Rates & Barrels - Freddie Freeman's Epic October Moment, Judge's Slump & Long-Term Questions About Ohtani's Shoulder

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss an eventful start to the World Series -- including Freddie Freeman's walk-off grand slam, and the Yankees' choice to use Nestor Cortes in that matchup -- long-term concerns about Shohei Ohtani's dislocated shoulder even if he's able to play in Game 3, and the postseason struggles of Aaron Judge. Plus, they look back at their second-half draft from July to discuss a few intriguing early-draft season targets including Luis Robert Jr., whose situation for 2025 would improve drastically if the White Sox opt to trade him.  Rundown 1:15 Freddie Freeman's Walk-Off Grand Slam 11:31 Yoshinobu Yamamoto's Game 2 Performance & Adjustments 21:01 Aaron Judge's October Woes 27:00 Long-Term Concerns About Shohei Ohtani's Shoulder? 36:54 Looking Back at Our Second-Half Rebound Draft 43:50 Luis Robert Jr. v. Brenton Doyle in 2025 51:45 Bo Bichette v. Luis García Jr. 57:58 David Fry, Sonny Gray & Ronny Mauricio Updates Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Freddie Freeman Cover Photo: Maddie Meyer/Getty Images Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's the season to shop new styles, electronics, and definitely a holiday trip. And what if each time you made a purchase, you got a little something back? With Rakuten, you can earn cash back on just about anything you buy from over 750 stores. So if you're looking to buy a new phone, clothes, skin care, or a getaway, well, you can get cash back. So treat yourself, family and friends and book that holiday trip now. Start getting cash back today by joining Rakuten.

It's free and easy to use, and you can get cash back deposited into your PayPal account or sent to you as a check. It's the smartest way to shop, plain and simple. Start your shopping at rakuten.ca or get the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N.ca. Hi, it's Samantha Shea from Wirecutter, the product recommendation service from the New York Times. We all know those people who are simply impossible to shop for. At Wirecutter,

we have a huge collection of gift guides to help you find the perfect present. We can help you find a gift for the indoorsy type, a gift for the coffee lover looking to try a new bean, something that's nice but not too nice for the new person you're seeing, the best packing cubes for frequent travelers, for the music loving dad, try a Thelonious Monk album. We believe there's a perfect gift for everyone and Wirecutter can help you find it. Check out all our gift guides at nytimes.com slash gift guides. I use the New York Times Games app every single day. I love playing Connections.

With Connections, I need to twist my brain to see the different categories. I think I know this connection. Look, Bath is a city in England, Sandwich is a city in England, Reading is a city in England, and I'm going to guess Derby is a city in England, Sandwich is a city in England, Reading is a city in England, and I'm gonna guess Derby is a city in England. I started Wordle 194 days ago and I haven't missed a day. The New York Times Games app has all the games right there. I absolutely love spelling bee. I always have to get genius.

I've seen you yell at it and say that should be a word. Totally should be a word. Sudoku is kind of my version of lifting heavy weights at the gym. At this point, I'm probably more consistent with doing the crossword than brushing my teeth. When I can finish a hard puzzle without pins, I feel like the smartest person in the world.

When I have to look up a clue to help me, I'm learning something new. It gives me joy every single day. Start playing in the New York Times Games app. You can download it at nytimes.com slash games app. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Monday, October 28th. Derek VanRyper, Enosaris here with you on this episode. We take a look at the World Series as we enter Game 3 on Monday night.

The Dodgers with a 2-0 lead. A lot of exciting things happened over the weekend for them to take that lead. So we'll break all of that down and talk about some of the longer term implications of things we've seen in the series so far. We've got a great mailbag question about relievers and the third time they're matching up against hitters within a series. We've got some news items to get to outside of the postseason. And time permitting, we are going to review our second half draft that I did back

in July because there are some important takeaways as we get ready for the twenty twenty five fantasy baseball season. If you've not joined our discord, you can do that with a link in the show description, we will have a chat going for game three, so be sure to jump in there. Enjoy the experience. Maybe turn the volume of your TV down, turn the podcast up for a little bit and jump in the discord. That might be the best way to enjoy game three.

You know, let's start with what happened in Game One of the World Series. Freddie Freeman gets a chapter in postseason history with one swing and a lot of things transpired to make that moment happen. The parallels between Kirk Gibson's home run in the 1988 World Series and Freddie Freeman's go down to being hit at the exact same time of day. Both home runs were hit at eight thirty seven. That's just weird. So crazy. Just nuts.

I mean, the, the whole thing with him limping and the call by Joe Davis was, you know, Freddie meat, Gibby, you know, and it was, uh, it was good timing on all of it. And, um, it was, uh, you know, there was so many ways to second guess the decision to put in Nester Cortez as well. Um, so many that you could almost consider it front guessing or first guessing. We sort of anticipated this, this possibility, right? We talked with Trevor May last week, we were talking about ranking the relievers in the series and trying to figure out how Nester Cortez might fit into the plans.

And I think we were all of the opinion that there was a chance that Nester would have a really important matchup against Otani at some point in the series, whether that was a late ending spot, like it turned out to be in game one or just something where he was coming in behind Schmidt or heel at some other point in the game, they just needed to solve what they were going to do as a team against Otani and even Freddie Freeman. Right. The left is at the top of the order. But we were really worried about Otani because I don't think we talked

as much about Freeman because we were just didn't know. Right. What we were going to get. Right. We didn't even know if he would be completely healthy for game one. We kind of assumed he would be, but he hasn't played particularly well throughout the postseason because he's been so hobbled. Now he's out here hitting triples with the. Yeah, I mean, I've been around. It's crazy. It's unbelievable.

Now, the part of using Cortez that we had called out ahead of time was that it didn't make a lot of sense to use him in Game 1 because of the lengthy layoff between last game appearance. And I think we've talked a lot over the course of the season about the difference between a bullpen session, a side session, even warming up to go in a game and actually being in a game, right? All of those things are very different. What I couldn't figure out is that the circumstances in which Ohtani stepped to the plate in the 10th inning of that game on Friday night was the perfect Tim Hill setup.

In a world where your bullpen has Tim Hill in it, you have to use him when there's a runner on base and a ground ball could make all of the difference in the world, right? Like I even if you even if you hadn't gone through this situation with Mr. We talked about this a little bit. Aaron Boone did talk about this specific part. What was his reasoning? Well, Hill has a terrible strikeout rate. Yes. And even though stuff plus likes him and he's been a really usable reliever and he could get the ground ball double play.

They didn't want the chance that he got a ground ball single and then the game's over. So it almost, you know, in a walk off situation like this, like. It's like the walk off grand slam single. Remember with Ron Ventura, it's like, you know, we, we remember the fact that it was a grand slam, but you know, it was a hit and that was, that would have pretty much ended the game. Yeah. So, you know, I think thinking we need a strikeout makes some sense, you know, but, um, you know, Nestor Cortez stuff was so low that I think that if you were in a bullpen environment,

it'd be hard to say, oh yeah, when he gets in the game, it'll be fine. And that's where Aaron Boone said, no, he's been throwing for us and it's been looking great. Has it though? Because, you know, we had a stuff plus, I think TJ's stuff plus, which is pretty close to mine, was like a 79 on Nestor Cortez. And I don't really love the idea of like going out there and chasing, you know, listening to stuff plus on every game level and doing stuff plus reports every game and so on and

so forth. But if you are the Yankees and you are trying to decide if his stuff is good enough to go into the game and he's throwing in your pens and it's a 70 stuff plus this is something you should know. We just ran the numbers. The average stuff plus on a four seam in the playoffs is one 20 during the race season. It's like 96.

Right. So what do you think a 70 looks like in a game? Like it looks like a beach ball. Like a beach ball. And then on top of that, you know, uh, listen, the, the, the game plan is, and in, in, in game two, we saw Freddie Freeman, obliterate the game plan done right. So he's just a great hitter and maybe it wouldn't matter, but the game plan against a guy like Freddie Freeman, who has a very steep vertical path of, you know, a high vertical batting, at least top sort of five, six in the big leagues in this is to hit them up in the zone.

And so Nestor Cortez through a fastball that would have been poor in the regular season by stuff. been poor in the regular season by stuff that would might've been one of the worst fastballs. Like, you know, we, we, we were, we were just, um, looking at this for other reasons, but, um, I can look at this in a second, but yeah, the, one of the worst fastballs, uh, in the post season to the worst location, right. And he said, Oh, I missed my spot by like three inches. And I'm like, I think it was probably a little bit more than three inches. And it was in the disaster location. And he said, Oh, I missed my spot by like three inches. And I'm like, I think it was probably a little bit more than three inches. And it was in the disaster area.

And it's like, you know, the, the difference when you miss the difference, you know, Max Schurter talks about this all the time. You want to miss in the right direction. So Nestor Cortez should have missed high. Yeah. Like a non-competitive pitch above the zone. If it's a waist high, then that's better than what he did. Yep.

You know, three inches in each direction is not the same. It's three inches in one direction. If it's towards the heart of the zone, whoops. If it's down to a guy with a steep bad angle. So, uh, lots of things that went wrong there using Luke Weaver against the middle of the lineup to get to that point meant to me that to some extent this was scripted. They thought they could nurse cousins to a lefty on lefty matchup with the game on the line, either against Otani or Freeman.

And they wanted this. That's what they wanted. Otherwise you don't use Luke Weaver for five outs in the middle of the game. I think, yeah, to an extent, yes, I think there everything about the post Garrett Cole outing in game one was just a little bit askew for me, like it was just like, oh, man, like I know you have got some limitations for what you can do with their bullpen. It's not as deep as the Dodgers bullpen.

So you have to push the buttons a little more carefully and. Going through it, I thought each thing was going to cause a problem later, even if it worked and it finally did catch up to them at the very end. But I'll never understand it. I'm sorry. They can explain, they can say, yeah, Tim Hill's got a little strikeout rate. The whole point of this guy is to get multiple outs on the ground. That is what he does.

And if you did this later in the series, I think we'd all look at it and say, we saw Nestor and he was pretty good. He located well and he was doing his usual thing where he's disrupting timing. And he seemed like he'd be comfortable in a spot like that. But in game one, that that will be one that sits with the Yankees fans for a long time. They can't claw their way back into the series. And this felt like a game they stole, given how well Garrett Cole pitched. Right. And Flaherty pitched really well, too.

It was a pitcher's duel in game one. First fastball is 96 out of Flaherty. He had a pretty good game, Velo wise. And I think that was important for him. And I think we can look at this, and the less, there's the two things here, of course, both pitchers pitched well, but also the layoff,

like just as we talk about it all the time for the teams that sit out and have a buy in the wild card round, you could have that lag from not playing for four or five days. Like that's a legitimate thing that probably will make game ones really low scoring if we have breaks like this in future years.

Down this relatively low scoring for our time. Saw I think it benefited the pitchers. You know, Jack Flaherty coming out and throwing hard after not throwing hard in the against the Mets is, you know, points me towards, you know, and Garrett Cole had his best game in the, in the post season, I think so. Yeah. Only five already falls in six innings from Cole. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there was some discussion about whether

or not they should have left him in there. He had 88 pitches, you know, I don't, I, I don't really enjoy the discourse anymore. And I know, I know how, you. And I know how these teams work. They plan this out. They plan this out. You know? Yes, I'm not saying that this was given to the manager and he has no say in it.

The manager's in the meeting. But this is planned out. You know, they were like, if we get caracole through six, this is, this is what happens. If we're winning, this is the bullpen that comes in. If we're losing, this is the bullpen that comes in. You know what I mean? So they'd made that choice a long time ago.

This is what they wanted. This is what they wanted. I think they didn't necessarily want to have Jake cousins there. Maybe they'd rather have had Ian Hamilton or Jonathan Loisiga or, you know, somebody has been hurt along the way in that spot. You know. But this is this is what they generally wanted. And that eventually will get you if the game goes extra, especially, and depth is not your strength.

Someone is going to have to go into a matchup that you weren't hoping for because you just ran out of everybody else. You burned all of those options on the way through. Now we had a great game too, as well. And one of my series predictions was that Yoshinobu Yamamoto would pitch really well twice for the Dodgers to win in six. Maybe the series won't even go six based on how it started, but still a long way to go and there's a couple of different wrinkles.

We saw sliders, more sliders from Yamamoto, but you also noticed that there's been an adjustment to where he sets up. Yeah. I was just trying to figure out why his slider in the postseason is a one 30 stuff plus. And I think it's partially because it's coming at hitters from a different angle. So on the left here, you'll see him against Bobby wit, junior in June and his right foot, Yamamoto's right foot is on the first base end of the rubber.

It's basically at the end of the rubber. His left foot is off of the rubber as he stands, uh, prepare preparing to pitch on the right. You see Yamamoto against Aaron Judge in game two and it looks more like his left foot is on the first base side of the rubber and his right foot is basically on the middle of the rubber. And that is going to give your slider a different shape. I think this is mostly for righties because now the shape of his slider is a little bit horizontal. Actually, it's a kind of a gyro slider.

It's 86. It's got a little bit of horizontality to it, like a, like kind of like a power curve or something. Um, and if it does have that horizontality to it, what's going to happen is if you are on the first base side, I think the batter, the right-handed batter thinks that's never going to make it to the zone. You know what I mean? If you're, if you're throwing the lone away slider, basically, they never think,

oh, that's about to hit the zone. But I think if you move on this rubber closer to third base side, now that ball for a moment looks like it might go middle middle. And that, that pitch that he's about to throw that slider to Aaron Judge, I believe, struck out Aaron Judge on a 3-2 count. And, you know, there's some other things to say about Judge, you know, that we need to talk about. But in that particular case, what I see from Yamamoto is all the stuff is looking good and he's made an adjustment that makes him look a little different than if any of these hitters had seen him before. What we've seen is that in the postseason, 110 is average stuff plus.

What we've got from Yamamoto is a 124 on the fore seam, so above average on the fore seam. A 111 on the cutter, a 132 on the slider, and a 127 on the splitter. So everything's humming along, everything's going well. You know, the change up isn't grating amazingly, but again, that's a small sample thing. And of course, these are all small sample things, but they do point to the fact that as Velo is up, his shapes are good. And I think this change on the rubber has been good for him. So Yamamoto, your prediction is looking pretty good right now. Feeling good about it now.

It was a little bumpy. I think the first two innings of that start on game two, then he settled in and started to cruise. I'm getting a little bit of a like, uh-oh. Like the thing that I thought might switch this to Yankees is that this was going to be a win one, lose one, win one, lose one switch this to Yankees is that this was going to be a win one, lose one, win one, lose one, where the Yankees start getting familiar with these relievers as they see them more often.

I don't know. Banking to in that way where the Yankees also use their A bullpen and loss, that's disastrous because now on the flip side, the Dodgers have seen your bullpen. They saw Lou Hoover for five outs, you know, and you lost. Yeah, it's the suboptimal outcome, right? And you should win the Garrett Cole start. That's part of the benefit of having Garrett Cole

and to lose it and lose it the way they did is extremely frustrating. I think you'd have to look at the Yankees starting pitching edge in this middle pocket of the series and say that that's their best path to recover. And some of that is Aaron Judge not looking like Aaron Judge right now, but more of it is just saying maybe we can take some of the pressure off of our bullpen. Maybe our starters can go five innings in each of these next two games, and then we get Cole again in five. And if we can even take two out of three at home,

send the series back to Los Angeles, anything can happen in those final two games, right? Just extend it, take two out of three at home and live to tell the tale. I think that might be sort of a reasonable outcome if you're a Yankees fan right now. We'll have some more to say. I'm doing some research about bullpen games.

We'll have some more to say about actual bullpen games before game four. But you know, in this one, I think this is not a planned bullpen game. This is a Bueller versus Schmidt start where both of them hope to get some depth from those guys because you have three games in a row and you really don't want to hit the bullpen hard all three games. And so that's this is one where I do think the depth and the quality of the starting pitcher will have an outsized impact on the game. And this should be one that favors, favors the Yankees.

Hey, it's Lauren Dragon from Wirecutter, the product recommendation service from the New York Times, and I test headphones. Sweat is actually conductive because of the saline content in it, so we basically make our own fake sweat and spray it over and over on these headphones to see what happens to them over time. This is 85 dB of airplane noise. We're gonna put on some noise-canceling headphones

and see how well they actually block out the sounds. Put them on the ground and kick them over there. Okay. Go. Are they broken? No. I have 3,136 entries in my database. Kids, workout, running.

Does it have a connector that's lightning or USB-C? What version of Bluetooth is it? Does it have FDX HD? We have ones that track your... At Wirecutter, we do the work so you don't have to. For independent product reviews and recommendations for the real world, come visit us at nytimes.com slash wirecutter. We even the work so you don't have to. For independent product reviews and recommendations for the real world, come visit us at nytimes.com slash wirecutter.

We even have one that's solar powered. My name is Sam Anderson. I'm a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine. Over the years, I've interviewed actors, artists, athletes. Recently, I've been spending time with animal people. Wait, what happens if I put my fingers in that bottom cage? He will probably bite you. Scientists, ferret breeders,

a heavy metal band that rescues baby puffins. You got one. Everyone has a story. When I was a kid, I had bats in the family bathroom. She didn't hear my mom backing into the driveway and she got her pushed by my mom. Jessica, the rat used to eat ice cream out of my mouth. Because thinking about animals seems to open up a little door.

This is the baby. An escape hatch out of the human world. Ready, we got a little spirit. Is that your blood or it's blood? Thank you, John. I'm coming really close to my head. From the New York Times, this is Animal. Listen to it wherever you get podcasts.

Look at him. is animal. Listen to it wherever you get podcasts. Look at them. I play wordle in spelling bee every single day. That's the first thing I do. Play wordle while making coffee. I pour myself a cup and do the crossword, which is the jewel of my morning. I started wordle 194 days ago and I haven't missed a day. So what's our starting word today? I think it should be ocean. Storm is a good one. BRISK because it's a brisk day outside. At this

point I'm probably more consistent with doing the crossword than brushing my teeth. I don't think there's a day that I've missed it. I'm definitely a Monday or Tuesday player right now but I aspire to do Friday and Saturday puzzles. I have seen you do spelling bee during meetings when you're supposed to be paying attention. That never happens! When you win a puzzle, where you get that you're a genius, I always take a screenshot and send it to my wife. The New York Times crossword.

It really is a moment of zen that cleanses my brain. I wish the days were shorter and that the wordles were longer. Join us and play all New York Times games at nytimes.com slash games. Do you think the Yankees getting multiple looks at Blake Trinen is a big deal for the rest of this series? I think he looks it looks a little bit shakier each time. You know, I think that especially trying it against lefties

is not their best look. And so somebody like Soto is going to can touch Trinen, I think that especially trying it against lefties is not their best look. And so somebody like Soto is gonna, can touch trying it, I think. Well, when we even saw in the plate appearance against Jess Chisholm in game two, I was texting you as it was happening, but Jazz looked kind of overmatched by the sweeper at first, but he was able to kind of stay alive against the fastball

and eventually got on and made an impact in that spot. And I wondered, OK, like this this almost looked like the decay we're talking about over the course of one plate appearance where you're able to get enough looks at it now if he sees him again later in the series, he might go up there and be even more comfortable and think trying to through 22 pitches in Game 1 and he was up over 30 in game two. So they weren't it wasn't even like back to back appearances where you just kind of pitched well and you're like, oh, OK.

Everybody, everybody in the middle of the order saw him at least once, but it's fine. He he worked hard. So I'm wondering if maybe they'll pivot a little bit and perhaps use Trident slightly differently as the series rolls along. Yeah. And something that maybe not super obvious because everyone's talking about, you know, how awesome his stuff is and how bendy it is. And when you watch it, it's very giffable. Aesthetically pleasing.

Yeah, it's all bendy. It bends this way in that way and it's beautiful looking it's not as best stuff. Right now is what i've got on his i don't know why it's calling it a four seam and a cutter and a knuckle curve i don't. Whatever anyway none of his pitches is above average right now, except for his splitter, which is not what everyone's talking about. So I think his stuff is actually down a little bit and they're seeing him more. So that's the thing. That's like if we do get some push back, it's like finally judged, you know, hits a tank off of somebody that everyone like off a copac or something. Everyone's like, oh, you know, hits a tank off of somebody that everyone,

like off a Copac or something, everyone's like, Oh, you know what I mean? Like, or, or Soto goes tank off of Trident or something, you know, it's like, there'll be like these relievers for the Dodgers are not there. They're an advantage over what the Yankees have, but they're not. It's more like these things have been happening. Like they're not as good as Cleveland bullpen was during the season. You know what I mean? Like, they're not as good as the Padres bullpen was even in this post-season.

I would have taken the Padres bullpen over the Dodgers bullpen in length, in quality and all of this. So, uh, at some point it is on the Yankee hitters, I think. To make, take advantage of this. It's not, it's the thing about baseball. That's so hard. It's like, I think a lot of people want to blame one side of the other. And pitching and hitting are so intertwined that it's, it's not

always obvious who's at fault or the Dodgers pitching really well, or the Yankees hitting poorly. Right. Or do they have a game plan? That's just the perfect tweak that's working so far. And we think everything's going to continue this way? I mean, I think Mike Petriello had a story that he was writing about the bullpen decay. And it's funny because, you know, Kate, they finally got to Kate Smith in the last round, right? It's like, well, Kate Smith was almost perfect for the

postseason. And because he wasn't perfect, then it creates the narrative, oh, they got him. It's like, well, no, he actually outperformed them over the course of the entire series. But in a game that the Yankees won, they got to Cade Smith. We all remember that. Yeah. Yeah.

That's what happens to all the elite relievers. It's like, we talked about Hayter a few weeks ago. Our perception is that all Hayter haters had a couple of really big blowups in the postseason. Yeah. He's had a couple of bad outings. But he's still been better. Postseason relievers of all time.

You know, it's crazy. We're just paying closer attention because the stakes are higher. We just care more about a missed opportunity. It's a little bit of the story with Aaron Judge, because during the season in which Aaron Judge had an amazing MVP worthy season, he also had two weeks, three weeks in the middle of it where he went homeless and didn't look that good. If I remember correctly, that was the longest stretch of his career as a big leaguer without a home run that happened in this regular season in which he

put up maybe the numbers that'll win the AL MVP award. Right. Like that's, that's how, that's how difficult it is to be great all the time. Tom Tango put up Shohei Otani's monthly strikeout rate next to Aaron judge's monthly strikeout rate, and they're both like, you know, kind of higher strikeout rate guys, they're sluggers, they're big. And I think that is part of it. You have more to cover and you're going to get called strikes in places where maybe they aren't strikes.

That's something that's been well documented with judge because he's so tall. They'll cook though. They'll give him called strikes that are not actually in his zone because he's, because it seemed far off the ground, you know, but like, no, that his knee is anyway, um, you know, uh, the, the thing about that is that judges month is worse than any month that Otani's had right now. So there is something going on. When you look at his pitch types, just as this is just like, this is the, the

pitch types he's seen this postseason with, you know, their batting average and slugging against, I think that really leaves off the page for me is not. He's whiffed at every split finger he swung at. I mean, he's seen four, whatever. It's that he's seen 36 sliders, has hit 143 off them with a 143 slugging and a 70% whiff rate. 70 is that is that is so big. That is like he's not even, you know the four scene he's got 21% whiff rate that's about I think it's a little better than average. He's got a 455

slugging like he's not performing so badly on the four scene it's the sliders that are just eating him up alive and I you know I think he's I think you know some of the analysis that we've seen on you know it's not all bad you know that some of these analysis the analysis is seen on, you know, it's not all bad. You know, some of these analysis analysis is good. They're all former players and and know what they're talking about. To some extent, I would say that the idea that he's sort of out in front and being eaten up by sliders is probably true. Yeah. And, you know, I think as you mentioned earlier, when

when stuff gets better and better in the postseason, if fastball, four seam fastballs are a 120 right now, I'm guessing sliders you see in the post season are also about as good as any sliders you see all year. So there's the difference isn't as good, you know why? Because VELO is up. So four seam fastballs went from like 96 to, you know, 120 in the post season, which means nobody's throwing a bad four seam.

None of the guys with the bad four seams in your bullpen that you usually use, you're not, you're not using any of them. All the ones who have good four seams are throwing them harder, you know? So that's how that happened. But I was looking at, uh, slider stuff, plus the average slider stuff, plus in the postseason is like 107 and during the regular season, it's like 102, 103. So it's not a big increase. And I think it's because sliders rely on shape as much as, as V lo.

And there are some sliders that are not even necessarily improved by more V lo. So, you know, I think, I think that what is happening is he's probably having to start earlier because he's a fastball guy. Yeah. And he, since he's starting earlier, then come the sliders and he looks, he looks silly. So that would be my guess. I mean, I'm, I'm not a hitting coach, but yeah, that's, that's what I, that's

what I sort of see just for context. And again, it's in the lens of what is likely an MVP season. Aaron judge was a plus seven for run value on sliders of pitches that he sees a lot, um, by that, I mean like double digits. That's the worst of any pitch, but still like he's still plus seven on sliders. That's still good. So he hit two 44 and slugged four 56 in the regular season with a 41.9% with right. So that is like the, the way to get Aaron Judge includes sliders like all the time.

It's just the struggles being at this level are surprising. So I kind of expect it to change. You can just feel the pressure, the tension sort of building up with each plate appearance like it. It has to change eventually. I think if the Yankees are going to come back, you're going to need a few big swings from Aaron Judge, where where he connects and does typical Aaron Judge things to climb back into the series, especially since game one is really

one that got away from them. I'd be glad I don't live in New York if Juan Soto leaves the Yankees. The Yankees lose this and Juan Soto leaves the Yankees. I think the coverage will be nonstop. Aaron Judge is a choker and what are we going to do with this team? They're going nowhere. If Aaron judges the star, you know, everybody makes the assumption that Soto, if he leaves, would go to the

Mets, but what if, what if they lose the world series to the Dodgers and Soto goes to the Dodgers? Can you even imagine WFAN forever? Can you even imagine WFAN forever? The energy from that series of events would get them all the way through the winter. Power the city. Negative energy. So much hot air and negative energy could be expended if it plays out. I'm not wishing for this to happen, by the way, but I'm like, no, one's really talking about that as the thing that could happen,

but it seems like it could happen. I've seen some like people put together Dodger, Linus, and Soto in it. It's pretty nasty jerks. Do you say jerks? Yeah, don't, don't put that on us. I didn't go that far with it. I mean, I, I just said we should at least keep our minds open to the possibility.

The big downer of game two though, for people with any interest in this game would be Shohei Otani's shoulder. And it's a dislocated shoulder as of midday Monday, the party line on Otani seems to be, it's a pain tolerance thing. If everything goes well pregame and we don't think he can get hurt himself worse, he'll play. It's the same injury that Cody Bellinger had, although Bellinger had dislocated his shoulder previously

before the dreaded Arm 5 celebration that really did him in and caused a lot of problems as he eventually needed to have surgery. Frenem Tatis Jr. also dislocated his shoulder. The difference is for both Bellinger and Tatis, it was a front shoulder. For Otani, it's his back shoulder. So it's his non pitching arm,

which is great news as far as the rehab and eventually getting back to pitching goes, but it might also be less severe because of the back shoulder being less important, especially for a hitter with his type of swing and approach. Yeah, I was texting with Donnie Ecker about this, the hitting, I think he's like Director of Offense or something for offensive coordinator,

I think his title is anyway, former hitting coach for the giants who's with the Rangers and his first reaction was what I was saying was, you know, which shoulders matter. And he's he said they both suck, you know, like doesn't doesn't. It's not good to have a busted shoulder while you're hitting. I looked at Jeff Zimmerman's old rankings where he looked at like DL stints and how players did when they came back based on what injury they had and if you were gone for a short amount of time then the shoulder wasn't a big deal if you're going for a long time the shoulders one of the worst things generally.

And I think that it's because those are probably soft tissue strains, muscle strains, things that they can kind of get right. And then they're fine as opposed to maybe something involves a labrum ligaments. That's what, you know, Tatis and Bellinger ended up having to do is surgery to, to, to prepare the labrum. What happens is if you sublux, if you dislocate your, you, you're putting strain on those ligaments in your shoulder. And if you, that becomes more likely to happen more and more.

And the more often it happens, the more likely you are to have the surgery. So Tateeth actually, you know, busted his shoulder a couple of times. If people remember it was kind of out and then he came back and then he did it again, you know, and then he decided to have the surgery he's all the way back. So long-term, it can be fine. Short-term you are worried about it. One thing that Donnie Ecker said was that, um, you know, you, what you have with the, the follow through is the, the front shoulder is the follow through

shoulder, if you can't follow through all the way, you probably don't give your A swing cause you, you feel so bad on the end of it, you know, and I forget what hitter is just talking to about it. Oh, Mike, Michael Conforto, he had shoulder surgery and he said for the first year back, he was two handed on his, on his follow through cause he didn't want it. He didn't trust it. Yeah. He didn't want the momentum of the bat to basically hyper,

I was just going to pop back out again. Yeah. So, so, uh, that's, there's like a worry that's on top of the actual physical injury and so that's something you have to get by. Tatisa has gotten by it and is fine now, but it has been a longer process and it did feature a year where you weren't sure he was going to be all the way back. With the back shoulder, you don't have that same issue. sure he was going to be all the way back.

With the back shoulder, you don't have that same issue. Um, and Donnie pointed out that, um, Otani is kind of a, a front side dominant hitter. Um, and the way I take this to mean is that he sort of wants to get out in front and, um, you know, it's not so much about what he's doing on the backside. I think of sort of a Turner, Justin Turner, uh, we were trying to think of who might be somebody who works on the backside, maybe somebody like Bo Bichette lets the ball travel, goes the other way. They may have a worse time with a back shoulder injury.

There's a little bit of us sort of riffing off of this, but Donnie knows pretty well what he's talking about. And so that lines up a little bit with what Dave Roberts was saying is that it's better than being the front shoulder. I would say that to some extent though, both suck is probably the answer. And, uh, that we may see a little bit of reduced performance from Otani for the rest of the series.

Yeah. I mean, we'll, it's funny saying this Monday midday when we could be getting proof later tonight that he's actually closer to fine or that it's much worse. Like hit a dong tonight. Yeah. Could be a lead off home where we're like, huh, guess that shoulder's not feeling too bad right now. Or guess whatever, whatever stuff they put in his shoulders, making it feel like nothing's wrong. It's a little bit more of a long-term risk, I think, than short-term.

It's a little bit more like if this keeps happening, then he has to have the surgery and then, you know, that's a big deal. Right. That was my takeaway. Once they gave the initial update, oh, you can actually play in game three. Okay. Well, on again, off again, shoulder problems eventually could get a lot worse. So that's that's where I'm starting to think, hmm, is that going to change my plans in 2025 with how I approach Ohtani at the top of a draft board? We'll get a little more information before we get to that point, but it's something to keep in mind nonetheless.

Had a great mailbag question. This one came in from Pete. Pete writes, I've been very intrigued by the staggering numbers around relief pitchers facing the same batter three times in a series. The question I had was whether there is some self-selection who comprises that sample, though you guys called out that Ryan Brazier, Edgardo Henriquez were the only Los Angeles relievers to face batters a third time in the LCS against the Mets, which made me wonder about the quality of the relievers

that contribute to the already likely small sample that have yielded the 800 OPS against the opposing hitters. Maybe the mere statement made by the Dodgers to only let Brazier and Henriquez face people a third time is enough to underscore this trend. But if mop up men are contributing disproportionately, I wonder if the relative impact on a given pitcher is a little less stark than it seems

by using absolute numbers. Keep up the awesome work, you guys are killing it. The number of my friends who consistently tune in is steadily growing. Awesome for having great baseball conversations, less awesome for having a great edge in fantasy leagues. Hope to catch you guys in New York again next spring. Picture group seven for life.

I've just, I'm chuckling to myself. It's a deep cut inside joke on the show. And if Niv Shah, founder of auto new is listening, they've, they've just got mad. Having a chuckle, but it also made a little angry. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, hidden within that question, um, or a couple other things that, you know, as I just wanted to point out, I think Ryan Brazier was a trusted.

Guy. Versus Enriquez. So, um, we might think of Brazier as a mop up guy, but I think he was actually a trusted guy in the back of the bullpen. And so I think even studying what you're asking would be pretty difficult because it might be easy to spot the high leverage guys and the really good guys and might be easier to spot the mop up guys. But in the in between, as you pointed out, and before the show is going to be really

hard that picking out the Ryan Brazier's from, you know, especially since it's such a moving target like Evan Phillips. I had him like ranked fifth or something in my rankings when we ranked the relievers for the series, he didn't even make the roster. And he's a little banged up. So there. That's right. He's a little banged up.

So you don't like, how do I, you know that when you're trying to, no, but do I even know that when you're trying to. No, but how do you know that when you're trying to like do this study? Oh, right. Yes. Like that could limit who's available to be used. And it could limit how effective they are if they are being used. Like there's. Right. You, like you might think, Oh, I'm Phillips is really good. So he must be really good. And then they might actually use them as a mop up guy because he's not feeling good. So it's a really, really hard thing to study. I will say this.

I feel pretty good about pitching bots, um, research before he went and worked for Cleveland, he put out a thing that showed that third time through the order pitchers stuff does not decrease. and their locations are about the same and yet their runs allowed are so much higher. I think that's a pretty compelling case for familiarity as the source of the third time through the order penalty for starting pictures now if that means something. for starting pitchers. Now, if that means something, that means that familiarity matters, familiarity with shapes. And so therefore, I think the theoretical underpinnings

for the finding about relievers is pretty strong. Yeah, so familiarity less so than raw degradation of pitches, which can happen. Fatigue can cause that, but I would assume that generally happens less to relievers than starters anyway, because they're getting breaks. They're coming in on separate days.

Although, you know, October these days. But yeah, time of year. It really increases pretty hard. How much have you thrown this year? Were you hurt half the season? Maybe you're more fresh because you didn't pitch all year. Like there's again, another, another group of questions that kind of come up that make this particularly muddy, but thanks a lot for that email, Pete.

I want to see picture group seven on a hat someday. I would buy that hat. No one would know what it means, but I'd be happy to, uh, to wear it. Cause it's such an absurd story. The cleaners are here. So Iggy has come to visit me. Iggy has joined the show. Welcome to the show. Iggy has joined the show. Welcome to the show, Iggy.

Please behave yourself. No, Oh, actually Iggy is being very cute right now. Not doing anything. We'll see if that lasts for the next 24 minutes. Good job moving the camera in case Iggy does some cleaning or something. I'm Kevin Ruse. And I'm Casey Newton. We're technology reporters and the hosts of Hard Fork, a show from the New York Times.

A hard fork is a programming term for when you're building something that gets really screwed up. So you take the entire thing, break it and start over. And that's a little bit what it feels like right now in the tech industry. Like these companies that you and I have been writing about for the past decade, they're all kind of struggling to stay relevant. Yeah, I mean, a lot of the energy and money in Silicon Valley is shifting to totally new ideas. Crypto, the metaverse, AI, it feels like a real turning point.

And all this is happening so fast. Some of it's so strange. I just feel like I'm texting you constantly. Like, what is this story? Explain this to me. And so we're going to talk about these stories. We're going to bring in other journalists, newsmakers, whoever else is involved

in building this future to explain to us what's changing and why it all matters. Hardfork from the New York Times. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. Christine, have you ever bought something and thought, your podcasts. It's our job to research, test, and vet products, and then recommend our favorites. For instance, Kyra, I think you've slept on what, like 40 mattresses? Yep. And Christine, you've tested everything

from blenders to linen sheets. Oh, I love linen sheets. And we're bringing all of this expertise to the Wirecutter Show. Each week, we'll talk to someone from our team of 140 journalists about the very best product picks in every category. Plus tips, tricks, and hacks that go beyond the products

because we don't just want to recommend great gear. We want to solve your everyday problems. And trust me, we have the expertise to do just that. Listen to The Wirecutter Show, hosted by me, Kyra Blackwell, and me, Christine Cier-Clicette, available wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Robert Vinlo and I'm from New York Times Games, and I'm here talking to people about Wordle and the Wordle Archive.

Do you all play Wordle? I play it every day. Alright, I have something exciting to show you. Okay. This is new. It's the Wordle Archive. What? Okay, that's awesome. So now you can play every Wordle that has ever existed.

There's like a thousand puzzles. What day would you pick? Let's go back to my birthday. My first guess is going to be birth because it's my birthday. If you play every wordle that has ever existed, there's like a thousand puzzles, what day would you pick? Let's go back to my birthday. My first guess is going to be birth because it's my birthday. What made you guys do an archive? It's one of our most requested features. A bunch of our other games have archives. Like the crossword puzzle? Yeah, exactly like the crossword. You know, you can catch up if you missed one, which is pretty cool. Wordle Archive.

Oh, cool! Now you can do yesterday's Wordle if you missed it. Thanks so much for coming by and talking to us and playing. New York Times game subscribers can now access the entire Wordle Archive. Find out more at nytimes.com slash games. My default word is always bread. Why? I like bread.

So you might remember we had a second half draft back in July, and if you didn't listen to the show, it's fine. We're going to make this relevant for everybody. The rules were pretty simple. We were drafting players who were negative value contributors in the first half of the season, and they had to have played at least one game. So you had to have played to be eligible for the draft. Our draft was seven players each, no more than four hitters or pitchers.

You could swing it either way. Three, four, four, three didn't matter. No positional requirements otherwise. And we were going to use the auction calculator to look at the second half dollar values and see who drafted the better team. So I finally tabulated the results for that because I found an old notepad that had our picks in it. And I thought, well, maybe maybe we have an actual winner here.

So as a reminder or first time indication, Eno drafted Luis Robert, Zander Bogarts, Blake Snell. Blake Snell was his third round pick because we were all pretty worried about Blake Snell back in July. Josh Lowe, Lars Knutbar, Yusei Kikuchi, and Camilo Doval as his seven picks. I had Garrett Cole, Dainsby Swanson, Kevin Gossman, Beau Bichette, Hunter Brown, Sean Murphy, and Edwin Diaz. So just giving you the names, I don't know if you scrolled this far down.

We both got screwed on the relievers. Yeah, we both could have done better in that facet. Who do you think got more cumulative value based on second half dollar values on the FanGraphs player raider? Well, I, I read the rundown. You did read the rundown. Okay. You know, you know, you know, you know, one by $5 and the actual difference is just how bad Bo Bichette

was and then how hurt he was because in a player raider, if you play very little, you play poorly, real bad. He was a minus 13. Yeah. Our relievers cancel each other out, I think. Didn't we both get minus value from our relievers? I got a plus six out of Edwin Diaz. You got a minus eight though, out of Camilo Deval. So Deval almost, uh, almost sunk me like, uh, Beau Bechet did.

And I think one thing that really disappoints me about my pick of Deval, I think I must've just put Deval and Diaz together and then you picked Diaz before me and I just thought, all right, I'll just take Deval. If I had looked closer, I would have noticed that he was all messed up. Like his extension was off. His, his shapes were off. You know, he, he wasn't the same pitcher and Diaz was a different situation. I should just pivoted there.

Maybe not taking a reliever. Do we have to take a reliever? We didn't do it. We didn't have to. So yeah, maybe I was a bad influence or maybe you did it first and I just copied you and took Diaz. I don't remember the actual order of that seventh pick, but nevertheless it was, uh, it was the worst pick you had by a healthy margin. Everything else,

I mean, it was generally pretty good. And I want to go through to like a zero. He was just, um, it was like one of those seasons where I just feel like. He just wasn't into it. Like he wasn't going to try so hard. He wasn't going to get hurt, you know, he wasn't going to get, it's a fantasy thing, so he wasn't going to get runs in RBI. That was yeah. Much worse.

I think even worse than we anticipated going into the season was the supporting cast and then him being sellers, the deadline, not really finding a lot of interesting players on the way, like all of that stuff sort of worked against him. Injuries, I mean, ended the season, he was dealing with some rib soreness. I think that hip was a major problem. And he actually came back from that hip injury. It, I didn't even know if he was going to come back. Yeah.

So you wonder like, okay, aside from just the pure disaster situation around him, like how healthy was Luis Robert? And the more I think about it, I mean, just the way. He's going to be really cheap next year. I think he's going to be pretty cheap, but I also think from a real life perspective, the more I've thought about it, the more I think they should just trade them. I know you could maybe get more if you waited out and say, all right, let's, let's get him out here. Get him, get him on the AL All-Stars team. Prove that he's back or whatever.

Yeah, give him four months to just play really well again. But you're looking at a guy that is affordably signed with a couple of club options right now. He's already 27. He's had these kind of up and down performances. Yeah, maybe it's like selling lowest in some ways. But what if this is another in a different form, like another Eloy Jimenez

situation where we just keep waiting for that healthy season to come and it does. And then you get nothing on and you get even less. I think there's still I think there's still more of like a win win sort of outcome you can get here because there would still be teams

interested in Luis Robert. We're a year removed from a near five war season. I think most teams evaluating him are looking at the bigger picture. And you have to at least consider that downside if you're in the position of making these decisions for the White Sox right now. Yeah, he's still over the last three years, a plus 13 ounce above average in centerfield and that's, this is when you need to trade him because at 27 with those kinds of numbers, a team might be like, Hey, this is our, our centerfielder

for the next three years, you know? And, you know, you've got even a team like the Phillies that has been sort of cycling some guys through there and been trying to figure it out. I mean, the Dodgers right now in center field or Tommy Edmond and Enrique Hernandez, according to fan graphs, Andy Pahez, maybe, I mean, they could, they could want something like that and center the Royals. I mean, like I'm not a big Kyle Isbell fan. No, I think we've moved on from him as a regular.

I think that was part of our, our, our eulogy on the 2024 Royals that Kyle is Bell should be a fourth or fifth outfielder next year and not a bigger part of the plan that he has been to this point. The giants have put everybody in center and none of them have looked good. The one guy who's looked good defensively or looked okay defensively is Grant McCray and he just, I don't think he has the bat for the major leagues. So Elliot Ramos, I think is miscast in center. Luis Matos, no.

Mike Dostromsky is too old for it now and he wasn't ever that good for it. Brett Wisely is on their, on their depth chart of Fang graphs at center. So, you know, there's a lot of teams right now that would say, hey, we can we can have a center fielder for the next three years that actually has a bat. And, you know, who cares if he's hurt some? Well, we'll have you know, we have other guys that can step in behind him. I think I think this isn't this is a good season to this good off season to shop them. A quick would you rather for twenty twenty 2025, if the price stays similar,

the way it has been some very early October draft, seven drafts in the books now for October over on the NFBC. Huge sample. Huge sample. But Luis Robert versus Brenton Doyle, who would you rather have for 2025 on your fantasy team at that price? We're talking about a, about a sixth round pick. Oh man. They're very, they're kind of similar. Yeah. The difference is that when Robert was going well, he actually hit the ball

harder than Doyle does. Yeah. This is a guy who hit the ball on 118. Even this year was 113. I'm taking Robert, dude. There's like Doyle is a little who hit the ball on 118. Even this year was 113. I'm taking Robert, dude. There's like Doyle is a little bit propped up by his home park, I think. Right.

But he's not going anywhere. He's keeping that park. That's true. He's, he's a core guy for them. I might be wrong, but I kind of like Robert. We've seen better in terms of lower strikeout rates from Luis Robert earlier in his career. Maybe he has to sell out a little bit more to get to that top level of power and that's a trade off that you're comfortable with.

I would also take Robert. Yeah, like I'm not sure that this 25% strikeout rate from Brenton Doyle is his true talent. Yeah. I mean, he had 31s in the minors. This could be the best strikeout rate Brenton Doyle ever shows. But I would guess projections are going to spit out something in the high 20s now for him. So he's going to pop. I think Doyle is one of those guys, both of these guys might be up a little bit later on compared to

where they're going right now, because as projections give people confidence in Brenton Doyle, the price will go up. And as the off season goes by, whether it's a trade or not, a healthy. Once people start looking at projections, Robert starts looking better too. Robert will look better with projections. Yeah. He looks a little bit worse when you're just looking at what happened. And then the health grade thing, it's sort of, man, it's almost Byron Buxton

level bad health, but more consistency with the on-field performance. I think where you see more instances of getting what you want. Oh, maybe Doyle's the answer, because the worst case with Doyle is you stream him on your own team, where he plays Monday through Thursday, but not Friday through Saturday or whatever. Worst case scenario for Brenton Doyle is the Ryan McMahan of the outfield.

I guess that's the worst case. Yeah, because on the road this year, Bretton Doyle. How about a 211 271 364 on the road? That's like not that's not like a major league starter. You definitely don't want to draft a guy in the top 100 that you're planning on not using half the time or for. Yes, but that's the difference. What's the difference? What's the difference? Like, would you rather have a guy that you play all the time when he's healthy

and you, and you have the choice of dropping him or not? That's an easier decision. It's like, Oh, Robert's out, tore his hamstring drop. Whereas like Bretton Doyle is like, Oh, do I start him on the road? Do I start on the road? It'd be like these hard decisions all the time. Maybe Doyle's like a clearly better guy to pick in best ball or draft and hold where you just want to have a guy that's like healthy all year and you can have decisions and worst case scenario, you play some other guys sometimes over him.

That's cool. But in like a 15 game or 15 team or a 12 team where you want to make a decision quickly, you're going to make a decision quicker about Robert. Yeah, there's still a bit, a good bit to like about Luis Robert despite another big injury and an underwhelming year, especially in the strikeout rate department. So I was surprised, but I think the Deval I'm soured on like this, this, this, this, this thing helped me look at Deval's movement.

And then I, you know, Talk to, to people around the giants and became very obvious that he's not very coachable. There's even stories that I've referenced from, uh, just so as Santos about like his, his attitude. Um, and that became pretty obvious. And the fact that he got demoted in the middle of a pennant race or a race for the post season, they were like, we would, we don't even want to pitch you in the seventh, you know, we're, we're trying to get some sort of message across to you.

So he didn't come back and have fixed his movement either. None of his, none of his movement looked better. None of his extension looked better. Um, and then Ryan Walker, if he's still throwing 96, I don't think that Ryan Walker is a top end closer. And I do think he has some collapse potential and maybe Duval takes it back. But really I just, that whole thing has been devalued.

That closer situation has been devalued for me over the course of the end of that season. I mean, with new decision makers in place for the Giants too, Deval could get traded. Given the way this season played out, maybe they decide to send him to a team that wants to take a flyer on an intriguing late inning arm and just move on.

That could easily happen. But yeah, with Walker, the model loves the slider and doesn't really like anything else. So that's not exactly what I'm looking for in a closer. I want my closer to have a fastball they can throw by people. And I know he's done pretty well with the 96 mile an hour sinker that looks pretty beautiful,

but I kind of trust the model on sinkers. There's not a lot of dominant closers that look like Ryan Walker. All right. So we're generally, you're cautious with Deval overall. Walker is sort of like a third tier closer if they don't bring somebody else in who's obviously the guy. And there's the unanswered question of whether or not Deval is still there when the season

begins. It sounds like you're definitely in for a Louise Robert bounce back though. And I'm in for a Beau Bichette bounce back. As bad as the season was, I'm going to describe it mostly to injury, which he wasn't necessarily a huge problem earlier in his career. If you look at, there's a piece that I helped. We, we kind of helped, uh, Caitlin McGrath on where we tried to put into context how bad this day new model from Bo Bichette was this poor year from

Bo Bichette and, uh year from Beau Bichette. And, um, it's, there are very few examples that are anywhere close to it, because there's a lot of examples of guys that had like a 190 WRC plus coming back with like a 120 WRC plus, and that's not what this is. Like he went from easy one twenties plus to 70. So there's not a lot of, uh, the end Caitlin found that like there's a guy in the eighteen eighties like this one. Sure and and and like one other player I think how the bias had like a had a downturn one year that was sort of similar. The hobby bias one makes me worried because it could be the beginning of, you know, being something about the approach being wrong and something about the approach being, um, uh, found out by the league.

But the other thing is a lot of the other players that were on here that were close at all, uh, were injury related. And so I'm willing to ascribe Moses of this to injury and think that he can come back next year and hit 275 with 20 homers and five steals. Now that's not necessarily vintage Boba Shet. So I do want to like take a little bit off the top and give them a little bit of a haircut at the top. Um, but, uh, that's also a very useful player.

Yeah. I think if you've done fine with speed, you're going to do really well in average. You're going to do what you need from a middle infielder in power and your runs and RBI should be there too. I mean, I think that's the other part of, of Bo that is, is really solid. So it might not be a pick that jumps off the page, but he's going in the post pick 100 range, kind of in the 100 to 150 in a lot of drafts, falls a little further sometimes.

But I would expect as more and more people look at what he brings to the table year over year. The toss up right now is Bichette versus Luis Garcia. I mean, Luis Garcia had a nice year. No doubt about that. But I want Bichette. I got to take Bo too. Like there's just, there's much more. You know what I get vibe I get from Luis Garcia is an old national

Starlin Castro. So Starlin Castro, he was a, he was a covenant national, right? And early on Starlin Castro was doing the exact same thing Luis Garcia's doing was like every year was a little bit better. Oh, he struck out a little bit better. Oh, he struck out a little bit less, walked a little bit more, hit the ball a little bit harder, and I, I fell for it. Like three years in, I was like, Oh, incremental improvement every year. He's going to keep doing it.

And that's the thing that's not true. Just because a guy has improved a little bit year over year for two or three years in a row does not mean he's going to continue to do that. Yeah, it's fair. I mean, I think the, the part that makes everything complicated for Garcia is that he's been so young for the level everywhere he's played. He's been an up and down guy longer than you'd expect. He's always had a good ability to temper strikeouts.

We've seen enough in terms of power growth though, where I do think if he's holding what he's done from 23 to 24, if this is sort of the baseline, he doesn't have to get better to be very good, right? He narrowly missed being a 2020 guy this year. Yeah, but the way that these things work, we see an 8% barrel rate, and we say, oh, the 8% barrel rate funnels into the 162 ISO for Luis Garcia Jr. so I can believe these things,

and so therefore he's to have it going forward. But the way the projections work is they're going to say, no, it was a six for it was a 5.8% barrel rate the year before and 7.5 the year before that. So you're going to regress these things and he's going to be projected for like a six and a half percent barrel rate, which is what he's had for his career with a six and a half percent barrel rate for his career. He's at a 140 ISO. So I think next year He's more likely to hit 12 to 15 homers if he's gonna hit 12 to 15 homers

The stolen bases are I think a pretty big question mark. Will the team be as Sort of crazy aggressive on the base pass as they were last year Maybe I think it depends on how much progress they make as a group, right? I think the value of stealing bases for them is still probably gonna skew more towards them being aggressive where they need to do it to be better than average team. But if Wood and Cruz

come out as sluggers, then you're not playing as many games on the base pass in front of them. Yeah. Just waiting for Wood and Cruz to hit you a homer. To some extent, you might not be the extreme team you were, but I think you're still going to be a team that runs a good bit in 2025. So I wouldn't worry about that drying up completely. If you take, even if you take my homer thing, you're saying 270, 1220. Yeah.

That's pretty close to Bo. Yeah, that's pretty close to Bo, but I think Bo brings more on the batting average side and does already have the. More runs in RBI. I mean, Luis Garcia had 70 RBI on the season, 58 runs. Right. So there's, there's still quite a bit to like with Bo, despite all of this. Now it's interesting. You had Xander Bogarts in our second half draft, given all the times you've been skeptical of him, the Xander slander and. Everybody has the right price. Yeah.

That's a good example of that. So he's, he's becoming an oatmeal-y player. He's at that stage of his career, right? He turned 32 earlier this month. So I get it. Like he's not, he's not going to flash upside anymore, but. Still running a little bit. He was 13 for 16 as a base dealer in 111 games.

So maybe high teens is still possible. We saw 19 for 21 a year ago, narrowly missed 2020 a season ago. I know the underlying numbers as far as your barrel rates and your hard hit rates have been trending in the wrong direction for multiple years. Is this a little bit like the reverse of Luis Garcia? Where you say, oh, well, we have got a lot of track record to fall back on.

That is good. We know he's going to play every day. Contracts going to keep that afloat for a while. Is this good oatmeal? And are you surprised that you're still getting pretty good discount on Xander Bogarts, despite a good second half? Yeah, I'm going to chalk some of this up to injury too. And you know, you regression works the other way as well.

Right? So like he was 5.1% barrel rate this year, 6.1 last year, 6.5 the year before 9.7 the year before that. This is all Xander Bogart's career. 6% barrel rate. I would probably give him his career 6% barrel rate next year, which means a 162 ISO, 162 ISO for Xander next year would mean more like 15 homers, 18 homers.

And that means you're very likely to get sort of like a 275, 15, 15 package. And that's one of those, yeah, oatmeal is that idea that they don't hurt you anywhere. You know, there's nothing that line right there is pretty close to the average. Player fantasy player in, in a 15 team league, you know, and average is good because where you pick them, you're probably picking against people who are going to be sub-average.

So you're getting somebody who's average. It doesn't hurt you. He advances your cause in every category. Um, so it is about picking them at the right moment, but he still has that ability to kind of help you in every category. Yeah. The cluster he's in right now, Nico Horner, Bryce Terangs, Andrew Bogarts and Bryson Stott. And I believe eligibility is correct. I know Bogart's got exactly 20 games at short and then played the rest at second.

All four of those guys are listed as second and short. I have to double check it to see if they're all still eligible there. But anyway, that's the group of hitters. Horner's coming off surgery though. I mean, you know, forearm surgery, you know, that's, we may find out he's fine in the, in the, in the preseason, but like it may affect his comeback because he still has to throw the ball some.

And if he, if he's a little bit behind, then you know, how much, how much time, you know, what he, maybe his timing's off and maybe he just has a really bad March in April because he's just coming back from surgery. I, I don't love getting guys coming back from surgery. I don't love getting guys coming back from surgery. It is not ideal. And we're still waiting to see if there is going to be surgery for David Frye, by the way. David Frye is going to have Tommy John surgery. That's how I read the whole situation.

It makes so much more sense. He went to go visit with Dr. Keith Meister. We have not heard yet. You know, elbow inflammation, and he doesn't play catcher anymore the rest of the season, just elbow inflammation. No, it's not. Are you, uh, just throwing these other news items in here real quick. Sunny gray had a flexor tendonitis diagnosis that cost him time at the end of the season.

They're saying he's expected to have a normal off season. Are you in early drafts comfortable drafting Sonny Gray or do you wait until we at least get into spring games and just make sure he's on the same schedule as everybody else? Once we get to that point in the calendar, I think he's going to go among a bunch of pitchers that all have, you know, different red flags, yellow flags for health. There's by the time you're picking Sonny Gray,

you're not picking between Sonny Gray and a fully healthy, you know, different red flags, yellow flags for health. There's by the time you're picking sunny gray, you're not picking between sunny gray and a fully healthy, you know, great pitcher. Yeah, here's the group he's with right now. Carlos Rodan, who's actually healthy right now. And may have some helium after this postseason. I bet you he has an up arrow in that group. Kodai Singa, who's working back from an injury. May even have off- Singa, who's working back from an injury. May even have off season surgery.

Who knows Brian Wu, who seemed like he was just dodging an injury like constantly super healthy. Brian will Justin steel who missed a lot of time this year. Yeah. Shane McClanahan coming off another Tommy John coming back. Second Tommy John. We're not a Lopez who I think dodge two brief IELTS stints with arm injuries that looked like they may have been

more serious than they were based on how quickly he came back. Huge increase in innings and decrease in fastball below. Yeah. I mean, this is the, this is the take your, take your leap of faith on one of these guys. They're all talented pitchers. They are. But I wouldn't, I would,

I don't think you give any single one of these in a, in health. No, uh, that basically doesn't exist in that little pocket right there. So keep that in mind. Sunny Gray is fine there. I think, you know, I'd have him behind. I'd rather have Brian Wu cause he's young and like, you know, he's exciting. And, you know, there's some guys, I think I'd rather have Carlos Roudon for the wins, you know, a bunch of wins if he's healthy, but something great belongs in that group for sure. Here's one more news item before we go. Ronnie Mauricio has not started baseball activities yet. This was according to David Sterns at his sort of ACL injury.

It was in the winter, right? It was, it was not even, I don't even know if it was this time last year. He's coming back slow huh? Yeah coming back slow so far but still has time if he's gonna ramp up in the next few weeks to basically go through a normal offseason like the rehab phase should be mostly over but I think but he'll miss a full year like he won't even get to go into winter ball and get some ABs in probably. Yeah that's sort of the downside now I think it's interesting because Mauricio is in this group of players that I Don't think he's he's on anybody's radar anymore. Like it's like he's not really a prospect

but he didn't really play this matter was like Ronnie Mauricio versus Who's the the not of the Giants guy Luciano stop. Yeah Um, uh, who's the, the, uh, the giants guy. Hmm. Luciano stop. Yeah. It was like, there was a debate like who's going to be better. And now there's a, the, the probability is that neither is going to be good.

Yeah. But I guess you have, you have more evidence that Luciano isn't going to be good because he at least had a chance to play in 24. That's true. But, you know, even Mauricio, I guess he got some you get some age advantage for being as young as he was. But, you know, 104 WRC plus AA 108 WRC plus that is not as exciting as saying, you know, he hit two 92 with 23 homers at AAA at age 22. Um, I guess I'm being hard on him. There's a chance that Marissa is still good.

It's, it's this, it's just this package where it's like not much, um, not much patience and power numbers, but with high ground ball rates. So, you know, what is that going to look like in the major leagues? Right. You got to change something to make that profile pop, I think, against top level pitching. It does feel a little weird to write off Marco Luciano with 126 big league played appearances. I mean, it's been very broken up in terms of the chances he's had the last two

years. He just turned 23. I'm being harsh on him. There's still, there's still a chance he matters. Yeah. And then I think also the, the opportunity for him might be at third base given or even at second, given, you know, the age of the other second baseman. Um, and then also the glove that Mark Vientos has. So, um, there's a lot of opportunities for Luciano on this team or as a trade option to bring somebody in.

There was, I'm in a Mets group chat that was bandying around the idea of going, getting Aronado. Hmm. And I don't know, the bat speed stuff for Aronado last year is a little bit concerning. Seems more like a fallback option than the first thing you'd want to do with the resources that the Mets have in place. And I don't mean that as a knock on Aronado. I just think there might be some younger options whose bats are a little more safe. And I realized Aronato hasn't really been healthy in probably a year.

But at the same time, are we expecting a 34-year-old in April to have a healthier bat going forward? Or is that a longer term problem that we're going to have to deal with with him? I think that's kind of where I'm at, where I'm, I'm cautious about Arnado as like the thing that will put you over the top right now. It might be part of a bigger off season where if you did two other things that were more impactful than you could be excited about it. But if that's your big move, I'm not sure he's the same guy. Like if the idea is to move Vientos to first, you know, get Arnado and also sign Soto, you

know, like, okay. So you improved your defense at third, you kept the young good bat with Vientos and you're just hoping that Arnado, you know, hits you 18 to 20 homers hits 275 and just plays good defense out there. I think you're not, you're not saying be our cleanup hitter. No, it's the, that's like, we signed you to be our sixth hitter. You're in the sort of maybe Evan Longoria stage in the, on the giants. You know, you're like, you're just a veteran guy that we want to be out there

and not have the Entos be kind of brick hands and everything out there. Right. That's probably where we're at. I mean, even with the injury this year, you look at Aronado, he was a plus nine for outs above average plus six for defensive run save. The glove's still aging very well, even if the power is a little bit of a concern. We know the park suppresses power a little bit,

but I think if you use him as a secondary source of run production, that's totally fine. So we'll see. And you may get one of those, he had a bounce back year where it looked like everything was kind of going down and then he had a really good year even in St. Louis. So, you know, he could do the same thing where like that 2022 that came around. He could have another bounce back there. Maybe one more chapter there.

A lot more ground to cover though as the week rolls along. Give us a follow. Eno is at EnoSaris. I'm at Derek and Ryper. The pod is at rates and barrels. If you still use Twitter, if you don't discord is available. Check out the link in the show description. We'll have a lot more on bullpenning on Tuesday's show, plus probably some other

non-playoff topics as well, since we're down to just this one series to focus on. That's going to do it for this episode of ratesids and Barrels, back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening.