Rates & Barrels - First Base Breakdown

Episode Date: February 13, 2020

Rundown5:24 Looking for Red Flags in Bellinger's 201914:35 What's Next for Pete Alonso?21:13 Properly Utilizing ADP & Tier-Driven Rankings25:47 Playing Time Concerns with Max Muncy?34:22 The Case for Anthony Rizzo43:03 Considerations Outside the Top 10055:22 Endgame Dart Throws Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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7 Key Strategies to Grow Your Profits, at netsuite.com slash listen. That's netsuite.com slash listen. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 69. It is February 13th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, it's all things corner infielders. We've been talking a lot about pitching on the last three episodes, so we're going to get back to some bats and start doing some position by position breakdowns, kind of looking at where

tiers break, talking about players we like, players we don't, things of that nature. We do have some housekeeping to get to real quick. If you're listening to this show and you're not already a subscriber to The Athletic, you can get 40% off a subscription at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. Everything we do is included with a subscription, including the draft kit that we launched last week.

If you like this show and you're listening to us on a platform that allows you to rate and review it, please take the time to rate and review the show. We'd greatly appreciate it. And tell your friends if you think they would like our show as well. Eno, happy Thursday from what has become now a very frigid Madison, Wisconsin. Yeah, yeah. Here it's starting to warm up. It's starting to feel like spring.

Got some drafts under my belt. And just trying as hard as possible not to think about this stupid Houston thing. I just, I'm so tired of it, man. I am tired of it. And I know they didn't do a great job today, you know, apologizing or whatever. And I know that there are people that are mad about what happened in 2017. There's pictures on other sides. David Robinson said something really interesting today about how mad he was, but I, I'm just tired of it. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of it i'm tired of it it's been it's too much and i don't

think that there's anything the astros players can say i mean i i think that the canned comments were bad but when they got into the clubhouse they seem sincere and i really don't think there's anything they can say at this point no everybody i everybody, I mean, they've become the new villain. Everybody's at the point now, if you're not an Astros fan, you're just anti-Astro. You are rooting against them at any given turn. I mean, to me, this could kind of top, at least temporarily, the level of disdain that non-Yankee fans had for the Yankees

for most of the 90s and early 2000s. Like, they are the common enemy in baseball now. But there is definitely a fatigue element of this story. And I think you're right. I think we've reached this point where even a sincere apology, which frankly, I don't know if the organization and the people in that organization are even capable of issuing one, even that wouldn't satisfy everybody at this point anyway. So it's kind of like, what are we really looking for at this point? They've been caught. They've been busted.

The news is out there. I think it's just too complicated to punish the players. There's the union. There's the fact that there's players on other teams. You'd be punishing the Mets for something their player did with the Astros. You don't know exactly who did it and when they did it.

You don't, you can't, are you going to give them all the same number so that the, you know, Jose Altuve, who got like, you know, 12 bangs or whatever, gets the same punishment as Marwin Gonzalez, who got like hundreds of bangs, you know? Like, are you going to listen to the thing and try to be like, oh, no, Altuve got fewer bangs, so he gets a 10-day suspension? You know what I mean? I think that the player thing is just out the door.

I do maybe punish the owner, and the owner today said, I don't think I should be held accountable. That's bad news because that means that basically nobody in his organization feels like they should be held accountable. That's the top, the very top. So I don't like that, but you know, once you're an owner in baseball, you're almost untouchable. And you had to be such,

you had to be, what's his face from the Dodgers, man, you had to be so obviously off your rocker, uh, to, to, to get pushed out of the ownership group,

you know? Oh, man, that's true of most major sports, right? It's pretty rare for an owner to reach a level where the other owners and the commissioner essentially intervene and actually remove someone you had basically have to be going like bankrupt like the rangers owner you know that

that got pushed out off of his team like he was going bankrupt so So, you know, I think, I don't know. I don't think the owners as a group are a very accountable group and not one to punish one of their own if they don't have to. So, yeah. Anyway, let's move on. That's what I was saying. I don't want to think about it. I'm done.

I'm just done. Fair enough. Let's talk about corner infielders, and we'll get away from the Astros fairly quickly. Baseball. And to avoid them for a little while, we'll start at first base, where their first baseman won't come up in the early part of the conversation. I've been seeing some interesting things bounce around fantasy baseball Twitter in the last couple of weeks. People are getting increasingly opinionated because they've done more research they've done more drafts it's

just front of mind now more so than it might have been for a lot of people two and three months ago when you know fantasy football season was still going on but we've seen an interesting pattern develop get the big three in most boards whether it's you Trout first, Yelich second, Acuna third, or Acuna first, Trout second, Yelich third, whatever the order is, those three guys tend to go first. And then probably some combination of Mookie Betts and Cody Bellinger, maybe Francisco Lindor, Trevor Story, and then we start getting into pitching. And I think it's kind of interesting that the other guys in the first round, outside of the big three and not necessarily Betts because he's been traded and talked about a lot,

they don't get vetted quite as much. Like Cody Bellinger. We don't talk about Cody Bellinger as much as we probably should coming off of the amazing season that he just put together. I mean, maybe it's just kind of boring for some people to talk about a top five player, but a 47 homer, 15 steal season with a 305 average, no less, is remarkable. And I think the question most people should be asking

as they make a first round pick, and this is kind of in the vein of the piece that Ron Chandler posted on The Athletic earlier this week, pointing out flaws in every player, what do we expect from Cody Bellinger? Does he belong in that top five? Do you feel good about him as one of the first players off the board,

as your first-round pick, coming off what was easily the best year of his young career so far? I do. I was in love with Cody Bellinger in the minor leagues. I made a huge trade in Devil's Rejects to get him coming off of his 2016 AA season when he hit 263 with a 20% strikeout rate and had 23 homers, 465 plate appearances. homers uh 465 plate appearances i just really liked that he hit the ball in the air a lot and made contact um and had good patience i thought that was um you know a great combo but you know one of the things that i've learned since then and anybody who listens to this knows

uh that i've talked about this on the on the podcast is that know, he used to have a fairly steep launch angle and he had that 49% fly ball rate in the minor leagues, uh, that I've since become a little bit more nervous about. Um, and when he first came in the big leagues, that first year with the 39 homers, he had that 47% fly ball rate. But what you saw is that near the end of that season, he became attackable high in the zone because he had that, that real uppercut swing. And he in fact says, told me that he works on, you know, hitting the top of the ball or, or, or hitting, you know, straight through the ball. Uh, and he works on, he actually says to himself to chop down to the ball because he has such an uppercut that that helps him kind of lessen the uppercut. And I think you've seen the last two years, the lower fly ball rate has actually been very good for him.

And it speaks to his basically, I think, developing a second and third swing, where now he has the A, B, and C swing. And he's better about knowing when to use which one and he can dunk the ball into the opposite field in the outfield that people are going to attack him high and away all the over and over again and if they go low and in on him he's gonna yank it and he's gonna yank it hard it's becoming your catchphrase someone pointed that out on twitter after the last episode i think you were talking about jock peterson having the the same kind of approach but yeah this is the lowest strikeout rate we've seen from cody bellinger uh really at any point

in his career but since rookie ball like rookie ball was the last time he had a sub 20 k rate as he came through the dodgers system obviously walked even more than usual last year as well. Having those different types of swings, it does make him seem very sustainable near the top of the board. I try to find faults in players the way Ron did in that article and really try to make sure that each decision I make is a good one. And I have a difficult time finding flaws in Bellinger right now. The projection spit out a 287 average on Steamer, 289 on ATC, coming off that 305 a year ago. Do you think that batting average holds up? I mean, I would assume if you buy into the contact gains and those multiple swings he's employing, then you can

see him remaining an asset in that category. Yeah, I just think that he's employing, then you can see him remaining an asset in that category. Yeah, I just think that like, he's really figured out a way, like I said, the three swing thing, but like, you know, also, he's just figured out how to counter what they've done to him. And if you look at, you know, high and away, just the last quadrant, if you look at the heat maps on Fangraphs, last year, his ISO high and away was 180. If you go back to 2017, even his first good year, when he came up, his ISO in that same quadrant was 0.017. So he literally had a whole high and away that he's covered. Now, of course, that means that, you know, maybe he's attackable somewhere else and it's a bit of a cat and mouse game. But just the fact that he made that adjustment to me is huge. That's that's why the strikeout rate came down. And that's why I think

even in the future, even if they find a new way to attack him, he's proven that he can figure out what to do to counter that. Right. I think that's a really encouraging sign. It's a clear skill that some players have and other players don't. Yeah, I think the opposite, like I've talked about sometimes, is like Brandon Belt. He has the ability to make those adjustments, but it usually takes like two or three years at a time, it feels like. So the speed at which you make these adjustments also matters. adjustments also matters. Oh, absolutely. It makes you a lot less susceptible to having a completely down year if a new game plan comes out against you and it's actually really effective. Looking at the other kind of early first baseman, we don't talk about Freddie Freeman a lot. We're not going to go into a lot of detail here. I think the wrist injury he had at the end of last year is something I'm not really concerned about at this point. The only thing he doesn't do, of course, is steal a lot of bases.

We know that. There's really nothing new about him. But the thing I do like about Freddie Freeman right now is the quality of the lineup around him. It's a good Braves lineup. Losing Josh Donaldson hurts, but they've got more young talent coming up. Austin Riley, I think, still has the Bellinger ability

to potentially adjust. You look back at his minor league numbers, had some swing and miss initially upon most of his minor league stops, and then over time cut that down. So whether he can make as much of an adjustment to the big leagues as he did to AAA when he repeated that level for the first time, that remains to be seen. But nevertheless, I like the setup in Atlanta around Freddie Freeman a lot.

I think he deserves that first-round price tag. But he kind of has this boring feel because he's a late first-rounder who doesn't run. Yeah, and at a non-premium position. But like we said, the positional adjustment goes out the window for most leagues. You have to do it pretty deeply to start looking at positional adjustments. Talking mono leagues and two catcher leagues so really would you want a guy who hits 300 and has 35 home runs and you know it's amazing to me that last year is that only the second year of his career that he had 100 rbi but he had 113 runs and 121 rbi and i know he lost donaldson but

i would say that this would be the second year of his career where he surpasses 100 in both. So I agree on that in the projections. I'm a little bit nervous. He's 30, but 30 is not really 32. So it's not enough to make me nervous. I did want to point out that there's kind of an obvious cliff around Freddie Freeman. So, you know, it's very rare to see it so clearly. But there's a player in the corner infield that's a $25 player. And the player right after him is a $20 player. Can you figure that one out? Hmm.

$25, $20. It's not Freeman and it's not the guy after him who's by auction is Bregman. But the guy after him and the next guy have a $6

difference. That's pretty huge. I would guess that's probably around Matt Olsen territory where that drop-off happens. Too early. Too late. Anthony Rendon to Peter Alonzo. Yeah, Alonzo was the guy that I wanted to spend a little time on of the early first baseman.

ADP since the start of February has been right around pick 30, so we're talking mid-third round of a 12-te teamer end of round two of a 15 teamer amazing season a year ago obviously a league winning player as much as anyone can be one 53 homers you know over 100 runs 120 RBIs 260 average where do we go from here like that that was the most optimistic Pete Alonso owner didn't draft him expecting anything near that level a year ago. But what do you expect in year two? Yeah, I think he's kind of an example of the new aging curve where players just hit the ground running, whether it's because of superior player development, superior, uh, training and coaching as youths, like basically that they've, you know, they've been playing high level ball their whole lives. Um, whether it's superior nutrition, whether it's the lack

of PEDs sort of, um, uh, floating their end years, you know, But whatever it is, mostly with aging curves, you kind of start at a level, you kind of stay at that level, and then you start dropping off at 27 or 28. So I don't think there's anything more to come. And I think actually the risk for Alonzo is ball-related. If there's any change to the ball, he was a leader in opposite field home runs last year. And, you know, I feel like I want to just assume that the ball is going to be same as last year, but there was, there was some evidence that the ball was sort of yo-yoing from game to game in the postseason.

And some evidence that they were using 2018 balls in there. And just like we went from 2018 to 2019, I don't know why we couldn't just go back to the 2018 ball. And the opposite field home run, you know, is like the source of just enough home runs. And nobody in baseball, you know, I think benefited. Let me see here. I was looking at that leaderboard the other day,

the split leaderboard on Fangraphs for opposite field home runs. I mean, he's tied for basically like 30th with six. Maybe I'm just, I guess I'm sort of overreacting maybe to the home run derby where he had a lot of opposite field home runs. Yeah, he did have a bunch in that, didn't he? Very rare for a home run derby, I'll have to say. But he had six home runs in the opposite field last year. But still, I think you have to admit that

someone with a high strikeout rate that is more sort of OBP power patience, no stone bases, likely to have a low batting average, that someone like that would really suffer if the power was drained out of the ball. And to have a guy go in the late second round that is kind of a one-tooler in fantasy parlance. I mean, so here's another way to think about this.

Imagine Oakland's Chris Davis having a normal, healthy season with a 2019 baseball. Like, wouldn't that kind of look like the season that we just got from Pete Alonzo? You'd think. I mean, the guy was sitting at 45 every other year. You don't think he could hit 53? And where did Chris Davis chris davis peak i mean that's 80 because of the ut factor probably last season adp in the 40 to 50 range if i'm remembering correctly off the top of my head i mean he yeah it took a while for him to get there

too for for different reasons but yeah you look back at some of his profile. I mean, 2015, the breakout year with the Brewers, 10% walk rate, 27.7% K rate. Alonzo last year, 26.4 and 10.4 in those markers. If you want to point out that he's young and that he had better strikeout rates, that's somewhat true. But dude, Pete Alonzo is actually 25 years old. true but dude peter lonson is actually 25 years old and strikeout rate even if you do longer aging curves that include the pdr and stuff strikeout rate doesn't improve for that long um so you know his projections do have him improving to like a 25 strikeout rate and maybe uh you know maybe he could have a 265 average next year but i i mean i doubt he

ever hits 270 i yeah i i see those low k rates too and i could see that being a reason for optimism you know if he brings it down and the ball is still juiced then maybe you get batting average with that power but i don't really see that being the most likely outcome when it comes to Alonzo. I think I have a hard time explaining why he's going 25 or 27 picks ahead of Matt Olson. I think they're really similar players. Olson does it from the left side. Both have a huge raw power potential. I mean, I think when you look at Matt Olson, you see a guy who could win a home run crowd. I see that anyway. I see a player who has enough power to lead the league in home runs. I think he has batting average risk the same way Alonzo does.

He gets on base enough to be steady in the run scored category. He's going to be in the heart of the order, but what's really causing those guys to be 25 picks apart in ADP right now? There's some evidence that Olsen underperformed his barrel rate. I mean, his barrel rate was twice the national average, and his ISO was only 50% better than league average. There's people around Matt Olsen with similar barrel rates that had, you know, ISOs like Schwarber had a better iso relative to the league

average uh from mil reyes uh peter alonso and matt olsen have functionally the same barrel rate yeah so that goes right to your to your point and speaking of that cliff the difference between rendon and alonso is smaller than the difference between Alonzo and Matt Olson. Just going by straight projections. So, I think that's, you know, people talk about, you know,

don't use tiers, don't use ADP. You're always making decisions about what, especially if you're doing snake drafts, what will be available to me next time I get a pick? What player pool is shrinking? Where can I have the best, like how can I achieve the highest ranked player in every position, right? In every place that I need something.

So could I take an ace here instead? Could I take like a Chris Paddock? I'm not on team throw ADP out the window. I don't think it's any sort of gospel. Jack Flaherty's right there. Shane Bieber is at 43. You're always like, that's where I use ADP. It's like, Oh, okay. It's

not, uh, do I need to take Peter Alonzo? Uh, now, like if I have a value that says, Oh, this player is a 20, uh, but the ADP is 60. Should I wait around yet? There's some value in that. Like, maybe I can get them in the next round, but it's more like, um, relative to the each player pool. Oh, well, I have Pete Alonso at a decent value for right here. But the difference between him and the next three in terms of my auction values is not that big. That's tier analysis. But the difference between Luis Castillo and the pitcher that I think will be available to me when the net when the turn comes back to me uh is much bigger you know so that's that's where i think tier and adp analysis does help and i and i can't like i don't get when people say it doesn't you know that you shouldn't look at tiers and you shouldn't look at um at adp because they they are valuable i'm not saying like that should be your end all

you know i shouldn't i don't think you should take a player because of his adp but you should you should be looking at adp and judging player pools because there obviously are shelves in value i mean there's literally two players that have six dollars of value between them yeah that's probably got something to do with how people in general approach the game right just clustering similar players together like that's i think what makes the the results base the adp sort of tiers that that we're referring to here but in my head in my evaluations i just don't see anything that compels me to spend an earlier pick on alonzo when olsen and muncie and goldschmidt and even though there's less power and more batting averages profile anthony rizzo but those guys are all there later i i think that the acknowledgement of that tier is important in crafting your strategy knowing what your options are going to be if you go plan b plan c plan d at each position or with each category that's that's how you have to think about

it so it's not just draft off the tiers or just draft off the rankings it's apply those things together to create the best possible combination of players it's's not this works, this doesn't. It's you can use it, but you can also use it incorrectly. When I create and start work for an auction or for a league, what I usually try to do is have a column that includes like difference between my value and ADP.

And the thing that's nice about that column is it gives you a real quick idea of if you're high on a guy or if you're low on a guy. And you don't then even have to look at the raw ADP. You can just look at that and be like, okay, you know, I know your value says you really want to take, you know, Jose Abreu here because of the values or whatever. But, you know, you're high on him. And if you look at the straight values, you know, Matt Chapman, you know, or Suarez or Olsen, you know, is going to be there when you come back. So maybe, you know, look at a different position right now. So

I like to have that one column thing, which is basically Eno minus, and people do that when I do my ranks. Like, oh, here are the players that Eno's high on, the pitchers that Eno's high on, but I just did him minus ADP. So I think that's a useful column to have.

And it kind of gives you some sense of what the room might think. We're both in on Olsen. I think we're both probably in on Max Muncy. Do you see anything in Muncy's profile that gives you pause? I'm kind of surprised at how much they've played him against lefties, but because he's played well in those opportunities, they just kind of keep doing it, even though they're a team that platoons a lot. Is there any reason to run away from Muncie at the inflated price this year?

I think it's only depth chart issues and age. I mean, he's 29. I don't know if people realize that because it took him so long to get here. And he's a little bit limited defensively. So what does the depth chart look like in reality? We can try to kind of figure it out now. But with Betts here and Pollock and Peterson still in town,

there are three outfielder alignments that push Bellinger to first. Now you have Bellinger at first. Muncy goes to play second gavin lux does what you know um and generally you know i would say that what would you actually say who what is the what is the stronger yes the the outfield is a stronger group of players than the infield. Right. I mean, you've got Betts, Bellinger, and Pollock generally playing the outfield. That's what I would guess. You could throw Matt Beatty out there once in a while.

They still have Jock as of right now because that trade got mixed. That's what I'm saying. The depth and strength of the outfield is going to push Bellinger to first sometimes. Yeah, or Jock, one of the two. Probably Bellinger because jock at first base didn't work and yeah bellinger bellinger should play enough to continue qualifying at first and

outfield like that's probably you know like against righties you know you could see some some bellinger there and then i guess lux sits uh so maybe just the but lux is a lefty too uh so i mean are you gonna sit you know Justin Turner against righties I mean I know he's 35 but uh he hasn't he's you know been 30 percent better than league average or better for the last three years with a bat it does make you wonder if they weren't if they're unable to make another deal and no one's hurt when the season begins, do they squeeze Lux more or do they squeeze Muncy more?

Because one of those two guys can't play as much as we want them to, if they're all there, but an injury pretty quickly could just open it up to the point where it doesn't matter anymore. So that's where the Muncy question comes in. It's like, okay, you need something to happen.

He's versatile. So he should be okay. You like the profile. I mean, I like the profile anyway. You can move him to three different positions. But then when you're looking at it, if you're looking at first base options, you know Anthony Rizzo is going to play pretty much every day. You know Goldschmidt's going to play pretty much every day. You know Jose Abreu is going to play pretty much every day you know jose abreu is going to play pretty much every day it's really hard to walk away from higher playing time floors when you're probably not getting a whole lot more there at the high end of production for muncie compared to any of those other three options with the exception of maybe the home run gap between muncie and rizzo thing is though and like i think it's baked in to some extent most of his projections have him around 580 plate appearances he hasn't he last year's 589 was his peak uh some of this is baked in uh it's obviously an offensive defense thing where maybe you could start the game with with muncie and finish the game with lux uh once you get a lead that sort of deal um and i think it's almost irrelevant we shouldn't talk too much about it because i think most people will buy Muncie to play second. So it's bad news for Gavin Lux, at this time at least.

I think that the Dodgers probably value the offense more. I think Lux might just be a special offensive player, though, too, which further complicates everything. I mean, he can push the issue, but I don't think that if he played like he did last year, he wouldn't. And if he plays to his projections, he won't push Muncy off the position offensively. But yes, I agree that there's more potential even than his projections. His projections right now have him for a 170 ISO. And with the Major League Ball in triple a lux had a 330 iso wow that's that's pretty pretty big gap yeah all right and even a double a to start the year he had a 208 iso so yeah there's definitely a lot of potential there but they can also be like the Rays and kind of slow walk him um and uh and so I do think

Muncy probably plays a little bit more if Bellinger's at first and uh we're not done yet in terms of the offseason and they obviously were trying to get rid of Jock Peterson just for I think this reason you know also financial reasons probably. But also because Beatty can play corner outfield pretty well in terms of just stick-wise, and they can go with Beatty as the Verdugo, the kind of replacement outfielder, replacement corner outfielder, and play that Pollock-Bellinger bets in the outfield as their kind of starting alignment. I think as I look at the Muncie price, though, again, compared to Goldie, Rizzo, Abreu,

and Josh Bell, Josh Bell is the cheapest of this bunch. We've talked about him at the end of the last season when the second half was pretty ugly. First half was outstanding. I think at the time, you mentioned there was a little bit of just luck in the first half that swung the opposite way in the second. It wasn't quite as bad as the splits were extreme. If I'm paraphrasing that incorrectly, feel free to jump in.

But Josh Bell, no playing time concerns. Skills look real. Hard hit rates and low K rates. He looks legit to me. Based on projections, Muncy should be behind all these guys. Even if you add playing time to Muncy's projection, he'd still probably fall just outside the top 10 among first base eligible players.

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, the projections have him basically like three six nine twelve like 15th 14th among first basemen obviously like dj the mayhew uh maybe grandal who are ahead of him maybe mancini would play different positions so that gets him right to where you're talking about uh but bell bell is really interesting and i don't want to um cut this piece short i think there's we're doing these round tables that are really fun you get the different perspectives from different writers at the athletic about different positions and so we got first base coming out on friday and i don't want to you know take too much out of that

i answered like five or six questions here's the answer to one of them which first baseman has the highest variance you know in the in sort of the top of the the top of the grouping and i said josh bell and what i did was i went to baseball for sexist uh you know new tool the axe and one of the things that's really fun about the axee is you can change the percentiles in your projections. And so basically, I took all the first basemen and put their 90th percentile in. I just wanted to see what the values would be. And Josh Bell's 90th percentile was basically tied for third or fourth. I think it was fourth.

Tied for fourth among first basemen. He was fourth, tied for fourth among first basemen. And, you know, his, that's not a huge variance because he's like fifth or sixth as it is now. But I think it does speak to that sort of first half, second half split. And, you know, he had 27 homers in the first half and 10 homers in the second half. But his first half ground ball rate was 44% and his second half ground ball rate was 44%. Yeah, the mix was the same. So he hit a few more pop-ups in the second half,

a lot more pop-ups. But, you know, I think that that is a little bit of, like, where he was being pitched and the way they were attacking him. I think that that is a little bit of like where he's being pitched and the way they were attacking him. And I don't think that I don't think that that is something he can't figure out. I mean, he's adjusted a few times. Plus, we're talking about a guy, I think, that has one of the better hit tools of the first baseman. I would agree with that.

I think one of the few players who's got a better hit tool is Anthony Rizzo. We've seen it from him for almost forever. And the knock on him, this is ridiculous to me, you know, the knock on Anthony Rizzo

is that he hasn't been hitting 30 home runs every year for the last two seasons now. He's at 25 and 27. Seems like splitting hairs, doesn't it? Like when you consider his plate skills and how long he's done 25 and 27 seems like splitting hairs doesn't it like when you consider his plate skills

and how long he's done that and generally how durable he's been as well i know he's great his batting averages and obps and runs in rbi have been in between and even adds in some stone bases i don't know yeah he's he's uh durable i think he's kind of like the boring, bland type of player that doesn't have that U-word that people are always looking for. I mean, he's not that different than Freddie Freeman. And there's a 50-pick gap between them right now in ADP, 55. Oh, my God. You're right. I mean, you're talking about 280, 290 with 30 homers and good runs in RBI.

I mean, that's Freddie Freeman. And Freeman had a lot of opposite field home runs last year to sort of touch back on the point you brought up earlier. If you look at that leaderboard, he's really high up there. So if you're not convinced of Freddie Freeman as a first rounder, I think part of that could be that you see Anthony Rizzo there four rounds later and think, oh, well, this is basically Freddie Freeman at a discounted price.

And I wouldn't push back on that. I'd say, yeah, you're right. And that's why you should take someone else where a lot of people take Freeman. I don't think you can do better later. Here's that ADP and tier analysis. And the way that it can work out looking at ADP is when you're looking at Freddie Freeman, he's going at 15, you're choosing between, on average, and this is not your league, but you're choosing between Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, Walker Buehler. So you could go pitcher there and then take Anthony Rizzo the next time you're up, probably. You know?

Or you could take a player with more speed like Jose Ramirez, who's right there. So, you know, Or Anthony Rendon, say someone with more positional value, more positional value for your team in terms of what you think is available at third base later, and so on. I'm not saying don't draft Freddie Freeman, but especially if someone drops to you that you don't expect, like you're like, oh, Max Rizzo will never make it to me. And then all of a sudden you're looking at Max Rizzo versus Freddie Freeman. Maybe say, I'm going to take Max.

I'm going to take Rizzo next. Yeah, because you have other outs too. This is the other thing you got to keep in mind. If you're going to play the I'm going to wait for the other guy game, someone can snipe you on the other guy. And if there's not another guy beyond the other guy, you're toast. Then you're scrambling. I think it applies more to things that are more scarce, specifically stolen bases in the early rounds. We've talked about that for months, that you get to a certain point

in the pool where you are chasing very risky steals because you have playing time issues. You have other categorical deficiencies that become a bigger part of the mix. But if you pass on Freeman because you can get Rizzo, someone snipes you on Rizzo, and the rest of that cluster is all gone, Abreu, Goldie, everybody else you'd like there, you still have Josh Bell in the pocket. And you still have guys who are going to play a lot that are low average big power guys. I mean, Reese Hoskins, Carlos Santana, they're even cheaper yet. The part of pivoting there that you have to account for is, okay, I just gave up a lot of batting average to get that extra power.

Where do I find cheap batting average? Maybe that's chasing a player like Michael Brantley or somebody in the outfield. It's just having ideas of how you can find a similar player, even at a different position, is part of the prep work that makes you better at pivoting if you're going to have these sort of wait for the other guy strategies yeah and i think that i think that every philosophy has blind spots i mean you can be a dollarist you know uh a straight value guy who's like no my production system says 26.7 for freddie frameman and 26.5 for you know

i think you did a good job masking the voice but anyone who is familiar with the industry probably knows exactly who that may have been directed at like you did the old time newsy voice so that that's not what that guy sounds like at all um oh yeah well there's there's at least one person who popped right in my mind yeah you're probably right about it but i just i think there are there are blind spots to that too because uh projection systems aren't always right you know and that there are there are player pools where they miss poor like a lot and that those player pools are young players uh prospect you know rookie players pitchers um injured dudes injured dudes you know uh uh you know best shape of your life is is a dumb thing but there is actually, you know, Jeff Zidimer did find some research that if your sprint speed is up big year over year, you can actually, you actually overperform your projections, you know.

He had a great piece today on Baseball HQ about players that are old and don't have any sprint speed and don't have a lot of patience underperforming their projections. So the kind of the risk of dropping off because you don't have a great hit tool and you don't have great athleticism. You're basically just a masher. The risk of those guys dropping off earlier than other people um so those things don't show up in the projections uh you know they may someday but there's always going to be uh stuff that we can try and figure out ahead of the projection system because the projection systems are like the paper of record you know can't take one piece by Jeff Zimmerman and say, oh, this is it. That's great.

What they need to see is that that's true three years in a row before they include it in their projection system. Projection systems right now are just adding in barrels and exit velocity. Now. We've had stack cast since 2015. And I'm not really ragging on projection

systems i think that's the right way to do it otherwise they would add every little research piece that comes up and not really vet it and and and just be like crazy talk you know they need to be sort of boring instead and and slow they need to kind of plot along it's like the the the leader boards of fan graphs you don't want the leaderboards of fangraphs you don't want the leaderboards of fangraphs to have everybody's uh you know everybody's stat that's out there because you kind of want to vet it for three two three four years before you put it on the on the leaderboard you know what i mean well yeah you want you want to actually test it out yeah you want to see you want to see how it tracks over a few years yeah and it can't and and just look at jeff serman's research

on on uh injured players like it it was one way for what for like a year or two and then he was like i don't see it anymore and now he's like he's like doing more research being like oh this is why um it was there for a little bit now it's not because basically once you're injured you're you're kind of likely to injure that area again you know so it kind of it can lead uh if you're injured you're you're kind of likely to injure that area again you know so it kind of it can lead uh if you're older uh you know you play through injury it doesn't mean you're just going to bounce back and be better than your projections you could just be older and get hurt again um so you know i i try to we try to bring you the best of the research that's out there. That's a way to stay ahead of the strict valuist. At the same time, you're going to fail sometimes.

It's not going to work every time. Being a strict value guy is also going to make you fail in certain ways. Right. Again, like every part of this conversation so far, it's kind of thinking of it more like a bag of golf clubs like these are all tools and your ability to hit the club correctly will maximize its value but if you you buy that uh that lob wedge and you have no idea how to hit a lob wedge you're gonna make mistakes with it. That's just how it goes. Says the guy who doesn't have a lob wedge.

That might be our first golf reference. I'm trying. I'm trying to reach out to people on a level that makes sense to them. My world doesn't make sense to anybody, so I have to try and look through the lens of other people and talk about what I see that way.

Let's go rapid fire on some first basemen that are going later. I'll throw them out there. You tell me kind of a snap answer, yay or nay. And if you have a good why in either direction, what you're thinking with these particular players. Danny Santana, who played seemingly more positions than first base and outfield last year, only has first base and outfield eligibility. ADP's at 132. I know you wrote that piece about replacement level players and the dangers that come with them.

Are you going to have Danny Santana anywhere if that's the price? He's not my center fielder. He's not my second baseman. Nick He's not my second baseman. Nick Solak is my third baseman. I like Nick Solak. Shin Su Chu is my DH. So, is he going to be

your corner right fielder? Is he going to be your right fielder and Gallup play center? Is he really going to be the center fielder? I don't know, man. I think there's a fair amount of risk there I guess he could be the center fielder he definitely has the sprint speed for it it's just that him playing so much at first base and the way that clubs were treating him defensive like they weren't even signing him to be a defensive replacement in first in the center field you know what I mean? He'd kind of fallen off because they didn't see defensive value there. And before the kind of offensive breakout, they didn't see the offensive value either.

So, you know, if they had an obvious center or other outfielder, I would maybe put him on a do not draft list. But because there is some opening in the outfield, I'll take him if he falls. But to me, I want him around the place where Renato Nunez is in terms of drafting. And, you know, they're only $2 or $3 apart in terms of projections, and they both carry the same risk in terms of playing time. If someone like DJ Stewart, we talked about this on the podcast, but, you know, someone like DJ Stewart steps forward, he can get hectic for Renato Nunez pretty quickly.

So I want to put those guys in the $3 bucket. A little bit better than your $1 bucket, but not someone I'd be like, oh, Danny Santana is my corner infielder, and I am all set. I think I queued up a loaded question after saying rapid fire, so that one's on me.

That was as quick as I could get. Let's see if we can do better on this one. Yuli Gurriel. Out. Carlos Santana, 141 ADP right now. In on OBP leagues. I might be a little bit out on other ones just because age worries me a little bit.

33. There can be a cliff there. I don't see him as one of these athletic, maybe the hit tool is good, but he's also had some low batting averages. I could see him putting up another 230-25 year, which would be fairly useless in a lot of leagues. I think I'm in on Santana. I am out on Gurriel for what it's worth. I think Santana is actually still a little underrated, but I wouldn't push him up to get him in part because there's other guys we're going to talk

about here who I think can come pretty close at even cheaper price. How about Edwin Encarnacion? He hasn't really come up on this podcast since he signed with the White Sox, if he even came up then. 168 for the ADP. I know, man. 37. That's, yeah. I'm a little bit worried about carl santana at 33 like 37 years old i just feel like the collapse potential is strong with

him i mean it's not quite the same as like nelson cruz of course cru Cruz is even older yet, but I think you can see the warts a little bit when you look at Encarnacion, and that's the concern. Highest fly ball rate of his career last year, which sounds great, except that could turn him into a pop-up fly ball master and give him a 220 batting average with like a 320 OBP

and 28 homers pretty quickly. Yeah, I think you could do worse for sure, but you could also probably do better. And I think better in this case for me is Luke Voigt. I'm convinced he was hurt for the second half. It's clear in the splits. We talked about it

a few months back. I'm on Luke Voigt, especially at that price, but even if he starts creeping up a little bit, his min pick's 165, his ADP is like 198. I'm in at the min pick on Luke Voigt. Yeah, I'm all over Luke Voigt. He's my first baseman in a few places already. I think he was hurt. He also underperformed his barrels. His barrel rate was 60% better than league average and his ISO was 8% better than league average. Other people around Luke Voigt with better ISOs include Mike Moustakas, Michael Conforto, Juan Soto

has functionally the same barrel rate as Luke Voigt. So I know that Juan Soto makes more contact. I'm not an idiot. But Luke Voigt, i'm in and and i'd rather all things being equal and these things are fairly equal luke voight uh has uh uh well actually edwin eric and canassione has a nine dollar projection but if you're talking about like lou voight versus like daniel murphy uh or jock peterson um you, older players, take the younger player. That's a simple rule. If they're close, take the younger player, especially if it's a bench player or a corner infielder, take the younger player. All the research suggests that one of the weaknesses of projections is with 30 to 35-year-old players.

It's really interesting. It over-projects them, I would assume is the problem. Especially if they're projecting a bounce back, the player is less likely to bounce back if he's 30 to 35. Christian Walker is in the same range as Luke Voigt. I think they're kind of interesting because they're both pop-up guys that finally got their opportunities. Walker, I wish I could articulate it better. There's something about him that just isn't convincing to me, and I'm not sure exactly what it is.

I mean, he had a pretty similar bail rate. I think he's fairly similar to Luke Voigt. I don't know. He has all the things I would normally like, so it seems like an internal problem for me. Well, yeah, a little bit of depth chart risk, I think. Not just Jake Lamb, but Kevin Krohn and Seth Beer. It seems like the team itself has hedged their bets.

Yeah, that's still... He doesn't have to be terrible to lose his job. He has to be bad to lose his job. I don't think it's going to be two bad weeks. I think it's got to be a month or so where he's just... He could lose his job if he does a steamer projection his steamer projection is for uh 99 wrc plus and the average first baseman has 105 wrc plus if he if he goes to a steamer projection he might lose his job yeah you know what maybe it's just the comparison thing, though, where the StatCast numbers look good.

I just look at Voight being in the Yankees lineup in that park. Oh, yeah. No, I prefer Voight. It's like the Coke-Pepsi thing with Voight and Walker, where it's like Voight's the Coke and Walker's the Pepsi for me. And I'm like, well, I definitely want the Coke, but Pepsi's fine. Like, it's, I don't know, terrible analogy. Be more relevant. Pepsi's fine.

It's, I don't know, terrible analogy. Be more relevant. I mean, I think the outside stuff, definitely Park is a big deal. Since they put the Humidor in Arizona, the Park factor has gone pitcher-friendly, in fact. I think that's probably the biggest thing weighing on my mind with Walker, but not the only thing. How about Eric Hosmer? 233. Plays a lot. Kind of a flawed player in several ways,

but he's an accumulator, and accumulators, at least in leagues with more than 10 teams, it can be pretty useful. Yeah, I mean, blah. Yeah, he's a little bit, like he has a little bit of that boring you know oh my god still available you know i didn't do anything about ci i'm in a 15 team league um okay you know i'm just i don't want to i like i don't want to attach my name to eric hosmer any more than it has so he's a parachute player like things went wrong a couple runs happened you were waiting for void you're waiting for someone you liked late those guys actually i

think you end up going to hosmer very different than void doesn't have the upside sorry uh and uh doesn't give you the same power but if you you were kind of like, oh, Voight's my guy, and you're looking at the ADP too hard, and you're like, no one's going to pick him, and then someone listened to this podcast and took Voight and snatched him from you. Yeah, I think this is an interesting would you rather. Would you rather Eric Hosmer or Joey Votto?

Oh, Votto's even cheaper. Oh, man 50 50 picks later on on vato but he's 36 man he's 36 i get so hung up on talent sometimes this came up at first pitch too we were talking about it was shane bieber versus walker buehler uh that was the example so it's a pitching example and i was adamant that i prefer bueller to bieber even though there are things out of their control that makes bieber potentially more valuable right and i think because of things vato has done being are so much better than the things that eric hosmer has done in his career, I still cling to this hope or belief that Votto is the better player now, even when there's some pretty steady evidence to suggest that Hosmer is actually the better option at this point.

Yeah. I mean, Votto has 27 homers in the last two years and I sold all my my shares and in 20 after 2017 and uh haven't looked back haven't haven't drafted him in a single league uh the last two years but isn't he exactly the kind of player the projections would screw up just based on what you said a few minutes ago i think he said 30 to 35 players but he's 30 36 now right like he? He's the guy the projections will look at and because of all the goodness from pre-2018, it still lifts him up to a level

that... Steamer still says he's going to hit 270 with 23 homers and that's almost what he's hit in the last two years combined. Yeah, I mean everything rotisserie-wise is pretty much better with his projection than it has been in terms of his actual output

in each of the last two seasons. That doesn't seem like a smart thing to buy into at this point. I think in an OBP league, I would take Votto over Hosmer, but I think I might take Hosmer over Votto. And it just hurts me to my core, but we all play fancy baseball

and we all have to kill our darlings at some point. Isn't he just Joe Maurer at this point playing in Cincinnati, so he's getting a few extra homers? Seems like it. And there's no stat cast thing that is kind to Votto. It does. It sucks. I mean, I could see myself in NL only leagues getting Votto if he's cheap

because there you're buying playing time and you're probably buying it at a discount like that that could make some sense good corner guy for an old league for hos was pretty close to an nl only first baseman for me but but just a little better than than vato i think at this point is where i stand on him yeah i think the market has that one right uh let said. Let's open it up a little bit. Just later than that first baseman. Outside the top 200 in terms of ADP, who else do you like to throw darts at as you try to fill a corner spot

or for maybe deeper formats? Michael Chavis. I've had someone, I had a scout describe Michael Chavis as Scott as the next coming of, who's Pierce? What was his first name? Steve. Steve Pierce.

Not great recognition at the plate. Can run into one. Good against lefties. But I think Chavis still has some opportunity beyond that. And Jose Peraza is just... I don't think Jose Peraza is anybody's starting second baseman. I think Chavis can beat that one out fairly quickly. Who else

do I like? Eric Thames in Washington. Washington's a sneaky home run park. I know they have Ryan Zimmerman, but Ryan Zimmerman's hurt all the time. And then Rowdy Tellez. That's my favorite.

Do you like Rowdy? Is that a Travis Shaw fade then? It's not. I'm fully aware that Travis Shaw and Teoscar Hernandez are the starters there, and that's why he's more of a dart throw late guy. But Rowdy Tellez has the same barrel rate as Freddie Freeman. He has the same barrel rate as Eugenio Suarez, same barrel rate as Edwin Encarnacion.

And in fact, Edwin Encarnacion is my guy for this because, uh, I think that I see some, um, some similarities. And one of the main things for me, uh, I think that I see some similarities. And one of the main things for me is when Edwin Anacronasio first came up,

he struck out too much, but he obviously could barrel the ball when he got it. And then he figured something out in terms of plate discipline and really took off. And that's what's stopping Roddy Tellez right now. It's not what happens when he makes contact. It's the sort of pitch recognition and the play discipline part of it. And in the minor leagues, Tellez had good strikeout rates. So I think there's some opportunity there for Tellez. Also, just like Shaw and Teoscar Hernandez have fairly high bust rates.

Pretty obviously. Shaw busted last year. Teoscar Hernandez has been unplayable for large stretches of his career. Yeah, it's true. As toolsy as he is, it's just not clicking for him. Yeah.

That's why Rowdy is a fun get for him. Yeah. That's why Rowdy is a fun get for me. I think also Dominic Smith, but it's just such a crowded... I mean, Dominic Smith can hit, but it's such a crowded situation all of a sudden in New York. I can't even describe what would happen

for Dominic Smith to play regularly. Jeff McNeil... Robinson Cano gets hurt. Jeff McNeil goes to second. J.D. Davis plays third. And Dominic Smith becomes a regular left fielder. Yeah, I think that could happen. Although, I mean, Cespedes with the reduced contract might still be around, too.

And that keeps Davis at their... This is common, more common now, I think, in this landscape where you have teams that seem to just have too many players and it works itself out one way or another, oftentimes injury. But Dominic Smith, I mean, maybe it's a trade. Yeah. There's two things going on. There's two things going on in baseball. And interesting,

there's a limited number of teams trying. So the better players are congregating on the better, on the better teams. And so now they're more super teams and teams with great fifth and six outfielders type situations. And the other thing that's happening is we haven't expanded baseball for a while and we've expanded the player pool because we go to, you know,

places we've never gone to before to, in order to get players. And so if've expanded the player pool because we go to you know places we've never gone to before to in order to get players and so if you expand the player supply and you don't change where they can play you're obviously going to get better and better players and get crowded and that's why they're things like yasiel puig considering going to japan that's why some teams have you know their sixth reliever could close for a team 30 years ago. It's crazy, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, I, I, some people would quibble with that last one, but I believe it. The Puig thing is weird. I mean, I understand there have been some documented problems with Puig regarding, I don't know, his relationships with teammates at various stops. I mean, it's painting it with a broad brush, but at the same time, there's pretty obvious talent there, and teams take on so much worse in so many instances hoping to catch lightning in a bottle.

in so many instances, hoping to catch lightning in a bottle. Whereas, you know, it might not be in a bottle, but Yasiel Puig is just clearly a good baseball player. Yeah. I think that the problem is that the two places that he should go are St. Louis or San Francisco. And the problem with going to St. Louis or San Francisco is obvious. In one case, at least, San Francisco, having Madison Bumgarner leave town and having Yasiel Puig be one of the free agent acquisitions, I think, would be a real problem. So strange.

In some circles. So strange. circles so strange and in st louis i you know i think that they may just be over emphasizing uh those those secondary factors or uh both of those teams are just slow walking him and just trying to get him to you know come there for one year and five million or something i mean the cardinal way is one of those things that I just kind of laugh at when people bring it up and they're serious about it. Just imagine Yasiel Puig in a Cardinals uniform and try not to laugh. I mean, it's just. That's what I'm saying.

It will kill people so much. I would enjoy it. Those are the two competitive teams that I think could really use, you know, some outfield help. Yeah, and a one-year deal especially. Why not? I don't think he really wants to go. And they have some money to spend.

Obviously, he could go to the... I mean, the Indians also, pretty obvious. Right back there makes a lot of sense. And maybe they're just waiting for the number to drop to something like 1-5, and then the Indians will get back in. But he's probably looking for at least 3-30 or something. Well, they just added Domingo Santana, too.

I don't think, yeah. Did the Indians sign Domingo Santana? Yeah, Wednesday they did. They did? Okay, so that happened. All right, so, you know, and Domingo probably signed for 1-4 or something. Were these terms closer

two sides of agreed has to pass his physical they almost have done tuesday no numbers yet i thought it was i thought it was at least agreed to it's agreed to so yeah anyway so maybe the indians are out i don't know uh. But yeah, so Rowdy is an interesting one. Evan White is somewhat interesting to me. I think that them signing him to that long-term deal that they did gives him the cost certainty to just let him play. And he doesn't have, I think, some of the concerns that Daniel Vogelbach has defensively. No, I think White's going to be maybe a plus defender at first base.

I think that's absolutely in the cards for him. And in terms of starting his service time, since they've locked him in, I think he might be the opening deck first baseman. Yeah, they have club options on him through the 2028 season. And to begin the 2028 season, Evan White will turn 32 that April. They have him signed so cheap for so long that if they just want him to play, it shouldn't matter. I think they'd want, like, if he's going to get figured out or whatever and not adjust back, I think they want to know that as soon as possible, I think they'd want if he's going to get figured out or whatever and not adjust back, I think they want to

know that as soon as possible, I think I think it all lines up where they just, hey let's put him out there and let him fight through it, because we're going to probably be bad at least for the next two years, so let's let him be bad, let's let him fight through the Major League and maybe he'll be

you know, he'll be that sort of established first baseman when julio rodriguez and jared kellenich are ready they're actually a little more exciting than i realized at the end of the season i the depth in the system you've talked about some of the things they're doing with their pitching that's really interesting i i'm a little more optimistic about the mariners than i was probably just four months ago i think in part because i pulled back and just looked at the bigger picture. And it's coming into focus nicely. It's not just a couple of really high-end prospects. It's some other things that look really encouraging as well.

That's going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We thought we were going to hit both corners. It looks like we got mostly through first base. First base. You know where we're going on our next episode on Tuesday. I know the emails are starting to pile up. Ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com. Now, if you want to shoot us a note, be sure to spell out the word and.

If you go that route on Twitter, he's at Enoceros. I'm at Derek Van Ryper. I would also be remiss if I didn't say that we have two other fantasy baseball podcasts running this season. Fantasy Baseball in 15 every weekday morning. This is all the news that you need up and running by 6 a.m. Eastern each day. And the Athletic Fantasy Baseball podcast that drops new episodes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon opposite this show. So tons of great content to listen to. And again, check out the draft kit on the site as well.

We're back with you on a Tuesday. Have a great weekend. Thanks for listening.