Rates & Barrels - How Could Roki Sasaki Adjust in Year 1?

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

Eno, Trevor, and DVR discuss the Pirates' decision to fire manager Derek Shelton after a 12-26 start and wonder how making a change in that role will can make an impact. Plus, they dig into the slow start for Roki Sasaki and wonder if he can improve his fastball command and make a tweak to his pitch mix on the fly to get better results over the course of his rookie campaign, before drafting struggling starting pitchers and discussing a great piece about Mariners closer Andrés Muñoz from Alex Chamberlain of FanGraphs.Rundown1:10 The Pirates Fire Manager Derek Shelton8:54 The Overall Struggles Under Bob Nutting's Ownership15:44 Injury Follow-Ups: Hunter Greene, Dylan Cease, Corbin Burnes, Yordan Alvarez & William Contreras18:30 Checking In on Roki Sasaki24:24 Comps for Roki Sasaki's Fastball32:49 What's the Role *If* the Dodgers' Rotation Gets Healthier?36:40 A Four-Round Rebound Pitchers Draft54:16 A Great Read About Andrés Muñoz'Andrés Muñoz Is an Analytical Blind Spot' by Alex Chamberlain of FanGraphs: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/andres-munoz-is-an-analytical-blind-spot/Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.socialFollow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.socialFollow Trevor on Bluesky: @iamtrevormay.bsky.sociale-mail: [e-mail] our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFeSubscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrelsHosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno SarrisWith: Trevor MayProducer: Brian SmithExecutive Producer: Derek VanRiper Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Thursday May 8th, Derek Van Rye for InnoCeris, Trevor May here with you. On this episode we got some breaking news, the Pirates are making a change in the manager role. We'll talk about the team's decision to dismiss Derek Shelton as we get into some baseball news here in just a few minutes. We're gonna check in on Roki Sasaki,

seven starts into his big league career. Hasn't gone quite the way some of the more optimistic folks out there, like me, had hoped it would go so far. We'll talk about what changes Roki could make on the fly and what we expect for the rest of the season We've cooked up a small draft on this Thursday looking at some starting pitchers who have struggled up to this point So we'll have that later on in the show as well And we saw a great piece from Alex Chamberlain over at Fangraphs

Examining Andres Munoz and the unique characteristics of Andres Munoz that make him so effective. So we'll dig into that as well. Gentlemen, let's start with the Pirates decision to fire Derek Shelton. How on earth can you be a person with a brain in a decision-making capacity thinking that firing your manager in this instance will actually change anything? And this is not a specific critique of the pirate's front office. This is a critique of Bob Nutting and ownership and just taking taking people and just throwing them out of a role, putting someone else in the role and expecting everything to change when you don't do enough

to actually improve your organization. Right. Like what is this going to accomplish? Is this going to motivate the 2025 Pirates? Because by all accounts, Derek Shelton is a popular manager, a well-liked guy around the game, and this is not going to change the quality of the cast for whoever steps into this role to take over. So do you ever see a team as bad as the Pirates

fire a manager and get an immediately good turnaround sort of result from it? Who wants to go first? I'll take it. Yeah, no, most of the time, and this is my perspective on firing managers, it's I think an ongoing conversation that's always going on around the league

is like how much of an effect the manager has on games, especially now and it just comes down to It's a lot of internal politics comes down to like how well if you have you know a front office that is more of a micromanager or they set a really detailed plan for games and the manager like Is on board with that stuff. They tend to hang out for a little bit longer I know that by all accounts Scott Service was like that with the Mariners for a while. Like him and Dipoto were constantly on,

always on the same page, which allows you to get a little bit of a longer leash. And you know, by all accounts, Shelton's been there for a while too. And he is, he's a pretty amiable guy. But it comes down to you start getting pressure from somewhere, whether it's the fan base or the ownership or the lead, like whatever it is,

that start, you get pressure, the people that make these decisions then start to find somebody to, a fall guy. And it feels like it's a fall guy situation because in terms of game planning and stuff, it doesn't seem like he's making bad managerial decisions or that he doesn't know what he's doing. There are managers that make bad decisions

and you can see them. He's just not one of them. It's not something that you've seen him do. So then you go, okay, well, how are we grading your performance? Like what's the rubric look like? And with the Pirates, we don't know. We haven't known for years.

It's really hard to tell what they're trying to do from top to bottom. They just seemed like they're just behind I put them in the I put them in the group And this is probably really mean right now put them in the group with the Rockies It's just like are you guys watching anyone else play baseball? Like have you guys watch anyone but your own team it is kind of a head-scratcher And it's just unfortunate that the manager in that situation a lot of times is the guy that, you know, they're like, we're shaking things up, look how hard we're trying, we're gonna fire the guy

that, you know, that's the obvious choice, the top of the list, and that's what it feels like for me. I don't know, I don't think it's gonna change anything. Like, who's taking over? Maybe Derek could tell me that. Are they just going, bench coach, you're now the manager. Is that what they're doing or are they bringing somebody else in real quick?

Don Kelly has been elevated to the manager spot. Don as well liked and I think Shelton as well liked around the league and within the Pirates and I think they were a team that had the manager sort of have one foot in the front office like you're sort of mentioning that they're all kind of working together on lineups and things like that. This is, this is just a, on some level of admission that things aren't going as well as they want.

There's pressure on the organization to make a change. This is unfortunately one of the easier changes you can make. They've already changed their hitting coach, you know, and so you kind of go up the line from there. You can't say they're not hitting because they're hitting coach. You just got, you had two or three chances at a hitting coach and they're still not hitting. You know, they are projected to hit better than this. They have scored 3.1 runs per game worst in baseball. They're supposed to score 4.2 runs per game. And's still not one of this third worst, but it's still better than three. So there's still a run missing per game from that offense.

I think some of it is bad luck. We've talked about this one with other organizations when we talk about them. We talked about the Orioles and their luck. Right now the Pirates, most of their infield is on the IL. They were supposed to have Spencer Horwitz, Nick Gonzalez and IKF at first second third not great offensive players I think Horwitz is is decent and they traded for him to you know, be their first baseman So there's injuries part of the story, but also you go and get Spencer Horwitz Who's kind of like a you know doubles and singles guy and you're gonna play him at first

You know Nick Gonzalez you draft really high and it's been this up and down thing and he hasn't really You know shown you long stints of what he was supposed to be IKF would be one of the worst offensive short stops and honestly, you know, one of the worst overall short stop situations in the game, you know, and Brian Hayes has been up and down himself. They've never quite been able to unlock him. You go get Tommy Fahm for left field, you know, it's just the moves are tiny, you know, the moves are tiny. And the biggest thing they've done is extend Brian Reynolds, who's been struggling a little bit this year and probably contributing some of this offensive

downturn. But you can't build an offense on Brian Reynolds and O'Neal Cruz alone and then say, why don't we have any offense? You know what I mean? It's really like they have two good hitters and then a bunch of tiny little moves. They have a bunch of moves that people would do for like the last spot in the bench. You know, like IKF, I'm not trying to be mean to a single player, I'm just saying IKF, great bench player. You know what I mean?

Like that would be really top end utility guy. Starting shortstop. You know, and it's, you could say that for too many of their guys. Like how many bench players can you have? They seem like they have like six or seven. So is it like on Shelton that, there's some roster construction problems here too.

Yeah, the draft hasn't been good either. You mentioned Gonzalez, but Henry has not panned out and Swinski hasn't really panned out. Tamar Johnson was a big risk that's, may still have time to pan out, but he hasn't been like, oh, here's our top pick that just what blew through the minors and here he is you know outside of skeins they're just not hitting on offense at all I know the park has something to do with it the park plays the way it is but the park

also is it's pretty consistent also not know by now you know it's not Seattle it's just like a conventional slightly pitcher park, you know Bob nutting bought the Pirates in 2007 counting this season how many seasons have they been in last place? So how many seasons is there overall? It would be oh seven to 25 was like 17 seasons. I think They had a little good run with kach and stuff. Yeah, we used to go on a 12 Yeah, I'm going with 10. That was nine. Nine counting this year.

They're in last place right now, if the season were to end today. They've made the playoffs three times. There was a good run with Kutch, yeah. Yeah, 13, 14, and 15. There's a few other things that, there's one other thing in particular that just kind of jumps off the page to me

is you look at when they were good, 13, 14, 15, those playoff teams and what they Did in the years right after that at that point? They kind of pushed their opening day payroll out from the bottom five into that next five They were 24th 20th and 24th in 2015 2016 2017 So I spent a little bit more between 90 and 99 point nine million Yeah They were close to a hundred on the opening day payroll per CO. And they haven't even gone back to that in the time since.

They're not even spending what they were spending 10 years ago on opening day payroll. Yeah, once you factor in inflation. That is not how this is supposed to work. You're right, count inflation. Like that's not at all, that's not even treading water. That's getting worse. That's part of these small moves, right?

That's why you have to trade for Spencer Horowitz or sign Adam Frazier. It's like you're not swimming in the same waters as other guys. Like I know Christian Walker's not playing well right now, but they could have gotten in there for Christian Walker, you know? And that might have been a good move in another universe where Walker's hitting better and stuff, you know? But like it would have been a better idea. I could see this winter if someone came to you in the front office with a pitch to come

play for the Pirates as a free agent, you're like, yeah, I'm excited about your pitching. You're a bad couple bats away. Like maybe maybe you can be a playoff team. Like there were reasons to be optimistic. But I think historically, aside from being frugal, I think it's been a place where free agents have been reluctant to go anyway, because the futility. Why would you sign on for that knowing that the other resources around you are not going to be there? It's definitely a Pirates Offer you something to go, all right, cool, thanks guys. Anyone else? Yeah, shop that dealer around.

Leverage? Nope. All right, well, I mean, at the end of the day, it'll beat the AAA teams, so let's go there. The Padres overpaid for Eric Osmer early on, you know? And I think that on some level, the Padres were a team that you didn't really want to go to, you know? And I think signing Eric Osmer was kind of like, hey, we actually have money.

We're going to spend some money. And I think that led to the Machado deal, which has led to a lot of other spending. And now if you're Gavin Sheets and you and the pirates are calling and the Padres are calling, it's pretty obvious, you know, which call you accept. So I'm not saying that the pirates need to go out and overspend on a big deal and get you get in trouble. But maybe overspend on a big deal and get in trouble, but maybe overspend on a small deal. That's why I'm bringing a walker.

It's like, maybe overspend on a guy on three years and four years and like, you know, you're not stuck too long on that thing at the end and maybe you have a good year and walker's hitting well and then the next year someone's like, oh yeah, I'll take your one year deal. You know what I mean? It's just trying to take, That's the smallest deals possible.

They're really not even in the like one in 10 business. They're in the like one in three business. I don't know what you can do with that. It's a tough place to live. Now, I think some of the things the Pirates have done well would be on the pitching side. Drafting Paul Skeen's one one was probably a layup. I think most teams would have made that pick, but it's more the depth.

It's more guys like Thomas Harrington and Bubba Chandler. And you look at the next wave they're gonna have coming through. And Chandler should be in the big leagues now. The success of Jared Jones, we talked about that a lot last year. They've done better. They've started to put pieces in place, I think,

where you can look at them and say, they might be an organization that has that side figured out, but it's that position player development, that scouting and development on that side, that's where they've really lagged. And if you're going to be cheap, then you've got to do both of those things well. That's the only way to survive. Or you have to be so exceptionally good at flipping your pitching for hitting

and developing so much pitching that you have the excess that you make up ground on that side or that you are really good at finding guys on pillow deals, finding the guys that need the one year deal. Maybe they're not going to sign a four year deal to come to Pittsburgh, but you can get them for a year because you got a great reputation for fixing hitters. They don't have that. So it's just sort of a question of like, what are they going to fix next? What's really going to change that's going to move this franchise further in the right direction? Because they've been stuck in the same place for basically a decade plus now.

They haven't had like a very like a great plan that everyone's on board with and we're going like, you know, when I talked to Jason Ochart, he goes to Boston for hitting and he's like, we're about bat speed, we're about competitive work environments. This is what I'm about. Are we on board with this? Will you give me all the resources to do this? Will I be able to hire everybody I want?

Will I have to keep people around just because they've been around? Can I just come in and run this the way I want? And they were like, yes. And they weren't lying. He went in and he hired all the people he wanted and they're doing exactly what he wanted to do they're having some success I think the Pirates have shown that they will hire people and they've gone through these successive hirings but people already leaving the Pirates I didn't I didn't really realize this until I saw the LinkedIn but Sean Ahmed

who's their director of R&D, is now with the Tigers. So we've seen some people leave for other opportunities, maybe to get out of there, you know? And we've also seen people get fired out of there. So something's not healthy in there. Something's not working right. I think it's the ownership. I think that's where it is.

I think if you could change that, you might actually have some other things that will get better. But I don't know. Pirates fans among the fans that deserve better out there. And I don't think the Shelton firing is going to change your fortunes all that much here in 2025. Some good news follow ups here just as we get rolling. Hunter Green left his start on Wednesday after three and he was a groin injury So at least it wasn't an elbow or a shoulder We'll see if that requires any sort of I else didn't we saw Dylan cease Carrying a no-hitter deep into that start against the Yankees leave early with what they're calling forearm cramps

It wasn't that early. He made it into like the seventh or something. Oh It was late in the game. He's carried no hitter late after the no-hitter Yeah dropped out after Bellinger home or not from right forearm cramps the seventh or something. Oh, it was late in the game. He's carried a no hitter late in the game. It was after the no hitter, yeah. Dropped out. After Bellinger, Holmerdorfam, right? Forearm cramps, I mean, they're saying it's cautious removal right now, so probably okay.

It looks like Corbin Burns is gonna start on Saturday, so some good news there. Zach Efflin's supposed to come back this weekend. Mostly good news on the injury front, including Jordan Alvarez. I think his IELTS then is going to be the minimum with that muscle strain in his hand. The one that I'm a little nervous about

is William Contreras playing through a fractured finger. How does a fractured finger get better if you're catching? You couldn't, right? If it's on your catching hand, your glove hand, it would never get better. But I feel like even if you keep playing through it as a hitter, it's gonna keep getting worse. I've never been a big fan of the cortisone shot thing.

Honestly, just like the put a bandaid on it, especially with the fracture, that doesn't help you heal. It depends on the type of fracture. It just reduces all the inflammation around it. Yeah, then you just like, and it doesn't hurt as much. A lot of inflammation is your body trying to heal it, right? So like, I don't know, if it were September 27th, and they're going to the playoffs, yeah.

You have time to heal, especially like, those little hand fracture stuff, that's like a four week, you know, sometimes like just a couple weeks off, you can get ahead of it enough to where getting back into catching is like, not gonna hurt it enough, but it depends. Is it like a stress reaction thing,

or is it like a, was it an impact thing? Was it a swing thing? Like what happened? So it depends on is it like a stress reaction thing or is it like a, was it an impact thing? Was it a swing thing? Like what happened? So it depends on the type as well. But I'm just never a fan, I just feel like that stuff that's like never, like they never go back to normal. It's like they deal with it all year.

And this is a good example that guys who are dealing with something all year tend to not perform close to as well as they normally do. Yeah, you hear at the end of the year, yeah, that thing in my hand kind of. And even at this point, it's the perfect explanation for why William Contreras has a 331 slug and a 3.1% barrel rate.

This is not who he's been as a hitter to this point in his big league career. So yeah, we have the explanation, but it just seems like a tough injury to shake off if you're going to keep playing through it Let's get into Roki Sasaki's rookie season so far. It just hasn't been What I had hoped at least I thought Roki could hit the ground running with the occasional bump in the road I mean, he's a 23 year old all 23 year olds breaking to the big leagues for the first time aren't gonna have smooth sailing But the extent of the bumps, much worse, right?

17.9% K rate so far. I thought at a minimum, we'd get lots of strikeouts from Roki, even if the command wasn't consistent and he carried an elevated walk rate or an elevated home run rate as he sort of adjusted to the big league ball and facing big league hitters.

It's a 386 ERA, a 145 whip, only 24 Ks in 30 in a third innings, and that's, again, seven starts, so he's not giving them a lot of length in those starts either. What do you think the problem has been, Trevor, the primary problem for Roki Sasaki, and were we, some of us wrong, for being as aggressively pushing him, saying he could be a top 25, top 30 type starting pitcher from the jump upon arrival. There's a few things, I think. One really interesting thing that I'm noticing about Japanese players coming over,

even ones that are really good, it doesn't seem like Japan has really committed to the high fastball thing. Like these guys throw four seam fastballs, but they all still try to get the ball down in the zone, like to get strike one. And Roki is trying to do that, but he's throwing it mid-thigh a lot so his fastball command is not very good he also has a dead zone fastball a little bit too he throws hard but like it's like 15 ride 11 inches of arm side run like these aren't great and he's got a high arm slot so it's like it looks like it's gonna move that way too so So his fastball just isn't gonna perform.

He can't just go up there and pound fastballs in because he doesn't have the command and it doesn't move in the way that you would normally want that fastball to move in order to set his forkball splitter thing up, which is his best pitch by far. So one, like this is something I had to remember having a conversation with Fuji Nami. When Fuji came over, I asked him,

where are you trying to throw your fastball? He's like, down, middle. I'm like, you throw 102, what do you mean? And he also had a dead zone fastball. And I was like, you should never throw your fastball down the zone ever on purpose. Not one time for the rest of the year I want you to do that. So, and it was just something he'd never heard before.

He literally never heard it. And I was like, that's crazy to me. So that's one thing that I would say he needs to commit to is getting at the top of the zone, getting strikes there too because he has long extension, so at least he has a lower release height even though he's got a high arm slot. That could play into his, you know, into his,

I guess, arsenal a little bit better. But I think his slider's actually better than he uses it. It's got a lot of depth. It's kind of a curve ball, movement-wise. I know it doesn't spin like that, but it's got a lot of depth, and obviously his splitter's the best, I think the best one.

If he's dialed in with that, nobody's touching it. You could tell him it's coming. So it just comes down to command, learning when to use those things, and he's gotta learn to use his pitches. The things he throws, he needs to use them more effectively and this was the knock on him, right? It was the, he was not gonna have great command right away.

It's just gonna be electric stuff and he's not throwing 102, he's throwing 97. So that's hittable in the major leagues. I just think it's a combination of the things, and also his leash is about a centimeter long. So it's like, a lot has to go perfectly right in order for him to throw six innings too. So I'm not gonna hold that against him.

Like they're just not gonna let him throw six innings. It just comes down to when are you throwing your pitches and where are you throwing them and where are you trying to? And I think he's learning, he's learning how to have intentions that he never had in Japan. And honestly, Yamamoto had that a little bit last year. That was a little bit of his problem too.

He struggled to really throw the fastball top of the zone consistently. And he has learned it this year. Now he's absolutely electric. But yeah, you can see there on the left, the forcing, those are right down the middle. That's middle, middle, middle. And it looks like he's trying to go up there,

but he's so used to throwing down that it's like transitioning up. That and the splitter being all over the place. But I think that's just something that's gonna be part of it, because he has a splitter that tumbles. It's like a fork ball. If that was animated and we saw the spin, it's crazy.

It's like a slow curve ball spin. And anyone who's tried to throw a splitter and get it to spin like that, not very easy. Not easy to do to get it to go the opposite way of your hand, it's pretty crazy. It is like a feel for lack of spin, which is, it's interesting. But it's also potentially like elite to a level

like it's a unicorn type pitch, right? Nobody else throws anything like that. It could be a hater fast ball, airbender type of pitch if he's like rolls out of bed and able to throw wherever he wants it. If he learns that it's one of those type pitches. So at least he has that. I think that's worth it being excited about.

Yeah, I think if you look at those heat maps again for location, what you'll see is that if you tell this player right now he needs a strike, which one is he throwing? The slider's kind of all over the place, the split finger's kind of all over the place, he's throwing the four-seamer. And he's throwing the four-seamer alone,

and he's throwing it middle. Middle away, middle in. Middle away to right, he's middle the four seamer and he's throwing the four seamer alone and he's throwing it middle, you know, middle away, middle in, middle away to right, he's middle into lefties. That's it, you know, and so it's too easy to keyhole him and the fastball is not good even though it's 97 miles an hour. I think we've just now have a more refined sense, you know, thanks to the kind of research that's behind stuff. Plus we have a more refined sense of what a good fastball is. It's not just V-Lo, it's not just ride, it's a combination of those things. And you mentioned the dead zone. I went and looked and tried to find comps for his fastball.

And I was looking through them, and at first I was gonna use raw movement. And so you can say that Roki Sasaki gets, what is it, like 14 IVB or something on his fastball? Yeah, 14 IVB with 10 inches of arm side. And so I thought, I'll just use that. But over at Alex Chamberlain's site, he's got a new set of stats there that's based off of Max Bay's dead zone.

But the dead zone is your arm slot, basically your arm angle gives across like basically intentions of what your fastball is going to move like. Generally your fastball moves in a certain way if your slot is over the top or if it's three quarters or if it's a side armor. So Alex Chamberlain has these vertical dead zone, he has a VDZD, I don't know what they all stand for, oh dead zone delta. So he's a vertical dead zone delta and he has a horizontal dead zone delta. It's basically saying versus the dead zone, how much movement do you have? And so instead of using raw movement, I used dead zone deltas to find his comps.

And the comps that I found were not super exciting. Hermon Marquez, this year's Virgin, Michael Lorenzen, Cal Quantrill, although Cal Quantrill, it's three miles an hour difference Velo and that matters still, but Cal Quantrill's on there. Tony Santillan is a comp and then this one, I think the one that's up on the screen right now is the best comp, Nate Iavaldi. It's not a perfect is the best comp, Nate Iovaldi. It's not a perfect comp because you see that Nate Iovaldi, his arm slot is lower, but if you kind of think, just look at the movement chart and look at the arm angle

and you can see, oh, Sasaki's fastball moves like that and his arm angle's there, Iovaldi's is lower and it's there, you can almost see how they're dead zone fastballs. They're almost see how they're dead zone fastballs. They're high VELO dead zone fastballs. The reason I bring up Iavaldi is, he's always had a dead zone fastball. We didn't know what to call it when he came up.

We called it straight or whatever it was. We knew it was a great fastball in terms of VELO, but not other things. And I wrote a piece once for Fangraph saying, no fastball is too big to hide. And I was basically saying, I Fangraph saying no fastballs too big to hide and I was basically saying Yvaldi is taking off now because he's throwing the splitter 40% of the time and the slider So I just want to throw that up really quickly again because I think there's one pitch

That's super important on this if you look at what's missing between these two Yvaldi has a splitter Yvaldi has a curve that goes 76 Sasaki has a slider that goes 82. They have similar-ish movements. They're kind of sideways-y. They're over there. Their splitters aren't the same, but they occupy reasonably similar places in the constellation of their pitches. The thing that Sasaki is missing is a cutter. It's the thing that Iwaldi has. It's the thing that Iwaldi can go to if he needs a strike and he doesn't want to throw a four seam And so the cutter would be the thing and also toggling the percentages so that

Sasaki is no longer throwing a four seam 52% of the time that people love to hit They don't get any whiffs on that four seam so just take that four seam and Chop it down to 30% and throw a cutter in there. He trusts to throw a 20% of the time. And I think he could have a Nate Iovaldi like second act. It's going to take some time though, because, you know, I was talking to the Braves about what they do in their time between starts. And they said that their bullpen in between starts is 12 to 15 pitches. Now imagine you're Roki Sasaki, you're 23 years old, your pitchers coach is telling you,

hey, we need a cutter. When? When does he put together the cutter? It can't be, it's probably not going to be during this season. I mean, there are, Lugo did it and some guys, some veterans, Lugo has 10 pitches. Are we surprised that he was able to add pitches in season. Not really. But like for a guy who's been dominating on two or three pitches in Japan for him to add, if he's only throwing like 15 pitches in the bullpen, Trevor, you did, uh, bring up one way that, that he could be working on it. That's other than the bullpen. There's, there's another thing you do in between starts where, you know, he could

be playing around with his four seam grip, trying to get a cutter grip, trying to get a sinker, something like that. Yeah, that's the only other thing that pitchers do, that's why catch. So we either throwing bullpen or playing catch and for some of the really behind the times teams they're shagging BP. And that's honestly catch was my number one

learn a new thing, but I always had an opportunity, we always had two bullpen catchers. This is actually really interesting. Starting pitchers, a lot of times are out there either before or after bullpen guys. So like you don't have to pair up with another pitcher, you can pair up with a bullpen catcher. So it's for all intents and purposes,

like you have a guy who can catch every pitch as you're trying to get to move and then are maybe a little bit inconsistent or maybe erratic like you have somebody with the catcher's mitt on him maybe a mask and you're feeling more comfortable throwing it hard That is something that I probably is doing catch play right like you like you're gonna throw something That's really moving and really hard at another pitcher. I mean, there's some guys that don't care The beauty the beauty of when I when I used to play catch, I'd be like, hey, I'm going out to 300 feet, by the way. So there was always like one guy

I could get to play catch with me. And then most of the time I would have a bullpen catcher be the cutoff guy for the guy I'm playing catch with. So that, I was very specific and that helped me weed out the weaklings. So, but I would say get with your, like just, he should just be messing with grips constantly and catches the time that you get the confidence

in that stuff anyways too, and you can feel stuff. But I agree wholeheartedly with the second fastball idea. And also, it's funny that Iovaldi was the comp because I've had anecdotal evidence from, anecdotes a lot from Ottavino, who's really good friends with Iovaldi. And then he's a, he basically calls him a kitchen sink pitcher and he learned to do that

because he had that fastball that he couldn't explain why 99-100 was getting hit like it was back then. And he, but he committed to it really quickly. He's like, okay, whatever, I throw really hard. I'm not gonna be like, oh, it should be better. I'm just gonna say, okay, it's not as good as it, or it doesn't, what else should I throw? And he's like, I'll throw everything. And he got that confidence really quickly to where he can change his game to game

he just wildly changes his arsenal. He doesn't have a great feel for spin he's not a guy who throws a great breaking ball. Nothing's great great but he just like he throws hard enough and he is power enough that that like having five six pitches thing is enough to have him have some dominant outings and most of the time he's getting contact. Yeah what if Lugo threw 96 even with a crappy fastball like you know he'd be better. He would be absolutely disgusting. He's pretty good but like yeah but that's the idea with Evaldi. He'd be punching out the world if he's throwing 98. I'm throwing six pitches and none of them are great except you know you still have to honor you know 95 96. But he knows that. So that was, that's the difference. Like he evolved. He's a very, he's a good pitcher.

And I think he's, you can count on him. And I think that over the years, people have felt really comfortable being like, he's going to be who he is and he's going to make the adjustments because he committed to the fact that, yeah, I don't have that pitch. That's just like, I'm going to throw this only today. No one's going to touch it. I just don't have that. And I throw hard and this is what I do.

And so I'm going to maybe roll a six-sided die and pick the pitch and start from there. Ever since he kind of figured that out, he's been pretty nailed, dude. He's had an ERA under four now for six straight years and good strikeout rates, and this is in the face of a declining fastball, so he's really figured it out.

And Roky, on the other hand, has demon splitter. So like he's got something that Ivaldi doesn't have and if he commits to this side where all these pitches are just there so I can get to that pitch that is unhittable, he could be a step up, which I think is within the realm of possibilities. He's got to commit to it. I was thinking about this from another angle. If the Dodgers get to the point where they've got enough of their starters healthy, do you think Rokey is better served staying with the big league club in some kind of flexible, maybe a long relief role, right? They're trying to be careful with his innings and they want full control of his development.

Keeping him on the roster as the last guy in the bullpen is probably something they would choose over optioning him down to double A or triple A. Getting some use out of him. But then you know in games he's not going to flesh out his full arsenal. You're trying to get him to throw more pitches and then he's going to go into games and be a reliever. He's just going to throw the fastball and the split. In short relief for sure.

In longer relief maybe they'd have enough there where they could push that new pitch and still have situations where they feel comfortable letting him kind of learn on the fly. Even with all the starters they could have back at some point, that's a huge if, do you think he sticks on the big league roster in some capacity all season or do you think the things we're seeing will lead to at least a brief demotion to the minors where he can work as a starter, absolutely work on things with a capital W without even worrying about results initially, and then come back at some point later on this year. Yeah, it depends on when, I think.

I think also the key number right now is that the starters in LA are averaging 4.5 innings per outing. That's like a full inning less than the Royals who are getting the most. They're on pace to have the fifth fewest innings from their starters in the history of baseball. So I think that there's enough urgent need that he'll stay up. I can't see all these guys being healthy at the same time and then being like, oh, now we're suddenly flush with arms. I just, this seems like another one of these years

where they did this last year and they won it all anyway, but like, you know, there was a point last year where you're like, who's starting? Like, who's in this rotation? What is going on? Everyone's hurt. And then you're like, oh, the Dodders, they're doing that again.

So I just, if he's healthy, I think he's up. Can you imagine if they didn't trade for Flaherty? They would have had one pitcher. I joke that even when they won the World Series, they had no idea who would start the next day. They really don't. And if Walker Bueller hadn't turned it on, I mean, if Walker Bueller had just been

who he'd been in September, I don't think they win that thing. You make a really good point. Like if it's between Roki Sasaki or bullpen games, Roki, like they just don't have. It's gotta be. And so, and then when no one else in the rotations really like lighten up the inning total either, or like it's hard, it does not, it's glaring either. Like you were like, well, we gotta be patient with everybody.

Like nobody's going deep in the game. So why would we penalize this guy for that? And he is making the, you know, small steps in the right direction that we feel to be patient with everybody. Like, nobody's going deep in the game. So why would we penalize this guy for that? And he is making the small steps in the right direction that we feel like he should be making. So it just comes down to how you're analyzing him and then whether or not you want to just take all that pressure off and you just want to say, hey, here's what we want you to do, go down there.

And then I'm sure he'll have some minorly development person that's with him the whole time, probably, around making sure he's getting everything he needs and he'll get a little bit of special treatment probably. So, because sometimes you can go down and then they're like, hey, work on this thing and then everyone's like, what are we working on?

I don't know. Yeah, it would be more like, almost like a coach would go with him or something. Like the director of pitching would just be there like the whole time. It would be in a lot and guys would be like, wow, look, they're watching us. Look who's here.

It's awesome. Yeah. He's usually only here a couple times a year. Let's have our draft. I put together a board of guys who've pitched at least 10 innings this season in a starting role, and then I filtered down for strikeout rates below 20%, or equal to 20%, just to make sure we got one more name in there,

and walk rates above 10% because generally a combination of skills like that is a pitcher that we're not all that excited about and some very interesting names including Roki Sasaki are on the list right so we've got this list has Sandy Alcantara, Corbin Burns, Tanner Bybee, Taj Bradley, it's got guys like Chris Paddock, it's got Jackson job. It's got sake and Mitchell Parker and Tobias Meyer. So it's got back end guys It's got guys are supposed to be aces and a few in between

We're gonna try to draft for each and see who ends up with the best result at the end of the season I think we should use should we just use flat-out war because we're talking about innings and I think we should use, should we just use flat out war? Cause we're talking about innings and some sort of success. That's sort of strikeout rate specific a little bit. Maybe RA nine war. RA nine war, okay. So whoever has the highest RA nine war

from their four pitchers at the end of the season, what gets it? Jumbo bags of nerds clusters from everybody else on the show. Is this from this point on or is this a whole aggregate the whole year. Yeah. Yep. Yep You don't count anything that's happened so far So we'll do like a custom leaderboard at the end of the year makes a couple guys some notes in the calendar Yeah, and there's a few guys below the fold all scrolls you can see them down there

I mean you guys have the full sheets, so it's not like a big deal But just so everybody on YouTube could follow along. I think we'll do it like this We'll do the four rounds it'll snake all right top to bottom. I'm on top though. I have to go first. That sucks. I don't want the first pick. That's horrible. I'm never gonna win these nerds clusters. Alright, trying to get the best possible combination out of this mess. I'm gonna take Corbin Burns with the first pick. We got the good news on the shoulder. I looked back at his career, tried to find a run as bad as what he's been on to start the season.

And you go back to 2023, he had a little stretch in May and early June that was kinda like this. It's just a leap of faith that we're bouncing back to an acceptable level overall, right? There's nothing I'm seeing specifically that I'm overly confident in. It's just believing that he's not gonna be this bad this quickly.

So hopefully that shoulder injury is not much of a problem. He seems like a guy that just doesn't belong on this list at all. Nothing about the start of Corbin Burns' season actually makes sense to me so far. I mean, you didn't want first pick. That's the most obvious first pick you could have been. We would all take him.

I don't know. It tails off a lot, though. There's value, I think, in being in that three spot. But we'll see how this plays out. For me, this is a crapshoot. I don't even know how to really approach this. I'm going to go with Tanner Bybee. He's a member of the Guardians.

And he also has finished strong in both of his seasons. So I just think that he's the guy who's gonna bounce back and the team is going to, he's gonna rattle off some really good starts and then he's gonna throw a lot of innings. So I think there's gonna be a good opportunity for some more there. I think Bybee has four pitches right now

that are still above average in stuff plus. So yeah, I think that's gonna be a fine fine way to start off your rotation in this particular draft All right, you know gets to man. We're gonna regret this, you know getting two picks this early is gonna be bad for all of us That's what I'm happy about. I'm taking Sandy all contra. We've got a great track record You know, I know it's slow to come online, but we've talked about how command comes late from Tommy John. What I'm seeing is in his last start, he had the best location plus he'd had in his last five starts.

I think it's starting to come around, especially because he had the best location plus on his slider they'd had all season. That's the pitch that we talked about. Why do you not throw the slider when you come back from Tommy John? Well now he's throwing it I think over the course of the season as he throws those breaking balls he's just gonna come back online and be great. Plus I'm a stuffist and he still has his stuff second on this list and stuff plus. The next one I think I'm gonna go out on a limb a little bit. I'm gonna take the guy that has the

best stuff plus even though he has not shown the results yet and that is Jackson Job. I don't know if that's not if that is going on a limb or not. He's not really showing the strikeout rate. K-Bb says this is a bad pick. K-Bb is predictive at this point in the season. He has one of the worst K-Modice BBs on this list, but he has a nice home park. He throws 97 and I just think that there's something he's gonna click. We're gonna have a story this year. It's like Jackson Jobe turfed the this or he added the this or he you know decided this and it's gonna all come together for him. That's that's where I see Jackson Jobe right now. He's got all the tools and he just needs to put them in the right order. I think based on the model and everything, that makes all the sense in the world. I'm

hoping Jobe's not one of the, if the model says he's good, why isn't he better type guys? But it makes all the sense that you could possibly want for that fourth spot because this thing tapers off terribly at this point. There's only a couple other guys that I would want with that pick and so I'm happy to just go with the young guy that might put it all together. I'm only confident in my first pick, that's it. So I'm gonna go way out on a limb and say a guy who is

wildly underperformed, as his projections, and has the biggest difference between his ERA and his FIP of anybody, and that's Charles Morton. I'm gonna take Charlie. Yes, I'm gonna take Charlie because one, the guy throws 30 starts every year. Two, I think when the Orioles, I don't think they're gonna fully turn it around,

but I do think they're gonna play better, and I think that he is gonna benefit from some of that. He also has the highest strikeout rate on this list, even with those things going on. So he's had a little bit of bad luck, it's not all bad luck, let's be very clear, he's not thrown well. But his track record over a very,

a lot of years is healthy and swing and miss and kind of turning on a little bit. Now he started really, really slow the last two years before this year as well and then got better as the year went on. That happens when you're older as well. It just comes down to is he gonna be able to figure it out before he gets, he has to move on.

And that's the thing with them right now if they can afford to wait for him to figure it out. Fortunately, they have another old guy in the rotation as well that they're also gonna be thinking about for those situations at CalGypsum. So, there's hope, but he could be off the team in a week and then I'm just screwed. So, we'll see.

I'm a big believer in Charlie Morton and I don't know what else to do. Hey, keeping the job will be important because a lot of the guys on this list could get bounced entirely entirely could get optioned Triple-a could become relievers a lot of different outcomes. I think on the table here. I'm gonna take Taj Bradley with the next pick It's probably actually a toss-up between Bradley and who I'll take with my round three pick I'll take Roki with the round three one because I think there's a massive dip

I mean even with all the concerns we outlined, the command problems, the need for the cutter, the Dodgers need him at least for a little while, probably for most of what's left of this season. So there will be some innings even if they're monitored. It's some faith that he could make some adjustments. It's the faith in the organization that they're going to encourage him. It's the faith that maybe the command of the fastball will gradually improve over the course of the year even if he doesn't add the cutter. Looking at the fourseer and looking at the results on it Rokey's been fortunate so far with the four seamer compared to his x stats so things could get worse before they get better

I've got that kind of rattling around came on his BD does not predict a sub four URA so No, no it does not so there's there's a little more risk cooked in there with Taj Bradley We've talked about him a lot over the last year or so on this show. It just seems like he also needs something else in that arsenal and it's just, it's not there yet. I'm surprised the walk rate is up again this year. I'm hoping because he's in Tampa,

even though it's not the trop, that we'll see some kind of tweak along the way. It's blind faith that they'll finally get the adjustment right with Taj, even though we haven't seen it happen just yet. Well, okay, then give me, I'll take Jeffery Springs. Springs, okay. What do you see, yeah, what do you like about him?

Not a lot, but. But keeping the job. Yeah, he has a job. Like, for example, a lot of the other guys on this list, let's just talk about like Ty OneWalker, Logan Evans. Like as soon as one of the guys, one of the two Kirby or Gilbert come back, Evans is gone. I've been circling Evans and thinking about picking Evans and I don't think I don't know if he has the job. And Taiwan, as soon as one guy comes back, he's going to get moved to like, it doesn't matter really how he throws. I don't think

at this point. So they're kind of really on the on the on the edge and Springs just isn't an outside of an injury he's just not gonna be in trouble of not getting innings. So I'm going on they're gonna rely on him a little bit more and he's the veteran guy. I just know how Kotze and the squad works over there and if you have some veteran status or veteran time they depend on you know give you a longer leash and that team's been playing pretty well, so I think he's gonna pitch better than he has. Yeah, you're gonna take on the water,

the ratios accrued so far, so in that case, yeah, I think you got the clean slate to work with, but job security probably higher than just about anybody left on the board at this point. I don't, I... I... Uh... Jonathan Cannon?

Jonathan Cannon, come on down. It's more like a question than a question. Jonathan Cannon. It is. Jonathan Cannon. I'm going to say something nice about Jonathan Cannon here. What I'm gonna say is that he has above average stuff plus and he has a good fastball slider, you know situation

He does not have good numbers against lefties what I'm hoping he does is just walk the lefties get some of the worst lefties out and Play better than his Sierra last year. He had a 449 era and a 472 Sierra than his Sierra. Last year he had a 449ERA and a 472 Sierra. This year has a 409ERA and a 464 Sierra. Just hang around with that four level and there are arms I like better on this list than Jonathan Cannon but Logan Evans I don't think has a job long term and I think that's a little bit of a question with some of the other guys on this list. So it was between Tobias Myers and Jonathan Cannon and one thing that I just haven't liked about Myers this year so far is that the stuff seems to be down and you can see the strikeout rate is down and I don't know

what's going on with that. So I may regret this, but for my final pick, Jonathan Cannon. You actually get it one more. Oh, then Tobias Meyers. Here we go. Two guys with jobs and questionable stuff right now. I did talk to Tobias Meyers about throwing the change up more. It is his best pitch by stuff. Plus he just says that he doesn't think that he can place it that well.

He's kind of, he just rips that pitch but maybe he gets more comfortable with it as he comes back from injury and That number there is the way that he adds stuff plus adds whiffs It's a very good change-up And so I'm hoping that he kind of gets more comfortable with it and throws it more as you go forward All right, Trevor gets his force. Not at all confident about that duo, though, as you can tell. Yeah, I'm gonna go Logan Allen because he is on the Guardians and he's gonna get innings. Like it was between him and I was gonna say or Kylo Alexander because he once struck out 10 straight

in a relief appearance. That's all I got. I mean he's Remember that still holds the record that record made Man record may never fall 10 straight as a reliever 10 in a row pretty crazy. Yeah. Yeah, that's hot I mean, that's a pretty like how many times straight and straights only happened like five or six times in history baseball It's always by starters and it's always been a starter. I actually watched Nola do it to the Mets once, which was tough. It was a tough day. It's a tough day.

All right, so Tyler Alexander, so Logan Allen for Trevor instead of Tyler Alexander. Orvin Burns did it once. I should remember that. Andrew Haney got nine. That's gotta be a fun search. You know, of all the talk of Logan Evans, Ooh.

Think about it, I'm gonna take him because you got two guys working back from injury. I hope, look, I hope for the sake of the Mariners, they're just healthy and they get back and it's fine, but the situation could just change. Someone else could break down. I think he'll get some starts over the course of the year, even if both those guys comes back because there's almost no chance the entire

rotation stays healthy and it seems like he's doing enough to maybe move past Emerson Hancock in the pecking order for those opportunities so edge goes to Logan Evans I couldn't believe it I looked at the stuff numbers and the slider and curveball are really good compared to the field here. So, feels like okay value. We did have some intel from within the organization of somebody putting their finger on Logan Evans and saying, this is a guy you need to know about. That was like a year or two ago.

So, I always like it when you're picking somebody that somebody in the organization really likes. And I did try to struggle with why aren't his numbers better than, and I think somebody with an elite breaking ball could, you know, sort of suppress, you know, balls in play and not have great strikeout numbers in the minor leagues and still be have success in the major leagues.

I like I like these breaking balls. Feel pretty good about this. This group of pitchers I ended up with, though. Yeah, I like your better minds. Burns, Bradley, Rokey, and then Logan Evans is sort of a dart hoping the ends up getting more innings that you end up with Sandy Jackson Job I liked cannon when we were prepping for this I thought he kind of stood out to me as a late guy I would want then Tobias Myers did look a lot better last time out against the Astros than he has hoping

I'm gonna die. I know getting better getting getting healthier Yeah, and I think that's a big part of it for a lot of these guys But Trevor ended up with bybee as his first pick. Charlie Morton was, I think, a bit of a surprise. That one, if you write about Charlie Morton, I think you could've waited a little longer on Morton. I think I'm either gonna be so wrong, or just like, you crushed it.

There's gonna be no in between. There's gonna be no in between. Still got the breaking ball. Still got the breaking ball. Still got the breaking ball. One more topic to get to before we go. Great piece from Alex Chamberlain at FanGraphs about Andres Muñoz. It's dense, as you know, put it, in a good way. Just one of these things where the headline is Andres Muñoz is an analytical blind spot.

And it goes into some really interesting details. Great visuals in this piece as well and the funny thing about it to me is that Andres Muñoz throws hard and as long as you don't throw hard in a very predictable way where the hitter can just anticipate the movement pattern you're probably going to be fine right like that to me is a huge part of what's made Andres Muñoz successful, right? He throws so hard that his version of weird works. And when we were getting ready for the show, Trevor, you pointed out that as he loses velocity over the course of his career,

the adjustments he's going to have to make are probably going to be pretty significant as a result of what works for him now. Yeah, at least in terms of usage and fastball. I'll be honest though, he has established his ability to throw a slider and his willingness to do it in any count so far. That also helps his fastball be, that'll help kind of soften, I think, that decline a little bit.

But for those of you at home, the basic premise is the fact that the, and we've talked about this a lot, but arm slot and hand position provide a set of assumptions for a hitter right and when they make those assumptions based on how the ball is gonna move the farther away from those assumptions matching up with what actually is happening is what more or less deception a big part of the deception is it's like the Paul Seawald made like everyone's like how's he blowing 92 by everybody because he throws from a slot that looks like it's gonna be a sinker and it's like the Paul Seawald made like everyone's like how's he blowing 92 by everybody because he throws from a slot that looks like it's going to be a sinker and it's a weird cutting righty forcing

thing that's so and he unfortunately Munoz it lines up very closely but he has a reputation for throwing 99 100 which is one thing and a reputation for throwing a lot of sliders if he needs them or it's not comfortable to fastball and that is is enough to make, keep people off his fastball enough, but it's not quite the swing and miss pitch that maybe other guys who have just throw as hard have. And that's, you know, kind of what it comes down to. Like a guy who, another guy who has stuff that moves exactly the same way, but it's also, also throws really hard and but does get swings and misses, but not as fastball

is a Helsley. Helsley, all his swing and miss is on a slider because it's the exact opposite of his fastball. It's a crazy whiff, right? And the reason it's that way is because he throws directly over the top and a riding fastball and that's what people assume it's gonna be. And so he gets the chases and everything on the other pitch, think it has the opposite. So that's what you have to try to get. With Munoz though, you can see it or it moves the way you think it's the opposite. So that's what you have to try to get. With Munoz though, you can see it.

Or it moves the way you think it's gonna move, but he just kind of bulldozes you. Edwin Diaz is similar. He's got a weird fastball that kind of like is dead zone if you look at it in a vacuum. But, and his slider's not like a heavy breaker, neither is Munoz, but they're hard and they are willing to throw them in those counts.

But we're seeing what's happening to Diaz with his V-Low being 95 to 97 as opposed to 100. That like bull rushing doesn't work as much and that's what Munoz is gonna struggle with. And he's got that violent motion. It's all part of the package. And when that's 96, it's gonna be different. You're talking about that Velo

and the assumptions that people I think make off of Velo and that was the kind of big revelation in the article was that you know when Max Bay did his Dead Zone app we just talked about arm slot and arm slot predicting movement and so that makes sense as a batter you come to the plate and you see this guy's arm slot and you even if you don't do it in the front of your mind the back of your mind is being like up up, okay, access side armor, we got side armor, you know, and to some extent, Seewald, you know, plays with that. And you're like, oh, side armor, but it doesn't do what it's supposed to do, you know, and that confuses you. And it

takes multiple looks until you can kind of be like, okay, I know Seewald, I know, you know, you have to kind of override your brain, you know and kind of so the big question has been You know Max Bay did not include velocity as one of those things now I think stuff plus may capture this because stuff plus does Interactions between all the different things and it's just constantly asking like how do these all these things go interact? So stuff plus may handle this and stuff was likes Muno. So that's the thing in its favor But when you're talking about this dynamic dead zone, should you include velocity? Does velocity inform what a batter

thinks the pitch will move like? And another way of saying it is, you know, I just did a simple sort. Here's all the guys by fastball velocity. So Mason Miller's at the top obviously right and you kind of look at you look at the top guys in VELO and Munoz's tenth in the big leagues in fastball velocity and he still has that Diazian fastball velocity that Diaz has lost right. So in the top ten you know for fastball VELO they all almost all have plus movement or at least you know dead zone to plus right they all have decent movement or at least, you know, dead zone to plus, right? They all have decent movement, vertical movement. Honest and Real is has the least amount of movement, you know, in that group other than Seth Halvorson

and then maybe the comp for him is John Duran, you know, because they kind of have this sinkery four-scene. You know what I mean? So the hitter gets to the plate, he sees 99 and he thinks Mason Miller at the top, you know. He thinks, you know, Hunter Green at the top, Mason Montgomery at the top. It's gonna jump at me, it's Big Velo, that's what it's gonna do. And so maybe there's some part of the brain that just sees Velo and thinks like Helsley has great jump, Aroldis Chapman has great ride, Robert Suarez has great ride, Ryan Stanik.

So it's all these hard throwers it sees, it thinks, okay, hard thrower, gonna have ride. And then when he doesn't have ride, it's deceptive in the other way. And so the sort of beginning of the question was why does he get so many ground balls on this, on this four seamer? And it's because possibly Velo informs the dead zone and so he created you know he kind of created a

new little way to look at dead zone and I think it's plausible that a hitter might think like you know I think the opposite is is pretty fairly true like this guy throws soft it's gonna have a lot of sink. Or it's gonna move a lot or I'm gonna have to swing lower or I'm gonna swing higher. I mean, it comes down to it, like hitters, the assumptions they make is there's two things you have to do, you have to decide when you're gonna swing and where you're gonna swing. Those are the two data points you need to know,

and you try to make, set yourself up with the right assumptions so that you can kinda automate some of that stuff. And when the standard is, especially on guys with ride, it gets on you, it jumps like you said, it seems harder. So like maybe getting started a little bit earlier. Now guys are a little bit.

And if you're doing that anyway because he has high V-low, then you're like, oh yeah, I'm gonna start early because I gotta stay on top of this. So you're getting to the spot and then they're like hitting the top of the ball and they're like what the heck, I'm used to that being in the square

in the middle of the ball. So the standard has gotten so good that guys who are below that standard are actually effective. Like, that's a weird thing to think about, but that makes a lot of sense when everyone gets so nasty. Like, everyone's got such a great breaking ball that they see so many good ones that if you throw a backup guy... That was Alessio Hernandez's thing. He threw an 80 mile an hour cutter and everyone's like, what? Yeah, just so bad that it's good what is it, the Moronta slider? It's just a backup slider every time.

Yeah, the backup slider he used to throw. And it was, guys are just taking the worst swings I've ever seen on it just because it's something that just doesn't exist outside of him. I think it's also fair to wonder if there's a fine line that if he loses a tick, it gets much worse. Then people sort of see him as, oh, this is mid V, though, and I see the arm slot, and this is kind of,

this is not gonna be a rally. They stop grouping him in with those guys. He gets grouped in more with the mid-90s guys, and now they're not worried about getting on, they're not worried about those things as much. And so they're willing to sell out. And they see the slot, and then they're like, oh, yeah, this is kind of a lower slot,

this is gonna be a sinkery type thing. Really curious to see if Munoz makes adjustments before he has to or if hitters react to him losing Velo. I think the kick change will come out. I don't even know if he's thrown one in a game yet. He's thrown like three. They're disgusting. I don't think he knows where they're going though.

No, I've never heard of it. No, not really, but it's early with it. But there's something about his makeup that I wanna bet on it. He's so happy. He's a happy kid who's just trying his best. I don't know, I wanna bet on it. I think just him and Cal one day are just gonna be like,

there's a kick-changer today, and he's gonna throw like six. And then he's gonna get like four swings of misses and just have a blast, and then he's just gonna throw it all the time. He's gonna be like Joe Kelly. Joe Kelly always got a new toy and then threw 80% of the time until someone finally took

Him deep and then he got back to his Other way he was well, let's dream on that a little bit You know life let's just say like the Mariners are a playoff team in 2025 and you see the same hitters a couple times In a series is that when you? Save that wrinkle for October Astros and the ALCS. Just when he threw the, started throwing a change up for the first time in his career in the playoffs,

you're like, what are you doing? Yeah, really? It was great. Yeah. I missed that story. That might be the way to do it, as long as you're able to work on it on the side and get a little extra bit of confidence in it,

then flip that switch when people are really not looking forward to seeing you a couple times. Tyler Clipper would do it I know that he just make up a pitch throwing that game Granky there's a name. I haven't thought about for a while Classic remember some guys guy Tyler Clippard well We are going to go on our way out the door a couple reminders you can get a subscription to the athletic at the athletic Dot-com slash rates and barrels you can find us on blue sky

You know Zeno Saris that beast guy dot social Trevor's I Am Trevor May.bsky.social, IMDBR.bsky.social. Thanks to our producer, Brian Smith, for putting this episode together. That's gonna do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening.