Rates & Barrels - Introducing Chris Welsh and the Rates & Barrels Prospect Project!

Episode Date: February 7, 2023

Eno and DVR welcome Chris Welsh to the Rates & Barrels crew as they introduce a new prospect-centric weekly episode focusing on keeper and dynasty leagues, prospects, scouting, and player development.  Rundown 2:08 Preferred Keeper/Dynasty League Formats 11:40 International Free Agent Bonus Money v. Draft Slot Money 15:42 Dynasty Rankings Are Incredibly Hard to Do Well; Welsh's Process 31:11 Exit Velocity & The Challenge of Finding Robust Prospect Batted Ball Data  44:27 Who Do You Like More Than Their Current Stat Lines? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Welsh on Twitter: @IsItTheWelsh Have mailbag questions or ideas for future episodes, drop us a note! e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Offers from Ad Partners Visit ro.co/athletic to get 20% off your first Roman order today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It's Tuesday, February 7th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris and the newest addition to the Rates and Barrels family, Chris Welsh. Welsh, how you doing? Welcome. Hey, hey, claps. Yay, yay, yay. It's always very jarring. Always very jarring, any other voice being around.

But I'm very happy to be around both of you. Two people that I have spent, I haven't spent a lot of time with the Rates and Barrels family, but you two I have for many, many years when you've come out here for the First Pitch Arizona and everything like that. So I'm very happy and excited to be here. And of course, people are probably familiar with your podcast, In This League Shows, Baseball and Football, Prospect One, your prospect show, which is the main reason we wanted to bring you on as part of the family was to talk prospects with you to talk keeper leagues dynasty leagues you're going to be taking on a new role with the athletic on the writing side taking over the dynasty rankings

that ian khan has managed i believe for the last two seasons my sense of time is absolutely destroyed from everything that happened in 2020 and then then being in California for two years that feels like 10 years in a good way. So I have actually no idea what year it is. Not sleeping well, but we're working through it. You're preparing for the baby by not sleeping well. Did that really, really well last night. Had a wheezing dog for a little while. She's fine.

Reverse sneezing is a thing that my dog occasionally does. It's very scary the first time it happens. The second time it happens, it still startles you, but you kind of calmly wait it out and go back to sleep. That's what last night was. Dogs make the weirdest sounds sometimes. But they fill our hearts with so much joy. At least no reverse sneezing from the baby.

That's the one thing you can look forward to. At least as far as I know, that would be even more terrifying somehow. So I figured we could start today as a sort of get to know the Welsh sort of question. I want to know when we're talking about a keeper league or a dynasty, we're starting a league from scratch Welsh. What would you make as the perfect keeper or dynasty league format how many teams are in it what are the actual keeper rules what's your preferred way to play long-term fantasy baseball all right so i actually think there's a couple answers to that because a the original way like i started out long many many moons ago probably some people not even born yet listening to this

show playing was a kind of like a smaller more of a keeper format so like 12 it was a 12 team i'm a very big uh head-to-head categories guy obviously love roto love everything else but that was my first that's my oldest yeah yeah it was head-to-head category i still have it 12 team head-to-head dynasty with with like a separate little prospect list yeah okay and that's exactly this is like gotta be the old school thing because that was how it was like that original league we did when i was like 21 we did it outside of a bar when it wasn't cool not that it still is to draft outside of a bar you know what i mean and no i don't know what you're talking about where

the coolest people here it was 12 teams and i think we had five minor league spots at that time and like those are back in the day. I remember taking like, you know, Anthony Rizzo and Paul Goldschmidt and stuff and just, you know, reaping the benefits. So like a smaller, really fun home league, smaller keeper league, I think is beautiful. I still love that format. But as I've gotten older, I play in a lot of 16 team leagues right now. And I know it's a little odd because it's still

head-to-head categories 15 to 16 teams and i like 10 plus on the minor league system i actually and this is my favorite because i know this isn't necessarily universal there's a lot out there that will be like 10 and then you just kind of churn out different guys you got to get rid of some minor leaguers and you got to pull in you You always have 10. I plan one that it is an open world and that you can pick up guys at every moment, but you always just accrue new minor league players. So you start, let's say the first draft, you start off at 10. The next year you draft five more, then you draft five more. So you're not stuck at 10.

You might have 20 or 30 in there as they graduate, they go on. And also we, uh, I like to give extra credit to rookies so you wouldn't lose you get extra um keeper ability if you will so like let's say in the dynasty you keep 20 players for the first two years of the prospects um come up you would get an extra ability to keep them so you don't just dump them off again keeper and dynasty there is like it's like basaskin Robbins. There's a million different flavors. There's a million different ways to play.

I enjoy. Hold on though. Yeah. I like that. I'd like that extra keeper ability because what I've found in my 12 team league is that it's mostly, you just mostly want to sell your prospects because it's a, it's only a 12 team league.

And we have to, we have to either keep them or drop them at 150 plate appearances and it, or 50 innings pitch. And it's just not enough time to know if they're good or not. That was literally, that was literally the process of it is how cool, how much fun is it? You draft a guy, you sit on them for a couple of years, you curate them, they get up to the majors and then they stink and then you're done and the investment is over. But then-

Somebody else picks them up. They pick them up. I mean, I'm gonna do the trophy thing. Mike Trout, Mike Trout stunk when he first came up. You're stuck with this, you know, oh my gosh, I gotta decide between keeping, you know, Mike Trout here back when he was a rookie or this good veteran and you screw yourself. I had a similar thing in one years and years ago.

This is going to date me. I had to decide between, I think it was first year Paul Goldschmidt or Prince Fielder. And I loved Prince Fielder and Prince was Prince. And I had to make that decision. I traded Goldie off and this was like a low minor league that stinks so I tried at least in the leagues that I do we try to find the best way we possibly can to give a little bit extra time for the whole point of drafting this guy so like you said it's not like up 150 plate appearances 130 whatever it is by your standards they are not good you dump off of them no you get extra keepers and you get to do it for two years and I found that that's like a really good way to not just make them these selling assets all the time. Yeah, I find like the biggest challenge of being a part of a long term league, whether

the commissioner or not, is making sure you've got a set of rules that everybody in the league understands well enough to stay competitive, regardless of the competitive cycle that they're in so if you make a big enough dynasty league i think of the rotowire dynasty invitational james anderson started a few years ago well you were in that i was in that you know i don't know if you were co-managing with some i don't think you were one of the main people in it but it was a 20 team league and you could tell pretty quickly for anyone who just wasn't quite on the level of knowing the optimal way to play it, they were never going to dig out of the hole. And I think that's a major problem because Keeper and Dynasty Leagues can be fun. But if you set something up that falls apart after two or three years, you're really disappointed because you invested a lot of time.

lot of time. You spent all the prospect capital trying to get better for a longer window, and all of a sudden, the league folds just because it wasn't structured in a way that made sense for the people in it. So I think the league you guys are both describing, those 12-team kind of head-to-head categorical leagues, they get kind of pushed aside in our industry, but they're probably among the better ways to play long-term fantasy. I agree. I mean, I mean, Roto is obviously kind of the king. So I think you could start with just like 15 team leagues. What's so funny though, I get in everything I do with my show Prospect One, I do prospects and I do, you know, dynasty lists and stuff. And the amount of dynasty people that play in these like 20, 24, 30 team leagues blows

my mind. I think that's cool. But if, you know, if I were going to be like averaging out what I want to play, that's at the bottom of the list. Like I want to play in a little bit more competitive. I mean, I know you could see that as competitive, but like, I don't want to be sitting at the pool of, you know, the 800th player to try to get into my starting lineup. I like to have like a little bit more flexibility. So I think that feeds the competitive dynasty nature where 12 and 15 teams. I think that's like just that's the right speed, especially for anybody that's getting new into it, because that's a growing thing. I think you guys both see is like dynasty and keeper is growing in the fantasy

baseball world, which is kind of funny because I don't necessarily know if that's the case in like all the other sports, you know, football, football, but dynasty and keeper is a growing thing for fantasy baseball, but you don't want to make it too difficult. And like you said, the road to wire invitational was kind of an eye opener for me. I hadn't really even at that time jumped into a lot of 20 team leagues and we had some wild stuff happen in that as well. Different strategies, not just when now, but we saw the, the famous complete tank for years and years that Tom Trudeau did. And, uh, you know, it, it opened my eyes up to, you know, how deep these can go, but you want it to be as fun. And like you said, as manageable as possible. So people don't dip out. Cause that's

what stinks about dynasty and keeper the most is having to put in new players all the time. And also, you know, just from a sausage making perspective on our side it makes it difficult to know uh what sort of coverage uh you want so i like let this be a call to anyone listening that uh you know if you guys want to uh get in touch with us and tell us you know the depth of your league and like you know what sort of pickups you're looking at and what sort of things you want us to talk about, that'll be helpful to us to know because we can talk about complex ball guys that are total shots in the dark.

We're talking about an 18-year-old who's got gaga stats that you don't know if you can believe at all. We can talk about some of those guys, but they're going to be irrelevant for anybody playing a 12 team keep five minor leaguers sort of deal you know um and we can do our best on our side when we are talking about guys to put context on them you know this is these are the leagues that we think uh they're they're useful and these are the leagues that uh you just don't have to worry about the segment i guess guess. It is something I attempt to do. It's something I've really like tried to hone in is talk macro, because I think something

I've noticed and I have my hands in a lot of things over the years and I've been doing this, you know, like you guys for quite a while is a lot of places will get very singular about what they do. They'll talk about this is the format that I plan. So we only talk head to head or we only talk roto or we only talk points. I try as best as I can to just macro talk about everything that, yes, there are guys, Ethan Salas and Felton Selston. If people are not familiar, those are the two big J-15 international signees, multi-million

dollars, the next superstars in baseball. There's 16-year-old kids. Yeah, Padres catcher and shortstop for the Mariners, Felton Selston, who, multimillion dollars, the next superstars in baseball, the 16-year-old kids. The Padres catcher and the... Yeah, Padres catcher and shortstop for the Mariners, Felton Selston, who, by the way, fascinatingly, are two 16-year-olds that are here in Arizona going to be playing and working out in minor league camp, which doesn't happen. That is not a common thing that happens with these guys. Both are invited to work out.

That makes them unique. But guess what? It doesn't make them relevant still in five keeper, 12 team leagues. As fun as they are, you're not going to want to hold a spot for a guy

that even in best case scenario, if Ethan Salas, who I think is phenomenal, is three years away, you still don't want to hold a 16 year old in the hopes that at 19 or 20, he's going to come up to the majors.

And, you know, they do get, they do get money. But the money versus the, like the, the, the domestic draft money, it's, it's out of whack.

So it's not, you can't just be like, Oh, solace got this much money. So he would have been a top five pick it. It, you don't know that it's, it has to do with what's available that year it has to do

with who has money which teams have money it has to do with their strategy some teams are like i want to put all my money on one guy the padres basically all their money on one guy and other teams are like no we're gonna this year we're gonna just buy i think the guardians do this where they buy like 50 guys 50 short stops make sure you remember it's always 500 000 50 short stuff yeah 50 000 bonuses 50 shorts well you know it's always 500,000 50 short stuff yeah 50,000 dollar bonuses 50 shorts well you know what's funny about that too is like the ranks get screwed up uh you know something uh baseball america they they don't rank anymore they just rank by money so the value of players because we don't know anything we hardly know anything that's a little

disgusting yeah well i think it's not necessarily calling them out on that i'm just like it's a little gross when you think about it actually the inverse because maybe i said it wrong is they only show you the they rank it by who got the most money they they don't even give you a rank it's not a rank it's just the way they sort the list that's not it's not saying it means anything yeah yeah they said they didn't want to do but that's how it's going to be read right like people are going to be like okay so the best one is solace that's a better way to put it anything yeah yeah they said they didn't want to do but that's how it's going to be read right like people are going to be like okay so the best one is solace that's my point that's my point is when you start to look at the money then people start putting the valuation on like oh well this guy got four million dollars so he must be the best where this guy down here got two million dollars that's not necessarily the case the whole international

stuff is wild how many top end busts have there been i i really remember robert puas on is like a guy that i really wanted to pick up i think he got the second most money his year the a's picked him up uh you know yeah it's four years later you're like okay i mean that that's actually been a big point of conversation i've had over the last um you know a couple episodes on prospect one is the last two and a half to three years on the international side has been a complete disaster it has been failure after failure after failure and that's what people are then taking over to this new international class and they're like well you know back in the day you would see international guys be ranked by at least fantasy prospect rankers top 50 you know we're basing off of potential. This is fantasy. Now no one wants to touch them. No one wants to put them inside the top 100, 150. I do think Salas and Selston are different.

I think these guys are uniquely different than last year's class, which had Roderick Arias or Christian Vaccaro or the down to Puasson's class. But at the same time, it's a bad taste left in our mouth. Felton Selston actually trained at Poisson's same facility in the Dominican Republic and actually has a similar swing, which I don't like. I don't like the kind of brought down high leg kick. Didn't work out for Poisson. No, it has me a little bit worried. I'm a big Ethan Salas guy. But yeah, that's international stuff is something we can always hit if people are into it.

But even if you're not, if you're playing a 12 team and a five keeper, whatever, you should know about the next big top guys. We can get into the weeds and talk about 400th prospects and stuff. But even if a guy like Ethan Salas and Felton Selston are not necessarily relative to you at this moment, think about what happened with Jackson Churio last year. Jackson Churio had no professional stateside experience, stayed in Arizona for extended spring training, started putting up 110 mile per hour EVs during extended spring training on the backfields. And actually the Brewers have a developmental Twitter account that they were

sharing this with. I started to boost him up. Then they go, you know what? We were going to send him to rookie ball. Let's just try him at a ball. All of a sudden, this guy who was maybe going to go through complex level ball progressed so far that he went to double A and he's now like a top easy consensus, top 10 prospect, top five in fantasy. I'm not saying that's going to happen to guys like Selston and Salas, but being up on the guys that have that ability in the trajectory is a really good thing that you might be able to take advantage of in your leagues. Whoa, what are you listening to this for? Wait, who's talking?

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only at Tim's. So I think what you're getting at is dynasty rankings are incredibly hard to do well. I have never published a set of dynasty rankings. Never had to do it. I've helped people with a little bit of feedback about their list. That's as much as I have done. And it gives me anxiety going through because you're comparing players who have not played in the big leagues yet to guys who've been in the big leagues and have played exceptionally well for a decade against guys that just broke in and could be the next wave of players who will play exceptionally well for a decade. And you're going across position on overall list too so just from a simple logistics standpoint it's very challenging evaluating players coming into the game with all different experience levels one of the more

difficult things you can do as we were talking about some some j2 players i was thinking of kevin maitan who is only 22 years old He does have a birthday coming up here in a few days. He'll turn 23 on the 12th of February. But there's another blast from the recent past of someone that people had high expectations for because of the bonus, who unfortunately just has not materialized into a big league player. You know, what's funny about him is, I mean, famously, if you've ever paid attention, you know, the whole deal and, you know, the ownership that GM got messed over for all the stuff they did with Kevin Maiton. And he was ranked as a top 20 guy.

And people are going off a two year old video. Taking off of the Braves after John Coppola was banned for life. Four guys, him, Christian Betancourt, who's with the Rays now, was one of them. Oh, he was one of them. Yeah, he was one of them. And then I'm completely forgetting the other two. One was a shortstop. But Maiton went to the Angels, signed a contract last year. I live out here in Arizona, if everybody one of them. And then I'm completely forgetting the other two. One was a shortstop. But my time went to the Angels, signed a contract last year.

I live out here in Arizona, if everybody doesn't know. So I get, you know, Cactus League spring training. And I also get all the complex stuff. My time was rehabbing with the Angels. And I'm over at the Surprise Stadium, which I live next to. And if you've ever been there, it's a big stadium. But during complex, it's empty. There's no human being there. And it was a weird experience that I'm in there. No one's there

except just a couple scouts. And like Kevin Maiton is there. And if you think back to the publicity that he had, he was like the he was the Jack, whatever Jackson Chury was now is what Kevin Maiton was on steroids. He was like the Jason Dominguez of that first run. And I just had this moment looking at Kevin Maiton, who's bigger, um very nice but he's just sitting there and there's no fanfare whatsoever he's hitting balls into the ground and it was such an eye-opening experience of just the prospect world seeing him in this empty stadium rehabbing with a bunch of you know 18 year old first year professional league players and just no one is looking at a side of Kevin. My ton is there.

And he's not really a prospect necessarily anymore, but Hey, still young. Never know. It is the sad part of it, but you know, I think one of the things that's really hard with dynasty rankings is also just that,

you know, it's so different if you're a win-now team versus a selling-off team. And that can just really change it. I've always wondered if any Dynasty rankers are tempted to just have two rankings, kind of like the win-now rankings and the rebuilding rankings. You know, there is a site that does that with fantasy basketball, if anybody plays it. And I do think it's very helpful. OK, so let me say this, because this is a good transition of what you talked about.

I don't believe it's published yet, but my dynasty ranks are going to be the ones that are going to be up here on The Athletic. God help me. Where's Ian? Where's Ian? God, I hope you guys like it for what i do um but one of the things that i put in there that i feel pretty adamant about excuse me is like you will get people that will look and i have a top 400 and that's what i do it just so happens that's what

you guys have done before as well people be like why don't you do six why don't you do eight where's the thousand my philosophy on this has always been when you're drafting in a dynasty you're gonna have to pick a path and there i'm i'm simplifying it there's when now there's play for the future and there's other little versions there's like i want to have all under 28 year old guys or you know i want um to play for next year. There's different versions. But with that, you should start to alter to different lists. So I tell people, if you're a win now team, maybe follow my top 100 and then maybe move to a redraft list, move to my redraft list. If you want, if you are playing for the future completely, move to my prospect list, go into the prospects and start getting those young guys.

There's a, there should be a point where the road splits and you start to alter off. So I can't on a list properly tell you at two 85, should you take this prospect that is two and a half years away or three years away? Or should you take this boring veteran that is kind of falling? I can't really tell people that I do my best on the 400 to do that, but you should find ways to alter. Um, I, I, I'm, I think my list is actually kind of weird because I think I will have some older guys higher than, than some

of the dynasty list you'll see out there while I'll also have some of the really younger guys and prospects higher than some others. So I'm playing both fields of it to give everybody the proper valuation of how i see it over a three-year marker but like listen justin verlander doesn't do you much if you're playing for two or three years from now so you probably shouldn't have him i but if you're playing for win now you might get him in the 70s and that's a steal just because of his age and he's falling down. So I agree having like a win now and a play for the future list works. But I try to tell people like you got to start to alter. So you might have to have a dynasty list, have a prospect list, have a really good redraft list that you like, whoever's it is, and start to just move into those directions. This is just kind of a short little path to show you the valuations of players.

But ultimately, you know, we can't make that decision for people. I think what's really pretty fun is that because there are no public facing projection sets that look several years into the future, I realize Zips does it, but Zips doesn't do it through an auction calculator or a tool that everyone can use to have a consensus sort of opinion, you have to work on your own. You have to decide what's important to you. I think the three-year window makes a lot of sense. For all the reasons we talked about earlier, leagues don't even stick around that long. A lot can change over the course of three years. If you're looking beyond three years when trying to figure out what direction you're going, you'll probably never choose a

direction. What I think is really interesting about all this is that when prospects are coming up, you have present value grades, the 20 to 80 scale, and you get the future value grades. And so much is made of that future value, even though it could take a lot for a player to actually get there. Sometimes players miss. Some players get there really quickly. The development path for players is so radically different. But what we don't have is we don't really have this consistent ability to reassess on the same scale. I don't see people doing this publicly. Reassessing current players, present value, and then putting a future value

basically of how well they'll age, right? It's the opposite of the prospect problem. It's like, do you want to be the one that puts a future 40 on Max Scherzer? And you have to quantify it somehow and say at age 44, he'll just be a future value 40. He won't be good anymore, right? We don't have that. We don't worry about the back half of a player's career.

We obsess over the beginning and we don't even think half as hard about what's really going to happen as a player ages. Mostly it's things like, oh, he's on the wrong side of 30. He's not going to be very good anymore. But we're starting to see some players really break the aging curve because everything changes. Tech gets better. Information gets better. Training gets better. It is.

It's tough for me because I am. I do like to have a numbers based projection system, an auction calculator, at least something to sort of anchor where I start my, my analysis from, you know, and then be like, Oh, I would move them up or down based on these things that are not in the projections or based on these things that I've noticed. I don't have that anchor. And so a lot of times I will go back to my leagues, you know, and I'll know that in devil's rejects right now, I can't sell Justin Verlander. And so in those leagues, a lot of times I've been like, you know what? Fine. I'll keep Justin Verlander and he'll be good.

And that's great. But it's also left me holding the bag. I am holding the bag currently on Josh Donaldson. I got him for almost nothing. It wasn't a big deal, but I can't sell him for anything, you know? And so I'm just going to sit here and hold him until the very end. I am very stubborn league with 28 keepers and nobody else says anything.

He has value, but I think he's probably still going to be a backend, you know, CI for us. So like, you know, he's still on the team, but Tom Trudeau,

you mentioned before, I, uh, I, I admire him as a player, uh, because he's very, he decides his vision very, uh, strongly. And then he's puts a lot of effort into, uh, executing that vision. Uh, his name in our league is trade spam because you're going to have a million trade offers from him in your inbox at any one time if you accept one will be the biggest question if you ever accept one that looks good

and it's almost never good in the end after you do accept it and you realize damn I thought that was good and it sucked in the end but he also did something where Acuna was coming up and he traded uh prime goldschmidt um he's he's traded like like three prime players for him in the middle of their primes uh for one prospect and i just had i'd never seen that before i was

like man you just you just put three veterans in this deal for one prospect who's like an a-ball like wow he was interesting too if you look back to the rotowire dynasty invitational because he did something that i have a hard time with that i can't suggest to people unless you're comfortable with it is completely tanking for years because what people have to understand in theory it was so cool what he did because of how the team ended up building out but who am i to be like hey go throw your money why don't you burn your money for three years maybe it'll be good after that but i would like you to burn your money for three years to make it good and guess what happened i'm

always trying to be in the money man i don't yeah i don't want to just throw 50 away every year the league folded the rotowire invitation was gone and he had this insane roster he drafted he never got to do it he got he got peter lonzo ronald acuna he had all the young guys and then guess what in year three he had to start trying to trade for pitching it wasn't working because it was a 20 team league and we all wanted a lot more than he was willing to give up. And he never got to like benefit from that after three years. So it's tried and true as good as it can be, but you got to have the stomach to do those types of things.

And you're right. The evaluation of like, how do you start trading the older guys for younger guys is tougher. Cause I'm like you, you know, I get more stubborn. Like the amount of people I've had over the last three years message me for some reason they play in leagues where they can't move Max Scherzer. It's always Max Scherzer for some reason, never Verlander. And they're

like, no one wants to give me anything. This is the best offer I can get. And I'm like, listen, I don't want Luis Urias. Luis Urias for Max Scherzer doesn't do anything here. So no, I would hold on. And you don't want to hold the bag, but there's also a point of like not letting the league be the 100% determination of something that you think is valued really high. And that's part of the dance of Dynasty and Keeper.

It's tough. So let's be clear. When it comes to shipping internationally, can I provide trade documents electronically? The answer is FedEx. Okay. But what about estimating duties and taxes on my shipments? How do I find all... Also FedEx. Impressive. Is there a regulatory specialist

I can ask about? FedEx. Oh, but let's say that... FedEx. What? FedEx. Thanks. No more questions. Always your answer for international shipping. FedEx, where now meets next. Yeah. Every league has its different, like how prospect-huggy they are or whatever. Yeah, and I think if it's an industry league, then that's going to be more prospect-huggy than most home leagues. I understand some home leagues,

everyone clings to prospect rankings too, but I think when you've got a room full of people analyzing prospects, they're going to value prospects pretty heavily. A funny anecdotal thing actually about Ian was Ian Kahn was in that. And the first year I had Clayton, I didn't make the first or second year. And I had Clayton Kershaw and his team. He really wanted him and he had Royce Lewis.

So we all know Ian calls me. So Ian likes to do stuff on the phone. He's not going to do anything. I would like, I'm like, just text me. And he's like, ah, let's just get on the phone. I'm like, all right. So we get on the phone and to your point, I could not get Royce Lewis. This was now five years ago, at least. I don't know DVR when you could tell me it was five, six years ago. I couldn't trade Clayton Kershaw then for Royce Lewis and Royce Lewis still is prospect eligible at this point. Like that's the craziness. And Clayton Kershaw has given you like 600 like awesome innings since. Exactly. So it's just, it's, it's, it's weird. Knowing your league is

another really important thing for dynasty, knowing the players, knowing who is going to be hugging the prospects and knowing where you can push, you know, where can you push to get a little bit more? Some people are pretty, you know, like brush it right off their back. If you send them kind of a bad offer and some people, if you send a bad offer, they're never going to talk to you again.

So the, the dance and dynasty leagues across the board it's, it's a, it's an art. It really is. I'm just thinking back to that old RDI league. So I made a trade with ian it was ian and james anderson managing that team together and yeah it was max scherzer and aaron hicks

for shohei otani and dustin fowler was the second player that i got back as part of the deal and i'm thinking about this like this is 2019 i was playing i was already starting to play for the future i tried to build a win now team didn't win't win. Had to start looking ahead. That's Scherzer in his prime, right? 2019, still, he's been great since the trade, right? But there was that fear, even at that time, that Scherzer was this sort of, this guy's going to fall off a cliff, right? Oh, well, we can't give it.

And Otani, I think Ian really didn't want to make that trade. And I got this deal done, league folds. But you think about the last few years, Scherzer's been fine. Like for me to have an edge in that trade, the league has to keep going.

The league still has to exist today and it doesn't. So Ian's team got immediately better. That's why I usually try to win now at the beginning of the league. Yeah, same here. Yeah, it's just, it's so frustrating

to not always get to see the fruits of the trades like that. But I don't know. That league was so fun because. It was. I think it was fun because that was a 20-team mixed league. So basically, if you play in a mono league, the waiver wire looks about the same. Play in a 10-team AL only, NL only league looks a lot like the RDI waiver wire looked.

There were still useful players available. Tommy Edmond, waiver wire player that I picked up in that league. Will Smith, Dodgers catcher, waiver wire player that I picked up in that league. Will Smith, Dodgers catcher, waiver wire player that I picked up in that league. I love being able to find gems like that. There's something in my DNA. I like walking into an antique store in real life and finding someone else's garbage and making it my own. So I'd love digging through the waiver wire, finding a player that no one likes, putting that player on my roster, and having that player actually make an impact. I think there's some good antique stores in Sausalito, I think, back up there. So go on over.

I miss, I'm from Northern California. Everyone doesn't know, like you both are in California. I was raised in Northern California. I grew up in the Bay Area. So that's back in the old, back in my old stomping grounds, I think about. And I did go antiquing with my aunt a lot. So just put it out. I don't have any antiquing.

Sorry, you know. Stories to tell. You get a whole library behind you. Yeah, right. You did mention EVs, exit velocities. There's a great piece by Ben Clements on Fangraphs

this week about the stickiness of exit velocities. And it's titled You Can't Fake Exit Velocity. And it talks about how the year-to-year stickiness of exit velocity is better than any other stat we've got. And he's talking about 95th percentile exit velocity.

For whatever reason, max EVs are more available. are more available. What, what, how do you ever, how do you, do you just ask around? Like, how do you find exit velocities for minor leaguers? I will tell you some people, it's a lot easier. There are some people out there

and God bless them that have full on connects that can get all of this information that teams are going to share. I don't have quite as much of this. Sometimes it's locally asking. some teams, like I mentioned, have some really great, it's, it's literally called their developmental accounts and it's a Twitter account. So the Rangers, the Rangers, the Royals, the Brewers, uh, I think the Dodgers, uh, the Rangers is probably one of the best out here. Mariners have a good one. Mariners have a fantastic one and they will

go out and they'll share a lot of video and they will share a lot of this information because they've had access to it. So, um, in a lot of those places I'm looking for it. Um, you know, sometimes even just some of the other great places that you have baseball, you can just find that are going to be able to publish some of their information. Um, more recently, Jeff Ponce had posted something that had some really good, I think it was one of their top 100 list or whatever that had some, uh, average exit velocity numbers that were on there, which I think is kind of tough to get, but it was, you know, it was a little bit eyeopening when you get to start to look at some of the players. Yeah, it is a little bit noisier, but like, like James Wood had an average exit velocity

of 92, which was one of the highest, but that was also shared with Gunnar Henderson. Like that, that can be relatively telling, but to your point though, um, is noisy as it can get a guy like Kyle Manzardo, who, um, I think I showed you guys, I was just with last week. I was just with Kyle Manzardo. Kyle Manzardo had a 88 average exit velocity. And like that guy is built around big, hard hit balls. He's a big burly first baseman who actually i shared on prospect one this is a bit of like sneaky breaking news he told me that the rays asked him to pick up a third base glove so he's going to he doesn't think he it's going to be materialized into a big thing but i found that so fascinating because that's a guy that is getting full-on raid you

know what i mean like one of the things holding him back was he's just like a first base only player. And all the raised players are always playing multiple positions to think that they're comfortable enough with his, you know, that athleticism that he can maybe play some other spots might make him really exciting. But the point is, is do I want to read everything into an average, you know, 88 EV for him when he's built off of big stuff. No, not necessarily. And there are some other ones that get out there, but yeah, I mean, I think the most valuable, one of the most valuable minor league stats that I can get outside of just not visually looking at

them is any EV numbers. And it's usually done by poking around a couple of connections, locally asking, hopefully sometimes these guys that get some of the information will share it. And then, of course, follow developmental accounts if you really care. That's a fascinating thing for extended spring training. And you'll start to get some numbers because they loved it. For some reason, they love to share numbers. And I love when they do. That's what they did. Like I said, last year, there's usually a track man operator in the press box. Sometimes I know you can you can chat those guys. Exactly. And those guys are, you know, and it's actually a very weird experience during, like, extended spring training because there's nobody there. It's just, like, not even scouts are there anymore.

There's really no fans or anything like that. So you can just, like, walk up and just talk to people. And nobody knows one way or the other. And sometimes you can get some good information. I was just thinking about, you know, all the information we try to gather. I know Rotowire has some hard hit information on their player pages. We're looking in every corner, but compared to the amount of data that we have publicly facing for the big league level, we're still missing a lot. And then I think the complicated part of all of this is how much does

it matter when we're talking about 18, 19, 20, 21 year olds? Does it mean anything if your max exit velocity is relatively low at that age when you could still physically get so much stronger? I think, to me, it's more of an open question. Yeah, you'd prefer the blistering high exit velocity to a low one, but I think it almost

seems like an opportunity in leagues right now to take advantage of people maybe putting too much stock into that information, not knowing how it tracks over a longer period of time. DVR, I gotta tell you, I think that is very astute of you. And I very much agree with what you're talking about. Because power is the last tool to develop. And there's so much process that goes into it. The prospect development is not like linear. Like there are so many paths to it. And so much, so much now is being weighted on very specific stats in especially the ranking, the fantasy prospect ranking industry, where it is paid off and where it's not paid off.

And to your point, you can take advantage of that. Like if I see a guy that I really like, and he doesn't have great hard hit numbers, I think that's a pretty valuable tool, by the way, the hit strength, you can get over at Rotowire on their bad at ball data and they have bad hit strength. I'm not going to like be like, all right, you're done. That doesn't mean that doesn't necessarily mean anything. You see guys that, um, a perfect example, someone we've been talking about forever, uh, Everson Pereira with the Yankees. He had one of the hardest hard hits in 2021, as far as their metric goes.

This past year, I believe it was down to 26%. And he was up into the high 30s that year before. And it tanked down. So does that mean I don't like him anymore? No, it shouldn't. And the same thing would go for, you want to talk about one of the biggest high rising guys right now in prospect land, Emmanuel Rodriguez. Manuel Rodriguez had like a 39 to 40 percent hard hit strength last year, which was tops

of anybody. But he only had like 190 something plate appearances because he got hurt with an elbow injury. And this is a guy that there's a lot to be excited about. But he's being valued inside like the top 50 or 75 in prospect world. I don't know. Red Sox. Oh, white twins. He's a twins outfielder. Twins outfielder. Oh, that's right. And he also has some he also has some zone contact issues. Yeah, well, but nobody cares about that. It's all about this absurd hard hit that he put up last year. I'm not saying that he would be a sell, but to DVR's point, there's a really good opportunity

right now to potentially sell off if that's not someone you believe in, because I don't know if the contact stuff is there. I'm not in love with all of the bat and everything like that. But those are the type of things you can get into that. Yeah, I actually do agree with you that I think is as valuable as a tool is, and it should continuously, you know, be curated, that it definitely creates opportunities on both buying and selling opportunities and how high that stuff is being valued. Sometimes, not always. Yeah, no, I'm not saying that the information is useless. I just think people put more meaning behind it than they probably should, at least in some instances. And, you know, we talk about this a lot with player development, right?

I mean, think about guys that are drafted by various organizations that pick up velocity, right? The Guardians are amazing at finding pitchers, getting them into their system, adding two, three, four ticks sometimes on the fastball, and everything changes about that player with that one adjustment. And we're starting to see more of this with changes in bat speed and weighted bats

and different technology on that side. It seems like we're really only scratching the surface as far as finding different ways for players to improve in all of these areas. So I don't know. I just, I don't want to get caught believing everything that we have is as meaningful as people want it to be.

I think if I could throw in one thing that I think is making it more difficult is that there is no real public uh data given and i think that is um like like uh there is like snippets but there's no like no yeah no there's no like full everything have you ever done geo mapping it's like geo mapping you're just like all right you pick up your geo mapping anybody it's like a phone app and there's some piece of treasure out in a desert and you go and find it that's like what prospect information is it's like oh look and then you got to like put something back in the box and walk away for product there isn't a fan

there isn't there isn't a place where there is all this publicly sorted data that we can all easily find it's like you got to take the code of a game box score over here and put it in here to get this data it's crazy it's absolutely crazy i 1000 agree with you because right now i've got a tweet open uh from eli ben porat um and that's e-l-i-b-e-N-P-O-R-A-T. And he has batted ball data for single A. Great. He has it on a map. Send it on over.

Yeah. It says a selection of prospects who were under 22 for whom I have batted ball data. Okay. So just ones under 22 and just the ones he has bad ball data was not even all of single a so i don't know how this compares to everybody but it is fun to see that um anthony garcia has mammoth power he says he's um emmanuel rodriguez is there jason dominguez is maybe at this point almost underrated because he was the high point too far, but he still hits the ball really hard, you know, and he may not be a center fielder, but like he's still going to be pretty exciting.

And Emmanuel Rodriguez is on this and it starts a conversation about his zone contact rate and whether or not you should believe zone contact rates are off a complex ball and how much you should read into that. How much how good is the data going in? Who's, who's writing it down? Sometimes different leagues define things differently. You'll see swinging strike rates in the minor, in the low minors and the high minors. Sometimes they're like, there's no way this is the same player, you know, like, are they counting fouls? Are they not counting fouls? Like, you know, there's, there's all sorts of weirdness in the, in the data.

But it is like a finding a little nugget when you get this and you're like, oh, Tamar Johnson actually is is not like a weak stick. The reason the reason that the reason that I still think it matters and I think that I can't get all the way and be like, oh,, don't worry about it. He's Abraham Toro. And now on this podcast, we did a little bit more, uh, sort of starting the scouting, the stats. And I'm, I'm excited to have you on to kind of bring a little bit different

perspective because, um, we would just basically do different queries. Uh, and, and I think there's, you know, people denigrate that,

but like there are people in front offices that are, that just do this. Like Carson Sestouli used to do this for fan graphs and now and now he does it for the blue jays so like this is a this is a skill that that people that people have which is like finding interesting players just through numbers yeah and we always loved abraham toro because he did everything well he like didn't strike out he walked he didn't hit grounders like it seemed like everything was great what we didn't strike out. He walked. He didn't hit grounders. It seemed like everything was great. What we didn't have for Abraham Toro was his batted ball stats. We didn't know how he was getting to the 180 ISO. And I say 180 because I think that's the perfect number.

180 ISO, you have no idea how much power that guy has. You have no idea. I agree with that. It could all be legs. It could all be legs. It could be errors. It could be home like you don't know what that guy is and abraham toro always had like the 180 iso now it turns out

abraham toro is like a noodle you know like he cannot hit the ball hard well and like everything that has come since is like oh yeah that dude can't hit the ball hard. Like Dynasty with prospect stuff, I just don't, I think there are so many people that want there to be one thing. This is how it's done. But there's not. Like I believe that this, the new found like data-driven prospect stuff

that is kind of really taking over, there's a lot more data-driven people. That's very valuable. I think people that scout stat lines, it's very valuable. I think people that see guys every single day, it's very valuable. I think people that scout stat lines, it's very valuable. I think people that see guys every single day, it's very valuable. But all of those tools together, I think, make it key. So for me, it's not just about you look at this one thing, you scout the stat line, and this tells you everything. No, not necessarily. I've been in person watching complex level guys for seven,

eight years now out here. I just have a different perspective on it. I think I have a decent evaluation of a perspective of in-person baseball that I then take to whatever else I can get. If I can look at stats, I can go to fan graphs like you guys. I can get some bad at ball data. Sometimes I can talk to people.

Sometimes prospects tell me things about other people. Corbin Carroll has told me stuff about guys multiple times. And I take all of this stuff. I don't have one single method. I take all of this stuff and I curate it back to everybody as best as I possibly can. At the end of the day, you got to like it or you got to not, but you got to follow all the different tools. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm going to talk a little bit to give you a chance to think about it. Okay. This is off the rundown. Who are just one or two players that you like

that may not have the greatest stats right now? So somebody you like better than the stats. And I just, you bring up Corbin Carroll and Jordan Lawler, and I have them in the same head because not only the same organization, same shoulder surgery. I think they both had shoulder surgery. Labrum. Labrum shoulder surgery.

Oh, my God. Three in the same org. That's weird. Yeah, it is super weird. It's super weird. And then reading all the stuff about Tatis' shoulder surgery and being like, whoa, are our ceilings for Corbin Carroll and Jordan Lawler different? And that doesn't mean they do not touch for me.

Because this week, I did two things with Jordan Lawler at the same time. I sold him for Lance McCullers and Sir Anthony Dominguez in an auto. No, the just because I wanted, I needed pitching and I have Ellie de la Cruz and Noel Marte. So I'm like, okay, I think, yeah, I'm going to trade Lawler here,

but I also bought Jordan Lawler in a draft and hold because they need a shortstop and they don't have a shortstop right now. And he's pretty close. So, you know, there's always a different use case. But I'm not and I'm like, I'm not a do not touch on these guys. But it did ring a bell for me.

I'm like, wow, these guys had shoulder surgery. It may not. Yeah. I don't know if you saw the tweet thread, too, from Devin Masarocco, former with the Reds and a bunch of other teams. I think he he actually followed up on I believe it was a fan graphs article that had it. And he followed up saying he had this surgery and he was never the same. And he acknowledged his was more long. It was over like a six or seven year period of time, unlike Tatis, which was one violent act.

One or two years. But he never was able to fully recover. Oh, his was like fraying. Yeah, it was fraying over time. And he never could able to fully recover. Oh, his was like fraying. Yeah, it was fraying over time. And that was a cause. And he never could swing right again. He never felt that same ability for extension. And he said, that's my concern with Tatis,

though it was different. That's in the back of my head too, with some of these guys, especially with all these Diamondback guys. Corbin Carroll, I'm like the ultimate defender of though. You want to talk about ISO? Guys had 200 iso at every single level of professional baseball except for complex ball when he was 18 years old out here

in arizona every other level he's pushed 200 plus iso and he had like 28 homers last year i'm just a big defender of regardless of his size or whatnot um the question you asked me a couple guys that i like that maybe don't have this. Tamar Johnson is actually one of those that you mentioned. I'm very high on Tamar Johnson. Contact is there. The powers are actually won a home run derby, won one of those high school home run derbies, I think two years ago at the All-Star game and beat out Elijah Green.

And I think Drew Jones was there. This is a real big 60 plus power guy and his numbers don't show up very well because he struggled at complex when he started up but then he ended up hitting right around 300 when he went to a ball and battle ball numbers were better and he wasn't striking out like I think Tamar Johnson is super sneaky um Harry Ford is another one of those that I don't know. I wouldn't say his stat line doesn't necessarily like add up. 11 homers, 23 stolen bases.

He's a catcher this past year. But one of the things that during the AFL, he was hanging around doing camps. Here's one of the reasons why I really like him. First off, he's got incredible bat speed. He's a really good athlete that can play off the position. He makes really solid contact overall. His first year, he just didn't show off very well in complex. He had a couple homers hit 291, but in a ball all year hit 274.

He got big and no one knows this yet because from the season on, I saw him walking around Puri Sports Complex and the dude is jacked. He's put on at least 15 pounds of muscle and he looks like a completely different human being from complex to this year. I mean, I'm talking completely like he was like a buck 70 skinny guy. He is jacked and ready to put up 20 plus home run power with really, really big bat speed. And I think he's a guy that can play off the position. That's another one. George Blair is another one. I don't have any good stat lines to, to underline for you because I think a lot of things works outside of his

favor. I've just been around him for many, many years. He's got insane bat speed. He's got plate coverage across the board, kind of hits like Robinson Cano. He's running a little bit less, but he's a major leaguer for sure.

That's one. I have no, you're not so worried about theuer for sure. That's one I have no good So you're not so worried about the strikeout rates on him? I am worried about the strikeout rate, but he's so undervalued, I think, in fantasy now. He is kind of taking the opposite turn because people are worried about some of the contact rate and they're worried about really the strikeout. Almost like the Jason thing where it's like post-hype, but still a prospect. I think he's post-hype sleeper prospect. Those exist. Those 100% exist. And he's one of those guys. Cause he's got a really

good opportunity to make the majors this year. The only concern is I believe he just had a surgery. Uh, and that's the second one he's had. And he had that when I was actually talking with him in complex ball when he was, um, in his, uh, ACL year. And he had that Hammett injury to have that again, to zap the power, that one does have me concerned a little bit. I just have a funny story real quick. Pablo Sandoval, I was asking people about hamate stuff, and he had the hamate surgery at one point.

And I said to Pablo, I said, you had the hamate surgery, are you worried about it? And he goes, no, no more hamates. They take them out. One of the procedures is to have them removed. They're gone. They don't worry about them anymore. What I have seen through the research is it does create pain in the rehab process.

And what we saw with Olsen was when he was coming back from it was it just hurt. But deeper studies, the first round of studies said it hurt your power the deeper studies I've seen since suggest that it doesn't hurt your power and I think if there is anything in between those maybe it hurts your power at the very beginning

when it still hurts but at some point it stops hurting that's interesting it's not like a bone that has a lot of function you know it's a little bit like having your appendix out i was about to say it's like the gallbladder of bones yeah yeah long-term outcomes you just have to get used to it yeah but did but get that man an ax bat you know those that part of what the ax bats Bats were created was to deal with handmade injuries. As is often the case on Rates and Barrels, we make a show sheet,

and we use about 10% of that show sheet, which means the next show sheet has already been started. And that works out really well, because by then, the Dynasty rankings that we're talking about, I might have a kid. The Dynasty rankings we're talking about should be available on The Athletic. If you're not a subscriber, get a subscription, $2 a month for the first year at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. Give us some follows on Twitter. Welsh is at isitthewelsh on Twitter.

Eno is at enoceros. I am at DerekVanRiper. We've got a new email account, so you can start dropping us questions at ratesandbarrels at gmail.com. A little easier to share that account with multiple hosts, so that's the reason for the switch. If you send us the old one, we'll still get it. Tell us about coverage. Tell us how deep you want us to go. Tell us the types of decisions

you're making so that we can get an eye into what our listenership is going to be like. Yeah, and it's about keeper leagues and dynasty leagues and long-term fantasy, but it's also about player analysis, player development, all the things you might care about. If you're one of our listeners who doesn't play any fantasy baseball, we still want to answer those types of questions on this show as well.

So that's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. We're back with you on Thursday. Thanks for listening. Thank you.