Rates & Barrels - In-Season Projections: Risers & Fallers

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

Eno and DVR discuss the D-backs' decision to recall Jordan Lawlar, Zach Eflin's importance for the Orioles' injury-plagued rotation, and the Rockies' decision to dismiss manager Bud Black, before looking at some of the biggest risers and fallers (among hitters) in initial 2025 projections v. rest-of-season projections with The BAT X.Rundown3:33 Jordan Lawlar: Recalled by D-backs; How Does He Fit Right Now?8:52 Zach Eflin: Returns from the IL12:59 The Rockies Fire Manager Bud Black21:55 Projections Movers: Biggest Risers28:22 Who Has Moved Their Projections Enough to Change Their Role?34:50 Andrew Vaughn's Projection Has Improved Despite Tough Stretch?44:26 Projections Movers: Biggest Fallers52:57 Willy Adames: A Good Buy-Low Candidate?57:15 Where the Money Went: Cade Horton & Intriguing, Affordable BatsFollow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.socialFollow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.sociale-mail: [e-mail] our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFeSubscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrelsHosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno SarrisProducer: Brian SmithExecutive Producer: Derek VanRiper Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey, it's Noah Chestnut from The Athletic. If you're into games and sports, pay attention. I'm going to give you four sports terms. You tell me the common thread. Ready? Game. Match. Point.

Set. This one's kind of a gimme. The answer is, how tennis is scored. Do you want more of a challenge? Check out Connections Sports Edition. It's a new daily game for sports fans. To play now, go to theathletic.com slash Connections. Welcome to Raids and Barrels, it's Monday, May 12th, Derek Van Riper, you know, Saris here with you on this episode. We got some baseball news you should know.

It has happened. Jordan Lawler has been recalled by the Diamondbacks. We'll talk about his fit in that Arizona lineup. Today we're going to take a look at some projections movers looking at the Bat-X original projections for 2025 versus the rest of season ones that you could find on the pages of fan graphs here on the 12th of May. We'll talk about some of the biggest movers in each direction and a few surprises along the way.

Got a couple mailbag questions and we'll get to where the money went this weekend in our fantasy baseball leagues as well. You know I think the question I have for you is the question that many of our listeners have. Did your mom complete the race on time this weekend? She did not. I'm super proud of her though. She made a hundred miles and she ran through two nights. So basically somewhere around 60 hours of straight running and got to a hundred

miles. She said she was hallucinating. She was seeing dogs everywhere, even during the daytime, that no dogs were there. And so at the end, there was a sort of cognitive impairment that sort of happens once you haven't slept for two days and you've just been running where she wasn't sure if the information she got was incorrect or if she understood it incorrectly, but there was a misunderstanding about when and where the next cutoff was. And so she thought she was basically done and sat down, then found out that she'd had enough time to maybe keep going. It would have been touch and go.

There's a sweeper, this person who runs at the end and picks up all the cones. And if you can't stay ahead of the sweeper, then you're out. And so if she had barely made it to the next cutoff, that means that the sweeper would have left right after her. And so she would have had somebody on her tail the rest of the way. So, you know, it might not have been super pleasant, but she did say the last 25 miles, she was bummed because the weather was decently cool and the last 25 miles is mostly down after she'd done

5,000 feet of elevation change and you know run a hundred miles so she's already, you know booking her plans for next year and and She said she has to strengthen her back because her back was actually the thing that locked up on her the most. I'm still thoroughly impressed. 100 miles is, geez, 93 more miles than I've ever run at one time. I think I've topped out around seven.

Felt like that was enough, was like an hour of running for me, so that's awesome that she did it. It's cool that she's gonna try to do it again. I imagine her mother's day was spent hydrating and sleeping snacks sleeping not not doing much active but actually trying to get back on track after a ridiculous feat that was accomplished I'm gonna be surprised she's back out there very soon yeah no that's awesome, let's get to some baseball news you should know. Jordan Lawler back in the equation now for the Diamondbacks

and the line all along has been, when he's ready, he'll be back. And we have wondered how he will fit into the mix and looking at their depth chart right now, knowing that Ketel Marte has returned from the injury that put him on the IL briefly earlier in the year. You don't really have a spot for him to call his own because Eugenio Suarez still provides the thumb

from third base, they extended Geraldo Perdomo. Marte occasionally will get some DH time and I think one of the pleasant surprises that we haven't talked a lot about on the show, Pavin Smith has made good on some improvements that were from being a part-time player last year. He's carried that into a larger role this season as well. So it kind of looks like Jordan Lawler is going to be a super sub that helps keep everybody

around the infield fresh, at least as the roster is currently constructed and knowing that this group is actually pretty healthy. There's definitely a role in versus lefties DH that he, you know, Pavin Smith, as good as he's been, does not play against lefties. That's waiting for him. I wonder if we're gonna see any outfield work from him. Because I think in terms of the way

this current roster is constructed, they're kind of a little bit weaker in the outfield with Garrett Hampson and Randall Gritchick as the righties there. So if you could take over that work, be more useful than playing a good glove like his at DH. And then I think there was, you's, it seems like you have older people on the infield, like Eugenio Suarez at 34, you could give him a rest, could tell Marte at 32, give those guys rests. And I know Marte is not 32 yet, but he's 31.6, which is 32 in my book.

Anyway, you have some guys that are older that could use a rest, so I would speculate that he plays three to four times a week. Yeah, three to four times a week seems like a fair expectation, does make it harder in leagues without daily moves to just set it and forget it, but if anyone does land on the IL in that mix, then all of a sudden he becomes a regular, so it's a little bit

like the arrival of Royce Lewis for the twins in terms of usage but probably slightly less volume up front that would be the the one difference where you okay we don't know where exactly he's gonna play but he's gonna play most of the time we'll see how it comes together for Lawler here in the next few weeks probably limiting him mostly to 15 team leagues for now Keeper dynasty of, of course, he's roster ruled in pretty much all of those, but the big thing you gotta keep in mind too, I guess,

is for keeper in dynasty, this is the final year of the extension, Eugenio Suarez side, I believe with the Reds forever ago, right? This is the last year of that. So he's a free agent at the end of the season. So this playing time crunch probably goes away in the winter. I would imagine Suarez ends up going elsewhere as a free agent, but you never know. Maybe it's a smaller deal and he comes back

on and as they continue to age, the older guys play less and Lawler plays more. Yeah, I think just looking at their payroll page for the Diamondbacks and thinking about the way the team is constructed, I think if they have some extra cash jangling around their pocket, it's probably going to be set in motion towards the pitching side. Jordan Montgomery's 22.5 million off and Eugenio Suarez's 15 million and Merrill Kelly's 7 million will be off the books. So they'll have some money they could decide to kind of go with the two aces approach and spend some money there. As much as I don't love spending money on starting pitching, you know, sometimes because

it's so volatile, that would be similar to the nationals approach. And if they can hit it right, they'll you know, they could, it could really work for them. They've tried it with Corbin Burns. The early returns haven't been what they'd hoped for. We'll see how the rest of year one goes. But yeah, I think the some of the Mike Rizzo builds over the years did feature spending up at the top of the market. It's a matter of just hitting when there are opportunities for the right guys.

