Rates & Barrels - Hitters We've Overlooked In 2025

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Eno and DVR discuss another round of news including Trevor May's induction in the Reading Baseball Hall of Fame, Tommy John surgery for Jackson Jobe, and a rotator cuff injury for Cole Ragans. Plus, they discuss the 'Urgency Index' of Trade Deadline needs, before looking at several hitters they've rarely discussed this season including Jeremy Peña, Hunter Goodman, and Ozzie Albies. Rundown1:19 Congrats, Trevor!2:26 Jackson Jobe: Will Undergo Tommy John Surgery10:44 Cole Ragans: Returns to IL w/Rotator Cuff Strain13:54 Aaron Civale: Requests a Trade Out of Milwaukee16:26 The 'Urgency Index 1.0' Teams In Need of Impact Starting Pitchers21:31 Thinking Outside the Box For Another SP on the Trade Market27:15 Kodai Senga: IL-Bound w/Hamstring Injury29:46 Listener Submissions: Hitters We've Largely Ignored47:33 Isaac Paredes: Back to Tapping Into Pull Power51:28 Ozzie Albies: Where Did the Power Go?Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.socialFollow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.sociale-mail: [e-mail] our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFeSubscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrelsHosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno SarrisProducer: Brian SmithExecutive Producer: Derek VanRiper Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Shop with Rakuten and you'll get it. What's it? It's the best deal, the highest cash back, the most savings on your shopping. So join Rakuten and start getting cash back at Uniqlo, Best Buy, Expedia, and other stores you love. You can even stack sales on top of cash back. Just start your shopping with Rakuten to save money at over 750 stores. Join for free at Rakuten.ca or download the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N. Rakuten.ca. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Thursday June 12th, Derek Van Ryn for EnoSarris here with you. On this episode we have underappreciated hitters. We're going to talk about some players that have been rarely mentioned on the pod over the last two and a half months or so.

Some good, some bad, trying to uncover the why behind the improvement or the decline. Get some baseball news you should know and there's an urgency index piece that Eno wrote along with Tim Britton and Aaron Gleeman on the Athletic Today, so we'll dig into that as we try and, our ongoing effort is to find fits trade-wise, we wanna be matchmakers,

we want people to be happy, right? We can't make people happy in love, but we can make people happy in baseball. At least that is our general goal. Matchmakers is our other option. Our other backup option. No, I don't think we could. No, no, I can. I can take care of myself barely. Barely.

I learned that over the course of my life. I can just barely find that for me, but I can't help other people in that regard. So a lot of ground to cover. Baseball news, you should know, as you may notice, there's no Trevor May here today because Trevor May is in Reading, Pennsylvania, being inducted into Redding's Hall of Fame. So congrats to our friend for that. He's going in with Darren Ruff, a name you met, remember, from the Phillies

organization a few years ago. And the Giants. Giant for a little while. So good things for Trevor and a fun trip. I can imagine getting to Reading from Seattle is actually somewhat challenging. We got to get you into a Hall of Fame. I know. I'm the only person on this show not in the Hall of Fame.

Yeah. I got the FSWA one. That's a attainable goal for you I'm gonna start the I'm gonna start beating the ground for that gets you on you know what I did wrong. I stopped writing Do the pods and the radio and I think that's a very writing a fantasy sports writers association. That's an angle I mean, how many podcasters do you have in there? Come on? I Don't I don't want to go on a campaign trying to beg into Hall of Fame's. If it happens somewhere, it happens.

It's awesome for Trevor. Very happy for him. Congrats to Trevor. Some other baseball news you should know. Unfortunately, Jackson Job needs Tommy John surgery. It feels like we're getting that second wave of the injuries that were minor to begin the season that got worse over the course of the year that were minor to begin the season, that got worse over the course of the year, I don't know. But the interesting thing about Joe,

we talked about his injury history a lot when we were analyzing him during draft season, and it always felt like the silver lining when we'd look back and say, Joe missed time with injury, was that it wasn't really because of arm trouble, right? I think it was a lumbar spine injury, there was a hamstring in there.

Unfortunately, because of the timing of this injury much like the corbin burns one questions are going to linger about whether or not we see job pitch competitively in 2026 right it could take the longer end of that 12 to 16 month timetable and knock him out for all next season as well and i think the reminder here for all of us is that the initial diagnosis for Job's injury this time around was a grade one flexor strain. And we see that a lot where flexor strains end up leading to Tommy John surgery because there's damage to the UCL and just a frustrating outcome for a young pitcher that was trying to find his way here in 2025 and it leaves the Tigers in a spot where, at least for now, both Sawyer Gibson Long and Cater Montero

are going to be in the rotation because they still have Reese Olsen and Alex Cobb trying to work their way back from injuries right now. But as Job goes, what did you see pre-injury from him in that rotation and what do you think this ultimately means for him long long term once we eventually get him back either late next season or in? 2027 I think he was starting to put together the pieces, you know It's one thing that I think of like Clark Schmidt telling me that you kind of develop your way through a system Clark Schmidt telling me that you kind of develop your way through a system trying to optimize your stuff plus in a way.

Like you're just trying to put the best shapes on all of your best pitches, right? And then you get to the big leagues and you realize it's about getting outs and you know, not always just throwing your best pitch by stuff plus is the way to go forward. Sometimes it's throwing a suboptimal pitch to set it up and finding ways, finding that you can't really command that great stuff plus pitch in the way that you need to at the Major League level. So, you know, I think he was starting to figure some of that out. The other thing that I think of with Jackson Job is he has a really hard slider. And here is a list of the hardest sliders last year by just

starting pitchers, minimum playing time, one inning, sorted by slider velocity. Jose Soriano, who is healthy now but has had two, maybe three Tommy Johns? At least two. Two, I think, Tommy Johns. I think he's two. We don't see a lot of threes. I think he's had two Tommy Johns. Mackenzie Gore is second. Jacob DeGrom is third. Tyler Glassnell is fourth. River Ryan is fifth. Hermon Marquez who has a Tommy John is sixth. Edward Cabrera is seventh. Hunter Brown is eighth. Ryan Pepeo. Jared Jones is 12th. Scoobble is 13th. Gavin Stone who had Tommy John after this is 14th. 15th is Blake Snell. 16th is John Gray who's been hurt all year. Listen, you can take any list, you'll find a lot of injuries. But I wonder if the high velocity fastball list that has produced so

many injuries is really just a mask for the high velocity slider list. So, I don't know if I want to start making that a part of the injury algorithm that Jeff Zimmerman has developed that I use with him. I will suggest to him that he tests it. However, I think Jeff Zimmerman might be taking the year off and traveling the world like Kane and Kung Fu. So I don't know if he's going to do that for me, but maybe he'll have enough time to test slide of velocity. It certainly seems like it should be something that we at least test in

our injury algorithms. I think Jeff's been testing a lot of bourbon from what I've seen on Booskai. That's what he's been up to. I don't know if he's doing it from the comfort of his own home. A bourbon fuel cane and kung fu. Traveling the world from his living room through the magic of bourbon, maybe. I don't know. I can't do it. Bourbon, I love it, but it's bad for me.

I just can't do it. But with Job and the hard sliders in particular, it's like every time this comes up, we have the leaderboard of great stuff, be that the fastball velocity or the slider velocity you're bringing up right now. You name a bunch of pitchers and I have the, oh, hurt now, hurt now, or was hurt recently. And then there's a few really, really good names in there.

And even the guys that were hurt were good before they got hurt. And I keep thinking to myself, if we just develop a rubric that pushes those guys off of our rosters, what's left? Are we going to have good enough pitching if we do this? And the broader questions that we've talked about in the show over the years, you know, it's like, if these types of things, high velocity sliders are fully, truly linked to massive arm injuries, is the payoff still worth it when the possibility of coming back after a year or 18 months and being mostly the same guy is still lingering

out there? I mean, for Job, he's in that younger bucket of guys in the big leagues having it, much like Yuri Perez, who just came back earlier this week. And I think I've wanted to look back at age and the outcomes. Are you better off having Tommy John earlier in your career? Are the outcomes better if you have to have it earlier in your career? I think I've seen some analysis like that.

And it was, you're better off the longer you wait, the longer, like, sort of Verlander-esque. The later in your career, the better. Yeah, so that's kind of an interesting thing to think about. There's other aging factors then like then you're just bad because you're old It's not because of the surgery it's you know what I mean? Like justin verlander struggles right now are not made it basically due to Tommy John surgery as much as the fact that he's over 40

And yeah, the list of the slowest sliders is I think healthier, it is also worse. Paulo Espino, Tyler Alexander, Cooper Criswell. Yeah, that list doesn't help me. What about the medium? Jacob Lopez, Valente Bellozo, Cole Irvin, Elisio Hernandez, JP France. No. I mean, I don't wanna shop there, sorry. Just the middle, that's what I want.

Yeah, I guess 85 is supposedly a good one. So like 87 mile an hour sliders include like Rodin sliders 87, but he's a hard throw. Otherwise, he's been injured. Zach Gallin sliders 87. I don't think you're hiding from injury that way Yeah, I don't necessarily think you are either you're gonna pick Joe Boyle because he has an 87.6 mile an hour slider I'm nerdy enough. I don't need to be so embedded in my process where I'm like, give me a median velocity slider, please

No, I don't want to live my life that way that's that's a step too far I guess Spencer Schwalbach, you know, that's kind of interesting 96 mile an hour fastball 87 mile an hour slider Wide mix command although guess what he had Tommy John surgery Right, I mean, yeah I don't know man. Yeah, it did. I don't know, man. Yeah, it's tough. It sucks. Tough break for Job for sure, though, and hopefully we'll see him back

in the next 12 to 18 months. Cole Reagans placed on the aisle with a rotator cuff strain. This is a frustrating situation because he was down with a groin injury, came back for one start, threw 78 pitches to get through three innings against the Cardinals, did have a downturn in fastball velocity. I think he was down a full tick compared to his season average in that first start back,

and that's tricky coming off of any sort of injury because I don't know if you always expect the stuff to be 100% there, first start off the IL. Maybe that was an indication that something was bothering Regans though, beyond the leg. And the rotator cuff strain outcome, like that to me is rarely going to be a 15 day minimum stint on the IL. We don't have an official timetable here, but it's a pretty big blow for a Royals rotation

that stayed really healthy last year in that run to the postseason. Using the awesome injury recovery dashboard over at Baseball Prospectus, we can look at past rotator cuff strains and see, you know, how long they've been out. The most recent rotator cuff strain on here is Yoshinobu Yamamoto last year who was out 86 days with a rotator cuff strain. He did come back pretty well so that's interesting. Nester Cortez had it in 2023. It looks like he had it twice so he had maybe tried to come back and then had to leave again. The most common is two to three months. The second most common is six to eight weeks. And then there are some two to four week guys in here. I guess Pete Fairbanks came back

in 26 days once. So I don't know. I guess some of these are also maybe messed up by Ian Kennedy had a rotator cuff strain on 9-16 9 16 2023 and it says he missed 16 games. Didn't he stop pitching after that though? Like that was the rest of the season or the end of his career? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so I don't, I don't think he came back at all. I think he retired, but okay. So this comes back to getting more information. You know, maybe there's some imaging to come. We get grade one diagnosis and that two to four week window is possible. Josh LeBours came back and missed 18 games.

And then it says he has the same injury the same year a month later for another 57 games. So really, he should add that together. So I'm thinking six to eight is optimistic. Right, and that puts us up closer to the trade deadline or even a couple of weeks after, if that's how it ends up playing out for Reagan. So more opportunity for Noah Cameron

to stick in that rotation, and perhaps if we do get more detailed information about the extent of the strain, maybe the Royals join the fray as a team looking for pitching help at the trade deadline. Good news for those teams, Aaron Savali wants to be traded, wants to be a starter, and I think it makes sense. With Jacob Mizorowski coming up, Savali got bumped out of the Brewers rotation.

This is his walk year. Final arbitration season before, he's a free agent for the first time in his career. So if you're Aaron Savali, I think getting a lot of innings this year showing you can be a starter going five plus consistently. All those things are important. So to me, this is only a matter of time before the Brewers can simply find a fit and actually grant Aaron Savali that request. I actually think it makes a lot of sense.

It made sense before we knew Aaron Savali asked for a trade for the Brewers to consider moving him, given their current depth and given the needs around the league. This is really weird. There's a missing piece of information here, right? He had a rotation spot and he would have a rotation spot if Jacob Mizorowski wasn't in the rotation. So did the Brewers tell him, we're calling up Jacob Mizorowski to pitch in the rotation and not to pitch once and then go down. I think that was at least implied. I think that was the day we're bringing Mizraki up.

And we're going to move you to a long relief role for now because they didn't want to burn an option year on Priester, Chad Patrick. I know he got hit against Atlanta on Wednesday. He's pitched really well. It's a good problem to have. But Savali, as the most senior of those three, I think was understandably not happy about that situation. Maybe this is the right move. I mean, maybe he needs to prove that he can be a starter and he gets starter money. There is another way that he makes his way forward like a Jacob Junas. And he's like, I can be your roster spackle and I can get one year, $5 million deals for three, four years, you know? And I'll be your spot starter. You know, I'll get a save for you. I can do 80 innings in a season. You know, that's something that Jacob Junas has done with, I think, a somewhat similar repertoire. But Savalli probably wants more than one in five at the end of the season.

And so maybe making some noise is the way to go about things. If you're not going to start for the Brewers though, I'm not sure where you start. I put together a list here of the top three starters. And this is for the urgency index today. This is top three starters on the depth chart sorted by war and you can see the Brewers are down there. I think this is partially why they're doing the Mizorowski thing because they're like hey listen we can put together a four and five and six starter.

We've done that a lot of times but if we want to make some noise if we want to push the Cubs if we want to do something in the postseason, we need to improve our standing here, which is bottom 10 in terms of the top three guys in our rotation. We're kind of right now, Freddie Peralta and company, you know? And if we want to have a game two or a game three starter that has put some fear into the team's situation, then it's going to be probably Mizorowski and not Savalli. So could Savalli go to a team that looks okay here by the top three but needs a fifth starter? I think the Padres could use an Aaron Savalli as a better fifth starter than what they're using right now.

The twins are in a bit of a bind where they're waiting for some guys to come back from injury. Could Savalli tide them over? You know, the Royals might be good enough. I would maybe want more impact, but the Royals could use a backhand starter just to get them there. Even the Dodgers, like the Dodgers are projected right now to have the fourth best starting rotation going forward and sort of like a top 10-ish even when you look at the top three. But they're having trouble just filling games right now as they wait for guys to come back.

So Savali could be a arm that gets you there that isn't necessarily a game one through three starter. And maybe there'd be interest for him in that role going forward. All right. A couple ideas for you here real quick. I love when the Brewers get to become a part of the conversation on the show in organic ways, even though I think I have a little bit of pull

if it's actually happening organically on the show. But, okay, we talked about San Diego a lot. The Orioles could be another team that need a guy like Savali. You need someone to get there if they fancy themselves buyers. I think that's a little more of a big if. But Savale could be pretty cheap. Pretty cheap. In terms of dollars, $8 million pro-rated

for the rest of the season. So most teams out there could afford them. If you traded for them now and you were out of contention seven weeks from now, you could also trade them again. That's another option for a team that needs pitching immediately. The Minnesota thing makes some sense. I think we know the Brewers clearest need is thump third base, especially could you possibly pry Max Muncie from the Dodgers?

It's got a club option for next year. Savali for Max Muncie that like the best case scenario, if you're the Brewers and trying to get immediate short-term help? Has Jose Miranda's star fallen far enough? Oh I think you could pull that off too. That would be kind of like the lower ceiling but you get control. I think he's still got options left this year. Yeah he's still got an option like right now. He doesn't help you defensively like the brewers like but if you're the brewers you say hey we're so good defensively everywhere, maybe we can have one that's not so great.

Yeah, I think that's the kind of range you're looking at. And maybe the Muncie things is unrealistic, but the Jose Miranda path, that actually seems like one thing that could make a lot of sense. If you throw that back up there, this chart, you know, looking for a Savali type, I think is easier than what the Yankees need.

The Yankees could do nothing, right? Except they also could acquire an impact arm that pushes Clark Schmidt and Lewis Heal and Will Warren into support in the playoffs. And that would seem pretty Yankees like if you ask me, you know? But then I have the Cubs circled in bright red. The Cubs and the Blue Jays are teams that are right now in the playoffs and they don't need a Savali. They need an impact arm.

And what impact arms are available? We have Sandy Alcantara. We got a little chart for you on Sandy Alcontra that came up in the Ken Rosenthal piece today. Sandy Alcontra is by like turfing his slider basically and focusing on the curve and he has this really interesting bullpen work that he was doing that was relayed to Ken by his manager McCullough said that he'd been really focusing on Gloveside Command in his last few bullpens. And if you look at this rolling graph, you see that his location plus is finally getting

back to where it was. So you could tell yourself a story as another team of, oh, Sandy might be coming back. That's the obvious arm. But we tried to think outside the box is there's only one Sandy Alcantara and are you selling to your team and your fan base, we just acquired a guy with a 5ERA coming off of surgery, you know, and he's our impact arm. Or is there another impact arm? I love this idea when you had it. Being the fantasy first minded anything could happen. Let's trade anything we could possibly trade.

I was thinking about the Rangers, the situation they're in. They're a few games below 500. We know thanks to their TV situation, the spending they were doing a couple off seasons ago is maybe not a level they want to sustain. Given that Jacob deGrom is pitching well, and as you mentioned before,

not all the way back to pre-TJ stuff, would they trade Jacob deGrom? Would he fit the needs of teams that want that impact arm and simultaneously relieve long-term financial stress for the Rangers. I mean, Jacob deGrom is in the middle of the five-year, $185 million contract that he signed prior to 2023.

There's a club option for 2028, so you really don't have to worry about that other than any sort of buyout that's attached to it. So you'd be getting him for probably as long as any team that gets Sandy, because I think with a club option at the end of Sandy's deal you could have him through 2027 as well just at a much lower price. But deGrom has I still think a good ceiling even if it's not a lead. Right so what he's done so far this year 25.3 percent k-rate not typical of deGrom still isn't

walking a lot of guys that's fine 5.8%, doesn't have a bad home run problem. It's a 337 Sierra. I think that gives you some context as to de Grom's new performance level. That's the highest Sierra Jacob de Grom has had since 2017 when it was all the way up at 344. That's how good Jacob de Grom is, right? Yeah, it's the worst stuff of his career,

and it's still 107, you know. And I think you could tell yourself a bunch of stories in that front office. You could say, hey, in the year in which we signed him, it was the year we won the World Series. He pitched 30 in a third innings for us that year before he was hurt. And we still won the World Series anyway. So it's not necessarily waving the white flag. It's taking something that might not be tradable a year from now or a year and a half from now and turning

him into some future value. And then I think what you get back in terms of future value will also change a little bit based on how much of that salary you are looking to unload. Like if you pay down a quarter of it, you might get a still pretty reasonable return. And I think the Cubs actually line up pretty well with the Rangers because the Rangers need more long-term pitching anyway the Cubs on the other hand right now have a 217 million dollar luxury tax payroll estimate the first threshold is

241 I mean they could take the entire Jacob deGroms salary if they wanted to pay less and That might be the move if they want to try and keep Horton and Brown. Now, I think that Sandy might actually cost them two pieces or three pieces because he's so cheap and because it's so long. Whereas de Grom, if it costs so much, maybe you can get away with giving actually less for de Grom because you take on more money and maybe that's the ticket. The obvious answer in Texas if they decide the next two weeks that they're out of it is Tyler Malley. The problem is that Tyler Malley is a get you there guy. I don't think he's a

game three starter for me. At least in Chicago, if you've got the choice between Jameson Tyon and Tyler Malley and Matt Boyd, the choice is not obvious. Maybe you pick Malley. It seems like a small upgrade at best. Right, and even between like a Tyon and a Boyd, you're probably deciding that more based on who the best hitters in the opposing lineup are. Is it a lefty heavy lineup or not?

And schedule too, like Wrigley suppresses lefty homers. So maybe you use Boyd in game two because you're in Wiggly. And maybe Tyler Malley doesn't really fit that. You're like, oh, he's a righty. So he doesn't help me there. I want Boyd in the game too. So I think the Grom is a really interesting idea because when I look around, I don't really see a lot of impact arms that could change places. And I do see some teams in the Cubs and Blue Jays in particular, and maybe the Yankees, just because why not? Why not add, you know, if you can, that would be interested in an Impact arm.

And now we've uncovered 1.5 Impact arms. Because the de Grom's thing still kind of needs the Rangers to fall out, and it needs the Rangers front office to agree with us that this might be a good move. Yeah, just again, don't know the ins and outs of their financial situation and how much pressure they're getting in the front office from ownership to reduce spending but I don't know this seems like one way to do it if that's part of the goal. Just really quickly they do have 30 million

dollars coming out the books and John Gray and some other guys and Tyler Malley the problem is that with that 30 million dollars they out the books and John Gray and some other guys and Tyler Malley. The problem is that with that 30 million dollars, they have to buy at least one starting pitcher for the rotation and probably a bullpen piece and that might eat up most of the 30 million dollars. So you could say, okay we have 30 million dollars getting off of our books, we have to spend that to stay where we are. So is where we are good and And this just happens to be a bad year. That's the question that they are asking themselves pretty hardcore over the next three weeks. Shop with Rakuten and you'll get it. What's it? It's the best deal, the highest cash back,

the most savings on your shopping. So join Rakuten and start getting cash back at Uniqlo, Best Buy, Expedia, and other stores you love. You can even stack sales on top of cash back. Just start your shopping with Rakuten to save money at over 750 stores. Join for free at rakuten.ca or download the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N rakuten.ca. to did it did it did it did it did it did it got breaking news you know i just like you know it's breaking news feel bad stealing that from you code i think uh... is going on the i a l he just pitched on thursday and got hurt

in the outing it's going to be a hamstring strain. Some more tests are going to be done, but immediately known that he at least will need a 15 day IELTS stint. And we wouldn't have known this in time for this recording if the Internet hadn't eaten itself. Yeah, the Internet's having a day. If you're watching us on YouTube, you probably like what is happening here. I guess we're only going to see Derek's face. I don't know how this is working I only see your face, so I don't know if the video is gonna have just you just me. It's gonna cut perfectly

It's not gonna have graphics except for ones that get put on in posts a look behind the curtain Chaos just little mice running everywhere trying to keep things going forward mice running everywhere trying to keep things going forward. Little mice running everywhere might be a description of what's happening inside Kodai Senga's legs, because you reminded me that last year we waited all season for Kodai Senga. I was like, what? It was a shoulder thing, right? No, it was a shoulder thing. And then his first start back, you know, in the similar situation where he's pitched a pretty decent game, I think or something, maybe five innings, maybe that's what it was, then his calf popped and then

we didn't see him again until the postseason. So you know, this was part of why I couldn't push him past 26 or so in my rankings. He in fact was around other injury concerned guys. He was pretty close to Spencer Strider and you know Tyler Glass now. I had a little area in the sort of low 20s near 30 where I was like these are pitchers that are good that I don't know how much you can depend on for the whole season. Yeah I think you were right to have that low health grade on there just a brutal lost season for injury purposes from Senga a year ago. Yeah covering first base his first game back in July after missing nearly four months and that happened.

So hopefully this ends up being a minor strain but more details on that to come perhaps as soon as Friday's episode if the internet is not eating itself again. Totally possible at this point. I have low expectations to be completely honest, but I have high expectations for the rest of this show, no matter how weird it looks on YouTube. Underappreciated hitters are a big part of the conversation today. I went to our Discord, asked for some listener submissions, names of guys that we simply have not talked about. They could be good players, they could be bad players, they could be high end guys, low end guys, anything was fair game.

So we're going to focus on a bunch of bats. Couple of names here. Right at the top came in from Eric the Red. We have given Jeremy Pena very little attention other than our episode where Chandler Rome joined us to talk Astros. I don't think Pena's been mentioned more than once or so all season long.

He is the 17th ranked hitter in the FanGraphs player radar right now, tied with Bobby Witt Jr. I mean, easily among the best ROI hitters so far relative to draft day costs. I've been happy to have multiple shares of him. One thing that I have noticed that is strange, and I don't know this is the right entry point into an analysis of his season, but I have noticed that the market doesn't believe.

I have shopped him and I have received virtually zero nibbles. And I think perhaps it's because the power is uninspiring. The power is something that next year could produce anywhere from 10 to 20 homers and we wouldn't necessarily know which side it would come on. And this is paired with steels that in today's environment, I think, are also somewhat uninspiring. So he will, yes, end up the season with maybe 20 homers and 36 steels, but in a dynasty standpoint next year you would project him for I don't know 14 homers and 18 steals numbers which do not pop especially when you're talking about 12 team leagues and even in 15 teams leagues

and higher they just don't really create an impact in any one place so I guess is he oatmeal? I think he's a little better than oatmeal I understand why people don't want to rush to make a deal for him But I think he's showing us a more intriguing ceiling that we previously gave him credit for I know Peña's had a couple of injuries That maybe have slowed down his production even though they haven't cut a lot into his playing time in recent years I think that partially explains why the power has been lighter than what we're seeing so far it's a 6.8% barrel rate right this is probably about as good as it gets in that area but he's 14 for 15 as a base dealer and even in this

environment I think that's something that's a little bit more real in his game than people are giving him credit for. 97 percentile in sprint speed. Maybe this is just a guy that's kind of figured out how he can add the most value to his team. Also like the fact that he's cut that K rate down a little further. He's down to 14.7 percent. So if you're going to take a chance on a player like this, a low K rate guy that has speed and non-zero power, it's a guy that plays every single day and has also worked his way into a more prominent spot in the Astros lineup as well.

I kinda like Pena as a multi-year buy right now if the price is lighter than it should be for what he's bringing to the table. I agree, I think the reason I wanna put Oatmeal in the description is I think he's very high floor. So even that description of the back of the napkin sort of projection that I have for painting next year, that's sort of a floor projection. And I like how that's useful even if

he doesn't continue to do exactly what he's doing now. On the other hand, another thing that kind of inspires me about him, if you're looking for other guys to do something like this is that he had decent bat speed, above average bat speed, and he made contact behind league average. He was letting the ball travel. I think a lot of the power that he's put together this year has just come from moving that contact point four inches forward. He's gone from 28 inches, so where he's letting the ball travel two inches more than than the average, to 32 inches where he now he's

out in front. He's getting that ball in front. His ideal attack angle went from 49% in 2023 to 63% this year. So again I think this ideal attack angle and the point of contact is something that players can change a lot better than they can change tilt or bat speed. And so what you've seen there is a guy who wasn't basically pulling the ball enough and has now accessed more of his power through pulling the ball. I don't have a set of comps ready for you, but if you're looking through players that basically have a sub 30, you know, intercept point on savant, I would consider them to have some untapped power because they could go

get the ball two or three inches more without affecting their strikeout rate that much. For example, Peña's strikeout rate unaffected, in fact, the best of his career. So even if this ends up being a career year for him, he's 27, it's totally possible. I do think he's high floor. And look, the worst year he's done in the big leagues, Jeremy Peña, 263 average, 10 homers, 13 stolen bases. If you get that next year after you bought him at this price, you'd be a little disappointed, but you'd probably still have a guy that's valuable in your league. I also think if I'm in Jeremy Peña's position and I'm not gonna be a free agent until after 2027,

think about adding a couple more years on there. Free agency, I think, as a 29, 30 year old after his age 29 season, I think you wanna have a conversation with the Astros about a long-term deal now. We know they don't often go after guys that reach free agency and pay top dollar later So maybe Jeremy Pena can get a little more guaranteed money now

By trying to become more of like a core player for this this sort of it's not even a rebooted version of the Astros But just sort of that remolded version. Maybe he's he's gonna be able to carve that roll out He's already got a 3.4 war on the season We're looking at F war here because the defense has been great on top of this You're signing an extension off a good platform here. We're looking at F-war here because the defense has been great on top of this. You're signing an extension off a good platform year. At your age, you're not guaranteed to have a better platform year, right? So the case you're making now is the best you could make. And then you're not supposed to hit the market until a point where people might be talking about you not being a shortstop anymore, right? So the free agent deal that might be waiting for you may not actually be as

enticing as locking in that guaranteed money even if you have to give up a year or two a free agency to do so. Those years of free agency may not be worth as much as locking in at this level of production. Yeah, so I'd be in no way surprised if we found out this winter that Jeremy Pena agreed to an extension with the Astros. It's a good fit for him parkwise too, so I think that would also help his long-term fantasy value if it does in fact play out that way. Eric also threw us Jose Ramirez and Kyle Schwaber, more for just tip of the caps. I mean, Jose Ramirez doing pretty typical things, right? He's got a 160 WRC plus, that'd be a career best for him if you throw out the 58 games he played during the shortened 2020 season.

Just remarkable year in, year out, early first round sort of production from him. But then the more interesting name there was Kyle Schwaber. Because Kyle Schwaber is carrying an average in the 240s for the second straight season. And he's pacing out for a high 40s home run total again like he did back in 2022 in 2023. It just made me wonder if there was something we missed with Schwabr during draft season where maybe we looked too much at the

batting average downside and not enough at a more like median sort of outcome in that category alongside well above average power production, which Schwaber has done multiple times before. He is a free agent to be. I don't know if that's relevant, you know, but you know, it is a good season for him. And he's back to hitting the ball more in the air, but it hasn't affected his batting average on balls and play

as much as I would have expected. You know he has a 45% fly ball rate and in the past when he's had 45 or higher he's had a babbip under 240. Right now he has a 268. So I do believe that even though it doesn't seem obvious he could be getting lucky. That could be a high bavip given his swing right now. I wouldn't say that it's super lucky. And I just bring it up because he was like on, I think he won like player of the week at some point. He was hot, you know, and as soon as people put him on the hot list, he's gotten cold for like the last week or so. And then he hit a homer. I think he's just a kind of a hot and cold player, a lot of strikeouts. If you're in an OBP league, you've always loved Kaush Warbur.

If you're in a batting average league, buy him for now, but I think he might have a worse batting average going forward and I would still project him next year for like a 225, just to be safe. Yeah, you still are baking in more downside, but the outcomes can be better than you expect. I think that's for me the lesson if there's one with Kyle Schwab. We're very curious to see what his 4A into free agency looks like this time around.

Who will be interested? How long will that deal be? And will it be a spot where he can once again, mash 40 plus homers, at least on a short term deal? I think I like his chances. Let's talk about a few Rockies. Jeff Good, Low Guppy throwing Hunter Goodman and Jordan Beck at us,

as two guys we haven't talked a lot about. I think with Hunter Goodman, the playing time has been a lot more stable than I expected it to be at the beginning of the season. I think we looked at Goodman initially and said, part-time catcher occasionally, maybe in the corner outfield mix, depending on stuff that happens with a few veterans.

He's made 43 starts behind the plate this year, 25 at DH, he's an everyday guy in the heart of the lineup, gets to play half his games at Coors Field, and amazingly, Hunter Goodman's splits away from Coors and against same-handed pitching are better than his splits that would be the platoon side advantage for him. It's kind of amazing to see him hitting 305, 347, 531

against Wrighties and 306, 349, 587 away from Coors. I think this is actually mostly pretty real. I'm blown away by the ceiling, but how do you not keep playing him every day if you're in Colorado's position? Yeah, I am only mad that I didn't get more shares I do believe that in the season preview we pointed out that he had excellent bad ball stats and That he was at least worth a look in deep leagues, a second catcher and drafting holds. That might be the last time we mentioned him. And I wish that I'd gotten more shares.

I think I have, I think I might have zero. I think I might have zero. He went a little bit higher than I wanted for my third and fourth catchers. And I was a little bit worried about the playing time for my second catcher. And I just wish I had taken that plunge now I there's I got nothing to point out as a possible worry I guess the only worry is that like there are some Things he has in common with like a Michael Tolya where like he strikes out too much

But he has great bite of ball stats, but Michael Tolya's strikeout rate problems were worse than this I think this is the exact kind of stuff that we hoped, without the steals, of course, but that we hoped Nolan Jones would do in Colorado. This is the exact type of player that Colorado should have too, is that if you have a high strikeout player that can hit the ball really hard, they're going to float high babbups in Coors and they're going to be a much more viable player at Coors than in other places. And I think to give them credit, they have pursued this strategy to some extent. You have seen this type of player get a chance in Coors,

and this is the best outcome for it. Maybe sometimes we just, you know, we don't have analysis for it because we're like, yeah, it's it looks good. And I wish we'd told you more sooner. I at least avoided totally, even though I don't have Hunter Goodman everywhere. I was intrigued by Goodman but my hesitation and I did the same thing that you did where I was like third catcher price maybe a little high like if he ends up with more playing time great but there's no guarantee like we've been nervous about how the Rockies handle young players for a long time

especially one whose role behind the plate was just not as clear. I think defensively, he's grading out okay, slightly below average in the stat cast sort of catch all combined defensive metric, which I think you'll take for a guy with his little big league experience behind the plate as Hunter Goodman has.

I would assume he loses catching eligibility eventually. They're using him enough though, where it's like probably more than a couple of years down the road. I believe. Maybe. 43 already through June is a lot of starts. It could change with Drew Romo and some other guys in the organization.

I know it is what it is, but I think he's gonna hit enough to play other positions. I think that's the really encouraging thing for Hunter Goodman. As far as Jordan Beck goes, the Rockies done a good job not messing around with his playing time. Beck has started every game except for one since April 20th.

He's been a regular in the leadoff spot since May 16th. The Roto value really kind of spikes for him at home. We don't have the Hunter Goodman thing where he's been better on the road. Beck's hitting 298 at Coors, hitting 217 on the road. Good news, I guess, is that the strikeout rate is kind of the same, even though it's a little high, both home and away. Beck can do a little bit of everything, right?

He can steal bases, he's got some power. What do you think his outcome is? I think the Nolan Jones comp really rings true here, with the difference being that Jordan Beck is a righty instead of a lefty. I do want to point out that like, you know, this is the Brenton Doyle too, with maybe a little bit less defensive value,

but in terms of like what he does at the plate, strikes out a little bit much, power, speed, not like Hunter Goodman-esque like, you know, power, but power and speed. And you know, Brenton Doyle with a pedestrian BABIP has been hard to own. And so I will say that Beck, Goodman, Doyle with a pedestrian Babap has been hard to own. And so I will say that Beck, Goodman, Doyle, they all share a little bit of what I had what I discovered with Ryan McMahon in the past, which is if you buy these players that

let's say they played in San Francisco, you know, and they had these same set of skills, you wouldn't play them at all. And so what I find when I rostered Ryan McMahon was, oh, I only kind of want to play him at home. Even though he might be a good enough player to play all the time, he's so much better. Okay, I saw it on Twitter, on Blue Sky this other way. Somebody's talking about Roman Anthony, and I think the headline for the piece was, you know, that he's gonna sit against lefties. And it's not because he's not good against lefties,

it's just that like, you know, he's a Ferrari Testarossa against righties. He's some lesser car against lefties. And so, you know, I think that's what ends up happening. When I had Ryan McMan, I was like, I can find a better option than Ryan McVean away from home. And I bet you that's over the sort of the long term of owning all these guys that you end up feeling like, oh, I want to play him at home and I'd want to have some other option on the road. So the guy that I would say that could really rise

from this is actually Goodman. That's the guy I'd bet on just because the quality of contact is so good. With Beck, that strikeout rate, that Bavip, I think it could be a poor batting average away from home most years. Totally possible. I think with Beck and any young Rockies hitter,

I want to give them a little bit of time to adjust to how difficult it is to go in and out of Coors. So you know, it's not just you get the boost at Coors, it's that breaking pitches move more when you go on the road. And making that adjustment and trying to figure out a way to work through that, I think that makes the learning curve of being a big leaguer even more steep. And even just looking at his sample from last year versus this year, about the same size, 55 games when he debuted, 57 games so far this year. Jordan Beck had a 35.3% K rate last year in his first runs against big league pitching and he's got it down to 27.6%. So we have seen some improvement already in that regard and because he runs, I think kind of like the Doyle ceiling, there's more there than you think at first glance.

He has a lot of ways to make some value and be like a $15 player even if that average runs low in the short and maybe even the long term as well. I just like that they're sticking with him. That to me is some sort of learning. Something has changed in Colorado where they're not messing with the playing time of a guy that actually could be on the next good Colorado team, question mark. I don't know if I wanna dig too much into that. Feel like I kinda regret saying that now.

So let's move on to Esauk Paredes, who's a top 50 hitter so far this year. Seamless. Seamless, just the smoothest guy imaginable. I think Paredes just gets ignored because we've been fascinated with Cam Smith as the headliner of that trade. But look, Isak Paredes can be an Astro through 2027

as an arbitration guy. He'll get a little more expensive every year, probably less of a candidate to be offered an extension, even though he would probably be wise to take one if he had the opportunity. And I think the Astros are just happy with what they're getting. This is the best hard hit rate we've seen since 2022.

Not surprisingly, the Crawford boxes suit him very well as a guy that lifts the ball in the air to tap into all of his in-game power. You know, I just talked about how you know players with a 28 inch intercept on baseball savant that are letting the ball travel have power to be unlocked. I think the thing about Paredes that is hard is he is maxed out. This is the best he'll ever be. He'll never be better than this. There's no up. There's no better than this. He has a 69 mile an hour bat speed

and he has a 38 inch intercept. He's already eight inches out past where the average hitter is. So he is going to get that ball like nobody else. You can't go any further than that. You can't go 10 inches. Then you can't even reach that far. So, you know, the only thing that's gonna happen

is he's gonna get worse. And it does feel like a sort of untenable, like a razor's edge thing, where he's at a 54% pull rate with a 34% hard hit rate. Like it's just, this type of approach would not work for most people. He's made it work, but I just think because it doesn't work for other people, you know, you're just like, when will it end? Now 26, maybe

it's a little bit like, you know, Javi Bias, you can't chase it 50% of the balls you see, except you can between the ages of like 22 and 28. So like maybe Paredes will work for, you know, this year, maybe we'll work for three for three to three four more years I don't think it'll age that well because it's there's nowhere else for him to go in terms of oh when he's gonna get older he'll let it travel well then he'll be a soft-hitting let it travel guy you know that doesn't seem like a great idea so he also defensively will not stay at third base for very long and I think they're just hoping he stays at third base long enough for Walker's contract to run out so I do think he's a little bit for dynasty purposes. I think there are some question

marks. But if those question marks reduce the price, you know, everybody has a price that works out. You know, it's like if he's attainable, then, you know, hey, that's a 340, 350 OBP, 250 batting average. He's probably going to hit, you know, 25 to 30 homers every year Right, that's something good, you know But if they want to sell him as a stud then I'm not sure I would go all the way in in a dynasty I just feel like I think there's a little bit of a razor's edge thing here going on. I Think the league as a whole is fully aware of the likely outcomes long term for Paredes so if the Astros decide at some point they're going to trade him it's probably not because they're getting

a massive windfall back it's because as he gets more expensive in arbitration they just want to allocate those resources somewhere else but I hope he stays in Houston because I feel a lot better about his floor in that park than I do in a lot of other environments. We got a little taste of that with that second half shift into Chicago last year. Just did not work quite the same way for Isak Paredes dealing with the windy conditions at Wrigley Field. Jeff did a good job throwing us a couple names of players that are underperforming. How about Ozzy Albies?

What is going on here? Is a Bogartian, Bogarts-esque loss of power for a 28-year-old? You're four years younger. What's going on here? Is it a Bogartian, Bogarts-esque loss of power? For a 28 year old, you're four years younger. What's going wrong here? He's slugging 337 with a 3.3% barrel rate. He's never been a massive barrel-er. That's never been the script for Ozzy Albies. But why is he this bad and seemingly healthy after dealing with the fractured wrist and

the fractured wrist and the fractured toe last season? It's really weird because, you know, if you split his him into two because he is a switch hitter in your head, you're like, oh, Ozzy Albies, he murders lefties and he's surprisingly mediocre against righties. That's that that that has been true. To some extent, he's still better against lefties this year than he is against righties. But what we've seen is that, you know,

even his production from the right side has really just fallen off. So if you break it up, you know, in 2023 from the left side, he had better bat speed, but a lower barrel rate. And then in 2024, he started having better bat speed from the right side and he had that 205 ISO from the right side. So you already saw in 2024, from the left side, he's getting worse.

He's not as good as he is from the right side. And then this year from the right side, he has a 1.7% barrel rate with a 0.057 ISO. So basically from the left side he's not that far off from what he's been in the past. You know honestly he has a 4% barrel rate this year, he had a 6.5 last year, a 7.3 year before. So from the left side he's kind of still this sort of okay player, not great, 125 ISO type of guy. It's the strength that he's lost. I think it is interesting in light of something that showed up in my column with Ken Rosenthal today, which is that righties are having a harder time against lefties this year across the league. I don't know that that has anything to do with this but we couldn't find a real reason for it. I looked at change-ups and change-ups are up a little bit. You know, Robbie

Ray thought, hey, this could be a change-up thing. You know, seam effects, you know, if you take splitters plus change-ups, they are up a little bit. Austin Riley thought it could be a lack of lefties and yes, we are at like an eight-year low in terms of pitches thrown by lefties and yes we are at like an eight year low in terms of pitches thrown by lefties I think the the three batter minimum had something to do with that but I don't know I would actually point to something else you were kind of bringing up this idea that there are kind of two ways to age and you know it's not just necessarily calendar age that is one of them. Right and with Albies it's a lot of professional experience with some

significant injuries stacked on top. Right. It's the same way we think about pitchers. Like think about how quickly Madison Bumgarner aged. It's just stress of big league games. When Albies is healthy, he's a max volume, literally everyday sort of player. When he's not out there, it's because he's hurt. So when he comes back and he's back in the play everyday sort of role.

So I just think the wear and tear of how he's been used on top of the ways he's been hurt have probably pushed him into the back half of his career a little bit faster than if he had maybe, I don't know, but eased in a little bit more. I mean, like he's been a great player at a young age. So I don't think the Braves did anything Egregious, but the other thing I looked at more closely was the career splits against righties

245 310 431 for Ozzy Albies over his career. It's a 96 WRC plus So you mentioned like he does all that damage against lefties, or historically he's done all that damage against lefties. He's got a 902 OPS against lefties, a 741 against righties. It's a 138 WRC plus against lefties, a 96 against righties. Derek Hardy talks about this all the time. The lefty platoon masher, the small side platoon masher, I think in Derek's words they don't exist. And I feel like that's probably like a bridge too far or just semantics for me.

I'm like, well, I think that's a skill. I think it's a thing. What I think Derek's getting at is the sustainability of a player like that is not long because the statistical stability of destroying lefties is not reliable. And if you're not crushing lefties and you're kind of just okay or below average against righties there's nothing there in a lot of cases to support your playing time. The only difference here is that Albies is cheap, it's core player for that Braves team and it's not like the first player I thought it was Steven Pierce. It's not

quite like that but it's not as far from that as we'd like to believe. So I probably overlooked the gap. Just the overall average results against righties were something I probably threw out the window when looking at Albies throughout the draft season. Yeah, you just have to think about the relative sample of either of those things, right? The relative sample of him versus righties versus him versus lefties. I think that's what Cardi's talking about to some degree is like if you have a guy that looks really good in these like two Or three-year samples against lefties. Those are gonna be small samples just because they're like I said now

We're down to 24% of the pitches in the league or by lefties So if you have one sample, it's three times larger than the other like this is what you're saying Basically, we should have believed the sample that came in three times the size more right? That's the thing I overlooked 3,000 plus career plate appearances against righties mean more than a thousand plus career plate appearances against lefties Yeah, that's tempting when you say well. He has a platoon advantage or his swing is different from each side You know that's what that chart that that that I hopefully showed. I don't know. I don't know. Hopefully that chart shows is that there's less variation in his work from the left side over time

than there has been in his work against right side. His left side barrel rate is between 4% and 7%, right? His right side barrel rate against lefties is between 1% and 11%. And part of that variance, it's one quarter of the sample every given year. So it's like, you know, it's going to go up and down much more. I mean, I'm trying to look at how he's being pitched, you know, from the right side and yeah, he's seeing more curve balls and more splitters. Is that okay? So he's toast because he's seeing like two or three more curveballs and splitters again? No, probably he was actually closer to what he was doing against Riteys, which there are leagues where you just take that and you're fine with it. You can take that career split against Riteys and reassess and say okay he's going to be more like a

245-310-431 player going forward. Hey there's a lot of leagues where that makes sense. Like in my 20 team Devils rejects where I have Ozzy Albies I want him to get back to that and if he does that I want to keep him. I don't want to necessarily trade him because I'd be trading him for less than that right now. Better am I rest of season and let's even say for next year since you're talking about keeper dynasty Albies or Jeremy Pena?

Just like change places in ADP whereas pain it was kind of a 15175 range pick this year and Albies I think was more like a pick 75 guy I think they're just gonna swap and I might swap and take Albies I think was more like a pick 75 guy. I think they're just going to swap. And I might swap and take Albies at the new ADP. You know, if we are tying it to their cost, I might take Albies at the new cost if Peña goes beyond him because I do think that it wasn't that long ago, 2023, that Albies had a 33 home run season, and I don't think Peña's gonna have one of those.

I think I'm a little more into Peña right now, but it's at least a good toss up at this point. It gives you an idea of how much Albie's stock has probably fallen as a result of what's happened to the first two and a half months of the season. Last name from Jeff was Spencer Steer. He's outside the top 200 among hitters in the player radar, doing it with a ton of playing time so far too

And the thing that stands out to me is that Spencer Steer opened this season with a shoulder injury He was on the IL to start the year I think he's healthy enough to play and not healthy enough to produce and I think it's reflected in the hard hit rate dropping from Nearly 40% last year down to 30.2 percent this year We have some barrel rate slippage along with that, not surprising, and the strikeout rate is up compared to where it was over the last two seasons. It just, to me, looks like Spencer Steer

has an injury he's playing through and it's hard to rely on a bounce back until there's some time for him to heal or some kind of surgery that helps him get past it. Yeah, 27, I do think there will be a second, third axe for Spencer Steer. I really like how he has a two-strike approach. He has really nice plate skills. I was going to beat myself up over liking a guy

with a 6% barrel rate too much, but I do think that if he can get back to that 6% barrel rate and the 20% strikeout rate, he's going to be a good player again. I think in keeper leagues, you wait around for it and you wait around for him to be healthy. He did lose a mile an hour bat speed that I would describe to that injury as well. I do think it's harder in the 12-team leagues. We have Steer in that Devil's Rejects where we're not doing so well. Steer and Albies being part of our core.

I do think they'll have better days going forward. I also have Steer and CES in my 12-team dynasty and I have to drop somebody soon because I've got a full IL full of people who are healthy and I've just, I can't make any moves, you know? Like I have to like drop three players to make that next move. I don't know if Steer is going to make it because I think I'd rather have CES at this point. I'm intrigued by CES playing some third base to keep the eligibility there and become a little more roster friendly as a result of that dual eligibility. We had multiple requests to talk about Alejandro Kirk, who's now hitting 325 for the season with a 367 OBP. It's the7 OBP.

It's the highest OBP we've seen since 2022 doing it with that low K rate that we often see barrel rate up at 8.8% highest since 2021 kind of just doing his thing where he's hitting the ball hard all over the place and obviously collecting a ton of playing time as well because they really cleared out that organizational depth chart around him in recent years. The weirdest thing is I don't understand how this happens, but he is getting the ball out in front like three inches further, but you don't see it in the pull rates.

And I do actually think that at some point, you know, as we get used to this analysis and we vet a lot of these numbers, we're going to replace some of these things like pull rate with point of contact. I believe it might be superior. It tells the story of somebody who's kind of going and getting the ball a little bit more, being a little bit more aggressive, and he's got that barrel rate to show for it. So he is a guy just like Peña who used to let it travel, who's now going to get the ball in front of the average intercept point. I think that's a big deal for him. I do think that he's got all these years of playing

where he let the ball travel a little bit and he didn't have as much power. So I do think that he still just belongs in a class with Kavir Ruiz, who's not working out this year, but I believe we'll have better years. Gabriel Moreno, these are high contact rate catchers. I guess what I'm saying is that like, you can take one of those and you can take it cheap,

but you might get the one, you might get the two out of the three that don't work out that year. So it's kind of a one in three proposition sometimes. Even with this good skill set, I have three catchers I just threw at you that are basically the same guy, and two of them really aren't good this year.

I think that's fair. I do think of that group consistently, you're going to see Alejandro Kirk hit the ball harder. So there's a little more to be excited about with him versus Ruiz and Moreno. I'd probably rank them Kirk, Moreno, Ruiz for the rest of this season. Dynasty, maybe you flip Moreno

because he's a little bit younger. But they're very similar in terms of what they bring in their rural profiles when it's going well. One name we have not talked about more than once in season, talked about them on just about every single position preview during draft season, Billy Cook. Larry wants to know what's going on with Billy Cook. Things have been a little better for him at AAA lately Eno since May 1st, very arbitrary cutoff point. Billy Cook hitting 327 with a 402 OBP, only a 385 slug though.

So even for a team like the Pirates looking for bats, you've got to have a little more thump. Got to hit a homer Billy Cook. Hit a few and maybe we'll have the conversation to Billy Cook getting another opportunity in Pittsburgh. Last question here before we go. This one came from oldbencanobi. Is Vlad Jr. an elite or just really good real life player? And the same question for fantasy.

I think he is one of the highest floor batters we have in the league. And I think he has the highest ceiling too. So I think that makes him elite. It's hard for me to look at the projections and watch him and see how hard he hits the ball and tell myself that he's less than elite. Last year he had a 165 WRC+. Where do we think that lands him?

Last year, top three, top four for qualified hitters? Yeah, six. He was six, yeah. OK. I guess I judge Otani. Soto, Alvarez, Witt. Alvarez. Yeah. Alvarez is healthy. Yeah. That's elite. So this year, if you admit that, you have to admit that this year he is not elite, at least not in terms of results, but he's still 38th in WRC+. So I kind of think that's his range. You know, it's sort of like he's top

40 or he's top 10. And from what I understand, I believe it has something to do with his swing path, which is just that it is possible that his swing path provides him sort of streakiness. That if you are flat like he is, then you get times where you're just all over that ball, and then there are other times when you're hitting the ball straight into the ground. And I think that describes the history of Vlad Guerrero. What's weird is that Vlad Guerrero Jr. sometimes the hot streak is just all season. I don't know how to explain that, but I would acquire him. You know, 26 years old, if it's a fancy question, I would acquire him. You know 26 years old if it's a fancy question I would acquire him because I think that you know you can bank on like a 280 average most years and 25 homers and tons of

RBI and I think that's why they paid him that. They paid him to be a batter. Now he doesn't have the defensive value and so maybe when the war game is said and done, he won't be worth that contract. But this is something I've been struggling with with Arias a little bit. I would sign Arias to a deal that didn't work out by war per dollars per war, because having a guy like that in my lineup would be so valuable. Just having a guy that like, oh my God, all we need is contact. Oh, good thing, Arias is up. And it's the same thing with Vlad where it's like,

he's gonna hit the ball hard, he's gonna put the ball in play, and there's so many times when that's all you need. I don't think that war fails Arias and Vlad Aguirre Jr. I just think that sometimes their value is beyond that. Is that, it's their value in the lineup. You know? Like David Ortiz is in the Hall of Fame,

not so much for his war total. At first base, DH, the penalties for that in war are massive, right? Some evidence that that's too much. Based on pure feel, that's where I'm at for sure. I think it's an overcorrection, and I think the market will kind of help us understand that with Vlad. Is he worth $600 million?

Probably not quite, but it's probably not as much of an overpay as you'd think. I think that's the way I would look at it today and by the time we get to the end of that contract, maybe we'll have a better way for appropriately valuing players at that position or guys that DH like that too. So maybe time will be on Vlad Jr's side in that regard. Thanks a lot for all the great questions and name suggestions. We'll do the same thing with pitchers at some point, get to some of the names that we've unintentionally just ignored for one reason or another. They didn't make the news, they're just doing what was expected or popping up

and just not talking about their team. There's all sorts of reasons this happens. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. Again, I have no idea what it looks like, but thanks to our producer, Brian Smith, for making it sound good. It might look absolutely ridiculous on YouTube. Hit the like button anyway. Pretending you like chaos for at least one day.

You can find Eno on Blue Sky, enocerous.bsky.social, imdvr.bsky.social. We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening. That is just stanky. Shop with Rakuten and you'll get it. What's it? It's the best deal, the highest cash back, the most savings on your shopping. So join Rakuten and start getting cash back at Uniqlo, Best Buy, Expedia, and other stores you love. You can even stack sales on top of cash back.

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