Rates & Barrels - Fixing Broken Rosters, Finding Value in Unique Roles & Assessing Launch Angle

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

Eno and DVR discuss ways to consider making adjustments for struggling teams now that the calendar has progressed to the second half of May. Plus, opportunities to find value with pitchers in unique roles, and reasons for optimism about Ke'Bryan Hayes' future power contributions.  Rundown -- How to Fix a Struggling Squad -- Accepting a 'Sell Low' Situation -- Pitching Profiles to Target -- Stuff v. Role & Non-Closer Pitchers -- Felix Bautista's Future  -- Ke'Bryan Hayes, Launch Angle & Future Power Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first six months: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Wednesday, May 18th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we will try and perform a diagnostics test, we'll call it. A resuscitation. A resuscitation of sorts. A deep dive on my NL Labor Squad, which could be the worst team I've ever built by where it sits in the standings right now. I don't think I've ever been in last place in labor in mid-May before.

So when you're sitting with 39.5 standings points, it's time to make some changes. But if you are bottom half, bottom third of a league, what kinds of changes should you be making? What types of players should you be thinking about trading for, picking up, whatever it might be? It's not really about me. It's like this problem exists. What do you do in this situation especially now that we're getting closer to the the end of the second month of the season i realize april was cut short but you got to do something so we'll we'll work on that i've got a few other questions from the mailbag we're going to get to on this episode as well so plenty of fun topics here glad to be back after a week at home. Nice to see family.

Yay, you're back. Is it, what's it like when I'm gone from your perspective? I can listen to the shows when I'm not on them, of course, but what does it really like when I'm not here? I struggle with transitions. I talk too long. I don't know how to move things towards the transitions that I want I forget what to do at the beginning and the end of the show it's like being on stage and not knowing what to do with your hands

you know I just feel like a fish out of water and you know I think that you do an excellent job at what you do and we can't do an excellent job at what you do, and we can't do it without you. Well, thank you.

I appreciate that. Glad to be back. Glad to be back. Glad to be doing the usual things that I'm doing during the day. I get to spend time. I've got a couple of nieces. They're very young. I've only seen them a handful of times because of COVID and moving away,

so I'm getting to be around them for a few days and not being a stranger by the end of the trip, which understandably, they're like, who is this big, stupid looking guy? That's where it was the first day I was there. By the time I left, oh, it's Uncle Derek. It's like, yes, that's good. It's good to have that family relationship that has been lacking for many of us. So if you're the kind of person who could see family soon and needs to just kind of get that extra nudge, I encourage you to do it. I found it to be a great use of some time off. But let's get into what to do with a bad team, an actual bad team.

My labor team, again, this is just an example. It doesn't have to be a monolig team to follow the types of things we're going to suggest. 12-team NL only. I'm winning saves, and I am not any higher than fifth from the bottom in any other category. I am dead last in home runs and batting average. I am third from the bottom in stolen bases, third from the bottom in RBI, bottom four in both ERA and WIP,

and I am near the bottom in strikeouts. I have nothing. nothing now the first thing i would say is if you have a team like mine and you say oh i'm kind of bad in all these areas are you lagging on playing time are you just not playing guys enough are you missing lineup changeovers if you have the at bat column if you have the innings pitch column you can look at that and say how am i doing compared to the rest of the league? Not surprisingly, I am lower half in at bats, but I'm not bottom of the league. So I'm not totally buried in that regard. So that might be an indication that you have a few players that have underperformed just in terms of their slash lines, skills, maybe being a little

off, maybe some bad luck mixed into the roster. Innings pitched wise, I'm a bit lighter. I'm third from the bottom, and I'm a little scared there because finding pitching in a mono league is really difficult. It's literally almost impossible to find an actual starting pitcher available most weeks. I think that's where the uniqueness of this format comes into play, where in a mixed league, you could say my ratios aren't very good, and I don't have volume play where in a mixed league, you could say my ratios aren't very good and I don't have volume. But in a mixed league, I can take more chances on two start pitchers. I can be more aggressive and play the volume game. And even if I don't fix my ratios, I will be good in K's.

I'll be good in wins. And, you know, maybe because I've got saves already, I'll be OK in saves. I'm good in three pitching categories by the end of the season. My hitting turns out okay. My team's good enough to compete, possibly finish in the money, maybe win the league in situations like that. So I think this comes down to more of a trade problem for me specifically. Thank God, honestly, that these industry leagues allow for trades. Right.

Because I think that when you're in NFBC, you're just like, okay, all I can do is work the wire. The only question is, should I cut this guy that I've been waiting on, or should I not? Yep. And this is the league I have Herman Marquez, among others. Can't take guys out. That's part of the problem.

Charlie Morton's on that team. He's part of the problem with the ratios as well. Alex Wood has been a little bit of an underperformer for me. It's a little bit of everything in that regard. On the hitting side, it would surprise no one to learn that Trent Grisham is on this team.

Carson Kelly is on this team. Luke Voigt is on this team. I traded for Francisco Lindor a couple of weeks ago. I took that excess in saves, traded Josh Hader straight up for Francisco Lindor. Lindor hasn't done much since I traded for him. It's only been a couple of weeks ago. I took that excess in saves, traded Josh Hader straight up for Francisco Lindor. Lindor hasn't done much since I traded for him. It's only been a couple of weeks, probably not the end of the world.

See, that's exactly what I would have told you to do, but so do you have someone closing games for you now after Hader's gone? I still have Taylor Rodgers. Oh, that's nice. And theoretically, Anthony Bender could be a closer, but that ship might be sailing. So I've already moved my saves excess for a good all-around player, And theoretically, Anthony Bender could be a closer, but that ship might be sailing.

So I've already moved my saves excess for a good all-around player. And I think that's going to work out just fine. Jesse Winker, underperformer, even like JD Davis, who I think has been one of the most unlucky players in the league so far. Of course, he's on that team. I can tell myself a story that maybe I'm underperforming in hitting by two to three overall hitting positions where maybe my team is more like a bottom third of the league team than the worst possible team in the league. It still needs to be fixed. So if you can make trades, and most people can, what are you buying into? What skills are you looking for? What flaws are you willing to accept right now? What makes sense from a logical perspective when you're trying to take a chance on players that could actually help you dig out of a bad six, seven week start to the season? Well, that's a really difficult question

because for you in particular, because there's so many of those guys that are on your team. Yeah. But, you know, I did do piece uh recently about good process uh and bad results um on on on the athletic and that's the kind of thing i would look for what i looked for and this is something you've heard on this before is um i'd look for players that are barreling the ball not chasing and making contact because those are the three players that are barreling the ball, not chasing, and making contact. Because those are the three things that are meaningful early. And those, I feel like if you're doing those and not getting results, I think that, you know, those are the kinds of players that you want to go and get.

So I'm calling that up furiously here. I didn't know exactly what the question would be that you were going to get to. 12 MLB hitters doing the right things and getting the wrong results so let's see let me sort for NL players Max Muncy could be an interesting guy for you to get because he's not reaching

he's still barreling and he's making contact and they're playing him at third base I don't think the elbow is that much of a problem anymore maybe a little bit but um you could i think the the window for christian walker is closing we've been talking about him a lot on this podcast we've been giving him some love um but uh maybe you could go smaller garrett cooper is on this list i think he's a bit of a risk on a team that is always looking to improve offensively, that he could just lose his thing.

But maybe you could do a Bender for Cooper deal. You never know. That's small enough, right? You're not saying Bender for Muncie or something. You're like, hey, let's just do a little side deal here. You could take a shot at these saves. Maybe if Bender gets one more clean save or something, you could capitalize

on that. I think it would be hard for you with your resources right now to get Christian Jelic, who's on this list, or Max Muncie. I've already got Jelic well you you drafted him i got on this team yeah you drafted him yeah yeah um and then you know i think that i think the hardest

thing to do is to sell low yes that is a very difficult skill to develop i feel like i've played what feels like almost 20 years now and selling low. You know you have to do it sometimes, but actually bringing yourself to do it, accepting 50 cents on the dollar for a player, that's a thing you need to do sometimes.

In this case, did I name a player out of Tyrone Taylor, Jesse Winker? Well, Jesse Winker and Trent Grisham jesse winker well jesse winker and trent grisham actually those are the two that i am looking at and i have i have grisham in a 12 team regular dynasty where you know just a 12 team you know mixed league um you know it's an ops dynasty so like the ability the ability to get on base is somewhat useful, especially if you're going to steal on bases.

But he hasn't even attempted a steal. And given how sticky those are, perhaps you could sell him as a 10-steal guy when he may only hit 10 more homers and steal five bases. So did you say you were doing well in steals? No, I'm not really doing well in steals uh no i'm not really doing well anything but saves i think steals i guess it comes back to would i punt steals would i be willing to do that the other that's the other thing you you gotta you gotta start thinking about i'm gonna say no far behind no on the stolen base punt because i have 15 and i'd be fourth most in the category

if i had five more so there's such a cluster there that keeping at it, holding because of the possibility of steals from Grisham is probably worth it in this case. So that might be looking at Winker, you know, because the thing about Winker is the process stats when it comes to strikeouts and walks look fine. He's reaching less than last year, chasing less than last year,

and around his league average rate, he's making contact around his career average rate. His walk and strikeout rates look fairly sustainable. And so, you know, you'd expect his batting average to come up. Now, the problem is that Safeco is a batting average killing park. And then you look over at the barrel rate, which is poor and goes back all the way to 2019 levels when he hit 16 homers.

In fact, his StatCast stats look very similar to 2019. And that was the rabbit ball. So you take the 2019 barrel rates that produced a 16 homer season yes albeit in you know sort of 400 plate appearances but in cincinnati with the rabbit ball and so i think you could be looking at a 16 homer season for winker in all and if he's gonna you know hit 250 or 260 for the season you know going forward that might be or no you know if he's going to, you know, hit 250 or 260 for the season, you know, going forward, that might be, or no, you know, if he's only going to hit 250 or 260 going forward, you know, getting 250 and 12 homers, you know, it's not amazing, but maybe the other person on the other

end of the trade is looking at a different projection system and likes him better because of that, or just looking at their, you know, their last couple of blinkers last couple of years and likes him better than that. Or maybe you can trade winker for a starting pitching, starting pitcher. And the other person says, I just need an outfield bat and I'm willing to give up my access starting

pitching. Yeah. Oh, I think the obvious target helps to play in a league where someone has created a projection system. Derek Hardy's in the league. Perhaps he would be more optimistic about Winker. The Bad X is the one that's still kind of optimistic about him.

But I think this is the most underrated part of what you have to do right now. It almost doesn't matter what you want to do about your team as much as it matters what the other players want to do with their teams. And so you can say all day, like, oh, I'd like to trade Wink or whatever. Like, for example, in labor, I'm on the other end of the spectrum. I'm 20 points out in front of James Anderson. end of the spectrum i'm 20 points out in front of james james anderson um i've now i'm getting kyle lewis uh and josh naylor back uh in in the short term and i will have uh you know basically

two extra players which is you know not unheard of but it's rare when you're in two extra everyday players is rare in one of these mono leagues. The unfortunate problem is they're outfielders. And I wanted to upgrade Nick Solak, my middle infielder. Well, I looked around the league. There were like two teams that could maybe give up a middle infielder. We're talking about

12-team AL only. It's not like there's tons of middle infielders everywhere. So I struck up talks with those two teams, and they weren't that interested in Solak plus a bat. So I've got to change tacks. I've got to figure out where somebody has a surplus that I can take advantage of. And that's the main thing.

I almost think you could do that first, is look through your league and look for somebody who's way out in front on something. Anything almost. Like if you need help everywhere anything and then try to take advantage of that because that person is looking at their thing and saying man i'm so far out in wins and you can only win the category by so much you know i should trade one of my starting pitchers i'm way behind in steals or whatever it is then Then maybe all of a sudden, even though you'd like to stay competitive in steals, maybe someone gives you a really good starting pitcher for Trent Grisham.

You're like, ah, I'll just try to get some steals on the waiver wire. This is amazing. I think it's Mike Gianella's team, the Baseball Prospectus squad in this league, has an ERA still under three right now. Nice. It's at 267.

So you're looking for pitching? Go to the team that's winning ERA by almost .8 runs. That's a huge edge right now. Jeez. Yeah. That's a massive difference. That's a team that could probably afford to give you some pitching in exchange for

a bat. Because you're not good at anything except for saves, you can trade whatever the other side needs and get something back that gives you some action. You're not wed to any. That's the one thing you have in your pocket. You're not wed to almost any player or anything because, hey, it's not working.

Right. Even if the goal is not to be able to win this league this year, it's get as far out if the goal is not to be able to win this league this year it's get as far out of the bottom as possible just get at least to the middle of the pack and yeah sure it's a down year but it's not the worst year i've ever had i like those leagues that have um you know a money system where the the bottom has to pay more i like that they actually you know those end up getting very you know tight you know all the way through the season i think because people are like i don't want to be on the bottom and spend

you know 60 on this league if i can get to the middle and and be zero you know i'm gonna do that it's like a 160 bucks um so you know i would recommend that for leagues that are looking to keep people interested all season long the gradeded scheme where winners win more and losers lose more definitely keeps people interested. And the other thing that I would think about, I almost never like taking on multiple players for two-for-ones. In the labor case where I'm out in front, I'm desperately trying to do two for ones, you know? But, you know, I do think that when you are at the bottom, two for ones become more useful because there's got to be somebody on your roster you're looking at where it's like, that's a zero. I was trying to figure out who those players were. And I'm such a narcissist that I look at my team. I'm like, no, I'm right.

J.D. Davis is good, man. I don't need to punt on J.D. Davis. Tyrone Taylor had a couple knocks today. Do you have any reservable players in your starting lineup? No, I don't think I have any reservable players in my lineup. Everybody was an auction player, so they are stuck in there. That's the thing that people really value a lot in that league. That's very unique to labor and those old rules, but it's one of the few things people get excited about.

You can offer two players that have to be in a lineup that are $6 to $8 players and try to get a reservable player back sometimes and get a no because the reservable player offers that much more flexibility. That's where I'm at right now. That's what I'm trying to do. I did manage to pull a reservable Ross Stripling and a reservable Cole Irvin, which are helping me out a lot in terms of spot starts

and pairing them with Michael King to great effect. But yeah, that's pretty unique to our league, so let's not get too far into that. But just generally, I think that two-for-ones become more palatable when you're down at the bottom. And this is the reason why. Because it gives you more shots. It gives you more lottery tickets.

What you need are lottery tickets. You're in the bottom. You need more lottery tickets. Even if you get two buy lows for your one buy low, even if they're crappy or whatever, that's two guys that could be performing better going forward. It's two guys that could end up playing more than expected, two guys that could exceed the projection as opposed to the one.

Certainly there are enough spots that I can upgrade. I think the obvious opposite side of this is, what about pitching profiles? You outlined a very good rubric for what makes sense for hitting, and I think talking a lot about the Pitching Plus model on the show, it's already baked into my roster. I've definitely taken a nice mix of Pitching Plus guys along the way. I've got Charlie Morton.

Plenty of our listeners have Charlie Morton. You've got Charlie Morton. We've talked about him on this show. I think he's still more of a hold for me. Maybe it's not an active buy situation, but is there any reason to think in my situation that I should actually be selling low? Are the lines in the right spot where Charlie Morton for two, I don't know, $7 caliber players back on draft day? Is that actually the type of trade I should be making so that I'm not starting Corbin Martin as my ninth pitcher? Maybe that's something I have to consider as a unique approach to dig out of the hole. Yeah, and I would consider it just because his stuff plus is down from last year. So I think his ceiling is lower than it was in the past.

I think better days are coming, but at the same time, I think his ceiling is lower. Another way I think that's good to look for pitchers, I'm going to raise this minimum IP because there's too many relievers in here. Okay, minimum 30 IP, I'm doing strikeout minus walks, and then I'm glancing over at the homer totals so people who are really good in strikeouts minus walks but also have a high home run total right now uh include aaron nola that's kind of a thing he does though uh stephen matts uh surprising me there what i don't look like about his profile is that Steven Matz has a lower walk rate,

and that's making his strikeout rate look better. But still, a 27% strikeout rate looks a lot better than I expected. So I don't love Steven Matz, but Steven Matz with those strikeout and walk rates and that home run rate, I think becomes a buy low. Not necessarily like a 12 team buy low, but in other leagues, I think he's a good one. Nathan Eovaldi right now has great stuff plus, great pitching plus, great K minus BB. He's on his first 30 and k minus bb he is absolutely the highest home run rate and they in in in uh of anyone in the top 30 in strikeouts minus walks and he still has a 432 era you know so you some people might be looking at that fip and be like oh my god six fip well fip is not predictive it's not that useful it's really not that useful uh

and XFIP is only a little bit better but the XFIP is 333 so that's a little that's actually and then Sierra is a decent uh one stat uh you know kind of early season thing and his Sierra is fine so Nathan Eovaldi I think is someone that that sticks out as a good buy low. And then Tyler Magiel has actually kind of come around to being a buy low. I know that the recent starts haven't been amazing, but I think he can do better than a 4-4 ERA. Some names that were off the first page of Strikeouts when I was at Wox, which is still a very powerful tool. What I like about pitching and Stuff Plus is that basically Stuff Plus is, puts you on the way

to an expected strikeout rate. And Location Plus puts you on the way to an expected walk rate. And because they are directly measurable from, properties and actual locations at the plate, they are process stats. So like when you look at a batter and you say, oh, I'm looking at his chase rate and I'm looking at his swinging strike rate and I'm looking at his strike and walk rate and kind of seeing where those things don't line up. That's what you're doing with pitching plus a lot of times is saying, oh oh this guy's strikeout rate could be better uh his stuff plus is really good um and his walk rate is high but his location rates are good so that's that's what i'm trying to set up and then i know for a fact that um stuff plus and location plus stabilize faster they become meaningful faster uh than strikeouts and walks and strikeouts minus walks so um you know the we are still heading towards a better solution for subscribers uh but that's that's kind of how i use strikeouts minus walks and pitching and stuff plus right now

there's another thing that crossed my mind this kind of bridges the gap to some of the mailbag questions, is could there be a certain type of pitcher that just is not valued correctly even within the fantasy game? And one question in particular doesn't help me in this league but could help me in others. Tyler Wells, what does the pitching plus model see in Tyler Wells? This question came in from john john was seeing that he had a 111.8 pitching plus which was the second highest when filtering to more than 400 pitches stuff plus and location plus numbers are both above 108 and yet his k minus bb percentage at the time of the email 12.8 percent s Sierra sitting just over four at 4.22.

Is there, and now that Wells is being used more like a regular starter, like you see a four-inning outing, a six-inning outing, and a five-inning outing in his last three starts, it's less of a question about, oh, maybe he's falling through the cracks. And now it's more of a, is there another level coming with Tyler Wells where he looks almost like a more traditional buy low, whereas three or four weeks ago, he might have been more of a model-driven buy low because of his unique role and what was happening under the hood? No, there are definitely these new style of pitchers, these 60 to 80 pitch pitchers that

are very difficult to consider when it comes to fantasy value versus real-life value. Because teams, I think, have looked at the fact that 100 pitches used to be the norm for a thing. Now, last year we didn't have a single pitcher that averaged 100 pitches for the season. This year we don't have any. There's about two or three that have averaged 100 over the last three weeks. There are the guys that you absolutely think they are in terms of like Corbin Burns, Brandon Woodruff types. I don't

know if Woodruff is on it, but established mid-career veteran type guys that aren't nearing the end of their career either. So peak guys, they average 100, right? So that means that 90 is acceptable. Well, what that 90 is acceptable. Well, what if 90 is acceptable? That means 80 is acceptable, especially if there are 80 really good pitches and you have that extra 13 pitchers on your roster. You have that extra guy who can go to extra inning to kind of pair with Wells and Drew Rasmussen and kind of get them there. Keegan Aiken is another guy that's giving multiple innings. Spencer Strider, John Duran. These are all guys that have excellent stuff

in that sort of 50 to 80 pitch segment of the population. It's just really hard to figure it out. I mean, now Tyler Matzik is out and Spencer Strider is becoming more of a bullpen guy. If Tyler Matzik comes back, Spencer Strider might go back to having an opener and going four innings. Drew Rasmussen is pushing towards five innings, but he's still pretty solidly 80. Tyler Wells is actually a 75-pitch guy. He's not even an 80 pitch guy keegan aiken is is more like a 40 to 50 pitch guy all of these guys are amazing in points leagues um and they're just really great

in leagues where you can plug them in at reliever a lot of times and get extra points you know if you have a if you're in a league where you have a start maximum, these are guys you'd love to have because then you can get a secret start out of them. So in auto new and head-by-head, you have a start maximum. Well, hey, Keegan Aiken, let me throw him in my reliever slot and get an extra quote-unquote start. And so, especially if he's following somebody like he is so uh those are all excellent

that way if the the question was also you know why is he good in the model that was a very easy to answer is just um he has really great ride uh you know three two to three inches better ride than than average uh on the fat on the four seam. The slider's pretty hard at 86. The curveball's a big old sweeper with seven inches more horizontal movement than the average curveball. And the changeup is a big old sweeper in the other direction

where it has three inches more fade or I don't know what people call that. What is it? Arm side movement than the regular changeup. So when I was describing it to you earlier, you said it's the banana peel. And he's got the one in the middle, and then he's got the four seam above it,

and then he's got these two things that split off the sides. And then for people saying, like, where are the strikeouts? Well, most of the projection systems are projecting more strikeouts in the future. Stuff Plus says the strikeouts are coming. And then look at his minor league numbers. He very regularly had double-digit strikeout rates. He had good strikeout rates in the minor leagues. I think this is a function of him just finding his way along with four pitches.

When I talked to him a couple weeks ago, he said the curveball is new. This year it's a completely new pitch. He wanted to use it because he's starting. So he's got kind of a new pitch mix, and he's getting outs with them, so he's not maybe concerned about strikeouts. But there's always these bread-and-butter pitches he can go back to and get strikeouts. So I think the strikeouts will come.

And then just generally, and I wonder, like maybe you could describe to me like what kind of leagues would you be in where skills, not roles, something you hear about, you know, with different situations, but it's not true for every league. So skills, not roles means draft people who are good and then they'll play

and be in a good role. But if you're near a 10 team league, you can't draft skills, not roles. Right? So what, what, what kind of leagues do you think these pitchers, you know, we talked about points. What other kinds of leagues do you think these pitchers are useful? Um, when they're not really giving you a lot of wins, maybe they're not going to use saves, but they're not really giving you a lot of wins maybe they're not gonna use saves but they're giving you outs and they're pretty good mono leagues mono leagues and ultra deep mixers i mean we've talked about i think devil's rejects and years ago the uh rotowire dynasty invitational those were 20 team leagues anybody who is doing anything useful becomes useful there. So even if it's not necessarily in a starter's role, the thinking is because you don't like,

just like I described in labor, because you can't go to the wire and pick up someone who's going to start each and every week. You have to find guys ahead of the curve. This is why Corbin Martin is on that roster. Yeah. I'm sitting there. I'm like,

okay, bad enough team from a who's in front of him standpoint model likes him i might just have the wrong guy my process in this case is probably right fishing for someone who's going to end up with surplus innings at better than expected ratios if it's not him that i have to turn that spot and find someone else who will. So I think it's mostly mono leagues, mostly deep mixers and dynasty leagues where that stuff alone is good enough, where the skills alone are good enough because the role, that just happens.

Roles happen because of attrition in leagues like that. The league you described, the 10-team mixed league, you could end up with a role in a 10 team mix league after not having one but you're still compared to the freely available alternatives you're you're interesting but you're not clearly better so you waited and waited and waited and oh now you finally have someone with equal roles and comparable skills now let's see what happens let's see if you can have the right guy yeah like in our 10 team league like i'm, I'm just cycling through my last starting pitcher, right?

Because it's like Tyler Malley this week or Tyler Malley. Sorry, that's weird. It's a weird A. I don't make that A. And then Jameson Tyon. And then whoever has a matchup I like and is pitching well, I'll throw them in there because there's just so much available but i will push it a little bit further and here's one place that i've found pretty good use out of these types of pitchers it is nfbc now in draft and hold it's obvious you just want innings right that's just like you're just like

innings i want innings these guys you're gonna get your innings but i have found a lot of use with these guys in regular 15 team and even 12 team and fbc formats because we are chasing two start weeks every week and you're spending fab on trying to get two start weeks every week and you could have a guy that sometimes gives you two start weeks on your own roster. Or there's one of those stupid Monday scratches or a Monday trip to the IL where it's after the FAB run. You're like, God, I wish I had one pitcher on my bench that I could just reach for, and that's why I've kept Tyler Wells, Drew Rasmussen. I even have, I think, a Keegan Aiken somewhere. I've kept those guys on my roster because it's like, hey, worst case scenario, I've got a guy. He's going to pitch.

I'm going to throw him in there if something goes wrong on Monday. Let's say you bought a two-start guy. You weren't that excited about the second start, or you weren't excited about the first start, whatever it is. You bought a two-start guy, weren't that excited about the second start um but you know you're or you weren't excited about the first start whatever it is you you bought a two strike and then he then they get pushed this happens too all the time right the two-star guys become one-star guy because something happened a rain out or something and then you're just shouting and then all of a sudden maybe tyler wells is a better is a better start that week because now you're just it's a one-start

versus a one-start situation so um i've definitely found use for all of these guys uh aiken and ottenew uh wells rasmussen in related news i am not top half in strikeouts in all my leagues that's a bit surprising. I just, I thought I had to really feel that because, you know, it is part of the give and take, right? If you're going to have a guy, especially Tyler Wells, if he's going to go four and strike out three, you're just like,

oh boy. Well, the question with Wells specifically, is the strikeout rate going to go up? Because with the stuff being as good as it is with the stuff being as good as it is the control being as good as it is the swinging strike rate's decent the swinging strike rate does point to a better k rate than what he's had so far and if he goes four and strikes out five or six now you're like okay that's fine like you know logan webb could go seven and strike out six you know

so um yeah it's uh there's a give and take. And I don't think I'd want a full roster of these guys. And as much as I love the last Drew Rasmussen start against the Tigers, great, great start. And I think he's been good. He lost a little bit of stuff because he lost a little bit of ride fooling around with the cutter. But I still like him as a pitcher.

I did move him down in my rankings update because i was like well you know i have to you do have to acknowledge the fewer innings yeah you do um it is it is part of the value proposition so um i don't think that wells is a top 50 pitcher i don't even know that rasmus i think rasmus and wells are very borderline sort of top 50 pitchers they're they're they areup dependent. If you're in a 10 team league, they're more streamers than anything, I think. Um, but, um, I also don't, I would push back on anybody who would say that they're not useful. I like where Rasmussen locates his pitches. They looking at the heat maps, like there's a of consistency. The foreseam are up in the zone

or usually away to right-handed hitters. The slider, mostly down, mostly away, below the zone, just getting guys to chase. The cutter, away from righties, in tight on lefties. The occasional curveball he throws seems like

he's trying to spot those as a chase pitch outside the zone too he throws seems like he's trying to spot those as a chase pitch outside the zone, too. I mean, it just it seems like stuff and strategy and location are all in a good place with Rasmussen. The ceiling limitations maybe are always going to be there in terms of workload, but it's why we love Ray's pitchers so much. He's another good example of why it just works so well. He's another good example of why it just works so well. Yeah, and they're limiting his innings pitch not as much for maybe strategy as actually for injury. I mean, I think he's had two Tommy Johns.

Two, yeah, two before reaching the big leagues. So, you know, this guy's not one that you expect to keep healthy. So, hey, why not get 75 pitches out of him instead of pushing them to 120 and getting injured? I mean, that's one thing that people, when they look back and they say,

all these guys used to throw 120. Well, I remember a lot of injured pitchers. And there was a lot of guys who didn't, who didn't have more of a career because they, they, they were treated the way they were. There is something real about the fact that everyone's throwing

closer to the maximum that is more injurious, more stressful on your arm. That is true. But we've got to figure out other ways to toggle the incentives to change the game on that one. I do think maybe going down to 12 pitchers on a roster, on the major league roster, would incentivize teams to get more bulk out of the pitchers they already had. In fact, it's math, right? If you have 13 pitchers for a certain amount of innings, you can get X amount of innings per. If you do it at 12, it's X plus something.

It's not as important now, of course, Jorge Lopez back, but there was another question that came in from Paul about Felix Bautista, and I've noticed him near the top of the stuff list pretty much all season long. You watch him pitch, you're like, that dude looks like he's going to close someday. It passes the eye test, too. He's like one of the,

I think he's the only pitcher in baseball that has a single-digit number for ride, which is just like, just means that the pitch is dropping like four inches like i think he threw a pitch this year that dropped three inches that means like like it's it like basically coming on a line i mean it's just it is really hard for for for hitters and then have you seen him oh yeah he's yeah i was in the clubhouse. I was like, who's a linebacker? Yeah.

I'm laughing because the savant page has him at 6'5", 190. It's 190 in like seventh grade. If he's 6'5", 190, I'm 5'8", 160. I'm Nick Magical if Felix Batiste is only 190 pounds. So there's no chance. That is a grown man out there i was i was even looking for him and i was like no that's a catcher right yeah yeah big human and uh it it looks really good he fits a little bit more into a more traditional question of stuff versus role or skills versus role where you're like, you know, will he close? And, you know, we'll have to do some validation on that.

I don't know if it's going to come with the rollout this year, but I have I did do really well in buying closers that had the role that had high stuff plus versus closers that had the role that didn't. So, you know, I bought a lot of Joe Barlow and David Bednar and Jordan Romano. And, you know, those guys all had really high stuff lovers. I did not buy a lot a lot of mark melanson i did not buy a lot of uh the other barlow uh you know i did not buy a lot of the guys who lost their jobs um and then i bought a fair amount of guys that didn't even have the role like bednar and stuff that that have you know they've been doing i mean not bednar um bender uh who've been doing pretty well maybe he loses his job but um you know i but I would count that as a... In fact, it's kind of funny.

Using Stuff Plus on that labor squad, I drafted Tyler Wells. This is last year's Stuff Plus. I drafted Tyler Wells and Tanner Scott with $1 apiece for labor. I did not expect what has happened. No. I thought I was buying the Baltimore closer for $1,

who I ended up getting in fab for two dollars so i did finally get the baltimore closer we wrong long road to get there but scott i think you know people were talking about um uh about who who do they think is going to take the job from Bender? Floro. Floro. And then there's another guy that recently just pitched the ninth. I think Scott's in that mix, man. I'm trying to figure out exactly how to use Stuff Plus. I do know that Stuff Plus beats projections before the season for relievers. And I do know that teams value Stuff Plus and use it.

So I wouldn't be surprised at all to find that they made some closer decisions based on it. The problem is that the way teams attack bullpens these days, sometimes they'd be happy with taking a guy who has a really high Stuff Plus and putting him in the seventh inning. So I don't know about that. taking a guy who has a really high stuff plus and putting him in the seventh inning, you know? So I don't know about that, but here are some high stuff plus guys that are not closers, I guess.

Would that be useful for people? Give it a shot. Steven Wilson, high pitching plus. You just need an injury because Taylorlor rogers has clamped down on that role in the first six weeks of the season it's his job he's the guy clay holmes has a higher pitching plus than a role as chap yeah that wasn't under the radar one today that came up ian was talking about chapman just not looking like himself and holmes being right there i could see it i could see the change if they're finally ready to say

Chapman's not the closer anymore. I mean, Holmes versus the field versus, say, like, Chad Green. I guess that's the question. Is it clearly Holmes is the next best skills guy? Well, the model likes Green too, but you can tell from usage that Green is not necessarily getting the high-impact, high-leverage situations. So I would never tell anyone to not look at usage. usage the green is not necessarily getting the high impact high leverage situation so i would never tell anyone to not look at usage that is uh not what i'm doing here um but um i

would like uh yeah so uh clay holmes i think deserves oh the thing is chapman never had good command right and so now his his uh stuff has kind of fallen off. This is the first year the model says his foreseam is below average by Stuff Plus. So he has been adding the splitter, and he has been trying his best to mix it up more. And you can see that he's doing the old pitcher trick. But it's an old pitcher trick. You know what I mean? He's definitely falling off a little bit. Is the K rate being down, though, too.

Usually in the past, when you'd have the bloated walk rate from Chapman, you were getting 35%, 40% K rate to go with it. You're getting 24.2%. You're getting Jorge Lopez's K rate, and you're getting a walk rate that's worse than Jorge Lopez. You've basically worse skills than Jorge Lopez now, coming from a role as Chapman. And maybe we've seen enough to the point where, look, the Yankees are playing really well the first quarter of the season.

If they keep rolling, one thing they're going to have to do is either fix Chapman, get him back to previous levels, or be willing to move on and not let him close out games. Like that has to be on the table now more than it's been probably at any point that he's been a member of that organization. Yeah. They keep signing him though. And you know what I mean? Like it, it doesn't,

I don't know. They seem to have faith in him. Um, there's a Seattle situation, uh, which is the exact same situation as we said coming into the season Eric Swanson and Paul Seawald

have really great pitching plus Paul Seawald has better stuff plus and then Andres Munoz totally in the conversation with him the problem is they're all three in the conversation it's like take your pick on that one.

Andrew Kittredge still looks good in the model. He still has the best stuff plus and pitching plus of any of the Rays bullpen. However, Brooks Raley is in a virtual tie with him. And I want to get to Jason Adam here. Where's Jason Adam? Jason Adam has a 122 stuff plus. So he actually has a slightly higher stuff plus than Kittredge, but worse command. I did pick up Adam in a couple of places where he just wasn't owned because the Rays will do anything.

where he just wasn't owned because the Rays will do anything. AJ Puck grades out much better than Danny Jimenez in the model. I don't know if they want to do that. They are definitely a cheap organization right now. We just wrote a whole piece about that with Ken Rosenthal. The cheapest of the cheap. Griffin Jax looks amazing in the model. He's a little bit like Whistler and maybe Romo in that he's throwing 50% sliders.

But I wouldn't be surprised to see Jax get some save opportunities. I think he's already had a couple like two, three inning kind of in a close game kind of situations where he's been used that way. So that's definitely something. The Mariners' bullpen looks amazing in the model. Drew Steckenreiter is popping here just right after talking about Munoz. I don't know.

There's some names there that might be useful to people. Luis Garcia, the reliever, looks good too. But there's no reason to really doubt Rodgers right now in San Diego I don't think no I don't think so if you do listen to Under the Radar as well as this show of course you'll hear Will Vest's name on the latest

Under the Radar I think he's the guy that I'd be taking my chances on if I'm trying to speculate in Detroit 89 stuff plus for a reliever is just awful that's what I'm looking at I love that love an 89 stuff plus for reliever is just awful that's what i'm looking i love that love an 89 stuff plus for a reliever but uh but you know uh you know the the there was an excellent stuff uh an excellent piece out by mikey ajeto uh over at baseball prospectus about the sort of intricacies of, um, seems to be wake. And, uh, there is, there is a thing, there are two things I would love to do with my model that I cannot do.

And so those two things are missing. So if you are looking at a player and you just don't get it, here are the two things, a, we have access Delta and spin efficiency in our model. Those are okay ways to try and get seam shifted wake out. A better way is to model Magnus movement. So model movement if Magnus was the only force on the ball and then look at modeled movement versus actual movement. And then you would actually have like a seam shifted wake number, right? You'd be like, this is the non-Magnus movement. This is what we're looking for.

The problem is to do that, I have to have access to stats that I do not get. Like baseball teams have that. I do not get that. And then the other is stuff we talked about before, like Ian Anderson's very unique arm slot where I was looking at it with, was it Jackson who was a reliever on the A's? Is it Zach Jackson? He's very over the top.

Yeah, Zach Jackson, very over the top. Model hates him. He gets pretty good strikeouts. The model says he has a 74 stuff plus. I could see the model missing something because he's one of those guys that kind of yanks his back over to really be over the top. And I took a video of him from behind a home plate.

And if anybody wants to see that i can send it to them but anyway those are two things i know are not in the model so it's like i know the model's not perfect i'm not here to say the model is perfect but um uh if you do notice that a unique arm angle perhaps uh some sort of deception that is not captured by the model. And then, um, uh, seems just awake. It's not perfectly captured by it. Yeah.

I mean, I'm looking at some video of will vest right now and nothing, nothing about his delivery jumps out to me as unusual. So it's either seems shifted wake or it's a trap that I'm wandering into. Despite warnings from my friend that it's a trap that i'm wandering into despite warnings from my friend that it's a bad idea well it's interesting that uh there's so much red on a stat cast page um but uh not on the fastball so i will uh point that out that it may be dragged down by a poor fastball number because he has a four seamer with below average ride um but there's a lot of red otherwise three pitches that's the thing that makes it a little

different or not unique but rare for for a reliever that gives me a little more hope despite the low stuff number oh i could just see this one ending in huge disappointment with an absolute stain on the ratios. But the good news is he's in the AL. He can't make the NL team any worse than it already is. He has a nice park. He has a nice park. That helps as well. One more big question to get to.

This one came in from Max. Max writes, I'm in a very shallow keeper league. I've got Brian Hayes at a good price, but I'm trying to figure out what he's going to be this year. Can he hit 20 homers? The obvious thing that's looking rough is his launch angle. However, when I watch him play, he seems to be hitting one or two hard high-ish drives. When he hits it low, he hits it really low. So what's up with him? And more broadly, what's up with launch angle? You could hit two barrels at 25 degrees and then hit two worm burners at negative 30 degrees and your overall launch angle won't look good right i think you've talked about this before but maybe you could dive in again particularly looking at haze is there a stat cast page i can look at to figure

this out like a launch angle distribution visualization or something else thanks i was i was looking for that old launch angle visual jason i saw on some place way back in the day where like you saw the guy batting and like it showed like all the angles off it i couldn't find that but i did find this thing that's kind of cool and i think um maybe derek you can put it up um if you go to a player's page um and then go to uh stack cast breakdowns um and then you can, what I've done here in the stack cast breakdowns is I've done a map of his launch angle, of Cabrian Hayes' launch angles, and I've colored it by exit velocity. So what you can see on this is that he does indeed group his launch angles around zero, his launch angles around zero,

which is not ideal for power. However, what you'll see is that he hits it pretty hard from zero to 10 and from zero to 20. And that he's not like a really obscene worm burner and he does actually hit the ball hard. So now I wanted to put up um wander franco it's better um because you can see that his launch ankle distribution is higher from 10 to 20 and he's got a red um he's got a red a hard hit hit area between sort of 10 and 15. That's line drives. But it has some similarity in that his hardest hit balls are around zero. And in fact, if you

look at every player, their hardest hit balls are usually around zero. And so that's part of the picture. I wonder if you could just throw Pete Alonzo on there, though. Now, you can see here that Pete Alonzo's hardest hit balls are at zero, but he has a very high distribution of launch angles from 20 to 30. He hits a lot of balls from 20 to 30. Now, if you go back to the Cabrian Hayes' one, you know, it's obviously too skewed to the left. However, the exit velocity is great.

He hits the ball really hard. I think he can be Franco. You know, I think he can be a lot like Wander Franco. He has to do a little bit of movement there and take advantage of how hard he hits the ball. And I think he can be Wander Franco. If you look at Wander Franco's max exit VLO and barrel rate, they are almost identical to Brian Hayes right this year. And that's this year. So I think he's a really good dynasty by low. I've been trying to do it in my 12 team. I think he's still a really great player. I think he's, I honestly, I'm so in on Hayes that I think he's one of those guys

we talked about with James Anderson when he was on that you would actually, I would actually pair two or three veterans to get to Brian Hayes if I was rebuilding. You know what I mean? Yeah. Because I think, if I'm thinking about skills, not roles, hits the ball hard,

makes a lot of contact, just needs to lift it a little bit, steals bases and plays on the infield. Like I, I love that package. And, um, if he did hit the ball higher and higher launch angles and did hit for power

right now, you wouldn't be able to buy him. Right. He'd be impossible to get. We've also got Jazz Chisholm's distribution here. This is important because this is Jazz Chisholm in 2021. And in 2021, he had a identical, or not identical, very similar barrel rate,

very similar max exit velo to cabrian hayes this year so this is jazzism this year this jazzism last year it looks kind of similar to uh to to cabrian hayes just missing cabrian hayes just missing some balls at 20 right otherwise kind of i would say very similar to the distribution that Cabrian Hayes has. Is that my crazy? No, it's pretty similar. I think those are pretty similar. So what if we were looking at Cabrian Hayes? The step four that Jazz Chisholm took this year

in cutting the ground ball rate, hitting more for power, cutting the strikeout rate, that is all there in front of in front of cabrian hayes that's that's how i see it like to be in the same sort of to to have a similar distribution of launch angles and exit velocities to to jazz chisholm and wander franco that's good that's what you want and even the surface stats are already starting to improve right you're looking at a k rate that's better than it has been at any point during his time in the big leagues for Cabrian Hayes.

You're looking at a career best walk rate. Not surprisingly, K rate is better. Oh, swing percentage is also improved. The ground ball rate down from where it was last year, closer to where it was when he arrived in 2020, when he was showing a bit more power than expected.

I think Cabrian Hayes is exactly the kind of player, even if it's just as simple as trading Charlie Morton or someone like I was talking about earlier, if I could pull a trade like that off just to get value and to possibly catch a player who's about to have that breakout, he's the kind of guy you want to get if you're chasing, even in a redraft league right now, because it might be a three and a half month breakout for

him it might not be a full season but it might be a really good final line even though we're still looking for the first homer of 2022 from cabrian hayes let me see if i can uh do this quick enough but i've got okay i've got um i've got barrel rate leaderboard on Fangraphs. I'm going to go to the page that has Cabrian Hayes. All right. So he has 7.5% barrel rate. Spencer Torkelson has 7.8%, three homers. Justin Turner has a 7.8%, three homers.

Manny Machado has a 7.6% barrel rate, seven homers. Cabrian Hayes, 7.5, zero homers. Gio Ur 7.6% barrel rate, seven homers. Good. Brian Hayes, 7.5, zero homers. Gio Rochelle is 7.5, three homers. Paul Goldschmidt, 7.5%,

five homers. John Segura, 7.4%, six homers. He's just Aguilar, 7.4%, five. What?

Like, you know, which one was the outlier, right? Brian Hayes is a 49.5% hard hit right now. He should have three homers right now. And if he had three homers right now, people probably wouldn't be asking about him because he would just look like Paul Goldschmidt.

He would look like he's on a 15-15 pace with a great average and a great OBP. Yeah, and I still think he can pull that this year. And then next year, I think there's more. So to answer Max's question, yeah yeah he could hit 20 homers he might not be able to get there this year because of the slow start but he'll be on maybe on that pace for the rest of this season and it wouldn't be all that surprising so thank you for that email max i'll be to several questions about jose quintana what year is this? What is going on? Oh, yeah. I had to look at Cueto's, too. Jose Quintana, 74 stuff plus 102 location, 93.

And then Cueto, 76 stuff plus 110 location, 101. He also controls the running game pretty well and has massive deception. If was gonna bet on the two of them i would not i i would not uh go in hard on either of them but if i was gonna pick one i would pick cueto in certain matchups um and then maybe quintana against like the cubs at home or you know like i hate to pick on any one team but like red reds at home, you know, like I hate to pick on any one team. Reds at home. Maybe even the Reds in Cincinnati. Maybe. No, no, no, no.

I'm not throwing Kingtown in Cincinnati. Deeper leagues. That's a bad stuff number, like wildly bad. Yeah, both of them. I mean, when you're in the 70s, let me see. Let me do a quick sort here. Maybe I should embrace this, though've given the the will vest situation all right i i sorted stuff plus from the bottom um dakota hudson you will always uh ty block is is is worst with 58 i've never i don't think I've seen that um Martin Perez near the bottom um Alexis Diaz who we've

talked about and this is what I wanted to say people have been asking about Alexis Diaz Alexis Diaz has such a unique combination of stats around his fastball that when you have a model that does not have comps, basically, it struggles, right? So basically, Alexis Diaz has Edwin Diaz's fastball minus 10 inches of horizontal movement. It's a big difference. The only other fastball that's anything like it is Matt Festa. Now, you're like, okay, that gives you a comp. No, because Matt Festa started this year, I think. I think this is rookie year.

So there's no real comps for it. So the model's just kind of looking around being like, I don't know. It's the shrug emoji. That's the other way that you can get in trouble with this model. So I wouldn't say that Alexis Diaz is as bad as the Stuff Plus. The model shrugs and goes to the refrigerator to get a beer. Yeah, but guys that Quintana

exists Quintana himself existed right uh Zach Jackson uh Patrick Corbin oh Dane Dunning is down here Dylan Peters uh who um we've already we've already been mean to Dylan Peterson this is mostly a group of guys that we are just waiting for the correction, though. I don't know if there's anyone on that list that you're naming that you'd say, no, no, this guy's different, and I know why. Like, there's... Alexis Diaz. Yeah, but I mean, the starting pitchers.

And then maybe Hudson. Hudson, I don't... Maybe Hudson has some seam shift away we're not capturing. I don't, I, maybe Hudson has some seam shifted weight we're not capturing. I don't know. It's, he has like a career ERA of like 3.2, right? Yeah, he's got a 3.13 career ERA with a 1.32 whip. I don't, I don't think he's good, but I would say that between gritted teeth. I could be wrong.

Chris Bubich, Tyler Gilbert, Kyle Freeland, Jake Odorizzi. Although, Jake Odorizzi has good command and lots of pitches. So there is that kind of pitcher that can be good every once in a while. Austin Gommers down here. Humberto Castellanos. These are the gettable pitchers. If you're in a deep league and you're just playing a volume game. They also don't want.

They're so easy to get. Ian Anderson is once again down here. That might be one where the model is missing him. I mean, he's not doing well, but Ian Anderson's location numbers are down too. But if you're looking at Zach Loesch, there's a really weird arm angle there. Zach Loesch is kind of a side armor with doing some weird stuff.

It's possible we're missing something. But yeah, most of those pitchers I don't want. Yeah, I don't want them either. Just don't let me talk myself into trading them because I could set some records the wrong way in LA for this year if I get too desperate and try something. You could try that at least if you get in the record books somehow. No. Not that one. Not that way. Not that way. I'll find my way into enough bad record books

over time. I don't need to speed up the process by tanking it right now. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. If you've got questions for a future episode, drop us an email, ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com, or ask in the comments section under this video on YouTube. Be sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel and hit the Like button on this video if you are watching us over there on Twitter. Eno is at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper.

And good news, we have a second episode this week. It will be coming out on Friday. Plus, we've got a 3-0 show coming out. That'll come out Friday morning this week. We have a little schedule switcheroo. And then Eno's got something going on with some hands. Jazz hands. Get some jazz hands going.

Nice. You're just excited. So, good to be back. Thanks to everyone for listening. We're back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening.