Rates & Barrels - Goodbye to Hitter's Counts, the Importance of Handling Sliders & Fastball Laggards

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

Eno and DVR discuss the disappearance of hitter's counts thanks to reduced fastball usage, hitters that are better equipped to take advantage of a more slider-heavy environment, struggling hitters that continue to lag in production as the end of May draws closer, and a few pitchers in need of adjustments due to poor fastballs.  Eno's story about the loss of hitter's counts as fastball use changes: https://theathletic.com/3331525/ Rundown -- Goodbye to Hitter's Counts -- Hitters With Good Results Against Sliders -- Good Against Sliders, Bad Against Fastballs? -- Struggling Bats: What To Do? -- Where Did Robbie Grossman's Power Go? -- Making Sense of Nelson Cruz's 2022 -- Rebound Coming from Yasmani Grandal? -- Making Sense of Jeffrey Springs -- Fastball 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Thursday, May 26th, Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris on this episode. We will explore the piece that Eno had published at The Athletic on Thursday morning. There are no longer hitters counts. We'll dig into why and we'll dig into a way you might be able to take advantage of that with your fantasy teams in the immediate

and long-term future. We'll talk about some struggling hitters who could be drops in shallow leagues, possibly by lows in some cases, try and diagnose a few more issues with guys that are struggling as we move through the end of the second month of the season. Among those players, not someone you would drop, but someone that we're always curious about, Wander Franco. Kind of wondering where his power has been through the first two months of the season. So lots of ground to cover today.

And before the show, I learned that Eno, like many people, does not peel bananas correctly. So I feel an obligation to the listeners of this podcast to bestow... Blew my mind. The occasional nugget of life wisdom. I have very few things in my life that I can pass on that I consider to be valuable knowledge to other people. Like what I do is mostly in the useless information department. But I imagine that most people listen to this podcast are like Eno prior to today, where they take a banana and they peel from the top where the stem is, where the bananas connect

to each other. And oftentimes as you're kind of breaking that stem, you're bruising the top of the banana, which is unpleasant. The banana is still edible. It's fine. It's just kind of weird to bruise the banana and then eat it.

Maybe you cut the bruise part off. And you're wasting the banana and you don't want to do that. My advice, my tip, is to take the banana, flip it upside down, and peel it from the bottom.

You will bruise the banana considerably less. And even though there's not a little handle, a little pull tab to grab onto, it will peel very easily. So that is what I have.

Deceptive pull tab, you're right. Yeah, there's no visual cue there, but I assure you it will peel very easily. So I'm just happy to offer something for the greater good because I so rarely have something like that that people are unaware of. I have a banana upstairs.

It's slightly overdue. It might peel itself at a certain point. But I might have it with lunch and test your theory. That's a smoothie banana in our house. That's what that becomes. Overripe bananas into smoothies or banana bread. But the problem with banana bread is you need to that becomes yeah overripe bananas into smoothies or banana bread but the problem with banana bread is you need to have like five overripe bananas yeah yeah and if you have five overripe bananas you bought too many bananas i i think you basically

went on vacation and forgot that you bought bananas and just forgot to throw them in the car as a snack but uh the uh the other bit of banana talk, I was going through the Rolling Stone top 500 albums of all time when I was back home in Wisconsin. And my dad likes to have a few cocktails and turn on music. And he likes mostly classic rock. So Zeppelin to Aerosmith, that era is kind of his sweet spot, right? So we're going through the list and talking about the best albums of all time. And of course, after a few cocktails, he's kind of pushing back on the list, which I had nothing to do with. I was simply the messenger.

Did you know that Aerosmith probably stole Stairway from Spirit? I did not know that. No, there's a band called, yeah, I think the band is called Spirit. You should check it out. Just Google it. It's really close. Led Zeppelin stole Stairway. Yeah, it's really, really close.

Hmm. Anyway, the banana thing that was on my mind from that whole thing was the Velvet Underground and Nico, that album was actually, I think, a top 25 album. And it was one of the albums high on the list that I'd really never heard anything from. And I started listening to it and was really digging it. So just throwing that out there too. Again, trying to add some

pleasantries to life at a time where we are maybe searching a little harder than usual to find some things to feel good about. But we're going to talk about your story because your story was really good. And it's really interesting because the way teams attack hitters is just different than it used to be. And it kind of drives this idea that there are no longer hitters counts. So first off, what led you to dig into this? Was you watching a game? Are you talking to players? And what even inspired this?

I think it's just uh you know i wrote a piece for fangraphs a few years ago is that like time for you know the league to go to 70 sliders and ever since then i've just been tracking breaking ball usage across the league and it keeps going up and the weird part for me is that it keeps going up but whiff rates on breaking balls keep going up too. And I think that part of that is pitch design. We're just like, you know, we're leaning really far into sweepers. I talked to Griffin Jacks about his, he has a power sweeper.

He's one of the hardest sweepers in the league. And then there's a new pitch probably coming up through the ranks in, I heard, maybe the Yankees and Dodgers are investing heavily in a 93-mile-an-hour gyro slider. And when I say gyro slider, that's a slider that doesn't move. If you looked in StatCast or Brooks Baseball, it would look like kind of a 0-0, meaning it's a lot of bullet spin and um yeah it's not straight because straight means it's not dropping it's like what a pitch would do with gravity so the reason it works though is because every other pitch moves right it's like the one pitch it doesn't move and everything else moves and then it goes 95 so So the research on stuff suggests that any pitch,

any breaking pitch over 85, almost any pitch over 85, it's a breaking pitch, is good. And so I think some teams are like, oh, if that's true, let's develop a bunch of Emmanuel Classes. Let's have a bunch of guys who throw 93, 95 on our cutters, you know? Um, so that's happening. And right now at the major league level, the sweepers happening. So I think we're getting better at pitch design.

So that's, um, you know, saying slider is not monolith anymore. There's all these like crazy designed up sliders that are, that, um, that are helping the whiff rate stay high but i think the main thing is i think maybe more hitters should sit slider because we're getting very close to the amount of um four seam fastballs equaling the amount of sliders sliders are like 24 25 getting close there uh four seamers are all the way down to like sort of 32 33 if those numbers were equal i think you could do just as good a job sitting slider as sitting fastball

but the sort of general philosophy and hitting still is hit the fastball well there still seems to be a difference a pretty significant difference between fastball. Well, there still seems to be a difference, a pretty significant difference between fastball usage among starters and relievers, right? I mean, the most extreme example, the league should throw 70% sliders. Matt Whistler read that story and then became that guy. And now he's throwing even more sliders. He's got a 93.8% slider usage rate right now for the Rays. He's thrown 6.3% four-seamers. It's only a 90-mile-an-hour fastball, so yeah, he probably shouldn't throw it. But I mean, that's the extreme short relief example. Yeah, Whistler came up a lot. I talked to Griffin Jacks, who's with the Twins. Whistler was

converted into a 70% slider guy with the Twins, and they also picked up Sergio Romo. So they're leaning into this whole idea. Yeah, and Matt Whistler, once upon a time, was a starter. It's really hard to believe now. The only starter that's anything like that is Jake Junis, who right now I think is still throwing 60% sliders. And he's a quote-unquote starter. He's kind of that 4-5 inning, 80-pitch kind of starter.

Right, the follower that doesn't follow, the follower that starts. Yeah, but... Well, wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait. Jake Chunas has gone at least five innings in every outing so far this season. He's made six appearances. Yeah, but I think he's been really efficient. How many pitches?

It's like 80 pitches still. Yeah, it's still a low pitch count. And I'm looking at the batter's face, 16, 19, 21, 24, 24, 22. A little higher than I would have thought. Yeah, okay. I thought he was more like in that 16, 17. But it's working for him, and I talked to him about it. And he was just like, hey, it's my best pitch.

Why would I throw my other ones? And if you look at stuff plus, it's amazing. His slider is a 140 stuff plus, and and then all his other pitches are like 80 minus yeah well okay but if you have one pitch that's that good and you can throw it that often and it's still effective then keep doing it i think that's the question anytime you have a pitch that gets swings and misses a really effective pitch use it more see what happens use it more see what happens eventually you probably have some diminishing returns if everything else is used so infrequently or is so ineffective then eventually that amazing pitch isn't going to get as many whiffs as it did right it's not going to

be as good as it was because that's what hitters are looking for so you do have to find that balance but i think what this suggests to me is that we weren't there yet we weren't even close to what usage equilibrium we should be at for a lot of pitchers because there was maybe still some some older school thinking or even new school thinking too where it was established fastball establish the fastball and hit the fastball you see how these things go hand in hand right but then there was also the have this other pitch to throw. If you're a righty, you have a pitch for lefties that you only throw to lefties.

Well, maybe that pitch wasn't very good either because you're only throwing it 10% of the time. You're not really working on it that much, right? And then people know when you're going to throw things too. I struggled about this with Brady Singer because the fastball and slider are good, but he's had a couple good starts, and everyone's like, oh, the changeup, the changeup.

Well, the changeup doesn't look good he doesn't locate it well and it doesn't have good stuff how much does it matter that he has it right well maybe it does maybe it doesn't well then it goes back to a conversation we've had probably a few times on the show where it's like multiple pitches are good generally good but if the third and fourth pitch are truly bad pitches maybe it's not as helpful as if they're just average pitches right there's there's got to be some variation to be balls i think you know yeah if you can't throw it for a strike you can't get guys to chase it what good is it why does rodone not throw his change up he can't control it it's a good pitch he just can't control it so

if it's going to be a ball people see see change if they spit on it so i mean i think you know slider command is a big part of this and you know if you look at the slider command list um as i did on twitter the other day um you'll see that there's a lot of kind of like uh maybe surprising uh pictures i know surprising pitchers. I know Kyle Gibson is on it. Let me see if I can pull this up real quick. Here it is. Tyler Wells is number one. Of course, Mr. Pitching Plus. The Rates and Barrels, he's our mascot.

James and Tyon, second. Justin Verlander, Keegan Aiken, fourth anthony bass kyle gibson logan gilbert drew rasmussen garrett cole and will crowe uh who by the way um really interesting pickup for holds out of your starting pitching slot that's like relevant to four people listening very specific glad we could help four of you yeah but anyway but then the flip side though i think is hitters that are good at hitting the slider are in more demand this year and uh generally have a lower strikeout rate and are really good so let's let's look at just uh this is pitch type values, which would you rather I do? I can do pitch type values. I'll do both, but pitch type values first. This is the best hitters against

sliders this year by pitch type values. So that's summing up everything that happens on those whiffs, takes for balls and homers, whatever. Number one, Paul Goldschmidt number two is austin reilly who once told me that he felt in between fastballs and sliders so uh very interesting his work against fastballs is not amazing it's about league average so i think maybe he just leaned in and said hey i'm going to demolish sliders and do you know fight off fastballs, basically. But Goldschmidt, Judge, Stanton, Harper, they're on this list because they do both. But Jazz Chisholm, way better against sliders. He's fifth against sliders in the league

than he is against fastballs. Austin Hayes took a big step this year. He's sixth against sliders. Michael Brantley is eighth against sliders and has a negative value against fastballs. And I do think that you have to kind of look at these in tandem because Nico Horner is 12th against sliders and has a negative work against fastballs. Austin Meadows is 14th against sliders and has a negative value against fastballs. I think if you're doing that,

that might be evidence of sitting slider and it not working for you to some extent, right? And so that's why I wanted to look at Wander Franco real quick because when we see Wander Franco, we see like an okay, like still good raw power, maybe where's the launch angle where the barrels is he going to be a good but not great player um and so i wanted to throw up some visuals here for you on youtube and i'll describe it for the podcast this is wanda franco as a lefty against sliders you see how he pulls almost everything there's nothing nothing to left field. It's center and right. And it looks like a

decent approach, except you might notice not that many homers, you know. Now let's look at his fastball heat map as a left-hander. Well, that's a lot of pushing for fastballs. Yes, he's pulled some balls on the ground there and he has two homers, but look how much there is in left field. So I think he's got an approach where he's like trying to be early on, you know, trying to get the slider out front, you know, and hit that for home runs and then fight off the fastball a little bit, let the fastball travel a little bit. And it's an okay, it's a good approach for contact, which he's amazing at, right? It's a good approach for batting average.

It's not an amazing approach for power as you can tell two two pulled fastballs there for homers is what i'm i'm guessing i mean you when you're looking at heat maps you're kind of guessing but the blue looks like it's i would say that's two um and uh and so that's uh that's the kind of push and pull where like you know using this for analysis is tough but i think that generally hitters that can uh that can do something with sliders are are it's a little bit like command with pitchers like oh i like them a little bit better you know there's only gonna be more every year we get more sliders if you're good at sliders you're at least doing something that every year there's gonna be more of you know yeah, I guess the natural question I have is when you're looking at two months worth of games or a little less than that, and you see someone who is thriving or the other hand, maybe struggling in a big way against sliders or any one pitch.

Do you still have the this is a very small sample sort of thing? Or is it quick to be something that is stable? There is a name for you that's perfect for what you just asked. Eric Hosmer. Eric Hosmer right now is 15th in the league against sliders. He has, over his career, not been great against sliders. And I think that his early, you know, and hitters will very rarely admit something like this

it's too like their approach it's too like oh he just said in this article he's sitting sliders okay well let's fill him up with fastballs you know what I mean like it's too much but if I had to guess I would say Eric Hosmer was sitting slider a little bit more early this season

especially you can tell he was swinging at inner half pitches I bet you right-handers trying to back foot him on the slider, he just started looking for that. He's like, anything that's off of my back foot on the inside is in the zone, I'm going to turn and burn. I think it did well for him, but over the course of the season, we're seeing him slow down, maybe they bury that slider more, or they start throwing backdoor sliders on the outside, you know, and trying

to get him to swing or take those for called strikes. So, you know, I did do one, it was a multiple year one. And now if you do a multiple year one, it really just is the best hitters in baseball. Number one, Jordan Alv is the best hitters in baseball. Number one, Jordan Alvarez. Number two, Bryce Harper. Number three, J.D. Martinez. Number four, John Carlos Stanton. Number five, Taylor Ward, small sample in the group. Number six, Manny Machado. Number seven, Freddie Freeman. Number eight, Austin Riley. Number nine, Ronald Acuna. Number 10, Jazz Chisholm. If I was going to give you any surprises off this list, 10, Jazz Chisholm. If I was going to give you any surprises off this list, Josh Bell at 11, Jesus Aguilar at 15, Goldie still there at 16. Not a surprise. Austin Meadows, but he's also the only one of the top 20 that has a negative fastball value. So it is fair to wonder if Austin

Meadows needs a new approach. But Wander's there in the top 20. Austin Hayes is there in the top 25. I think these are good things for those players. I like Austin Hayes more now that I've read this. This actually worked out exceptionally well. Sometimes things just flow perfectly, but we're talking about struggling bats on this episode too, and I just noticed Lourdes Gurriel Jr. has been good against Sliders. I'm looking at a multi-year leaderboard going back to 2019. He's been very good against sliders, but has a negative run value against fastballs. He's among the struggling bats that you'd be looking at right now in an 8 or 10 team league, especially, and saying, what do I do here? Or if you're in a slightly deeper league, do you trade for him?

Do you reserve him? How do you handle Gurriel? How much of a flaw do you think it is in a multi-year view to see, yeah, you thrive in this one area, but you're actually below average. Among good hitters especially, being negative really stands out against fastballs

because the truly great hitters are going to be excellent against fastballs. So if you're not even just decent against them, you're very different than those players, even though you might be as good against sliders as those elite players are. Yeah, I think it's the Meadows problem, too. And, you know, the two of them, I think, are fascinating because, you know, they're not of an age where collapse is what you'd expect. Their strikeout rates are good and have been better the last couple of years, but their power is gone. And you look at that fastball value and you just say,

maybe they're sitting slider and maybe it's good for their strikeout rate, but it hasn't been good for their power. and maybe it's good for their strikeout rate, but it hasn't been good for their power. And, you know, I'm kind of... As much as I've said that I like guys that hit the fastball well, in these two cases, I mean, the slider well, in these two cases, I think it's gone too far.

And you look at the barrel rates they've got and you look at their, what looks like slider-centric approach, and you say, in this case, it's not working out, and I don't know if I'm in on either of them. I don't know if I want to buy low on either of them. I think the baseline projection for both of them has a good batting average in it, but I wouldn't believe the power much. There's some projections for Lourdes Gurriel that have 15 homers. I believe the one that has 12 homers is another thing I'm saying. So now you're talking about a 260 hitter with 12 homers.

On Meadows, there's some projections that have him with 18 more homers, and that's totally fair because he's had a 33 and he had a 27 last year with that barrel rate he has right now with the slider approach he has right now i'm gonna believe the projections that say he has 12 more homers in it so most of these guys are guys that like listen if you can get them for almost free because they'll they'll probably hit 250 260 uh with 12 homers and a couple stolen bases if that's you know in a deep league, if somebody's going to hand them to you, then do it because I think they'll both play.

I don't know about the injury with Meadows right now, but I think it's a decent time to pick them up in deep leagues because that'll play in deep leagues. But anything, even in a 15-team league, 260, 12, and 3, that's like a streamer league, 260, 12 and three is, that's, I don't even, like, that's, that's like a streamer bat, right? Like, if you were talking

about a 15 team NFBC, like, that's not something you want in your lineup every day. That's like, oh, he's in Colorado or something. Yeah. I think it's, it's kind of interesting too.

We've talked a lot about Joey Votto on the last few episodes. He was our player spotlight on the 3-0 show that went up on Thursday. And, you know, it's something that comes back a lot when we're talking about projections. The guys after age 33, I think, is where the cutoff tends to be, is where the projections start to get wobbly. And with Votto on the last few episodes, the recurring theme has been, but he's Joey Votto. It's very soft, right? We've seen him make adjustments.

We know what kind of hitter he is. At the other end, and this guy's not on the wrong side of 33 yet, I was thinking of Javier Baez as an example of a player that, you know, describe a player with the opposite approach of Joey Votto. Well, Javier Baez or Jorge Alfaro, guys that strike out a lot that don't walk, they would be the kind of players that I would say are kind of at the opposite end of how they try to go up there and do damage. All the things we would say about Votto and being comfortable with him, I would feel and say the opposite about Baez when things are going wrong. He's hitting 201. He's got three homers, 10 runs scored, 12 RBIs so far this season, and no stolen bases yet.

And part of it might be just adjusting to a new environment switching to a new league we talk about this all the time with players that sign big contracts just trying to earn every dollar with every swing chasing more pitches rate of his career right now not a surprise to see that that's that's normal for players that are in a situation like this but i think it is more difficult for me to talk myself into the correction happening just because of, of the way bias has been good in the past. Like the way he's got there has always seemed problematic in the long run.

So is this going too far though? Is this, is this saying, is it taking the soft sciences and kind of just making them say what we want or choosing to react however we want? Well, I think generally in sort of dynasty long-term settings, this was, I think, the worst contract of the offseason. And the fact, I've talked about this before,

the contact on pitches outside the zone ages terribly and when it falls off the cliff it really falls off the cliff so if you're a guy who swings at half the pitches outside the zone and then I think I ran the numbers

slugging percentage on pitches outside the zone starts with a 2 and slugging percentage on pitches outside the zone starts with a two. And slugging percentage on pitches inside the zone starts with a four or five. It's like, come on. Checks out. Yes, it's a much more hittable cluster of pitches. Sure.

Yeah, so this is not somebody I would bet on long term. The only thing that, yeah, and lo and behold, his out of zone contact rate is the worst it's been since rookie season a fairly big drop off and he's reaching a lot outside the zone and this is the kind of stuff you would see um from other people who've collapsed early like josh hamilton pablo sandoval um who had similar approaches on the other hand he is still 29 and he is the streakiest mofo I've ever seen. And if you look at his past six seasons, the only one where he didn't get to an okay number

at the end of the season, like a pretty decent one for fantasy, was the one where he didn't get a full season. You know, like 2020. So, like, I don't have any shares i don't think i would have the fortitude uh the intestinal fortitude to trade for javi baez right now because he doesn't line up with my belief system you know like just doesn't do the things i want my hitters to do but i i can't i can't say that he you know like the projections are for 17 homers 10 stolen bases 250 average like that's

that's valuable and if you can get him i you know how i see him a hail mary i think he's a hail mary you're in ninth place right now it's not not a keeper league. You don't worry about next year. Javier Baez is like, well, I'm screwed either way. And somebody's going to give me Javier Baez. He's had these troughs below, but actually this is one of those worst, but you know, look at the other season, 2020, he just didn't have that, a big peak to set it off look at 2018 fairly big trough you know the beginning of season hot second half look at 2021 not you know fairly big trough early in the season look and go off yeah and if you want to see the visual i pulled up his rolling woba for every 15 games over on fan graphs if you're listening and you're like what what are they describing see it on youtube

or you can just pull it up yourself and i think it again we've talked about this maybe three or four weeks ago it's a good way to visualize what might be within the range of normal for a player because anytime we go through a month or two months when a player is significantly over or underperforming usually when it's underperforming we start to think the sky is falling it's broken the player's not coming back and you look at the chart and you go, oh, actually, no, this has happened before. We're not at an all-time low. We haven't reached a new bottom. And that's probably the case here. It's for volatile players. And volatility has tried to strike out ratings. He's a high strikeout guy. So he's just going to be a volatile player. And so the tops and the bottoms are just going to

be further apart. You sent me a link before we started recording too. It was, I believe strike percentage on sliders. Is that what the search you ran over at Savant? Yes. Swinging strike percentage on, on sliders for hitters. And this I think is a little bit more useful in a one year format than

because it's not how many balls bounce in the right direction and stuff like that. It's also less useful in other ways because adam frazier is a third in baseball at swinging strike percentage on on sliders and i mean you could have guessed that he's probably third in most pitches right right yeah and not surprisingly we're talking about 282 players on this list have your bias third from the bottom, 35.2%. Among the absolute worst. Joey Votto, not far away, right?

Two very different approaches and yet a similar problem. It's kind of funny like that. Yes, but the age difference is meaningful here. Yeah. Just point it out that Votto is at 273, 28.2%. But if you want some hope for Mitch Garver, he's 7th in slider contact rate. Jerickson Profar is 10th.

Jesse Winker is still 11th in slider contact rate. So, you know, other guys we've been talking about, Eric Hosmer is 6th. Manny Machado is 14th. Gold Schmidt is 17th. Taylor Ward. Taylor Ward. Taylor Ward was really interesting. I talked to him, and he's got that new approach that's working so well right now

that's a response kind of to the way pitchers are pitching. So if you target the high fastball and you create a swing that can hit the high fastball, the low slider, I've talked about this with Adrian Browtree, the low slider looks like crap. And so you're basically set because it's easier for you to spit on the low slider and you can hit the high fastball. Taylor Ward also makes good contact with sliders. That's why he's so white hot right now. He can make good contact with the slider. And then if you give him a high fastball, he can smack it. So it took him a while to get here. Maybe the league actually had to change to make his approach work better, if you think about it.

But I also wonder how long it'll last. Mark Canna's like this. Marcus Simeon was like this last year. Is it something that's exploitable after a while? People start throwing you high sliders? People start filling up the bottom of the zone? I'm wondering with Marcus Simeon what you would do in a shallow league right now. I mean, again, in an 8 or 10-team league, which people do play in.

I know we don't focus on them a lot during draft season. We are in a 10-team league. We are in a 10-team league. I think I have Simeon. And I think in a league like that where you've got IL spots and I think it's five-player benches, okay. You could hold them on the bench for a while. You could bench them a little bit. The point of the bench is to hold the player that you don't want to drop and then to then mix and match your pitchers as much as you possibly can.

So whether it's a player like Simeon, an early-round pick who's struggling or early in the season, maybe a prospect you're waiting on, you can burn a spot for something. This would be a good in-season use of a bench spot. I guess I'm wondering if you've seen anything in the last couple of weeks that makes you think that Simeon is starting to work his way out of these early season struggles. One thing that's really notable is his lack of fly

balls this year. What's really interesting is that, you know, over the course of last season, he started hitting more and more fly balls, and it was pretty good for his overall production if you kind of look at the rolling graphs and pan graphs. And so then this season, he came in with that fly ball approach early in the season and cratered, you know.

So I will say he has changed his approach because his fly ball rate is now down. So what I'm guessing is, you know, fly balls are the result of two things, right? Your swing mechanics, but also the pitches you're swinging at. High pitches go for fly balls and low pitches go for ground balls. My guess is that they filled up the bottom of the zone against Marcus Simeon.

And so now he's trying to show them that he can fend it off and he can do something with it. So my guess is that what will return first is the batting average, right? He's swinging at lower pitches. He's going to start driving those lower pitches at some point, and he's going to try and force the pitchers to go back up in the, at the top of the zone. So if he starts stringing together some hits, I think that is what you start to look at. If you look at the last seven games, he's got 10 hits. I think that's a beginning.

And so the batting average comes up, but what that means for his power is not good news. Zips has him for 20 that has him for 17 i'll take the 17 it is weird too because i know someone has pointed this out in the email before it's just that what simian did last year a lot of people chalk it up to dunedin and the way the jays season was strange playing in that park and then going back to Toronto, but his splits, at least in terms of home runs, don't really back that up. And to see this much of a collapse this quickly, I think it's really surprising because he didn't strike me as a guy that had a bad

approach or an approach that could be quickly and easily exploited. I mean, so you're saying 17 home runs the rest of the way, and you're probably on the under side of that? No, I mean, I'll take it. I think he can get there. I think it'll be like, you know, the average creeps up, the average creeps up, and then some pitcher's like, man, you know, he's killing me on these singles and doubles. You know, let me try and sneak some cheese by him up top,

and then he can use his old approach. The big difference was that, as he told me at the All-Star game, was that sometime in 2019, he discovered that if he targeted the top half of the ball, which is not what hitters normally do, if he targeted the top half of the ball on four-seamers, he could hit the high fastball. And he discovered against the world is Chapman of all people. And so what you see in 2019, 2020, and 2021 is the fly ball rate go up, the pull rate go up,

the home run rate go up. I just think it got to the point where he really liked that approach. It was really working well for him. And pitchers were like, okay, we just, we can't throw him high fastballs anymore let's get to a few other players that have underperformed in a big way robbie grossman

is one that i think some people looked at as a possible cheap 2020 guy where he was going again still looking for his first homer through 36 games entering play on thursday a 30.6% K rate so far, an awful 189-306-227 line. Grossman does have a couple of steals so far. But this is another guy, you look at the profile, even if you don't want to buy in as a 2020 guy, if you said, yeah, 12 to 15 homers and a healthy number of steals and plenty of playing time with a good spot atop an improving lineup, I think it was easy to talk yourself into Grossman, at least as sort of a low average, does everything else sort of well player back during draft season.

It has not been the case so far. You know, it's funny. I did draft him in a couple of places hoping for about 240, 15, 15. And if you, even the most pessimistic of the projections right now, would have him basically hitting 235-240 going forward and ending the season with 9 or 10 homers and 10-12 stolen bases. So you could just hold tight. And in AL only, what are you going to do? You're going to

hold tight. He's still playing. But when it starts getting to 15 teamers where I have him on the bench, I've been nursing him on the bench, and I think this is the week I'm going to drop him. I don't want to play him anymore. And he's in that age range. 32, 33 is when those projections become a little bit less meaningful. The strikeout rate is bad. The swing strike rate is bad. His chase rate is not bad for the league, but it's his second worst of his career. His barrel rate is down back almost to where he was when he had no power. And so I just, how much do I want eight more steals? Like, I don't even know if I believe 10 more steals the rest of the season, right?

We're almost through a third of the season. He has two steals. Has he even attempted more? No, he's attempted two steals. That's fairly sticky. So I think he might end the season with five homers and six stolen bases. Even if he gets to 10 homers and six stolen bases, do I want the 230 average and 10 homers and six stolen bases. Even if he gets to 10 homers and six stolen bases, do I want the 230 average and 10 homers and six stolen bases?

I think the number of leagues you want that in is getting very small. I think the question with Grossman is just still, how much is the gap between his ability as a real player and as a fantasy player? The OBP versus average thing changes a lot. If you were trying to find a struggling outfielder to buy low on to trade for in a deep league i could sort of see it if you're in an obp situation in an average situation i think that's just been a clear flaw of his for a while then he's also not a good defensive outfielder so right and i think that limits his trade appeal too so the idea of him going to a

better team which i thought was going to happen a year ago i thought robbie grossman was a shoo-in to get traded to a contender and be the i mean outfielder or the good fourth outfielder. I mean, he's a switch hitter, though, so it's not – you know, it's funny. You know, there were some – there was, you know – so Jed Lowry was in this offseason, right, and Darren Ruff, right? The Giants re-signed Darren Ruff, who has less defensive value than Jed Lowry was in this offseason, right? And Darren Ruff, right? The Giants re-signed Darren Ruff,

who has less defensive value than Jed Lowry, right? But he's a right-handed hitter who can do damage against left-handed hitters. So he has a very useful use, right? Like, oh, this is when we would use him against lefties. I mean, he's being used a little bit more than that, but I think he was predictable in when we would use him against lefties. I mean, he's being used a little bit more than that, but I think he was predictable in how you would use him and good at this one thing.

Now, Grossman is more of a meh at a lot of things, right? So that's a little bit weird to have as a fourth outfielder. I guess, I mean, you do want to put him in center, so he's not a defensive backup, and he's a switch hitter, so how much can you believe his splits and be like, oh, we'll use him against lefties or we'll use him against righties? So in a way, he's a little bit like Jed Lowry, isn't he?

I mean, he's actually a lot like Jed Lowry. Yeah, I think. With less power, even. Similar limitations. I'm surprised, though, just because I thought he was a high floor player. He's 32, so age might be part of the factor here and he'll be 33 before the season ends it turned 33 in september but uh i i didn't get him not because i thought he was bad but just because i i saw a little more of what you saw low average 15 15 kind of being the high side and then

maybe less power being part of what he would bring. So curious to see if any team is interested and takes a shot. But I think it has to be the right fit. It has to be a team that actually has a good backup center fielder. Maybe they've got a utility guy that can play center field and Grossman can be the two corners plus DH if they don't have a couple DH clogs already in place. We've talked a lot about Trent Grisham, so we're not going to bring him up again, but Nelson Cruz sort of came up in passing

on the 3-0 show and looking at his line, 227, 298, 325 so far, actually pretty good roto numbers despite the line. Four homers, 19 runs, 23 RBIs, and a steal. You'd actually be okay with that to this point, but I think it would lead you to questions about what comes next. Is this finally the end for Nelson Cruz? You were just saying, is something within the realm of normalcy for a player, right? We were just talking about rolling graphs and using that so i was pulling i was like wow that's a pretty big ground ball rate for nelson

cruz uh he was nowhere near this in 2021 never never near this he's had two you know sort of 10 5 10 game stretches of being rolling 60% ground balls this year. Last year, he never was over 50. Now, the nice thing about this rolling graph is I can push it out further. So I'm going to push it out to 2018. And I bet you it's still going to be the highest ground ball rate he's shown. Okay, back in 2018, he had a moment. It was like that.

Was it a bad year? Yeah, I mean, there was a 37 home run season. That was his last season in Seattle. 256, 342, 509, 37 homers. I will say that 2018, the ball was different. His barrel rate was different. His max EV was different. His barrel rate was different. His max EV was different. So, you know, if you put him 2018 in this year, uh, and then gave him this year's barrel, you know what I mean? Like I'm,

I still think it's a bad sign that the barrel rate is down. The max EV is down. The ground ball rate is up. It's, it, It doesn't look good to me across the board. And then you've got the age, 41. Would you have dropped him already, or would you drop him now in some of those shallow leagues that we're talking about? There's also a risk-reward proposition, right? With Grossman, the potential reward is lower, I would say.

Comparatively, yes. So I would probably be nursing him on the bench, as I have been in these 15-team leagues with Grossman. I'd probably be nursing him on the bench a little bit longer. But as I'm finally getting to the point where I've begun dropping Grossman, where I have two or three shares of him, if I had more shares of Cruz, I'd be about a week or two away.

I don't know what I'm waiting for. From a broader... From a rolling graph perspective too, the ground ball rate is still up. From a broader trade perspective and thinking about the humidor and the ball and things that we're always wondering about, thinking about Nationals Park in D.C. and one of the more hot, humid, hitter-friendly environments in the league, especially as the weather warms up, I wonder if we're going to see a big fluctuation there.

Kind of the opposite of what we've seen in Oakland, right? The damp basement playing even more soggy than usual in Oakland early in the season. Maybe we get Nationals Park to be among the parks that is even more lively than usual because of the humidor and ball interaction that we're going to see. We're going to see massive summers from the four or five hitters in this lineup that have been, well, Josh Bell's been good, but even Juan Soto hasn't quite been himself. Cruz is obviously underperformed. I wonder if we're going to get a turnaround from a few of these bats just because of the ball being different as this weather pattern kind of changes.

Yeah, I wonder if there's, I mean, I think I'd feel like pretty confident buying Kybert Ruiz, you know? Puts a ton of balls in play. Puts so many balls in play, and if he did get, you know, another 80 points of ISO and he could maybe finish the season with like, you know, seven or eight more homers, even that seems, you know, kind of impossible to say about a guy who's one homer i think you know that you could do that you just rattle off a month with three or four you know um and uh i could i would

totally buy bell um and i think it's possible to buy bell because the iso is down and the homer rate you know that's not great and you know people maybe some people are looking at the average maybe some people looking at homers and saying saying no thanks so um i think yadiel hernandez is a is a decent buy high um so yeah i would say that about most of those guys in that in that in that lineup that i would do it and nelson cruz just that it's the age man what do you think about lane thomas yeah we got a question about lane thomas recently i don't in that lineup that I would do it. And Nelson Cruz, it's the age, man. What do you think about Lane Thomas? Yeah, we got a question about Lane Thomas recently.

I don't have the email in front of me, so I can't thank the person that sent it. But I was just watching him in that series. The Brewers caught the Nationals recently. And Thomas played pretty well in that series. O-swing is still pretty good at 25.8%. For the season, the K rate is still up compared to where it was a season ago. He struggled with that a little

bit back and forth. I wonder how much of this has just been the strange shape of his playing time. He hasn't played as much as I would have thought. It's been a little more in and out of the lineup earlier in the season. All that being said,

what are they going to do instead of playing Lane Thomas? It's been a little more in and out of the lineup earlier in the season. All that being said, what are they going to do instead of playing Lane Thomas? It's kind of like your Hernandez argument where it's like, are these players tradable? Are they likely to get moved as the Nationals move some players at the deadline? No. I mean, they picked him up on like a waiver claim, right? Or was it a small deal? Small, small deal, I think, with the Cardinals. But I'm kind of in for deeper leagues. 15-team league's a deeper.

It's kind of similar to the Grossman profile for me where I'm not sure we're going to get a good batting average, but the OBP is good enough for him to end up in a decent spot in the lineup. And then you've got this combination of power and speed that can be intriguing when the playing time gets high enough so it is really weird to see that low of a chase rate and that low of a walk rate it suggests to me that he's you know basically taking the wrong pitches you know like there's that there's some approach thing

that could click for him you know like uh Mm-hmm. Like sit slider or something. Still got the hard hit rate up over 40%, which I think for a deeper league especially is good enough. So limited in terms of the number of leagues where I'm interested, but I'm kind of patient with him in some of those spots. Could be like an only league by-law, yeah. Yeah, good player to trade for in an NL-only league especially. Again, helping four more people. That's why

we talked about bananas at the beginning of the show. Because more than eight people listening eat bananas. Fairly confident in that. How about one more positive one as we kind of look at more of these struggling hitters that I think at least is a good idea to go after right now. Yes, Manny

Grandal. The overall line is just light across the board plate skills are intact we've got some friction here i like it the white socks man they're gonna hit they're gonna score runs there there's gonna be some some rebound in this offense as a whole and grandal i think it's gonna be a big part of it i'm just worried with there's a sort of the grossman thing is the reward worth it because you know he is a lifetime 238 hitter the projections are for 220 you know yeah maybe you can get 13 14 more homers it's going to come with a 220 average i'm i'm dealing with this right now in my 12 team keeper league i've been trying to trade mj

melendez and no one's taking him uh i've got yasmani grundahl as my starter it's an ops league so you know there is there is that and i do think grundahl will give me a good ops but it's average and ops and some part of me says you know just drop grundahl in this 12 team keeper league he's older it's not good the batting average is always going to be a sink on you. And keep the young guy who could be good. You know? I am not telling you to get rid of Melendez because he hits the ball very hard

and can carve out a larger role. But I think with Grandal, he's still controlling the zone really well. K-rate is actually at a career best at 19.9%. Not surprisingly, chase rate is still good. Bar actually at a career best at 19.9%. Not surprisingly, chase rate is still good. Barrel rate's not horrible at 7.8%. It's low for him, but it's low within his

range. Ball rate is up and barrel rate is down. And the max EV is down too. I think it's just an adjustment. I think it's an adjustment before he gets back to being the grand dame. Look at the second half of last year with a bad knee, no less. He was crushing the ball.

What if he's just hiding an injury? I mean, that's another thing I worry about with catchers. Yeah, I guess the other thing, though, you mentioned the average. We talked about Gary Sanchez on our last episode. The threshold for average right now, it's as low as it's ever been. I'm not worried about that 220, 230 risk.

Yes, let's have a breathless league batting average update. 237. I mean, I mentioned Juan Soto struggling. Again, it's all relative. WRC Plus-wise is 33% better than league average. Juan Soto is hitting 236 this season. The baseball is completely effed. This is a career 295 hitter hitting

236 while walking more than he strikes out. He's still Juan Soto in so many ways and yet he's hitting 236 because the baseball is an orange in a sock that has gone through the washing machine. The ISO is up to 149 over the last 30 days.

It was for the full season, it was 144. So it's creeping forward. Jeez. Maybe you've convinced me. I don't know. I'm very convincing, at least with fruit-related things. Let's move on from struggling bats.

Let's talk about Jeffrey Springs for a moment. There was a request in the YouTube comments to discuss him, and I think it's really easy when a new ray emerges and it's someone

that you kind of expected to be working more out of the pen. You just have this sort of reflexive, okay, I don't really need to worry about him. The workload's not going to be that good. Results have been great so far. He's got a 132 ERA, a.80 whip, 27 Ks in 27 and a third innings. We look at the usage here, and more more recently he has been working as a starter. He's gone four, four and two thirds and now five and two thirds in his last three appearances.

So what are we looking at with Springs? What type of ceiling does he bring and in what types of league should we be interested? Let me sort by player name and then look My appearance One reason I do this, I look at the per appearance Chart Because there is a big difference In what your stuff does

In larger Samples When you have to go longer Early in the season when he was Throwing 16 15 pitches per appearance, he regularly had a stuff plus over 100. Now that he's throwing 30 to 40,

so his 31 pitch appearance on the third, he had a 95 stuff plus. His 57 pitch appearance the next one, he had a 92 stuff plus. But it was back up to 107 and 102 the last two. What has been true all along is really good command. So I believe the command, the stuff kind of, I think, goes ebbs and flows a little bit with how far he has to go in the game and how he doles his pitches out. And let me look at his per pitch data now.

Is this like Bruce Zimmerman with one fewer pitch right now? Uh-huh. Let's see here. It's Jeffrey Springs, change up, 109 stuff plus, slider 101, forcing fastball 94. So bad fastball guy who locates them well. Bad fastball guy who locates them well. Bad fastball guy who locates them well and doesn't throw it excessively.

Throws it like 40, 44% of the time. He almost throws 50-50 with the changeup. That's crazy. Yeah, he used to throw the slider more. I wonder if that'll change now that he's going through these longer outings. But I'm intrigued not just because he's a Ray. I'm intrigued because there's two

seemingly good non-fastball pitches here and the usage has been at a level that hey it's good enough to get wins and damn it we need wins yeah that's true and he's starting those games it's not even going to follow but there is a little bit of the Drew Rasmussen problem where they are kind of limiting him to 15 to 20 batters faced. So it's going to be tough to squeeze some wins out of this one, I think. It's not what I wanted to hear. Can you say something else? I'm glad you just pick him up. No, but in leagues where he's available, I'm definitely did you just pick him up no but in leagues where he's available I'm

definitely targeting him well I mean at AL only I think really uh really go for it uh 15 team leagues I think I would like to pick him up as a two starter yeah on and off maybe with two starts or streaming opportunities starters you just get two chances at that win, right? So maybe one game he only pitches three innings, four innings, the other game he gets to five and gets that win, you know? I do think that the risk that they leave him out there for like a seven earned run appearance is pretty low, right? Yeah, that's...

How many teams are in that group, right? This isn't just the Rays. These are other teams that use their pitchers in a way that gives us more confidence in how they're actually going to fare because they're not going to sit out there and wear it. I think what you need is other bulk guys in the pen. You need a whole team where you've got multiple bulk options for every game basically right so some teams are just like uh we don't have that but the rays are like yeah you know we throw jeffrey springs out there then maybe ryan yarborough uh you know who might have been the starter tomorrow he can pitch tonight and we change things around. Or Josh Fleming can go a couple innings, right?

Alright, I'm in on Springs. 27% K rate, 7% walk rate. It's good enough to play in those deeper mixed leagues. I am keeping an eye on the schedule though as far as... I think, I generally agree. You know, anybody, you know, the average stuff plus for a starter is 97, so he's keeping it around there or better. The command

looks really good and has for long enough to believe in it um there's a three pitch pitch mix uh the the the fastball isn't even isn't like there are fastballs that have 80 stuff plus and 70 stuff plus you know what i mean like this is it's not one of the worst fastballs in the league or anything so is that martin perez isn't he one of those guys do Do we want to do this? It's actually good for comedy a little bit. Let's now do

sort by pitch name foreseen. I want the guys with the worst fastballs who've pitched really well so far this season. Because Martin Perez has been amazing. And if you have him, you're just scared to use him in anything but an easy matchup. Because you're sure that there's going to be some crooked numbers coming.

I'll do starters. How about this? Jacob Junis, 38-7. But he's only thrown 14 Zach Thompson has thrown 90 at a 41 stuff plus great Eric Fetty thrown 40 at a 48 stuff plus

oh Matthew Libertor's first 16 fastballs registered at a 48 stuff plus that's ugly here we go this is this is something i have noticed and i don't know how nervous to make it noah cinder guard 52 stuff plus 131 four seamers thrown joe musgrove 52 patrick corbin 53 that one was that was not surprising no not surprised but the two before that especially musgrove i That one's not surprising. No, not surprising. But the two before that, especially Musgrove,

I think that's pretty surprising that he'd be that bad because he's been great going back to the beginning of last season. Yeah. I mean, he throws a bunch of pitches, right? So I think he probably... What you can see with this is he locates the pitch well. So I think he just probably is very careful about when he uses the four seam and he locates it well and so he doesn't get screwed as much cinder guard

50 fastball usage that's surprising me and and the numbers don't like it and and you know you like you can use you can use raw numbers like the fastball velo is not back no he's at 94 i mean he's that's average now three and a half ticks below where he was at his peak four ticks below yeah so i i personally think noah syndergard's a sell high i don't and i just happen to have him in leagues where I can't even trade. So, but if I could trade, I would sell him high. You're not worried about the,

the Cinder guard finds extra VLO and gets the K rate up scenario. Really? You're just saying, eh, this is probably just a, a lighter version of the guy he used to be. And maybe it's a high threes, low fours ERA with a decent whip,

but the K rate is going to be below average, so you're going to be disappointed. If there is any sort of second act for the humidor, I think that this is the type of pitcher that would struggle from it. Now, Jeff Zimmerman had some research that said the first three appearances back from injury basically predict the rest of your velocity for the year. had some research that said the first three appearances back from injury basically predict the rest of your velocity

for the year. His first three starts back, he was sitting 94, 94.5 or something. It's only gotten worse since. Yeah, almost seems more likely if he's going to get some velo back, it's going to be after an offseason. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And you can see it in the strikeout rate you know like it's not a good strikeout right no he's he's surviving on a fair amount of good like okay pitches and uh he you know he has good command that's something that when he was a power pitcher he was he was so good because he had the power and the command, but now he's more in common with JT Brubaker than you want to know.

Sorry about that. That feel mean toward JT Brubaker right now? No, Brubaker's actually throwing harder these days. There's JT Brubaker's four-seam fastball 65-plus. Sandwiched in between Jose Quintana's actually throwing harder these days uh there's jt brewbaker's fastball forcing fastball 65 step plus uh sandwich in between jose quintana's 65 and herman marquez 65 although uh colorado ones

should come with a little bit of uh an asterisk i guess dakota hudson's here michael pinata's here am i surprising you like the only one was Musgrove that really surprised me Eduardo Rodriguez is here Ranger Suarez is here David Peterson is here Patrick Sandoval but we already knew that he didn't have a good fastball right?

we knew that his whole thing was surprising change up four good pitches two good secondaries, and to keep away with the fastball. Yeah, I mean, having a slider and a change that he throws as often as he does and a curveball, I'm pretty content to bet on that mix. It makes me wonder, too, if the Angels can look at Cindergaard

and say, let's just dial down the fastball usage some more because he's got plenty of pitches too like yeah cinder guard could throw other stuff and maybe that's his path to getting the strikeout rate up and maintaining something close to his current his overall stuff rough stuff plus would go up to right because he'd just be using less of this of this bad pitch yeah it's not hopeless but you're just kind of pushing for an adjustment and you're not sure if it's going to be made or not. Right, right. You're in the pitching coach's hands. Also, like, you know, he didn't throw any breaking balls at all when he came back for that one start last year.

And so is he, like, you know, sort of tender on the breaking balls? Yeah. He's definitely used to throwing more breaking balls than he does right now as well. I'm wondering, maybe he starts to feel better and starts to feel better with the elbow and can push the slider usage to 25% and the curveball to 10% to 12%. That would be in line with what he's done in the past,

a little bit more aggressive. But he has to be more aggressive because the fastball is not as good as it used to be. i hope he makes the adjustments because it's more fun when he's pitching well he won't he won't with a three era so there might have to be some bad stuff that comes first and then the secondaries start going on yeah you're gonna have to absorb a few bad outings though by the way zips 397 rest of season bat says 456 says a lot it's not the number you'd expect to see

in that space but it starts to make sense the more you actually break it down we need to go before we go a quick schedule update with the Memorial Day holiday coming up on Monday no show at the beginning of the week we will have a show next Thursday.

So only one episode coming out next week. We will have a 3-0 show as well. So two episodes, of course. Go grill some brats or some veggie brats if that's what you're into. Go have some beer or some non-alcoholic beer if that's what you're into. Maybe even like a spritzer,

you know, like something with lime and ginger. It's been a really hard week a couple of weeks or just for obviously a ton of terrible things happening in the world right now so take the time away and do whatever you can do unplug your children go to a beach if you can go to a body of water don doom scroll. I felt myself doom scrolling excessively and it hurts and it sucks and it's just one of those things. Not helpful. Anything you can do. I got a list of things like how to talk

to your children about what's happening and one of the things that it said on there was, don't watch the news. That was like, yeah, you're right. It's kind of of true i mean that that's just unplugging right so yeah advice to parents as well but just reset for your own well-being and sanity because i know it's look it's hard no matter what you do it's hard to get up every day in the face of bad

news and just do whatever it is you do. And whether that's dropping your kids off at school, whether you're a teacher, whether you make baseball podcasts, it weighs on you throughout the day. So just do whatever you have to do to feel better. And my heart goes out to everybody in Texas, but especially parents of elementary school. My kids are in elementary school and i was just like i i can't you know but the thing is there's work to be done and the work can only be done if you're in in the headspace to do it you know like you can't really get hopeful work done in despair and so you know i know in this household um we're working uh working on some things and hoping to help some campaigns, you know, who will hopefully do something about this because I think something needs to be done.

And I don't think pointing to pass fail policies and saying, oh, these things didn't work and just throwing up your hands is the answer, man. No, it's not. More people die of gun violence in this country than any other country, and just throwing up the hands and being like, what could we do? It's not enough for me anymore. No, no.

A lot of the alternative solutions, if you want to call them that, are just pure galaxy brain stuff, too. We need to do the simple things that would help make everyone safer. It's just... Go look at a graph of gun violence by states that have more things in place,

more restrictions in place. Restrictions are possible. Look at the global numbers too. It's not a population thing. It's a volume of guns thing. It's not hard to understand that. But do what you need to do to feel better over these next few days. Take the time to recharge if you can.

We are going to do that, and we are going to be back with you next week. Thanks for listening.