That's the challenge. Yeah, they're definitely going to do something in the rotation. Yeah. guys. That's a challenge for them too. Yeah, they're definitely going to do something in the rotation. Yeah. And the other factor, I guess, here, too, is that in an off season, you could potentially have Lawler work more in centerfield or somewhere in the outfield. I think that's the other path for him if they wanted to add another year for Suarez, keep him in the mix, too. Like there's there's a few ways it can work, but the long term playing time trajectory is good and I think we finally got to the point where Jordan Lawler really had nothing left to prove at

AAA Reno. So hopefully this is an up for good sort of situation. There wasn't a ton of news over the weekend but I did notice Zach Efflin came back from the IL and I started to think a little bit more about our conversations about the Orioles recently and how important Effflin's going to be given the state of their pitching. Five innings, five Ks, two earned against the Angels first time back.

He's made four starts this year around that injury. He's gone at least five in all of them. 313 ERA,.96 whip. And I think Eflin's addition to the roster because it happened at the trade deadline or prior to the trade deadline last year is that one move they sort of made in advance of losing Corbin Burns that hasn't received a lot of credit in part because of his time on the I.L. But if they could somehow and this might be wishing for too much, but maybe it's not because

the ratios have been good really since 2023 consistently and they've really been bad over the course of his career. If they can keep Eflin healthy the rest of the way and get 160 innings or so by season's end of low 3s ERA good whip then that goes a very long way in a rotation where the depth has been tested a lot up to this point. Yeah, I made the contention that this is going to take more time to fix. I saw some pushback in the comments of my, you know, 10 numbers piece. My initial reaction was like, you know, Zach Eppelin is not fixing this, but you have to give credit to the fact that Sugano looks useful.

I don't think he's a one or a two, but if you want to give Sugano the three spot in a normal rotation, and I don't think Eflin's a one either, because I doubt those numbers, but even in terms of stuff, let's give Eflin a good two. Grayson Rodriguez is throwing again. So I guess there's a potential that by season's end, they have a sort of normal one, two, three, and they're like everybody else trying to figure out four and five. And maybe this trade deadline this year will be even more active than the last one. Maybe they can find someone a little higher up in that pecking order. But long term, you know, Eflin is a free agent at year's end, Sugano's a free agent at year's end.

So if we fast forward using this roster till next year, this is part of my contention, is like if we fast forward to next year, it's Grayson Rodriguez and Dean Kramer and Cade Povich one, two, three, and that is not viable. And then we look at- Brad is should be in there. Yeah, Brad should be back. Right, so you'd be, okay, one, two, three, and that is not viable. And then we look at- Bradish would be in there, assuming he comes back healthy. Right, so you'd be like Grayson, Bradish, Kramer, Povich.

I mean, I still don't think that's fixed. And we know that this is not a team that's necessarily gonna go and shop at the top of the market. So you're gonna take Grayson, Rodriguez, and Bradish, guys who've just been hurt, and then Kramer, Povich, guys who've been very up and down, and then you're going to add some more one-year, $10 million deals to them again.

I just don't think this is a good strategy year in and year out. You know what I mean? What I'm hoping for is some more information about Nestor Hermann, who's at double A right now. Good numbers in terms of strikeout to walk so far this year, 37 to 10 in 25 innings. And I think six of those walks were in the first two starts of the year. So the little wobble control wise seems to be gone. I think he's a big part of their plan.

I'm just kind of curious to know if it's a true mid rotation or better arsenal or something that won't play up quite as much because the results from him so far in the minors overall have been excellent. Yeah, Kate Povich was running very similar numbers in the minors. Think he's got better stuff than Povich, but don't have the data to quantify it just yet. So there's my one random name to think about if you're looking for some Orioles pitching that they might be relying a bit more on maybe by the second half of this year or at least by 2026. How about this one? The Rockies fire Bud Black and bench coach Mike Redman.

So Clint Hurdle is now the bench coach and they made their third base coach the new manager. The Rockies are at 7 and 33. Their third base coach is the new manager. All right. are at 7 and 33. Their third base coach is the new manager, alright. Yeah, they went that route. They didn't make Clint Hurdle the manager again, which, whatever. We had this conversation with the Pirates, like to a large extent this just doesn't matter.

It's part of the process of saying, we gotta make some changes, but unless the changes go much deeper than they typically do you're probably going to keep getting the same underwhelming results that you've been getting for a long time and you know how much of the 7-33 record can be attributed to Bud Black? Not much like it's just I don't think it would matter who's managing this team right now. This Rockies club has really been spinning the tires Arguably since at least 2022 maybe as far back as 2019 In their best season in that window since 2019 they went 74 and 87 in 2021. That's their high-water mark They've changed GM's

They've hired and fired people in their analytics department, which has always been small yeah, they've changed the analytics departments three times over. And this is a classic similar situation to what we see in Pittsburgh, similar even see in Anaheim where they will spend money on payroll, or we even see it with the white socks where they will spend when they're good. Until ownership changes, I don't have any real confidence that they're going to make enough changes to get a significantly better result. And I say this as someone who's always said, this is the most difficult place to win in baseball because of playing at altitude and the challenges that presents.

I don't think that's changed, but it's also not an excuse to be constantly this bad. I think they also just, they aren't clear-eyed about where they are in the wind cycle and what they should be doing. And so we make jokes about like, oh, you know, this guy's up, but he won't play cause it's the Rockies, you know what I mean? And like the kind of cutting bait on Nolan Jones

a year after you traded for him, like it's just like, which way are you going? You should be hoarding assets, right? You should be holding onto Nolan Jones and giving him a long, long try. Because why are you doing anything else? Like why are you doing anything but trying to find young players that'll be here for a while? So we were looking at lineups and you know, Bud Black has basically kept the same lineups forever. And I'm looking at, you know, Brenton Doyle and saying, this is a guy with like a career 290 OBP, why is he in leadoff? But A, I actually don't think that the lineup means that much.

The lineup to me, what we've seen in the past and studying this, the lineup is the top players get more chances. So if they are a team that needs to think about the future, then Doyle at number one is fine. It doesn't matter what his OVP is. It's just you just put him up there and you're trying to see can he be our lead-off guy? He could be an ideal lead-off guy even if he could get that OVP at like 320, you know? And so you're kind of letting him develop. and so are you a developing team or are you a team that's going to be good and if they're if they're gonna

become a developing team then they should look at all the ways that develop players because it's not hasn't been working and they should be they should be hiring and firing you know people with who are their player development presidents and more than their manager everybody loves Bud Black the other thing that I come to think about is, is Bud Black a good manager or not? And I ran into this thing which is, among managers with a thousand or more wins,

he has the worst winning percentage among those 67 managers that have ever got a thousand wins. However, if you look at the other people around him in win percentage, they're Ned Yost, Frank Robinson, Gene Mott, Ron Gartenhire, Jim Furgose, Clint Hurdle. Connie Mack is not that far from him. Connie Mack has the most wins of all time. Connie Mack is in the Hall of Fame for managing. Connie Mack has a 486 win percentage, Bud Black has a 460. So, you know, Bruce Bochy has a 498 winning percentage for his career. So, I don't know that winning percentage is a great way

to judge Bud Black. You can think about the places where he's been. He had the Padres when they weren't good and he had the Rockies when they weren't good. But I also think that he might not be the right guy for a rebuilding squad that needs to try and think about doing things differently. So he's a guy who's a pitching coach. And like, if I was going to do something interesting with the Rockies, I would take that pitching staff and try to figure out something that works. Maybe have almost like a home away platoon staff,

you know, like have guys that you're trying to pitch at home and guys you're trying to pitch on the road. And I know that's it seems impossible, but I would be I wouldn't be like, let's just do it the way we've done forever. I'd be like, we've got it. We've got to push the needle on this somehow. Maybe everybody pitches three innings. Maybe that's it.

I was thinking about the conversation we had with Adam Ottavino around this time last year, he joined us as a guest and we were talking about the success he had when he pitched in Colorado. We kind of asked him, like, what do you think it was about? And he talked about being more East and West than North and South. And, you know, I haven't taken enough of a deep dive into Rocky's history to really see if they've ever tried to fully assemble a staff that's more East and West. And I think the reason it would be difficult

would be that pitchers, before they are in their organization, are going to train in a way that makes them as effective as they can possibly be. And then the day they find out they're going to Colorado, it's like, oh no. And it's usually a really bad, like if they sign there,

like it's the last chance saloon sort of deal. Yeah, and I just, I think you're sort of, you're already facing an uphill battle, generally speaking, because I think most pitching development is not going to first encourage the type of pitching that could be more successful in Colorado. So, you're already like trying to mold people

who've been working on something else. And that seems like part of the problem that is very tricky to fix as well. We talked about in the first year we had a show, very first year of Rates and Barrels. One of our first episodes was like, what would we do to fix the Rockies? And the summary of that was, well, everything different,

but like in the sense of leaning as heavily into tech and science as you possibly could and trying to use that to your benefit. Take the things that make being in Colorado difficult, make that a strength for you, or at least find ways to exploit that weakness in your opponents more effectively. I don't get the sense that they've ever been able to maximize that. I'm sure people have tried. I'm not trying to discredit people they've hired and fired over the years who've worked there and have tried to solve this problem.

It's not like we're sitting here looking at it with some amazing clarity and having all the answers. But man, you just can't be the way most teams are. And I've always got the sense that a lot of their senior leadership in the front office have been more of old school scouting types. And they have to flip some kind of switch to do a more modern approach.

And the current GM was their former director of scouting. Right. That's not inherently bad. But I think in Colorado especially, that is extremely difficult but I think in Colorado, especially that is extremely difficult I think you need to skew in the completely opposite end if you need good scouts you need Everything across the organization, but I think your top decision makers have to be much more forward-thinking Data driven people there than they do anywhere else. Well, sorry about black

Yeah I mean it's a tough road. And in like his first, the first part of his career as a manager came in San Diego in the pre-San Diego spending era, right? Like, kind of historically one of the doormat franchises in baseball. And man, he just, like, two difficult jobs in great places to be a manager from a life perspective. Like San Diego, great. Denver, great.

Just really tough to win in those places historically with the more recent Padres being an exception because of changes in overall approach. Hi, it's Alexa Weibel from New York Times Cooking. We've got tons of easy weeknight recipes and I'm gonna make two of my favorites for you today. For my five ingredient creamy miso pasta you just take your starchy pasta water, whisk it together with a little bit of miso and butter until it's creamy.

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Find these recipes and more at NYTCooking.com. Smells so good. Let's move on to some projections movers. Today we're gonna focus on some hitters, put together a massive spreadsheet. I was focusing on players who've already collected at least 100 played appearances, so just concentrating on everyday players who've been healthy, trying to get a feel for who has moved their projections the most. Can you give me, off the top of your head, the three players that have moved their projections

upward the most by WRC plus since the start of this season Jorge Polanco, no, but I like that guess I'll give you a couple more guesses Trent Grisham Trent Gisham's number one, you know, I'm just gonna say this guy because He's they were writing pieces about how might might be the best right-handed hitter of all time That's a good one. You should check out from Jason Stark. Aaron Judge. Yep. Aaron Judge, never a bad answer to a question like this. You got two out of the three.

I mean, one more guess to get the last one. Oh, I have no hope. Pick a teammate of Trent Gershwin and Aaron Judge. Oh, another one. Oh, Ben Rice. Ben Rice. Yeah. Yeah. He's had the top three spots, which is pretty amazing. And yeah, Ben, well, they hit the ball hard. The bad ex likeskees have the top three spots, which is pretty amazing. And yeah, Ben Rice. Well, they hit the ball hard.

The bad ex likes if you hit the ball hard. Yep. Hit the ball hard. I think if you're trying to reverse engineer it, like what causes a projection in season to move up in the bad ex? What do you think it would be that would move the needle the most? Probably hard hit rate, barrel rate. Yankees are third in hard hit rate. Yankees are first in barrel rate.

Yeah, those things. It might not be as much of a differentiator now as it was when he first created the bad X, but I know that stat cast factors heavily into the bad X. And that's why the bad ex usually wins in projection battles when it comes to hitters. Yeah the projection for the rest of the season now for Ben Reiss is 242, 329, 467. That's good. That's actually real good for a rest of season projection. He actually kind of looks like a reverse Aaron Judge to me.

A reverse Aaron Judge? You. A reverse Aaron Judge. He just means this Aaron Judge from the left side and just shrunk down a little bit. They have the same batting stance. I mean, it's not even shrunk down that much, but yeah, I guess he's 6'2", not 6'5", but they have the same batting stance and almost like, it looks like a similar swing. It's amazing. I think with Ben Rice, you know, it's like, it's the extreme in the opposite direction of what we saw last year.

And I think the projections do a really good job of giving you the more realistic rest of season output. And again, that's a good projection. With Grisham, we talked about it on our Friday show. The question eventually just becomes like, he's not even playing every day right now. As it gets more crowded on that depth chart. Does he lose a little more time if he cools off even slightly?

I think those questions still are going to linger with this group, but it's really interesting just to see three guys on the same team all going off like that all at the top of that leaderboard. It's weird that he doesn't start every game against righties. He's pretty weird. He started a game against the lefty and then he sat against a righty maybe because they wanted to DH Aaron judge. Whatever the opposite of, you know, defensive versatility that he has is probably costing him more, uh, ABs than his lefty righty platoon split. It's just harder to get him in the lineup because Goldschmidt or judge, you know what I mean?

Like you have to push somebody good out of the lineup to put him in there You know some days and it gets just gets worse when stands in there Stanton could be back at the end of the month. We still don't know for sure I saw one suggestion in our discord that Stanton could just be mostly the DH against lefties. Small side platoon DH which is optimizing what he can do at this point in his career. But you see the run that he goes on like in the postseason last year and even just looking at what he did in the regular season, he was 16% better than league average. That plays on a lot of teams. I guess it doesn't play every day on this one if everybody involved is maxing out to

the degree they have up to this point. But Stanton still has two years and change on that deal. He signed through 2027. I guess at a certain point you just say the money spent, it doesn't matter. You think that's a realistic outcome? Because we were wondering if Jason Dominguez might be the guy that gets a little bit pressured. Once Stanton eventually comes back.

I just don't think you're playing Stanton in the outfield. No, he'd be the D.H. But then you get to play Rice somewhere else. And it's just it creates a good problem. I haven't seen Rice play catcher or outfield. So I think maybe we'll get some clues. Either Rice doesn't play anywhere else and he starts slowing down and then we'll realize that he might be headed

towards a demotion when Stanton comes back or Rice keeps hitting and we start seeing them in some weird spots in the in the in the lineup. Yeah we'll probably get some clues. I bet as Stanton actually gets closer, we'll see a little more experimentation. Maybe we'll see Rice behind the play a little bit, or we'll see whatever wrinkles they might want to throw at that time. But the bigger question here, beyond the biggest risers, who do you think has moved their projection up enough to materially change their playing time situation? And I guess that kind of requires

an initial question of like. Well, that's Grisham. That's Grisham types, but I'm looking at the whole, not even with the Yankees, I'm looking at the whole group of players league-wide. Kieron Parris, you know. Like Parris, yeah, Parris, Kyle Stowers. Bad team, Stowers is just like almost pretty much

an everyday player, especially because he's a righty, right so Stowers is a lefty Okay, so he might still get platoon Yeah, if I'm just thinking about it in the sense of like when you go into a season What's the threshold for WRC plus where you can be good enough to get a shot at a job? But you have to play at or above your projection to keep it. And if you play below, you quickly lose it. Is it somewhere around like an 80 or 85 WRC plus? And then some guys below that get shots.

We have a number from Jeff Zimmerman. He's focused in on was like a 700 OPS and a 700 OPS. I mean, I have to find somebody doing that first, but 625 from Doyle, but that's in Colorado. See, I have Reynolds page open. Brian Reynolds right now has a 607 OPS. And that's a 66 WRC plus. Yeah. So I think yeah, I think a 80 WRC plus it doesn't know there's a sliding scale there depending on how much defensive Ability you have of course. I think so

I think that matters a lot and you know Stowers has gone from a projected 81 to a rest of season 95 Like that's a big big swing. You've gone from Could slump and lose your job to you're part of our regular mix right now Like I think that's that's one of the more extreme shifts that you're gonna see Brian on herns is pretty big Because he's a platoon bat So if he's projected he's he's projected for a 116 WRC plus before the season and that you take sort of a 10% haircut maybe for platoon So you'd be like oh against same-, same-sided, he's 106,

and he's a DH type, so then he becomes maybe replaceable in Platoon situations. Now, his projected W is RC Plus rest of season 129. Then you take that Platoon haircut, and you say, he's still our DH. You know what I mean? So getting out of that platoonable area is kind of important too.

But, you know, I would say that like Lars Knutbar before the season had a projection that was platoonable. A 112 WRC+, you're like, oh, you might be below average against lefties. I know that his observed platoon splits for Lars Knutbar are not big, but if you're just modeling him, you might say, hmm, maybe if we were playing to win this year, we're sitting

Lars against lefties. Now his rest of season projection 125, WRC plus for Lars Nusbar, you're not sitting that guy against lefties. There's a sliding scale for playing and there's a sliding scale for avoiding the platoon split. I think Cameron Misner's Preseason projection was 73 WRC plus now. It's 85 You know you're platooning that guy you know to try and get him to a hundred you know against opposite-handed hitters pitchers But you're also playing that guy more than you would before so I'm not saying the Misner is safe he actually just jumped into the unsafe territory from the unplayable territory.

Right. That's where I feel like there's a few different levels. I mean, I think thinking about your platoon example with Newt Barr, Tommy Edmonds gone from a 93-7 projected WRC plus to a 107-4. That's a pretty big move for a guy that's been in the league for a while. I know he's on the IL right now, but I do think the way the Dodgers are going to use him has probably changed a little bit. I would imagine that they're even maybe a little bit surprised at just how different the performance has been to this point. Yeah, and he's changed his flyball mix. I mean, it's the most flyballs of his career and the most barrels of his career, the best hard hit of his career. There's not really been a negative, I guess the babbip is low, but that comes from fly ball sometimes, but you know, homers don't count in babbip. So I think he's become, I would say mostly their everyday second baseman.

Yeah. I think post-IL he's kind of tracking back into that sort of playing time window again. I thought when the Dodgers acquired him and then extended him, I thought, okay, he's sort of like a Chris Taylor for them. Maybe it's a little bit of near everyday playing time at the beginning of the deal and then he sort of falls away. And that could still be the arc over a deal as long as that. It was a five year, five year extension that he signed. But also, like I'm looking at Tommy Edmond and thinking there's more of a 2020 type player here than we've ever seen before. And that's pretty exciting to see that happening for a guy

at 30 years old for the first time. Yeah. Back to the platoon example, Cedric Mullins was a 101 before the season. Now he's a 113 rest of season projection. and lo and behold, he's playing against lefties. So I think that that's interesting. Josh Young moving his projection so much is interesting. I think from a similar standpoint, there are things I don't understand on here. You know, like Christopher Morrell went up. Yeah. So here's here's a guess of what's going on with Christopher Morrell went up. Yeah, so here's a guess of what's going on

with Christopher Morrell. He's got a 19% barrel rate, so when he connects, still good in that regard, but his K-Rate's as high as it's ever been. And if you, in the projection system, don't think that that K-Rate is skills loss driven, it's noise, and you kinda say, well, he's making better contact when he connects,

and I think he's gonna keep his kind of say, well, he's making better contact when he connects. I think he's going to get it's going to keep his normal K rate. Then you get that that better result. But I think when we look at it from a human perspective, we, you know, we are accounting for the defense in the playing time. And that's already been a little bit shaky anyway. And we're saying, yeah, you know, if if they're going to do optimal usage with playing time, that's gonna make metrics like barrel rate pop, and you're just not gonna get that.

It's kind of, it's a way of maximizing the value, the real life value of the player, but then knowing that they're not going to flip the switch and just push them out there as a near everyday guy. So I think you have to be a little careful with some of the semi regulars that will pop up on this list. I thought it was weird that Andrew Vaughn

for as rough as his start has been, his projections are actually up a little bit for the rest of the season, right? I think that kind of says by low, right? But it's the worst O swing percentage of his career. So you see that, you're like, oh, okay, that explains why the K rate's up a little bit. But he's done that with a 50% hard hit rate

and a 15.8% barrel rate. So he's keeping some of the gains we saw last year when he was lifting the ball more often. He's just not getting good results. It's a 220 babbit. It's about 66 points off of his career norm. Still just doesn't pull the ball in the air, dude. Just not pulling it.

So then do you look at that and say, okay, he's doing most of what we want. We're just waiting for that last tweak. Or do you say this is fool's gold and the projections are misleading us? If the projections are anything like X-Woba, and I can't say that they necessarily are, but the are anything like X-Woba, and I can't say that they necessarily are, but the fundamental research behind X-Woba,

it does not include spray angle, and that's because, and spray angles, pull and push and those things, and that's because when you put pull and push in, it doesn't make X-Woba any more predictive. I was super excited about that. You've heard it on this show before, and we did find some X- some ex woe was that had

spray angle in them and thanks to the people that did that research But what I've seen is that it doesn't make it more predictive and I think that the reason is that Pull percentages and things like that They kind of I think they go in and out and I think they have something to do with contact point and I think that Contact point goes in and out there is a chance that he shifts that contact point and pulls more in the future. On the other hand, I would say there are players that have demonstrated a certain tendency towards pulling or pushing over their entire career

that you can believe maybe more than, than like when you look at the entire population. You know what I mean? You can look at André Bonn and be like, he's never pulled the ball 40% of the time. Like maybe for him, these projections aren't as valuable. Right. So then you have to kind of similar players and flag them accordingly and make sure you're not just buying low into an approach that doesn't quite maximize its potential. Like I almost think the projection in the case of Vaughn says this is what he could do if

he was able to make that adjustment, but then you have to ask yourself. If he had a normal spray, if he had like a league average spray angle, this is what he could do. That's a little bit of a surprise that I saw in there. I did see some pretty common by-log questions like Brian Reynolds pops in here. I think when you have a long track record of being good, it takes a lot to actually significantly lower your projection. Brian Reynolds is down less than a half point in WRC Plus

despite having a 66 WRC Plus in season. 28.5% K rate, a little high for Reynolds. You don't really expect that. But it's sort of a question of bounce back to what? And people will write to us on Discord and ask, is he down in value because the Pirate's offense is so bad? And my thought is no, they generally haven't been good lineups around him over the course of his career.

And he's been able to put up some pretty solid, like 18, 20, 22 dollar type years anyway. So you put together this rolling chart looking at his strikeout rate over time and it's a three year snapshot, 15 game rolling average over from FanGraphs and you see that longer term trend of more K's that you would kind of expect for a player at this stage of his career right? Ryan Reynolds is post-peak, and I think trading for him for the rest of this season is actually pretty sharp. I think he's gonna be fine.

I think we've talked about him as like the Honda Accord or Toyota Camry of players. That's the Ryan Bloomfield way. He's the best oatmeal you can imagine, right? He's safe. He's almost certainly going to come in close to his projection year in and year out. That chart shows you that like he's had this problem before and he's fixed it, you know, and it's not this. Yes, this peak strikeout

rate in 2025 is a little bit worse than the one in 2024, but it's not that much worse than then. He had a month like this last year, right? And he still managed to come out the other end. So, you know, you look at the underlying stats, you know, his barrel rate is actually one of the best of his career right now. His hard hit rate is this is the second best of his career. So he's doing some things well. And I think he showed up as having sauce in my 10 numbers in my in my by low bats piece. And I stand by that. I think he's a great by low I think it does become a bigger question in keeper leagues We were having this discussion off-air a little bit about just like, you know, is he actually a good?

choir in dynasties and I would say that the same graph makes me worry a little bit about long term that But this same graph makes me worry a little bit about long term that this is the beginning of the end in terms of he's going to strike out more. And I don't mean the end of him as a good major league hitter. The bar for fantasy is higher. So his rest of season projections are for like a 109 WRC plus, if you kind of average them out, that's oopsie, the bad X 111 so you know you got zips at 106 so he's basically a 10% better than league average corner outfielder and that's with them projecting his his

strikeout rate to improve and be basically what it has been over his career if he starts pushing 27s and 28s and strikeout rates regularly then that WRC plus projection is gonna come down and it's gonna come down to like 105. And now you're a corner outfielder with a 105 WRC plus projection, that's not super valued in fantasy or in the big picture in baseball. So there are some scary signs here,

I think for his long-term dynasty output. On the other hand, you were saying, well, you know, a 30 year old corner outfielder that doesn't really stand out in terms of well, you know, a 30 year old corner outfielder that doesn't really stand out in terms of any, you know, oh, he's going to solve my home runs or my stolen bases needs going forward. It might be an easy acquire. They don't cost you a lot to get a Brian runs right now. Yeah. Compared to trading for somebody who's going to be a top 40, top 50 dynasty player, it's going to cost you a lot less. And Reynolds is still, geez, he's under contract through

2030 for a team that doesn't have more than what, three viable everyday bats right now. His playing time is going nowhere. So it might be extremely boring, but even right now, just quadruple what you've seen so far, you'd get 78 RB's, 20 homers. You get a dozen steals and 64 runs scored to be the lowest we've ever seen from him as an everyday player. That's while he's hitting 210 with a 274 OBP.

He's probably better than that going forward. The lineup around him could get a little better. Spencer Horowitz coming back, maybe some of the young guys start to click. I don't think they're going to be good good but I think they could be better than terrible it's sort of the reasonable rest of season outcome for that supporting cast so yeah I keep her dynasty leagues I think he still makes some sense because he's fallen to that sweet spot where what you get is probably more valuable than what you have to pay since the person getting rid of him has slowly lowered their own

expectations I don't know why they signed up to that deal. I don't know. I think it makes a lot of sense baseball wise. Well, we'll save that. The A.V. is so cheap that they're like, hey, even if he's only like a one win guy, the average annual value on this is 13 million. Right. One to two wins for the life of the deal. They're still fine.

And if he's a little better than that for a few years and a little worse for a few years, that's fine. Yeah. I'm trying to say this in a way that's not rude, but why him? Probably because who else was going to take the money? Oh, right. Yeah. Like, how else are you going to get somebody to commit to a deal like that? And I think if I remember correctly, around the time that that extension was signed Yeah, it was back back when I was doing the Friday show on the Olympic baseball show with Keith law. We were looking at Reynolds and I think Cedric Mullins as long-term comps for each other and kind of wondering Who you'd rather have for the next five plus years who deserves the extension what they would age like

five plus years, who deserves the extension, what they would age like. But at least Mullins starts with centerfield defense. Another thing you can see if you look at Reynolds numbers is the defensive numbers are dropping. Mm-hmm. That was, I think at the time, one of the differences that we thought made Mullins a little more of a safe floor guy. But the bigger concern, I think, was that at the time, even then, Mullins had some splits that were pointing towards him possibly being a big side platoon guy. And that was kind of tricky to rectify on a long-term deal as well. Right, and we just talked about how he kind of maybe moved out of that.

But if he moves out of that, it's a temporary move. He's trending towards maybe he wants to sit versus lefties. Interesting names up and down that board. At the other end, if you're just curious, who are some of the players that are playing a lot that have lost the most off their projection? Luis Renjifo has gone from a 93 to about an 86 WRC plus for his rest of season projection. One homer, one steal so far this year, hitting 208 with a 248 OBP slugging 280.

A miserable start for him, so he's the biggest faller. I mean his hard hit rate also just all the way down to 27%. And then the other guy is Xavier Edwards who doesn't hit the ball hard at all either, so. Yeah, yeah, like a downward fluctuation for guys like that who were a little low in the first place, that would be a big deal. Joey Ortiz and Spencer Steer, like being down there

makes me sad because they both are players that I liked going into the season. And also they make me wonder if there is like a little bit of an alteration I need to make in my analysis, which is that they both had like average-ish batted ball stats. You could squint and be like, oh, that's okay. You know what I mean?

Like a five-ish barrel rate. That's okay. You can tell yourself, oh, they do the other things well. They run, they make contact, and they have defensive versatility. You can tell yourself a story and I don't want to get so barrel-pilled that I don't appreciate this type of player anymore you know what I mean? Oh my god barrel-pilled is going on a hat someday. I don't want to be... those are my biases. My biases were already like hey you, you know,

do you really like George's and Spencer's too? But I wanted to be like, no, I like all kinds of different players. And these players are good players. They just don't hit the ball super hard. And now them being down here makes me sad. I mean, I understand, like there's, even Willie Adamis, got a mailbag question

about Willie Adamis coming up here in a few minutes. But you look at Willie Adamis' hard hit rates over time. When he broke into the league, 29.6%. We wouldn't have been very excited about that then. Year two, 35.6%. Okay, a little better, right? Lot of strikeouts, 26% K-rate at the time. Got the 20 homers for the first time.

Probably thought, all right, that's probably about as good as it gets. Five years of double digit barrel rates. You can change as a player. Like we have to have some some reason. Some rule that are also and just like, yeah, you're going to get better. You're going to learn how to hit big league pitching. There's like there's a learning curve.

There's there are raw skills you enter the league with, but you can also get better and get more acclimated. But that growth can happen. You're not always going to see amazing red popsicle barrel rates for everyone who's going to be good. Like you're just going to see different things, different starting points for different players. So I don't think your process needs to be completely abandoned.

And maybe there was something else with our tease that that we both missed. I thought a lot of what happened last year was the result of that tarp collision and the neck injury that he suffered. But the Brewers have three eyes in the bottom ten for the Fallers. Christian Jelic is the third biggest Faller of all. I think Jelic is kind of a mixed bag in the sense that if I was really worried about him health-wise I feel like it would come from seeing less playing time But yellow just played 39 games this year hundred and sixty five played appearances

It's not really that far off other regulars coming off of the micro discectomy surgery in his back And if I was really worried about yellow from a health standpoint, I'd say you're probably not stealing bases But he is he's eight for nine as a base stealer so far. Like if his back was really feeling like garbage, they wouldn't have him running quite that much and he wouldn't be that efficient. I mean, the big difference is he's pounding the ball on the ground again. And this is a problem he's had at various points in his career. Peek, yellow, got the ground ball rate down into the low 40% range. That proved to be an

outlier. Even the follow-up in the shortened season, he got to 50.8% again. But he's been creeping back up in ground ball rate for a few years. And that's how he entered the league. I kind of get it. This seems a little bit like a Brian Reynolds-y, this is what happens to players as they get older. They just get a little bit worse. And that's actually a pretty big fall in projection for a guy that has a lot baked in. But when you dig into that ground ball rate being above 60%, and you see like, oh, he's just not hitting the ball

quite the same way he did even three or four years ago from barrel rate perspective, like yeah, he's chasing more than ever too. That's the other part of this. It's been a slow increase from the peak in chase rate. This is the fourth, fifth season in a row where the chase rate's actually gone up for Christian Jelic. Eventually it gets to a point where it's still high

that it's a little bit of a problem. Yeah, and then Churio being the third guy on there was really surprising to me. I hadn't noticed that there were any red flags at Churio being the third guy on there was really surprising to me. I hadn't noticed that there were any red flags at Churio and maybe there aren't, but it is a surprisingly soft barrel rate, I guess. 8.8% is not a standout number. And so the Bat-X gives him the worst slugging percentage among all the projection systems going forward.

So it only gives Churio 16 more homers. Hey, you give them 16 more homers, 23 for the season, 25 stolen bases, 260. I don't think anybody's complaining about their draft day price. So a lot of stuff is relative. The other thing that's interesting is that the whole list is skewed towards adding. You look at the mean change in rest of season production, it's around plus four. So I wonder if he's adjusting the run environment. I've been trying to figure out while you were talking like what the run environment this year is

compared to last year. I can tell you that the FIP was 406 this year right now and last March, April is 401. Do you think that's like a big change? I don't think it's a, I don't think it's negligible, but I don't think it's a big change. ERA has gone from four to 403. Maybe he's just seeing something in the run environment

where he's like, I need to push everybody a little bit. I also wonder if the way I cut the leaderboard at a hundred plate appearances You did a little bit where there would be more people improving anyway because they're getting playing time The teams are playing the more because they're playing better and for the guys that are just below that threshold Maybe that chopped off a bunch of the sliders losers So even if that run environment was bumped up a little bit by the projection system this particular even if that run environment was bumped up a little bit by the projection system, this particular slice may have kind of made it look more extreme. That explains it all actually, because just think about what we've just been talking about.

Like, let's say you started with an 80 WRC plus projection and you got bumped down to a 70. You're not really playable and you might not even make this list anymore. You probably slumped your way out of playing time and you missed the 100 played appearance threshold. Like, here's somebody who's really close to that. Jacob Young came in with a 68 WRC Plus projection. There were some places I would have taken a shot on Jacob Young because I thought this is a good defensive center fielder and he'll play just because, you know, this is deep

leagues. I'm not talking about, you know, I don't have a lot of shit. I don't think a lot of shit. I don't think I have any actually in there, but I did consider him a couple times in like draft and holds as like a sixth or seventh outfielder. May have one of him like that. His projection rest of the season went from 73 to 71.

Not a big deal. However, it is going down and that's a 71 and that's even closer to how valuable is this glove to us in the first place and he has 114 played appearances and is being phased out to some extent. So already there we're seeing someone that could easily have not even made this list. You know if you used 125 as a cutoff. Yeah that's my guess of the white skews more towards risers than being kind of balanced and evened out so far.

One mailbag question before we get to where the money went, this one comes from Kerry Bonds, Willie Adames, a good buy low candidate. When you look at Willie Adames in this same rubric, what's going on with his rest of season projection compared to his initial projection? Initially projected for a 109.5, now projected for nearly a 113 WRC+, he would fit into that, hey wait, why is he up sort of group? Reasons being, hard hit rate 44.8%, still good, right, he's not chasing more. I think this is mostly just the guy getting used to a new environment where the home ballpark

is a tougher place to hit than the last place he played his home games. And I don't really have any strong explanation for anything. Weirdly, his home split is better than his away split. He's a 712 OPS at home and 576 on the road. But you know, it still applies. It's just, you know, he's getting used to different away stadiums too.

It's a whole different life. Yeah, yeah. Well, last season, final year in Milwaukee, 18 of his 32 homers were at home. So it wasn't like it was heavy, heavy skewed in the direction of American family field, but I don't know, man. I think you could take that 14 away, right?

And say, okay, that's his true talent. Let's give him 14 away this year or 13 away, you know And then you're gonna give him, you know, maybe eight at home So maybe he's really only and this is that's actually sort of where he's projected If you add what he's done to rest of season projection, he goes from 21 to 23 homers, you know, that's his range So maybe that's that's the deal. He's a 14 homeerun away guy, and he's an eight homerun at home guy, and that's going to add up to like a 240 average at the end of season with 21 homers and 10 steals.

It would be a tick below what he's done for a five year. It'd be a five year low, but it wouldn't be a ridiculous couple of homers on. It's not as bad as what he's doing now. It's probably valuable in almost every league. I think the other part of his value that we were skeptical of coming into the year was the stolen base spike.

He was great on the base pass last year, 21 to 25. We know that's in the Brewers organizational DNA right now to be aggressive in that regard. Two for four in 41 games with the Giants. And how much of that is organizational philosophy? How much of that is, you know, maybe just trying to stay healthy and be out there every single day and avoid the risk that comes from being more aggressive on the base pass, whatever, whatever, to every degree that actually is risky.

I mean, I think I would argue that there is at least some risk to stealing bases because of jamming your fingers and thumbs and just getting hurt a variety of different ways. We've seen it, but with Willy Adames, the projections say nine to 10 bags the rest of the way. That's not quite 15 plus that you'd expect for a guy that stole 21 for the first time last year. You know, he's been struggling to lift the ball

a little bit in this early going, and if you look at his rolling fly ball rate It's it's trending back upwards again. I've been watching a fair amount of him because you know I watched the Giants and Padres a fair amount, you know, the local teams for me really the family teams and Looked a little discombobulated plate and I think he's been coming around recently. So I just wanted to Give you those overall numbers for the season so that you don't overestimate what you're buying like I don't think you're buying a 30 home run 20 stolen base guy no and I think we saw enough parts of his career where he's been more of like a 230 240 type hitter with some variation

to the downside in their mid 20s to low 30s home run power and non zero speed. That's where your expectations should have been all along. That's what you should be buying back into if you are buying them low. I think he's fine. Job security's there, skills are solid, still makes hard contact. So short answer, didn't listen to the last four minutes

of the pod, yes, Willia Dames is a relatively good buy low. Just don't expect him to run nearly as much as he did last year Alright, you know last question for you before we go in where the money went How much Kate Horton did you did you cram onto rosters this weekend? None? Okay, any particular reason you didn't cram Kate Horton onto your rosters I don't think it's a very very good fastball The slider is good, but I think it's like a league average kind of slider And then it's a really small arsenal. He threw the fastball 58% of the time

which is a lot of throwing the fastball for a fastball I don't love and we did put the minor league stats on the Google Doc for subscribers and some of this was available to people before he even pitched because he had a 96 stuff plus on his four-seam fastball on the minors he comes up It's 95 in the majors. So good yay for the calibration and You know the curveball scored well, but he only used it 5% of the time doesn't seem to trust it as much So small arsenal, I don't think it's necessarily So small arsenal, I don't think it's necessarily super dominant as a fastball slider pairing.

And I didn't, I wasn't comfortable with what I thought the prices would be. So we put some make good numbers on them. We had some 15s and 20s on them, and you know, in some of my leagues in terms of out of a thousand, you know? So we were willing to take him if nobody was super excited, but he ended up going for more like 5050, $75, if I'm right.

Yeah, I think in a lot of leagues that was the range. He topped out with a 3.37 in one of the main event leagues, a 2.25 bid in one of the 12 team online championship leagues. But yeah, Kate Horton was not cheap. And then there's a matchup against the White Sox coming up for his next time out. So that maybe nudged people, even who weren't looking at him as a long term

ad to maybe just take him for this week. But who would you rather have thinking about Ryan Gusto getting added back onto rosters more in 12 team leagues where he had been dropped in some 15s. He just was held the entire time and he wasn't in the rotation. Wasn't a very long time. Yeah, I'm taking Gusto over him. Yeah, I think that's all right. That's what I figured. Hayden was Neske's got an elbow injury. There's still some swelling, I'm taking Gusto over him. Yeah. I'm taking Gusto over him. That's what I figured.

Hayden Wozneski's got an elbow injury. There's still some swelling, I guess, going on there. And we're scheduled to talk to Chandler Roem a little bit later in the week. We'll get some more details on that if they're available once we have Chandler on the pod coming up on Wednesday. Some other interesting names here. Addison Barger on the hitter side,

kind of a long-term prospect of the week, interesting underlying skills guy. He's in our word cloud. He's definitely visible in the word cloud for us, which is a little odd since he hasn't had that many opportunities. It's been a lot of up and down for him trying to break through with the Blue Jays, but this looks like an okay opportunity for him right now. Andres Jimenez won the IL going into the weekend.

So they're down an infielder. And at the very least, looks like Barger could play his way into a big side platoon role. Yeah, I think third base is his for the short term. And I think they don't even have the personnel necessarily to take him off that against lefties So I think he might get everyday playing time until him and his is back

And then I think he has a chance to carve third base out for himself Even when him as his back because Clements power that last year I think was a mirage has returned to earth and he's profiling very much just like a utility player and an infield that Has Clement, you know, maybe taking at bats away against lefties at third base and spelling the guys around the diamond. Otherwise, I think is their best opportunity. We're looking at the hard hit numbers for Barger, the barrel rate, the max CV. Like he is yoked.

If you've ever seen him, he hits the ball super hard he's among the top you know five guys on this team in terms of hard hit rate or max e v like he he is a power threat for them on a team that needs power has been getting out slugged in their games and losing because they can't homer uh he is a homer threat so he's he's got you know runway he's got skills that they want at a 10% swing strike rate. I don't think he needs to be a 27% strikeout rate guy. There's a chance that he strikes out less than league average, hits the ball harder than more, you know, than more than the average, maybe even among the best in the league. I mean, a 117 max EV is, is good, is really good. So I went heavy in on Anderson Barger.

I got him everywhere that I could. And I paid 30 to 50 dollars. I just thought it was a great price, you know, multi eligibility, third base outfield opportunity. If it doesn't work out, you're not crying about 30 dollars, 50 dollars out of a thousand you lost, you know. No, you may get lucky and actually reel off a stretch reason everyday guy for the next two weeks because the Blue Jays, at least as it lines up right now, are not projected

to face a left-handed starter in their next 12 games. I think it all lines up pretty well. And then, you know, it's one of those things that sometimes when you're given runway and you get that confidence and you don't see a lefty and you play every day like everything just sort of falls into place. I know there's the complicated factor of his P.E. suspension in the minor leagues. I don't know what to do with that. You know, you're just like, he's here now and he's hitting the ball hard. And, you know, if he gets popped again, then shame on me for picking him up, I guess. Yeah, when you said he was jacked, I was like, well, yeah, he was. He did get suspended for. Yeah. It's not just the PEDs like there's there's some work that goes in there, too.

But yeah, he continues that the ball hard. I just think that lower K rate in this limited run this year, that makes him really interesting, at least short term target to throw on your rosters to see where it goes in a bunch of leagues. Anybody else that you were picking up this weekend that you thought was a particularly interesting ad? After our draft last week, I got some cannons. You got some Jonathan Cannon. Nice. And I know that some people saw at Cincinnati and scared away, but if you have looked at Cincinnati's batting numbers at home, they're bad. They have like a three fifties slugging at home this year.

I'm going to say that might just be noise, though. Do you know where the Reds rank right now and run scored per game for the season? Twenty six to twenty fifth. They're 11th. Really? Wow. They've scored almost as much per game as the Phillies. But all in the road.

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it's been, I'm not, yeah, I'm not debunking the home road thing, but also like the ballpark's the ballpark, the weather's getting warmer. Oh, I don't feel amazing about it. I mean, this is, I dropped Carmen Mazinski for a two step from cannons. So, for five bucks out of a thousand. So, I'm living that life. I mean, this is I dropped Carmen Mazinski for a two step from cannons

for five bucks out of a thousand. So I'm living that life. That's that's the 14th place team that is just like, yeah, OK. You know, just trying to scramble the way out somehow. You got two sticks on that club and you're just trying to make a little fire. I got you. OK. Good luck. That was the Garrett Cole in the fourth round team that's really struggling. It's the one where you go to set your line up and you put some goggles on to cover up your eyes and you do it.

You're like, here we go. My eyes, my goggles, they do nothing. Snap the old chin strap. Let's go. Let's see what we can do. I do see some interesting pickups in terms of Evan Carter being out there. I don't think that was available to me in most of my leagues. That's one of those situations where he costs more because he's been gone on some leagues.

I like Evan Carter and I like the skill set and it seems like they're just giving him center field. So yeah, I do think that he might sit against lefties, but yeah, you should go pick up Evan Carter. It's even at 240, 1010. You know, he's like, I guess what they thought internally is like, he's like, he can do what Tavares was doing, but he also could do a lot better. And Tavares can't do much better. Now Tavares is also playing right field in Seattle.

And I've seen that he's on the main event pickups. I don't know, Tavares at some point, Victor Robles is back and then he seems a little bit Spider-Man Mimi with Victor Robles. Well, that's what they're hoping to kind of catch as far as the let's get a guy and see if we can be upper end of the projections and just be right about a very talented player that hasn't had it work consistently for a while. I think that's exactly what they saw. Robles is still a long ways away from coming back though so so much is going to happen between now and the time that they actually have to make a choice like that.

I think I'm on the Rangers side of that one and it's because of the reasons you were describing during the Rockies portion of the show where if you're the Rangers and you think Evan Carter is good enough to contribute on your team when you're making the World Series run and we get to 2025, two seasons after that happens and you have Leodi Tavares who's been in your organization for a long time, like probably a decade or maybe even a little longer, you can't fix Leodi Tavares, you've tried. Evan Carter needs reps, you've got to figure out if Evan Carter is going to hit big league pitching, you've got to give him the exposure, see how that goes, put him in the bottom 30

year lineup, hope the defense is going to be good enough and say he's probably not worse than Leody, he might be a lot better and part of getting to the path of him being a lot better is just playing him He had a combo meal split over two games over the weekend. So I don't know what you call that Is that a now and later like a homer on Saturday? So he was making an impact over the weekend, but I think our General approach to Carter going into the weekend was the long-term outcomes could still be good, more of a secondary than a primary if you're trying to play for the

future. If you try to get him as a second piece, I think he'll be happier there. It just might take some time for him to put all the pieces together because health's been a big factor in why it hasn't happened over the last year and change now for Carter. But yes, hopefully they are leaving him alone in Texas. We are going to go on our way out the door. A reminder, you can join our Discord with the link in the show description. You can find Eno on Blue Sky, enocerous.bsky.social, imtbr.bsky.social.

Thanks to our producer, Brian Smith, for putting this episode together. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening. Sorry, Bud Black.