Rates & Barrels - In-Season Player Valuations, the Trade Itch, Tommy Edman's Surprising Season & A Summer Homer Surge?

Episode Date: May 23, 2022

Eno and DVR discuss the ongoing challenge of finding common ground with in-season player valuations, the arrival of the annual 'Trade Itch', Tommy Edman's surprising start to 2022, the possibility of a summer home-run surge, and more.  Rundown -- Finding Common Ground with In-Season Player Values -- Managing Ratios When Doing Well -- Dealing with Roster Surplus -- Tommy Edman's Great Start; Similarities to Ozzie Albies -- Joey Votto: Bat Change + Return to Health = Summer Turnaround? -- Gary Sánchez: Any New Adjustments? -- Expecting A Summer Home-Run Surge -- Ballpark Shadows; Advantages for Pitchers? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first six months: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Monday, May 23rd. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we'll talk about in-season management, specifically valuing players if you're trying to make trades or trying to make some decisions about ads and drops even. I think the same principles would hold up here, but it's trade season. Everyone has the itch. I'm in a few leagues where a handful of trades happened in 48 hours over the weekend because the teams going for it, and keeper leagues especially,

are trying to get as much value as they can as soon as they possibly can. The teams that have been in the bottom of the standings have accepted their fate for this season. But we're seeing it in redraft leagues too, where people are pulling back, looking at the strengths and flaws of their roster, and trying to achieve a little more balance. Because we've played about 40 games now, I think, for every single team. So about a quarter of the season is in the books. Therefore, people feel more confident in their current trajectory. So we'll talk about that. We're going to talk about Tommy Edmond maybe being a little more like Ozzy Albies than we once thought.

Interesting email that came in. A follow-up email about Joey Votto that brought something to light that I had not even realized before. So I'm looking forward to talking about that in a little while. We had a question about summer home run rates too, which I think is right in your wheelhouse as our resident ball expert. So looking forward to digging into that

among other things. How was your weekend? We had a nice close COVID exposure in the the house so we were actually at a pool party when we found out that um somebody who'd been in our house the night before had just tested positive so we were like hey bye bye everybody bye everybody like grabbing all your stuff as quickly as possible uh sorry hope we didn't get too close to you don't hate us uh so far we've been testing negative but also that person dropped off uh a dog that i think needs a c-pap machine uh i don't think i've heard a dog make noises like this at night so i'm just

i'm exhausted and of course when you're exhausted and testing, you're like, oh, is this COVID tired? Right. Yeah. You're tired. Or stupid snoring dog tired. Yeah. I think when you're on watch for any sort of symptoms like that, you sit there and you're like, oh, I woke up and my throat was dry.

Was it dry or was it sore? So you drink a gallon of water and you're like, is peeing a lot of symptoms? My stomach doesn't feel good. Why do I feel bad? I feel weird now. It's so hard not to pee in your head.

I think allergies are so hard because I think one thing that we could just do is like, oh yeah, if you've got anything going on and any symptoms, then stay home. Like, well, let's have robust healthcare and stay-at-home policies any symptoms then stay home like well let's let's have robust health care and and stay at home policies and then you're like but allergies i felt that last week when i was at home in wisconsin the tree pollen was off the charts high so the day after

i got there my nose was itchy and my nose started running and i'm sitting there i'm like this doesn't make any sense i mean mean, like I'm fine. I'm totally fine. Nose is running the whole time. Then add that I'm a hypochondriac, which just makes it even better. I'm dying. I'm just trying to make sure that I'm not doing dumb things. So I'm sitting there.

I'm like, this is pure allergies. This is the itch that I've had my entire life living in Wisconsin. I remember this itch. Spring allergies. This is familiar. I'm going to be fine. Came back to California. Was here for about a day. The itch that I've had my entire life living in Wisconsin. I remember this itch. Spring allergies. It's familiar. I'm going to be fine. Came back to California. Was here for about a day.

The itch was gone after one day. Different stuff blooming here that I'm apparently not allergic to. Oh, give it time. There's your allergy talk. Yeah, I'll develop the allergies. I'm looking forward to that. But yeah, stay safe out there. Obviously, a lot of stuff going on.

Just do what you can to keep everybody around you safe the interesting thing that we're looking at right now is the recurring theme of every may that i've ever hosted a podcast and it's the lack of a mutual agreement on values and i think compared to draft season when we have nfbBC ADP and multiple full sets of projections to look at, we don't have as much of a common ground. And I think the other thing that makes it more challenging now to find values that make sense to everybody is that the needs are so different. Like if you start looking at trades and trying to work out a deal with someone, the positional balance has to be achieved. And then within that, you still have to come up with a combination of players or even a one-for-one swap where both sides feel like they're getting something equal.

And just to draw on some recent experience, the aforementioned NL Labor Disaster Squad that I built, I was trying to make a trade coming out of the weekend. It's full of guys that are currently by in-season projection supposed to still be decent players. Trent Grisham, I think by the bat in an NL only league is supposed to be a 10 or $11 player the rest of the season. Good luck trading him for someone who's playing well and is expected to return similar value the rest of the season, right? There's all these little wrinkles about, well, he's underperforming right now. Are the projections wrong? And I think those are the right kinds of questions that you need to ask with underperforming players. And it's part of why you have to

sometimes accept getting 50 cents on the dollar. That might be an example of where a six or seven dollar player is the best that you're going to get back in a trade because the one somewhat common evaluation tool we have, a rest of season projection, you know, through the fan graphs auction calculator, that might be the closest thing to the Beckett that we actually have for fantasy trades and for pickups this time of year. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a, it's a good place to start. I mean, you can always have your disagreements with it,

but at least you'll know whether it's within a dollar or two. I don't tend to try to be absolutist about it and just be like this is the number therefore i will not trade with you especially with players that are you know doing something differently or young or you know may not be captured by it but um you know and then there's i guess there's also um you know it's a little bit of foibles with relievers where it's like, oh, this says that your reliever that you're giving me is worth like $1 over the rest of the season,

and my Brian Reynolds is worth $12. I won't do that trade. I don't know. If you need saves, it doesn't matter as much what the auction calculator says if that's an urgent need for you and you believe that the player you're getting back is going to give you saves more than the auction calculator says if that's an urgent need for you and you believe that the player you're getting back is going to give you saves more than the auction calculator does so there are fringe cases where it's not that useful but i think uh for the most part uh i want to know what it says you know yeah it's just a good starting point at the very least and within a few dollars in either

direction you could still come up with something that works. I do think the standings gained points concept is really important when you're thinking about moves you would make and when you would stray from those values. I think if you look at stolen bases in most leagues, look at wins in most leagues, saves in most leagues, usually they're pretty well clustered. Steals are probably even more valuable now than they are on draft day. There's already a tax, a premium that you're paying for guys that run in February and in March.

And I think the price goes up even higher when you start to deal for those players in May and June. Unless you're dealing with someone who maybe knows they're not going to win the category and the whole room knows it. So then they can't command that premium. But there should be enough willing buyers where they can get something really good in the return but that's part of how i came to a conclusion like i don't know two weeks ago and i made a move for starling marte in a league and part of my calculation was that the points he could give me in steals average runs and rbis looking at him versus the player, my last outfielder that was currently in my lineup, it was a huge jump. And I know it's not a perfect way to calculate how much of an

impact there's going to be, but if you see a 30-point difference in projected average, you see 30 more runs and 20 more RBIs and 15 more steals, you can kind of look and see how much would that change my fate in each category and i saw a player that was probably worth 15 plus standings points relative to what i was using because the league was so deep so i do think that's probably the the main thing i would use as i'm starting to hone in on which players to trade for is just seeing how i can make up the most ground with the the most impactful sort of move yeah um i think that's i think it's time for that is for sure um it's just uh it's hard it's hard sometimes to like you have to also judge what

other people will be trying to do right and so you can be like oh it's obvious i can make a lot of ground up in case that's where i i stand in a couple places because i maybe tyler wells it up too much or drew rasmussen up too much but like i can use case well the problem is i'm going for two starters like everybody else you know and they're going to be doing two starters and so it is it may look like it's the easiest place but we're all acting the same way um i don't have an answer for that by the way it's just it's something that i've noticed as i've been chasing k's i'm like oh man i can see which teams are also getting like if i have three two starters i'm looking at and i get one i can see which other teams got the other two yeah i mean I mean, the downside to chasing the two-start pitchers,

aside from everyone else wanting those guys. They're not as good, right? They're not as good. So you can get the boost in two categories, but you can drop in the other two categories. So that's where I think your current placement, I've mentioned before, being near the bottom in ratios, I think now is a time where you can start to be more aggressive with volume you're already that low it's going to take some things going right for

you to get out of that hole and be really competitive in the category you've got a better chance of getting lucky with volume than you do just kind of grinding it out with the core that you have so i i think that's that's a more common problem. would not use because you're doing really well in ERA and whip, and you don't want to lose the top standing spot that you have in one or both of those categories. Yeah, I guess I'm in first place in our Brit league. And I, the only person who has a better ERA and whip is you in second place.

So I can only gain, you know, two points by chasing you. And yet I've got a 2.85 ERA in this 10-team league. And the next best team has a 3.08 or a 3.06. So I've got a lot of more I can do in the other direction in terms of my ERA can drop, you know, point two, you know, points before I'm really in trouble, you know, of losing even one point in the ERA. And so I'm definitely in the position where, you know, I can see that coming. I have a ton of people in front of me in terms of Ks. It's 20 Ks, but they still have that.2 cushion,

so I'm going after, I'm streaming in this league. I have a spot at the bottom where I just pick up pitchers that I like that are pitching in the next couple of days. It's not a weekly lineup, so I'm just sort of filtering, picking matchups I like, and because it's a 10-team league, there's a lot of guys out there. So I'm hoping to gain some ground in Ks there and not lose much in terms of ERA and WIP.

Yeah, and I think if you are currently winning in the ratios categories and you get to these two-start weeks that generally are coveted, but you've got lower-end skills players, kind of your fringy on the roster, off the roster, or at least in and out of your lineup sorts of guys, and they're catching the Dodgers, the Yankees, the Astros,

some of the top lineups in the league, at least for one of those two turns, it is tempting to sit them down. A lot of it comes down to who is your alternative. Like right now, I'm not throwing low end starters against the dodgers especially i'm avoiding that at all costs i think meryl kelly was a good example of someone who just got rocked recently by them but they putting up more than five runs a game you think he gets them back

again gets them again this week too so it meryl kelly the meryl kelly correction fortnight is in full swing right now all All that is to say, you may have to just absorb some of those guys because you might not have someone on your bench that you can use instead. So I don't think it's going to ruin your season if you start one guy in a two-start week where he's got a bad matchup like that and you're currently winning ERA and WIP.

But if you keep chasing volume with that lead in pursuit of maximizing wins in Ks and saying, yeah, I'm just going to keep blowing past everybody because I've got ratios locked down. I think it's early enough where you can screw it up by overplaying volume. I think it is possible. So I'm not in full-on huddle around the ball, take a knee sort of mode with ratios, but I'm not totally willy-nilly about it if I'm winning those categories right now. I think I might have a line for you, actually. Yes.

So this week I was looking at two starters, and I ended up with a fair amount of Chris Archer. He's got, I think, Detroit and Cleveland. Detroit and Kansas City. Detroit and Kansas City. i was excited about it i was like this is a good picture good you know against you know two offenses where i like the matchup i was excited about that um i think you could even pick that up even if you're protecting your ratios and you wanted to you know get some more k's right i think that i think that's a pretty good picture and pretty good starts pretty good parks you know what i mean like the other one

uh was kyle freeland now i think he's an okay pitcher and i think he's at pittsburgh i think he's away twice at washington those are decent matchups. I think I would not pick up Kyle Freeland if I was protecting ratios. Right. If you're protecting ratios. If you're not, if you're just neutral on ratios, then Freeland was a viable two-start option

for you this week. Yeah, I got him in a couple places. So I ended up with a fair amount of Archer, but in places where I wasn't as desperate for Ks, I ended up with Ronzi Contreras as a pickup over Kyle Freeland because I just figured I don't know when he's starting. And that's not great in a given week, but I like him better as a pitcher and I'd rather have him long term. I like him better as a pitcher, and I'd rather have him long-term. The other name that comes up, I built this spreadsheet yesterday just tinkering with stuff, location, pitching plus, opponent strikeout rate, and opponent WRC plus to try and help navigate the pile of pitchers

that were out there. In most of my leagues, 15-team mixed leagues and deeper, it's gross every single week. There's maybe two or three pitchers you actually like. You get a Ruanzi Contreras, you get a Brady Singer, you get someone like that you look at and say, yeah, something might be different, or this situation's good, this guy's skills are actually pretty good, so you push for those guys, and everybody else is just sort of not hurting yourself, or which temporary option will be

just good enough. Jordan Lyles popped up in a few of my leagues. He was at the Yankees and at the Red Sox for his two matchups. And that, that to me was below the Archer line, even though Chris Archer, I think has some, some in-start workload restrictions that are going to make it very difficult for him to get maybe even more than one win in any given two start week.

Yeah. It can be folly. I mean, it's there's, there's traps, you know, all the time. An Archer,

for example, is maybe a four inning pitcher. That's what he's been pretty much every start. It's 18 batters faced or less. And because there's probably a one starter out there that might pitch more innings yeah yeah maybe but good luck fine good luck guessing on that one is it aaron savalle against the tigers like it could be but go ahead take that chance see how that one works out for you i mean i do think with archer the problem is that the location is still not great, right?

It's below average command. And I think you need to have... And two pitches. You need to be really efficient if you're going to only go through the lineup twice and get through five innings to be eligible for a win. I mean, it would change so much for Archer if the Twins would just throw an opener in front of him. If they threw an opener in front of him, he'd go from constantly available in deep mix leagues

to someone that people would actually want to have on their rosters, even with some of the ratio risk that he carries. It's something that's reflected in Pitching Plus. If you're in the document, it's very interesting to see these guys. Archer kind of illustrates the thing which is uh he's got a 115 stuff plus 98 command plus and a 99.4 pitching plus you'd think those things wouldn't add up the same way but uh and this was a decision we made when we made the model uh we decided stuff plus would not uh consider platoon splits i'm not sure that's the right decision. It's still something I debate.

However, if you use the whole suite of all three, and Archer is at 400 pitches, so now all three numbers have become stable, you can see that Pitching Plus does consider platoon splits on shapes of pitches. So it's saying, yes, Chris Archer has a good fastball slider. However, he's going to be platoon risky, and he doesn't have good command. Therefore, he's basically an average pitcher. And right next to him, this is really interesting, Tyler Anderson has an 89 stuff plus, a 105 location plus, and virtually the same pitching plus. Tyler Anderson has lots of different pitches,

doesn't have the platoon risk, has the command, has lower stuff. So, you know, there's a lot of different ways to be successful in pitching. And I don't even think this model captures all of them, of course, but, you know, it is interesting to put those guys up against each other. And I've started sorting, if you're in the Google Doc,

I've started sorting by pitching plus among all the pitchers that have at least 300 pitches thrown you know who else bothers me right now since we're on the the ratio train and pitchers that are just frustrating Drew Smiley whose stuff and location and pitching plus numbers are pretty similar to Anderson's I think just a tick better he was a two-star guy this week, and it was at the Reds and at the White Sox. And I've had Smiley on rosters more than I would like to admit.

You said no. I've nudged him in in a few leagues where I either had him or I went at it. It was that at Reds one I didn't like. He's got the home run possibility. He has the home run problem. That is the main issue.

And what I was looking at, again, I was looking at K percentages versus lefties and WRC plus versus lefties. And I know that can still be pretty noisy because even through 40 games, how many lefties have teams seen? Can we really say that a team is very good or very bad? And he's a really weird lefty too.

He's over the top, no wiggle. There's not many lefties like him. Yeah. The Reds, though, have been atrocious against lefties so far. I realize they've had a lot of guys missing, so that's part of it. And I think that was enough to nudge him in. All right. White Sox are good against lefties, so the matchup sort of evened out that way.

But that was the last little bit of information I saw. Like, wow, a 68 WRC good against lefties, so the matchup's sort of even out that way. But that was the last little bit of information I saw. Like, wow, a 68 WRC plus against lefties. I'm watching Smiley because I was like, I can't risk it. I took Kyle Freeland over Drew Smiley. Well, and if you gave me the choice between Tyler Anderson and Drew Smiley, I'll give up a little bit in the model and take Anderson, given the matchups at the Nats and at the D-backs, especially much easier environments with the Nats.

We're not talking about peak summer yet. I think he must have been owned. I didn't see him available. He was more rostered. But I think Anderson was already – he was probably the guy that you're looking at at the bottom of your roster. You're like, yeah, two-star guy, pretty good. Drew Smiley, okay, yeah, I could pick him up.

If you can only use one, it's Anderson for me, even though they look really similar on paper. Yeah, I have an interesting situation in AL Labor where nobody wants to trade with me because I'm way out in front. And I have a roster management situation where I've got surplus and I want to overpay. I really want to like two for one because I've got just too much, too many players.

And nobody wants to do it because they see me coming a mile away. Two-for-ones are not the greatest thing in fantasy. So managing that roster surplus is difficult. And the way that I was trying to explain it to my brother-in-law, and he said, especially because in certain times, you can see a roster crunch happening in real time, and the other guys can see it too crunch happening in real time and other guys can see it too. They're like, oh, you're about to get Kyle Lewis and you're getting Josh Naylor

off the IL this week. You are stuck and you're coming to me and trying to do two for one. I know I can see you coming a mile away. Let me give you this poo-poo and this pee pee pee and we're done thank you give me your good players um and uh so my brother-in-law is like oh so right now you're stuck between choosing between a bad deal now and a worse deal later like yeah yes that's where i'm at right now yeah i mean sometimes the the answer is to just do nothing in those cases even though you you want to make them. Which is what I chose to do this week. I have Matt Duffy at middle infield right now. He's choosing to do nothing. For one week, that won't completely burn you.

But yeah, I'm finding the balance in monoleagues especially is really difficult to strike via trade. If you're desperate for something, you're usually going to lose value overall getting someone to agree to a deal just because they have less incentive to deal than you do and the specific needs just don't line up very often. So that is something I found to be really difficult. And every time you're like,

yo, you could drop that player. I could give you these two players and you could drop that player. I'm looking at the player. They look at that player and go, oh, but he could be good. Just give him another week or two. They stashed him for a reason, especially in a really, really deep league.

Those leagues, I almost think the Mono League is the most dangerous league to fall in love with a player in because the reason to cut a player is basically that the player is no longer on a roster. You have to be so amazingly bad to be droppable i have been a competitive i like him but like yeah yeah yeah i've missed out on rujneto door you know so um yeah missed out that's that's that's what you did you missed out but i i it is something that comes up in chats, and it's something that I think people need to do more of when they're trying to make a trade

is really put yourself in the other person's shoes and just try to imagine you running their team and what you would see them as needing. And they give a pretty good offer from the beginning there's nothing worse than starting off with someone and it's just an awful offer from the beginning and you're just then you just don't want to do it anymore you know you're like thank you move on let's get to another question this is a trade related question that came in from will will write sometimes we're thinking about trading in my league i struggle to nail down the value of

a deal that includes pitchers and hitters. Do you have a go-to rule that you use to translate hitter value to pitcher value or vice versa? I was just offered Dylan Carlson for my Taylor Rodgers and my immediate reaction is no way because I'm not very high on Carlson, but I don't truly know how the value of those two players compares. I love

the show. Keep up the good work. I think Will's instincts in this particular instance were right and then we learned on Monday morning, Dylan Carlson just went on the injured list, so that would have nixed it anyway. But I would say that this is kind of one of those things where, much like I was saying with steals, where they're almost more valuable than they were on draft day right now. Saves, I think, are especially true.

If Taylor Rodgers was an $18 closer on draft day, he's pitched really well. So he's up a couple of bucks based on that. The health looks good. He's not at any risk of losing the job right now. Right. And the league as a whole looks like such a mess for saves. It just feels like saves are not coming from the liners.

And all the other options around him that valued him at 18 have gotten worse. A lot of them have gotten worse. Right. So you could arguably say that taylor rogers in a trade is more like a 25 player right now like that's what you could reasonably expect back in the return so you could push rogers for the equivalent of a third round bat in a mixed league i mean the types of guy like a if we're a mixed league is x Xander Bogarts for Taylor Rodgers a ridiculous trade value that's like imbalanced right now?

Listen, that face that I made is mostly just because I don't like trading for saves. And this is partially why, because I agree with you in terms of how the market works and in terms of like our general conversationational evaluation,

I would just never do that. There's no way I'm giving you Xander Morris for Tyler Rodgers. However, I guess I could see it the more the deeper the league gets, the more it's like, oh, one closer could make a difference. If I had zero closers in an AL only league and you could give me Tyler Rodgers, it wouldn't work. Unless it was before the trade. I know. I know. But let's say you could give me Jordan Romano for Xander Bogarts in an

AL only. I mean, I could see it maybe. If I had zero closers and somehow an MI glut or somebody that could at least or more likely tyler rogers and your crappy mi for xander bogarts and my you know guy i picked up jp fire rising right either way the point is is just you can look at you can look at a combination of rest of season value and then standing gain points and kind of get a feel for it and say, actually, Steele saves. I'm going to bump it up a couple of bucks,

and I don't think you're going to get turned down by everybody. I think you're going to find that there are people willing to make that move because they know the impact. I think you can also feel your way to it more intuitively by just thinking about top 10 at their position. So if you were just looking at Carlson and Rodgers, is Rodgers top 10 in his position and is Carlson top 10 in his position? Right.

And for outfielders, I guess you'd stretch it to, what, top 30? Just multiply by three because there's three times as many. Yeah. But even then, Carlson fails the test. Right. Rodgers, yes. Carlson, no. That's another good approximation.

So hopefully that's helpful. I mean, a lot of trades end up working that way because the imbalance that two rosters have is I drafted too much hitting, you drafted too much pitching, we can help each other out. The goal, I go into trades with more of a goal of win-win. I want to make a good deal with you. That way, both of our teams get better. That way, next time we've got a need, we're going to make a trade.

If I burn you in a trade, you might remember that and not want to deal with me next time. It's the same as getting awful offers, right? Yeah. You can see those coming a mile away, and you're like, oh, man, this guy again. I hopefully know who's listening. It's's like you're that guy i don't think i am i really do try to like have better offers people yeah people think you are that guy i doubt it but maybe somebody listening devil's rejects hit up the group chat tell me how wrong i am thanks a lot for uh that question will you don't don't shatter

you know his confidence uh at this point i've got an email here from jack and it's a question about tommy edmund and he was looking at tommy edmund versus ozzy albee he's looking at their projected game power and raw power based on the fan graph, scouting reports, career walk rates, career strikeout rates, exit velocity numbers, barrel rates. And there are a lot of similarities between Tommy Edmund and Ozzie Albies. The key difference, if you look back at like a three-year comparison going back to 2019 now, is you see twice as many home runs from Albies. And part of the reason is that Tommy Edmund hits the ball on the ground more. Maybe the other part of the reason is the park is a more difficult place to hit.

That doesn't, I mean, that's not all of the difference. That's just partially the difference. So the gist of the question is, what do you make of Tommy Edmund? Is he a tweak away from being even more like Ozzy Albies, maybe closing the gap on the power? Because Edmund was one of those players that back during draft season, it seemed like more people were out at his price than in. He was kind of a consensus, he's fine, but I'm going to take someone else instead,

or he's going to be in the bottom third of the order, so I'm not interested. And now, I mean, Carlson's hurt, but even before that, things had flipped. Edmund was back in that more prominent spot in the lineup, and he's had a great start to the season through the first 40-plus games. So curious what you think about the comparison that Jack made and if you do think Tommy Edmund might have one more level. Yeah, I don't know that he does. I don't know that he does.

I mean, he has pushed his barrel rate to the top, and one of the reasons why this comparison works is a little bit of recency bias where Albies' barrel rate is one of his worst and Edmund's one of his best. I think if you kind of look, like if you looked at it going into the season, you would have a different sense of their barrel rates because Albies has had 9% barrel rates in 2020 and 2021 uh whereas

edmund was uh more in the four percent right so we're talking about a guy who hits twice as many barrels now you add in he he plays in atlanta which is conducive to homers and edmund plays in a park that actually reduces homers more than almost any other park in baseball. I think it's like second or third worse. So I just don't. And then my last thing I wanted to add is that Edmund is 27 years old and has played 1,400 plate appearances in the big leagues. So I think we have a decent sense of where he is. Maybe this year he'll hit 15 homers because he has one of the best barrel rates. Maybe this year he'll hit 15 homers because he has one of the best barrel rates.

And maybe this year Albies, who is showing one of his worst barrel rates, will only hit 22 or something. 24. It might be one of the closest they've been. I just don't think they're actually that comparable in terms of power. The barrel rates are pretty different. Blown away that Tommy Edmund has a 140 WRC+. That is not something I saw coming. I realize it's only a quarter of a season. 10 for 11 is a base stealer.

If we're talking about which one's the better, if they're comparable hitters in real life, then actually I think they're way closer than people think. Yes, you might even prefer Edmond, especially with the way that he's taking walks. Yeah, that's the thing. The walk rate is way up right now. I'm wondering if the hard hit rate between the two players

is actually going to end up being closer than expected too. I mean, Tommy Edmond's got a 35.3% hard hit rate. Ozzie Albee's 33.7 over the last three seasons combined. Oh, yeah. Okay. I was just looking. This year's Albee's at 24%. That's pretty awful.

I can't believe he even still has a 5% barrel rate. I mean, one thing that he does is when he hits the ball hard, it's in the air. I mean, that's what I see when I look. He's getting a lot out of a smaller hard hit rate than Edmund. Then Edmund, when he hits it hard, he hits on the ground. That's part of the story here.

Over the course of the last three years, Albies just swings more. He swings more pitches in the zone. He swings more pitches outside the zone. Edmund makes more contact in the zone. So I don't know. There's just some pretty interesting things here in these profiles where I think more people than not

really like Albies because of his age, the lineup he's in. There's plenty to like there. I don't think there were a lot of questions about his ADP, but there were a lot of questions about where Edmund was going. I think the best news about this Edmund barrel rate to where it is right now is that it pulls him out of the Whitmerryfield

territory. You know what I mean? This is not a guy who's going to have a.90 ISO anytime soon. In 2020, you might have thought so because he had a.118 ISO and a 3% barrel rate. You might have been like, this is Whitmerryfield all over again like right that's what i thought utility guy was a younger whitmerryfield yeah um and uh i think he's pulled himself out of that i mean a four percent

barrel rate the next year and a seven percent barrel rate this year with a with uh an increase in raw power as judged by maximum exit velocity, keeping his swing strike rate low at the same time. Like I think he's pulled himself out of that. I would, I would consider him as a better bet to age gracefully into his early thirties, more than Whitmer if you want to be going forward. Thanks a lot for that question,

Jack, we had a followup email come in from Ani and she pointed out that Joey Votto is actually using a new style bat throughout spring training and into April. There was a story that C. Trent Rosecrans wrote for The Athletic. I completely missed it. It was the hockey puck knob bat, and he ditched it just before landing on the COVID IL for two weeks, which is pretty interesting. So Ani broke it down into three parts. She's like Votto part one, new bat, 30% K rate.

Votto part two, sick with COVID for a couple of weeks. Votto part three, the start of his 40 home run season. I mean, he said he's still got plenty of time to lead the league in bill rate. 39 to go. But I didn't realize he was using a different bat. And I'm just surprised that he was even messing with that at this stage of his career, coming off the season that he just had.

But that's who he is. He's a crazy person. Constant tinker. Yeah. I mean, he's always, like he's trying to set up pitchers by doing one thing early in the season and then doing something completely different

in the second part of the season. He's admitted as much to me. You know, so he's, yeah. i think that just makes him really hard to analyze you know it's a just yet another example of why i know his numbers don't look good he's chasing more than he's ever chased uh the barrel rate is way down from the last where it's been the last two seasons um you know there's a. The K rate is just astronomical. The swing strike rate is astronomical. All these things are somewhat meaningful in smaller samples.

So, yeah, I get it. Except it's Joey Votto. He could wake up tomorrow and decide not to swing at a single pitch outside of the zone. There's a thing he could do. But are you interested where available? I mean, there's some 10- and 10 and 12 team leagues where, of course, he's hit the wire. There's leagues where you could trade for

him right now. He'd fit really well on the NL Labor Disaster Squad because he's an underperformer right now. I held him through in those 12 team leagues. Actually, in most of my leagues, I held him through this. I'm going to give him the next two weeks before uh i turf him

but uh he's also sometimes in those 15 team leagues you know there's not much uh that there to replace him um but what i have tried to do is in the meantime especially since it hurt i've been trying to like audition guys that could replace him right so at some point i may just decide uh you know one of these other guys that i picked up in the meantime is better than him i might have an example for i mean rowdy telez was an example right um and at this point yes i would i think i have rowdy ahead of uh v. But there's always CI, right? So then you're like, okay, who's my guy in CI? And then it's like, well, I'd rather keep Votto just in case.

I hope he becomes available in some of my leagues. I don't think it's going to happen, but if he does, I'm interested. So my main is a Votto team. In the meantime, while he was out, I picked up Juan Yepes, Michael Chavis,

and I have Nate Lowe. So I'm keeping Votto, right? You keep Votto around. Chavis did kind of stand out to me this weekend when I was digging around looking for depth bats, though, because he's he's doing a few things better than he has in the past we know that there are multiple spots in that lineup right now in Pittsburgh that are you know revolving doors so if he hits he'll play and he's

been playing pretty consistently and Chavis was kind of an all bat sort of profile not that long ago K rates down so far under 25 percent this season easily the best that it's been during his time in the big leagues he's always been a decent barreler even as a part-time player right his career is like 8.4 he's at 7.6 right now he's chasing a little bit more than i'd like but you know decent barrel rate again i i've yeah picked him up in a couple places also because he's mic i first base second base so he can cover a lot he can cover like three or four positions from a bench spot and yeah i think the number one thing for me has actually been usage like he's playing a fair amount you know and he's playing i think against

lefties it must be he's third in the order and against righties sixth in the order but that's good enough i mean it's better than being out of the order against, against righties. So I'm, I'm definitely watching Michael Chavis. And I think, you know, over the next two weeks, it could become a situation where if, if low starts getting going, because, you know, Donnie Ecker is doing his work in Texas. It's just taken a little while longer. They had a three week spring, right?

And so what you saw with Cole Calhoun in the last couple weeks, Cole Calhoun, about two weeks into the season, changed the way he stood at the plate. He brought his feet closer together. Then he had a two-week stretch where he hit five homers, right? Yeah.

He went pretty wild and popped up on the wire and probably got scooped up this weekend anywhere he was available. And I was so annoyed because Donnie told me about this adjustment that he'd made with Cole Calhoun right after I dropped Cole Calhoun in like the two or three places. So I was a little annoyed. But I kind of, and I think Lowe was doing so well at the beginning

where it didn't feel like maybe there was that urgency that Cole Calhoun had to figure something out. But Lowe has really taken a step back and has really been struggling. So I'm hoping there's an adjustment there for him that they're working on that will come through. But this week, I think Lowe's on the bench and chavis is in and um you know i guess if low does turn something around and vato doesn't uh i guess i could have some uh lineups where it's uh chavis and low and yep as and uh and vato's on the bench so you know uh i had to nurse him through this in 12 team leagues. I could see, you know,

my 12 team dynasty league. I, I, if I didn't have a lot of IL slots, I could just see him dropping him. Um, I was using belt and to Les, uh,

while he was out. And, uh, so I just actually just swapped belt and Votto on the IL and we'll just keep it going. But if you didn't have that IL ability, I could see dropping him. I understand. But I keep a little place warm in my heart for Joey Votto.

Compared to so many of the other cornerbacks that you're trying to wish cast to a more prominent role or to more consistent production, I feel like you're not wishing as much on Votto. It's a little easier to talk yourself into things happening. It's like a long-ass track record. Yeah. Right.

Michael Chavis, you're like, dude, don't go back to striking out a third of the time. Right. You don't really draw walks, so please draw walks. And I can see that 40% reach rate, that 40% chase rate. So I could come any time. Yeah. But thanks a lot for that email, Ani.

Let's get to a question about Gary Sanchez. Has anything changed? I think it was an email from John. If you look at the profile, I mean, at a glance to me, this looks an awful lot like typical Gary Sanchez. And part of the problem with Gary Sanchez is that when you strike out nearly 30% of the time and you don't run particularly well, you're going to have a low average. He doesn't walk a ton year over year,

at least he's not walking this year. So the OBP is down right now. I think the walk rate could still creep up a little bit. So I'm not looking at the walk rate being down and saying that's changed for the worst and that's who he is going forward. I just feel like his, his margin for error in the batting average category is just really slim because the type of player that he is and everything looks really similar to me than it has in the batting average category is just really slim because of the type of player that he is.

Everything looks really similar to me than it has in the past, even though he's playing pretty well right now. Yeah, I think in some ways he's doing the... If you don't have great bat-to-ball skills, then sometimes being more aggressive can be useful because you get to that fastball before you strike out. So he is being more aggressive right now. Swing rate is up.

And it's mostly on zone swing. So it's been aggressive in the zone is what he's been. And I think it's doing him well. The 56% fly ball rate says to me that his batting average is being attacked from both sides. It's being attacked by the strikeout rate, but it's also being attacked by his launch angle. And I think once you get over 50% fly ball rate, you start having pop-ups. You start having really low BABIPs, and that's something that applies to Sanchez. Career 253 BABIP, career 43% fly ball rate, career 27% strikeout rate.

So that's all those reasons he has a career 229 batting average. I don't think there's much more that can go right for him. I think this is who he is. And I think in some cases it was just like, hey, let's not continue to batter him for who he isn't. Let's just take this guy and appreciate him for who he is. Yeah, and I think that's happening a little more now that he's got the fresh start in Minnesota.

My question for you, where do you think Gary Sanchez ranks in the auction calculator rest of season for the bat x among catchers uh you know because I I think they did an adjustment to the run value uh the run environment in the bat x so I would guess that league average batting average projected forward for uh for most people is like a 230 so his 215 average probably wouldn't hurt as bad as it would seem. And so I'm going to guess like top five, top four. He's seventh.

I mean, it's Will Smith, Dalton Varshow, Wilson Contreras, JT Realmuto. How about that? Dalton Varshow at number two. Realmuto's falling off. Sal Perez and then Yasmany Grandal before you get to Sanchez. That's still good. That's really good. I'm happy in my draft champions leagues.

I've got a couple of Sanchez. Yeah, more playing time than a lot of other guys that get kind of stuck behind him at the position. If the league as a whole is going to hit for a lower average. Maybe his batting average doesn't hurt as bad because everyone else, yeah, exactly what you were just saying. Context is better. And then the the team the team is better right so your runs and rbis not not compared to where he was last year with the yankees but just compared to other catchers in the pool the

twins i think have an above average offense that bodes well for the counting stats as well and that's huge when you're talking about a difference in playing time and a difference in lineup quality so not a lot has changed, but just a good player that's just getting to be himself, I think, in Minnesota. It's become rarer just to be able to hit home runs. I am interested to see how this transitions into the summer months, though. And that was our next question. This question came in from Jerry.

I don't know what that's from. the uh the question from jerry two pods ago you know mentioned looking at home run rate outliers with good k minus b percentages as good targets that got me wondering don't home run rates typically increase as we move into the summer or is this a thing of the past with the new ball and humidors so i think based on what you wrote along with ken rosenthal a few weeks ago i if i remember correctly the guidance there was the run environment could actually change a lot because the humidor is going to make the ball react a lot differently when we get to the consistent 80 plus degree days with high levels of humidity around the league. So what is a sluggish power environment now could swing considerably once the weather

has warmed up all over. Yeah. And I doubt myself more with every day. However, we have started to see some nine to eights and, and tend to, yeah, I think we've seen some 20-run games and stuff. So I think that there has been a tick up in the run environment. And the theory, I think, is still sound, which is just that, you know, in the early drier months, the humidor, because the humidor is just set to one level, the humidor will actually be adding water. And then in the later

wetter months, it would be taking water out relative to last year. And so if you took water out of an August ball last year, then you should increase the distance that it goes. So then there's just the natural trend. You know, the ball has been a big deal in the last few years. But this is interesting because this was put together by Patrick Brennan, who he does good stuff. What is he on Twitter? I've got to give him the right love here. Painting Corners or something? Patrick Brennan.. Painting Corners or something? Patrick Brennan.

At Painting Corner. You know, looks for a Twitter handle. Should be on the Rates and Barrels bingo card. Anyway, he's with Baseball Office of the Phillies now, but he used to write for Beyond the Box score, RIP. And he had this great piece where he just looked at the home run for fly ball. He also looked at temperature. Temperature peaks in july uh and and august but the june july august those are the

the peak uh year the peak times for for temperature some of the places other like for example san antonio peaks in july i don't know why that's on this for for baseball but uh uh other places peak in august so uh if you look at league-wide home runs home runs per fly ball by month which patrick did and he did it from 2002 to 2019 so it only has one juiced ball year in it right um and and we might be out of the juice ball era again so this is relevant to us april home runs for fly ball is 10.5%, May is 10.7%, June is 11%, July is 11%, August is 11.3%, and September is 10.8%. So we're just now getting into peak home runs per fly ball territory. And then you may have this aspect of the humidor pulling water out of the ball. So we may just have, in the interest of consistency, created a more inconsistent month-to-month situation in baseball, where maybe our Aprils

will just be down big, and our Augusts will be up big. So that's still a possibility. That's something I wrote about when I wrote about on Friday, you know, hitters that are adjusting to this new ball and hitting more fly balls, hitting more line drives instead of fly balls. I hope they made the right decision. We'll see in August. I was going to ask if there's any way to possibly leverage this.

Are you looking for pitchers who have shown significant improvement in home run rate to this point in the season and saying you know what these are the players that i'm looking to get rid of these are the guys i'm looking to trade away oh oh oh i see you were saying a different way to to trade away guys who had real low home run rate so far yeah get away from the players that have moved the most. And there's already a lot of noise and home run rate over. That's what I thought you were. I thought you were saying like target pitchers that have improved in their

home run rate. Yes. I wouldn't do that because there's so much noise in home run rate, as you said, normally. And then you've had to that noise with this humidor situation. So yes, I,

I would, but I, I think another interesting question. i do think uh i'm in trouble a little bit by not being behind in k's because i think that the two-start streaming strategy is going to get a lot harder because you're going to be taking these fringe guys and now you're going to be throwing them in august and being like uh oh you know smiley in cincinnati in in july or whatever you know then you're gonna be like oops there's three homers five runs three innings thank you very much um and uh so i i think that like an aggressive april streaming strategy

may become more viable with if the humidor is going to change the shape of the season like what if in the future home runs per fly ball rate are 10% in April but still 11.5 in August you know what I mean if it just kind of became more stratified

then you would want to react to that by being more aggressive with streaming early get ahead in k's uh and then kind of protect uh like sort of work on your ratios after that by being uh having more relievers in your lineup and such that sort of deal um and then the other thing uh that i that i think is interesting to me is you know if we start to see this like crazy to me is you know if we start to see this like crazy july thing would you love to trade a guy who has uh you know a great strikeout rate let me see if i can come up with a guy but let's say would you write to to uh trade a guy who's a great strikeout rate but right now uh is maybe

getting lucky on on home runs for someone who has a great ground ball rate, like right now. You know what I mean? So let's see. Somebody who's been getting lucky on home runs maybe. Scooble? Verlander. I did buy K-BB.

Scooble? Oh, compared to his previous home run rates? Compared to previous norms, right? Like there could be, with Scooble I can tell myself, yes, there's probably some skills improvement. He's changing his pitches. He's doing things differently, but he's not going from a two homers per nine guy to

a.4 homers per nine guy. That's probably not a new baseline. Oh, he's looking in the wrong category. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, Gossman. Gallon?.18. Zach Gallon, pretty big improvement from him. He was at 1.41 homers per nine last year. He's at.239 homers per nine so far this season. Oh, I've got the perfect name.

Carlos Carrasco. Yep, he pops on this list. .58 homers per nine? Dude, if you could trade him for someone. Now, the harder part is finding a good pitcher with ground ball rate. But if you could trade, I mean, could you trade carasco for fromber maybe not probably not getting away with that but you could just trade you could just trade carasco for a bat and just find someone that needs pitching get a bat and then flip a bat for a different pitcher here are uh some i think

some names that are actually kind of interesting brad ke. I've found I've used him a lot in streaming. 51% ground ball rate is sixth among qualified pitchers. So I think that's an interesting name to remember. Adam Wainwright. You know, maybe he's just attainable because he's old. You know? Kyle Gibson. 50% ground ball rate.

So some of these names have been pitching pretty well, but they could still be attainable. Miles Michaelis, 47% ground ball rate. Now, once you drop below 50, it's less meaningful. You do want the over 50. But there are some guys there, and they might be more useful when it comes to July. You know, they might

suddenly be somebody that you'd be more interested in. Graham Ashcraft didn't do well by the stuff model, but did get 7% ground balls in his first start. Alex Cobb, I think, is about to go on a run.

If you want to buy a low pitcher, Alex Cobb is my guy. Well, I do need to buy a low pitcher in a few leagues, so perhaps I will follow your advice and go after Cobb. I mean, the situation, of course, in San Francisco, I just like that floor so much. Same with Alex Wood. I don't have any specific reason for targeting Alex Wood. I just have him already in a league where I think he can only get better. Yeah, the velo is up. He's actually made a couple changes to the shapes in his pitches, and I think both of those guys are about to go on a run.

I would love to see it for very selfish reasons. Thanks a lot for that question, Jerry. One more question to get to. It's too late, maybe, but Michael Lorenzen, 56 ground ball rate, and he lowered his arm slot and told me he had a couple different cues to improve his sinker.

So he has a really good sinker right now, and he might be a little bit safer. He might be safer, for example, than Thor. Not intuitive, but interesting nonetheless. Thor's stuff has not come back and he's succeeding on the fact that he's throwing a lot of pitches and has command but Lorenzen's

stuff scores better than Thor's and he has the higher ground ball rate. Just an idea. Last question here comes from Rob. It's actually about ballpark shadows. Rob was watching a Padres Braves game just about 10 days ago, and it had a four o'clock Eastern start time. The announcers were talking about how in the early innings around the fourth and fifth inning, the middle innings, it would start to be a problem to have the shadows creeping in. And Rob was curious if there are other parks that have similar issues that come up and if there's any way to take advantage of that because of, you know, the sun being somewhat predictable. The sun tends to do the things you expect the sun to do.

For me, I have noticed this as a Brewers fan at Miller Park when they get this strange late afternoon start time. And that's I think this happens in a lot of parks for those late afternoon matinees. They catch that national game on the weekend. Anytime that the team doesn't ordinarily play where they have a day game, that's when you're going to probably see some weird things because the stadium wasn't necessarily designed with that game time in mind. It was designed with where's the sun at one o'clock local and where's the sun going to be setting if we're playing a night game? Those are probably the two considerations in most ballparks in terms of how they're positioned. So Miller Park gets this really badly late afternoon. It's even worse late in the season, especially if they're playing playoff games. If they have a 4 o'clock central start, the sun comes in.

It's like pitchers in the shadows, batters in the sun, or vice versa. And it does seem like it's a really difficult in the shadows batters in the sun or vice versa and it does seem like it's a really difficult situation to hit in when that happens yeah 100 percent um i i think of a few things right now i'm developing a piece um that uh i may may may take all it's all season because i'm just talking to people right now, just gathering information and opinions. But the one thing I think of is there are ballpark factors for strikeouts and walks. And normally I think people think of ballpark factors as like, oh yeah, how does the ball fly?

But I think that when you start thinking about, oh yeah, ballparks can augment strikeouts or suppress walks. Why would that be? So then my first thought was the batter's eye because, you know, I did a piece with Andrew Bagley out here where, you know, they don't have paint on the seats in the bleachers in San Francisco. So they've got these metal paintless seats and they switch to 640 start times on the weekdays right and so people are still getting there from work and so in the first couple of

innings what you'll find is the sun is coming right over the back of the ballpark and reflecting through those seats and right into the batter's eye and so part of the batter's eye which is the place behind the pitcher where you're and so part of the batter's eye which is the the place behind the pitcher where you're trying to keep you know pick up the location part of that is sun reflecting back at

you so great uh that that led justin upton to tell me that it was the worst place to hit and it was because of the batter's eye and the and the sun reflecting but then i talked to um uh steven biscotti something something i'd never heard before, which is that the batter's eyes were fine from place to place, but what he really didn't like was when the ball was lit up a certain way, like the ball itself. And so he seemed to not like domes because he said, what I really don't like, if I look, if I look at the picture and his face is

in shadow, I don't like that. Because what that means is the ball, I'm only going to see the top half of the ball in light and the bottom half of the ball is going to be in shadow. And it just leads, makes it hard to determine the spin or determine the location or just pick it up. It's just, it's the ball is lit weirdly. And that's true. That might ring true for people who watched games in the trop. The trop has, I think, this sort of straight down lighting. And, you know, Willie Damas said that he had a really hard time in the trop and it was the LED lights they put in place. So, you know, I thought of that as like somehow reflecting off the batter's eye. I was always thinking batter's eye. So, you know, I thought of that as like somehow reflecting off the batter's

eye. I was always thinking batter's eye. Now I'm thinking, oh, it's actually the nature of the lighting. So that becomes even more granular than this great letter, right? This great email we've gotten where he's talking about like literally the shadows, like you're talking about the shadows across between the pitcher and the hitter. But that means that there's other times of the day when the sun is just hitting maybe straight down maybe these 11 or 12 o'clock starts where some batters don't like that either you know because the ball is lit up weird so uh i guess what i'm saying is you may have a hard time proving this statistically because every hitter has their own thing they hate or love in terms of lighting, batter's

eyes, etc. But we did find a distinct home field advantage for San Francisco in the early innings. That their opponents scored less than most opponents do in the beginning of a game.

It's pretty interesting. The thought I had with Hadames is that you have the roof at Miller Park, or American Family Field, it's closed a lot this time of year. And now that you get to Memorial Day, the weather's warmed up quite a bit. Oh, he hadn't seen that because he got traded into the warm weather. About a year ago. So the roof was pretty much open. I mean, unless it was raining, it was probably open more than it was closed by the time he got there.

And I was looking to see, okay, beginning of this season, how are his splits at home? He's got five of his nine home runs at home, and it's only 14 out of 35 games played there. But he is hitting 192. Strikeout rate's a little higher. 18Ks and 62 plate appearances. So interesting that it's just different. Good second half when he's got that sun lighting. I just think this is,

it does go back to statistical issues that you're pointing to where it's like, it's such a small number of plate appearances. Is it meaningful? Is it predictive? It's going to be hard to say that it is, but it also seems like it couldn't possibly be nothing because seeing the ball seems pretty important in the process of hitting the ball yeah and i was talking to brett phillips about clutch um and i

think that sometimes um we have this uh feeling of like oh clutch doesn't exist because we haven't been able to prove it we haven't been able to prove it. We haven't been able to show it, right? We have no predictive stat of clutchness. So therefore, clutch doesn't exist. But Brett Phillips was like, no, man. I'm sorry. It does exist. And I've had this experience before with players.

And he was like, you know what you need to do is you need to stick a heart rate monitor on us and let us go out there. And you'll see some people have a slow heart rate and some people have a high heart rate. I was like, well, what about this idea that everybody who's made the major leagues, we've already sort of sorted through you. You guys are all clutch. Anybody who's made the major leagues. And he said, I don't know if that's true, man, because first year when i first got up my heart was racing there were times where i didn't even see the pitch and there

was the pitch was past me because i was just so in my feelings basically i was just so like yeah you know and he said you know being traded to tampa i'm living at home this is my hometown somebody wanted me they told me they wanted me they made me feel at home. This is my hometown. Somebody wanted me. They told me they wanted me. They made me feel at home. And I had some early success. It's 100% different now when I step to the plate in terms of what my heart is feeling. And I'm sorry. I think if you looked at the MVPs, that's what he's saying.

If you looked at the MVPs, if you looked at the people who do best in the clutch, you would find a lot of really slow heartbeats. Right. But see, that's where I think how you would measure clutch would be more about how you feel in a situation. The logical aspects. And less about the statistical results. But I feel like in the past, it was always a statistical thing

where it's like, oh, runners in scoring position or in October, this player does this. Like those things, which again, are small samples. You've cut it down. You've cut it down too much, yeah. Yeah, so you want to look at just how does a player actually physically respond to those situations?

Does that make that player more or less likely to be successful in any particular spot? I think it's actually sort of wild that it doesn't. Like we've, we statistically have come up with this idea of clutch, like there's actually a clutch stat and you can look. And what it basically says is, do they perform better in high leverage situations?

Like we've defined a pretty good stat. That's just not predictive. And, you know, it's kind of amazing that it's not because we designed a pretty good stat to like try to capture this. But, but I, you know, it's kind of amazing that it's not because we designed a pretty good stat to try to capture this. But, you know, I think also, you know, seasons are small samples sometimes, too. You can have a whole season of clutch opportunities and maybe you got divorced that year.

Maybe you had a big contract you were pressing that year and you were just you were doing whatever you could to to to prove that the contract was good and then the next year you calm down you know and then you'd have terrible clutch numbers one year and great clutch numbers next year maybe if we were able to put a heart monitor on you we would have noticed that you were stressed out of your eyeballs that one year and and more comfortable the next year so yeah or yeah if you weren't sleeping and we knew you weren't sleeping maybe that's why you weren't clutch because you were struggling you're struggling to stay awake you're not as focused as you possibly could be

because of of that we will have more of that study i think as we go forward because the i i was like brett you would never like you as a player you would never let the team put that heartbreak monitor on he's like i don't know, man. Probably would. There's a lot of stuff to be learned from it, and more and more teams are doing it in the low minors with all sorts of wearable technology. So all the pitchers are wearing the Moda sleeve

when they do bullpens and stuff. They know they're wearing technology right now so what's another one way of the future looking forward to to seeing more and more of that tech and and trying to learn some stuff from it hopefully we'll learn something from it someday but it might be a little ways off before we're actually talking about anything that's remotely publicly available right yeah it's a it's one of those things too where it costs the technology costs a lot and then there's an arrangement between the player and the team or at least

they want to keep it, at least the team keeps it to themselves and doesn't send it out to everybody. I don't think we're going to be getting access. Catapult is a thing that you can just wear that gives you all sorts of information about your heart rate and sleeping habits. You can wear the

what's that ring? The Novus ring or something? There's a ring that can tell you about how you slept. And there are teams that are doing all that and collecting the data and learning. But I doubt that we'll get it out here for a while. Thanks a lot for the ballpark shadows question, by the way, Rob. You got a question for a future episode. You can send that our way rates and barrels at the athletic.com or drop it in as a comment under this video on YouTube. If you're watching us on YouTube,

be sure to subscribe to the channel and hit the like button on this video. You can find, you know, on Twitter at, you know, Sarah, so you can find me at Derek van Riper. If you don't have a subscription to the athletic,

get one for $1 a month at the athleticletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Thursday. It's so good to have you back. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.