Rates & Barrels - George Kirby Arrives, Opportunity in Minnesota and St. Louis, & Exceeding Expectations

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

Eno and DVR discuss the impressive debut of George Kirby, several prospects emerging to find playing time at the big-league level, players exceeding their scouting grades and expected production, bat humidors, Justin Verlander's post-surgery arsenal, and more.  Rundown - George Kirby's Debut; Future Expectations - Interest in Josh Winder? - Royce Lewis & Jose Miranda - Can Juan Yepez Maintain an Everyday Role? - MJ Melendez & The Royals' C-1B-DH Crowd - A Boring Pickup in Cincinnati? - Grit+ & Exceeding Expectations - Bat Humidor Technology - Justin Verlander Pre v. Post-Surgery Stuff - Odds & Ends: Yadiel Hernandez, Michael King v. Luis Gil & Stuff+ Laggards Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first six months: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Watch the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Monday, May 9th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we will dig into the debut of George Kirby that took place on Sunday. A pretty heavy weekend of bidding and free agent pickups this weekend with a lot of prospects getting the call over the last week or so. We'll talk about some expectations for those players as well as maybe a few sneaky, interesting, boring players with a lot of playing time. We had a lot of email questions trickling in, covering a ton of different ground, including bat humidor technology, a new metric called Grit Plus. I think I teased that question a few weeks ago,

but that one drives it something a little bit different than actual grit. So we'll get into that question among a few others as we move along here on this Monday. But you know, the George Kirby debut was excellent, really about as much as you can hope for from a pitcher making his big league debut. Six scoreless, four hits, seven strikeouts, no walks. And if you were among the people who were excited about Matt Brash earlier this season, yes, I was definitely among that group. And you are also excited about George Kirby. The one thing you should be really excited about is that zero in the walk column because George Kirby, as many people

may know already, has very good command. It's nice to see a guy, especially in his debut, go without issuing a free pass in a start where he pitches that deep. Yeah, I mean, if you could squeeze him and Matt Brash into one person, you'd have probably the best pitcher in baseball.

Corbin Burns, yeah. But the debut as seen through the Pitching Plus model kind of agrees that it was good command. I think the thing that might surprise people is that it was a 91 Stuff Plus debut. We're looking at a guy who threw 96, so you're kind of like, seems like good stuff but uh one thing that you might notice if you sort of peruse some of the stat cast numbers is that it had it has

less ride than usual about an inch inch and a half less ride than usual and ride really matters on that kind of inch to inch level uh also the major league average uh even among starters is about 93 and a half now so um you know that is good velocity but it's not what it might sort of first appear um and then you've got uh you know some good pitches in the curveball and change that he did not use as much um and then the slider goes hard but it has less drop than average so um you know it's a bit of a uh just from sort of guessing by the movement patterns here i'm guessing it's a little bit of a gyro slider um which means less movement uh more about where he puts it but the good news is you put it in a lot of good places um i wonder if uh you know a comp for this

would be would be kind of tough let me see so kirby was uh 91 stuff plus 103 location plus 97 overall um i could see that location going up especially if he was amped a little bit and he goes back down to more like 95 uh plus um and and you know gets some command out of it um maybe who is somebody that he could be like uh maybe some of the cleveland guys yeah i see bieber in this profile like i see i see bieber with more velo on the fastball in George Kirby. It's possible, yeah. That would be the upper end. I think on the lower end, it's not a comp in terms of how he looks or how he pitches, but Eduardo Rodriguez has had a lot of success with the more command,

a lot of pitches kind of approach to pitching. I know he's not doing well right now, but he's doing okay right now. And for his career, Eduardo Rodriguez has a 417 ERA 131 whip. I would assume that Kirby's whip would be lower because his walk rate will be lower. But that might give you an idea

of the range of outcomes for him is somewhere between eduardo rodriguez um and what was your comp again oh shane beaver left beaver yeah there's uh i i i wouldn't say that like a 91 stuff less debut you write some off especially uh you know it's important to remember that we're talking about three or four starts are better. And we just got a start from Kyle Braddish where it was his first start was similar, 92-93 stuff plus. And the second start was 115. So that's why we, you know, give it another turn. And then also somebody noticed, this is fun, This is fun.

Somebody noticed that there's a three-inch difference in release points vertically for pitchers that pitch in Baltimore and then pitch somewhere else after. What? So there's definitely still calibration issues out there in baseball. That's what I would guess. I would guess it's calibration. It's not like everybody's going to Baltimore and changing their release points. So kind of crazy that it would be like that. But I do know that, you know, I've heard

sort of now, now, now I'm getting to the part where like, I say something that I don't have like great reporting on that. I've just sort of, it's like kind of gossip almost, baseball gossip, which is that some teams are fine with uncalibrated or poorly calibrated track man or Hawkeye or whatever because they know what the calibration is that they have to do in their numbers and maybe other teams don't. That's just so weird.

Well, we can figure out. We know what the the problem is so we can just correct for it but we know these teams can't like that's yeah i mean maybe there's some teams out there where it's just not much of an r&d department and they're just taking the oh man this pitcher in baltimore is a great release point yeah that's pretty weird. The other pitcher that I think was pretty popular as a pickup, if he was even available still, is Josh Winder in Minnesota. I know we haven't really talked a lot about him. He's kind of been the extra guy early on this season,

and another injury has befallen the Twins rotation. Unfortunately, an elbow injury for Chris Paddock, and given what he was dealing with at the end of last season you could imagine that could be a very lengthy absence plus bailey obers down with a groin injury right now so there was already a opening at least a temporary one for josh winder who to this point split between the bullpen and the rotation as a 20 to 4 strikeout to walk ratio in 22 and a third innings posting good ratios so far has a good track record at most of his stops in the minor leagues with some really nice ratios along the way good control pretty much everywhere he's been good if not great strikeout rates at a few of

those stops as well so i'm curious what you make of winder getting this potentially extended opportunity in the minnesota rotation yeah i think he I think he's got some fastball deception because he's got more ride than usual and an interesting release point. He's got a good four-pitch mix. His stuff plus per by appearance has kind of gone up and down. There's a, you know, his best appearance came with like 60 pitches by appearance has gone up and down. His best appearance came with 60 pitches with a 108 stuff. His worst came with the most pitches

with an 88 stuff. There is that process of coming from being lights out in three innings to having to go five and finding a way to make that go. I would point out that the average SP Stuff Plus is actually 97-ish because Stuff Plus is calculated among all the pitchers. Kind of unfair to compare Winder to... I'm just looking at Stalmont because they're both Joshes in the sorting. But Stalmont's they're both Joshes in the sorting.

But Stalmont's up there in the 120s and 130s with Stuff Plus, but he only has to throw 10 to 15 pitches per appearance. I think that Winder will – is it Winder or Winder? I thought it was Winder. I'm going to check it real quick to be sure uh i think josh in minnesota uh will uh will settle in with above average stuff for a starter i mean there's there's enough of uh you know you can you can kind of look at the what's what he's shown then you can look at the stat cast page see he has above average ride um has a kind of an interesting power change up um and then um uh a slider that doesn't look amazing

in here but i think there's some scene shifted wake effects there that that help him so um i'm actually uh i like him you know there's no real flaw because right now overall it looks like 99 98 98 uh you know stuff stuff, location, pitching, which to me is like kind of average-ish, but there's been, you know, some appearances where he's done better. There's some deception. No one's seen him. You know, it's a decent ballpark to pitch in.

I wouldn't like push him super hard, but he would be in my like top 75 if I knew he was a starting pitcher the rest of the season. Which makes me wonder, where would George Kirby be by comparison? Because the bid differences in the leagues where Kirby was available, I saw a 29 out of 100 bid in one league. Yours truly dropped a 207 out of 1,000 in Tout Wars, a 15-team mixed league.

So I think 20% is probably the rough estimate for a lot of mixed leagues. Once we get to next weekend when he's available in the NFPC, we'll obviously have a lot more leagues to pick from. But bidding was aggressive, and it wasn't just me in the places where I saw Kirby available. Yeah, I mean, I think the thing for Kirby is slightly better demonstrated strikeout rates and effects and results in the minor leagues a slightly better demonstrated strikeout rates and effects and,

and results in the minor leagues, slightly better projections. And then also for Kirby, like a slightly different kind of opportunity, right? Like Kirby is up not to cover for injury. Right. More clarity on his path to sticking.

It's up to him. If he pitches well, he stays. He's in. Yeah. So I think Kirby might make the top 60 and then you would find, you know, Winder. What is it? Winder? It is Winder. Winder in the sort of 60 to 70 range in there, maybe like the higher 60s, maybe low seventies. Um, I, you know, I, if Kirby has a great start next time out and has that sort of jump that

Bradish had in the second start, then I might be even more excited. Um, it just, the thing that I remember is that everything that said, everybody says about Kirby first is command. So that's the only reason I'm not like number one with a bullet, you know?

Uh, so I want to see a little bit more on kirby but already you know already in the top 75 because good command gives you a really high floor and he has a look he has a spot waiting for him whereas winder might be up for might be starting for two weeks you know three weeks it really could come down to a few factors do the twins want to use six starters at any point how healthy are the likes of gray ryan bundy and ober how well is chris archer pitching you know i think that's a key question too aside from the paddock factor so it's a little more bumpy in the long term if you're trying to plot out how he sticks in the rotation but there there's more than one way it can work i think with archer the numbers strike out per inning so far

has been good controls a bit of an issue still home runs have been a bit of a problem ratios look good so at a glance you look at archer and you think it's working it's fine this is good he hasn't pitched more than four and a third innings in any of his starts so far this season so he's a foreign yes he is a two times through the order and then we're turning it over to the bullpen which with their bullpen i think that can work for a spot but i also i don't know what that looks like come you know late may or june if he's still actually in this rotation or if they just move him into the long relief role isn't this just a fascinating new type of pitcher, though? This is a new type of pitcher. I mean, this is now a thing that people have in their rotations, the four-inning pitcher.

Yeah, without shame, apparently. Without shame. Which is good. I mean, look, there's a lot of space between one and six. We've talked about this before. Yeah, why do we always think, like, oh, they either come in two. There's only two brands of pitcher. You get six or you get one.

You go one inning, you go six. That's it. At least they've embraced that there are numbers in between one and six in major league baseball. Very excited for them. It's not awesome for fantasy and for watching. Although I suppose a really good four inning pitcher could still be a marquee name. You could still be excited to watch that person pitch. Yeah, could you be like,

oh, Chris Archer's pitching tonight. It could be four innings, 6Ks. Well, I think if you could make... You could have more combinations of pitchers that work together. It could almost be like tag team wrestling, where you have Archer and Yohan Duran. You could give them a nickname. They could come in.

They could have tandem entry videos. They could even have a tag routine. Tandem entry videos. Yeah, there's a lot of things you could do with something like this. Drew Rasmussen and Josh Fleming. They'd be the worst tag team champions of all time. But, hey, I mean, look, you got to lean into this kind of stuff. Oh, my God.

You know what the tag team duo for them is? Wrestling. Wrestling. Oh, wow. We are off the tracks. Just 15 minutes in. They're wrestling. A couple more twins I want to talk about. Royce Lewis

and Jose Miranda are both up right now. I think this is another question where I felt like the Royce Lewis pursuit this weekend for me was lighter than it would have been if we had bad news on Carlos Correa. It sounds like with Correa, it's not as bad as they once feared. The fracture

with the finger might not actually be a full-on fracture. There's a chance he avoids the IL, at least at the time of this recording. I wondered with Royce Lewis, though, does he stick in plan of their position given that they have that kind of opening at third base right now,

or is this just a temporary solution until Correa's back in the lineup? I think that was a big part of why I was sticking to about 5% as my high-end fab bid for Royce Lewis, because I wasn't convinced he was staying. I'm also not sure there's going to be everyday playing time, even if he sticks. Yeah, I don't think I even really put the bids in, because I was a little worried about that. And then, you know, I think you have to think about it in tandem with jose miranda tandem is the word of the day apparently because uh there's one job available it seems third base and and

what's amazing is if you actually look at urshela's in numbers i know everyone sort of swim moved right past him he's 30 he's never was that good and now he's bad but when you look at urshela's numbers he's got the lowest swing strike rate of his career the lowest strikeout rate would be the lowest strikeout rate if he had all year so he's making contact he's got the second lowest reach rate uh chase rating no chase rate of his career and he's got the best barrel rate of his career like he's actually doing It would be the second best walk rate of his career. He's doing everything right, except for get hits. Yeah, well, some of that's out of his control.

If you're putting the ball in play that often, making good decisions at the plate, and you're dealing with a deadened ball, maybe it's a little bit of bad luck. I think he could get the job back. You know what I mean? I think he should be considered the favorite i think uh because jose miranda you know could do the same thing that other rookies do and and be fine long term but not make it right away and jose

miranda is you know not necessarily doing everything right under the hood yes he has a walk rate twice his strikeout rate but that it's just because his strikeout rate is 3.6 right now. So it does make a lot of contact, which I like. But 52% of the air is, I think, a little bit problematic. That's going to lead to a low BABIP. The guys that had, for a piece that I just did, I looked at 48% or higher fly ball rates in the last three years. And the top, there were like 11 guys that did that and their combined BABIP was 220. So if you live in that

sort of 50% plus fly ball rate, I think you can only expect a 220 to 240 type BABIP at best. So that's not going to be great for him because right now he doesn't have a good babbitt it's uh and he's not barreling the ball so i mean i i'm not saying this you know i was pretty negative on kalanich you know due to some process stats when he first came up i i'm not saying the same thing about miranda you know what i mean like i i think he could figure out a lot of this i really really liked the contact rate, you know, the reach, the chase rate is pretty good. But I just don't know. He's going to do it right away. You know what I mean? And then Lewis, I think you're kind of wasting some of what he can do if you're playing him at third.

And then I'm not sure that he's offensively better than Urshela or Miranda. So I think Miranda might get two weeks to try and push Urshela off. And if Urshela's luck turns at all, then Miranda might go back down and hang out with Royce Lewis and AAA. They can float the DH a little bit because Sano's down for a while. So that does create an extra spot

that wasn't there previously. What they're doing since Alex Kirloff came back. That's why they're going to keep Miranda up, yeah. Yeah, they're playing Kirloff at first so far. So I think it's a lot of moving parts. I think there's room for one of these guys to hang on. I think you also have to ask how much do you buy into Royce Lewis really producing at the best clip he's ever produced at in the minor leagues

to begin this season. 24 games at AAA. He had a 310, 430, 563 line. There's nothing like that at any of his previous stops. He was always young for the level. Obviously, lost the 2020 season because there was no minor league season. Had the torn ACL last year, so it's been a long layoff. But he's walking more than ever.

He's cutting the K rates down and hitting the ball in the air more than ever. I mean, this looks like the Royce Lewis that people were expecting when he first was drafted. And the legs are healthy with eight stolen bases. Yeah, everything looks really good for him right now, except for the immediate playing time. So I'm really curious to see how they balance it out. But I just have to temper the expectations in the short term for both players because they're trying to really battle for what is currently one spot. Yeah, and there's really only one winner that's the point it's like it's a little bit tough when you like it better when somebody like kirby it's like just what we were doing with kirby and winder right with with kirby you're like man there's like there's no way that he's going to pitch well and

get sent down you know like that i think that's the opportunity that's in front of him whereas i think with royce Lewis and Jose Miranda, they could both do better than they're doing right now. They could both do well in the major leagues, and one of them would get sent down anyway. We should talk about Juan Yepez in St. Louis because he was highly coveted over the weekend. People were very aggressive with some bids on him.

Including me. You were one of them. Opportunity here is probably with Corey Dickerson fading, Dylan Carlson's month-plus disappointment to begin the season. All it takes is one or both of those guys playing less, and suddenly Juan Ypez can play kind of a lot for the Cardinals. And the reason that I took the leap was this. He's played two of the five games in the outfield. I just wasn't sure that was going to happen because if he doesn't do that,

then the chances that he holds his position all year are lower. But if he plays the outfield, that opens him up for the Dylan Carlson spot. So now he's coming up, and there's Dylan Carlson struggling, Corey Dickerson struggling, and, I mean, Albert Pujols is fine. I wish that Yepez was a lefty so that he could just steal, you know,

two-thirds of that DH spot and settle in with Pujols. But just the fact that he's playing the outfield and the fact that he could just steal, you know, two thirds of that DH spot and settled in with pool holes. But, uh, just the fact that he's playing the outfield and the fact that he came up and just played every game, right? He's played five in a row since getting called up.

He's hit fifth in each of those games. It was right field, three at DH and one in the left. That's also good news. He didn't hit eighth. You know what I mean? Fifth is a pretty, pretty nice spot to throw him in the lineup.

And then every once in a while, you know, and this is where I leave my normal analysis behind. I did take a bit of a leap of faith because his chase rate is not amazing. His barrel rate is okay. It's a tiny, tiny sample. But I do like how much contact he's made in the minor leagues and paired that with really good power.

So those are two things I like. And then part of me was like, you know what? He cost me like $200, right? There are going to be guys that come up where everyone goes heavier on them and cost even more than $200. So this is my chance to buy in on what could be a great run so and i needed corner infield in a couple spots and i needed i needed some power so i took my chance i as you can tell from the way i'm talking i'm a little bit nervous about it

um but uh i see a real opportunity here because I just, frankly, I don't think Corey Dickerson was a good signing, and he's a bad ball hitter, like one of the best bad ball hitters of recent baseball history, like on the level of a kind of Pablo Sandoval in terms of swinging at everything outside the zone at all times and making a lot of contact. But look what just happened to him.

He just dropped 13% in O contact percentage, which is exactly what happens to people in their early 30s, which is exactly why I had zero shares. So this is a bad ball hitter who's starting to lose his ability to make contact on the bad ball it could go it could go south pretty soon pretty quickly they didn't sign him on a big deal he could be released you know so the IPEZ I think IPEZ is coming for Dickerson's job and I think he can take it yeah even though it doesn't fit as a lefty righty combo you could just see them continuing to use

Pujols only against lefties and using Yepez as the guy that goes out there against same-handed pitching, and because he can play the corner outfield spots, that bumps up the playing time just a little bit too. The days they want to give Tyler O'Neill a breather, days they want to give Dylan Carlson a breather, that can work out. So I do

think it's harder to roster a player like Juan Yepez in a 12-team league. It's harder to stick a player like juan yupez in a 12 team league this is harder to stick with him if the playing time doesn't turn out right but five for five to begin his time with the cardinals this season probably enough to take that chance he's somewhere in between like kirby and winder you know i mean it's not it's not a perfect kirby situation where they're just like hey we have this opening and we need you to take it. But it's not the Winder situation either where he's not up temporarily, right? What's the corresponding move?

Is there somebody he's up replacing temporarily? For Winder? Yeah. No, for Yepez. Oh, Yepez? I don't remember what he came up for. It wasn't... Cardinals placed Edmondo Sosa on the COVID-19 related injury list

last week, Tuesday. And that was the day they brought up Epez? I don't think so, no. Because they sent Nutbar down more than a week ago. It wasn't for Nutbar. It wasn't for Nutbar. It wasn't for Sosa. It wasn't the corresponding for Sosa.

So I don't see this as an injury replacement situation. Yeah, you don't go five for five with starts if you're just going to yank this guy out of the lineup and send him back down. So I think there's a real path here if he continues to take advantage of the opportunity. That's the key. Got to play well to keep these spots.

The other guy that's tough is MJ Melendez because the Royals lost their backup catcher. The corresponding move was Cam Gallagher. MJ Melendez needs to play more than Cam Gallagher based on his offensive production, but he has the same problem in that you look at the guy in front of him, Sal Perez. You're going to keep Sal in your lineup pretty much every day. So I think all of this just requires Sal to be a DH more. If they're willing to do that, okay. Like MJ Melendez could probably play, what do you think, three to four times per week in the short term?

And if he hits, maybe there's a chance he plays a bit more. Yeah, I mean, he didn't have an amazing start to the season in the minor leagues, MJ. But still a really good player. I'm trying to see who's been playing DH. I see a little bit of Hunter Dozier. A little bit of Ryan O'Hearn. Yeah, is that the combo that's going out there right now?

Yeah, they move guys around a bit. I think a lot of this comes back to Carlos Santana and how long they're going to be patient with him. He's on the IL right now, so that helps. That buys him some time. Yeah, and he was mostly first basing. He only had two starts at DH. Yeah, that's interesting.

I guess there is a DH availability because you can play Hunter Dozier pretty much full time in right field and go Dozier, Benintendi, Taylor with somebody backing up like Olivares or somebody. Yeah, because Olivares just went on the IELTS and now you're not playing him. He started

four in a row before he got hurt during that doubleheader on Sunday. So if you push Sal Perez over to DH more often and use Ryan O'Hearn as a backup corner outfielder? I don't think you get to play Ryan O'Hearn at all, for what it's worth. Not to be mean to Ryan O'Hearn. Right, yeah.

Just a guy on the depth chart for me. I had been out on him because catchers take longer to peak offensively. They debut at older ages. They just have a harder job overall. And so, you know, I just, I'm usually out on young catchers and try not to spend too much in Fabu Palooza situations. The chase rate looks good in a tiny sample. He's already hit a barrel.

Like, you know, there's some good things about what he's doing, making a lot of contact and he actually is a sort of a patient guy. So, you know, there's a lot to like there. I, and I thought, I guess I thought there was more people in his way, but, uh, you know, let's not pretend that pushing Sal Perez to DH, uh, at 31 is not going to be kind of slightly momentous. You know what let's not pretend that pushing Sal Perez to DH at 31 is not going to be kind of slightly momentous. You know what I mean? Like, he's doing this, like, kind of once a week-ish DHing.

Wow. How is he only 31? He turns 32 tomorrow, so happy birthday, Sal, if you happen to listen to the podcast. He's going to turn 32? That dude's knees, that dude's body has to be 40 from the number of games he's caught it is three out of the last six at dh it's happening maybe it's happening it's happening he hits like a dh now i mean like that's that's the truth like he's he's become this

guy that hits the ball hard so often that you can much more easily justify playing him frequently as a DH than you could earlier in his career when it was low average, low OBP, runs into a homer and doesn't do much else. Now he's just scalding the ball. Yeah. All right. Yeah. I think there's a – okay. There's more of an opportunity here than I thought.

I'm scalding myself. That's why the tone. I dismissed him too quickly, damn it. I got a boring one for you. Brandon Drury. He's sneaky interesting in Cincinnati. One of our listeners, Sean, emailed us probably 10 days ago and gave us the, hey, something up with Brandon Drury

kind of playing a lot in Cincinnati. I finally saw him getting picked up in leagues. I picked him up in a couple places. Some leagues he's got second base, third base, and outfield eligibility. So yeah, you got middle, corner, and outfield. Prominent spot in the lineup. Yep, it's a bad team, but guess what? Guys that can hit for

power in that park and play a lot on a bad team, they're going to be somewhat productive. And I think that might actually describe Brandon Drury in a pretty fair sort of way. A lot of infield time right now, moving between second and third base, Moose DH-ing quite a bit. I know they're missing a lot of guys, eventually India and Votto, and a few guys come back, and that shifts things around a bit.

But he's hit second six straight games, never hits really any lower than sixth, other than the first handful of games that he got the call. He's playing against lefties and righties, not just a small-side platoon guy right now. Yeah, yeah. I think there's a fairly large job he could carve out even if everyone's healthy, I feel like. You know, like the DH right now is if everyone's healthy

and Moose is out in the field, is Colin Moran? Yeah. I'm not, you know, I don't think he's terrible, but, like, he could beat him. And the nice thing about Drury, too, and I think we might have mentioned this when we first talked about him, he's doing everything under the hood about the best of his career, honestly. He's got the best swing strike rate of his career, one of his best strikeout best of his career honestly uh he's got the best swing strike rate of his career

the one of his best strikeout rates of his career the best uh one of the best reach rates chase rates of his career definitely the best in the last four years his best barrel rate uh his best max ev except for uh 2016 which was when he was a young young buck and had the best season of his career so um yeah there's here's a guy i think that i don't know if he's gonna have like a 289 2016, which was when he was a young buck and had the best season of his career. Here's a guy I think that, I don't know if he's going to have a 289 ISO to continue that, but it is a nice park. I think that if you gave him a full season, this is a guy that would hit 260 with 20 homers, 22 to 25 homers maybe. So definitely useful.

You know, that's perfect. What I've found is I have, you know, a few shares of his and where everyone's hurting, I just need someone. Yeah, I like having a player like this that can cover just about any gap on the bench, right? It gives you maybe a little more flexibility if you are like me and you're chasing some pitching categories. Maybe you can get away with two hitters on your bench instead of three

because you've got a guy that can cover almost any spot. And I think that's appealing. It might not be a guy that stays on your roster for six weeks, but if you get through May and you use him two or three times for partial weeks and he comes through, that can actually work. So definitely some things that are interesting in the oh and also kind of a fun in mfbc formats

they have that fun like sort of you mentioned partial weeks yeah they have that fun thing where like you could have a hitter like him on the bench where he's away for the first series and then he's home over the weekend then you're like yeah i would like to have some jewelry at home for the weekend please yeah home streamer in more shallow leagues. So not necessarily a player picking up anything that's 12 or smaller. Let's move on to a question that's been sitting on the rundown for about a week or so. This one came in from Alan. Alan wanted to come up with a metric to measure getting more out of your tools and your ability than others.

And it was called Grit Plus, which maybe we'd have to rename it because as he explained, he said he's got David Eckstein as the proprietor of the algorithm for Grit Plus. Board members including Brett Gardner, Joe McEwing, and Trott Nixon. They had a harder time coming up with pitchers that fit this criteria. Top choices included Nestor Cortez, Mark Burley, and Sergio Romo. But the whole concept is just getting more than expected out of a player,

which I think the essence of this drives that player development and honing individual skills and investing in your own game. So I think it's more of like dev plus or exceed plus because it's hard work. It's optimizing your swing. It's cleaning up your mechanics. It's training. It's coaching. It's more of like dev plus or exceed plus because it's hard work. It's optimizing your swing.

It's cleaning up your mechanics. It's training. It's coaching. It's all of those things. And I think a good recent example of this on the pitching side for me is Luis Garcia in Houston. Luis Garcia of the Astros was not supposed to be this good, supposed to be. And I think there's a lot of other players like that i think we've talked about them before where you've got these kind of 45 50 grade players who end up popping to be above average regulars that to me kind of comes back to something in player development more than anything else

yeah that's interesting i was i was thinking more along the lines of maybe like a chris bassett um you know many many pitches many, not the greatest stuff plus, but a good location on many pitches. And then it also just fits his personality. But, you know, I wonder, in your definition, somebody like Tyler Medjiel or Kyle Wright would count. I think so. I mean, I think Kyle Wright,

see, I think if you're looking at it from everyone, regardless of when they were drafted or the amount of their signing bonus they sign as an international free agent if you put everyone on a level playing field then you can include everybody regardless of because that's a weird one to include right like this guy was supposed to be this good fifth overall pick yeah yeah but the scouting grades and looking at the old fan graph scouting grades this is from 2020 that has graph scouting grades, this was from 2020. Then it has a 40 plus. So I think if you just want to look at it more from the,

what did people think this player was going to be and what did this player become? He'd be on the path to a significant exceed. So I, I do think that we should include players like this because sometimes players are not drafted in the correct order. They're rarely drafted in the correct order. They're rarely drafted in the correct order.

And I think we should look at development and try and isolate situations where teams are getting it right and try and figure out how we can be right in long-term situations or in the case what we were talking about earlier, right? If you think about a Josh Winder, that's why josh winder versus george kirby even though the playing time situation right now might keep it from being an apples to apples sort of comparison it's interesting to think about how close they could be in actual value if playing time were in fact even even though the perception of those two players based on scouting reports and expectations are pretty significantly different yeah yeah i it

player development is so fascinating because you just have all these different pathways to it and yes it's not linear and then you know i think also people think of uh kyle wright as like the sort of typical player development win whereas it's probably somebody more like Nestor Cortez. Right. Cortez and Luis Garcia, I think, are the two best examples. Cortez, I think every time people look at him, they wonder, how is he this good, and when is it going to fall apart? And then he comes back and pitches well again and keeps it going.

I mean, right now, he's pitching better than he did last season. He's got his K rate up at 32% so far. Walk rate pretty much in line with last year. He's brought the homers down early on this season. We're not expecting him to pitch to a sub two ERA all season. No one's expecting that, but it's looking more like 2021 was closer to his true baseline than any of us expected. Yeah. Well, here's another way of looking at it. More along the lines of Nestor Cortez, I was thinking. I took all of the pitchers that had thrown more than 100 innings,

and then I took their... I only looked at the pitchers that had an above-average pitching plus. These are supposed to be above-average pitchers. And then I sorted them by reverse stuff plus. So who has the worst stuff among starting pitchers and has yet been an above average starting pitcher and i kind of like the first name michael pinata uh that i think he's gritty dude i think he liked how long he stayed around the game how little he has the fastball just keeps getting worse and he just got that slider and somehow he's still here. Miles Michaelis, Dylan Bundy, Ross

Stripling, Michael Waka. I think this is your grip plus leaderboard. These are guys that are getting a lot more out of their respective arsenals than you would expect for sure. Is Paul Blackburn close to the top of that list? We get a lot of paul blackburn cortez is near the top of that list right now noah sindicard is here zach granky this stage of his career sure wasn't always a grinder like this does make the list why doesn't blackburn paul blackburn's a mystery to me i mean and i know the park is playing real extreme and doesn't have above average pitching plus but he does have low uh low stuff plus and high command plus or high location plus yeah i mean i think he he counts if i open it up a little bit but yeah i mean he belongs in

that list anthony disclafani dude good call yeah i think he's right there but uh yeah but then you're right we're conflating a few things i mean there's like the is it is it um someone who has low stuff and is as just a command artist that's making the most out of it that that does kind of fit this you know x in a little bit for me i i would say like the pitching he he doesn't have he didn't have power. So he was just pesky, and he commanded people to death, like bat commanded. Do you think on the hitting side, do you think Taylor Ward would count? If anything close to what he's doing right now is something he sustains all season.

It's a little bit like Kyle Wright. He's a first-round pick. There were people that thought he'd be good back when he was drafted, 26th overall in 2015, but it's been a bit of a long road for him to get there. Part of that was defensive position, but we're looking at a guy that's never swung less at pitches outside the zone and is doing more damage than ever when he connects. Everything seems like it's falling into place. This looks like a know player keeping at it sort of success story more than anything else

yeah i think this you know i'm surprised that taylor ward didn't end up on the on the on the a's by now uh because i i feel like that there's something that the a's have figured out which is like you know if you give a player long enough uh if they've shown it's almost like that uh what was that adage that ron chandler has like if they've shown it they have it draft skills not roles once you once you once you have a skill once you demonstrate a skill you own it yeah that sort of deal and so i wonder if you know part of what the a's do is to uh just take guys that aren't showing it right now or just showed it right because then they're like okay they just they showed it so they own it like so this is gonna you know if we give him enough time he'll he'll he'll make it you know

it was like that's sort of what happened with loriano and you know like was he was facing a roster crunch in houston and he had shown some some promise but he wasn't showing it at the moment so they bought low um so that's why that anyway that's a little bit of a random rant but uh taylor ward i mean he just proves that like you know sometimes you just got to take a little bit longer also i think you know being this good at 28 means that um he just he wasn't a superstar like he wasn't so good before his peak that he could be in the major leagues you know he had to basically get to his peak to make the major leagues so i don't think that necessarily he's an amazing uh dynasty or keeper league asset because it took him this it took him

till 28 to make it i think rowdy telez counts here i mean you go back to his old scouting grades and in part of this is the the uphill battle where i think when people who grade players write a scouting report a bat only first baseman is facing a steep uphill battle to end up in the aggregate with a 50 like it's very difficult for that profile to be a 50 maybe we haven't seen enough yet but also you you see in the in like the fan graphs right up 55 game power 60 raw power uh so you had the power they gave him a 40 45 hit tool i have to say you know having a career 23 strike a 23 and a half percent strikeout rate right now is a way good outcome for a 40 45 grade on the hit tool right so i i think

that he maybe he was i mean i've heard that he can't hit the fastball um but and maybe you know quote unquote slider slider speed uh bat but um you but people said the same about Nate Lowe, and I think his struggles have continued in some ways with the fastball, whereas Rowdy's figured something out. Yeah, Rowdy's got five homers against fastballs alone this year, crushing them, 368 average, 921 slug right now. And that has been a problem for him in the past, but interesting to see that

he's made some adjustments on that i think he could maybe fit into this conversation but that player type that sort of player exceeds expectations and gets a job or in limited chances doesn't do enough and doesn't get another chance and ends up back at triple a that's just kind of the the line you have to walk if that's the player that you are. But definitely something here. And I think Dev Plus, like Development Plus, Dev Plus is where I would want to go with that. Yeah, I kind of like Michaelis' capturing all of this, you know? I like Michaelis on the pitching side because he had to go away.

You know, like he had to go to Japan. So he was on that like up or down. It took him a long time to make it, but he figured something out that does work. Absolutely. Thanks a lot for that email, Alan. We got an email about bat humidor technology,

which I think is pretty interesting. Cause we talk a lot about the ball. We talked a little bit about the bat. You had a great story about how just in a batch of a dozen bats, players can figure out which two are actually the good bats and all that but the question here comes from royce royce wanted to know does relative humidity the bats have anything to do with exit velocity it seems strange the guys just leave all their bats sitting in a rack in the dugout exposed to the weather of

the day then presumably they get loaded on a plane and cargo or set in a room near the batting cages until the next game anyone who has split wood in in Wisconsin knows that good dry wood in the winter basically jumps apart when the mall hits it. Damp wood just absorbs the energy with a thud. Yep, it matters. And Ichiro is like such a great guy, such a crazy, crazy person. He was out in front of this. I think everybody will be like Ichiro eventually, especially the stars. More and more of them are storing their bats in humidors as they travel um didn't it wasn't christian yellich like didn't he get a bad humidor i thought i heard that anyway there's more there's

definitely more and more stars that are doing it and it's it is definitely something that matters and i know other ones that don't even travel with human oars, what they will do to counteract this is continuously weigh their bats because you can see them getting waterlogged, right? And so just the weight, you can see it. And so they'll continuously weigh their bats and then buy a new batch if it gets too heavy. So there are a couple ways around it um but yeah i think the best players think about their equipment this way and

you're going to see more and more bad humidors because it absolutely does matter i will confirm that i have never had to split wood before. That is a brand of difficult labor that I did not live far enough north to have to do it. I am not part of a family that has a cabin or anything of that nature, but I have loaded wood onto a trailer before. I've done that, but I have not actually split wood. I probably would have cut off my own foot, to be honest.

Probably not real good with an ax. I'm pretty bad with scissors, so they won't give me an ax. The next question here comes from Adam. Adam wants to know, for Justin Verlander, he was just taking a look at the peripherals the other day and saw that he had his lowest swing strike rate since 2014. We didn't get to see the immediate results from the sticky stuff enforcement last year because Verlander, of course, was out recovering from Tommy John surgery. from Tommy John surgery. He's just curious, what's the difference in Verlander pre and post surgery

with his stuff and spin rates? How does that impact how we'd rank him going forward? Yeah, it's an uncomfortable conversation, but 100% his spin is down. It's around 2,400. During his peak, it was 2,600.

That's absolutely on the level of uh what you might lose if you had to switch uh switch stuff um uh for your grip uh you know you can see that the vertical movement on his foreseam fastball is down and it's uh he's not getting as much ride as he used to uh it's a little bit harder to see in raw numbers. It's an interesting thing here. So you might see that he gets 11.6 inches of drop right now and he got 11.4 last year. So you say, well, that's not a big difference.

That hasn't changed. However, he threw a half tick harder last year. And so when you lose a half tick, you should gain ride. And he gained less ride. So relative to the league, he has less ride. Relative to the league and relative to his velocity, he has less ride this year. So that's why I like to use the versus average stuff on StatCast. So you can see this year versus average, he's got 0.5 inches

of ride. Last year he had 1.8 inches of ride. And at his peak, he had 2.9 inches of ride better than league average. So the difference between like 2019 and now is two and a half inches of a ride. That's absolutely the source of his missing swinging strikes. 100%. I think he's being helped a little bit by the fact that the ball is not jumping out. And I believe that if the humidors start to dry the balls out relative to last year in the wetter months, we may see a larger home run rate going forward and that's what you see with zips with a 1.6 home run per nine going forward um and the bat is on the other extreme saying 1.24 homers per nine both of those are higher than what he's

got right now also those systems are all projecting him to have an 11k9 where he has basically a 9k9 right now and those systems don't know anything about sticky stuff enforcement it's a good point yeah i wonder if you're ranking him for the rest of the season i know you just did a new set of rankings 20 to 25 among pitchers is that about right i mean i wanted to kind of push him and push him you know like i like he's healthy he's throwing pretty hard he's got such great results um and uh and so i have him all the way up at six oh you got him at six okay you got him way up there i mean the results are amazing the stuff plus the numbers are good he's one of the few very there's like a really short list of people who have 107 108 type stuff plus with 108 type location like that's he

he he leapt to you know uh he basically his numbers look like in in pitching plus look very close to brandon woodruff's so uh i think it's like one of those things where he's like come off of a peak that the peak was so high that he's still very good. You know what I mean? Sure. Well, the control has been really good so far, too. If you compare that to the walk rates compared to what he had elsewhere back when his K rates were lower during brief times in Detroit, that's the other skill that's kind of changed. So, you know, even if it's a 34040 era and a 110 whip the rest of the way with

a lower k rate than you expected based on where you were drafting him you're still really happy with him i would say that the fact that you have him at six doesn't point to a massive crash on the horizon even with some of the concerns yeah so it's weird like i can agree with everything you're saying and say yes yes yes yes he's not as good as he used to be but he's still damn good so wish i had him in more places liked him a lot during draft season played the game of chicken waited too long a few places and didn't get him nearly as much as i would have liked to thanks a lot for that question adam uh here's a name that i should have thrown out there earlier but i waited until now because there was a question about him what type of player do you think yadiel hernandez can be with regular run for the nationals and this

is a guy that our friend nando dafino has liked for a long time loves this guy a peak nando guy and 34 year old cuban who doesn't have any defensive value but finally playing and playing in the heart of the order when he gets chances to go out there. And I think... Great bat to ball. I think of him almost as another Ty France type player in terms of who he is as a hitter, where maybe it's more average over power, good run production because of where he hits in the order. I don't know if I'm doing that because Ty France is also a Nando guy,

but that's where I'm setting expectations. I mean, you're talking about a guy who's going to have a better than average strikeout rate, maybe doesn't have plus-plus raw power. You're talking about a 108 at max EV. That's, you know, like Shohei Otani has elite plus raw power. He has a 119 max EV, you know?

So, you know, even though the barrel rate is good right now, I think, yeah, I wouldn't expect much more power than he's shown, which is a 176 ISO. And so you're talking about a guy who can hit 275 with, you know, if he had a full season in him, I'd say like 18 to 22 home or something like that. That's kind of tight for Ancien, isn't it? Yep, and probably good counting stats.

I think that's the, at least until they start trading players away in DC. But the specific question we got was from Scott. He's in a league that uses OBP instead of average. He was considering dropping Marcelo Zuna to add Yadiel Hernandez. Could also pick up Harrison Bader or Anthony Santander though. And I wondered like Bader, Bader's running a lot. Speed's hard to get.

I'm kind of, like, snap willing to just say, go get Bader. I know it's not an amazing slash line. He's at 239, 317, 348. But he's got the K rate down again this year. He's got some of the walks back. That was the one kind of skill that went the other way last season. He's 7 for 7 as7 as a base stealer in 28 games. He plays a lot because of his

defense and center field. That slash line is still a league average sort of line. When you hit a league average player, and you play defense like Harrison Bader does, the playing time keeps coming. I'm really tempted to say that's the move. I don't think he's losing a job. I don't think he's losing a job, and he's

stealing bases. That's a hard one. I think Yadiel's going a job and he's and he's stealing bases yeah that's a hard one i think yadiel is going to steal some bases too but you're going to get like two or three and then you know the rest of the package kind of like a 275 20 homer hitting guy is only useful uh if you really need the batting average right and then you know cutting marcelo zuna k-rate is pretty much where it's always been he's walking a bit less than he has in recent years. Still hitting the ball pretty hard. 11.6% barrel rate so far. I mean, pre-2021, he was at 15.4 in the shortened season, 12.1 back in 2019. I think he's going to go on a tear at some point. He looks mostly like the same player he was before. It's really a question of do you want power and run production or do you want a chance at some speed on the bottom of your roster yeah i would say it was gonna like i know

that his chase rate is the worst of his career so he's definitely pressing on some front but he's his max ev is right where it normally is which is plus his barrel rate is there uh you know he's somehow not striking out despite having the same whiff rate as ever i think he's gonna go on a tear at some point thanks a lot for that email, Scott might be a whole situation there, but you should find a way to get Bader on the roster. If you can, I had a question coming about Michael King in the Yankees organization,

getting chances. And that's kind of the extra reliever bridge guy right now. And it's surprising to me. I brought this up with Keith law on the athletic baseball show on Friday, Louise heel down at triple a, just had a good start going into the weekend, but it's really to me i brought this up with keith law on the athletic baseball show on friday louise heel down at triple a just had a good start going into the weekend but it's really struggled his control davy garcia looks like a bit of a mess right now clark schmidt we talked about him earlier this season it just doesn't seem like they have a clear immediate plan to get him fully stretched out so they could use him like a starter and And it led Manny to ask us if Michael King might be a starter in waiting for the Yankees. Should they lose any one of Cole, Severino, Nestor, Tyon, or Jordan Montgomery?

Clearly not a spot based on how everyone's performing. But the question was really, who gets that spot start? Who gets the extra opportunity if one of those five goes down? Clark Schmidt, 35 pitches, 26 pitches, 54 pitches, 16 pitches. Generally above average stuff, but could drop below average, at least below 100 if asked to go 80 because he hasn't done that yet this year. Michael King, on the other hand, has recently been

pitching 26 pitches, 33, 34. He topped out at 45, but that was earlier in the season. It almost seems like he's trending towards more of a traditional reliever. If you're talking about the last three starts, the last three appearances 26 pitches 33 pitches 16 pitches 34 before that he has much better stuff plus uh than clark and could go all the way to you know 80 pitches and still have like a 105 to 110 stuff plus i think at 80 pitches so i think i'd rather have Michael King do it. I just think the usage is unclear.

Yeah, I kind of think based on usage that they would turn to Luis Gil if they had a spot open because he's working like a starter at AAA, went five innings last time out, 9Ks, no walks, maybe a really big step back in the right direction for him.

So I guess if you're in an AL- only league, like Michael King as an extra guy as your ninth pitcher is probably fine because the Ks are there, the ratios are good. Hard tone him otherwise. But yeah, if you're stashing for future starts, I think it's heel despite some of the struggles with walks. And think about how well the Yankees are playing and how well this kind of King slash Schmidt longer pitcher on the Major League pen is working. And then you could say, oh, if there is a corresponding move, it's like, okay, tie on to IL, heel up, heel gets the first four innings,

and we'll just use King and Schmidt like we always do right after him. Then the fact that Heal's third pitch is inconsistent, he can't always command it, matters less, and you get a Chris Archer situation out of Luis Heal, where he's four innings, six strikeouts, one earned run, and give it to King or Schmidt for a couple innings, and then you've got to win. Yeah, I couple of innings. And then you got to win.

Yeah. I think that's what they would be most likely to do. So if that's enough to bump King off your radar, because you're playing in a 12 or 15 team mixed league, totally makes sense to me just because they've got that depth is one of the things we liked about this team throughout the winter is they have plenty of interesting arms that could turn to if injuries really broke things apart.'s too late to too late to point this one out but he's amazing uh in one of my leagues with the sprp he's like uh we've got holds and wins and uh sp slots he's so

good like i have him and jorge lopez uh you know in my sp slots when i don't have a starter this is so so great to have the like extra couple relievers giving you innings so uh that's about the best use i can think of we got a question from oj about alexis diaz because the reds could possibly turn to him as a closer at some point oj pointed out the stuff plus number is absolutely brutal 68.9 that is i think the lowest stuff number i've ever brought up on the show it might be the lowest one i've ever seen for a non pit not a non-position player so what's going on here is there actually something that the model just doesn't like that's unique to Diaz. I think we got to look at this one, man. This is really bizarre.

In his last three starts, last three appearances, Diaz had a 23 stuff plus on the first. On the third, he had 133 stuff plus. Something's going on here. I wonder if the pitch classification is jumping around on them or something if yeah because he's fastball slider based on the fan graphs page right at 95 4 on the fastball for the average velocity 85 2 on the slider it this looks like a pretty typical relief profile he's you know he's not he's not small oj pointed out the extension's good so maybe like there's a little bit of that,

a little bit of deception possibly getting lost. No, I mean, we have extension in the model. Yeah, extension's in your model, so it's not that missing. And the release point, people have low release points and good ride. That's in the model for sure. I could sit here and try to say something negative about his movement patterns like he he does not get good ride on his fastball and the 95 mile an hour fastball these days uh the average for a reliever is 94 and a half so he's he's got a little bit above average

fastball but 95 isn't't what it used to be. No good ride, no good fade on the fastball either, or whatever you want to call that, run. And then a slider that goes 85, that's not very fast for a slider. It gets a decent drop, though. So I'm a little surprised that that slider isn't above average. Let me look at my per pitches. Maybe that'll tell us something. Player pitch. That's a decent drop, though. So I'm a little surprised that that slider isn't above average.

Let me look at my per pitches. Maybe that'll tell us something. Player pitch. I think this is a tough game to play with the Reds' bullpen, though, just in general. This team is not winning. It seemingly has designs on using a committee. It seems to have.

Like, if this is a fantasy question, yeah. All right, here we go. Curveball. It says the four seam is the problem. The slider is not great either, 87, but the four seam is 65 stuff plus. Yikes. So it really doesn't like that four seam. So I'm going to ask my modeler. I had actually a question about this player,

and maybe we'll get a better answer for you. It is concerning to see someone that has such good results too, right? That you're kind of like, what's going on with this? And then also the big swing from 20 stuff plus to 133 stuff plus is just really weird. But then Diaz hasn't been amazing in the minors either. In 2019, he had a five era but the strikeouts have generally been there so i will say let's i'll look into it some more all right one more name to throw at you dylan peters also a bit of a laggard in the stuff plus

does not like fastball he lows up 92, career best for him on the fastball. And the results have been good so far, even though the walk rate's been really high. In my mind, when I think of Dylan Peters, I think of control first. And I'm looking at the results, and even for most of his career, that's actually not the case. He somehow picked up the good control reputation in my mind, despite the fact that he does not really have good control.

Yeah, yeah. He also suffers in the have good pitches realm. He has a 118 slider, and then everything else is below 90. So I think he's a slider guy who has enough other pitches to be good in short starts. But I don't believe in him long-term. Big correction coming. It's not going to work. Let me see appearance by appearance. Yeah, the best stuff plus he's put up this year, of course,

are in those appearances with fewer pitches. So once he gets over 40 pitches, he's generally a 75 stuff plus guy like i just that's really pushing it in terms of like you know trying to get by with his location plus numbers are good i think what he does is just live outside the zone right live outside the zone with a lot of pitches and only come in ever with the slider he's only faced double digit batters in one of his appearances so far so i don't think you're gonna find it's only gonna i don't think you're gonna find like a good nl only deep deep league arm here i think this is just gonna be a meltdown to come and it's just a matter of time before it happens so be very very careful 38 37.6 zone rate the lowest of his career yeah

he's just living outside the zone he's gonna take the walk over the hit or the homer i just don't i don't think that's gonna last i think teams are going to catch on to that the more and more they see him especially within the division but thanks a lot for that question rob you've got a question for a future episode, send that our way via email ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com or drop it in underneath this video in the comment section on YouTube. Be sure to also subscribe

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