Rates & Barrels - How We're Using Statcast's New Bat Tracking & Bat Speed Leaderboards

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss Paul Skenes' MLB debut against the Cubs before digging into ways they are utilizing the new bat tracking and bat speed leaderboards from Statcast, including a few players to consider targeting via trade.  Rundown 1:45 Takeaways From Paul Skenes' Debut & Unexpected Comp 13:39 New Bat Tracking & Bat Speed Leaderboards from Statcast! https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/bat-tracking 19:27 How Should We Apply Bat Speed Information? 25:47 'Squared Up' vs. 'Blasts' 27:59 Players to Target 40:14 A Tool to Use for 'Buy High' Players? 44:44 Learning From Good Players Without 'Ideal' Swing Speed & Length 52:11 Robert Gasser's Debut & Where the Money Went 1:04:13 Other Bids & Frequently Dropped Players Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Monday, May 13th. Derek the Riper, you know, Saris here with you. A fun day. We have new tools to discuss. Statcast releasing some bat speed and bat tracking, which is really exciting. We'll dig into how we might use that

now that we have some new information at our disposal. Of course, we had the debut of Paul Skeens over the weekend, so we'll have a few takeaways from that. And we'll do what we usually do on Mondays. We'll dig into some players that were frequently added and dropped over the weekend. If you're watching us on YouTube, be sure to smash that like button. If you're not watching us on YouTube, subscribe to YouTube channel, watch us live at one o'clock

Eastern on Fridays. We got Trevor May on with us each and every week. You know, how's it going for you on this Monday? It's going good. It's going good. One more day of Little League for the oldest. They won. They had a big win. They didn't win that many games this year.

So winning in the playoffs is a big deal. And they get to play again today. And so, you know, young Felix was happy on his way to school. And we had we had people over for for Mother's Day, ordered some Indian and hung out in the backyard. So it was a good weekend. Nice little weekend. Glad to hear it. Got the Discord link in the show description if you'd like to connect with other listeners

of the show and with us. We're in there from time to time, probably more at weekday times than on weekends, but always there trying to help when we can. Let's start with Paul Skeens and some takeaways from his debut against the Cubs. It was one of those moments that people were looking forward to throughout the weekend. And I think in many ways it was a, it was a debut that delivered on a lot of the hype. It was not in that Strasburg 14 strikeout absurd level, but a good first up. He got let down by his teammate a little bit. 100%. Yeah, there was some of that.

Two of those runs he could have escaped without scoring. Yeah, I think in terms of process, like the VELO as advertised, the slider, the splitter, the splinker in this case, those main three pitches were what we expected them to be. I came away thinking the splinker was actually his best pitch. I, by, you know, called strikes and whiffs, CSW percentage, that was the case in the debut at least. It's just such a funky pitch to try and hit

because it's not quite Johan Duran's pitch, but it's in that family. It's like if a starter had it, it would be kind of like that by by Velo. So I came away pretty impressed, even though, you know, we didn't get the W. We didn't get the things that we we hope for. Seven strikeouts in less than five innings. I think that's a big, big step in the right direction as well. But I'm curious what what you saw and what the model actually spit out for Paul Skeens.

Yeah. I mean, I was watching over my shoulder as Felix and I were at his younger brother's little league game. So we were on a little phone huddled in the bleachers trying to watch Skeens. So it wasn't the best viewing experience for super nuanced takes, but I will say that he lives in a little area of nuance. That's kind of, it's impressive given that he throws a hundred, you know, there's, there's that meme where it's like, uh, uh, where's the, the, the troglodyte and

the, the, the, the like more refined human. And then the, the, the, the really smart guy and the, the guy that being a fastball go brr, you know, the guy in the middle goes, there's more important things than fastball velocity. And then the guy all the way on the other goes fastball goes brr. And, uh, and so, you know, he threw us a hundred that removes some of the nuance. He's going to be good. He sat.

So I thought I'd go through some of the metrics and see where he sat. He sat with the third best VELO in baseball out of 504 pitchers. If you listen to that number, 504 pitchers, you know that I did not cut anybody out of the sample. No, you didn't. I did not say starting pitchers. I did not say minimum 100. These are the games that I play, but when we do want the leaderboard to look right.

You know, I didn't do any of that. It's all pitchers third best behind Durin and Mason Miller. So, uh, that's crazy. Um, where people start talking about the flaws is the other ranks. So, you know, when you look at his extension, 248 out of 504. So pretty much just, just like right down the middle, uh, for, for extension. And then when you talk about, uh, vertical movement, um, he does not do well there. Um, you know, he, uh, let me just run it real quick.

Cause I was focused on horizontal movement is good. 13th out of 504 in horizontal movement. But we know that that vertical movement is more tied to to swing and miss where, you know, side to side movement. He's 196th. Actually, this should be sorted the other way. So if I sort the right way, yeah. So he's like middle of the pack when it comes to vertical movement, which is bad. That's a dead zone. So when people start talking about Paul Skeen's has bad fastball shape, what they're saying is that he's got a little bit of a lower release point

that contributes to a sideways fastball that in a lot of ways looks like a sinker, even though it's called a little bit of a lower release point that contributes to a sideways fastball that in a lot of ways looks like a sinker, even though it's called a foreseen. And it doesn't have that riding component that leads to whiffs. But fastball goes brrrr. It still goes really hard. And in doing this research on his movement and where he ranked in these certain in these certain places, we figured out an interesting comp. So the we're gonna play a video here real quick. And when you see Paul skeins pitch, the the

relevant things that he almost has a perfect match for on the pitch, the person behind him, so it's going to be two pitchers in a row. He's almost a perfect match for them in terms of it is a perfect match on arm side movement. It's an almost perfect match on vertical movement. It's, it's a four inch difference on release point, um, and a five mile an hour difference now. But when the other pitcher was younger, uh, it was closer. There's only one big difference.

This is your clue because this is a little bit of like trivia. Who could you guess who the comp is? Cause I was really surprised by this, but then once we started looking at the video, we're like, oh yeah, this is it. Um, the only difference is he's left-handed. So here we go. Paul Skeens is a right-handed who. When you threw Chris Sale's name at me as a Paul Skeens comp was like, wait, what, what do you mean?

But again, it's by, by movement and you kind of, the visual helps. If you're not watching us on YouTube, check out a clip. You need to watch fastballs in particular, because you kind of see that sweeping, angular release across. They're a little bit cross body-ish. Yeah. And there's, there's a few similarities with they're doing with their legs coming out of

their delivery. There's just a few things that you, they're way more similar than you expect. And I think the main reason your brain doesn't come up with it on its own, aside from throwing the different hands. When you watch Chris sail, he has such a skinny, tall, unusual body that you're kind of just watching how whippy he is. And he's a little bit more herky jerky in his mechanics.

Yeah. Yeah. And skeins has a more prototypical starting pitcher body, right? Just bigger shoulders, bigger lower half. Like it's just, so it doesn't, you're just watching different things at first. I couldn't believe it, but yeah, you're right. And the V-load difference, even when Chris Sale

through harder, there's still a few ticks in Skeen's his favor. There was 96, 97, 98, you know, in his, in his rookie years for sale. And this is, this is above and beyond that. So, um, you know, Chris Sale is a guy that the stuff plus hasn't always loved. So that's you know, that's an interesting thing. And also the other part that the model might be missing in the model did,

you know, spit out like a great number, of course he would. But the model said his fastball had one on one stuff plus. That's what sort of encapsulates all the stuff we're talking about. That's above average because four seams are around 97. So it's above average, but given that he throws 100, you expect it to be a much bigger number. And then the splitter basically averages well. And I can tell you why when I look at the numbers is that the split finger only goes six miles an hour less VELO wise.

It only goes six miles an hour slower than the fore seam, and it has almost the exact same horizontal movement. So the difference is all vertical. And I think that to some level, the model is just saying, yeah, that's okay. You know, it's not a standout pitch, but maybe the raw VELO component on the split finger. The fact that he's throwing at 95, um, is something that should be valued more. How many other pitches like that are in the database to be compared to?

I mean, I think of Durin, you know, and so then it's going to say, well, even if you like Durin splitter or Splink or whatever, Durin throws his like 99. Because he's a reliever., because he's a reliever. Yeah, he's a reliever. He'd probably throw it 96 if he was starting. Right. Right. So I guess that, you know, there's another sort of, uh, numbers based comp is kind of like a, a starting John Durin.

Those are good comps. Chris Hales had a very good career. It's filthy. Like there's the really nice combination of, of, of pitches to have, even if there are some things with the fastball that we'd like to see different until that fastball slows down several ticks. I don't think it's going to be a problem. You know what it reminds me of?

It reminds me of a little bit of these discussions of like, Oh, does Ryan Mount Castle, you know, have a terrible chase rate? And so therefore he's not good. Well, maybe when he's 30, it's a little bit more of a bigger deal. But right now it's not as big of a deal. So like, am I buying that skeins will be super dominant to 40? Maybe not. Maybe this will be a problem for him at some point. I don't think you can buy that for any pitcher. He's 21. Let's enjoy the next several years and then worry about what is Velo does

later when we get there. And I just think that's a problem that we all tend to have sometimes is trying to project the entire future. It's like just, just project the rest of this year. Think about next year if you want to a little bit, but you don't have to go any further than that. Yeah. a little bit, but you don't have to go any further than that.

Yeah, I think, you know, it is right to maybe wonder about his health, I guess. I mean, he throws 100 all the time and he throws fairly close to his max and he throws his breaking balls hard and you know, he throws his split finger hard. And so, yeah, it's fair to worry about that sort of stuff. But at the same time, I'm just like, you know, the guys who throw 90 get hurt too. So just enjoy it while we can. Let's let's have nice things while we're allowed to 14 swings and misses. Yeah. Top five pitches by velocity.

Not surprisingly, all belong to Paul Skeens and that came at 101.1 up to 101.9. And don't look at his ERA too hard. Like, like I referenced, like that what happened was like, maybe he hit a batter and walked a guy and so he had two guys on base and then the pirates relievers, Hey, not Not a good time for balloons. The Pirates Relievers had a party of the bad sort, a walk party. I think it was four straight walks after that. It was there was like four bases loaded walks.

So somebody they got the bases loaded and then there was like four bases loaded walks that scored Skeens as runners and made it three, you know, three earned runs instead of one earned run. I feel like you could have almost left him in to finish and he would have finished with one earned run. That's, I thought he looked pretty dominant. Yeah. The other big number there, 84 pitches in the debut for Paul Skeens.

So as far as how much they're letting him work, much more like a regular starter, which is kind of what they built up to given the way they handled him earlier this year. It might not be good in quality start leagues, I guess. It's kind of hard to get to six innings with 84. Yeah, I guess that's one area where maybe he'll be a little underwhelming. But I think you know that with a lot of rookie pitchers going in and even even if you had that concern You know a year ago with Grayson Rodriguez by the second half of the season. I think those concerns were largely erased I think you could see something similar maybe for this next month

It's a little more cautious with the usage by the time you get to July. I think if he's pitching well Six innings won't be a problem at all at that point in the season for Paul Skeens. Let's move on to some new tools though. Bat Speed leader boards are here. You had a chance to dig in before it was released to the public. So you've had some time to let this sink in, see what was going to be out there, think about some ways we could actually utilize it. Just generally, what have your initial impressions been of

what Statcast has put out there? It's, it's fun. You know, one, one thing that hurts us right now is just the ability to parse this on a per pitch level. You know, pitch to pitch as opposed to the way it is now is kind of. Grouped by player so you can only kind of see the entirety of a players you know averages and stuff we also just don't have any context year to year so we don't know what players were doing last year it It's year one. So I think the overall thing that I would say is just, let's be cautious. Let's dive into this.

I'm sure there's signal here. I'm sure we will be able to be better analysts because of this. I'm sure there's stuff to say. And I think, we'll get to this over the course of this pod. I think there are already some actionable things where you compare on field results with some of the underlying numbers and, and, and learn something and pick. I think you can pick your bylaws better with this and we'll get to that.

But obviously the number one thing is that, you know, you know, turning the bat faster will lead to more power. We have a arrangement, a correlation here that's in the article that I'm sharing with our viewers on YouTube. It's a positive correlation. You'll see that there's a fair amount of noise. But if you look at the white dots, which are a bigger sample They're mostly around this line that just goes up the more that you have you have more swing speed you have but What what does end up happening is that if you look there's a correlation between how fast you turn the bat and swing length and so the

fastest bat in America, prepare for yourself to be really, really surprised. Giancarlo Stanton, of course. Yeah, that's not surprising. But he also, they have a stat called swing length and Giancarlo Stanton is fourth in swing length behind JD Martinez, Brian Ramos and Javier Baez. By the way, in a small sample for Brian Ramos to have below average bat speed and the second longest swing in baseball

and not be striking out yet, but have strikeouts in his minor league numbers. That that's already saying something to me you know to have a bat that's almost the swing that's almost as long as have your biases is suggest to me that you will have strikeout problems all the guys mostly guys up here at the top of the swing length. Matt carpenter Stanton by as a willy adames has a really long swing judge Harris Buxton Nolan Arnado rowdy to Les Reese Hoskins Jordan Walker. Those are the longest swings in baseball and It puts into focus some of their their Their issues with strikeouts. think so you know one of the ways that i think that you should think about this is think about swing length in tandem with that speed and we have another visual here real quick that's. Baseball's best hitters have short and fast swing so now you're looking for the white dots those the best batters And if you look at the white dots, they have mostly above 72 mile an hour bat speed,

72 is average, and mostly under a seven and a half foot swing length. Those are the best hitters in baseball. And if you can hit both of those benchmarks and are struggling like a Corbin Carroll, then I'm in. So I think that's, I think that already you can say something interesting when you say, let me look at Carroll, oh look he's got a 74.4 mile an hour bat speed, 72 is average, he's got a 7.1 foot swing length, that's better than average.

Both of those things, he has the same bat speed as michael harris and his swing is a foot shorter. So to me that says i'm gonna buy low on corbin carroll this is a reason by the corbin carroll the batspeed is not a problem the shoulders not a problem. You go to aaronado though. And you go to Aeronauto, he's got a 69.5 mile an hour bat speed, which is 333rd if you have the numbers down real low. 333rd out of 460. It's worse if you start looking among regulars. It's really bad. And then his bat swing length is 8.2 feet, which is really close to Stanton. So if he's got

the swing length of a Stanton but the swing speed of an Arias that's a problem because Arias has the worst swing speed in baseball but he has the shortest swing so you can see that there's kind of a little bit of a relationship between power and contact that happens when you talk about swing length and swing speed so we're all feeling it out but already me, those are two actual Matt Chapman has above average bat speed and a quicker than average bat. I think he's about to get hot. So there's a ton of other information that needs to be like folded in to this type of analysis and being this is still very new. Day one for a lot of folks and like day eight for plenty of others even that had the advanced peak, I look at Aeronauto and then

I see Mookie Betts in terms of bat speed a few spots below, right? Big difference would be, well, hey, the swing length, Mookie Betts, 6.9, Aeronauto, 8.2. That gives you some difference. One thing that they're similar at though, is a metric called fast swing rate. So those are swings that are at or above 75 miles per hour. And Aeronauto actually swings the bat hard a good bit of the time.

He's got a 10.8% fast swing rate. So that gives me an idea that maybe a hitter could have the A swing and the B swing. And in the case of Aeronauto, maybe there's still a little bit more raw there than the average would. Because think about how we use average exit velocity. We look at average exit velocity and we're like, in a vacuum that doesn't tell us much. Like with other contexts, it tells us something, but by itself, it doesn't tell us as much as we'd like it to.

Yeah. Yeah. We're early on to knowing, you know, which one of these things are predictive. And we can't to that point. I think we can get to that point. I think we can get to that point. I think we can get to that point. I think we can get to that point. I think we can get to that point. I think we can get to that point.

I think we can get to that point. I think we can get to that point. I think we can get to that point. I think we can get to that point. I think we can get to that point. I think we can get to that point. I think we can get to that point. I think we can get to that point.

I think we can get to that point. I think we can get to that point. I think we can get to that point. I think we can get to that point. I think we can get to that point. I think we can get to that point. I think we can get to that point. I think we can get to that point. I think we can get to that point. I think we can get to that point. at a ball distance. So like, there's like a physical like F equals ma, you know, like there's like, there's an actual physical relationship between these things, but each batter gets to it in a different way. And that makes that super

important. There's a stat in here called squared up percentage. And, you know, if you look at a rise, you can spot a rise in terms of you can spot him as having the quickest like the shortest swing in baseball and be like oh yeah that makes sense but jung-ho lee does not have the shortest swing in baseball and he has more bad speed than a rise but he has a kind of a rising game. Kwan looks like a rise in terms of super short swing no swing speed. Juan looks like Arias in terms of super short swing, no swing speed. Jung Lee has a little bit more swing speed. He also pulls the ball a little bit more than those two guys. And there's a link there that I have to discuss in a second. But if you just look at squared up percentage per swing and you start looking at people who have, you know, a good amount of numbers there, it's Luis Arias, Nolan Shonwell, Juan Soto.

That's a weird leaderboard, man. Brian Ramos, who you mentioned earlier, is second in squared up by percentage swing. That isn't been up that long. So here's my theory on squared up. It needs a lot more sample than this. And you know what I think it is? It's like line drive rate.

It's, I think this one's going to be the messiest of the stats. It's, I think it'll be useful in telling the picture of so far, but I don't know if it's going to tell you the picture of in the future. Just like, does Juan Soto strike you as like, he should be third to Arayas and Shanoel. It's squaring it up. Yeah. It makes a little bit of sense to me when I consider that Juan Soto probably swings harder

than both of those guys on a pretty regular basis. Oh my God, by so much. He is 76%. That's what's absurd is to swing that hard and to square it up is just. Which I think is saying he's hot, like he's squaring it up. Like if you look at Matt Chapman, him and Juan Soto have like the same

stats in terms of bat speed and swing length. But Juan Soto has squared up 40% of the swings he's taken. He squared them up and Matt Chapman has squared up 19%. So basically half as many. And that's kind of the difference in these numbers between Matt Chapman and Juan Soto. So I think that those are noisy and I'm, I'm, I'm, I look at them, but I don't know yet how much I want to use those. And then the last part that I sort of alluded to when it comes to pulling is that you have to think so the way that they measure

this is bat speed is six inches from the head of the bat so the sweet spot that's a good idea i think that makes sense you want that part of the bat to be going the fastest that's that's where you want to make contact unfortunately i don't know if it's unfortunately but the way that they're doing it is that they're measuring contact they're measuring bat speed of contact or the closest point to contact on a miss. And so for one on contact, there's going to be a reduction in bat speed, a non zero reduction in bat speed because you're making contact with the ball. So that has something to do with it. And then because you're measuring at contact hitters who have a contact point out in front will have two things, a slightly longer swing length and slightly higher bat speed, but they may not inherently have more bat speed than somebody who lets the

ball travel more. Right. Because they're trying to do something different. And the bat just moves faster at different points in your swing. This is part of why people do want contact points out in front and why pull pulled balls go further. And you know, you're putting more bat speed on them. You're usually putting a little bit more launch angle on them because your bats coming up at the end. So that's complicated. I don't know if it's possible, but maybe at some point or maybe teams have something that's

like six, what is bat speed and attack angle and swing length from six inches in front of their front, their front knee or three inches in front of their front knee? Because then you would have, it'd be stabilized for every of them, all of them, and you'd have this one metric that kind of judges them, irregardless of their contact point, sort of taking the contact point out of it, because I do think contact point is something that hitters can change. It, you, you become more aggressive. You try to get that ball out in front.

Or you try to let it travel. That's like an approach decision, but that's underlying a lot of these numbers. I think the next thing to look at here, we're just kind of working left to right across the screen for the new leaderboard. We have blasts, and just by name, blasts to me sound like barrels. So are blasts as helpful as barrels based on what we know so far is that I look at that leaderboard, I'm like, um, probably not quite, but it looks better than the squared up when you look at the, the blast by percentage of swings. Like you see a group of hitters.

Cause it adds a component of bat speed that squares that squared up does not. Right. So that's, that seems like where. You know, squared up might be like the launch angle leaderboard or the sweet spot leaderboard. Like sweet spots good, but you got to squared up might be like the launch angle leaderboard or the sweet spot leaderboard. Like sweet spots good, but you gotta hit the ball hard in the sweet spot.

