Rates & Barrels - Framber Valdez's injury, 2021 rookies, and how to use auction values in snake drafts

Episode Date: March 4, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss Framber Valdez's finger injury, the potential impact of the delayed start of the Triple-A season, tiers for rookie pitchers, how the Padres may handle MacKenzie Gore in 2021, how to utilize auction values in a snake draft, and the role that luck may play in barrel rates.  Rundown 2:24 Framber Valdez's Spring Finger Injury 7:33 A Delayed Start to the Triple-A Season 13:52 Building Tiers for Rookie Pitchers 20:25 Prospect of the Week is Back!  26:02 How Will the Padres Handle MacKenzie Gore? 40:13 Using the Auction Values for Snake Drafts 53:34 Are Barrels Somewhat Luck Based? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Please fill out our listener survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/athleticaudiosurvey Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we have some spring injury information to pass along. We have a good question about auction calculator prices and how to use those in snake drafts. We'll talk about that because it's a really good tool that you can use for all of your upcoming drafts. Great question about barrel rates versus hard hit rates and exit velocities and how there are some guys who are good in one or two of those categories but not necessarily good in all three.

We'll try to figure out what that would mean for those players going forward. Eno, how's it going for you on this Wednesday? Good. I have another dog thought for you. My two dogs who, yes, yes, and this one is also weird. My two dogs are combined weight of maybe 20 pounds. They are chawinis.

They are tiny. And they're way back from school every day. The process is that one of them picks up like a like an enormously large branch that's that's like the size of both of them right and it's just got leaves everywhere and it's this big branch and they walk out in front with the branch and they're like i've got a branch and then the other one's like i want the branch you know so the other one runs up and they fight over the branch and they fight and they fight and they drop and they pick it up and they break it and they fight and they fight over the branch, and they fight, and they fight, and they drop, and they pick it up, and they break it, and they fight, and they break it, and they break it.

And they just destroy the thing, so there's no stick left. And the stick is me. That's you? This is family life. You are the stick that your dogs destroy every day. This is family life is what I'm saying. It was a strong allegory for family life. Your dogs destroy every day. This is family life is what I'm saying. It was a strong allegory for family life. So anyway, yes.

Cute, tiny, and bark way too much. Vicious. Well, I'm glad they're happy, even if you are getting destroyed every day. I obviously have some issues. Yeah, we'll try to fix that some other time. The dogs are happy, so I guess that's all that matters at this point. Before we start to record, we've got some news. Frambois Valdez has a fractured left ring finger.

He suffered that after a bouncing comebacker caught him on the hand. I think that was on Tuesday that he was pitching. No timetable for his return just yet, according to The Athletic's Jake Kaplan. Kind of sounds like opening day is going to be a problem, though, just based on the early indications, since it is his pitching hand. Houston's rotation depth, I think it's kind of interesting. Some people have pointed to it and said they're a mess if they lose starters. But they were working with some relatively unheralded depth guys last year

and got really good mileage out of Framber and out of Christian Javier. You were doing a slow draft, so you've got that running while doing TGFBI. And behind the scenes, you were reaching out to me and say, hey, after pick 500, throw a dart on Forrest Whitley. I think he's pretty damn interesting for someone that you would maybe have to throw into a rotation if you're in Houston shoes. We've talked about this before. The walk rate's been through the roof. The results in the upper levels of the minor leagues in 2019 especially were not good but there are still a ton of raw talent there and this valdez injury as frustrating as that is may open the door

for whitley to get some big league innings sooner rather than later yeah i think they actually have some credible death beyond and either it's whitley or it's Luis Garcia. Both of them are interesting. They're interesting pitchers and they have a pretty good pitching development program there. By my most accounts, most teams are looking up at them. Some of my reporting suggested that the Brewers value shapes differently. That's going to come out in my piece that's coming out soon. The Brewers value shapes differently and so people kind of look at them and being like, you know,

what's up with them? Like, how do they, how are they doing, you know, pitching development, but otherwise, you know, kind of the Astros, the Mariners, the Indians, um, you know, the Dodgers, the Yankees are creating shapes, um, and creating velocity that, uh, align with each other and, and are finding some success in moving the needle. But, you know, Whitley, I, you know,

the question to you was, cause I've done some best ball, you know, deep drafts where you draft like 50 or 60 rounds and that's your team. And they pick the best ball out. Like they pick the best lineup out. That's best ball. Right.

And in best ball out. They pick the best lineup out. That's best ball, right? And in best ball, I think it makes more sense to take veterans than to take prospects because the prospects may not be there and they may not give you what you need in terms of – you're not setting lineups and you may not have all the innings you need. And if you think about it, veterans have great weeks. You know what I mean? Like if you knew what a great, like the great week for you, like if the, if the computer was going to pick your great weeks from your veterans, you'd put some, some great weeks.

You know what I mean? Like John Means will have an amazing week this, this year, or even somebody down, down further along. Like, do you remember who I was talking to you about? Oh, like Logan Webb. I was like debating Logan Webb? Logan Webb. I was debating Logan Webb versus Forrest Whitley. Logan Webb is going to have at least one or two

weeks this year that are going to be amazing. It's just how it works. But in this case, it's a little bit different than best ball where I have to choose the week. Let me throw that down for you. You logan webb's best week

this year this year and nail it down you know what i mean instead in that case i think i'd rather have forrest whitley which is like i'm taking a shot at a guy who comes up and becomes so good that i just play him you know and i don't have to like every week go like oh is this the week that logan webb has a good week uh So I think there is a little difference between, I guess this is called, it's a DC draft champions. I'm kind of a newbie for NFBC. Sorry, I'm an old person. Laugh at me.

I don't care. But this is a DC. This is different from a best ball. So there's slightly different strategies there. But Forrest Whitley, Luis Garcia have now become more interesting. I think I'll drop Valdez to around where I have LeMet, you know, the 40s, 45, something like there. Just to, you know, it's sort of like a good but question mark tier. Yeah, I would take Valdez with the finger injury over Lemaitre with the uncertain health of his elbow.

I think there's, to me, still a pretty big preference for the guy with what seems like a less severe injury. Still awaiting more details, of course. Right, especially tomorrow or the next day where the news comes out where it's like, three-week rest and rehab, two weeks to come back, and he's back in mid-April. You don't risk losing the whole season versus losing a couple weeks. Three-week rest and rehab, two weeks to come back, and he's back in mid-April, right? You don't risk losing the whole season versus losing a couple weeks. Yeah, Luis Garcia is a good name to bring up because we did see Garcia pitching in the big leagues last year, just 12 and a third innings, 9 Ks, 5 walks, had an ERA under 3, a whip under 1.

I think he's probably one notch ahead of Whitley just in the short-term plans, but I think the short-term plans for all upper-level prospects became a little more complicated. We learned this week that the AAA season is not going to start on time. It's been delayed one month. So we're going to have the alternate site plan in effect to begin the season. And I do think for some teams, in certain instances, there's going to be a little more interest in letting the near big league ready players start the season in the big leagues, kind of see what happens for the first month. And if things aren't going well, then send those players down for more game reps at AAA, because the more we learned about the alternate site as last season played out and getting a

chance to talk to various sources over the course of the offseason, you just got the sense that the alternate site was Groundhog's Day. It was not good for development. Players didn't like it. There wasn't necessarily a lot of growth happening there. So at this point, if you want to just put those players who you thought were kind of fringy for the opening day roster, you put them on the roster, see how it goes. You still have that flexibility to send them down later on and they don't have to go through the experience of scrimmaging against less talented prospects and barely on the 40-man type players. I don't know, man. Sometimes there were coaches. Jason Ochard sent some picture out where he's

playing third base or he's playing the outfield. We heard that they were bringing the pitching machines and instructs because they ran out of pitchers. I don't know. I don't know. It's a rough combination right now in baseball where because of injuries and because of just the way that front offices have been working. And because of, uh,

uh, uh, you know, there's a youth movement in baseball, right? Like that's, that's undeniable. And COVID has,

has created a little bit more of a need even for these young players as there's been more injuries to the veterans. Right. So, you know, and COVID, uh, losses like people missing time for COVID.

So between all that, like you never needed the youth more. And at the same time, the youth is not being served by our player development because it doesn't exist. Like the minors haven't existed and won't exist.

So it's a tough combo. And like to see Wander Franco today hit that massive home run, right? Just beautiful. Just beautiful. You think, okay, I love it. Top pick, and he's performing like it, and it looks amazing, and it's going to work out. I wonder if it's all a little bit scarier for other prospects, or for in general for people that are trying to you know depend on them is this going to be a good year for prospects to like come up and you know are

they gonna are they gonna shake it off and be like i don't care like i'm gonna perform i've wondered about that i've wondered how much is it a year to fade prospects? I don't know if it's from... I don't know if it's this batch of players or if it's guys that miss time in the low minors that we should be worried about. The ETA 2023-2024 guys. I almost wonder if they were more vulnerable than guys who were closer.

Guys that were going to play last year at AA and AAA, a lot of those top prospects at least did get to the alternate site. They did get big league level instruction last season. Right. Their coaching is superior when you get closer to the big league. So they got a lot of that.

Yeah. So even if it wasn't the same as the reps at AA and AAA, it was better than what a lot of low A and high A prospects got last year. So I feel like we're going to see more of a delay or different aging curves for this group of players that was either drafted in A ball or lower, or even high school seniors and college juniors and players who had their seasons interrupted

at that phase of development as well. But yeah, we'll know in five years. We'll look back and go, oh, wow, that was some weird stuff that we saw with these players who lost a season at various stages of development. It'd be really interesting if we saw that cohort, the COVID cohort, age a little bit more like old school aging curves. Old school aging curves, people used to improve before they hit their peak and then decline. And what we've seen recently is that people just hit the majors at a certain level and then decline possibly ostensibly because our uh our play development system is is so good

that we've like we've we create these like guys that are close to basically at their peaks and they and they perform that way maybe we'll see a group of players that has to improve which in which case you would fade prospects because they wouldn't land uh on their two feet and just tatease it up you know what i mean like for the most part they would uh they would struggle at first and we have a lot of post-hype sleepers and we'd we'd hem and haw about how you know covid like stole a whole generation of players from us and then a lot of them would recover and become good again. Once they got that big league instruction, once they got the playing time under there, uh, once they got that time to

improve. So, um, that'll be a really interesting thing is, you know, also interesting to think about the idea of a pitcher versus hitter split. Maybe it is time to bet on pitching prospects for once because these pitching prospects have had more time, They had more time to do, I think, time off development without games benefits pitchers more than hitters. Because hitters need to stand in the box and have someone try to get them out. And BP doesn't do that, and a pitching machine can kind of do that, but it doesn't really. But a pitcher can shape his pitches, work on his mechanics.

He dictates the flow of the game, so, like, he can do a lot of that thought process in his own head. And I think live ABs may be just good enough for them. So I don't know how that pertains to, say, who do you think the top hitting prospects that could be useful in baseball this year, like that will actually play in baseball this year. You're talking about pitching prospects. You're probably talking about like Forrest Whitley, Edward Cabrera with the Marlins. Who else are you thinking about?

I mean, I've got it. So I'm working on a rookie rankings piece yeah i'm working on it and i've it's taking forever to get through it because we're doing a lot of shows which is awesome but i've got edward cabrera clustered in to a tier with spencer howard and michael kopech at the top of that tier because they're sort of guys that are basically big league ready innings are being monitored time you know but yeah like they're they're at the top of that group patino's in that group and then i've got edward cabrera matt manning and forest whitley all lumped together cabrera i think has to go behind whitley for now because he's dealing with a biceps issue

and i think the marlins are understand i'll be going to be very careful with him. Manning of course had an injury last year. Yeah, the Marlins that division's tough. That works against them. In a flat sort of division, I think they could hang around a bit more. I think in the NL East, it's going to be difficult for them to exceed

expectations. I think Cabrera, Manning, and Whitley are in similar buckets in that they're going to be handled very carefully. They're possibly going to see time in the bullpen, even though I think all three are going to be very good starters long-term. And I wouldn't want any more than one pitcher from this group on a redraft roster, including Howard, Kopech, and Patino. I'd like these pitchers, but I don't think you can justify stashing two of them because you might be waiting several weeks

for them to get big league innings, especially working in a normal starter sort of role. And I think as great as Cabrera might be, that injury is a really big blow for his chances of making a first half impact in mixed leagues. I think he's more of an NL-only reserve sort of stash for me at this point. And I just don't see a player in that group that I want to stake my claim to and be like, yeah, this guy used the time off to develop me, Whitley,

but he still has to overcome Luis Garcia and the command problems. And it's not obvious that he's just going to hit the ground running. Spencer Howard is an interesting guy to bet on but like on the hitting side uh you just got you know like dylan the dylan i'd rather have dylan carlson than spencer howard i'm not going to tell you to fade dylan carlson because howard has had time to develop or whatever you know like um who are the hitters the best hitters you haveters that you have? Well, the best pitchers real quick. Well, there's a couple tiers even above that group of pitchers I mentioned. I have Sixto, Ian Anderson, and Tristan McKenzie kind of all together.

I was thinking about guys who haven't played yet, though, you know? Just because that's when you're drafting, you're taking a real chance on somebody, you know? So the only one who hasn't played at all is Manning, Edward Cabrera, and Whitley. I think on the hitter side, it's Wander, it's Kelnick. Those guys, they can make more of an impact right away because hitters come up and they don't have those workload restrictions. They don't have that role flexibility that we look at.

And usually when they come up, they're not brought up to be a part-timer. Usually it's like, drum roll, please. Jared Kellnick, our starter in left field. Sorry, Jake Fraley, we gave you three weeks. You didn't do anything with it. You didn't murder the ball for three weeks and now you're a fourth outfielder. And in a couple of weeks,

if you don't hit as a fourth outfielder, you're going down. a fourth outfielder and in a couple weeks if you don't hit as a fourth outfielder you're going down yeah but um yeah so kalnick is the the obvious uh guy to to throw down on i think another name i want to throw out here is josh jung as a uh nearby prospect that hasn't played at all in the major leagues that could spend a month in the minors and come up and and rake um seen some sort of ian kler-type comps. Who else did you have as guys who have not played at all? A peek behind the curtain.

So I've got Kelnick and Wander Franco as the two. I just blew up your piece that's coming out. I'm sorry. No, you know what? It's fine. Hopefully, it's a little more than this conversation. Right, right, right. If I take all this time and my piece isn't more than what we're saying right now,

then I have failed. conversation right if i take all this time and my piece isn't more than what we're saying right now that i've failed but i think kelnick and wander are prospects that you're going to roster in pretty much every type of league once they come up like i think even in shallow mixed leagues there's a path for them to be useful for right uh guys that haven't debuted yet kiriloff he debuted in the playoffs i mean i think he's he's kind of like andughn. Like, if it's not opening day, it's not long after opening day. Those teams are expecting a lot from those guys. The thing that could mess it up for Vaughn, the only thing, I think the only thing that could mess it up for Vaughn is Ioannis Cespedes. Ooh, really?

I didn't even think about that as a real concern. Yeah, I think it's possible. And isn't Edwin Encarnacion still out there? Or did he sign? Still out there. So those two, you know, still a possibility they could just sign one of those guys and tell them, you have a month. If we think you're toast, Vaughn's coming up.

Well, so the next group, it kind of gets into mostly only leagues until these guys get promoted. I would say that Jeter Downs is probably in the same group for me as Josh Jung, and I might even take Downs a little ahead of him. I mean, they signed a couple of utility guys, essentially, with Kike and Marwin both being in Boston, but if Jeter Downs is raking, why wouldn't they bring him up? I think so. I think it'll be hard.

I think it'll be a little bit hard. I think there's also ahead of the CBA. There might even be some internal pressure on teams, you know, especially once the first month goes by to be like, Hey, you know, we're going to get a lot of crap if we don't put our best players in the,

in the major leagues. If like, you know, and, and Jung and downs are really interesting because they play at positions of need for their teams, you know? Yeah.

And so if they're raking and their team is still running out like utility guys and like, Oh door or, you know, whoever, like people they've kind of moved on from. Or Odor's hitting like 150 and Kike's hitting 220, but he's playing all over. Then like it'll be like so obvious. I think there could be like even media pressure or just like fan pressure for those guys to come up. So I like those two names. Jaron Duran, also in Boston, I think is pretty interesting. He's added some power, made some changes to his swing. The hit tool has always been good. I think he was a prospect of

the week selection way back in the spring of 2019, if I remember correctly. So he's pretty much knocking on the door at this point. I think they have opportunities in that outfield that he could end up taking over, especially if they don't bring JBJ back, right? I mean, that is a pretty clear opportunity for him too. So he's definitely on the radar. How about this? Prospect of the week.

I like your name. Do it. I like your name. The long shot in Houston. I like it. Let's do it. I like your name. The Longshot in Houston. I like it. Let's do it. Pedro Leon? Yes.

Mm-hmm. Yes. I got to add him to this tiered thing that I've got going on in the background because I really don't know what to make of him. They had him taking ground balls at shortstop. They signed him as really more of a center fielder. He's not young. It might not take him that long to be big league ready.

He could be big league ready by May or June. He might be big league ready today. That's not out of the range of outcomes. He's 23 years old and played in Cuba. I don't know. Cuba ranges. There are some fields that are like low A, and then there are some fields that are more like double, triple A.

There are some teams that are uneven competition, but just look at the players that have made it, have made the jump. They've made it quickly. Some of them have made it directly. He's 23 years old. He plays center field. Myles Straw is Malik Smith.

Myles Straw is not an everyday big league player. Chaz McCormick is Jakeik Smith. Miles Straw is not an everyday big league player. Chaz McCormick is Jake Fraley. Maybe. Maybe. It's a gaping hole on a team that's projected to win 90.

They showed up as a good bet. I did my over-unders today. Astros over-unders on the 87-5. I still take them with Valdez out. So that's just a thing. But Leon, center field, baby. Let's do it. And I'm not saying go draft him in your 12-teamer.

That's ridiculous. But, you know, if you're listening to this, you're probably in some wicked deep leagues. And Pedro Leon is a name that Dynasty players know and are really excited about him. And I even texted my homeboy James Anderson about it. And Anderson's like, I love him. I just don't know if he's a 21, 22 guy. That is kind of an interesting thing to hear from somebody who's going to do an AL only league this weekend.

Crap, we should have done this segment next week. only league this weekend. Crap. We should have done this segment next week. But also just the two other leagues that I was talking about, best ball and draft and hold, sort of DC type stuff, then late. I just put him on my queue.

Yeah, he should be drafted at least in the last 10 rounds of a 50-rounder, maybe even a little bit earlier, just because there is a path for him to get that opportunity sooner rather than later. And I think looking at him compared to Downs, looking at him compared to Jung, I think he kind of belongs in that tier. He could be an early season call-up, and the range is like six weeks in either direction for guys like that. I guess it can't be earlier than opening day.

Age matters because he's 23 years old. You're not going to game for that sixth year. Do you care about him at 31, 32? This comes up sometimes. Isn't Vaughn – Vaughn's a college guy. There's a couple guys where you're just like, dude, he's – why do you care about his age 31 season? You don't even want him at that point, probably. Don't play these ticky-tack games with a 24-year-old. Just bring

him up. Right. I think teams have started to realize that in a pretty big way. I think the other guy that's tough in the rookie conversation is Adley Rutschman because I thought, and again, Adley Rutschman, because I thought, and again, prospect analysis isn't my sweet spot, but I thought Adley Rutschman in a full season in 2020 was ready to play in the big leagues by season's end. Defensively ready behind the plate, offensively going to be, I think, a well above average player at the position in the not so distant future. But what makes this situation really unique is that the Orioles are even further away than a team like seattle and with rutschman it's like if you're gonna wait even six to eight weeks to call him up then you have that temptation to wait even longer right i mean i just i i hate that i hate

that calculus he's 23 years old man like you're you're you're talking about his age 30, 31 season that you're gaming around. And not for nothing, you know, I like that one, not for nothing. I don't know what it means. Not for nothing. I guess it means something. This means something. Oh, I kind of like some of the arms they're starting to put together. So I've always said I like means,

but Kramer and Aiken, if you look at, if you look closely at my pitching ranks, you'll notice that I like them. Um, and you know, you got Kramer and Aiken and, um,

I can't say that I like anybody else, maybe Bauman, um, down there. Um, but there's gotta be also a new crop coming up through their player development system that are coming soon. Maybe you install Retchman sometime and say,

you're our guy, man. Develop these pitchers with us. You know? And do we really think we cannot compete in the next six years? Let's say Retchman, we're putting Retchman in. We're going to compete in the next six years. Our clock has started.utschman, we're putting Rutschman in, we're going to compete

in the next six years. Our clock has started. In the next five years, we better be doing something. Yeah, so it's like the Cabrian Hayes situation last year, where it's like,

sure, the Pirates weren't going anywhere last season, but eventually, you just got to play the guy at the big league level and say, we're going to put

the pieces around him. In the Orioles case, beyond the guys that you mentioned who are clearly big league ready arms Grayson Rodriguez and DL Hall aren't that far away either they are in the piece they're going to be further down of course but with pitching I just find the the timetables to be

really difficult to project right now because of the lost season and why wait forever I mean like the Mackenzie Gore example is probably the most pertinent for most mixed league players. But with the Padres, we've seen what they've done with Tatis and Paddock. Gore is a Scott Boris client. Therefore, Mackenzie Gore almost certainly will not sign a long-term extension. Mackenzie Gore will pitch his way to free agency and try to get a $400 million contract in 2027. Something to look forward to. But if you're the Padres, clearly you're in win-now mode. You have some high-risk starters in that rotation. If they go down, you want to bring a guy up that can actually give you innings that are at that sort of level. So I don't think it's impossible that we'll see Mackenzie Gore in the second half of April. I think what complicates things now, it would have been really good for him. I mean this in a very sincere way, just because he hasn't pitched that

many upper level minor league innings yet. It would have been good for him to get a handful of starts, even if they were shortened starts at AAA. Now that that's not an option, they've got a tougher decision to make. He's, I think, one of the more difficult players to decide on in minor league baseball right now. Yeah, and teams are having this trouble across the board. I was talking to a farm director recently, and he was talking about how, you know, there's like, if I put everybody that was in high A into double A

and just say, you know, we're going to keep the line moving, and everybody else decides to put all the high A guys back in high A into double A and just say, you know, we're going to keep the line moving, and everybody else decides to put all the high A guys back in high A because they haven't done high A or whatever, you know, to repeat and to be, then all my guys in double A are going to look terrible.

Because there will all be double A guys that are sort of repeating, and my guys will look terrible. So then that says, and my guys will look terrible. So then that says, hey, let me be conservative. But if I do that and everybody does that, then we just all lose a year because we just kept everybody back a year. And he said, it's been making me rethink my entire process for where I put a guy in the minor leagues. He said, I'm now looking at my pitchers in the minor leagues.

And I'm saying, and this guy has some good pitchers. I'm saying, if they have major league pitch grades, like if my nerds, I use it colloquially, I think it's okay. I count myself as one. If my nerds are telling me that these guys have major league pitch grades and my coaches are saying these guys have major league pitch grades what am i waiting for what am i waiting for you know throw them so um i think it'll be just really fascinating once the minor leagues finally you know start to see assignments you know see see where people were where what teams what different teams are doing totally agree

with you there now just to put a bow on some of these names we're talking about, just focusing on the pitching, 6-0 Ian Anderson, Tristan McKenzie, kind of in a tier of their own because they've debuted already. The next group for me was Tarek Skubal, Casey Mize. I put Gore in this group because Gore could be the best pitcher that I write about in this piece by far. That's not a secret.

There's a future value 70 on him on Fangraphs. You don't see a lot of future value 70 pitchers. So it's Scooble, Mize, Gore, Nate Pearson. I've got Pearson a little ahead of Howard and Kopech because I think the Jays have a little more pressure to use him as a starter. And I think he might have that role waiting for him right now. He might be a starter right now in the major leagues pat's a little clear i've got aj puck in this group right now but i think he could easily drop into the howard copec group or just be a reliever or a really good reliever that's the other fallback i think if he's in the bullpen he's a high leverage reliever

problem is they added rosenthal so puck's a little less interesting now than he was when i started this dane dunning is the other guy in this group and it's like one of these guys is not like the Problem is they added Rosenthal, so Puck's a little less interesting now than he was when I started this. Dane Dunning is the other guy in this group, and it's like one of these guys is not like the others. It's Dunning by far. Throwing 91 with a sinker. But he's got a couple of interesting secondary pitches, and he's pitching in an airplane hangar. He's in one of the most pitcher-friendly situations in the league, and he's got the clearest path to the most innings of all these guys. Everybody else in that tier could be subject to some sort of manipulation dane dunning i don't think will be so it's just so weird to rank a guy that is clearly a notch below everybody else in that tier because

innings matter volume matters yeah yeah and as a person who just, my pitching staff through eight rounds in the TGFBI is Walker Buehler, Julio Urias, and Pablo Lopez getting some guff online about how many innings I've got and the risk I've got. I've got two responses. One is, you know, I don't think that my guys are necessarily in the baby, you know, in the babying stage. Maybe Urias. are necessarily in the baby uh you know in the babying stage maybe urias but um you know you know these guys are more um you know third fourth year right third fourth year veterans like all of them really like how many how many years are you going to handle them with kid gloves um you know then all of a sudden the six years are up and you only got you know 100 innings out of them one season you know so like on some level i think these guys are just ready to go and then the second thing is there's three things the second thing is we're all screwed

on innings i don't think that i don't know why anybody thinks that you know the innings are going to be easy this year and the third thing is um i don't think that we're gonna do a really great job projecting innings so i i you know safe innings guy framber might have been a safe innings guy yeah well relatively speaking yeah in that range i think so and that's a group that includes So, you know, safe innings guy, Frambo might have been a safe innings guy. Yeah, well, relatively speaking, yeah, in that range, I think so. And that's a group that includes Lizardo and Urias and some guys that maybe do have still some kid glove treatment. And you think that there might be some safe innings guy on the Padres. I'll tell you this.

I will put it down right now, and I'm sorry to my Padres homeboys and homegirls. I love the Padres. The Padres are going to be great. One of their starting pitchers is going to go down this year. Inevitably. Yeah, there's just so much risk in that group. Do you know that the DL percentage, the average DL percentage for a pitcher is 40%?

40%. 40%. For just one stint at some point? Yeah. So basically half the pitchers in baseball are going to get hurt this year. The question is, how long? Yeah, is it a hammy? Is it an obl is it an elbow is it a shoulder you know what is it that actually knocks these guys out the the main thing i would say in redraft purposes mixed

redraft purposes is of these pitchers we've talked about the six though anderson mckenzie group is an exception you could draft two or three of them if you want to. You're not really worried about up and down. But I wouldn't take more than one from each of the next two groups out of that. Pearson. Well, Pearson's close to being that other one. I mean, I just think he's in the rotation. But we'll see. They might play some games.

They're stretching out Julian Merriweather. They're stretching out Hatch. And one of those guys might jump in there somehow. And yeah. out Julian Merriweather. They're stretching out Hatch and one of those guys might jump in there somehow. If you think the guy doesn't necessarily have a role yet like Gore, you can only take one of those. How many innings would you project? Yeah, you're going to have to

be careful. You're going to be like, I want to drop Gore, but I want to drop Gore. I need that bench spot. Benches aren't endless. That's the problem. So you have to think about how difficult it's going to be to either hold that player or to possibly make that decision to cut him in some mixed leagues,

depending on how the workload takes shape over the course of the season. How many innings would you project for Urias, by the way? I ended up drafting him as my second pitcher in PGFBI. I waited on pitching. I went Darvish in the second and waited until the seventh to get in on Urias. And then I got Sixto Sanchez in the eighth. So I'm okay with that foundation so far at cost because I feel like I've got a pretty big advantage in terms of the hitters that I was loading up on in rounds three through six. But I was thinking for Urias, 140 innings is

probably where my expectation is. And if I get 160 or a little more than that then i'm thrilled but i'm not expecting more than 140 from him in the regular season and i i think i'd rather take that um than than a shot at something i think is going to be 180 uh of more oatmeal-y right like i think urius's per innings numbers are going to be great. And I think, you know, 140 is fine. And then let's say I take the shot at the 180 because there is no 200 anymore. There might be two guys this year that do 200. So 180 is the new 200, right? Okay. So I take a shot at a guy, I say, oh, you know, Sandy Alcantara or somebody else is more likely to do 180 than Julio Urias, right? 40% likely to hit the DL. So my 180 guy hits the DL once, even if it's a oblique or whatever. And yes, Urias can get hit too. And I understand that this is all like sliding scales, but I'm saying, man, you could take those shots at those 180 guys, you know,

take less production per inning and then get an oblique and be a 140 guy and then you just then you just didn't get what you wanted so personally and this may be a weakness but i've never come up short on weakness on i've never like i've never come up short on innings i've never come up short on k's all of my teams will dominate in k's and home runs that has never been a problem for me i'm learning over time to try and spend money to get more stolen bases and to get more wins, right? Because wins are actually, they come from better teams. They come up from more hyped players. You know, Garrett Cole is going to win more games than Shane Beaver. You know, there's, it's probably true. And so I've been

learning some stuff over time. I'm not saying I know everything, but I'm saying I would much rather focus on your per inning goodness, your skills, especially, uh, for two people that are going to be in a starting rotation. I'd rather have the one that I think is better. Like I think all the other stuff I think is just really hard to project and really hard to predict. So like, I'm just going to take the better one. I don't know.

I mean, sometimes we've, we tend to overcomplicate things. and really hard to predict. So like, I'm just going to take the better one. I don't know. I mean, sometimes we tend to overcomplicate things. Urias has 239 big league innings so far scattered over parts of five seasons. He's got a 320 ERA and a 125 whip so far. Yeah. And last season, 10 of his 11 appearances in the regular season were starts. So I think we've kind of pushed further into the,

he's clearly a starter on this team, even though they've got really good depth. And even though they can manage things around him a little bit, the quality of those innings is going to be exceptionally high. You're not taking a zero when he's not starting. You're just leaning on your depth a little bit more. And I think how you put depth on your roster behind someone like that, if I'm going to rely on Urias as my two, I'm going to be a little more careful with some of the young guys that we talked about. I'm not going to have as many of those guys on my roster as I might otherwise.

I'll go for a little more oatmeal on the bench and try and find a lot of two-star pitchers, try and find the veterans in good streaming spots and manage it that way to really make sure that I'm getting enough innings because I think if you get too far down the young rabbit hole with how you build it out, then you can fall short.

You can come up way short in innings. You'll definitely lag in wins. And that lead you should have had in K's just becomes a relative strength. You're getting eight or nine points in that category instead of, you know, 14 or 15, right? You got to make sure you're still getting enough innings behind guys like this. And I think it actually fits,

uh, uh, to zig here, uh, in another way. Uh, so you're talking about sort of oatmeal, the innings type guys, uh, on your bench, right? Well, we've been talking about the guy like Alec Mills, right? Not super exciting, but he opens the season with two games against the Pirates, one of them in Wrigley, right? So like that's going to be a cold ass game. That's probably be one you want them in there for. And having Alec Mills that you can jerk around and just start him against the Pirates and start him against the Reds at home or whatever it is you've come up with, that's going to be useful. And it's going to be super cheap. And there's going to be other people picking up like Forrest Whitley types or Nate Pearson types.

They love doing that with their final pitcher and saying, oh, I got upside on my bench. What if you got some upside, you know, with established roles with some track record up a high, and then you got some more, you know, Spore has a term for this, team streamers, where your bench is guys who are in the major leagues, have some established roles, and, you know, you can muck around with. Be like, oh, I'm going to start this guy outside of Coors, you know, when he's on the road. I'm going to start this guy when he's at home. I'm going to start, you know what I mean? So, like, and those guys are super cheap cheap and you can wait forever on those guys. So it's something I've noticed even in my ranks this year where I had some high command

plus guys near the sort of 70 to 75, 70, 80, which is where a lot of people are getting their last starter. And I put some high command plus guys there because I was like, I like the high ceiling here. I think this year is going to be bad innings-wise, and I think these guys have roles, and the command is going to give them a high ceiling. So if you're looking at my ranks,

look at those high command guys in the 70s. Those could be a way out if you've taken Julio Urias as your second pitcher as we did. Yeah, I think this is a really important point to drive home. Vlad Sedler was on the Athletic Fantasy Baseball pod last Thursday. He's had a ton of success in NFBC leagues, 12 and 15 team leagues alike. He's great at fab, and I think a big part of it kind of starts on draft day. It's getting the guys that the fab of opening week, like that Sunday before opening day is the first fab run.

Drafting the guys that people are going to spend $40, $50 out of a thousand for, just drafting them, saves you fab, gets you the matchups that everybody wants and puts you in that position to go ahead and turn those spots over after the first week or after the second week, depending on how far those guys carry some value. Think about your pickups at the end of your draft, and you can get ahead of the competition that way by maxing out matchups. That Alec Mills situation is a really good one. The Pirates are going to be awful. You're going to throw some pretty bad pitchers against the Pirates this year and live to tell the tale because you're going to get great ratios and lots of strikeouts

from pitchers in that spot. All right. We got a great question from Ben, and Ben wants to know, how do you use auction calculator prices in snake drafts? He writes, I get tripped up sorting by values because inherently you will have players with similar prices but vastly different ADPs. Examples, Pete Alonso and martinez similar auction values but jd goes 40 picks later do you sort by one data point or another while drafting tier by position any tips would be great as i feel like i always underperform in snake drafts so this is a tool we talk about all the time fangraphs has an auction calculator it's very flexible to different league sizes different scoring formats and different

projection systems right you got i think four projection systems you can choose to run through there you got the bat you got zips you got atc you got points you can do points on there yeah get custom points values out there it's an outstanding tool quite do like i don't think it quite represents weekly lineups great so that's something if you're thinking if you're if you do nfbc or do weekly it'll sometimes pump up a guy like jock peterson where you're like uh yes but i'm gonna lose a bunch of plate appearances by playing him weekly when he gets platoon and stuff so just think about that i i've been thinking about if you have an idea email us i don't know how to represent that i even even reached out to David Alvin and was like,

how would you fix the auction calculator to have a weekly toggle? And we texted back and forth about it a little bit. And there's some ideas out there. But anyway, just as that's an aside, sorry. So what do you do to get around the differences in how the market treats players versus what the auction calculator spits out? Because you want to make sure that you're not overpaying for talent. And you want your guys. And you want the biggest number guys. You want to get your guys. Yeah. You want to get as many of those big number guys as possible. For me, I do look at the dollar values first. And I'm comfortable pushing guys above ADp a little bit 40 picks is a lot when you're talking about a top 100 player right jd's projection is similar to alonzo's i'm drafting

him a round or two later not three rounds later if you wait that that third round you try to thread the needle perfectly you're probably going to miss out someone else else is going to swoop in. But you also got right there at this idea that you might not drop Alonzo. Right. You found a similar player that has similar auction value that could fit the similar place on your roster that you could get later. Yeah, so we've been saying the eat this, not that kind of as our running joke this draft season. And it's really easy to see similar players with that tool.

I know it's something our friends Paul Sporer and Justin Mason have done a bit on the Sleeper in the Bus podcast, too. So this isn't some original idea that we've put together. And we're not geniuses for doing this. But it's a helpful tool to use this way. Far, far from geniuses for doing this, but it's a helpful tool to use this way. Far, far from geniuses. He knows the stick that his dogs are fighting over and shredding on the sidewalk. But I think it does give you an idea of where you might be overpaying for certain types of skills, right? Like power and run production. Sometimes you pay this premium for reasons that people don't articulate particularly well yeah yeah people are obsessed with cattell marty's power right

they're obsessed with his power and if his power is there and if it's not there but if you look at his projections and his value he has value as a 290 hitter it They're not projecting him for power. They're projecting him for like 20 homers. It's the 290. It's the 280, the 290 that you're getting. The handful of steals. It's a really hard package to be excited about. Even I, I have Cattell Marte.

I did the Marte partay. I did Cattell Marte and Starling Marte around the turn. I think it was 4-5 or something. I did it and I don't feel great about it because I'm like, dude, this might hit 20 homers, but he might hit 20 homers with a 280, 290 average and seven stolen bases and just really keep me afloat everywhere. But so the way that it really works for me is the cue. The cue is where it's at. So what you do is you look at the auction calculator, you sort for whatever positions you're looking at or whatever position you need.

Early on, you can just look straight at the top hitters. But then later, you're like, I need a first baseman, I need a second baseman. You fill your queue. And this is what I do. Let's say the general, the auction is around $18, right? I fill my queue with everybody that the auction calculator says that would be relevant to me, you know, the first, second, whatever positions I need, I fill it with everybody over $16. So then in my queue, I'm looking at everybody that's $16.

In the sorting window, I have it sorted by ADP. So now I can look at, I say, okay, this is what the queue is telling me what the auction calculator is spitting out. This is what the auction calculator thinks I should pick. The ADP is telling me which one of those picks is riskiest or not risky, riskiest for losing that which one of these picks, if I don't pick them now, I'll lose them. Right. I won't be able to get them later. So then I say, okay, uh, this guy's an $18 player. He's at a position of need and the ADP lines up, boom, I'm taking him. And I'm hoping this other guy comes back because his ADP is lower. So this just happened. It happened right after the Marte party.

Eugenio Suarez and Quetel Marte. I was looking at both of them. They had, Quetel Marte, Eugenio Suarez had a higher predicted auction value than Quetel Marte. However, I know that second base sucks this year

and I looked at the ADP and Quetel Marte had a much higher ADP. And I had a good friend named Derek. We chat all the time about our drafts. And he said, Eugenio is more likely to come back to you. And I was like, duh, look at the ADPs. Eugenio is more likely to come back to me. I did that.

I got Eugenio on the way back. So that's basically how I would manage. And I think that not looking at ADP, some people say don't look at ADP. I think that not looking at ADP, some people say don't look at ADP. I think that's silly. That's going to give you a sense of who you're more likely to lose in the next round or two. And so that's how I navigate the difference, I guess.

Yeah, I think the don't look at ADP argument is don't look at ADP when you're generating your own rankings because then you're incorporating groupthink into your analysis. but you do want to look at adp either before or during the draft just to get a better feel for timing things out and coming away with as many of those high value players as possible but just looking at second

base i mean i think we talk about decision trees quite a bit i think what you can do is you can look at the adp column and the cost column and say, hey, I like Ozzy Albies as someone that I want to get maybe at that 2-3 turn or somewhere in round three. If I don't get Albies, oh, look at this. Jose Altuve, who goes about both good in average. They're both good in RBIs. They're both really good in runs. They're kind of similar production-wise where, okay, I do prefer Albies, and I want to get him. Someone else just took him. I'm going to do something else in this spot. I'm not going to take another second baseman here. I'm going to get Altuve later on.

You start to identify some of your plan B and plan C type players using the tool this way too. DJ LeMahieu, I think, is probably your similar comp to Quetel Marte. A little more average in the projection even from DJ LeMayhew, but similar questions, I think, about how much power each of those guys is going to provide for slightly different reasons. Overall values right around 19 bucks, depending on the settings that you put in. So you miss out on DJ LeMayhew in that 2-3 range, guess what? Quetel Marte in the 5th or 6th might be a good fallback option. So that's the way I like to use it, is kind of identifying similar players who might be available a lot later on.

And you can do this up and down every position. It's one of the easiest ways to see it right in front of your face. Here's one, I just had this earlier today in TGFBI. We've said on this show, I think during the catcher preview, that getting one of the top five catchers is ideal. And usually it's not JT Realmuto in a snake draft because of what he costs. In an auction, it's a little bit different. I think when I see the numbers in front of me for Sal Perez and Yasmany Grandal, there's a $4-ish difference in overall value. Most of that comes from batting average. I see Yasmany Grandal as a perfectly viable fallback option, even a better option than Sal Perez because I don't want to necessarily draft a catcher in that pick 80 range but at 130 I'm getting almost the exact same production from Yasmany Grandal right so I just I think this is a really good way to find pivots and in different drops drops in tier because we talked

a lot about Owen Poindexter's piece last draft season where he was looking at values across each position like where you get significant drops second base is one of those spots the shape of a position it's easy to see the shape of a position looking at the auction calculator even when you're playing in a snake draft right why would you want dollar values in a snake draft because you could see where those tier breaks where those drop offs are there's a bunch that look good at 10, and then there's like, they drop to like one and two, and you're like, whoa, that's terrible. So that definitely is a good way to do it.

And then I would last, one last thing I would say is that at some point I stopped doing that. Because I do think that there is a relationship between your team needs and your team structure and the auction calculator that starts to fall apart at some point you know like if you have three first basemen it doesn't matter anymore to you that there's a ten dollar first baseman out there you know what i mean you just can't fit them into your lineup so at some point the queue uh becomes um a much more

intuitive thing for me where i might glance at the auction calculator, but really what I'm doing is looking at projections and the cue all of a sudden just becomes, well, I just really need a backup MI and a starting pitcher and a reliever. So my cue is just going to be full of those guys. And then I'm going to kind of sort through those. So, you know, there definitely is a relationship between as you build your team, the team needs you create. But you can get out, like you're saying, you can get out ahead of some of those needs by even looking at the auction calculator. So it definitely is the basis for how I start to start drafts. There was an unrelated follow-up question that came in with this one.

It's a Keeper League question from Ben. Do you have a preference between Lizardo, Paddock, and Corbin Burns all being at the same price in a keeper league? In this particular league, it's a quality starts league, so you can factor that in as well. The concern Ben has with Burns is the walk rate and a possible home run rate regression. So any of those three pitchers you think is clearly above the group in a keeper league or would you even pivot and keep Kevin Biggio instead who's the same price and this is also an OBP league where Biggio's value jumps quite a bit yeah actually I think given all those those choices I might I might take Biggio uh the the thing is that uh none of the three has the what I'm looking for in a keeper pitcher which is both good command and

good stuff and when you're looking at, he's like a 109 stuff. That's great. He's like a 91 command. That's fairly close to reliever level. And you got Paddock, who's got 95 stuff. That's not great. He's got 115 command plus. I do think he might have the best career out of the three.

I think we might have just seen a stumble in the middle of a pretty good career. But betting on any of them to continue, rather than Biggio, who's demonstrated elite Vottoian discipline, lots of different places where he can help you. And then he's almost like Vottoian on the base pass, too, where he's going to get you 12 stolen bases against two caught stealings every year. So I feel like

he's just a great plug and play guy that I think I'd just rather have that. If I had to, if you were going to force me to the wall, I guess I'll take Burns. It's the elite stuff. It's the short term play. Maybe Paddock is going to need another half year or something

to figure it out. We agree, though. I think BGO, especially in OBP, he could really be a second or third round player in a format like that, because average is the thing that drags him down so much in typical 5-by-5 league. With that setup, I'd treat pitchers as rentals and just double-tap pitchers

the first time you come out of keepers every year. First to second round, boom, boom. There's going to be some good ones out there for you. Just get your burns back. Get your burns back as your first brown pick. Yeah, all three of the guys that Ben would throw back in this case would be candidates to take with those first couple of picks, most likely. They'd be sitting right there for you, and then other people are going to throw pitchers in,

and all of a sudden you're like, well, I got my BGO and my burns. Absolutely. Thanks a lot for the questions, Ben. All right, we've got one more question that came in. This one came in from Isaac. Isaac wants to know, why do you think some players have good barrel rates, but bad other rates such as hard hit and exit velocity in particular are

barrels, somewhat luck based and bad B examples could include Kyle Lewis. Who's got a good barrel rate, but a bad hard hit rate and relatively low exit velocity, or Vlad Jr., who's got a good hard hit rate and exit velocity, but is mid-range in barrels. So, what do you make of this? Are barrels somewhat luck-based and Babbity, as Isaac asks? Well, I mean, we've talked on the show about how you would regress somebody's barrel explosion. Like if they showed a bunch of barrels one year

and then you were trying to project them, you would regress that. So yes, there is a certain amount of luck with any bad ball. And there's a certain amount of relationship between sample and how much you can believe it. So Lewis in particular, smaller sample, maybe Beryl has it wrong.

Maybe he just got lucky on a couple hard hit balls in the air. But I would say that it's not like Babbitt at all in one way, which is that when you look at year to year correlations, like how sticky is it? How much does, if you show that skill in one year how much do you show it the next year um it's much better uh barrels are about the best thing we've got um one of the things the only the only things that was stickier year to year was um how hard you hit the ball when you hit the ball in the air which is barrels it's you know the idea is we're looking at how hard you can hit the ball in the right angles.

So barrels is just the right angles, and hard hit fly balls is a wider group of angles. But the idea is still, can you hit the ball hard and in the air? Interestingly, ground ball exit velocity is not at all sticky ear to ear. It's more like BABIP. And that's probably part of the whole BABIP thing. It's not that much of a repeatable skill to hit the ball hard on the ground for whatever reason. It might be a mechanical reason.

It might be something worth unpacking. But there's something more repeatable about hitting the ball in the air a punch. So I guess if I was faced with the choice of these two batted ball profiles, let's say, let's give Kyle Lewis the same amount of sample as Vlad Guerrero has, right? Let's say they had the same amount of batted balls. You've got a guy who's got good barrels,

but a bad hard hit or mediocre hard hit versus a guy who has great hard hit, but mediocre barrels. I'm going to take the barrels guy. It's a little bit like Yandy Diaz versus Harrison Bader. That makes it sound bad because nobody wants Harrison Bader, but that's just the name that came to mind. But, you know, both of those guys are flawed. I mean, maybe that is a good comparison.

Do you want Yandy Diaz or do you want Harrison Bader? I'm going to take Harrison Bader. He's the barrels guy. I know there's flaws. Yandy Diaz has flaws. want Harrison Bader? I'm going to take Harrison Bader. He's the barrels guy. I know there's flaws. Yandy Diaz has flaws. Both of them are very flawed. But Yandy Diaz hits the ball really hard. A lot of it's on the ground.

And then he had a year where he didn't even hit the ball that hard. So long story short, the most repeatable skill is hitting the ball in the air. We've seen a few players, like veteran players, start hitting the ball in the air. We've seen a few players, like veteran players, start hitting the ball in the air at an advanced age in recent seasons. Eric Hosmer, I think, was the best example from last season. I think we talked about him looking at first baseman, and I distinctly remember saying, it's Eric Hosmer, he's just killing the ball into the ground,

killing worms. It's not going to change for him, but it did. He got the ball in the air more often, and good things happened for him in the shortened season. Ryan Zimmerman did it a few years ago too. It's possible to take hard hit balls in the ground and turn them into hard hit balls in the air, but I don't think

that is an easy sort of adjustment to make. It's difficult to assume that a hitter can and will quickly make that adjustment, but if you just go to the Baseball Savant leaderboard, sort that page by the fly ball and line drive exit velocity column, it's hitter can and will quickly make that adjustment. But if you just go to the baseball savant leader board, sort that page by the fly ball and line drive exit velocity column, it's loaded with guys that we like. It's Miguel Sano, it's Tatis, it's Acuna, it's Soto, it's Corey Seager. It's a few stat cast darlings sprinkled in like Teoscar Hernandez, but he had the breakout last year and

puts in decent numbers together in 19. It's Nelson Cruz. It's Eloy Jimenez and Jelic and Jose Abreu. Those are all really good players. So you move further down that list and you start to say, hmm, maybe the Evan White year two is going to be a lot better if he can get the strikeout rate in check because when he hits the ball in the air,

he's doing quite a bit of damage in those spots. Maybe Colin Moran, who's 15th in terms of average exit velocity on flies and liners. Like, maybe that's more real than I was giving him credit for. Willie Adamas, baby. Just needs to make some contact. Yeah.

I mean, it's pretty interesting to see the surprises on a list like that. But I would agree, like, generally, like, you can have a profile that's mostly good. And you can always kind of tweak that one thing, but sometimes you lose something with it. Sometimes the cost to hitting the ball in the air more often is a spike in strikeout rate. If the strikeout rate jumps up, then the batting average comes down, so there's some give and take to make that last adjustment in a lot of cases. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this sort of analysis brought us rowdy to Les. It's found us some gems in the past. And I can't say that I understand exactly why ground ball exit velocity is so noisy, but this is the skill we're looking for.

When you're looking for power, this is the skill you're looking for. I'm looking back at 2019 and trying to find some surprises going into 2020. Maybe Jorge Soler counts. He was sixth in this. Who's another surprise? Josh Bell didn't really quite work out. That's a surprise that didn't work out. Ruggie Odor proof it doesn't always work out. I think a surprise it didn't work out rugio door proof it doesn't

always work out right i mean but i think a lot of on that with a door in particular and with uh abreu um there is this not abreu uh bell there is this question of like the there's other skills involved like yes okay you hit the ball hard when you hit in the air this the second two questions are how often do you hit the ball? Important. Ruginetto door, Willie Adamas and then the second one is how often do you hit it in the air? Period. And that was a bit of a problem for Josh Bell.

But I'm taking Josh Bell as a bounce back back to these sorts of numbers in 2019 myself. One last thing. Max EV is a really, really sticky thing year to year. And the reason that is so great is it pushes the whole range of possibilities for you. Because hitting the ball in the air actually requires you to hit a little bit less than your max EV because you're trying to hit it in the air. So that's why that's the max EV is kind of this thing that brings it all together. So, you know, max EV guys from last year that,

you know, this is where Vlad shows up because what you're saying is he can show he can hit the ball really hard. He has a really good, you know, range of possibilities. He does need to start. has a really good uh you know range of possibilities he does need to start right he's second third in max ev so he can hit the ball really hard he hits it too much on the ground we're hoping that he can he can put it up in the in the air lewis doesn't hit the ball quite as hard but he puts in the air so he's he's conquered one of those skills yeah and i think like ryan mcmahon is kind of interesting if you look back at 2019 like very high high up on, on the fly ball line, drive exit, velo leaderboard,

pretty good in max exit velocity. I think he's 21st among qualified hitters and average there. And about 40th or so in max EV like that. That's a profile you want to believe in at the swing and miss portion is where it kind of goes a little wrong for him, right? I mean, we're talking about a guy that strikes out at least 30% of the time,

most seasons. But if you can bring that down just a little bit there's a chance that mcmahon could still be a bit of a late bloomer for us especially at the price and being a guy that can move around a bit with that multi-position eligibility the worst case scenario he's a guy that you have uh you only play at cores you know at or somewhere, wherever you need him. A little easier to pull that off with a guy that's eligible at three spots too. You can throw him on the bench. At least you can fit him in for your worst option at one of five spots, right? Between first, second, third, middle, and corner. I got a max TV sleeper for this year.

Lay it on us. Joe Adele, 14th in the big leagues leagues i know he's got the contact issues you don't have to tell me about him but dude did do something right last year it may not it may not come right off the page but he did do something right last year uh josh bell josh bell and gregory polanco Josh Bell and Gregory Polanco, 26th and 27th. I took Polanco in that massive 50-round DC as my first bench outfielder. I feel pretty good about that. I got one more name to throw everybody not interesting in the Joe Adele kind of way, but Kyle Schwarber still hits the crap out of the ball. And he's coming off a really bad shortened season.

I love that signing for the Nats. I would put him in our conversation of guys that look like he's in really good shape. He looks trim again. I mean, he's been kind of better, I would say, in terms of how he looks for a couple of years now. But I just saw Kyle Schwarber highlights on Twitter earlier today.

He looks like really healthy at this point. So I wouldn't be surprised at all by a massive bounce back. Avi Sahil, 37th. We got to give Avie sahil some love trim garcia do it it's gonna happen it's gonna happen but uh yeah i mean there's a lot here to unpack and we're gonna keep digging in of course as we often do looking for more sources of value a lot of mid-round and kind of later round options you can find on these leaderboards that

if it doesn't work out, you're not really out all that much in terms of draft day costs. I think that's a good way to really fish in the right pool for some possible surgers here in 2021. Before we go, a few things I wanted to throw out there. If you haven't signed up for The Athletic,

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That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. You can find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris. You can find me at Derek Van Ryper. We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening..