Rates & Barrels - Growing Pains, Opportunity, Triple-A Power Surges & Pitchers to Target

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

Eno and DVR discuss the challenging balance of giving young left-handed hitters ample opportunities against same-handed pitching, a few interesting power surges from hitters at Triple-A, pitchers that have underperformed through the first two months relative to the Pitching Plus model, and more.  Rundown -- Jazz Chisholm Jr. v. Lefties -- Noise in the Very Limited Split Samples -- Jesús Sánchez & Growing Pains -- Nolan Gorman & Future Strikeout Rates -- Luis García and Triple-A Power Surges -- The Tigers' Lack of Hard Contact -- Pitching Plus Targets (Current Underperformers) -- Bat Fitting Like Golf Clubs? -- How Are Taylor and Tyler Rogers *So* Different? 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 Tuesday, June 7th. Derek Van Ryper here with Island Eno Saris. You look well for a Tuesday, especially for an early Tuesday morning. Yeah, I'm out here on the Lanai. As you can see behind me, that's Hawaii. I've been having a good time. I even managed to keep up my running schedule, which is rough here. Wow, a lot of sweating.

So sweaty. And lots of up and down here on the big island so i did like 600 feet of elevation in my run which is about three times more than i usually get so uh been just doing slow pace slow pace just trying to keep keep my head above water i did sign up for the San Francisco half. So I got it. I can't fully take this vacation off, as you can tell. Right. Yeah. It's great that you're here.

And it's going to be a slightly lighter week of shows. We've got 3-0 show coming up. Recording Wednesday, going up on Thursday. I should have a guest episode coming up later this week, pending on whether or not that happens for sure, but I'm trying to pull off a second episode this week. So fingers crossed. Yeah, pins and needles.

At the very least, we'll get back to two episodes a week starting next week, but I'm hoping to have a second episode for this week. Cautiously optimistic is where I'm going to place it right now with a few inquiries out. But on this episode, we have a lot of ground to cover. We had some great questions that inspired kind of broader questions. Young players against left-handed pitching. So Jazz Chisholm was the inspiration for that question.

We'll dig into whether or not to be concerned about Jazz or when you should be concerned about any player based on struggles against same-handed pitching, especially from the left side. We're going to talk about AAA power surges and whether or not you should buy in, inspired by Luis Garcia finally getting a chance with the Nationals again. We're seeing some really poor batted ball quality numbers from the Tigers.

We'll dig into that a little bit. Got a couple of good follow-up emails as well about bat changes in St. Louis and a pitching plus question that I think could be pretty helpful for a lot of people out there as well, since we're more than 10 starts in for a lot of starting pitchers. So a lot of information now in the model from this season, but we're going to start with the same handedness concerns for Jazz Chisholm and the numbers are ugly. We've seen this before. We've seen guys that in very limited samples they go up and they struggle against same-handed pitching as young players and

suddenly they fall into a platoon and I feel like there's a lot of things in play here one how good is the team and two how willing is the team to let the player learn on the fly as a result of not having other players they can play in place of that player. So if you have a team that's trying to play for right now, they're going to be more inclined to use almost anybody who might have a better matchup as part of the platoon. If you are a team that's not really playing for right now, they might have this sort of willingness to just let it fly

and just see what happens and kind of go down that route for player development. I'd add a third one to that list. It's a great list. But a third aspect I think is just as important is just the perceived upside of the player. Is he a star or not calculation? It's a little bit like when you bring up a starting pitcher or a pitcher

and you're trying to determine if they are a starting pitcher or a reliever and how long do you stick with them as a starter before you make them a reliever, right? It's like how long will I stick to this guy as an everyday player and it will matter how good I think he can be in the long run. Because if, you know, if I've got Chad Green, and I think he could be an okay starter, but he could be an amazing reliever, then those other two things that you mentioned come into play. We're the Yankees. We got to win now. We don't

have time to really sit here and wait for chad green to do what he's got to do uh and i think the ultimate they made the right decision at least for themselves probably for chad as well uh but uh it is it is interesting because you know the royals will run a guy out there as a starting pitcher for longer right now because they're just trying so hard to find starting pitchers. And the Royals will probably let a hitter right now who might have some interesting platoon splits try to hit his way out of it too. Yeah, so there's a lot of factors you have to consider.

And then on top of all of that, the splits, the number of plate appearances that a left-handed hitter gets against left-handed pitching, it's very small. So there's not a lot of statistical foundation that you can really lean on here. And it makes this a constantly moving target. So we'll start with Jazz specifically. At a glance, when you look at the overall numbers, you see more walks than we saw last year. You see fewer strikeouts than we saw last year. Backed by an improved O-swing percentage.

He's barreling the ball more often. These are all good things. So to look at Jazz and say, well, that's all true, but he's struggling against lefties. In this case, we're talking about 29 plate appearances for Jazz Chisholm. He's still, he's got two hits in those appearances. But it's not as though he's striking out half the time, right? It's only eight strikeouts. I'd be looking at some of the process-related stats to try and get a read on whether or not a team is actually going to consider cutting playing time.

And I think Jazz fits into what you were describing. He fits more into the mold of a player that miami sees as a future star and if you see a player as a future star like jazz you're not cutting his playing time short especially right now but even if they were in a really competitive spot right now they'd probably be more likely to let him play and just move him down in the order than to actually take him out of the lineup completely. Yeah, 100%. He has a 3% walk rate against lefties for his career, so it's possible he doesn't see them amazingly,

but he still makes about as much contact as he does against righties. And for his career, a 215-250-365 with a 615 OPS, it's not great. But I actually think that if you were that amazing against Arites, that wouldn't keep you out of the lineup, especially if you play an interesting defensive position. There's all sorts of other things you can do. And then there's just the non-linearity of of development and especially when we kind of bore down on this level to these little year to year platoon splits you kind of

you can see it right now and the the leaders against of left on left rafael devers is first rice harper is second trevor larnak is third. Do you believe that will continue or not? Is he more of a future star? Is he a guy this is meaningful for or not? Then there's Nate Lowe, Rugnet Odor, Brandon Nimmo. I think that maybe one of these guys will be in the top 10 next year. You know, like here at 11th is Mike Yastrzemski. Here at 11th is Mike Yastrzemski, and if you look at Mike Yastrzemski's platoon splits against lefties, he had a 145 WRC+, a 165, and then a 46 last year, and now he's back up to 130.

We still don't know what his true talent is. Brandon Lau was a guy who was supposed to be platooned and was for the most part. I wonder if Tampa is sort of its own little place because even if they do think you're a future star, they might platoon you. But in any case, Brandon Lau, 90 WRC plus, 78. And this is when, oh, you got to platoon him. 2020 breakout year, 208 WRC plus against lefties. Oh, maybe he's figured something out. Oh, 2021, 83 WRC plus, 2022, 136.

So he's a guy you don't have to platoon all the time, but there are bad enough years in there where you can sort of scratch your head and wonder. But I will say this. I think that teams have either better mathematical understanding

or move faster than the numbers say because Matt Klaassen did a piece back in 2010 about estimating platoon skill, and he said that you need 1,000 plate appearances against lefties to have more signal than noise. So basically you regress against 1,000 plate appearances against lefties to have more signal than noise. So basically you regress against a thousand plate appearances. So if you have a guy like Jazz Chisholm, who has 193 plate appearances of an observed platoon split, that means you add another 807 of league average platoon splits to his observed platoon split so basically what i'm

saying is right now mathematically jazz chisholm has no platoon split you know the no no beyond like the regular platoon split right but then my immediate pushback on this just in terms of it being helpful to us in the long run is by the time you get a thousand plate appearances against lefties you've aged five six years you're not the same player anymore yeah yeah yeah and then and then on top of that um like how many hitters with bad platoon splits get to a thousand plate appearances you know i mean like my there's a my point there is like there's there must be something that teams know about shapes of pitches about the maybe their process stats maybe if you if you look at their process stats you can make

a decision quicker right like if they just strike out 40 of the time against lefties and you know 25 of the time against righties then you're know, 25% of the time against righties. Then you're just like, dude, I don't think I need to go to a thousand plate appearances on this one. But for whatever reason, like teams work faster than this. You know, you can say this is a mathematical fact that we've observed in, in baseball,

but teams don't wait till a thousand plate appearances against lefties to say, okay, okay. We made it to a thousand. He's not good. They don't want to give away a thousand plate appearances so um you know i don't i don't know the curtis granderson though was in the piece i just this is a little bit of a fun thing uh he was in the piece by matt clausen on fan graphs and um he he was trying to project basically granderson's platoon split going forward and at that point in his career granderson was terrible against lefties had a 270 wobah and had basically i would say like a 60 wrc plus against lefties um you know into in 2009

and chris granderson said yeah but if we use this thousand and we and we and we regress him then uh he should have a 311 woa next year and in 2010 he had a 290 instead of a 270 and in 2011 he had a 402 and then he never for the rest of his career he basically had like a 311 330 type wo buckins lefties so um you know there was something to that piece when it comes to curtis granderson um and i would think just generally you know okay so let's turn this back to actionable stuff right like when when you start to see the team platoon and i guess that's when you that's when you worry yeah that's probably a good place to start as far as being willing to consider the possibility of something like a jazz

chisholm might be at a relative high point in his long-term value and i'm in a dynasty league or a keeper league where this is a great time for me to get everything I could possibly want, right? If they were platooning him already, that might be true. They're not using him that way. They're letting him play. And again, there's plenty of good in this profile as well. So I would err on the side of buying into Chisholm long-term and being very interested in trying to get him in leagues where someone is actually willing to trade him

as opposed to going the other direction. We had a question about his teammate, Jesus Sanchez, who is struggling right now. He had a pretty good run thanks to a series in Colorado. I think that sort of helped correct some of the early season struggles for him. K-rate's down a little bit from where it was during his previous time in the big leagues, still close to 30% at 29.6%. He's walking less than he's walked at any level since high A. So that's a bit of a concern for Jesus Sanchez as well. It's a similar sort of question. When do you look at a player like this and say, yeah, this is probably all we get versus normal growing pains? Because I think you could argue that since we're still talking about a player

with fewer than 500 total big league plate appearances, it could still just be the adjustment phase that Jesus Sanchez is going through as a young player. Yeah, I kind of, it's funny because we had a podcast, we talked about Jesus Sanchez and we said we liked him. And then he kind of went in the tank and yet I still like him at the same level because he still barrels balls and I do think that he has some opportunity to make more contact as he adjusts to major league pitching

and I believe his projections which still have him as a 250 30 home run type hitter in a full season um maybe you revise that down to 26 or 27 but that's all that i've done in his last four in his last poor playing stint i think it's just part of the ups and downs of being a young player this is a dude that hits the ball hard you know in terms of a 114 max exit below last year, 115 this year, a 12% barrel rate for his career, like, I will bet on people that hit the ball hard, especially since he's not striking out 35% of the time. It's 30% of the time. It's doable in today's game. And his projections are for 26. And if he ever gets it down to 25 or 24, that's when you have a career year. So, you know, I think he's a guy that in season-long leagues,

if you can't take a 240 average and, you know, 20 to 25 homers is not that great for you this year, then maybe move on. But in terms of keeper leagues, I think he's a decent buy low. If he's acquirable, I think he's a good player. And I would say this would also lead us to help maybe define losing playing time against lefties in a concerning way. Because he gets days off against lefties, but he doesn't sit against all lefties. It's just kind of the opportunity for the Marlins to give him days tends to be utilized more against a certain lefty.

If you look back at the last month or so, the last two games he sat were against lefties, but he's also started a couple games against lefties during that window, that broader window. This would be normal usage. You get a young player like this, you're not going to play him 100% of the time. Maybe you don't see star level upside, but you see very good player, everyday player sort of upside. The key is to kind of balance that out,

make sure he's not getting too far in his own head when things are going wrong and just helping get him right, putting him in the positions to succeed. This to me is still not an alarming loss of playing time as it pertains to Sanchez. Let's try to be precise about this a little bit. So I've now pulled up a search of which batters have the lowest percentage

of left-on-left plate appearances, right? So these would be the guys who are being platooned. Some of the obvious names are there. So these would be the guys who were being platooned. And some of the obvious names are there. Jock Peterson is third. He has 590 plate appearances and 38 of them, or maybe it's pitches and 38 of them, but sometimes Savant annoys me.

In any case, he's seen the third fewest amount of pitches left on left in baseball with a minimum of 10 something pitches, plate appearances, I don't know. And so Jock Peterson is third. Also on this list is Brad Miller, Robinson Cano, Tommy LaStella,

Franchi Codero, Corey Dickerson, G-Man Choi, right? Did you just name one player under 30 in that group? Franchi's the only player who's under 30, I think, in that group. Well, I did that on purpose. I was naming the older players so that now I can say, okay, here are the young players that are on this list

that maybe you should worry about. Cole Tucker is number one. Richie Palacios is number two. That's weird. He just came up. He's already a platoon player, right? That's when you really worry. I think when you're on the bottom of this list, Nolan Gorman is on this list. Now that may have more to do with your first two rules, right? How good the Cardinals are now. And how healthy they are too, right? They've got enough depth

right now where someone someone good has to sit every day depending on the matchup and some days that someone good is going to be nolan gorman is it more like the jesus sanchez situation though where it's not against all lefties it's only against some lefties well i mean i'd say he's in the bottom 10. So right now it seems like he's mostly all lefties. He's 19 pitches seen left on left. It's a very low number. But, yeah, I don't know. Gorman also with that strikeout rate, he's not my favorite prospect.

I know he's had a good beginning, but he's not my favorite prospect. I'm not buying high. But he's not my favorite process. I'm not buying high. Here's some other names on the list that are young and therefore interesting for this discussion. I guess Rafael Ortega is not young. No, I think he's even on the wrong side of 30. Gorman, by the way.

Since Gorman debuted, the Cardinals have faced four left-handed starters. He has started against zero of them. It doesn't mean he'll never start against lefties. just means for now he's not getting that opportunity which then creates a problem later how do you become capable of hitting lefties if you don't get chances to hit lefties i need my thousand uh lamont wade jr uh is on this list willie calhoun uh is on this list. Um, uh, Lars Newt bar is on this list. That's interesting. Um, CJ Abrams is on, 18, 21, 25. Okay, so Jazz Chisholm is about the 35th lowest. He's seen 105 pitches against lefties.

So, I don't know, 35 lowest. I think that if you're in the bottom 30, you're like a very obvious platoon guy on the team right like bottom 30 is like oh yeah that's our platoon guy he only sees lefties 35 uh he's hanging out with uh david peralta uh who i thought played every day uh he's right there with uh he's right there with Joey Wendell, Yadiel Hernandez, Andres Jimenez, Eddie Rosario okay so I guess he has a little bit of a platoon risk but they've been using him against lefties recently and they're not even dropping him in the order that gives me I think a little bit of an intention to say yeah we're going to keep letting him try to figure it out. He's had a few injuries and has just lost

some time this year, too, which I think has helped drive that down. Similar to Sanchez, there is a, when we give this guy a day off, it's more likely to be against the lefty. Okay, that's fine. That's smart usage, but you see a handful of those opportunities. Also, they haven't faced that

many lefties. I was just saying, I'm trying to figure out how to improve the query um on the fly here but that is a flaw if you have not seen that many lefties then uh you won't show up at the top of this he still has 105 pitches seen against lefties so you know he is way more than any of the guys above him on this list yeah i guess you could see a lot of lefty relievers, even if you don't see that many lefty starters. Like some teams that don't have any lefties in the rotation obviously have lefties they can throw at you out of the pen.

So that starts to pile up too. He's like Yadiel Hernandez, I think, in terms of total pitches seen, total pitches seen against lefties, and they're in the same division. So it's possible there's just not that many lefties in that division. So what do we do with Gorman in the long run? I mean, you mentioned he's not your favorite prospect just because of some of the limitations, but that's a pretty intriguing profile. And I think what we saw last year at AAA and what was a larger sample than what he had this year at the same level was a 19.2% K rate. And that's the best he's had at any stop so far. He was striking out 26.7% of the time at AA last year.

It looks like an outlier, but he's so young. You can look at that and convince yourself that maybe there's some room for growth, that he's not necessarily a long-term 35% K rate sort of player, that maybe he's a 25 to 28% K rate player in the long run. Look at the differences in the, in projected strikeout rate. This is, uh,

this is got to be one of the largest spreads I've seen. Zips has a 22.7% projected strikeout rate and, uh, the bad X has 30. That's a pretty big split. And that's exactly what you're talking about is how much does that 2021 factor in um i believe i believe the 30 yeah i think it's the safe place to go but you have to look at gorman as the kind of player that's going to make a ton of hard contact he's going to be a

good barreler and if i guess i would say if you can believe in jesus sanchez you should probably also believe in nolan gorman as a hitter damn you good point but that's what it comes down to the the amount of k percentage that you're willing to tolerate comes back to how much damage you do there's a difference in hype cost and acquisition cost. Right, because Jesus Sanchez was his ADP back during the end of draft season, maybe fringe for the top 200 overall. Yeah, and Gorman was even being picked, I think. I'm trying to think about if Gorman has a good comparable rookie season to what Sanchez did a season ago.

Oh, he'll get picked higher. He'll do it over a larger volume of plate appearances, assuming health. He'll go earlier. So I think you're right. There could be a difference in price. Maybe it is a question of when you take players with this profile, when you bet on a 30% K rate

with a 12% barrel rate. When is that okay and when is that not okay? Not okay in the top 50, not okay in the top 100, maybe okay in the 100, 200 range, ideally after pick 200 because then you're getting cheap power and then if there's some skills growth to go with it, it's gravy.

If there's not, you're not hurt. You're still going to be pretty good. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, you nailed it. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah. I just think that he's essential to remain cheap and remain 80% as valuable maybe as Nolan Garman.

If he costs 50% as much, then he's the better pick. I want to move on to another young player and a broader question that comes along with him. Are you buying into AAA power surges? This came from a question about Luis Garcia. Did Luis Garcia figure something out at AAA, or is he reaping the benefits of hitter-friendly environments? He's finally getting a chance at the Nationals again,

so Jake wanted to know if he's a dude or just another guy, which I think is a great way to ask how good a player is. Is he a dude, or is he just another guy? Yeah, I did not really like him that much before this power surge because I saw him as like a guy who would hit 260 with like nine homers and six stolen bases, honestly. That's where I had him pegged and like for for example right now his projection especially on the bat x is for uh 257 and 10

homers and four stolen bases in a full season so that's where i had him uh but uh there are people who like him and i think part of it is the fact that he's not a string bean. He's 22, and he's succeeded at most levels. He's succeeded at all the minor league levels on the way up. Maybe not as outstanding as you might want until recently. But these last two stops at AAA have been outstanding. recently uh but these last two stops at triple a have been outstanding i mean he's been 54 better than league average last year in triple a and then 30 34 this year and with that uh that both years showing that power uh that power bit and that's what you that's what he needs to show

because he has good contact he has some speed he can play shortstop for them. So if he can ISO 200 instead of 100, now you're talking about a guy who will hit 275 with 20 homers and four stolen bases over a full season. Yeah, sign me up for it, man. In this case, I'm taking the Zips projection over the bat projection. I think when I'm looking at the minor league numbers for Garcia, I'm wondering if the added power, despite a still somewhat high ground ball rate,

it's better at AAA than it's been during his brief times in the big leagues prior to this season. I'm wondering what kind of cap that actually puts on him. If he's a 15 to 20 home run guy that's a lot better than what people thought he was just a year or two years ago for sure and maybe it's a little bit like the luis urias changes in the minor leagues urias came through initially as a really young prospect in the padre system and it was really all hit tool and not a lot of power got the triple AAA a much more hitter-friendly environment

than the one Garcia's playing at because it was El Paso in the PCL, so high altitude, great place to hit, and unlocked some extra power by also changing his approach. Yeah, made changes, hit the ball in the air more often, maybe sold out a little to get it, but those adjustments ultimately paid off.

So I think we could be looking at something somewhat similar, and I think Luis Garcia is probably more, for now, at least a 15-team mixed league player. I don't know if I'm looking at them at 10s and 12s. Some of it's going to depend on where he hits in the lineup. And if he ends up carving out a spot in the top half versus the bottom half, maybe then the counting stats are just good enough to make him viable in some of those other mixed league formats. But I am willing to take a chance here and i'm really the thing i'm watching really closely the hard hit rates and the barrel rates you know is he actually making a lot more hard contact than he did in the brief times we've seen him previously hitting it hard but on the ground right now

and that's been part of the problem before it It's only 15 batted ball events, so not even worth mentioning, really. Right, so just something to keep an eye on. I think there's a chance he's a dude. There's a better chance than not that he's not just a guy anymore. That inspired me to look up the AAA International League ISO leaders. I just didn't want to have that PCL noise in there.

Number one, Nolan Gorman. Number two, Vinny Pascantino. Someone, I think I heard an Italian breakfast nickname. Italian beef was the nickname. I think Clay Link came up with it. I don't know if that's just something that Royals teammates were calling him or if Clay Link came up with it. I don't know if that's just something that Royals teammates were calling him or if Clay made it up.

So if Vinny Pasquantino is on board with being called Italian Beef, it's a great nickname. He doesn't want to be called Italian Beef. I understand. We don't have to do that, but it's a great nickname. We got Robel Garcia on here, but he's a little bit a part of the old dude, maybe making some adjustments

or maybe just waiting to get back into the big leagues. Other old dudes like him that are doing well down there are John Singleton. Remember him? Yeah. John Singleton still kicking around. Daniel Palka in the top 30 down there. Jared Young, not so young. Anyway, Kyle Stowers is fourth.

This guy does have some swing and miss, but he's got big power, and it looks like he's knocking on the door. So this is a guy that if you have the ability to stash, people ask about stashers. There's not that many stashers left, right? He's got to be on the list. Yeah, I think Pasquantino, if he's not stashed already,

has to be coming up soon. Al and I talked about this a little bit on the Athletic Fantasy Baseball podcast for Tuesday. The Royals are ready to shake things up as it pertains to Carlos Santana. What else do you need to see if you're them? Start playing for the future. Give Pasquantino those opportunities.

This just blows my mind in terms of WRC+. Pasquantino is at Gorman's level, but with a K rate that was at 14.4% at AAA this season. That's really impressive. We're going to hear some stuff out of Kansas City soon, I think. We have to. Talking about firings

and demotions. They were supposed to be building. They have the worst record in baseball. Right. So, yeah, I don't think it's a comfortable time there. And, yeah, so I think Vinny's a good one. I think it's actually a little bit less obvious at the major league level what will happen to make Kyle Stowers come up.

But he's so excellent that at some point they may just try to make room for him or maybe there's just going to be an injury that happens. I mean, right now you've got Hayes, Mullen, Santander, and Mancini, and Mountcastle. It seems like Stowers is blocked. But also, maybe they are an early strike trade deadline team. And it's not obvious. I mean, Mancini is the obvious one,

and he's a crowd pleaser, but he's a free agent in, I'm trying to read this, 2023 mutual option. So he could be a free agent next year. So I think maybe Mancini gets traded and Stowers comes up so that's that's a possibility and then there's always injury possibility for everybody else yeah i think stowers probably gets a look in the second half and compare it to a lot of the other players on the leaderboard for iso in the international league he does strike out less than many of them a lot of those guys are at or above that 30 k rate which gives me some concern you're striking out that much there yeah i mean even gorman was striking out a lot at that level how well is that going

to translate nick prado vinny pasquantino's teammate up at 31.8 again yeah another he's also on the iso list but he has the higher strikeout rate yeah i think that makes it like more likely vinny comes up uh because you these two have something to tell Nick Prado. We'd be like, hey, listen, we've got to get that K right down a little bit. Other names that are interesting on this list in terms of ISO surgers that may have changed some of the narrative around their careers, number one is Royce Lewis. Royce Lewis is 23rd on this list, but it was the best ISO he ever shown. It came with,

you know, getting healthy. And that's why I think when he gets healthy off of this knee problem that he's got right now, just a bone bruise, hopefully not a bad one that can really go either way. But I think when he comes back, he's like pretty much the everyday left fielder for the twins that's how i see it because geo urshela's uh process stats are still pretty good i don't think he he pushes him off um and larnac sanchez gary sanchez ryan jeffers um you know miguel sanon miranda like first base dh larnak can fit in there. And I think that Royce Lewis gives them more defensive value in the outfield, especially because I think Royce Lewis is their best center fielder when Buxton takes his planned days off. So I think you just

get used to, you get Royce Lewis used to being a left fielder, center fielder. And that makes your team much better in the long run. So Royce Lewis is on this list. Cody Clemens is on this list. Um, he's a little bit old at 26, uh, but at least he's making the progress that you'd kind of hope for over the years. Uh, he's projected to be about a league average bat in the big leagues, but none of those projections have a 200 plus ISO, which he's now shown for two straight years at AAA. So I think Cody Clemens may be like a deep league stash.

Then there's Oscar Gonzalez, who really showed an ISO explosion at AAA that kind of goes back to his AA years, and we have seen none of it um at the big league level yet except for a 113 max exit below so i think oscar gonzalez is still more interesting than some of the other low power guys that have come through that uh guardians organization and uh you know he's playing every day. I think he's a pickup. I don't know how shallow I'd go. I don't know if I need him in 12-team leagues, but if you're looking for something in 15-team leagues, I think it's worth it.

It's a good combination of power and contact. Circling back to the Twins for just a moment, their offense has more depth than we expected and I think that's going to spur the action we've been wondering about for a while they're going to trade a bat they've got enough young hitters who are big league ready alex kirloff tearing up triple a again he seems to be healthy he's doing good that's good he's great at triple a so far this year um be look at larnik we talked about earlier even Even if Larnak is Brandon Lau

with a little less raw power, that actually, with years of control, is a skill set that teams would want back. So I think there is a trade in the works to get them pitching

involving some of these kind of currently fringe guys that are legit regulars. Yeah. And I think, yeah, larnak's really interesting because i think for the is it ties back into our other discussion where larnak i think on this on these twins is a guy that you platoon you know uh you just don't risk it he has a 33 strikeout rate if it's any worse against lefties then you're talking about like a what a 40 strikeout against

the lefties that starts to become untenable and i, you know, he's been mostly been platooned as he is now. Another team, a worse team could say, hey, we could value Larnak as an everyday player, you know, and we could give him those at-bats. And, you know, we can look past the fact that he may be, you know, a first baseman long term, you know. So I think Larnak is a really interesting one. I think, you know, Kirloff could go too, but I think he has a little bit more defensive value. The defensive stats on fan graphs don't say that, but just from watching him, I see him as a little bit more fluid in the field. Am I crazy? No, I think that's fair.

And anyway, with his strikeout rates, historical strikeout rates, I think he offers more upside for being an everyday player. And he's barreled the ball just as well in a short sample. So if we were choosing between the two, I think I would trade Trevor Larnak. Got another question here. This one came in from John. It's about the Tigers and their lack of offensive production to this point.

My question is regarding Detroit's exit velocities. I have unscientifically looked at the EVs of some of Detroit players and note the average and max are down significantly. Is this a function of hitting coach and or the radar gun. How do you think about drawing conclusions from apparent patterns? And is this a buy low with a humidity change? Thanks in advance, John. Yeah. again i could have i could be wrong about how the humidors are going to work and

uh we'll say this i don't know if you've been following on twitter or whatever but home runs are up and uh home runs even when you account for weather are up and sometime in mid may there was a change so this this is awful. I have to tell you, this is awful for me. And I don't know if people probably don't care how I feel about it, but it's just an awful beat. It is so hard. And you want to assume that baseball knows what they're doing or that they're doing what they say they're doing. And both of those things are not true, demonstrably not true in the last few years, right? They told us there was one ball last year.

Oh, sorry, it was two balls. So, you know, and then in terms of like, you know, their stated goals for certain things, you know, and then what actually happens, they don't seem to line up either. So know what they're doing or doing what they say they're doing are kind of out the window.

And so when you see a large, a kind of a drastic change in May, two things are always possible. It's noise or they change the ball or they change the humidor settings. Like all these things are possible. So it's hard for me to follow along. I do know that homers are up. Detroit is a sneaky, tough place to hit.

And there's some evidence that the walls are further out than they are listed in certain parts of the park. We've talked about that before. There were some calibration issues early on with StatCast in Detroit that led to some weird numbers there, too, but I don't think that's true anymore. So I pulled up the lowest team exit. All right, let me just do the fun part first. Top team exit velocities in the StatCast era. The Yankees this year, number one, 90.5.

And then it's Toronto last year, Toronto this year. Minnesota this year, Yankees 2019, Dodgers 2020, the year they won. Hitting the ball hard, it's good. Hitting the ball soft, it is not good. Cincinnati, 2017, 85.5. Yowza. That's not even the first year of StatCast, so you can't call that calibration issues. Then you got San Diego, 2017, Pittsburgh, some Colorados more cincinnatis so i'm going to crown cincinnati the uh exit velocity laggards of the stat cast era my point is the tigers are not actually all over this and the 2022 tigers are maybe the 20th lowest uh in the stat cast era I, it's not an outlier.

It's not, they're not a team that shows up here so often that I'm worried that they don't value it as an organization as I do with the Reds and the Rockies. Honestly, they're, they're all over this part. But it is a bad season for them. And I think that the real narrative here is that building a team is hard, and this is part of the one step backward after two steps forward that may have been expected.

I think Riley Green hits the ball hard. I think Javier Baez will hit the ball hard eventually. I think Torkelson has actually shown us something to dream on and will improve as the season goes on. I don't – to be concise, I'm not sure how much is ball or humidor related and how much is personnel related. In terms of buying low because of this nugget of information. I don't know, but if you want to buy low on Torkelson or bias bias in this year leagues or Torkelson and keeper leagues,

I will give you the thumbs up on that. Most likely Spencer Torkelson will be on a few of my rosters in 2023. Like that's sort of what I've expected all along. I don't have him anywhere in 2022 not for any personal reason just didn't feel like there was going to be immediate success for him in the big leagues just generally that's why i don't buy those that first round there's the three or four prospects every year they get drafted in like the first five rounds like the first 10 rounds at least.

And I never have them. So it cost me Bobby with this year, but it also kept me out of Torkelson territory. You know, the other thing that really stands out to me with the Tigers, their O swing percentage as a team, 35.8%. That is the worst in the big leagues.

Part of the reason you're not hitting the ball hard is because you're swinging a lot at pitches outside the zone. Make sure you're missing some of those pitches, but when you hit them, you're not hitting them hard because it's hard to hit pitches outside the zone hard. There's an interesting thing that happens. I've said this before, the highest paid regular is your de facto leader in the clubhouse. And if you make Javier Baez your highest paid leader, he doesn't even have to say anything, but you now see his plate approach and say,

well, that seems to be what they chose, so I'm going to, I'm not saying that Central Torquesson is like in his head like, oh, Javier Baez chases pitches, so I will too, you know? But, but you know it does say something what they would that they value and i'm not or maybe it just says that javier baez himself is uh is moving this number he's 49 well even though the tigers are first in oh swing percentage they are 24th in O contact percentage. So I guess fortunately for their batted ball numbers, unfortunately for their batted ball numbers, they're not actually hitting the ball outside the zone as much as other teams.

Torkelson, by the way, has not learned anything from Baez. He has a 26% O swing, and I'm happy for him for that. That's a good sign. But it is interesting to see harold castro willie castro victor reyes heimer candelario as and even derrick hill is all just swinging at everything also though that goes back to the personnel how good are those players how many of those players do we believe in to begin with and how many will be there maybe next? Yeah, I think this is kind of the end of the era from the Tigers not having torque. And eventually, Riley Green will be there too.

The catcher Dylan Dingler will be up there eventually. I mean, they've got a little more talent still coming. And I think that's going to start pushing a few of those guys completely off the roster. But a good question and probably a little bit of both in terms of just the organizational philosophy, the coaching, the individual players, all of it more of a perfect storm than anything else. I don't think this is a data-related fluke. I don't think it's the technology not being set up correctly

in this instance, even though it did happen in Detroit a few years back, as Eno mentioned. Got a question here about pitching plus and which of the pitching plus numbers are actually the most helpful when you're trying to determine performance and identify pitchers that throw better than their stats have indicated.

This question came in from Adam. So out of pitching stuff and location, what would you use as your guide if you're trying to find players that have underperformed results-wise so far but have actually pitched pretty well? Yeah, we're at a fascinating moment where even some of the relievers now have passed 300 pitches. So 300 pitches is a really important number in the model because before 300 pitches, I would use more stuff plus because stuff plus, um, is stickier year to year and it stabilizes faster. So, you know, more about a pitcher stuff, uh, quicker than, you know, about his overall quality because location. And I think this has to do with the umpire in any given game to game

maybe nagging injuries also the catcher behind the plate all these things can affect the game plan can the all these things can affect your your location plus numbers and so therefore those stabilize less quick but we're at we're at the past 300 pitches so right now i'd be using pitching plus because pitching plus looks and, are they putting in good locations and do they have good shapes and velo on their pitches? If they're doing those two things, I think they're generally going to be good. So if you sort by Pitching Plus for over 300 pitches, there are a few buy lows that come to mind.

Brandon Woodruff is 13th overall. That's not even counting all the relievers. He's basically, by Pitching Plus plus the third best starting pitcher in baseball. You've got Kevin Gossman, you've got Garrett Cole, and then you got Brandon Woodruff. I call that a buy low. Nathan Eovaldi is right behind Woodruff. I think he's also a buy low or just a buy. You know, he can continue doing what he's doing. Happy hold. Yeah, happy hold.

Yeah, there you go. It's going to get better. It's going to gain points. Tyler Wells is here. I know the model is not designed as a fantasy model. So Tyler Wells is an interesting case. We ran the – we trained the model against run allowance or the sort of RA9 sort of stuff where you, how many runs does this pitcher allow?

And so therefore it likes Tyler Wells maybe more than we should as fantasy players, because I will admit Tyler Wells is not striking out as many batters as I expected. However, if you look at Tyler Wells minor league career, he struck out more batters. If you look at his pitching plus, he's right there behind Nathan Eovaldi and ahead of Shane McCallaghan by decimal points. So I believe in Tyler Wells. I think he's still a pickup. I've picked him up and dropped him and picked him up again in places. So he's gettable, you know. Frankie Montas is up there. Shoei Otani, but they're doing well. Zach Wheeler.

So people are asking me, you know, his stuff plus doesn't look good. You know, when Zach Wheeler was vintage, his stuff plus number was like 101 or 103 or something. It was never as good as what he was when you added in his location ability. And in his last three starts, Zach Wheeler's pitching plus has been over 110. So he can actually move past Otani and Montas and be a top five pitching plus guy in a start or two. So I think Zach Wheeler has absolutely returned to form, and he's fine. Mike Clevenger is an interesting case because he has a low stuff plus number only

in 260 pitches, but a good pitching plus number and then an unclear situation in San Diego where he keeps getting piggybacked with Nick Martinez and not going deep into games. I would put a sort of a qualified buy on him, but just sort of let me go through here and see if I – Logan Webb, still a top 10, top 15 type pitcher. If you think he's gettable. Rodon has not fallen off that much. He's right there. Berrios.

Berrios counts as a buy low, and I will stick to it. 890 pitches in. He has above average stuff above average locations. I will go to my grave with Jose Barrios. Urias had a stumble at the beginning but he's back up there.

But I don't know that he's a buy low. But let me see if I can find one more buy low. Alex Cobb that he's a buy low. But let me see if I can find one more buy low. Alex Cobb. As obvious a buy low as every... You can use any stat you want. You can really use any stat you want. Alex Cobb has got to be about to go off.

There you go. So hopefully that's helpful with some direct targets and just in terms of how to use that information from the model as you try and find buy low targets moving forward as well i had a really interesting follow-up email that came in with a story from the st louis post dispatch about the bat technology that a couple of the cardinals are using nolan arenado paul goldschmidt among those players a former cardinal matt carpenter also going through the same process and the story kind of of gets at how I think it's Marucci is the bat company. They're working and kind of getting to this point where it's more like being fitted for golf clubs now when players are being fitted for bats.

And that's where a lot of the changes are coming from, adding the puck, counterweight knobs, different things to fit the way that individual players swing the bat. And I just think this is, it's really exciting because it seems like one of the bigger technical developments that can help hitters sort of counteract pitchers getting better and better all the time, right? And we're seeing some guys have pretty surprising early season performances at the plate. And we're starting to get some stories like this that point back to significant changes to bats being maybe part of the explanation for how they're doing it. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

I did a story on this a little while back in terms of just knowing that you got what you want, that what you ordered, you know, apparently out of a, out of six bats that you order two of them are demonstrably better than the rest. I think that story is called no two trees are alike. If anyone, if you order two of them, a demonstrant better than the rest. I think that story is called

No Two Trees Are Alike. If anyone, I was really proud of that one. It took me about a year and a half to put together. But the weight, the weight of the bats even within the group, right? Yeah, yeah. It's slightly different. Yeah, and those are all bats

you ordered to be the same. But then beyond that, yeah, you're right. We're doing more of a golf. We're learning a lot from golf. Golf has, you know, Trackman was in golf first. first uh you know hit tracks type stuff was in golf first uh where they simulate where your ball would have gone if you're like in a hitting uh hitting uh what's it called the hitting cage environment um but um i one thing that was interesting when I was doing this story about the bats was some of the teams were not into it.

And we're kind of giving this guy a hard time at Long Ball Labs. And I couldn't tell why. Because there could be one thing going on, which is, hey, we want to do this. And, yeah, good idea, but we'll take it from here, which is always possible. Or two, we just – this is equipment. The player determines his equipment. We're not going to be there. I don't know.

If I was a team, I'd be like, I'm going to help you, every one of you, get your best bat. You know, I'm going to – like, we, we, we have all our, all of our resources at your disposal as a player. You don't have to use them, but here they are. This guy over here, all he does will measure your bats when they come in the door. You know what I mean? Like, and he'll, and he'll tell you which one's the best ones out of your six, you know? And this guy here, we'll see if you want it. He has the ax handles and, and, and he can tell you what it does and what it does. The ax handles and the newest is the hockey puck handle at the bottom um the axe handle i think is just good for

certain players to kind of they talk about um getting quick to the zone and being flat through it i actually think the axe handle like has some ability to like help you kind of shorten your bat path in the back and get to the zone quicker. That's a little bit of conjecture, but I'm thinking about the way the bat fits in your hand. The hockey puck thing is about MOI, I think. That's the moment of inertia. So if you have more weight on that side,

I think the fulcrum changes. You know, and it changes, it changes, I think, how quickly. So I think that's a little bit like choking up, putting the hockey puck. It's a little bit like choking up without choking up. It's like putting a little bit more weight under your hands so you can be quicker, but you still have the normal length of your bat.

So I think that's the theory there. Yeah, they were talking about it a little bit. It was the Monday Night MLB Network crew. I think it was Yonder Alonzo was talking about it. You can whip the bat head through the zone a little bit more easily and not sacrifice weight in the bat as a whole heavier bat's good because you hit the ball further right so the only way to get the bat head through faster previously was just to go with a lighter bat and that isn't necessarily what you want right if you have to

swing a lighter back it's the only way you can catch up to stuff okay you do that but you sacrifice some power in the process because mass equals force times acceleration and now you're not making that same sacrifice because the technology is changing times mass that equals ma wrong happens anyway um one thing that i think is interesting is that a lot of this stuff was being done by feel so if you if you've looked at people's bats in the past uh some people will take tape and just keep taping the knob. Right. So they have like a bunch of tape at the bottom. What is the bunch of tape at the bottom?

The same thing as this hockey puck. It's just weight below your hands. It's a few ounces eventually if you put enough tape on there. Exactly. And I've seen people just sort of tape, tape, tape, tape, tape until there's like a thing at the bottom. And the other thing is on the measuring, the batters have always known that you have your game day bat they've

always known that when you get six of them one is the one you really want for the game and the others are batting practice bats the thing that we're the the the space we're in as a as a race as a human race is that the stuff that we used to kind of do by intuition we're like let's be more precise about it now we have all this technology and data like let's not go with the sort of voodoo divining stick trying to find water underground we can we can probably just image the ground and find the water you know what i mean like let's let's be a little bit more precise about this stuff so um and that's why i don't think it's ever really valuable to listen to someone say something i was talking to brett phillips about clutch and i was like the way i said it to him

was like listen we can't prove the clutch exists and i told him my theory which was that uh all baseball there's a there's a sort of a um a bell curve right like if you think about there's a sort of a bell curve, right? Like if you think about, there's a bell curve of all baseball players. That's all baseball players everywhere, including minor leagues, you know, college, everywhere. Pro is the little tiny tail on the way out, right? So if there is a bell curve of clutch, it's possible that all major leaguers are on the tiny little tail out front. So they

all basically are clutch because how are you going to make it to the big leagues if you aren't a little bit clutch? You know what I mean? Like if you're me and you're going to get in there against Garrett Cole and just poop your pants, like you're not a major leaguer. You know what I mean? Like how did you get here? Yeah, you got pushed out in high school. That was it. But Phillips pushed back, and I think that the smartest thing to do when you're talking to old schoolers or to baseball players is listen because, you know, Phillips said, no, absolutely. When I first came to the big leagues, I was crapping my pants all the time, and I couldn't have a thought about what I was trying to do at the plate.

I couldn't have a plan because I was just, ah, and he said, you know, part of being traded to the Tampa is I'm sleeping at home. The team wanted me.

They have a defined role for me. I've been here long enough. I'm not, I don't think I'm going to, I'm out of the league if I strike out today, you know, sort of deal.

And he said, he absolutely thinks that if we put heart rate monitors on pro players that we would actually be able to identify some sort of clutch. And then I said, well, players never let you do that. And he's like, come on. I think at this point they probably would because they're measuring us every time we fart. That was paraphrasing. I don't know.

Data that I don't want. Yeah, data that I don't want. I have no interest in that data. Data I am interested in, though. There's one more question that came in, and this is just kind of a fun question. Ani sent us a question. She was wondering if the model is able

to disambiguate between twins. She noticed there's a huge discrepancy between Tyler and Taylor Rogers. And of course, they also pitch with opposite hands, which just kind of tongue in cheek is confusing. How can twins have opposite hands? And I was I did a little bit of research. I didn't have a lot of time to dig deep into this question because I think in the general population, 90% of the population is right handed. Everybody else is either left handed or ambidextrous. But in twins, there are some indicators that there's actually a greater likelihood of left-handedness, closer to 20% out of the population of twins.

unknown to me is how unusual is it if it is unusual at all for identical twins to throw with opposite hands the way that taylor and tyler rogers do and then of course the deliveries look nothing alike because you'd say okay fine they're they're mirror images of each other right they both have over the top it looks exactly the same you could put them side by side and be like oh sure these guys are twins the the legs move the same the The arms move the same. The follow through is the same. Everything's exactly the same. It's just the opposite side. Nope, that's not the case either. And even from a velo perspective, if you go further back into the story, this is a story that Andrew Baggerly and Dan Hayes wrote for The Athletic a few years ago before Tyler Rogers was even in the big leagues.

Tyler Rogers didn't even throw as hard as Taylor did. So that was part of the difference in them as prospects too. Taylor went to the University of Kentucky and Tyler was actually at a community college and it was Garden City Community College where he was throwing like 87 and he had a coach there who suggested he try that lower arm slot. So he wasn't even throwing like that until he went to a community college and then he transferred to austin pay and then eventually of course did become a big leaguer but it is one of the more bizarre things that you can come up with there's only been i think five sets of twins that have

both played in the big leagues if i'm not mistaken so rare to even have this happen in the first place but it seems even more unusual that twins would throw with opposite hands and then have completely different arm angles on top of that yeah i think it's a it's a great story i i do have some experience one of my best friends is a is a is an identical twin um there is a little bit and i can't say this is universal to all twins i don't know all twins but some you know some twins want to define themselves fairly differently from each other they want to have some aspect like this that falls apart a little bit with these guys because they're both playing baseball and they were both you know throwing over the top and one just threw harder than the other but uh there's some part of the story that's like oh yeah this is actually kind of a twin thing

we're like oh you you throw overhand in 95 well i throw down here at 75 so mom loves me better or how about this i came out three minutes earlier how many twins have had that argument i'm old older. I've heard that one. I've heard that one. Yeah. Yeah. I've got a good friend of mine. He's a, he's one of seven children and there are two sets of twins in that group. And he's one of the two sets of twins.

And I think he's left-handed and his sister is not, of course they're not identical twins, but I think that actually is another one of these Taylor, Tyler Rogers situations. We have twins with opposite hands and I, it never fascinated me quite the same way previously that it does now this is just bizarro world and I want

to know more and if I ever find more reasons or explanations for how these two people could be in the big leagues and be so similar yet so different I will definitely pass them along but thank you for that email on a lot of great emails throughout the show today. So thank you for sending those in.

As always, you can drop comments below this video on YouTube as well. Of course, our last episode didn't make it to YouTube because hotel internet was real good to me. Our video was super choppy. So I didn't post it because it would have been terrible. Everybody would have hated it. We always post the audio. It's always available as a podcast. So if you watch us on YouTube and you're missing an episode, always in the podcast feed.

Get a subscription to The Athletic for just a dollar a month for the first six months at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. Ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com is the email address if you'd like to drop us an email message for a future show. You can find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris. You can find me at Derek Van Ryper. And good news, looks like we do have a guest available for another episode this week so we should have another episode for you on Thursday wait I'm doing it right

there you go thanks for listening.