That's what the barrel is, right? So I think that's kind of where I like the blast. That's something that if I was gonna glance at one of those two columns, the blast on a per percentage swing basis would be the thing I'd look at. Yeah, and what's interesting about blasts is that it underlies this point,

like we have average bat speed on here and So the bat speed varies a lot even within a hitter So their example is that Otani has this home run that's a blast because his bat speed was 82.8 Nobody averages 82.8 in our thing and then there's another pit There's another one where his bat speed was only 80 and it doesn't count as a blast. So, you know, there's this variance within players, but you know, bat blasts per swing. The leaderboard is Luis Robert Jr. Ryan McKenna. Maybe you have to up this and get more competitive swings in your sample. leaderboard is Luis Robert Jr. Ryan McKenna.

Maybe you have to up this and get more competitive swings in your sample. If you do, you start talking about William Contreras, Juan Soto, Ryan O'Hearn, Shohei Otani, Giancarlo Stanton, Yandy Diaz, Salvador Perez, Alec Bohm, Kyle Tucker, Trevor Larnac, Tyler Stevenson. And if you look over at the barrel leaderboard, Tyler Stevenson has a huge increase in barrel rate and his batting average hasn't caught up yet. We have another by-low, I think.

Tyler Stevenson is a rock solid by-low for me. Yeah, I think that's sort of the main thing people wanna know is like, okay, so you take what you have from these leaderboards and your initial thoughts about what using these numbers and working with other things we have, like what it all means together, who do you target? Who are you going to go after? Because there's like one layer. There's the people that play in leagues with nobody else who read stuff like the stuff you write or listen to shows like ours, and they can go get these guys we're going to

talk about. So we'll do that first. And then there's the second level where you have to come up with something that's a little bit different than everybody else. You have to look at it and say, hey, maybe reduced bat speed is the sign of a player not being healthy. And if there are players that are low and they weren't healthy to begin the season, perhaps they're gonna be healthy now,

I can actually target players that are coming up as, you know, low bat speed. I like this thing about Arnotto, because I was like pretty much on board with I'm not buying low, but it's interesting to see that he is still swinging the bat 10% of the time over 75, which is, that's a decent amount of bat speed that,

you know, if he connects on on those they're homers. Right but let's start with the simple approach right you're not playing against 11 people like yourself in this scenario you're playing against you know just a group of people that are pretty typical playing fantasy baseball who are your targets based on looking at some of these numbers? Well one thing that I didn't get to so Larnac is an interesting one where you can just pick them up in some places. So Blast are interesting in that way that you can kind of and I what I recommend is leaving the minimum total swings low.

I have 10 on right now is my default. But taking an eye keeping an eye on competitive swings. So like the fact that Brian Ramos in 31 competitive springs has a good blast rate, I'm not sure that's good enough, but it is something to think about given the other flaws in his game that maybe there is maybe can maybe does have like real power in there. But when I look at somebody like Lars Newtbar and I say, okay, 72.2 miles an hour on the bat speed.

Okay, so that's not a problem at least. So you look, I would say is like, take a by low hitter that you're interested in and then look at them and see if there's like a real problem that you can discover, you know, and for new bar, I can't find it because 72.2 is enough bat speed. His swing length 6.8 is very short, you know, and yes, he's been having a little bit of trouble pulling the ball, but he knows about it and he's trying to change that contact point. His blast rate is good. I think Lars Newt bar is a rock solid by the voice left Lars Newt bar, but it's good to have more validation. I do think there was a player we were talking about before this that makes it very hard to do this analysis. And his name is Isak Paredes. And for what it's worth, he is living rent-free in our heads.

He's on our word cloud for sure. I don't know. He's our praise is up there with, uh, I don't know. Who do we, who've we talked about as much as these are praise. Mitch Keller for the first few years of the show was number one parade. ACE is starting to make up some ground on them. So parade is has a 67.6 mile an hour bad speed. And I think that is a problem. And just to give you some comps based on bat speed alone, he's hanging out with

Alex Verdugo, Andres Jimenez, Gio Ocella, Jeff McNeil, Nick Ahmed. And the problem is all those guys that I mentioned have at least have short swings. Alex Verdugo is a 6.3 foot swing. Isak Paredes has an 8 foot swing. That's like it's two, two feet longer than Alex Verdugo's swing in the same bat speed. Like I think that's a little bit problematic. But as we pointed out earlier, Isak Paredes is a major pole guy. And so I just I don't know what the number is.

I think I would say that my guess and I'm trying to remember this. I would say that the difference between letting the ball travel like a opposite field spray ball really contact point and then beginning the ball in front. I would say the inches difference in swing length between Verdugo and Paredes is explained by contact point alone. So I would say that this is a little bit of evidence that Paredes' approach is on shaky ground. Now, does that mean I want to sell high on him for this year? Not necessarily. But does that mean that I may not value him as much as the auction calculator says I should next year? Maybe. It just seems like a very fragile approach that depends on getting the ball out in front with a long swing. It,

it leads to guessing. Don't you think? What if he's good at anticipating? It's positive. Guessing is negative. Anticipating is positive. Difference in nomenclature. Because Esauk Paredes has had very good plate skills as a prospect. He was always believed to have an above average, even a very good hit tool. Yeah. The strikeout rates have been fine.

The swing strike rates have been fine. Right. So if his ability to read pitches, anticipate pitches is above average or possibly elite. I feel like that's kind of your how do you get there sort of explanation. And I think it's just yet another tool that doesn't like Esauk Paredes that's going to keep his value in check no matter what the actual results say. He's got eight homers and 38 games.

So he's on pace for another high 20s, low 30s home run season. He's doing it with a better average and OBP than last year. So far. I don't think he's the kind of guy that can run a better bad bit because the way he hits the ball lends itself to him being a low bad hit player. So maybe that's where the extra juice is coming from. But from a power perspective, he's doing everything in his ability right now to show us that the breakout from last year is actually somewhat sustainable. Yeah.

Yeah, he's he's fascinating. Um, I think on some level you like we want to we want to maybe do, uh, teams. Let's do yes. Oh, you want to see teams? I haven't done this tab yet, which is to my detriment, but you know, you're trying to get a piece out there. Um, let's see what Tampa does. I'm just assuming they're gonna be in some weird spot on this graph.

Where are they? No, I don't want, I want bat speed versus bat in length. That's what I want. Is this gonna be a thing where, because of the different combinations of hitters, like you would end up with a, generally, like guys that are, teams that are all kind of clustered near one spot. They're they're yeah they're mostly because you know in Tampa Bay's actually doesn't stand out they have.

They have shorter they have longer than average swings and less than average bat speed as a team. But there is there are some outliers. This is really interesting. The Braves have the longest and fastest swings in baseball. And they don't even have Stanton on their team. Longest and fastest swings in baseball. Yeah, so they're trying to do that. The Pirates have the second longest swings in baseball and above average, no,

the second fastest swings in baseball, the pirates. These, and this is, and Andy Haynes is quoted extensively in my article saying it's not all about bat speed. They had the second fastest average bat speed and a slightly above average swing length. So the pirates on this process level look pretty good. And the Orioles, and this is, I think, actually due to scouting and player development

from what I've heard, is that the Orioles basically scout for contact ability, and some sense of VBA, but also hit tool. They scout for hit tool, and then they make weighted bats part of the everyday program in the minor leagues so that everybody coming up through the minor leagues is basically just doing bat speed training. Guess what? The Orioles have the third fastest bats as a team and the third shortest swing length. They really stand out as doing the right things. So love the Orioles for merging scouting and player

development in such a fascinating and strong way. And if you consider that, then it would be interesting to know that the slowest bats in baseball are on the Chicago White Sox. That's not surprising. They do have the shortest swing length, but the two teams with super slow bat speed are the Blue Jays and White Sox. Blue Jays, I think that there might be a component of some aging factors there. I mean, you look at some of their guys are getting older. I think about Springer in particular. But the fact that they're down there, I don't think is, is great news, but at least

their swings are short. Yeah, they're not fast, but they're short. Texas who Donnie Ecker was quoted a lot in this piece, um, has a, has a, have quick bats, have short swing length, uh length and near average bat speed. One thing that I would guess, oh, here's something that's actionable. If you want to look year to year, I found that the tightest relationship between bat speed and any outcome variable was with MaxEV. And this is actually, I think, really important.

We know from citing MaxEV and talking about it that it's not. And it's not it's not one of these like, oh, like he's going to be great. You know, it's like one of those things. It describes raw power, but not every player gets to it. And we talk about that often getting to that power and just describes their upside. So I think that speed in some ways describes your upside. And then what we'll learn, it's a little bit like stuff plus, like when you get a guy debut, you want to check his bat speed.

But once you've had 150 plate appearances, then you only want to kind of know about bat speed differential year to year. And so you know that bat speed is tied to maxi V. What you want to then do is go over to the the year-by-year leaderboard On fan graphs. It's called the season stat grid and you can put in you know a hundred plate appearances this year and 400 last year you can do year-to-year changes

year and 400 last year you can do year to year changes and you can look at who has changed the most in max CV and what you'll find is that'll be a component of bat speed so for an anotatees is max CV being up three miles an hour probably suggests that his bat is faster this year Jake Cronenworth up one bat is probably faster this year when you look at the other side, the negative, Acuna down seven, there could be something there. We also know from MaxTV though that it's hard to know when you have enough sample. So, but Nolan Aronato is on this. I would guess that Nolan Aronato's bat was faster last year.'s still, still some guesswork to be done here for sure, but, um, and contact point is just.

Contact point is this like lurking underlying thing that's just hard to know. It'd be nice. Maybe maybe they could give us contact point. Maybe. I mean, I'm sure, I'm sure this will evolve and change a lot in the next couple of years. And I think we're going to see all sorts of fun trade offers that take place now in our leagues as a result of this, because people are going to come up with a few different conclusions from all of it.

That's just, that's natural with any sort of new, newfangled toys. It's funny when you see names popping on leaderboards that you don't expect to, but you know, the buy high, I wrote a little bit about trade targets and different players you should go after. Sometimes the buy high is actually the right sort of move because the person that has that player has found money. They have excess. They found a player at a relatively low price and maybe they just need something else and they're comfortable locking in a profit by trading a player away. The example of that's probably Joe Adele.

Joe Adele, huh? Just looking at him, yeah. He's popping on here. The bat speed looks fantastic. He's 15th in average bat speed. He does well. He doesn't have that eight foot swing that kind of seems to be where the strikeout guys are. Morrell has eight foot. Jordan Walker has eight foot swing. Miguel Sano has an eight foot swing that kind of seems to be where the strikeout guys are. Morrell has eight foot, Jordan Walker has eight foot swing, Miguel Sano has an eight

foot swing, Joe Adele 7.6. Contact quality is pretty good as far as the percentage of blasts and all that. It's supportive. He's stealing bases. There's all sorts of things in the numbers that look really good for Joe Adele. The only thing he's really doing that he's always done that would gonna be the yellow flag would be chasing pitches outside the zone, but he's doing enough good things

where that doesn't really matter. And you're starting to think that maybe some of this massive strikeout rate growth could actually be sustained. So you got power, you got speed. Maybe some people are looking at that seven for 12 mark on the base pass and saying, he's not going to keep getting green lights. I've got news for you.

That team is brutal. They can let everybody run as much as they want. Also, they've, they've decided from spring training, we pointed this out, but they're going to run this year. They're going to run anyway. And I just think they've got nothing to lose. Yeah. Nothing to lose at Anaheim.

So I think the more I look at Joe Adell and seeing where he is here, it's yet another reason to think about him as that possible buy high sort of target that you still believe in to continue at a higher level than his current manager does. Yeah. And I think another thing that I like to do with these stats is use them to uncover really low cost, low risk decisions. You know, like I've got Matt Wallner in a 20 team keeper league and he's got the second best bat speed in baseball and his swing length is a foot shorter than Giancarlo's stands. Like we weren't probably going to drop him anyway, but this is like, OK, I'm not going to drop him.

And if you're in a 15 team where he's out there on the wire and you're just dropping a hurt reliever or something, you know, like if it's not a big deal, then maybe maybe use it. You know, for example, I traded in the auto new, I traded for Jesus Sanchez. I didn't give up much. Some people might be surprised. I did give up. I gave up JP Sears. But I just I had a lot of pictures and pictures for hitting as I'll do it anytime. And you know, you might be like, well, Sanchez, why? Who cares about Sanchez? Well, Sanchez has the same bat speed and swing length as Gunnar Henderson.

same bat speed and swing length as Gunnar Henderson. He even squares up at a similar rate as Gunnar Henderson and has a similar amount of blasts. The problem is he's setting everything to the ground. Yeah. Yeah, I mean. But you gotta know that he thinks, he knows that's a problem. He's all, I mean, Hey Sue Sanchez also is running

a little bit for the first time ever, and he's not slow. I know. So like I see when I, when you see somebody like that, you're like, okay, he has the raw materials for a good swing. He must know there's a problem because he's hit for more power and more fly balls in the past. So that seems like a toggle you can do. That's a little bit an easier toggle than maybe our an auto being like, yo, just swing

faster dude. And you know, like, yo, just swing faster, dude. You know, like, maybe that's not possible at his age. So he's a Sanchez is somebody that has jumped off the page for me as somebody that is acquirable everywhere. If you're looking for a reason to be excited about hell, Elliot, Elliot Ramos, he has a similar, uh, bat speed to Matt Chapman, which is in the top 10 if you relax the numbers, the requirements. And he has a shorter 7.5 foot swing. It's not, it's maybe not going to strike out as much as people think. So could he strike out 28% of the time

and have an ISO over 200? Maybe. So, but I'm not saying, you know, spend a lot to get Ramos. I'm saying if you have an extra spot, like why not pick up Haley Ramos, you know? So I was thinking about looking at this leaderboard or these leaderboards and trying to find really good players who don't pop because that might be instructive of ways

we could use things incorrectly. The parade is comps, right? The parade is comps. I mentioned Mookie Betts, right? I think Mookie Betts being where he is. Will Smith right there with Mookie Betts, 68.8 for average bat speed, slow, fast swing rate is less than half of what Mookie has. I mean, that's kind of surprising, right?

How does that work? Why does that work? I think trying to answer those questions is going to have a lot of value because knowing how people have used the sliders on StackCast so far in their analysis, red good, blue bad, that's where there's other opportunities. That's what I'm excited about. That's the lodum devil on my shoulder saying, hey, they're all looking for this. You should go look for that.

So that's what I'm going to try and dig into now that we've got more time with this. That's why I think swing length is huge because swing length, first of all, doesn't have the blue red on it. And then very much if you, if you just look at the bottom of average bat speed, you start to see these are shorter swing lengths and that's what's keeping them in the big legs. So Luis Arias, again, worst bat speed in the majors, shortest swing length in the majors.

But there are people like him, Justin Turner, has really, really bad bat speed. But his swing length, 6.4, is the same as Stephen Kwan. And he's, you know, the difference for him is that his 6.4 is further out in front, because he's a get out in front guy. So this is where the sort of relative, you should think about pull rate a little bit

when you're looking at these. So if Justin Turner and Stephen Kwan have the same swing length, but Justin Turner's getting the ball out in front, Justin Turner's swing might be shorter than Seam Quants in absolute terms. In any case, if you add just that toggle of swing length, you can find guys in the bottom like Justin Turner that are just getting to balls by being super, super short. And another name that's not necessarily someone who is established or anything,

but Lamont Wade Jr. does not have great bat speed, but it's average-ish. He has the eighth shortest swing in baseball. You know? So there's a kind of a reason to believe in Lamont Wade Jr. Yeah, I mean, it's a good deep league sort of player, someone that you can make daily moves.

He makes some sense. Yeah. The platoon aspect is not great. Yeah. A lot of these short, short swing guys work from the bottom. Arias, Bryce Terang, Austin Barnes, Alex Verdugo, Justin Turner. Justin Turner's a really good hitter that kind of is like the, how does he do it? Nice quick short swing.

That's, that's it. Madrigal, you know, Pedro Pahez, Victor Scott, Steven Kwan. Yeah. Like these are hitters. Pahez has a really short swing. Pedro Pahez, the, uh, like he's a catcher for the Cardinals. Yeah. And Andy Pahez.

Hmm. Oh, Nolan, Nolan Jones is out here with a 6.8. Corey Seeger with a 6.8. Nolan Jones is kind of interesting because there's some shallow leagues where he's been dropped in the leagues where he's been held even in keeper leagues. I think whoever has him is a little bit nervous based on what's happened to start the season slightly above average bat speed with a with a like short like the shortest 25 percent in baseball kind of swing length

and a park that juices balls and play in a way where the thing that he'd be the worst at like average could be offset by his home park. Yeah. So I'm still kind of into Nolan Jones since, you know, he's a Rocky. Yeah. There's a ton of stuff to look at here. Why? Geez.

Wyatt Langford. I actually just traded for Wyatt Langford in the keeper league. Had to give up a lot to do it. That was the name that that was the name I was saying on ours, on our cast. I actually just traded for Wyatt Langford in the keeper league. I had to give up a lot to do it. That was the name that that was the name I was saying on our, on our cast. Goodness. 6.8 feet for the swing, like 74 mile per hour average bat speed. So yeah, short swing, very hard swing.

And I saw some people posting about this more than one, I think, posting that Wyatt Langford has been getting just absolutely wrecked on borderline calls so far, getting the rookie treatment in the purest sense. So you take that on top of an injury on top of his first month in the big leagues and how hard it is to hit big league pitching. It sure looks like bright days are, are still ahead for Wyatt Langford. And maybe as soon as the second half of the season. Let me try something real quick here is pit swing length. So we're going to focus on swing

length here. Swing length seven feet or or under under seven feet. And an above average bat speed. What we've got is Colton Kouser, Mitch Hanniger, Brian Reynolds, Paul De Jong, so every list is gonna have one where you're like hmm, Paul De Jong, Mookie Betts, although he's slightly below average bat speed, Tommy Pham, Wyatt Langford, Cabrion Hayes, Heston Kurestad, Lars Knutbar, Nolan Jones, Corey Seeger, Lane Thomas, Lewatwe Jr. That's it. It's a pretty good list. So you have like, it's all good.

And then there's, oh, Jose Abrey. Yeah, Jose Abrey was on there, isn't he? He's right. He's on the cusp. He's got to be close because he's, he's got the shorter swing. Yeah. Big average bat speed. Yeah. Hmm.

That's problematic. But any, any good list, uh, has, um, Oh, the reason I, I went over him is, uh, he didn't have quite the sample. I was trying to use a hundred competitive swings. Ah, yeah. Okay. But, um, uh, but any good list, I think has, I don't know who said this, but any good list is like mostly duh. And then a little bit of what,

and that list was mostly duh. And a little bit of what, and that little bit of what is you have to make a sort of decision on it. You know, you just, that's where, that's where you're going with your gut because we haven't vetted all these stats yet. We're in the process of vetting these stats. I want to know who's using them and using them incorrectly. I got to figure that out. That's the next thing to do in my league. Using them in a way that I don't agree with because I don't know absolute right

and wrong. I would assume that the first the first salvo will just be sorting by bat speed and you know buying based on that without the rest of the contact. Right you're going to be looking at your auto new waiver wire and Trey Cavage is going to be getting put up for auction today. Yeah let's see how many leagues Trey Cavage has put up for auction today. This is a totally perfect thing to track out of me. Niv, shut up if you're listening. Tell us if there were a bunch of, who else, who else, uh, Oliver Dunn.

Everyone's picking up Oliver Dunn and Elliot Ramos and Trey Cabbage. Yeah. And Alex Canario. That would be a bad speed day. Yeah, bad speed day. Like Wednesday, all those players will be on new rosters on auto new as a result of this

stuff dropping. So, uh, this is definitely an area we'll talk more about these leaderboards. That we'll take questions, drop those questions in our discord. We just, we're just scratching the surface. We're learning along the way, but I think it's something that'll be a lot of fun to continue digging into throughout the season. We're going to move on to a few other topics.

We'll keep these somewhat brief because the show is already like 52 minutes long, but I want to talk about Robert Gasser, not because he's a brewer, but because he was actually the most sought-after pitcher that was actually available since Skeens was already rostered pretty much everywhere in competitive leagues. And Gasser came up, pitched on Friday, debuted against the Cardinals, pitched well, wasn't overpowering. it was 4Ks, it was six scoreless innings, good results against the lineup that's really struggling to find its way.

I think the big question we've had about Gasser is just what kind of command is he going to put around that arsenal? He's supposed to have above average command, we've seen the walk rate tick up at times, we understand that those are not necessarily the same thing, there's command, there's control. And I think what I see when I look at the scouting report is a fastball that was graded out poorly by fan graphs, a 40 grade fastball from Robert Gasser. And that's the number one thing that I look for in a debut in the Stuff Plus model. Just

if anybody's listening that wants to know that I look at fastball stuff plus almost more than the entire arsenal. What I'm really surprised by is that, you know, there's a slider that's supposed to be above average, a car that's supposed to be above average. I don't think he was throwing the cutter much or at all. It was fastball slider changeup. It was almost all a fastball slider, only a couple of changeups. I wonder if this was a case where the game plan was simplified because it was a debut, but 92.7 is the number I'm seeing as the average fastball velocity.

We know it's not all Velo. You know, if he had good ride, if he located it well, there's ways to get away with that. But that mix at that Velo does seem a little bit weird given other things we know about Robert Gasser. Yeah. Um, I went in on him and this is my thinking. I can see where they got this bad fastball grade on his four scene because he has poor ride on his four scene. He is a sinker guy, but. You know, at the same time they're, you know, pretty good, um, uh good numbers on, in terms of scouting grades on his other pieces. I think the change up and the fourth seam were good enough for me to kind of jump in

on him as someone who's going to be really good against righties. These, the sinker stuff plus was 102. Um, and the, uh, the slider is 121. So I think he's going to be dominant against righties. It's a little bit like the Michael King package where you're hoping the four seam and the change up are good enough to exist against lefties. Uh, it's the other way around because he's the lefty, right? He's gonna be dominant against lefties. Ooh, that's not as good. Dominant against the lefties, but the other parts of the package I think will be good enough to keep him afloat against righties.

And then there was a component of like, well, at least his next start is against the pirates. So sometimes when you like, you see this, you're like, okay, I see some good things, the schedule is going to help me to get a soft landing. I'll at you like, you see this, you're like, okay, I see some good things. The schedule is gonna help me to get a soft landing. I'll at least want to play him this week. Because there is a difference between spending as I did 40 bucks and spending 10 bucks. 10 bucks says, I just want him for this next start.

40 bucks says, I want him for beyond this. But what I'm trying to avoid is spending 100 bucks. These are all out of a thousand. I don't wanna spend 100 bucks or 200 bucks on a starter because that seems as if he is anything, you know, that might just end up being a $10 buy too. So in this case, I was like, I'm going to spend 40 and 50 bucks because he's at least worth 10 bucks. Right? He's at least worth 10 bucks.

Start them against pirates this week. Yeah, I'll do that. I mean, I wanted the home start against the pirates and if he stays in the rotation, if he stays up, I assume he will because they've had a lot of trouble with injuries already. That's the other part of the bet. At Miami is the next turn. Like that's a great landing spot for these first couple of starts. So at the very least I'm taking a shot on these first two opportunities. And then by then he might've made the argument that he's in the rotation.

And then at the very least I've got a guy that, well, maybe I don't want to start him in Atlanta, you know, but I've still got a guy I want to keep on my roster. So this is all sort of 15 teamish language in 12 teamish language. I would say, yeah, pick them up for the, for the pirate start, but treat him more fungibly, you know, for these, after these next two starts, don't fall in love maybe because there are some flaws. The four seam does not have good ride.

We have yet to, we don't know it's a change up is good enough to get right. Yeah. I think there's also like this from a number scouting perspective, there's something similar for me, at least to Joe Ryan coming through the minor leagues. Ryan was more dominant overall in terms of his strike out. The strike out numbers are amazing for Gasser and the miners. Yeah. It's just kind of like the results are such that you look at them and say,

okay, like, yeah, maybe the fastball is not amazing, but it's good enough. It's like you said, it's a sinker. It's over a hundred. We don't even, a lot of fastballs great out a little bit below that. Oh yes. No sinker. The average sinker is like 94 stuff. Plus 102 is great.

I think the unanswered question for me is just like, where is the cutter that was in the scouting report before? Is he going to bust that out? If you bust that out, then you say, well, there's, there's your thing. He's going to throw to righties. That's going to make him better than that split. That would be better if you had that. Was it, was it sneaking around inside the sweeper designation or maybe, you know, yeah, I don't, I don't know where that was. That definitely is funny that,

um, Fangrass has a, has a 55 5560 on the cutter that wasn't there. I think we're going to see people waiting at least from a prospect investment perspective for guys like Kate Horton, maybe Jackson Jobe because of later in the year, I think the bids on those players will be bigger when they come up, even though Gasser got up earlier than those guys. Because it seemed like a lot of prospect circles. He was in that, that next wave, like, yeah, he's probably a starter, but he's not necessarily a frontline guy.

I think generally I just don't like the idea of blowing a 20 to 30% of my pre-agency budget on one player. Yeah. I went like five to 12, depending on the league size and needs. And in the league was, I think it was Tout Wars, solds where I put the 12% bid in. Nobody else was close to that. I wish we still had Vickery where you get the next, the runner up's bid plus a dollar. I, in this moment regret voting against Vickery several years ago when that came up to a league wide vote. The chickens of come under risk. I won him 47 to 37, dropping Ben Brown in the

great fantasy baseball invitational. And then I also won him in barf Bay Area Broto fantasy. Yeah, that's, that's what it's the. Every time. Thanks, Laura Michaels. That's Lars. That's a humor in one acronym. Uh, I won in 56 to 41 dropping Tyler Alexander, who'd been a two starter for me. So, um, that's it's pushing it.

And I just, you know, blue 67 on Tyler black. I kept Tyler black on my roster for another week, just because I was like, man, if I paid 60 bucks for Tyler Black, I'm not dropping them the next week. I'm surprised you did. I think you could be waiting longer than you want for that opportunity to come back around for Tyler Black. It's, it's, it's an opportunity afforded to me by the fact that I'm in first place.

Yeah, it's a luxury stash. As soon as things get hectic, he's gone. It's an eight cup holder stash. That's what that is. As long as I can, I will. Our stroller has four. We only have one kid. Is it one for each hand for the kid and then mom, dad?

They're expecting the coffee, the beer for each. Yeah, one for each parent and then two for the kid in case he's left handed, right handed or needs water, juice. I don't know. Four cup holders on a one kid stroller. Seems pretty weird to me. Uh, do you think we're right much later than we expected to be about Abraham Toro? I'll have to tell you, he does not look good in the bad speed stuff.

Yeah, but he's not that kind of player. There. I know, but it's a, it's, it's longish good in the bat speed stuff. Yeah, but he's not that kind of player. I know, but it's a, it's, it's longish too. Like it's not, I, I, I expected having been watching him this year, that it'd be a short swing length and poor bat speed. It was poor bat speed, 70 miles an hour. Um, which is not, it's not bottom of the league. Um, but like he, he profiles kind of like Chris Bryant in terms of bat speed and swing length. Yeah. And profiling as 20, 24, Chris Bryant in that way is not a compliment, but I think there's, I think there's, there's analog analysis here.

Like how many times in Abraham Toro's career has he not had to look over his shoulder for playing time. Ah, it's like one or two at most. And those were reasonably short stretches because of the teams he was on, probably more with Seattle in 2022. Didn't really get a chance at all with the Brewers. Like that just didn't work out at all. And now he moves around enough. He's on a team that's flexible.

And the Los Angeles angels of Anaheim. Last chance salute. Maybe a question for a future day. Should it be like should players like this be fringe guys or are they good enough to be more than that? I think he's good enough. What's interesting is the projections are all at least league average bat wise or around there.

Steamer is excited about it. Steamer says 250, 318, 399, 10% bed and league average with a full season pace of 16 homers and eight stolen bases basically. That'll work. I just saw Toro get picked up a lot of places. That's actually, you know, given anything I said about bad speed or whatever, that's reasonable. That's a reasonable expectation and that's valuable in a lot of places. And he should have his job because there's not really much competition for it. I looked at him as a replacement in places where I was rostering Tyler Freeman. That's kind of where I was looking at.

You moved on from Freeman? Yeah, but I may have just moved on to another version of Freeman. Yeah, I mean, they are similar in a lot of respects, but Freeman is hitting 184 on some poor luck. And that's the kind of analog analysis for me is that we've got a 346 babbip from Toro and I've seen a lot of singles, you know, and what's missing from somebody like Freeman is a 193 babbip and Io and I've seen a lot of singles, you know, and what's missing from somebody like Freeman is a 193 Babbip and I haven't seen the singles, but I've seen similar power out of both and similar contact. I just, if I had that choice between those two, I would take the one where I think the

luck would be even out in the right way going forward. It's fair. I think with Toro, I'm just more comfortable at that playing time, even though you could see the luck kind of turning for Freeman. I still think they look at him as a little more of a super utility guy. And I don't know if he'll play every day. He's playing every day. But you're right.

It hasn't been kind of a set it and forget it in center. In the last 10 games. He's played second twice and and been a pinch hitter and played third. Yeah, I was going to look and see what's the most recent run man. He had a couple of two, three, about three, three days out of the lineup in the last eleven, so it's almost a full share and a little lower in the order to. That's the other thing that continues to hold Tyler Freeman back just slightly, but very similar in terms of what they are likely to bring to the table.

If they're playing equal amounts, any other notable bids players you were excited about. It's just kind of amazing that we just were comparing these two guys just to think back of the journey of Tyler Freeman and Abraham Toro Hernandez on this podcast. Oh, they're both prospects of the week. They definitely were both prospects of the week that I was super excited about at different points in my life and then completely forgot about them for like two years.

Just like just wiped them from my memory and didn't own them anywhere. And now in places where I wish I had Tyler Freeman that I actually could use him, I'm mad that somebody else has him. Yeah, I guess the thing that also does give Freeman a little more path to value is that he steals some bases. I don't think Toro's offering much in that regard. He's one for two so far this season. Freeman at least four for seven.

He's taken off a handful more times. I think that actually means something too. Anybody else you picked up over the weekend that you thought would end up being a good stick for more than just, you know, the upcoming week, like streamers are one thing, but any, any sneaky ads. I went a little, uh, load them during this, uh, bat speed moment and went and got Andrew Vaughn, uh, who has actually a fairly, you know, it's an average length, but poor bat speed. And I,

and I wasn't going to play him. I just picked him up to stash him and just see if a week of rehabilitation is enough for me to care. You know, one of those dollar stashes at the bottom of a long string. I don't really have anything to tell you. That's good. You picked up Andrew Vaughn. That's, it's not as sad as me picking up Victor Oblase. And I might've done that except that he, I think he like came back and got hurt

in the same game. He came back and made a pretty bad base running blunder. That was, that was brought to our attention. He was trending for some people. I can't even believe that. Cause it was such a bad blunder. Yeah. that was brought to our attention. He was trending for some people. I can't even believe that. Cause it was such a bad blunder. Yeah. Yeah. He made an error.

Oh, bad, bad, bad day at the office. But I, that's, um, to me, that was a tip of the cap buying into the small sample from Seeger, uh, the Robert Oars system that was looking at hitting and Roblays popping in there. system that was looking at hitting and Roblade's popping in there. I did pick up other word cloud favorite, Jack Zawinski in my main event, just because in a similar way, he's cheap. There's under the hood, like he's making contact and, you know, I think he's going to move that contact point out in front and strike out a little bit more and hit for power again. So I'm just interested. I think that he's someone that really encapsulates what we were talking about with where the

contact point is because right now he has a seven point two foot swing length, which is would be among the shorter in baseball and of course the 73 mile an hour bat speed, but maybe he should have a longer swing because he should be getting the ball out in front more. So just an interesting guy that I wanna have around for a little while longer because there's a lot of stuff that looks good

other than the batting. Couple of other things to get to real quick before we go, frequently dropped players, not a lot of surprises this week because I think there were some unfortunately obvious cuts like Wilson Contreras. I saw a 10 week timetable for his forearm injury. You really can't hold him without IL spots. Tyler Black was the second most dropped player in the Rotawire Online Championship. Those are 12 team leagues though if it's deeper than that, you know, finding playing time

is tough. I don't know how long I'll be in a hold on them now, but at least I only, you know, lasted 50 bucks and not 300. Other injuries though. I mean, Christian Acarnacion strand. We talked about that late last week. He was a regular cut, Brandon Drury, Edward Cabrera, Kent Tomei is on the IL with a virus, but he's also not pitching well. so I can see that being just like that last straw for a lot of people that had him rostered.

Kevin Ginkle got dropped because Paul Seawald's back for the Diamondbacks. Yol Piam's getting dropped because Trevor McGill keeps getting saves for the Brewers. McGill didn't have it as far as like A-plus command on Saturday, but there was one of his outings last week where he was just dotting the edges of the zone. I was curious if he had been, he gains as far as his location numbers go because I don't remember him from last year having command that was quite that good. Maybe I just caught him on one of those days where he felt great, but it looked really good. Yeah, he's definitely advanced there. He has above average location plus, and he didn't have it before. He's also far and away the stuff plus favorite in that pen.

And I'm kicking myself now because we've cycled through basically every Brewer's Closer on my main event team, and we ended up with Pyoms at the end, which is so stupid because my model says that it should have been Trevor Mega like from the beginning. And so now I just feel dumb. Sometimes you just need to argue your position or believe in your in your model. And this time I was like, well, Piams is getting the chances.

So let's pick them up. I think if you're disappointed that the K's haven't been there, they'll be there. He's it's good enough stuff. It's not. For McGill. Yeah. For McGill. It's, it's, it's coming, but he, he looks like the guy until Devin Williams comes back. And then the question then becomes once Williams is eventually gone, does McGill go back to getting saves in the future? I mean, he's one of those older debut guys a few years ago

that isn't a free agent until after 2027. So he'll be around as long as he's healthy in high leverage spots for a long time. Yeah, I think if he loses his job again this year, it'll regain it again in the future. So covered a lot on this show. If you wanna read more, Eno actually has a piece about the new bat speed numbers, actually

two, right? You have the one that you wrote about Matt Chapman with Andrew Baggerly, and then you've got the one that you wrote on your own focusing on everything that's out there with some leaderboards, awesome visuals. If you didn't watch on YouTube, you can check out those visuals in the story. Get that at dot com slash rates and barrels. We'll get you a subscription. So be sure to do that.

If you don't have a subscription already, find Eno on Twitter at EnoSaris. Find me at Derek VanRiper. Find the pod at rates and barrels. That's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. We're back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for watching!