Rates & Barrels - How Do You Prepare to Face Blake Snell?

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

With Blake Snell's return to Cy Snell levels since coming back from the injured list, DVR, Eno and Trevor discuss how teams should game plan against him during the final two months of the season. Plus, they examine some of the biggest surprises among position players in 2024, and the recent uptick in sinker usage around the league. Plus, they discuss the White Sox's decision to part ways with manager Pedro Grifol, the possibility of MLB players in the 2028 Olympics, and more. Rundown 1:15 Pedro Grifol Fired as White Sox Manager; Evaluating Managers on Bad Teams 7:37 Typical Player-Manager Interactions 15:00 How Will MLB Approach Baseball in the 2028 Olympics? 25:02 The Game Plan: How Do You Prepare to Face Blake Snell 42:38 Pleasant Surprises of 2024: Brenton Doyle 50:57 Tyler Fitzgerald's 8.0 fWAR Pace 54:37 Brent Rooker's Step Forward From 2023 1:01:03 What Has Led to the Uptick in Sinker Usage This Season? 1:06:20 Notable In-Season Bat Speed Increases Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Trevor on Twitter: @IamTrevorMay Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris With: Trevor May Producer: Brian Smith Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Raids and Darrils, it's Thursday August 8th, Derek from Raiborino, Sarah's Trevor May here with you. On this episode we have a game plan segment, how do you hit Blake Snell? It's been very difficult since he came off the IELTS course through a no hitter two starts ago at a quality start on Wednesday night against the Nats just looks like a different guy now that he had earlier this year's next Matchup is gonna be against Atlanta next week So we'll talk about what the Braves hitters might do to try to prepare for Snell in his current state to can talk about some Pleasant surprises among hitters some guys that have had great seasons so far try to figure out where we're going to talk about some pleasant surprises among hitters, some guys that have had great seasons so far, try to figure out where we're going from here.

You don't notice that sinker usage is up again around the leagues, we'll talk about why that might be the case and we're going to take a look back at a new toy we were excited about a few months ago. We have stat cast bat tracking, we're going to look at bat speed risers from the first two months of the season to the second two months and see if there's anything we can pull out of that that might be meaningful probably more questions than answers in that part of the show But it's fun to look at those shiny new toys get some news as we get started today gentlemen the White Sox have Dismissed manager Pedro Griefvall. I like in soccer how it's the manager gets sacked. I prefer that terminology

I think I want to use that going forward It just seems like a great way to say someone was let go how the manager gets sacked. I prefer that terminology. I think I wanna use that going forward. It just seems like a great way to say someone was let go. But Pedro Grifo, no longer the manager of this brutal White Sox team. Simple question to start, Trevor, how do you evaluate a manager on any bad team? Because the outside looking in perspective I have is always,

they shouldn't be this bad. So perhaps there is something the manager could be doing differently. But you've been on some teams that have been less than great. So how do you evaluate a manager in those situations? A team like that going into the season, and I was in a very similar situation going in 2023 where a team we knew wasn't going to be great. It was always a question like, how far is the fall going to be before the turnaround? Is that going to happen this year?

And I think that's kind of what they were hoping for. Like, let's see if we can get some diamonds in the rough to kind of come out and be our core guys. Then we can start building on top of that again. And there's a lot of responsibility. I think it's more responsible to be on a manager in those situations than there is when the team is pretty good or getting close because you measure it a

little bit differently. I think that we had a lot of conversations about, hey, we are not going to be, we need to not like look at ourselves or evaluate ourselves based on, you know, wins and losses at this point. That's just not where we're at. But it is, are we better now than we were three weeks ago? Like are guys improving incrementally and are we developing players because we're in a situation where we have to develop players in the big leagues. And I think that's where his failure may be glaring because not only did they lose 21 games in a row and it's semi, I think, almost brutal to fire a guy after he finally breaks the streak and then he gets fired. They're like, oh, that's over.

Anyway, you need to leave. That sucks. But they've they've lost over 10, like four times in a row. And that's a you can't stop the bleeding. That's a we're not you're not that's not the philosophy. Get better than we were just a couple of weeks ago. And I'd say they're getting worse. And that's not personnel wise. That's you know, you can you can win games in the big leagues. I'm of the opinion that the the difference in talent like the from the best to the to the worst players isn't as big as other sports. Like any guy can be the hero any given day. And a lot of times to do like if you have really good processes, you can scrape

together wins even if you don't have the best talent in the world. But if you don't have the best talent and you don't have that philosophy, that's when you get a team that's 30 and 90. It's almost hard to do. That's where I think ineptitude maybe shows a little bit more and that's, you know, the messaging must not have been good. Like you just got to call it what it is and maybe there's pressure there. Like, you got to kind of act like you just don't look at the elephant in the room.

But when guys look at the elephant in the room and go, hey, this is the deal. Let's just try to get better every single day. And if I end up not having a job in the day, that's, but this is me doing my best in this situation, file accounts doesn't sound like that's what it was. I think it was a kind of pie in the sky. Hey, we could be better than we, we, we look like we're going to be, but you have to develop, you don't have the guys with experience to do that. So you got to learn how to do it. And I don't think he was doing that.

My general stance on managers is that they're kind of like vibes and personnel managers that they are trying to keep, you know, a bunch of men in the same direction. But, you know, a lot of people think of managers as tacticians, the choice of when to take the picture out or what the lineup card looks like is, is most important thing that a manager does. And I think that might actually be is most important thing that a manager does. And I think that might actually be the least important thing that a manager does,

because a lot of those decisions are made in concert with the front office. And a lot of those decisions seem really important in retrospect. Oh man, that guy that you put eighth in the lineup went four for four. If only you'd put him second, they would have scored a bunch of runs.

Yeah, that's not where the hat works. You know? Yeah, by the way, had I known that I would have done it too, right? Yeah, right. And it's the same thing. It's like, oh, you took that guy out too early. Oh, but did I take the other guy out too late? You know, like, you know, it's like, you know, there's, there's, it's a lot of the if so

factor, like sort of backwards looking, oh, the manager's an idiot because he didn't do these things that were obvious now, but weren't obvious at the time. But when I say that, I'm not trying to denigrate how important a manager is because vibes and process and personnel are super important. They're just not something we see as much. And so my input, you know, my best way of seeing this is like, I see Marcotte say, and I see the A's, and I see them a lot, and I see David Fore saying, we do a lot of player development at the major league level. I see Marcotte answering questions in the scrum saying, we've asked Lawrence Butler to make a little adjustment

with his head and to kind of keep his head more still in his swings. And we're asking him to make better swing decisions. So that's what he's working on. We've asked Zach Gelof now to make a big change to the way he swings the bat. And he's telling the media this to give the kids a little grace, right? So he's saying, yeah, Zach Gelof is hitting 196, but we've asked him to do something that's really hard to do.

He's trying to change the way he swings a little bit. So give him a little time. And if he does come out of that, then you can say, well, you know, a little self-servingly, yeah, Mark Katze had an adjustment for him. I was just talking about him last week, and now look at him, he's hitting 300 in the last couple of weeks.

But yes, that's what you're talking about is like, you know, getting better. It seems to me that Mark Kotze has put into place some of these processes in terms of what we expect to see out of you. We expect to see better swing decisions. We expect to see damage at the plate, whatever it is, certain metrics they care about,

certain processes they care about, and they're in place. And the team knows about it. He transmits that belief. He tells them that. But one question I have for you Trevor is what is your interaction? And I and keep it general. It doesn't have to be with Mark or you know any specific guy. But what is the average player's interaction with the manager? My impression is not much. It's a two-prong approach right? Kotze is a very, I'll just use him as an example. He's a good example.

Um, he's a very, he's a younger guy. He is not that long since he played his doors open. Like he's a very approachable guy. He wants to be approachable. That's very much on purpose, which I greatly respect. The vibe I got was maybe a little bit of an experience in terms of that vibe stuff. Like as a player, what, like, what kind of things can you like, what do, how much

does the players want the manager to be involved with that? That's a way crazy wide ranging thing. Like Buck Showalter was completely different than like Rocco Baldelli. Rocco's pretty so laid back. Just listen to the fish in his office, but it's open. The door is open, but like he's not out here raw, raw, and are like hanging out in guys lockers that much. Buck was way more. So it's like they want to show their personalities off.

They want to meet you at a human level. And those guys are the best in my opinion. But then there's players that like seek out hanging out with their manager a lot, like going and sitting there and like talking about the game and just like hanging out late longer after the game and like, you know, having dinner and like the manager, there'll be the last couple guys there like Seth Brown's one of those guys. He's always, he likes to sit and shoot the breeze with his manager, right? And I'd say he likes doing that stuff. I'm getting it out. Like I'm just, that's not the way I am. But when it came to talking ball, like

we, I was comfortable knocking on his door and be like, Hey, skip, I got something to, I had a request to make. I remember going in there and being like, Hey, when I came off the aisle for the anxiety being like, Hey, if I can get like one outing and low leverage or like no leverage, just one before we get into this thing. Cause I understand the nature of our bullpen and the, where we're at right now. He's like, absolutely. And that first outing,

I just, it was a situation where it was kind of leverage and he's like, every, this is the least leverage. It was that, are you going to sit out there for a few days? I was like, you know what? I appreciate that. But he was clear about it and that, that was good. So at the end of the day, I think just being approachable is the number one thing you can have and be as honest as you can. And when you can't be like, I can't give you a bunch of detail because of the nature of this business. Just say that and that's enough.

And I think he's he's learning that really quickly. I'll be honest. There was times where I was like, I could, I didn't know what was, I didn't know what was a Mark Kasei decision and what wasn't that gets frustrating a little bit. You don't know who to like, if you don't agree with something and you don't know where it's coming from, like it's hard to not be mad at everybody. So a good manager is one that can is approachable, can alter his approach to fit a little bit what the player wants. And then I think the one thing

that I get from Melvin a lot is just super honest. Super like, you know, just be like, you know, I'm taking accountability. I'm not trying to be like, oh, this was the pitching coach's decision. So yell at him. I take accountability. It was a decision of be like, oh, this was the pitching coach's decision. So yell at him. I take accountability. It was a decision of the coaching staff, but you know, you can still sort of suddenly be like, you know, that was a full coaching staff decision or was my decision, you know, so you can kind of, you can kind of read between the lines and understand sort of see the organization, see the organization fault lines,

because that's what they're, that's what they're representing, right? That's a great way to put it, the organizational fault lines. And if everyone's willing to take accountability and overlap those things and take a little brunt from other people, I think that works the best. And I want to be very clear, players can clock coaches that like kind of shrug off blame a little bit. Oh, yeah, that was the pitching coach's choice. That's emo.

The first thing you're told by every big league when you get up there is be accountable. So like we have to be all we get really sensitive when it seems like people aren't. That's why there's so much vitriol for that sometimes, because it's like we can't fathom not being accountable for everything you do, especially longer you've been around. And that's just the where nature of the manager is that he's sort

of at the middle of the front office And the coaching staff and the players So he'll he will be broadcasting a decision that will be a front office decision or like, you know He will be broadcasting a decision that came from his coaching staff He tell you most of the time specifically what it was or he shouldn't because it would have caused more problems than it actually But he yeah, so it's really it's have caused more problems than it actually was. Right. Yeah, so it's really, it's a difficult job. It's a dance.

It's a difficult job. I mean, you want to broadcast honesty and accountability, but there are different ways to do it. And Mark has uniquely, he's got other things going on that there's no other manager has to deal with. In terms of front office decisions and stuff. Yeah, because then there's that dance between the ownership and the front office, which also might be a little muddy.

So it's like he can't tell what's, you know, like, he's also doing the same thing we're doing with him. And it looks like especially from last year, this year, it looks like that stuff is he's getting figuring it out a little bit like, okay, it's the best way to do this and make sure players feel like they're seen and they're heard and they know what they need and we're feel like they're it looks like to me like they're getting much more on the same page but that's what happens when you have you give guys a few years to get it going because it's unique situation so yeah and maybe Pedro just

wasn't given enough time but at the same time yeah and maybe there's some unique challenges there with ownership as well and and and so on but I haven't heard great stuff and we're gonna we're gonna hear more soon, I think, but I haven't heard great stuff about the processes there, like in terms of the numbers the players are seeing, the preparation the players are getting. And that was part of the reason he was supposed to be there, to improve those processes.

Well, I'm curious to see Grady Sizemore is going to be the interim manager. Anything changes, if this team just looks a little bit better in the final two months Maybe there's a chance that the interim tag gets removed and they actually keep Grady around I mean, they just the White Sox processes are so so steeped in loyalty that Ordinarily said they have to go outside the organization. They have to start over with all these things I don't think they necessarily have to do that because of all their past behaviors.

But yeah, changes are slowly taking shape. I did see a funny tweet about like, what would be the most ridiculous hire for them? Would it be Buck Schillwalter or Joe Madden? And I don't think that's the direction they're going. They're gonna try and do something like, you maybe have like Olly Marmol in St. Louis where they're going to try and do something like you maybe have like Ollie Marmole in in St. Louis where they take somebody who's within the organization understands the organizational values and can grow into the job.

I mean that was I think part of the idea with Pedro. That's what it seemed like at the time they hired him and I think just because it was a change from Tony LaRusso I thought this has to be better and unfortunately it didn't work out that way. I thought this has to be better and unfortunately it didn't work out that way But one more question for you guys before we get into the the meat of today's show the game plan against Blake Snell I've been riveted by the Olympics in the brief moments when I've been able to focus on them 2028 the Olympics are going to be in Los Angeles Baseball's back will Major League Baseball

Find a way to let its players compete in the 2028 Olympics with the logistical tweaks of maybe moving up the start of spring training, breaking down the schedule, having a gap around the time the games will be played? What do you think the biggest hurdles are actually going to be, Trevor, for this to happen? Because it sounds like some of the superstars of the game want to be a part of this four years from now. And I think from just sort of a global marketing opportunity, there would be a lot of interest within the group of owners to make this happen because you would be getting baseball in front of a lot of people who don't get to see it very often if they even get to see it at all. It would be huge for growing the game, which seems to be an initiative for the MLB in a big way, which I am a huge fan of.

I think they're doing a good job. I heard recently that there are rumblings of playing at the Bristol Speedway and putting a game in the middle of wherever. I don't know where you put it, but like 120,000 people into a thing. And I don't know how it works, but it's cool. It's just like outside the box thinking I like that. The Olympics are one of the coolest things that I think humankind does.

I think it's like Andy Anderson, the really famous skateboarder who's competed, said a comment to Tony Hawk recently that really hit me hard and he said, there's only a few reasons the world gets together and it's like the UN, uh, war and the Olympics. Only one of those is positive. And he's the older skateboarder that is skateboarding in these Olympics against

these like 14 year olds. Yeah. And he's like, he's a really unique guy, but, uh, that was one of the, like that makes it seem so much crazier. And then we also know how, what the players said, especially last year with the emotional attachment, I felt like we felt like we had more emotional attachment, at least in the public eye of the WBC players. The guys are like, I'm so excited to play for my team. So if they can pull it off, they should, and it's in the United States. Like, I feel like that's the plan that's aligning.

You gotta try to get it done. Now, it depends because obviously they do like, they do like sections of events in the Olympics where like people go, they compete for 10 days and they leave and then more events start or whatever. There's like gymnastics was before track and field and so they kind of, most of the gymnastics is gone. Yeah. Yeah. Gymnastics is over and like the rugby team's been home for a week now. Like, so like they would have to figure out what point of time, cause it's the middle of summer,

but then they could just do an extended, I don't know if you can play MLB games during the Olympics. And that's the interesting thing. Like, do you want teams playing without their best players at all? Like in the season? Cause it matters. And then there's the injury concerns, but at the same time, like in my opinion, if someone gets hurt because they're in the field of dreams game, they run in the court, they don't see something or something like then is that any worse or better than happen at any time? Really? Yeah.

It's Jeremy Affle, Torres ACL picking up his kids. Like you can't worry about injuries. You just got to go play. And I think that the fun of baseball should happen. If they can get it done, they should definitely get it done. Especially because a lot of the best players from all the different countries are already in the United States. So the travel, everything would be easy. Getting them there in one day would be easy. Getting them facilities would be easy.

Because California is full of baseball fields. They're everywhere. Like teams could have, everyone could have their own facility to work out in. And it's, so it just lines up really well in that, like the infrastructure and stuff, they need to do it, but it's the timing, like how much time do they need? And I'm not certain what that is, whether it's a week, if they could do the whole thing in a week or if they could, they need two weeks to do it, then now we're, you know, pool play qualifying made off seasons and then only the, there is no pool play.

You just go straight into bracket play. I don't know. Yeah, that'd be interesting to switch pool play from bracket play. I like that idea. The discussion with Mark Hattie in the in the scrum this week or on Tuesday was the idea that it would be two weeks and then how do we fit that into schedule? And if we make it the All-Star game, does the All-Star game just not have any All-Stars in it? Do we not have an all-star game and have a two-week all-star break,

which is the Olympics? You know, so. Producer Brian says, Apple also got hurt separating frozen burgers with a knife. So. Oh yeah. Then there was Clint Barmas with the deer meat. Deer meat, yeah.

Pete Fairbanks dunked on his kid in a swimming pool and got hurt. Blake Snell, I think, dropped a sink on his toe or something. Yeah, pedestal on a shoe off towards Achilles. Yeah, I mean, this stuff just happens. Life happens. Two weeks is a lot. Two weeks is a lot.

I mean, you know, because we do these things where we send them to the Seoul games and Seoul games, they're only two games themselves, but there's, you know, it's kind of like two travel days before and two travel days after it becomes basically a whole week. So if they could fit it into a week, I think it could really happen. And then maybe the way to do that is there's a separate pool play, pool play in March. I mean, could they pull that off, but then the other teams have to send people to. But but a lot of them would be major leaguers. They would be in America anyway for March. So I think that'd be cool because you'd you'd create some of that hype at the time.

And WBC normally happens. Yes, we have that energy in the spring. It'd be that would build up more anticipation for what happens in the summer. And then I think, you know, missing an All-Star game for a year isn't the end of the world. You could maybe feature the Futures game more that year because those guys won't necessarily be on the team. There's other ways to work around that.

There's probably a bunch of, because there's revenue around the All-Star game, right? You can create a whole, call it the break, mid-season break or something, and it's got all kinds of interesting different kinds of baseball to consume it's not like things just go away but i think that just overall viewership wise it would be it'd be incredible and it would be really cool to see i don't know like a chinese taipei team or like taiwan or something like like one of these teams

like have some crazy, you know, like stud pitcher comes and just, you know, gets them their win every time kind of like the little world series works. I think we would get that same kind of vibe where some we get to see some teams even that don't even get to go to the WBC. Yeah, because you'd probably have to do one and done. And if you do one and done, you could have 16 teams. If you just do the bracket play, that's four games. Yeah. Yeah, it's not too bad for each, for the, for the team that plays the most, you know, I have to be limited, really limited in teams.

So like qualifiers would be important and then you could do regional qualifiers the work travel. I know that's not necessarily how they work, but I can't do the math on the fly, but maybe if you had, if you only had, uh, eight teams that made it or 16 teams that made it, and then you did the way they do little league here is like, if you only had eight teams that made it or 16 teams that made it and then you did, the way they do Little League here is like if you lose, you can lose once and you go into the losers bracket. So that might be able to fit in six, seven games, do it in a week.

I don't know. I'm not a schedule maker on the fly like that. But if it was seven, maybe even 10 days and you could fit it in, that'd be pretty cool. I just hope that somebody takes it seriously and thinks about it and tries to make it happen. Yeah, would love to see it come together. We'll see what kinds of hurdles we run into in the next couple of years trying to iron out all the logistics to actually make it a reality.

That game at Bristol has been confirmed. It's a Reds-Braves match Braves matchups going to happen next season. And they did play a college football game at that track before they put a field on the infield. It was a Tennessee Virginia Tech game. A hundred and fifty six thousand nine hundred and ninety was the attendance. Largest crowd ever to watch a college football game. What are you seeing? You know, if you're the if you've got the hundred and fifty It's the largest crowd ever to watch a college football game. What are you seeing, you know?

If you've got the 155,000th best seat in the house, what is it? Yeah, you know what? You're probably. Taking care for the atmosphere. You've probably taken care of a cooler of beverages before the game started. And you're not really that worried

about how far away your seat is. You're just having a nice time out in the sun at Bristol. That's my guess as to what the vibe is like. You get the worst seat in the house for something like that. Think about going to a NASCAR event. What do you see? Yeah, I see blurs. These the cars are bigger, you know. Oh, OK, so he's in last. Got it. Yeah. I've been to some races. I've been to Indycar races before.

I've been to two different tracks, the Milwaukee Mile, which is similar to NASCAR's in the sense it's ovals, right? But then I've been to more of a road race style. There's a little track up in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin that has a bunch of sharp turns and stuff on it. And there you can't see most of the track. You've got to pick your spot where you're going to be. So that's a totally different experience overall.

It's interesting. So if you have a good turn like you're just you're just rooting for the turn you're just like oh look at that you know this one yeah you can see all the different turn strategies but you don't see what they do in the straightaways or whatever. Yeah one of the years I was there they were coming right at us down a hill into the turn you're like man I hope everything's working with braking you know I just yeah this is gonna be bad if be bad if it's not tuned up the way it needs to be. But I actually had a lot of fun at races.

It's been a while, it's been more than 10 years. Highly recommend doing it at least once just for the experience. The Olympics are rolling along and the Athletic Podcast Network has you covered. The Athletic Women's Basketball Show, NBA Show, and Full Time with Meg Linahan are bringing you reports from France

after all the big Team USA basketball games and soccer matches Plus check out summer of champions on the no dunks feed every night when the action in Paris wraps up Check it all out wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get to our game plan segment Let's talk about how you would prepare to face Blake Snell the good version of Blake Snell Which is most of the time right the beginning of the season is really a relative outlier. And there was something Trevor brought up during our meeting yesterday that I hadn't picked up on. The big difference in terms of what's working for Blake Snell right now is off speed stuff

early and counts, right? That's the thing he didn't have clicking earlier in the year. And I went back to at the recommendation of all three of you, including our producer, Brian Smith, I went back and looked at some of the footage from the game against the Rockies on the 27th of July, the one where he had 30 swinging strikes. It was the start rate before the no-hitter.

He was completely filthy that day. There's a sequence we're gonna watch. It's on the screen right here. He starts with a curve ball and a change up before going three fastballs to Brenton Doyle. And it's just like he almost gets a swing on the first pitch down in the dirt. He gets the changeup down and away. And then it's just all heat. Fastball up, fastball in that gets fouled off.

Another fastball up above the top of the zone that actually finishes off that plate appearance for the strikeout. And it's interesting too because if you go back that was the second time he faced Doyle in that game the first matchup he opened up with fastballs and Doyle ripped the line drive to centerfield that Elliott Ramos misplayed that actually turned into a double so all this is to say this version to Blake Snell when it's all clicking what do you do how do you begin to approach him to reduce his effectiveness against you? Because he's pitching like Cy Young Snell again here in the midpoint

of the season. I try to like look at, for example, he's facing the Braves. I try to look at Braves against fastballs up, you know, that, you know, like Snells. and I did a search for just lefty fastballs with as much ride as snow has and Like the most sample was like six And I was like does that did they face like snow, you know, and I think maybe the only other guy is like Mackenzie Gore Maybe you know, so you're talking about, you know primo ride from a lefty like that You know up in the zone that you know, there's not too many guys who are like that. So I decided I'd rather open it up and look at guys who are just generally good at ride up in the zone.

And Ozzy Albies is good at that. And Acuna is good at that. And that doesn't help the Braves on this particular Monday. So Marcel Azuna is somebody that I keyed in on because Marcel Azuna is a high ball hitter and he's he's good at it. So these are all of the pitches that Blake Snell has thrown Marcel Azuna. I think they've had four at bats. Marcel Azuna has a homer. Blake Snell has a strikeout.

There's a walk and then there's a ball and play that was an out. So they kind of, they've split the difference so far. As you can see with the fastball, Snell still wants to go above in the zone, but I would venture that those balls that are so far up in the zone were never meant to be strikes. Because I think he knows that Marcel Lozuna is a highball hitter, so he doesn't really want to give him balls in the zone up there. And then otherwise, he's filling up the bottom of the zone with slider curves and changeups. And you know, I would say that this is a really, at least an obvious strategy and that Ozuna,

you know, could just key in on the high fastball anyway and just spit on everything down. But the homer is on that change up that's middle middle. You can see it's the little spot there, that little blue spot that's middle middle on the change up. That's the homer. So Ozuna did a great job of being open to something soft that didn't get down enough while waiting and looking for a high fastball.

I think that's the challenge is, especially if you're a high ball hitter, you do wanna get that high fastball, but he could just try to fill up the zone with you with curves on the inside back foot corner, change ups in the zone. But as you can see, this is a tough matchup for Blake Snow. This will be the toughest matchup he has on Monday, I think.

It's interesting. OK, so I have done a lot of thinking about Blake Snow and also discussed with him about what he's trying to do a lot. So there's a few things you should know about Blake. We talked about tunneling and picking a tunnel and throwing off that tunnel. Blake is very much one of those guys. He is a Tampa Bay Ray, so you gotta remember

that he was one of the first guys they talked to about this. He throws a very, very good riding foreseam, one of the best in the league. I think that last one you showed with Doyle said 10 inches of drop, which is like 22 inches of ride, according to True Media. So that's tops of the league. There's only a couple guys that are even with him

regularly at all. So he throws his fore seam, it's up and into righties, up and away to lefties. This is the same spot. So that's his tunnel. So he throws his curve ball, which is the opposite of that. I go straight down off of that.

There was a slider off of that. That ends up a little bit more into righties, but he throws it off of it. So like where he throws his breaking pitches, where they're spotted, if they're slightly in the zone, that means they tunnel off his fastball. Well, if they're out of the zone, he didn't tunnel. So early in the year, he wasn't throwing them off the pitch, so they look different. And he wasn't commanding it very

well. And he was also just, guys weren't chasing. He's dependent on chases. That's when the difference between his high fastball and his low breaking ball is just easier to discern. It's easier to discern. They're taking his breaking ball more, but when he's throwing his curve ball a little bit up earlier in counts, like you said, throwing one early in the strikes, close to the zone where guys think about swinging at it or like, oh wow, that was close. Then now his fastball is open and he's got one of the best ride fastballs that, and he throws 97, so good luck. So as long as he's tunneling there, he's fine. There's no identifying a pitch and going

off it if they're tunneling that. The stuff's too good. So what you need to do with Blake Snell is look for patterns and he has them. So this is when he gets in trouble. This is when guys are giving him a little bit of the fits. Here's some pretty glaring stuff. What I did was I went and just got a, I have a posing pitching report

and it just tells me what his usage is in each count to the different guys on the side of the plate. And it's pretty glaring. A couple things, when he is in a mid count or behind, he is comfortable throwing his slider for a strike to lefties and his change up for a strike to righties. That's what he goes through. The usage of those two pitches is far and away,

the highest in the middle counts. One strike. And he doesn't bury the change is something I've noticed. It's a change for strikes. It's a change for strikes. It's a change for strikes. He's trying to throw it a little bit higher. That is, I throw this for strikes pitch early in the year. He only had his fastball and he only had his change up

that he could throw in the strike zone. That is his first best pitch and his fourth best pitch. And he was a two pitch pitcher with those two pitches. That's why he was getting hit like he was getting hit. Now he's got his curve ball back. That is that the chase and the curve ball is crazy, but this is why 02 to righties 61% curve balls, not a single slider on the year.

And it's 30, it's like 33% fastball. So it's 94% fastball or curve ball with two strikes to the rightie. To lefties, it's like 45% slider, 10% curve ball. And the rest is fastball. So he goes slider to lefties for the's like 45% slider, 10% curveball, and the rest is fastball. So he goes slider to lefties for the swing and miss, curveball to righties, over half of the time. So if I am one of those two guys, I'm like, I know this.

He goes to a two-pitch pitcher depending on where you are in the count. And if it's 60%, I'm sitting curveball with two strikes. Two-oh to a righty, two-oh, 61% change-up. That's where Marcel Zuna was sitting, probably sitting change in that count and saw that. I'll never forget this. This was in 2019, CJ Crone, who is listed here

as one of the guys who has some success against Blake Snell. The way he gets ready for pitchers is, this is what he looks at. He looks at what are your glaring patterns? I'm gonna sit on a pitch and a count, and he's gotten them three times. So that year, at that point, it was like June, and Blake was 100% change up 2-0 to Riteys.

So he sat 1-0, 2-0, got 2-0 on him, took him deep. And I'm like, what are you, that's, you gotta, you can't be 100%. How much of that's on Bailey? Should Bailey be just calling something else? I mean, it doesn't matter if Blake's known the 2-0 to Riteys, which is what he's doing. So he's showing you very clearly.

If you go look, if I'm a hitter, I'm going look, if he's throwing this type of presented this, that's a comfort thing. He's comfortable doing that. I mean, he's not comfortable doing something else and his fastballs, the thing he's most comfortable with. So instead of guessing which North or South it is, just try to pick one that you think you're confident on the 60% of you get in these counts and then know what pitches he's using mid counts more often than not and you can eliminate a pitch. You can turn them into a two pitch pitcher based on the count.

I think that's when he gets in trouble. When his stuff isn't really elite that day, maybe it's just like a little bit diminished. He's a little tired. He's still really good. He's a little tired. He's not commanding as well. He starts getting, guys are fighting off pitches. He's staying in those patterns.

They're getting more confident in making the decisions on I'm guessing one or two pitches, I can get them, and then you gotta try to get them for a homer. And that is one thing that the Braves are gonna try to probably do, and as soon as probably your best option, because he naturally can hit his stuff a little bit better than other people's. So like Austin Riley, right, he's gonna get heaters up,

and he's gonna get curveballs below the zone. What Austin Riley needs to do is try to get him, because he'll throw a slider every once in a while, try to get a slider mid-count, going to get curveballs below the zone. What Austin Riley needs to do is try to get him because he'll throw a slider every once in a while, try to get a slider mid count because he can drop the head on that. That's the best pitch to hit from him or sit on a change up in like a two O count. Like if you get one of those, that's what Austin Riley is going to try to do. And just foul everything else off. That's how they're going to approach him.

But he's one of those guys like if he's dialed in and he's hitting every single spot, you have to sell out and just try to get him like a two run homer after a walk or something. Like that's your best option. He's got some of the most glaring patterns and he always has, though it is better this year. It was worse earlier in the year and it's getting more like he's willing to take more chances but he sticks with the best stuff within that one tunnel and every single target is that up pitch.

So just know everything's going to look like it's up here. And if he's dialed in, it's going to look like it's a strike. And based on what the count is, if you know which two pitches he's using in that count, maybe you can you can adjust your swing to get a good swing on one of the pitches, guess right, whatever. And if he's not going really well, you might you might be able to get him to throw a lot of pitches. That's how you beat Blake Snell. And I think you know, hitters don't want to admit this. And I think the I think one of the problems is the word guess has these

connotations that like, oh, you can't see the ball and you're just guessing out there. And another way you can say it is anticipation. And a lot of this, the swing is a, you know, a lot of the way I see the swing is yes, yes, no. Right. And so you kind of, in order to catch up to the biggest heat, you do have to start, you know, with the pitcher, you have to be yes, yes, yes. And then what I think really helps is if you have a sort of, you anticipate a certain type of pitch and you're yes, yes, yes, and then you know off of that. Right.

So you, you either hold up or you check your swing, right? You see it so often. And I think that's the pitchers, that's the hitter saying that wasn't the pitch I guessed, or that wasn't the pitcher I anticipated, you know, that wasn't the pitch I guessed, or that wasn't the pitcher I anticipated. That wasn't the pitch I anticipated, and so I stopped my swing. And so I think a lot of the sort of right now with pitchers really not only optimizing their stuff,

but now optimizing their arsenals where I have three fastballs, I have this, this, this, I think it's more important than ever to kind of play along with the pitcher and try to anticipate something and match the right swing because you do, you will might have like two or three swings in your pocket that you can use against his two or three pitches and so you have to kind of anticipate and be like, well, I think it's going to be sinker and I'm going to do my scoop swing, you know, and so I had to do my scoop swing.

Here's my scoop swing. Yes, yes, yes. Oh no, it was a four seam. Nope. Try to check, you know, and so that's the sort of, Yes, yes, yes. Oh no, it was a four seam. Nope, try to check. And so that's the sort of, you can call it guessing, but guessing makes it sound bad. That's the only thing I was gonna push back on. Also, Jerick Kellnick is a high ball hitter.

And so you might say, well, he matches up well against Dale, but he's a lefty. And so those percentages that you brought up make it harder for him to anticipate something. You even brought up, what was it, two-oh counts, or oh-two counts, you know, where it's like, oh, well, with lefties, it's kind of 30, 30, 30, but with righties, it's 60, 30.

You know? So the lefty already is like, crap, it could be slider fastball, it could be, you know, it could be slider fastball or curve. It could be any of three pitches, whereas, you know, the righty slider fastball or, or curve. It could be any of three pitches. Whereas, you know, the, the righty can say, man, this two thirds of the time, it's going to be this one pitch. And anytime you see any percentage, I think you've said this before, anytime

you see a percentage past 60%, you're opening yourself up for, for hitters. Sitting on it. Those numbers are glaring in the major leagues. A great example of what you just talked about, by the way, if anyone wants to go back and watch this, I went to the Mariners game last night, catcher Rogers handle the handlebar mustache. The Tigers, Jake Rogers got Kirby on a four seam up like three inches above the zone. Not a pitch he hits. It was the flattest swing I've ever seen him take by far. Like he was

and he was so excited. He's like, I did it. Like, I can't. I did it. And I got him and it was 95. It wasn't his best fastball either. And that was a prime example of a guy. He probably won't do it again all year, but he did it. He was confident and the usage of the forcing fastball that day for Kirby was really high. He was going up for everybody.

So he just took a shot and it worked out. Did you say it was out? He said it was outside the zone, too. Was outside the zone. It's way up. Kirby was like, what? That's interesting, because I had a piece come out today where I talk about with Kirby the fact that he had to go further outside the zone. He was kind of too in the zone with two strikes. And when I looked at the heat maps, his aggression has all been above the zone.

He is less in the zone, but in a sort of maybe predictable way. It's all like kind of above the zone. So Jake Rogers, you know, they have advanced scouting that can say, hey, when he gets a two strikes now, it's not really in the zone much. It's it's like two or three inches above the zone. So Jake Rogers like, oh, it's two strikes. This is going to be a fastball two or three inches above the zone. You know, I'm going to put my best swing on this guy.

Yeah, it's just one thing you mentioned kind of at the beginning of this, you know, is just like with no Acuna and no Albies in particular, it takes a tough matchup for the Braves against Snell and makes it a lot harder. Right. I mean, like that's two very important bats that in this particular spot would have been really helpful. But yeah, some of the guys, most the guys that hit him well, I mean, they're all righties, right? Gary Sanchez has five homers against them. Nobody else has more.

El Tuve and Bregman hit him well. Pete Alonso's hit him well. Jonathan Daza. Pete Alonso is a high ball hitter. Pete Alonso is a high ball hitter. There you go. And a ball hitter off speed wise. He can go way down there. But yeah, he is. Pete Alonso, if you were going to grow an opponent for like snow in the lab, he is. Pete Alonzo, if you were gonna grow an opponent

for like snow in the lab, it would be Pete Alonzo. Somebody who's comfortable with the high fast ball and the low breaking ball in, has that ability, has the natural ability to touch the fast ball and has developed over time, a response to the kind of the back foot slider. That's why Crohn's good too, Crohn's really good on the back foot slider, you know. That's why Crohn's good too. Crohn's really good on the back foot slider.

One thing that's always weird about the batter versus pitcher stats is that they don't mean much. They're not predictive because the samples are so small and they're usually stretched out over several years, right? I mean, you see some guys a lot more if they're in your division, you're both there for a long time, you get those larger samples,

even then you're talking 30 to 40 plate appearances usually at the high end. I wonder what would be the best matchups you can conceive of if we somehow had a like a simulation, but like a real actual attempt to do it where a guy has to face someone like 100 times in a season. Like what what are the dream matchups of great hitter versus great pitcher that would just be absolute battles throughout? Do you know what Mike Petriolo tweeted the other day? He said that Ted Williams faced

74 pitchers in one season and that last season Mookie Betts faced 295 Mmm, that's that's a big difference The game has changed. That's just sort of a little side note to what you're saying. It's like, yeah, if we went back to like 1910 when like you might have actually only seen 50 pitchers all year. Who did Beirut hit the most homers off of? I want to know that one.

Stat head search will be done momentarily. Let's get to some pleasant surprises. It was Brenton Doyle in that particular clip against Blake Snell that we looked at earlier. I'm surprised that Brenton Doyle has improved this much from year one, mostly in his strikeout rate, right? It's a 35% K rate when he debuted last year. A small school guy. It's an organization that I don't have a lot of faith in, but to see him striking out

26% of the time this year and juicing up the barrel rate too Britton Doyle looks like a 30-30 guy who can play gold glove defense in center field Like this is a great development for the Rockies and I'm trying to learn from my mistakes Like why did I underestimate Britton Doyle in a way that is like a repeatable mistake or did I get torched by an outlier who's doing some extraordinary things to get this K rate down to such a manageable level so quickly? I didn't see this coming and you know, I guess one thing is that like last year the 17.5%

swinging strike rate that did line up with what he'd done in the high minors. You just don't expect that person to make a lot of contact. 17.5 and higher in this year is Alex Jackson, Matt Wallner, Trey Cabbage, Florial, Kyle Stowers, Gabriel Arias, guys who were striking out more than 30% of the time. Some of these guys strike out 40% of the time. But another guy who doesn't strike out as much as you'd expect given even that high of one is Zico Tovar.

And I do think that on some level what we're seeing is that Coors can help you make the most of your balls in play and it can even help you maybe make more contact over time because you're gonna see more fastballs at home. And if you can sort of figure out how to have a fastball approach at home and a breaking ball approach on the road, then I think you can improve. But I also just wonder what's gonna happen in the future because Doyle sported 30 plus percent

strikeout rates in the minors all the way along the way. And there's some other guys we'll talk about here where the K rate kind of jumped around a little bit. So you can say, oh, maybe this is a developmental thing. For Doyle, it seems almost like maybe he's being a little lucky on strikeout rate, which is not what numbers suggest. They suggest 450 played appearances into the season that you actually know a lot about a strikeout rate. I'm saying maybe we don't. Maybe this is going to come back to Earth, and it'll come back to Earth when it comes to contact.

Yeah, those minor league rates and his age to level were part of the reason why I wrote off the possibility of an improvement like this. Like sure, if he shaved two or three percentage points off of what he did last year, okay. But that's just- 32% now. Right. That's kind of like where my head tends to go because that's usually more in line with

what we see. But what do you make of Brenton Doyle, Trevor? How did he make this much of an improvement from year one to year two? Well, I'm looking at which pitches he's handling the best this year. And last year he was negative three run value on sinkers. This year he has the plus 10. Jeez. So there, we're going to talk about this a little bit next, but there has been a rise

in sinker usage. It's been notorious. This was one of the first things that was in the conversation about cores, about how sinkers are terrible there. Guys who are sinkers going, basically go there to die. Rest in peace, Kyle Kendrick. So that might be guys are adding that wrinkle, going to Colorado, trying to throw it more and he's crushing them.

And he's hit, he hit sliders fairly well as well, but better than he did last year as well, that might be the big adjustments he's made, but I think that possibly. The way, the things that makes him most successful, the types of pitches that he wants to see, located where he wants them in the zone, he's getting more now because of the way the pitching has changed and maybe he's just gotten to take advantage of that just a few more times that has given us that little bit of an adjustment. But generally all pitches pretty much across the board he's down about 3% with percent.

So that's also tells me that he's getting a better understanding of what he handles the best and how to spoil things that he doesn't that are in the zone also. And again, like he would only need to do that just like every once in a while, like spoil a pitch that he was missing before and then getting another one and putting it in play that would change this strikeout rate in a big, big way. He's just fouled off one more pitch that he wouldn't have fouled off before slightly, and then he gets to make contact that he didn't get to make,

and that would attribute a lot to that percentage as well. But in terms of his production, I think that he's just hitting the pitches that he can handle the best really, really, really well, and that doesn't scream lucky to me. That screams like an adjustment to approach, but I don't think he's ever gonna be like a 15% strikeout guy.

But all he needs to be is a 25% strikeout guy because he's that good defensively and he can run and he just needs to get on base. Something that'll be true of a lot of the other guys that we talk about and is true about Doyle that I like is that the defense is really good. You know, we've seen, there's a a bit of a this is younger Paul DeYoung, but, you know, there was a time at which Paul DeYoung and Tim Anderson

had like the worst walk to strikeout ratios of like all time. Like they were like I made a list once where I was like, you know, can you have a 10 to 1 K to block ratio and and like be a major leaguer and Paul DeYoung and Tim Anderson at some point like were very close to that and I was like oh so you can in today's league if you also hit for power and play defense right so you know maybe the strikeout rate we can, you know, we can, we can disagree a little bit out where that's going. But with plus defense, with a modicum of on base ability and with plus base running, he's going to keep, he's going to, it's sort of a tent pole that keeps everything alive, even while he maybe slumps with the bat.

And so I do think he'll continue to be irregular. I don't know exactly what the strikeout rate and therefore the batting average are gonna do, but if you're just asking for him to hit for power, steal some bases and play excellent defense in center, those things I believe in. And I think we've seen enough of those to believe in those. And it's sort of the younger Paul DeYoung stayed on the field

for a lot of these same reasons, playing great shortstop, doing all the things except necessarily maybe walks and strikeouts, doing them really well. I think it's a lot easier to improve if you're getting regular run as opposed to getting two or three starts a week. I think it's just so much more difficult to problem solve big league pitching in a situation like that. So that's where the value of defense and fantasy in that roundabout way always comes back. If your glove buys you everyday playing time, that's a great thing. Projections, not surprisingly, basically split the difference between last year's K-rate and the current one.

So that's where I think most people are going to try and value Doyle going into 2025. I might, depending on how aggressively people are drafting him, I might actually be more in than out, even at the significantly increased price. By the way, you asked earlier who did Babe Ruth Homer the most off of? StatHead says Rube Wahlberg. 17 career home runs off of Rube Wahlberg. A Rube. Total Rube.

You got 14 off of Hook's DOS also. What a great name. Names were just better. Like they were just better. So everyone went by nicknames to like Rube's, short for Rube. And I'm sure Hook, I have an idea. Probably just like William Henry just gets used to be hooked for some reason because off season was a great fisherman or something

I have no idea. There's usually a story. Yes. That's probably exactly what it is So it's gonna look that I'm like, yes, correct Let's talk about Tyler Fitzgerald for a minute on an eight or pace through 53 games now It's like 36 homers and 21 steals the strike our eight flirts with 30% I don't want to make the same stupid mistake I just made with Brenton Doyle this year with Tyler Fitzgerald this season. Right. That's totally possible.

What is happening here? Is he unlocked something that makes him a kind of a key core piece for a Giants team that's been looking for an answer at shortstop? Yeah. I'm close to this one and been watching him for a while and You know, he's athletic for sure and I don't and I'm not suggesting these all tools and and without baseball IQ But he's been also moved all over so he was centerfield and third base and shortstop And some of that's the Giants philosophy of just making people play all over the place but some of that for me was that I didn of just making people play all over the place.

But some of that for me was that I didn't think he was a natural shortstop. And I also know that the Giants pretty much are desperate for a shortstop. So I'm not sure that he has the exact same sort of defensive acumen that I'm going to ascribe to Doyle. And another thing that Doyle has that Fitzgerald doesn't have is top end exit velocities that match his barrel rates. So right now you've got Tyler Fitzgerald supporting a 13% barrel rate, which is excellent, and that supports his crazy home run barrage and it's a good number. But then you pair that with a

107 max EV, even if you go down to the minors, 109595 I mean that's Bryson Stott territory and if you just you know, whatever you think of Bryson Stott's pure power You know put that up against Tyler Fitzgerald's 20 home runs in 250 plate appearances across triple-a and the majors this year And so there's a bit of a disconnect between his raw power and his game power Maybe he's just a guy who gets to his game power really well. Maybe he has good game plans. I do respect heavily the Giants' approach to game day preparation. Their tech is bar none, basically.

And so they're hitting off the trajectory and so on and so forth. So I think maybe there's going to be some disconnect between game power and raw power. But that's the thing that I think is most interesting. Yes, he's also going to strike out a lot, but if he is going to hit 25 homers a year, then, you know, he's a little bit more viable as a shortstop that may only have a 300 OBP and may not be the very best defensive shortstop, but he has 25 homers and, you know, 15, 20 steals and looks generally fine out there and will play shortstop for them for three or four years.

That's an outcome I can get to, but the question for me is the power. Which is weird to say about a guy who just hit a ton of homers, but I think, you know, guys can hit a bunch of homers in a short stretch and then go, again, go, you know, go quiet for a while. He is nice and pull happy though. So as far as getting the less than ideal raw power to play up a bit more. That's the best place to go in San Francisco too, for sure. That's definitely gonna help.

99th percentile in sprint speeds to do. So a burner that if the power were to tip, like to slip a little bit, you know, maybe you come back and add some bags too. So I think a lot of ways for him to be really good from a fantasy perspective, but yeah, nice pop-up guy. I mean, at 26 to find this is a nice surprise for the Giants.

Trevor, do you have anybody that's kind of caught your eye, that has just stepped forward in an unexpected way this year? There's plenty of candidates out there. Josh Smith for the Rangers is a popular one, but who's really caught your eye this year and surprised you? Josh Smith's a good one. I don't wanna say surprise per se,

though there is a little bit of surprise because it was kind of a repeat and a build on from last year after the beginning of their career at Brent Rooker. But I've had lots of conversations with Rook about approach, like this is all stuff that he is very interested in. He's, we, we, I see a lot of parallels between us and just where our interests

lie and how to make decisions and how to be prepared. I mean, he's a really smart dude, but the one thing that's so impressive is that he has, he's better now than he was last year for his All-Star campaign, in my opinion, and he's like a top, maybe eight production hitter overall in the major leagues. And nobody, nobody's really taught. And he's been there for a while. He's been there all year and he was there for most of last year. So to have a mid nine hundreds OPS for this long in that stadium is rare, hard to

do, and they still not have guys that do that regularly or ever. I'm thinking like Jason Giambi. Like this is that type of production. So he's, it's been very impressive and it's sustainable in my opinion, because he is, he's increased his walk rate, reduced his strikeout rate year over year. His hard hit rate has stayed the same or gotten better. He has improved his run values against the pitches that he's notoriously

struggled against to the point where they're not quite liabilities as much anymore. They're not, he's not great at hitting them, but they're not liabilities. Like he's taking away holes, um, or at least confidence pitchers throw them there. So he's doing a lot of things that I think are sustainable. And then he's a, you know, he's a, he's an older guy, um, later bloomer. And it's just awesome to see him getting these opportunities. But I think that he, he would hit in the middle of most lineups. He might have to hit fourth for the Yankees, but everywhere else, he's like,

in terms of just general production, like he's up there with like Bobby Witt and Gunnar Henderson, like in overall, like, yeah, he doesn't run like them. I get that. He's not defensive like them, but hitting, he's up there with the guys we're talking about for MVP. So doing this for two years is very, very hard. A lot of guys that do flash in the pan for one year and then they come back down to earth.

He has not, especially with the production protection he's had in that line up the whole time. It's even more impressive. Oh, Bram Roker. He does remind me of you. He's he's very curious. You know, last time I was in the clubhouse or two times, two times ago, I was in the clubhouse and he stumped me with two questions about stat cast stats that I was like I don't know what that is and I had to go and do some research and come back to him to answer his question I mean one one we both agreed was maybe not super valuable, but the adjusted exit velocity on

Statcast he was like what is this and we're looking at it says Average of 88 and which is like what's this 88? What is going on here? And we thought maybe the 88 was the pitch, the pitch velocity coming in. It was like adjusted for pitch velocity. I talked to Mike Petriolo and it's basically takes every exit velocity over 88 and averages it so that you remove the noise of all the sort of squib hits and the you know the useless 50 mile an hour 40 mile an hour whatever those like those those apparently those bad balls

have less signal in them they don't mean much they just mean you you've made a bad swing it was a check swing whatever it was it wasn't it wasn't a real swing so once you get to 88 and over you start to get a little more signal and you get to you know what when I saw know about bat speed, he's like, yeah, I called up the guys at driveline and talking about bat speed for a while. So like, you know, he's, he's one of, he's very inquisitive. He wants to know how to make the most. And I think, you know, on some level he has to be because he has to make the most of a,

of a, of a less, less time in the big leagues, you know, just because of, you know, the way that his, his career on-ramp. So, and I think that's maybe true for Trevor too. It's like, when you see your career span and you're like, I only have this many years, one more year could mean seven, 10 million more dollars. You should be inquisitive. That's why sometimes I wanna shake the young guys that are like, oh, seven, 10 million more dollars. You know, you're going to you should be inquisitive. Like that's why sometimes I want to shake it.

You know, the young guys that are like, I don't look at that stuff. You're like, dude, like you don't have that long to make this money. Like you have a very short careers. I am certain that they're going to stick. Literally, I think it's the number one number one tool for me. If I meet a guy and he's super curious about why everything, oh, why does that happen? Oh, why is he throwing that to me? Why is it if you are really good at asking why you make adjustments faster than other

people and the longer you do it, the faster you get. And before you know it, you're maximizing your own time. And then you just hit a ceiling where, you know, you're not physically good enough. That's one thing I am. I am happy with my career, especially at the end. I was like, I think that I maximized my stuff. The time I had. Final last year.

This is what I have, and this is as good as I could be doing, and I have more time, I think overall it looked better, but like, I am doing the best version of myself right now, and that is the bull. And then you get kind of bored. And I think the Rookers also a really great influence. Tommy fans like this, I've always liked him for that the Rookers also a really great influence. You know, Tommy fans like this. I've always, you know, liked him for that.

Rookers like that. And both of them sort of proselytize a little bit. So like, you know, they'll just be, you know, they're just hanging out on the couches. It's not like he's sitting there being like, oh, and you shall read this and do this. But he's like, you know, Rooker's the the guy in the clubhouse, you know. And so there's a bunch of couches right around him and Gelof and Butler are always hanging out there. And you know, a lot of times I've gotten in the middle of the conversation where we're

talking about is the ball juiced or, you know, how important is bat speed? I'll start a conversation and Gelof will chime in and Rooker's leading the conversation because he's asking me questions. And so that's a really fun, when you have a dynamic like that, that's good. And that's why I do believe in Gelof fixing things because I think that Rooker's going to shine off on the right. So there's something we stumbled into when we were looking at Rooker during our meeting this week and he destroys sinkers and this came up with Doyle now to where if the league is making this broader

Adjustment sinker usage ticks up around the league like it has this season Some players end up just being in a situation where they see something they can crush a bit more often and that seems to make A pretty big difference when that's maybe the best pitch that you hit So what has led to the slight uptick, the resurgence in sinker usage this season, you know? I mean, I think mostly it's the fact that the less you use a pitch, the more it surprises people

and the more it starts to do well. And so if you look at sort of the history of how well batters have done against the sinker, you know, I think in, you know,, 2008, 2009, people were pounding the sinker because there was a still a little bit of the vestige of I'm going to establish loan away with the sinker. And then, you know, over the next few years, you have the rise of the four seamer. And as the four seamer goes, it becomes more prevalent.

And the sinker since 2008, we're just using it less and less and less and less and less and less. You start to see the one sinker, the sinkers that 2008, we're just using it less and less and less and less and less and less. You start to see the one sinker, the sinkers that are left are A, good sinkers, and so you're not throwing any mediocre sinkers, and B, the people who are throwing sinkers are surprising people with it. So in 2022, it really hit a bottom point

in terms of production, batter production against the sinker. And I think that pitching coaches were like, geez, you know, if it's gonna return that kind of return on my investment in terms of I throw the sinker, I get a 340 Woba on average. That's a lot different than when it used to do a 370 Woba. You know, I'm cool with this.

Let's throw some sinkers. And then on top of that, just what we've all been talking on this show and I've written about, and you know, the diversification of your portfolio. There is throwing your best pitches the most often, but then there is also, hey, I have three fastballs, so I can throw a sinker to righty, a cutter to lefties,

and the four seamer at any time. And then as a batter, you're like, crap, you know, I put my four seam swing and I got a cutter and I just pounded it into the ground. Or I put my fore seam swing and I got a cutter and I just pounded it into the ground or I Put my fore seam swing on it I got a sinker pounded in the ground or I put my sinker swing on the fore seam and then I Hit a pop-up, you know So, you know matching your swing plane to the fastball that you're trying to time to is a lot harder if you have multiple

Fastballs, so I think this sinker uses there's not necessarily a lot harder if you have multiple fastballs. So I think this sinker usage, there's not necessarily a lot of people upping, not a lot of sinker dominant people being like, I'm gonna throw the sinker more often. Cause we know that fastball usage across baseball is going down. It's more people adding a sinker, and starting to throw sinkers. It's like the Tyler Glass now situation.

Tyler Glass now dominant forese seam curveball slider. He starts throwing a sinker so that batters who were trying to key, especially righty batters, were trying to key in on the fore seam. Oh crap, that ball just had seven inches more run towards me than I expected. So you've put the fore seam swing on the sinker. It's seven inches closer to your handle than you expect. And so it's playing with the different pitches. And what you'll see, you know, I just did a quick search in terms of being superlative against both sinkers

and four seams, you'll see guys actually prefer one or the other in terms of being superlative against both sinkers and four seamers, I'm going to say superlative is a five run value or higher. You only have Juan Soto, Bobby Wood Jr., Aaron Judge, Shoa Yotani, the best in the game, Brent Rooker, who's still a little bit more towards the sinker, Ellie De La Cruz, and then really not too many, CJ Abrams, Brian Reynolds, Kyle Schwaber, and that's pretty much the end of the list. Those are all the guys who are superlative against both

sinkers and four seams. And a lot of times it just causes you to be better. You have a swing that aligns better with one of those four seams, with one of those fastballs, and you just try to avoid the other one. To be able to do both says you have you have an adjustable bat. You can hit the ball hard, you can time to the fastball, and you have a fore seam and a sinker swing. Swim, sinker swing. So you can do something against both.

Didn't sound right. Yeah, I think the interesting thing too is I think back to the beginning of that chart, oh, eight, oh, nine, 2010, I think of interesting thing too is I think back to the beginning of that chart like oh wait Oh nine 2010 I think of guys like Justin Masterson who were out there just trying to throw heavy Heavy sinkers trying to get guys to pound the ball on the ground repeatedly. That's just pretty much gone There are very few guys that try and pitch that way and now it's just not the not the way Most people have a scoop swing and I think you know what we've had is you had the scoop swing

Then you started adding the the flat swing, you know for the fore seam and then as people were like oh I have a flat swing you know now you're bringing the sinker back to be like oh do you also have a scoop swing you know and it's kind of hard to have both. Let's connect the dots with the very last thing for today bat speed changes in season we were looking for notable changes. This is a really odd thing to be looking at because we don't have past seasons. We just have the current season. So we tried to slice it in half and, you know, put together a board of bat speed risers. I was wondering if Gavin Lux would appear on the list because he is

swinging the bat a little bit harder, but nope, he's not among the top 15. Just off. He's like he's like 23rd or something. So he's among these guys, he's just not having to be in the top 15. Yeah, so I looked at some results for these players. The thing that I saw pretty consistently for anybody that was in this group, adding a mile and a half per hour

to their average swing speed from the first two months to the last two months, K-rates were down, WRC pluses were up. The only exception I think I saw was Bryson Stott. That's not surprising. And yet Bryson Stott yesterday just hit the hardest hit ball of his career. Now it was 1099, which is not necessarily impressive,

but it was the hardest hit ball of his career. And I think, you know, I did the same thing where it's not obvious, like batting averages aren't up for all these guys. And you know, it's a lot of slugging. A lot of slugging is up for these guys. and what you'll see is top end exit VELOs, exit VELOs like you know for Nolan Aronato who you know this is this is a huge swing for him and really important for him because he was really flagging on the bat speed.

For him to add 2.4 and then you look at the results numbers you might say well these aren't that great before and after. What is better is the slugging percentage and the exit velocities. And when you have a hard hit rate that jumps by like 10 percentage points it may not turn into results right away. But I do think that this is good news for most of the people on this list. I can't imagine that I would say this is bad news for these guys, even if maybe they're batting averages down in the sample. I mean, Luis Campesano makes tons of contact. If he pairs tons of contact with better contact, with like better exit velocities on that contact, then it doesn't matter how much he walks. You know what I mean? Then he can just

be a guy who hits 20 homers and hits 260 and has like a 310 OVP. That's a great outcome for a catcher. And then Jaren Durin who's just an exciting, blossoming young player, for him to add this component of elite bat speed to the foot speed that he has, to the entire package that he has. On this list, if there is a future MVP that isn't obvious, like Yordan Alvarez could be a future MVP. I think Jaren Duran is another name on this list that someday could be an MVP. Yeah, he's one of those guys that where he was drafted, he's been an exceptional value.

He's been almost like a first round fantasy guy that went in the 12th round of drafts this year and increasing bat speeds, a great sign to see from him. Trevor, one thing we did when exit VELO became kind of a new thing we could all see was we wondered if looking at it as a rolling chart would give us some insight as to players who might just be hurt, right?

I think there's something Eno presented at a first pitch Arizona conference a long time back where you'd see this dip and say, okay, what was going on there? Maybe you get a chance to talk to the player. Yep, hurt my shoulder, got hit by a pitch. You'd find some things that kind of explained the fluctuations.

What types of explanations could there be for bat speeds maybe rising and falling over the course of the year? Because my suspicion is if we look at something like this, mapped out on a rolling graph, once we have those available, we're going to see some ebbs and flows. But what would cause those changes to happen

that are kind of normal baseball things? Injuries are one, big time, especially like, we don't think about how getting jammed can affect you, you can bruise your palm or something. They're dealing with stuff like that constantly. And so you're a little more tentative, then that'll just kill your bat speed. And then inversely, it might go up

because you're most confident with your, you found something and now you're swinging with gusto at that hitch. Some mechanics, like a mechanical thing even. Might be a mechanical thing. It could be any of those things. And the interesting thing for me is gonna be, I think the highest value is gonna be

seeing that rolling, seeing the rolling average, especially when they get swing speed stats for like every game, game over game, and you're able to see trends and then map it to what you're feeling and map it to the types of things that are happening on the game, on the field. And maybe you're looking for something like,

why am I miss hitting everything? And then you could start with, okay, bat speeds now one of the, one of the places you can calibrate your compass with to point you in the right direction. So I think that's gonna to be the biggest value. And then pitchers conversely are going to also see things like this and be like, maybe there's something going on here.

Slowest bats be maybe me susceptible to fastballs. Let me look into that. The crazy thing for me too, to remember. Um, and I just really want to touch on Aernardo really quickly is increased bats speed and he's been publicly said, I'm trying to increase it. As soon as that came out as a stat, it's not surprising at all. He's like, Ooh, interesting. I don't want to be below average.

I want to be above average. What that does is his swing is getting a little bit bigger. Now where his barrel at is in time is different than he is naturally used to it. That's what's happening now. I think he's got the swing speed down. He's got a good, he's feeling good about how quickly he's able to get the bat there.

And now he's like, when do I start it to get my barrel in position to hit the ball over the fence? And that's what he's struggling with. He's miss hitting balls that he wasn't used to miss hitting. He looks really frustrated about it because he loves hitting this guy. But I would say if I'm a Cardinals fan, this is really encouraging because there's a chance in the next two, two to four weeks that he just goes off. Right. And this is, this is better than beginning beginning the season when he said, I hate my swing.

I've lost my swing. He's also swinging 68 miles an hour. You know, so there's nothing to hold on to, at least here. Like, OK, he's got some speed back. Maybe you can get the timing back. Yeah, the thing that's interesting, too, if you look at where are not hitting his home runs this year, they're not as tightly clustered to left.

There's a few that are more like center, close to center, at least. Arundel's hitting his home runs this year. They're not as tightly clustered to left. There's a few that are more like center, close to center at least. So that would kind of be that visual proof, like, hey, the timing is different right now. He's still looking for that, but just having more bat speed, it makes you think there is something

still left in the tank. Whereas back in April and May, we were wondering if it was the beginning of the end for a great player and maybe a quicker decline than we had previously expected So nice to see him turning things around He's in another inquisitive guy that like studies swings and cares a lot and you know So I'm not too surprised to see another act, but I do wonder how it how it goes from here

We are gonna go very long episode today If you'd like a subscription to the athletic and get one for $2 a month at the athletic.com slash rates and barrels, you can find us on Twitter. Trevor is at I am Trevor May. You know, is that you know, Sarah's I am at Derek Van Ryn for the pod is at rates and barrel shot to our producer, Brian Smith, for putting this episode together. That is going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. We're back with you on Friday.

Thanks for listening.