Rates & Barrels - Framber's No-Hitter & Trade Deadline Fallout

Episode Date: August 2, 2023

Eno and DVR discuss Framber Valdez's no-hitter, changes in his profile compared to past seasons, and the fallout from the Trade Deadline as opportunities for changes on several depth charts plays out for the final two months of the season.  Rundown 1:01 Framber Valdez's 93-Pitch No-Hitter 7:25 Dominic Canzone Gets an Immediate Opportunity 10:07 DFA'd Veterans Seeking New Teams 19:33 Kyle Manzardo's Path to a 2023 Debut 22:57 The Marlins' New Depth Chart 28:14 The Rangers' Rotation, With Health 31:23 Spencer Howard's New Start with Yankees 33:44 Luis Patiño to the White Sox 37:38 YOUR Favorite Deals From This Deadline Window 42:07 Eno's Favorite Trades 56:01 Willingness to Pay a Premium for Prospects 58:29 Masyn Winn Getting the Call This Season? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Wednesday, August 2nd, Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. Welcome to those of you watching us on YouTube, as you probably have noticed immediately we're wearing the same shirt for some reason. Just a plain gray shirt. What's up with that? We called each other and made sure we were wearing the same thing. Apparently.

That's part of the new order around here, I guess. But on this episode, we recap some of the fallout from the trade deadline that, of course, passed on Tuesday. We talked a lot about the deals as they were sort of happening and being confirmed after the deadline on the 3-0 show, so you can check that out as well. We were kind of looking through the depth charts, trying to make sense of some players that have either been released or players that are going to quietly play a bit more as a result of departed players,

but we have a no-hitter to talk about today. Before we get into all that, Frambois Valdez, on a day where most Astros fans were just really excited that Justin Verlander was coming back to Houston, Frambois Valdez comes out and throws a no-hitter. He does it with 93 pitches. So, yeah, it was a Maddox. It was the third fewest pitches thrown at a no-hitter since pitch counts have been tracked. I think that was since, like, 1988. So, an extremely efficient no-no for Valdez.

Everything was working, especially the curveball. And every time we talk about Frambois Valdez, I look at the rest of season projection versus the results. And usually the rest of season projection is considerably worse than what he's done so far. That's still the case, even though we're now sitting with four seasons of Valdez pitching at a really consistently high level. I mean, this year, he's got a 26% K rate. He's got a 6.1% walk rate, which is the longest full or the best full season walk rate of his career. He had a 5.6 back in 2020, but we're talking about 135 innings now

this season. This is just amazing. The transformation of Valdez over time as a guy that used to have consistently high walk rates to someone who's also improved that facet of his game. He's just really turned into a front line sort of starter. Even if he's not an ace, and I know that word is now frowned upon, is it an ace? Doesn't matter. He's one of those guys that you want out there when it counts. Yeah. I love the addition of the cutter, but this is saying that he threw four in that no-hitter and that it wasn't that much of an addition i i don't know about that i don't know he throws i guess it's uh sometimes maybe hard to distinguish uh from the the curve when the curve when he throws the harder curve that's like a little bit more pinpoint at like

85 because the cutter is 85.6 according to baseball savant um but i do like the addition of the curve of the cutter generally i think that's just uh led to the additional whiffs and uh strikeouts uh second best strikeout rate of his career um you know it has led to a little bit fewer ground balls as he's gone for those whiffs but still at 54 still really excellent um i don't know you know his his career now 331 era 122 whip uh and his projections are for basically a 315 era and a 120 whip so uh i guess it's pretty easy to see where that comes from but that also includes 2019 where he had a 586 era for 70 innings and that seems so far away that seems like it has nothing to do with who he is now

yeah he just seems a little bit underrated and part of the package this year has been increased velocity too that was something i was not counting on at all for valdez we're talking about a guy who's 29 years old already so we're at that point in his career where you expect the velo to sort of plateau or just continue to drop a little bit year over year but seeing him averaging 95.5 on his sinker i mean that's really nice to see yeah that's true i do wonder what that means long term i mean at 29 you would expect the uh the aging curve to suggest that Velo will go down after this. He's had success with less Velo and so much of what he can do. Part of what I think cushions

a possible meltdown in the long run is that Fran Brevaldez gets a lot of ground balls. It's interesting that this is the worst, air quotes, worst ground ball rate of his career at 54%. There is something different about his approach do you like this version better than maybe the guy we saw two years ago with the 22 k rate but the 70 ground

ball rate these trade-offs seem to me like a net positive but do you agree with that i do think so it looks like he's uh throwing a little bit at the top of the zone more than he used to and I would assume those are some cutters and maybe even some high sinkers but you know the research might be split on that if you look at Sierra for example I remember the research for Sierra said that once you get past 60 percent ground balls you really get a great return on your BABIP. You start to expect a lower BABIP once you get past 60% ground balls. And you shouldn't expect that for somebody in the 50 to 55 range, that somehow 60 was a bit of a shelf.

And I think you see that a little bit, although you will see that his Sierra, when he had a 70% ground ball rate and a 21.9% strikeout rate, was 379. This year, he has a 54% ground ball rate and a 26% strikeout rate, and Framber's Sierra is a 342. So I think that is a little bit of a suggestion that, yes, the tradeoff has been good for him. And generally, I'm pro-whiff. Yeah, always pro-whiff when faced with the alternatives. This no-hitter also came on the heels of two pretty bumpy starts, one particularly bad outing last time out against the Rangers,

gave up six earned, eight hits, three and two-thirds innings, probably his worst start of the season. Actually, probably easily the worst start of the season for him. But a nice little turnaround. And then that start against the Anaheim, you know, he had two in. He had basically his worst three-start stretch this year. And maybe for a while. I mean, 15 earned runs in 15 innings.

Yeah, but 13 Ks against the Angels in that first start coming out of the break too. So this version of Frambois Valdez, even a little bit better than the other recent versions, which have been pretty consistently, I would say, underrated as part of all this. Dude, against Anaheim this year?

Oh, that's lovely. Against Anaheim this year, he has 32 strikeouts in 21 innings. Man, he's tearing them up. He has their number. That's impressive. Wow.

Yeah. So on to some other things that happened, some fallout from this deadline. We were excited about Dominic Canzone getting an opportunity in Seattle. They pretty quickly put him in the middle third of their order, so we're going to see this. A little up and down, though. Defensively, he had some miscues. Didn't quite show in the box score, but some of his defensive miscues led to runs.

Nevertheless, right? Nevertheless, he started. Yeah, and he got a hit i think so i think as a result of canzone and then josh rojas getting there they decided to dfa colton wong and then you look at the dh first base outfield depth situation to oscar hernandez did not start on tuesday i don't really think there was a particular reason for that maybe there's a minor injury or something that wasn't reported. Or maybe he was on the block and they might have been ready to go to the airport sort of deal. Right. So I

assume since he's still there, they're going to keep playing him. And that means one of Cade Marleau or Mike Ford would have to lose time if they're going to play Teoscar Hernandez every day. But Colton Wong gets bumped off the roster. As you kind of look through the depth chart that's left over for Seattle, do you see any other winners or losers of note? Well, the Colton Wong thing is a real interesting one because you think, okay, that means that second base, there's some opportunity there.

And I guess Josh Rojas being the lefty and Jose Caballero being the righty, I guess Josh Rojas is going to get some burn. I don't know why or who should pick him up. I'm not sure anybody but Mono League should pick him up. If it's an everyday role, I could see the case for him getting back into some of the leagues where he was rostered previously but we're talking about a guy that's gone 60 games this season without a homer he is six for six as a base dealer but a 287 obp and everything in the slash line under a 300 right now 25 hard hit is like one of the lower numbers i've seen yeah it's a it's a big reset for him

and he's been chasing outside the zone more just everything going the wrong direction so i think it is more of a wait and see situation for rojas even though he's been a player that has drawn interest in mixed leagues in the past i think they could mix and match with caballero whose playing time was already down before this trade compared to where it was it has to be a daily league i think because caviar is still there against righties and so is dylan moore and i can't assume that they're gonna play because even even uh arizona stopped playing against lefties when he was playing well so yeah it has to be deeper daily league before you make that move so you look at you know wong was dfa'd we learned that Gene Segura was part of the Josh Bell trade he was

quickly released by the Guardians the implications of that are just probably balancing out the player option on Josh Bell's contract for 2024 so the Guardians had to eat something it sounds like based on that swap Wong Segura and then Trey Mancini also DFA'd by the Cubs do you think there's any chance that one of those three players will end up finding enough playing time somewhere else to become fantasy relevant again beyond Mono Leagues over the final two

months? The Red Sox are playing Christian Arroyo at second. Have Luis Urias in the minors. Could they pick up Segura? They've been playing Justin Turner there. I think Segura, because they traded for Urias, I think Segura

becomes redundant had they not made that trade. I think that fit would be there. I don't think he makes sense for the White Sox or Nationals. The Brewers are listed as, ooh, that'd be fun. A reunion. Back to the Brewers?

I mean, right now, the Brewers' second base situation is listed as 29th in the big leagues, led by Bryce Turing. All glove, right now, and speed. But really there for his defense. The real question is, if Andrew Monasterio is still on the roster, and I think he is, then that means there's a roster slot there where you could... I think Toro's on the roster right now, too. So those are two guys you can option, I think. I'm pretty sure you can.

And if you can option one of those guys and put Zagura in there, it might be a good idea. Just a guy to put some balls in play and be a little bit more stick first than glove first. I mean, a lot of these guys have under 300 projected Wobas. You look at the Giants. I think it's going to be a team that's in the middle battling for a playoff spot.

The Giants, the Angels. Is he better than Isan Diaz? Yes. Yeah, probably. And Isan Diaz has been playing. Maybe a reunion with the Phillies just for depth even though you're still playing Bryce and Stott because he's playing really well. They traded Rodolfo Castro to the Phillies? Oh yeah, for Bailey Falter. Interesting. They probably aren't adding a middle

infielder there right so i don't think it's phillies but uh yeah i think that's it giants or brewers those that's my prediction and would he register enough i don't know i think with the giants he wants uh tyra strata's back i'm not sure how much he plays and with the brewers i think that would be actually one of the best places he could actually play a fair amount if they decide to start games with Segura and end them with Bryce Turing. Yeah, I think managing the roster is going to be a little bit tricky for the Brewers once they get healthy,

because I was trying to dig a little more into the why would they trade Luis Urias to Boston? Why is Monasterio and Toro up? Because both those guys can be optioned, but if they are to be optioned for healthy people, then that doesn't help you very much for adding Segura. Then you have to drop Owen Miller to get Segura. Owen Miller has already been optioned or just was optioned as a result of them adding some

players to the deadline, but now you've got Rowdy Tellez and Jesse Winker on the IL. Once they come back, you've got to make room. That's Monasterio and Toro? Probably, but I also... But who else is second base eligible? Like, who can play second base other than Turing on the roster other than Monasterio and Toro?

Yeah, with the changes they've made, that's the list, I think, at this point. So, you know, there might be an opportunity there. The question is, could Segura be better than Monasterio and Toro? And I think at this point. So, you know, there might be an opportunity there. The question is, could Segura be better than Monastero and Toro? And I think so. Yeah. Yeah, having options left might work against those guys.

And I also think you have to decide how do you build a bench? How do you build a roster? Can you have Carlos Santana, Roddy Tellez, and Jesse Winker all on the same roster given that Winker's not really an outfielder? And then Santana and Rowdy are your first base dh combo i bet it's i bet it's the ghost il for jesse winker the rest of the way i just get the seemingly legitimate back issue again right now it's got him on the il but it'd be like i just like a high bar for him to return in a way like be like we really need to see you like you know hit something 110

you know right right right the other question you threw out there on the stream yesterday that i didn't really have a clear answer on was will tyler black possibly get a look i don't know if tyler black defensively is at a level where they would want to play him on the infield that seems to be the the knock on him that's the question might be a little more of an outfielder yeah there's the 40 man question as well now they've played him mostly at third base at double a so far this year so it's certainly not impossible they're playing not on the 40 man yeah but if you're gonna dfa someone like winker then you got a 40 man spot that way so that's the type type of thing that could happen.

You could see maybe an infielder end up there. Mancini is someone that we liked a little bit going into the season just because the downturn in production last year, it didn't come with underlying numbers that fell apart, right? I mean, the K rate was still fine at 23%. The barrel rate, 9.5% was right in line with his career norms. I'm surprised it didn't go better for him in chicago this year and i gotta think there's a team willing to find some playing

time for trey mancini over these final two months to see if they can catch lightning in a bottle yeah but is it going to be a competitor or a rebuilder like it could be the a is just like looking to catch somebody but why would the a's do that because would he actually still he would still be under contract for them at the league minimum for next year i think yeah this is coming up again it's not an option though it's not an option right right it was an actual deal it's an actual two-year deal so if the a's pick him up and he plays well they could play him again next year at the league minimum right he'll be 32 next season so maybe for a rebuilding team given how little a player like this tends to get for you in trade maybe you don't

use a roster spot that way yeah so maybe it again it goes back to some of our our mid-pack you know teams with 30 to 70 percent playoff odds what about trey Mancini in pinstripes for the Yankees? People are upset about what the Yankees did at the trade deadline. Do you think they could just find a spot in that roster to squeeze him in? He's right-handed, right? And we were looking for a right-handed jockey for Jake Bowers in New York. And I think that the other place that we were looking for a right-hander was the Twins. A right-hander to pair with Joey Gallo or Matt Wallner, whoever's starting in that corner.

Or Max Kepler, who is somebody that's been platooned. So a little bit of an awkward fit there since they're basically only DH-ing Buxton. And Buxton's a right-hander, so you would need Mancini to play in the field. Yeah, I think you'd rather play him only at first base. If you do it, you don't want to put him in the outfield. So I think that probably narrows down

the possible fits for him. The Cubs played him, I I think five times in the outfield and only three of those games were starts so it was not very often. That was basically a first base DH over 73 out of those 78 games. I don't know, man. I don't know how interested I am. Because even if he does, he's a right-hander. He might just be in a small side platoon. It's so strange how this player

type, I think Luke Voigt kind of fits the same bill. It falls off so quickly. He's socking the ball in the minors too, and he just can't get a shot. I mean, yeah, righty first baseman is just not something that people want too much of. I think

generally people don't love the idea of platooning at first base is that possible yeah because they just want to have a guy one guy because a lot of times those players don't play anything else all that well any defensive versatility yeah like if you have a right-handed guy who can play second and third or or I love these infielder outfielders that are right-handed. I thought if there was any value for Tony Kemp at the deadline, it was just the fact that he could play the infield and the outfield and was right-handed. Usually there's something you can carve out for yourself being that. Yeah, I think the downside to the Mancini-Yankees plan

is that you've got Rizzo and Stanton at first base in DH. Unless you're going to move Giancarlo Stanton into the outfield sometimes, that's going to be a tricky place to find enough playing time for him too, even though adding a bat there could be helpful, linking that line. If there's something left in the tank for Mancini, that's part of

the conversation too. Is there any reason to believe that there is one more productive season there? Or the Guardians, if they don't want to call them comments. Well, okay. So he's much less blocked in Cleveland anyway. And then of course that Bell trade, sending Bell to Miami,

opens things up quite a bit. They played David Frye there. They played David Frye there. And I just, that was, some things happen on the day of the deadline that I don't think are necessarily indicative of what's going to happen. So, yes, they played David Fry

at first base on the deadline. He's a catcher. At least his bat is a catcher level bat. So, I don't know. Do you think they're going to continue playing David Fry at first base? You know what?

David Fry at least has made hard contact at AAA, 51.4% hard hit rate there this year. He's a little old, of course. He's already 27. Very limited sample with Cleveland, 13.5% barrel rate. Teams have given worse players than David Frye opportunities, but that is not... You look for an excuse to not

play Kyle Manzardo, and Cleveland, you're there. You can still win the AL Central. I think you could probably justify some kind of platoon. Bring up Manzardo. Let Manzardo play against all the righties. Play David Frye against the righties play david fry against the lefties and you can be one of those teams that does that because at least david fry has that

that catcher backup option so i i think that's probably that's probably a realistic sort of outcome are you going to be trying to stash kyle manzardo into the weekend in any redraft leagues? Is he a contingency bid sort of player for you where you say, you know what, there's a good enough chance this happens. I want to burn my one extra bench spot, if you have one, hoping for a call-up. Yeah, I mean, I like him, I think, better than maybe consensus on him because, yes, people are really concerned with the 442 slugging for manzardo but i see a 48.5 hard hit rate and a 111.9 max ev and say i don't know power looks like it's in there 45

fly ball right so he's doing all the process things to create power and they all line up with what he's done before you know without having knowledge of what his hard hit rate was in double A or high A, you know? So to me, it looks like he's in a good spot. This is a team that was on the receiving end of that no hitter, right? Yeah. Did not look like a good lineup. I mean, that's the thing with putting David Fry there.

Sure, you know, it could work. I mean, I think it could work a little better for a team that had a really good lineup everywhere else and was like, hey, we're going to have a catcher who also plays first base. That's great. This team is also starting Myles Straw in center. And right now, Arias at short.

And those are automatic outs. Like when it came to the ninth inning, it was Frye, Arias, Straw, and I said, outs like when it came to the ninth inning it was fry aria straw and i said he's got it that's uh that's a weak weak bottom of the order right now in cleveland so i'm kind of talking myself into manzardo actually getting a call up that he probably wasn't going to get if the rays had actually held on to him through this deadline. Let's get to a few other things here. The Marlins, with their more crowded depth chart, are there any surprising losers as you start to shuffle the new players in? Getting Garrett Cooper out of the roster picture, sending him to San Diego, I think was sort

of necessary just to make all these pieces fit because you added Josh Bell, added Jake Berger. Who loses as a result of this? And this comes with Jess Chisholm recently getting healthy too. So infield and outfield looking a little stronger in Miami after the moves. Yeah, Josh Bell has a switch hitter, but he has a large, large sample now, and he slugs better against righties.

And so there may just be a bit of a platoon there with uh guriel guriel is let me just check my math a righty yes i was correct so that could be a traditional platoon really um although they don't have a straight up DH every time yes Jorge Soler plays there but he also plays in the outfield again I'm checking my math he has played in the outfield 24 times this year so

I think there's going to be Bell's going to get 80% playing time Gurriel's going to get like 33% playing time. Gurriel is going to get like 33% playing time. So if you were betting on him to sort of, he was kind of taking over some of Garrett Cooper's playing time before I was noticing, because I had to pick up Garrett Cooper in a fit of desperation.

So I would say that Gurriel is a little bit of a loser because Bell, I think they're going to play Bell I think the big side platoon to Bell makes a lot of sense there, I don't think they want to play Soler a ton in the outfield, Abigarcia is back from the IL as well

so you look at the lineup they rolled out on Tuesday it's... Jesus Sanchez has been dealing with an injury of some sort, but also not playing. And you look at the depth charts now, and he's not number one on any depth chart piece. Right, and it's so strange. Jazz got a day off on Tuesday, so Sanchez played in center field.

Ooh. That was a De La Cruz, Garcia, Sanchez outfield. De La Cruz at center? Wow. No, no, they didn't.. They didn't even put De La Cruz at center? Wow. No. No, they didn't. So that was against a lefty. Really interesting configuration. That must have been like a late scratch or something because they don't prefer to play Sanchez against lefties.

But Sanchez has been 12% better than the average with a stick. He hits the ball hard. He doesn't even strike out that badly. I'm a little surprised that he'd be on the short end of the stick. I think De La Cruz is a player that loses some time, even though they've been using him in the heart of that order. Look at the overall body of work

this year. Tell me Brian De La Cruz isn't going to lose playing time with all of these changes. Really close to league average and a righty. Maybe Sanchez takes over the two-thirds part of a platoon with Brian De La Cruz. Yes, I think if you've been relying on Brian De La Cruz,

you really want to keep an eye on the playing time going into the weekend especially. Dropped in my 12-team dynasty this last week. Probably the right call. It's average in power, run run production decent run scored total and maybe the better counting stats these final two months on a per game basis but that gets offset by playing less as a result of a healthier group position players i did like what the marlins did overall i mean nothing overwhelming nothing too splashy khal Khalil Watson being included in that trade

as a player that, I said it on the stream, he doesn't fit the mold of what you expect Cleveland's prospects to be like. The good news is Khalil Watson, after a really high K rate last year at low A, 35.5%, has cut that to 28% at high A this year. So some improvements there, even though the slash line is still pretty bad, 206, 337, 362, but he's still young for the level. I'm really curious to see if this changes anything with Khalil Watson once he eventually

advances to AA. I think it's going to tell us a lot about what his long-term future really looks like. I think for the Guardians, the return didn't matter. And so they just took the most interesting name on whatever list the Marlins showed them. They were really just trying to get out from under the Josh Bell money. And they got out from under $16.5 million of Josh Bell for $8 million of Segura. So they cleaned up $8 million and somehow ended up with Kill Bill Watson. You know what I mean? I think that's pretty good. I think they could have taken nothing.

I mean, I wonder if going into the deal would have thought that they had to pay something to get rid of those $8 million. I wonder if they going into the deal would have thought that they had to pay something to get rid of those $8 million. Yeah, I think there was definitely probably a point where that was a conversation. But finding a team that also had a player they wanted to unload ended up working out and got him prospect back in the return. As he said, thinking about the big pitchers that were on the move generally because so many teams that trade for top end pitching don't have a full rotation, you don't really expect anyone of consequence to get bumped. But if the Rangers get healthy in their rotation, that probably means Dane Dunning is an extra guy at some point before the end of the season. And as much as you look at the skills and keep saying, this isn't going to last, this isn't going to last, he's been important to fantasy players this year.

So once Nathan Evaldi is healthy, I think Dunning is the next starter out of this rotation in Texas as a result of Max Scherzer's arrival. Well, I hope that anybody that's been depending on him has been very lightly depending on him because a 15.5% strikeout rate is ridiculously low.

And the entire package reminds me, it's not the same because it's not the same pitches, but it reminds me a little bit of the Cal Quantrill situation where you're like, how can he do this? Yeah, yeah. I mean, not a lot of swinging strikes. Even in the past from Dane Dunning, we've seen 10% swinging strike rates.

This year, he's under 8%. Tons of contact. Not like he went straight to the sinker and has a 60% ground ball rate. Somehow, his ground ball rate got worse, too. I wouldn't have depended on Dane Dunning. I would just be happy banking with whatever you've gotten to date. Nice to see Andrew Haney shove last time out. I did almost raise an eyebrow.

You said something about starting Haney over somebody in the playoffs. Let's see. The playoff rotation, if you were making it as of right now. Haney over Montgomery. I think it's Haney over Montgomery. Yeah, it's got to be. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of people who just hate Haney.

I mean, they just think that he underdoes his peripherals. And, you know, I can see it. Career 4.53 ERA despite a career 25% strikeout rate and 7% walk rate. Like, there is something there where you got career 1.6 homers per nine from Haney. So I don't know. I, uh,

yeah, Montgomery doesn't have that kind of problem. So I don't know. I don't know. One of them, one of them will be a little bit more situational, I think in the playoffs, but that's not for us to worry about,

I guess on a fantasy show. I think they're both in the rotation when everyone's healthy. Yeah. And I think you can pretty easily stack up, you know, one a fantasy show. I think they're both in the rotation when everyone's healthy. Yeah, and I think you can pretty easily stack up one of those guys behind someone else, have them go through the lineup one time or one and a half times and maybe get the best of both worlds that way. The Andrew

Heaney flaw is always home runs. That's always the concern. So maybe it's a more matchup-dependent sort of thing, too. Maybe you decide they're both lefty. Figure out what it is, what types of players get the home runs off of him and avoid those.

Maybe Haney and Montgomery are both behind Scherzer, Gray, and Evaldi. If Evaldi gets in trouble in the third in the playoff game, here comes Haney. I want to talk about a former Ranger with you for a moment. Spencer Howard gets traded to the Yankees, quickly optioned to AAA. And Howard was a pitching prospect we were excited about a few years ago,

previously traded from the Phillies to the Rangers. We've seen the Yankees make some tweaks with plenty of pitchers over the years. And Howard certainly has raw talent. It just has not come together for him at the big league level. He's been up and down now around injuries, parts of four different seasons, ERA for his career up over seven, just below a strikeout per inning, the 109 Ks and 115 innings. What adjustments do you think the Yankees could make

to potentially get something out of Spencer Howard, either down the stretch or possibly in 2024? Well, I mean, the good news is that his fastball still rates above average. And an interesting facet of this is that over at Fangraphs, it just registers him as having a fastball and change. But I have him in the minor leagues throwing fastball, cutter, curve, and change. The cutter was close to league average, so you could just turn him into a reliever that throws fastball, curveball, and get basically a league average righty reliever and get him under team control for a while.

And I don't know. What they can do beyond. But I will say that they have. A pretty good track record with hard sliders. The old. Luis Severino hard sliders. Was wicked. And they've had a few guys that have thrown these.

These hard gyro sliders. That have had good success. So I could see them coaching that up somehow. Yeah and the success for Howard. Really kind of petered out sometime around aaa in 2021 even going down the time since then it hasn't been nearly as good as we'd seen earlier in his career but decent strikeout numbers as recently as 2022 at that level 28.7 k-rate last year as a member of the rangers organization while pitching at a triple-a round rock so worth watching him for more for next season i think than anything else could end up being a high leverage guy out of the pen if they start them and give them a long window over these final two months to keep working in that capacity that opens up some interesting

possibilities as well but a nice lottery ticket. We saw the White Sox do the same sort of thing with Luis Patino, and I'm getting close to the point of just accepting that I was probably too excited about Luis Patino going back as far as 2021. What do you think the White Sox

are going to do with Patino? Given their needs, I would imagine they give him a couple of chances to start both the end of this season and probably going into next season. What are the possible outcomes based on what we've seen from Patino in flashes both at the big league level and kind of extensively at AAA this year? I don't know. He's just gotten worse.

He was in 2020, he was averaging 96.7 on the four seam. He's down to 94.9 now and that's in relief. You would assume that if he was starting it's probably more like 93.5 and 93.5 for a starter is like league average-ish.

And the slider has also just changed shape. He's had like two or three different sliders, it looks like. So I would say this. Why not? This is a team that should try that. If their pitching coach said that he saw something that he liked, go get him. I think they gave up cash for him or something. It was a very small deal and this is a team that needs

pitching of all sorts. You can be a reliever for them. They just traded away half their relievers. you can be a reliever for them they just traded away half the relievers so I think it was a good move even if I don't know exactly what I would do with Luis Patino to unlock it yeah I mean you think about Patino also as a guy that's been around for a few years

he's going to be out of minor league options going into next season a team like the White Sox can afford to deal with that that's why the Rays were just like yeah you can have him yep and given that the Rays had him in the organization for three years, couldn't figure out how to unlock him, it kind of makes sense why they'd give up on him. But I did like that as one of the few dart throws that the White Sox actually made coming out of the deadline.

They had another starter that went on on Tuesday that you thought was a little bit interesting. What do you make of jesse shultons i mean he's geez he's 29 years old so this is this is really just a short-term stop gap in the rotation until other guys are ready but do you think shultons actually has some appeal at least in like al only leagues as a starter for these final two months? Maybe. I like the breaking ball. He had two breaking balls and I liked which one did I like better?

I think it was the curve. But just having two breaking balls that he could play off of each other. He was doing a pretty decent job of that. He has 17 inches of induced vertical break, which is decent,

but we've seen around the league that the new 17 is 18 or whatever. In order to stay ahead of hitter training, the fence posts have moved, the fence posts have moved, the goalposts have moved. You have to have a higher IVV than that. So it's a pretty blah fastball with blah-ish movement and 92 and a half, you know,

mile per hour velocity. So, you know, he was, he was up a little bit above that yesterday, but I think that was, that was kind of debut-ish adrenaline. We haven't seen him sit 93-plus,

so I think for an extended period of time. I think I agree with your overall idea that he's an only league kind of player. I asked the followers at the Rates and Barrels Twitter account what their favorite deal from this year's trade deadline window was. A lot of these are pretty much the deal that the team I root for

made. McKean had Scott Barlow for Henry Williams. I do think that's a nice addition to the Padres pen just getting a bit deeper there. I think Benjamin was trolling you with the Joe Boyle for Sam Mall trade. Michael said the Aaron Savali for Kyle Manzardo being the rare one-for-one big leaguer prospect swap.

That was a fun one just because it was unexpected, but it definitely seems like it helped both orgs. Asking for five prospects, you know. Yeah. Backhand Grab wrote, I think Fujinami to Baltimore and Paul, the young to the Jays will provide the largest difference based on expectations at this time.

When you look back, once the off season begins, Paul, the young might actually play, even if the Boba Shett knee injury heals quickly because second base is kind of one of those revolving door spots for the Jays as well. Versus lefties. Yeah.

Been amazing versus lefty they haven't been amazing versus lefty they try to get better uh by getting kiermeier and uh some other some other pieces to to be better against right against lefties but uh they're still not as good against lefties which is why i would not uh trust one year reverse hitter platoon splits please don't do that darren nola liked the Josh Bell, Khalil Watson swap that we brought up a little earlier. And then the- The squirm. Yeah.

The wiggle. The wiggle. One bad neighbor comes up with Berger for Jake Eater. I like that too. Because Jake Eater's coming off Tommy John surgery right now. We talk all the time about how much pitching the Marlins have. You look at him as a... How much pitching the White Sox don't have.

Yeah, a 6'4 lefty who is pitching at AA already, is pretty close to big league ready. He's been pitching really well recently too, at least 7Ks, I think in four of his last five starts before this trade went down. Yeah, so it might be clicking for him again. I like that quite a bit too. The reason Berger was so expensive was that he's so cheap. He's not even ARB eligible until 2026.

And I guess the reason the White Sox thought they could let him go is he's already 27, so he's a little bit of a late bloomer. Yeah, I think. But I do like it for the Marlins. They don't care if he's a late bloomer. They just want him for his team control years. They don't care if he's the late bloomer. They just want him for his team control years. They don't care that he's a little bit flawed in terms of strikeout rate. They just want that sweet, sweet barrel rate, and he hits the ball hard.

Yeah, hits the ball so hard that a 225 BABIP doesn't quite make sense. So I think you can pretty easily see where the the slash line so far versus the rest of season projections like where they're askew it's what's happened on the balls in play and the reason you trade for burger is because of the balls he can put out of play into the seats right like that's a clear skill bat x projection for burger 256 317 Yeah, please. That's real good. So I guess the question a lot of people would have is how much does the park change hurt him? It hurts a little, but that's big-time power. That's not power that needs a neutral environment or needs a hitter. Yeah, it's more like a Solaire kind of power for Jake Berger.

So I wouldn't worry too much about the new environment sapping the power for a guy that is on like a mid-40s home run pace on a per game basis this year. So I like that trade. Just fun for both sides given organizational needs. I think the White Sox were right to go ahead and move Berger though because you can find guys with similar skills relatively easily. It's harder to find pitching.

If Jake Eater's healthy, finding a guy like that is harder than finding another Jake Berger. I did see some people lamenting that we might not see Berger qualify at second base, but I don't know. The Marlins seem a little more open-minded about where guys play defensively. I wouldn't think Joey Wendell's a shortstop. They do.

They move Jazz Chisholm to center field, which that I could get on board with pretty quickly. He has the raw athleticism to play, I think, anywhere on the diamond. That's a very fair statement to make about Jazz, but they might not be as averse to playing Berger in the middle infield if they need him at second base based on everything else on that roster. Well, I mean, one of my favorite trades were the trades that the mets made where they just bought prospects um and i i think it uh took some cojones to uh to sell

as brazenly as they did basically um i don't i think that kind of takes them out of the running for shohei otani but maybe you know this year's 500 million dollar payroll you know already took them out of that even though the owner said he didn't care so um you know I love looking behind trades like that for opportunity I'm just not sure that at least with the first batch of call-ups that we saw a great opportunity for a great player that i'm really excited about in new york city um you know it looks like rafael ortega dj stewart platoon in left field i'm not really interested in either of those guys mark vientos should get some more playing time um he's looked pretty bad defensively and uh though he hits the ball super hard uh the strikeout rate is bad and he hasn't walked so uh the the uh i mean he has walked bientos has walked literally but like he hasn't isn't walking like he was in the minors. But I think if they gave him full burn, we could have a low batting average,

decent OVP, high slugging package out of Vientos. And I think it behooves them to play him as often as possible to figure out where he can play defensively for them in the future and what his true talent looks like. And so I'm hoping they play Vientos more, maybe in left field over that um that poor platoon uh maybe in a dh over volgo bach who's okay but he's not a foundational piece for

any team i don't think so um i'm interested to see how much vientos plays and i think you know that's the name that could establish himself in the next two months in new york city you think it's weird that adam adovino didn't get traded and that brooks rayleigh didn't get traded and that drew smith didn't get traded yeah well at least drew smith has another year on there and i guess uh and i think they'll keep those guys around but it is interesting that once you trade away verlander scherzer who were under contract for next year, that it didn't go full raised earth. I mean, the White Sox pretty much traded away anybody who was a rental

that wasn't under contract for next season. And so you would have expected that Adovino would have gone. Maybe there just wasn't that much interest i i don't know why because like think of the diamondbacks why wouldn't the diamondbacks add seawald and adovino right yeah there's you you can't tell me that of all the contenders out there that adam adovino is not good enough to be the fourth or fifth guy out of the pen for all of them i mean that that's just kind of weird to me. Maybe it's picking some nits, but if you're the Mets,

I imagine the next set of moves, I mean, Starling Marte eventually comes off the IL, plays a lot, that chews up some of the time that Ortega and Stewart might get in the short term. Viento should be the DH. What are you doing holding on to Daniel Vogelbach? No options left. You're going to, second year of arbitration,

keep him around? No. Like, no. Like, why? Why would you do that? Unless you love him in the clubhouse or something. There's just no, there's no real justification for giving him playing time right now when you need to figure out how good Mark Vientos is and whether or not Vientos is part of your next core. So it does seem like they're going to try and play the middle in 2024 instead of going splashy. They've got spots in the rotation that have to be addressed.

You have to think about them, too, as a team sort of like Texas one off season ago. Right. When they made additions, they weren't quite ready to go to the postseason. Sometimes the players available in free agency are only going to be available that one year. So you have to sign the multi-year deals before you're ready to push all the chips in. And even when you think about it this way, they didn't deal Pete Alonso. He's got one more year before they have to extend him. They've got Lindor on the long-term deal. They've got Nimmo, Beatty and Alvarez, two good young players. Alvarez has been fantastic. Beatty, it's still more of a wait and see. They're not bad as it stands right now. And that's without trying to

replace some of the veterans, the eduardo escobars the canas the fams like they're gonna take a bunch of shots throughout free agency they're probably gonna make a couple of trades this offseason there's a lot of things they're gonna do to keep tweaking this roster so even though it might not be as splashy as we've seen so far doesn't mean they're gonna just give up yeah uh given their respective ages and quality levels i i just wouldn't play ortega and stewart that much if marty comes back you nimmo marty vientos and left and i don't care you you know there's a weird thing going on where they lose they don't get any lottery balls if they're you know if they're in the top 20 or something in record at the end of the year.

So they really should tank. And one of the ways that you can tank while actually playing players and learning is playing people out of position or playing bad defenders. Play Mark Vientos in the field. Play Mark Vientos in the field, and A, you'll get information on, can he play in the field next year? And B, you'll give him every day at-bats, and you'll get, can he play in your lineup next year?

And that's what a bad team should be doing. That's what the Red Sox did when they were in a little bit of a mini-rebuild, and they tried to, you find players, you get more information on the players you do have uh play david peterson start david peterson every five days you know and find out if he's a reliever or starter for you you know because you have to figure that out yeah no i think that's the right way i mean playing time when you're not contending is a valuable currency.

I think you could probably talk yourself into giving Ronnie Mauricio a look. That'd be more interesting from a fantasy perspective than a lot of the other seat fillers, right? I mean, Danny Mendick doesn't move the needle. NL only league, sure. Anybody who plays. But Ronnie Mauricio at least has the chance to be a relevant player in mixed leagues if they decide to bring him up and give him some run at second base. I wonder if there's a reverse incentive. We have these new rules that if you bring up a guy early enough to win the rookie of the year, you get a pick in the draft or whatever,

and that does incentivize earlier in the year call-ups, but it also disincentivizes late in the year call-ups but it also disincentivizes late in the year call-ups it does at this point in the calendar but if you can do it a little later and keep the rookie of the year eligibility for the following season intact that might be where the timing ends up falling into place for a guy like ronnie mauricio i mean he wouldn't be a front runner for rookie of the year but it's's also not the most outlandish thing. I imagine you also like the prospects the Mets got back overall. I mean, we talked about Acuna a lot earlier in the week, but Drew Gilbert, getting him from Houston, what's your overall outlook on him?

This is a difficult place to hit, as we've talked about many times, and I'm curious where you fall in gilbert as far as his true talent ceiling well you know two no top 50 prospects were traded deadline by almost any list and we did see kind of three or four in the 50 to 60 range 50 to 75 depending on what list you're looking at carrero uh the uh catcher to the white. I think he'll be one of the further ones away because you're talking about a catcher. You're talking about a catcher who some people think aren't sure he can really catch that well. So I think there's going to be a little bit of time there for Carrero.

I think, therefore, that Acuna, Manzardo, and Gilbert are the other three that are in that package, in that group of you know 50 to 75 uh prospects and all three of them seem like they're pretty close and the reason i say this for gilbert despite a 92 wrc plus at double a this year is there's an injury in there where he was dhing and i read this story about how from chandler rome Rome about how he's a very energetic player and that coming off the bench, he's like a passionate, emotional player that if he is not doing well at the plate, he'll go out and make a spectacular catch

in center field and feel better about himself. You know what I mean? And he didn't quite have that outlet as a DH. Plus, we know that just DHing versus playing in the field is worth 10 points of WRC+. So now you're talking about 102 WRC+, for a 22-year-old in AA. So now you're actually talking about a 127 WRC+, for Drew Gilbert. So once you sort of make some of those adjustments to his numbers,

and I think he had like zero home runs for a stretch. Now he's got six homers and six stolen bases. I think Drew Gilbert is someone we could see in the big leagues next year. I think Acuna is the same. I mean, with Luis Angel Acuna, you're like waiting for the power, but I think the defense is polished enough that you say, if there is a need, you just say, hey, you're better than Luis Guillorme. And you're making the roster.

I do think the thing we've learned about the Mets coming out of this deadline is things that previous owners, other owners really wouldn't do, being willing to eat lots of money. That's on the table, right? So players that are signed to mega deals. So Starling Marte just, you know. Starling Marte. They could just DFAM. They could DFAM or trade and eat a bunch of money. Jeff McNeil goes to the outfield and Luis Angel Acia is the starting second baseman next year that's not impossible

right and i think geez even a few years from now francis golden door like the contract he signed with the mets like my confidence level that he's there for all of it is as low as it's been at any point since he signed it right like that's that's weird because his production is pretty steady right but he signed through 2031 yeah so if you get to and if you start to think about this team maybe being capable of learning from some of its mistakes like just throwing huge piles of money out bidding people for free agents extending players this long maybe they're going to realize that's not actually what great organizations do. This is this is stuff that the angels do. And we don't want to be like that. And this is not me trying to talk down about Francisco Lindor. But this is the fourth straight season in which the

OPS has been below 800. He's already 29, 30 in November. How long is he a shortstop? If you want to get out in front of that while there's still other teams interested in taking Lindor back in a trade, you might not have to eat as much money. I don't know. I wonder if they would look at him as somebody that they actually could move

sooner rather than later and again, part of this bigger adjustment for their organizational expectations, decide, yeah, you know what? This wasn't the way we wanted to do it. This wasn't the player we wanted to sign for this long. We actually would rather extend some guys that we're trading for, extend some of our prospects on long-term deals and try and save money that way, as opposed to paying market value and above for aging shortstops and other stars billy epler told max scherzer in a piece by ken rosenthal that was very interesting

and seemed very uh spilling the beans uh he said that billy epler told him uh that the plan was for 2025 so uh i think lindor is still a short stop in 2025 and uh i think that he can still be a foundational piece if if the window is thought to be 2025 2026 but it is interesting that in 2025 2026 he will be what 32 uh you know 32 30 33 he's a he's a november birthday so he'll basically be 31 32 traditionally people move off a shortstop by 32 you know it's it's a bit of a marker the the ones that don't are you know legendary defensive shortstops that are and managed to play there because they're still okay like brandon crawford yeah i mean that could be lindor he could just be a worse defensive uh short stop uh and still still play there but the uh defensive numbers have been going down a little bit too yeah and that's gonna have to stay at least at its current level if he's going to remain a well above average all-around player.

The projection, Zips has that three-year projection. You go to 2025, they've got Lindor at a 21 homer, 10 steal, 247, 321, 415. 4.6 war. The 4.6 war, I think, is dependent on him still being a shortstop. It assumes that he's still a shortstop and he's still a good shortstop or at least an above average one. So I don't know. I just think we have to,

we have to look at the Mets differently and just seeing what they did with Scherzer and Verlander. Cause there was a point two months ago where I think most people would have said, those guys aren't going anywhere. Why would they go anywhere? They're going to continue to try and win every single year. said it i said they wouldn't trade uh their two guys because they're under contract for next year right i just didn't think they'd punt a season and even if

they're not fully punting they're they're willing to of the of the trade deadline for sure they're just willing to pay a premium for prospects back in a trade and that's pretty unusual it's like instead of overpaying in free agency they might be overpaying to get some prospects in that organization i think we ran the numbers on the on the 3-0 show the the trade deadline show and uh for acuna uh what were the they had three prospects they got in the in deals. It was Acuna, Drew Gilbert. And then it was two 50s and a 45. And by driveline, that would be worth 65 to 70 million. And they're paying 90 million of Scherzer and Verlander.

So it's a quote-unquote overpay, but again, they don't care. Ryan Clifford was the other player. Yeah, he was the 45 future value by Fangraphs. Did you also account for the money saved on the luxury tax in 2024 though? Because that's like a unique to the Mets circumstance. That could be $20 million. That could be $30 million, yeah.

Which then sort of shifts it back into normal market cost of acquiring a prospect. Yeah, it's weird because the other teams got the $90 million. So it is still an overpay. But on the outgoing balance sheets for the Mets, it's actually $70 million. Some breaking news.. Some breaking news. Not massive breaking news, but it looks like Brian Rocchio has been recalled by the Guardians. Thank you.

I was watching those Arias at-bats for the Guardians, and I was not super impressed. Yeah, what do they always say on Twitter? Announce Manzardo, cowards. That's what we're waiting for now. I'm hoping. I think, you know, listen, Gabriel Arias is not terrible, but the strikeout rate just doesn't make him a Guardians-type player. And even though he has some good raw power,

he has not tapped into it barrel-wise. And, you know, he has some good raw power, he has not tapped into it barrel-wise. He has an option. I would say give Rojo the full chance. Since I've got the prospect news tab from Rotowire open right now, I just saw there was a story about Mason Wynn probably getting

called up mid to late August. Cardinal's not contending right now, so they'll wait. What's the idea? Preserving rookie of the year status for next year and giving Wynn some opportunities. Yep. I mean, I like that. I like that as a way of getting a better sense of what you've got going into next season. I think

based on talent, how good of a defender he's going to be at shortstop, there's plenty of reason to believe he could stick once he gets the chance. He's approaching a 2020 season at AAA right now. 16 homers, 16 steals with a 281, 354, 462 line, and he's just 21 years old. I was worried about some of the power numbers.

I finally, if anybody's been following along, my great Max Muncy caper, I finally traded away max muncie and uh i got the prospect rights to mason win and is that clapping it was gentle as a golf clap i got the prospect rights to mason win and jonathan aranda um and i i i was looking Muin for a while being like, I don't love these ISOs. It's, you know, it's more like an 8% walk rate, 20% strikeout rate package where I'd love him more if it was like 10% walk rate, 16% strikeout rate. But he kind of flirts with both of those numbers. breakout rate but he kind of flirts with both of those numbers and then i just looked up back to the age and you said 21 years old in triple a with a 102 wrc plus this is a classic situation

where the numbers don't wow you but he's 21 in triple a he's knocking on the door he's hit a ball 110 he's hitting the ball kind of hard and and a 31% hard hit rate is good enough for me, and he's 21. So it's like this is actually a pretty good prospect. I'd really like to see, maybe I can track this down after we're recording and actually bring it up on a future project prospect. I'd like to see where Mason Wynn hits his home runs. My guess, and I haven't watched him play this year, I haven't been able to do that.

My guess is that he's pulling the ball for his homers. He's not hitting them to all fields. It's probably mostly pull side power right now. My reason for believing that is because the overall hard hit rate is 30.7%. That's the fan graphs number. Not alarmingly bad, not so high that you're expecting

to scald the ball all the time. But my general thesis when it comes to players who are young for the level, who don't hit the ball hard yet, is to not panic about it. Because you can get stronger and hit the ball hard. If you have good bat to ball, good enough hit tool, that's a lot to like from a foundational standpoint. And again, he plays an important defensive position where the glove is good, the arm is just unbelievable.

Might have the best arm at shortstop in the league once he gets promoted. I think there's a lot more to like than to dislike with Mason Wynn. Not hitting 50% ground balls either. Right, that's the other thing. We were talking about that on Project Prospect yesterday. When you're looking for the guys that you want to project for

at least average power, like 15 to 20 home run power in the big leagues, guys that don't pound the ball to the ground. That's a good core skill to look for. And that's been Mason wind so far at that ground ball rate under 40%. We are going to go on our way out the door. Just a reminder. If you'd like a subscription to the athletic $2 a month gets you in the door at the athletic.com slash rates and barrels.

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We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening.