Rates & Barrels - It's Wander Time!

Episode Date: June 21, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss the promotion of Wander Franco, expectations for the 20-year-old rookie, and a few ways to take advantage of his promotion even if he's not on your roster. Plus, a check-in on how we approached stolen bases on draft day as the midway point of the season draws closer, the risk of added fatigue for Shohei Ohtani in the second half, and the importance of setting innings milestones in leagues that have a minimum requirement.  Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates in Barrels presented by Topps. Check out Topps Project 70, celebrating 70 years of Topps baseball cards. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. It is Monday, June 21st, and even Eno's dogs are excited because Wander Franco is coming up to the big leagues. We are going to talk about that. Maybe we'll get an interview with one of the dogs if they're available. I know they're busy. Shut up! Sometimes he's got to lean into it there's nothing you can do oh my god

how's it going you know good father's day was great got to got some crocs full dad mode full dad mode activated i also got a little bit of a hall pass to leave the house and go to a great bar in Redwood City, Gourmet Hausstadt, if anybody is on the peninsula. That place is awesome. They have takeaway beers and just a really great selection. Awesome. Looking forward to checking some places out here in the near future. And the other thing that's going on too, just thinking about some fun, fun things, the All-Star break is not that far away.

So if anything is happening, then people should be aware of, be sure to pass along details for any gatherings that might happen around that time. We're circling in on Sunday after the Futures game somewhere in downtown Denver. So still a possibility for something like a live Rates and Barrels.

Possibility. We'll see. Failing that, I think you might be out in the town at a minimum. Oh, yeah. I'll be out. I'll be around. Flying in Saturday. So I'll be around Saturday night, too.

Going to have to check out. I haven be around. Flying in Saturday. So I'll be around Saturday night too. Going to have to check out. I haven't been. Cerebral was the last great brewery that I've been to in Denver proper. I want to see. Maybe check out something new when I come by. Or just go to the Falling Rock Tap House because that is an awesome spot. Yeah. So more details to come as those become available in hopefully the near future.

Let's start with the Wander Franco news because this is something we've been waiting for. Wander, Wander, Wander. We've been waiting for this for a few months now, really. I thought there was a chance he could have been among the first players called up this season. Instead, the Rays

went more of the slow cooker route and in their defense, he's really young, but he's really taking control at the plate at AAA this season. I mean, for a little while, Vidal Brujan was outproducing him. In more recent weeks, even if the season-long numbers still favor Brujan slightly, Wander has looked like the better hitter. And as he gets ready to make his big league debut Tuesday against the Red Sox, Wander is going to leave AAA with a 315, 367, 586 line, a mere 11.8% K rate, seven homers, and five steals in just 39 games. So we're getting everything. We're getting average, we're getting power. We're getting speed. We're getting run production.

And we've talked about him a lot because he was one of the few prospects that we felt was mixed draft stash worthy from the very beginning of the season, like shallow mixed league stash worthy. So some people have had him sitting there on the bench for almost three months. If we look at the projections,

they give us a relative idea, again, of what we could expect from him the rest of the way. The bat has Wander at 279, 336, 433 with eight homers and six steals in 70 games, which for a rookie is actually a really nice projection. Yeah, got a piece hopefully coming out soon. Just examining those projections, examining what goes on behind the scenes on those projections, what parts of projections are more

successful than others. There are those that say don't look at projections. I think I developed a little bit of a rubric for understanding their value when you're looking at prospects. I think that projections give you an idea of floor. I think to have the second best projection among prospects, to have a projection of 16% better than the league average as Wander has, to be projected to be in the top sort of 40% of the league from the minute you land tells you a lot about Wander's floor. He's got an amazing floor with all that contact, a good eye at the plate and shortstop defense. The worst case scenario is something like Elvis Andrews or, you know, probably with better strikeout rate. I mean, who has a really low strikeout rate, a shortstop that has been kind of meh?

Ahmed Rosario strikes out 20% too. Who am I thinking of? Anilton Simmons, Goodyear is the plate maybe. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there you go. So, I mean, that's floor, right? And what we're all going to be watching are the power numbers.

We're going to be watching the stat cast numbers. We're going to be watching just to see how hard he hits the ball, what kind of angles he hits them in, because that's going to be the difference between Wander Franco, you know, really good major league regular, you know, two to three win guy and Wander Franco perennial MVP, you know, superstar, uh, you know, hit with the ability to hit three 30 and hit 40 homers. He combined that, uh, at shortstop, that would be what everybody who's holding onto him is hoping for.

And of course, uh, the number one name on that list tells you a little bit about how these things happen generally number one the best projected before his debut since 2010 by the bat um it was vladimir guerrero and that projection was wrong in 2019 quote unquote but is now right since we gave him enough years so there is going to be that push and pull with Wanda where people are going to be like, Bost, you know, like Jared Kalanich, no good. You know, Wanda Franco, no good. This is why you don't bet on prospects.

Well, you know, in redraft leagues, it is an open question of what the best strategy is for betting on prospects. But generally, you want to give them two or three years before you call them a bust. Because Vlad was a bust before he wasn't. Yeah, I think we want to give players a thousand plate appearances

before we can start to say, this isn't going to work. This is working exceptionally well and will continue to work exceptionally well. I think you have more skepticism with older rookies who come up and hit right away. We're talking about the Adelise Garcia's, the Yermin Mercedes. Like sometimes those guys come in and mash for a while. The league figures out their flaws and they never quite get back to that level that they were reaching for the first eight to 12 weeks when they were playing nearly every day and kind of catching the league off guard.

I do think it's interesting with Vlad. I remember at the time that he got called up, there was this idea going around that he may have been treated like a veteran in terms of how he was scouted and how teams were actually pitching to him. It wasn't a case where they went up there just thinking, oh, he's a rookie. It doesn't matter. They clearly knew who he was and what they wanted to do to try and get him out. There was a book on him before he even got there. Yeah, they were prepared for a hitter of that quality. So I think we could see a little bit of that here. But I would agree that if you said the Vlad Jr. projections in 2019, they were more right than wrong. If you think about them relative to other rookie projections, I mean, Vlad Jr. as a 20-year-old that year played 123 games, had that leg injury that cost him some time, kept his collar from happening right away in early 2019, hit 15 home runs in 123 games, hit 272 with a.339 LBP, slugged.4ged 433 5 better than league average for a rookie debuting at that level at that age that's not that far off what that projection was pointing to the projection was

just more aggressive than we're used to seeing so it is all sort of relative and i think i'm totally with you on the side that says hey look Wander could be amazing from day one but he could also just be average or a tick above average for a little while and then once we get to next season or 2023 that's when he takes off and starts playing at that superstar sort of level every single day and contends for MVP awards. Yeah, there was an interesting exchange on Twitter the other day where I referenced my bold prediction for Vlad going into this season as being 30 home runs, right? And I thought that was bold-ish. I didn't think it was my most bold claim.

It wasn't certainly the Cubs starting pitching bold. Certainly the Cubs starting pitching bold. But I did think, you know, the projections say 25 homers. I'm picking 20% over on the projections. I'm not saying he's going to hit 26. I'm not taking the over on the projections. I'm taking a significant amount over. The projections say 25.

I'm saying 30 plus. Like, okay, all right. The person that was critiquing the boldness of the claim and calling it milk toast bold was someone who works in prospecting and so like he was like yeah but like before he debuted if you know everybody was saying that he'll hit 30 homers right like that would have been that would have been a middle of the road projection and i'm like yeah but he was he was already transitioning from prospect like he he kind of this going into this year, was kind of transitioning from prospect to projectable, you know, young veteran. You know? So, the evidence didn't quite suggest that he'd look like a 30 homer player anymore. And we had some evidence.

But he's also right that, that like from a prospecting standpoint people you know were like yeah he can hit 30 homers so do you think there's a clear difference in the expectations of people who speak and write about prospects frequently that the actual prospect analysts compared to the fantasy analysts who rely on the prospect analysts compared to the fantasy analysts who rely on the prospect analysts. I kind of get the sense that the prospect analysts themselves have more realistic timetable expectations

for ceilings to be reached. Whereas in fantasy, we start to bump up those ceilings or accelerate the timeline for a player to reach those ceilings to very unrealistic levels, probably in part because of guys like Juan Soto and Ronald Acuna and Fernando Tatis Jr. We have had a lot of young players come up, and some of those guys had a lot less hype, less time to be hyped in the minors than more hype prospects have had before those

guys have temporarily, let's say, air quotes, disappointed us upon arrival before eventually reaching their level, right? I mean, I think there's definitely something in the expectations that varies a lot from the different types of analysts that are out there. Well, some part of it is fair, I think, because when you look at, when you look hard at aging curves, there's some evidence that most recently aging curves there's no up anymore you kind of just debut at a certain level and that's not to say of course that no player improves in the major leagues that makes no sense but that as a group players tend to kind of perform at their peak until 26 and then go down there's not as much

of a like an upward part of the aging curve anymore. And I think that you could talk about... I was talking to somebody just recently over this past weekend about how he thinks aging curves are broken because we think of players, especially for pitchers, because we think of players as aging in age, like years, and maybe

players age within certain contexts. Like maybe we should be thinking, how long has he been in a major league organization? Because part of aging is how many shots have you given that player to make the adjustment and get better? How many different pitch design sessions have you had with them? How many different mechanical changes have you made, right? So if you have a guy who's been, maybe he was a J2 signing, he's in the Dodgers, the Astros, and he's been in that organization for four years or something. So he's 21, right? And then you have a guy that's just been drafted who's 21, right? You might prefer the guy who's just been drafted at 21 because he hasn't, you haven't thrown the book at, you haven't, you know, you haven't tried

everything with him. And you know that the Dodgers and Astros tried everything with him and that you're probably, that's the best you're going to get, whatever it looks like now. You know what I mean? So that was a tangent. And I don't know that it was at all helpful to what we're talking about, but I found it interesting. So I said it. I think that's okay.

I think sometimes that's the more enjoyable things we talk about come up this way. In a weird way, I think you're describing physical growth and projection in like a long yeah long way like part of the reason that 17 year old comes in and isn't quite the player he's going to be later is just a 17 year old is not done growing like the physical maturation is not complete whereas the 21 year old you have a much better sense of how strong a 21-year-old is going to be in two years than you have about a 17-year-old in a six-year timetable, right? But there is this sort of weird thing that not all ages, not all years are the same. growing in the Astros organization, they're going to feed you, you're going to work out like you're at the best, but a year at maybe a below average university that doesn't have great tech

and doesn't have a really great situation, or maybe a year at high school. You know what I mean? Each of those years is not the same. And I think that's generally why projections miss, because it can't know all that necessarily. that's a lot of context it can't know and then it you know on top of that there's just these that projectability you're talking about is the purvey of scouts i think i don't think that you can ask a projection system unless

you do it with like 25th percentile projections right 10th percentile projections, right? 10th percentile projections. Kind of have a broad view of outcomes and try to do that for players. I think the best projection systems probably do do something like that. But what we see out in the wild are 50th percentile projections. And I don't think you can ask a projection system

to dream on what Wander can be. What it's going to tell you is people like Wander who be. What it's going to tell you is people like Wander who have low strikeout rates and good walk rates have done this. Correct. Which is helpful, but when you look at the bat

over at Fangraphs and you look at rest of season numbers and you sort by Woba and you see Wander's projection for the rest of season and you see David Peralta's projection for the rest of season, and you see David Peralta's projection for the rest of the season, and you're like, they're the same guy. They could be the Spider-Man meme. They are in projection, but they're not in range of outcomes at this point.

We know so much more about David Peralta. It's very clear. If you look at what has happened to him to this point in his career, we've seen his peak. We don't know how hard or how quickly he's going to decline necessarily and i think the opposite is true of wander it's like we kind of know what his floor is we don't know how fast he's going to ascend up into the stratosphere and be amazing or even if or if right but but we they're right now baseline expectations for those

two guys even at totally different points they at totally different points in their career, they're so similar in terms of the numbers. Yeah, and beyond the numbers, not at all similar. Nobody would put those two in the same bucket. Nobody would be in a trade offer. I could give you Wanda Franco or David Peralta, whoever you want. There's a lot of ways to think about it. If you can't go get Wanda in your league,

because whoever has him obviously will not trade him. You can go get David Peralta. He's definitely out there. Do the exercise that way. I was thinking about this a little earlier today too. If you are thinking about trying to leverage the arrival of Wanda to your benefit when you don't have Wanda on your roster, reach out to the team that has Wander because that team probably has an extra bat right now, likely in the middle infield, and they might be willing to move that bat pretty

easily. So there could be an upgrade there. Just something to think about that if you're always wondering like, well, I don't have Wander, so this just makes me sad. Well, find the person who does and take advantage of the extra bat they have because that extra bat can become someone that helps your roster yeah i have one share of wander and i'm kind of mad it comes in my first place uh oc team rotowire oc team i guess it's kind of cool because i might might be able to push up the overall leaderboard. Does that matter in that? Oh, yeah.

Does that pay based on overall leaderboard? Yeah, there's a big overall prize. Oh, nice. Wander time, baby. Yes, moving up on the overall board would be good. I thought maybe it was just wasted. I was like, well, I'm going to win it by 30 points instead of 20. Keep scoring.

Keep running up the score in the OCs and all those. Do you have any shares? And did you slide him in right away? He'll go in right away. I do a draft with Todd Zola every September. It's the first draft for the next season. We drafted Wander there and have held on to him all season long. He's a 15-teamer.

The downside is he's replacing a yet-again injured Alberto Mondesi. There would have held on to him all season long it's a 15 teamer the downside is he's replacing a yet again injured alberto mondesi there would have been room for him anyway but it's like this team just has not been completely healthy all season it's got soto on it it's got mondesi on it it's got luke void on it and we've been waiting on wander it's like all these key guys just keep missing chunks of time but i mean mean, I think the other thought here with Wander is you should play him right away. Because just not because you held him this long, but because of the reason you held him this long. The reason you held him this long is because of the possibility that he could be an impact player in a shallow league. That's why you're playing him.

That's why you're playing him. That's why you waited. So I would say push him into your lineup and be willing to make a deal, be willing to deal with someone else to bolster something else in your roster. If you're one of those teams that has a strong middle infield and Wander gives you that extra guy, deal from that strength. Take the best middle infield and the most valuable in trade,

put that player in a deal and upgrade either in the outfield or behind the plate or with your pitching staff yeah i i had the i had the choice between brian reynolds basically and wanda franco because because i could tell marty you know and uh i chose uh wander over brian reynolds you know there probably is a projection somewhere like maybe the ras ball hitter projections i don't have right in front of me right now maybe there is a projection that says I made the wrong decision but again I don't think that I think there's like there is like a chance that this guy is just such a star

that he's like Tatis or something and he just you like do you remember like Tatis coming back from the injury and you're like oh do I play him right away and like it was like a Monday like, he's coming back from the injury and you're like, oh, do I play him right away? And, like, it was like a Monday. And is he going to come back Monday or Tuesday? And I think one week I decided not to put him in right away because I wasn't sure what day he'd be activated. And he came off the DL at IL and, like, hit, like, three homers in his first couple games back.

And I was just like. So, yeah, I don't want to miss that. There's a chance that he comes up and Juan DeFranco is just that guy right away. Yeah, I mean, I mentioned the Peralta, David Peralta comp for the projection. Other guys that are projected similarly are all guys that are at least steady 12-team contributors when healthy. Eddie Rosario, Ian Happ, Matt Chapman with a little more power is comparable in terms of WOBA. I mean, these are players that you consistently believe in

as long as they're healthy. I think that gives you some guidance there too. It's okay to go ahead and play him in your shallow leagues. Yeah. I like that Peralta won best because Peralta's kind of like 260, 15 homers,

10 steals or 5- 7 steals kind of full season projection. And I think that's sort of what a full season projection for Wander would look like right now, because it's a lot based on the contact, right? And so without the power, knowing the power component, you can't necessarily give him the 300 batting average or even a 280. You can't give him much more power.

I don't think he's going to be a guy who steals 30 or 40. There's a little bit of a chance he's a guy who steals 20 or 30. This is also why you have these young prospects. You could play the David Peralta game for the rest of your life. I've faded prospects in so many of my leagues where I'm just like, I'm going to take the David Peralta in the hand over spending three, four times as much to get Franco in the bush, right?

But the problem is steals. Steals come from young players. So you have to actually, if you want steals, you have to choose, you have to shake after the young players. I have like five Lorenzo Cain shares right now that are just stinking up the room, dude. I was hoping only for like 10 steals. I'm not saying I was hoping he would like steal 30, but like, uh, that one didn't work out for me. No. And I think that's known risk.

But there's more to it than that. And we're going to break that down. Because I think stolen base strategy is something I'm beginning to think about differently for next season already. Based on what's happening through the first half of this one. But as far as Wander goes, yeah. We're excited. And it's going to be amazing. I'd be more surprised if he fell on his face than I would be with most prospects. Most guys, you expect a pretty steep learning

curve. I think he's going to make a lot of adjustments really quickly and at least hold his own from the jump if he's not above average almost immediately. He has that sort of special profile that you listen to the people that analyze prospects full-time, and they can't find flaws in him. And usually they can find flaws in anyone. So that's why I'm so optimistic, I think, about Wander. All right, you know, I wanted to get back to the speed point you were starting to put out there because I mentioned the Adalberto Mondesi injury. His third IEL stint of the season is now underway.

It's the oblique again, but this time it's the other side. Initially, he was dealing with the right side of his obliques. Now it's the left side. It's giving him some trouble. And the implications for Mondesi himself could be really interesting. If this ends up being a lengthy absence, he's going to probably come at a pretty significant discount in 2022 drafts. But what I started thinking more about was if you had drafted Mondesi or picked him up as a core piece for an auction build, you're chasing speed or you're just not going to have enough. or you're just not going to have enough because he's missed so much time this year and you're expecting so many of your steals, relatively speaking, to come from him.

You just can't make up ground in that category. But he's not the only stolen base laggard, and it's not all older guys too. You look at guys like Jose Ramirez, Mookie Betts, Kyle Tucker, Francisco Lindor. They're all between five and six steals. I know in the case of Ramirez, he's got 16 homers. So if you hit a few more homers, it's going to take away some of your chances to run. But I'm really starting to think that I want to change the way I build in the future and maybe focus even less on guys that get 20 plus bags early than I have in the past.

And just try and focus on guys that run a little up and down the lineup and not really expect more than 10 steals from any one player because losing a player that you're expecting 30 to 40 from in this landscape just makes it so difficult to remain competitive in that category when that player happens to suffer an injury. It sounds a little bit like a conversation about how much to spend on an ace and how much you want wrapped up in auction budget or how many high picks you want to spend on a pitching ace. Because then you've put so much into DeGrom or Cole or whoever, Bieber, that when they go down, it takes an inordinate chunk out of your production. I see that. In fact, it's a little bit even more hyper. It's a little bit more like maybe picking a saves guy high

because it's just that one category thing, right? Like if you lose Bieber, you might be able to work the wire and get replacement guys for that, right? But if you lose Aroldis Chapman or Adobo to Mondesi, that's kind of similar where it's just like, I'm just not going to pick someone off the wire that gives me 40 steals. I'm not little bit similar. But the thing is, you know, I see a bunch of people that were supposed to, you know, I've got the leaderboard sorted for top stolen bases in the league. And like,

it's mostly guys who are supposed to run. I didn't think what Merrifield would continue to run this much. So that's a little bit of a surprise, but otherwise it's Acuna, Turner, Tatis, Tim Anderson, Trevor Story, Tommy Edmond those are guys that we we drafted for steals so maybe the the maybe maybe I'm just saying the same thing as you but I'm I I never wanted to get a guy that

like the Jacks the the Miles Straw thing right I never wanted to have that guy where there was an obvious super flaw, but I was going to buy him for the super steals bit. So I think my only addition to what you're saying is that I'm going to continue to go after well-balanced guys. Guys who I think are good hitters that steal some bases. The one thing I would say is that if you don't expect any more than 10 steals from any spot in the lineup, you're going to need like 10 out of your 13 guys to have 10 steals.

And 10 steals is not that easy of a benchmark to make either. There may be 30 guys who steal 10 bases. So you've got to get a third of them in your draft. Yeah, I mean, I'm looking at the board right now, too. I don't think anybody necessarily thought Otani would have 10 in 70 games on June 21st. That's a little bit of a surprise. On a per-game basis, he's shown he can run in the past. And he's fast.

He's definitely fast, so it's not totally fluky. I think we were mostly just wrong about his playing time. Isaiah Kiner-Falefa having 15, I guess. I've just been wrong about him as a player. The power's really dried up since the early part of the season, so I think I was right about that. A five-category Isaiah Kiner-Falefa seemed kind of impossible, but at least to this point, he's been, I think, at least average in every category

other than home runs. He's actually a hard player to learn from i think like because i think that the place that you actually sort him is a guy who will play for defense and has an uncertain ceiling and like there aren't a ton of people like that i guess you could say mile straw belongs in that but I think that our idea of the ceiling was correct. It's not very high. It's not a very good batter. He's maybe in the process of losing his job right now

to Chaz McCormick. So I don't think it's a place that I... I don't want to learn... You don't want to overlearn, right? I don't want to look at Isaac Hanifleff and be like, ooh, I really need to learn from this, right? And so, therefore, in the future, if a guy is set to play at a position

and has something I like about him, I'm just going to go for it. Because I think you'll end up with as many mild straws as you'll end up with Isaac Anifalef. Yeah, well, I guess the thing about him that stood out to me is he's one of the few players in this leaderboard who wasn't an early, consistent early player drafted. I mean, Merrifield's an early rounder.

Acuna Turner, obviously, first rounder. Tatis, a first rounder. Tim Anderson. Mullins. Mullins was the other pickup. Anderson, I think, was third, fourth rounder in a lot of leagues. I think fourth was more common. That's what I'm saying.

When I look, I see mostly guys who were supposed to do it. A couple guys that were kind of like mid-rounders that have done it so far in Hampson and Tommy Edmond. Edmond in particular I think is a little more expensive, but with Hampson, he's actually given us more power than expected. Six homers so far this season in 68 games. There's also on this list players that are barely rosterable even having this many steals.

You know what I mean? Like Nico Goodrum with a 210 batting average, terrible sort of volume because he plays five days out of seven. I guess he's rosterable, but not in my 12-teamers. And I haven't had one thought about him in my 15-teamers, and I haven't had one thought about him in my 15-teamers. So that's where I think Dylan Moore and Myles Straw and Brett Phillips all fit, where it's like they're not very good players. And they have 10 stolen bases, but if you are playing them in your teams right now,

you're probably hurting for it yeah jerks and profile has been in my tout wars lineup all season because of injuries and at a glance you see some things that are good 12.4 percent walk rate nine steals he's got one homer he's hitting 214 he's showing he's basically miles Straw with 40 fewer points in batting average. That's not good. That's not good. You cannot get by with that. I mean, those steals are just brutal. To get the steals, you're suffering in a couple other categories. So I guess for me, my corrective action to not go overboard with Mondesi in part because I felt like he just wasn't a good enough hitter for me to

justify drafting him where he was going. That was my problem with Mondesi on draft day. I wanted to be healthy because I want to see if I'm wrong. We have no idea if he's improved as a hitter because he's played so little this season. My strategy pivot to not rely on Mondesi back during draft day, and this is not a lap of, ha ha, he's hurt. It's never like that for me. I hope that's very clear to people. My pivot was I want Jelic. I want Ramirez. I want the late first-rounders who've been five-category guys before.

And so many of those guys are running less than expected. And I would say even Kyle Tucker is sort of the younger guy that you could also have been skeptical of. He thought, you're getting five categories, and you really haven't so far. But you're getting five categories, and you really haven't so far. And that's where I'm kicking myself wondering if maybe we have to lower expectations for the 27, 28-year-old stars. Like stolen bases, as we've said so many times in the show, that is a category for younger players in general. Whit Merrifield having 20 steals, that's not a, hey, go get the next guy that you think is going to run that much at that age. He's an outlier, so be careful. Because most of the guys, the average age of the guys on this leaderboard is what? Probably 24, 25?

It's young. Yeah. I mean, I'm struggling actually to take away anything other than I have to chase it. I have to pick young players to get my stolen bases and I have to make it a priority at every point in the draft if stolen bases are category I have to think about them the entire way through the draft I think I think I have to get more stolen bases than I need I need to go past the projections because the projections are going to miss this maybe, this drop off, you know?

And I have to game for 120 stolen bases just to get 100 and maybe be in the top three. Yeah, I guess maybe the other corrective action is just to say, I'm still drafting the same kinds of players I wanted before. I'm still targeting Ramirez, Jelic types in the back of the first round,

but kind of twisting in what you're saying, instead of penciling them in for 20 or 25, whatever the projections say they're going to do, I'm going to hit them harder in that category. I'm going to say... Save five off. I'm going to knock off eight or 10. I'm going to say...

I'm expecting 10 or 12 or 15 bags from guys like that, not 20 plus, and that will help me push a few more chips in that direction, categorically speaking. And the reason I'm going after those players is that I trust that the other categories are all categories they're still going to bring. So even if steals are lighter than expected there, those are still hitters who deserve to go where they're going. And there's that possibility that they hit the projection and I end up with a few more than expected. Maybe I win the category instead of finishing third or fourth in it, but I do think expecting

players at 27, 28, and 29 to hit their stolen base projection when they can do so many other things might be a hole in my game that needs to be fixed. Generally, in my labor squad, I made it a priority to just keep going after steals and to try and draft for steals.

And of course, I lost Luis Robert early. And so that's like a big portion of missing steals. So I can't can't know that that know that maybe I had a fine enough approach. But my approach otherwise was to get some guys who would steal a few. Willie Adamas, Nick Solak, Ryan Mountcastle, Randy Orozarena. I thought Mitch Hanegar might steal a handful, but he hasn't. I thought DJ Stewart might steal some. I got Alex Kirloff.

I thought he might steal a few. Ended up with Adam Engel as a, you know, a little bit of insurance, but also some more steals. So I just, like, continually, like, continually made it a steals thing, and I was, like, drafting for steals. And let me tell you where I am in steals in this league. I don't think I'm in a good spot. I mean,

I have seven points in steals out of 12. And I just, I like thought about the entire draft and people came out of the draft thinking, saying to me, I think you got enough steals. I'm worried about your power. Well,

I have 12 points in homers and 12 points in RBI. I think the lesson is get some steals get some more steals and then get some more steals after that i think that's the lesson i think so and then i go back to what we were saying during draft season about late speed and how unreliable it is and it's like well crap where's the coming from like wait how how are we getting these steals and then more steals and more steals? Yeah, I know, I know, I know. I'm sorry. I do say it a little bit tongue-in-cheek

because I know it's hard, but there are some wins. Tapia was a late draft for steals, right? Got eight. Robbie Grossman and Mark Kanha are in this weird veteran that was going to steal some bases and was still super cheap anyway that's like gold i think if you can identify somebody who you think is old and boring and will steal 10 bases you gotta you gotta get that guy

i mean i'm trying to figure out if if chris taylor was somehow a few years ago a little bit instructive if we'd paid closer attention to how he did it if maybe a few years ago a little bit instructive, if we'd paid closer attention to how he did it, if maybe we'd have been a little less skeptical of Mark Kanha and subsequently Robbie Grossman. I think Grossman, of those three, was the hardest to see coming. The speed from him, especially

at this stage of his career, I don't know if that's a miss or if that's just the game being fun. Sometimes it's fun to be surprised because if we could predict everything that was going to happen, it'd be boring. Well, winning wouldn't be boring, but the challenge would be boring. There's this weird thing going on where I was writing a piece about Baggerly with Baggerly about how players are being more efficient now.

So Grossman, to me, is a guy who only swings at strikes like he actually kind of there I get a little bit of a Jed Lowry vibe where it's like he's not the most athletic dude on the team and not even close but he's gonna get every ounce out of every bit of his what he's got you know what I mean he's going to study up and he's gonna steal every base that's possible you know without blazing speed and he's gonna you know every base that's possible, you know, without blazing speed. And he's going to, you know, he's going to have the best eye at the plate and he's just not, you wouldn't expect a lot of this out of him. Like he's not that good, but he's really good at getting the most out of what he can. So I think that's a little bit Chris Taylor in. Taylor had a, you know,

a big swing change and some changes in philosophy um and is getting the most out of what he can do he might actually he's more athletically um gifted than grossman and i think that makes sense when you think about where taylor can play multiple spots came from you know up the middle moved off shortstop to go to center field if you're moving around the middle infield and center field yeah you you've got some athletic ability that's just that's not going to happen with Grossman it's like he's a corner guy really a left fielder that that I feel like you you could only see that if you were watching the A's on a regular basis and watching how Robbie Grossman was stealing bases like some of these things are so granular that you're just not going to spot them

unless you're really close to the situation raimel tapia i got hot i don't i just didn't think he was good like and he may not be i mean cores covers up a lot of papers over a lot of flaws man you're the nando that's another nando guy it's having a great season though counting stats have been good for him too so and these a lot of these guys are outside the top 200 that's sort of where the line is andrew benintendi was running before he got hurt and showing some power like quietly tracking towards the 2020 season before the injury put him on the il which is really disappointing because i i don't think his bounce back was being fully realized by people who didn't have him on their roster this season. Yeah.

Do you think we could pick some people like these, like Tapia, like Taylor or Grossman going forward? For Grossman, I'm getting a little bit of an Abisail Garcia. It's not the same guy, but Abisail Garcia, Mark Kanha, Robbie Grossman. Right? People don't want to draft them for some reason. And they will give you close to 10 steals. I'm trying to think if there's anything in the projections that would even steer us to some of the players

that are going to exceed expectations in this regard. But I'm running through that list right now. I'm not seeing a lot of guys that are truly overlooked. And the projections still throw you back into the Lorenzo Cain pitfalls where you're like, oh, yeah, he's done it before. He still moves well, but he's just old. And I think more even than the skills loss is just the time lost to injury. You're not going to hit that 20 steal projection if you can only play 110 games.

I've got a little bit of a Tapia vibe from Odibel Herrera. You know, not very good center fielder, but keeps getting played there. Not maybe the best bat ever, but good enough to play. And not going to be a guy who steals 30, but probably a guy who steals 10 even next year. I think if he's got, but he's, you know, there's a little bit of role anxiety there.

Should we stay patient with Manuel Margot? I mean, seven homers, six deals, only a two 47 to 89, three 98 line. Maybe get squeezed out of Tampa Bay because of the crowd in that roster. Probably more than the off season.

Then, you know, like right now,. Maybe he ends up playing center for Miami. Yeah. I think maybe a guy like that is one that you want to stick with a little bit longer because we've seen him do it in the big leagues before. 20 for 24 in San Diego in 2019. That's the speed we're looking for. He's on pace for about 14 or so, even this year with a lower OBP than he had when he put up to 20. For the Chris Taylor, I've got a couple names. They're a little bit different, but hear me out. Will Myers and Brandon Lau. and Brandon Lau. Guys who will give you other things, they're not the same sort of thing, but what they are are veterans that can play a few positions

and have 10 stolen base speed and won't cost much. I'm on board. I think I'm looking at more like Harrison Bader again. Why am I always a Harrison Bader fan? Ugh, it's gross. That reminds me of the Tapia group, actually, of just sort of like the bloom has gone off young player. That's a good place to shop, I think. The bloom has gone off young player is a great place to shop. And I think with Bader, he plays a defensive position that teams care about. That gets him in the lineup, and that keeps him piling up counting stats

and gives him more chances to keep getting better. We did see a little bit of skills growth before he had that rib injury, too. The K rate was cut in half from where it was in the shortened season and really from where it's been for most of his big league career. There are paths to these cheaper steals. I think Bader might be the kind of guy that's actually on the wire because of the injury in a decent number of leagues.

You could pick him up and end up actually finding some of these missing steals that you need for the second half in a player like that. Yeah, yeah. I think, yeah, the only other thing I can think of are like the super old, but that's like you start getting the Kane situation. Likeon belt will steal you six bases that's super old well i mean for baseball super no no it's true so uh just a super old guy who used to steal a lot of bases who's still

gonna steal you 10 like what's vato gonna steal this year i mean he's been hurt yeah oh man his his ejection if you didn't see the video of his ejection from Saturday in San Diego, take a few minutes. Watch that. He just lost it. It was incredible. Oh, zero for Votto last year, but he had been holding steady at five and eight for a while.

That's interesting. Yeah, he lost it. He lost it. There must have been something said. I just want to know if it came from the umpire or if it came from someone sitting behind home plate who he thought it came from the umpire because his reaction was just like very unexpected yeah so stone-based strategy is shrug emoji yeah shrug emoji hit us up via ratesandbarrels.theathletic.com.

If you're rethinking steals just based on the landscape, again, we're kind of in it. We knew it was going to be like this, but if you did something and you thought it worked or you did something and it really hasn't worked, let us know because everyone's trying to figure this out. Maybe we can sort of figure it out together here as we move forward. All right, we've got a couple interesting things to get to from the mailbag. The first is a follow-up question that came in about Shohei Otani. Robert wanted to know if pitching was actually a possible detriment

to Otani as the season goes on. It's something we get excited about now because the numbers are so good. But with him already passing his previous career high in innings, it doesn't seem impossible that fatigue could set in at some point in the second half. Is that something that you're kind of factoring into Otani as you think about him going forward? If you've been rostering him to this point and reaping the benefits of this amazing first half, are you concerned that the second half simply can't be as good? this amazing first half,

or are you concerned that the second half simply can't be as good? Yeah, I've got a league where I've got one util slot, and I've been nursing Otani and Jordan Alvarez. I'm in second place, but I should just trade one of them away. And it should be Jordan Alvarez, I guess, but the return would be so much more for Otani. And it could be the Meister stroke, because there's always the specter of,

looming specter of injury, I feel like. You know? It's just been demonstrated for Otani that it's not just one injury. And I think it's, here's a simple way of saying it. I don't think that necessarily the pitching makes him more likely to be injured, but I think pitching means he's more likely to be injured.

It's just two ways to get injured, right? Yep. It's twice as many ways to get injured. If any of these guys were regularly pitching, they could just grab an oblique for the pitching or they could grab an oblique for the hitting. I mean, it's a very rotational sport, but it's just another avenue for him to get injured.

I would just say that the baseline injury risk for him, I would say is probably twice the average player. I mean, he's performing twice the functions, so I think that kind of holds up in that regard. And I think even if he stays healthy, and hopefully he does, I would be hesitant to expect his last 81 games to be as good as his first 81 games. Like that's, it's a grind for everybody, but even more so when you're trying to do what he is trying to do.

And he's had, he's actually hit a career high in home runs already. Topped his 2018 numbers by hitting his 23rd home run in the last few days. So really just a truly amazing year that he's had so far. I think these concerns are valid. But I would also say you could look at Vlad Jr., even with the amazing projection he has the rest of the way, and say he's probably, based on projections and how regression works, more likely to underperform

his first half than to meet or exceed it because his first half has just been that good. Yeah, but what are you going to do? What are you going to do? Who are you going to trade Vlad Jr. for? Just enjoy it. Just live with it. That's what I'm saying. That's where I've come to on the

Otani thing. I'm just on the ride. I think that's where I've come to on the Otani thing. It's like, I'm on the ride. I don't... I think that you could overthink this and trade him because you're worried about this injury, right? And then what will be really hard to factor, especially because the best Otani shares are the ones where you can use him as a hitter or pitcher

and he's one roster slot. What you might not be accounting for really well in whatever auction calculator, whatever look you're trying to make at it, is the benefit of having Otani in one roster slot. I don't think we have a really great sort of mathematical or auction calculator, I don't think we have a great concept of how valuable it is to get both of those things out of one roster slot right you don't just add them you know it's not like war where i think even war is probably missing this you don't just add the like the roster slot itself has value you know what i mean so like so like by not having like you have otani that has 2.5 war

hitting and you have otani that has 1.5 war pitching but his value is more than those two things to add it together because you didn't have to use up the roster slot on the other guy and it's the same in fantasy so like even if you're like run the numbers you say oh the auction calculator says he's a 10 hitter and a three3 pitcher and I'm going to trade him for a $15 hitter or something right and you've congratulated yourself and you think you've done the right thing you might the the value now you have to use a roster slot somewhere else for a pitcher you have to you have to you're losing something so I don't know. I think you just hold on. I think it's like one of those bare-knuckle hold-ons too.

Yeah, it's not actionable, but I think it's a good thought. Just in terms of expectations, it's a good thought, even though we would love to see him just keep doing what he's doing for a full 162. So thanks a lot for that email, Robert. We had a question come in from Greg a while back about reaching innings pitched minimums in 2021. And he had set a goal of reaching 450 innings for a bunch of his teams by the end of May, regardless of where those teams were in the standings categories. Accumulating innings was the primary goal on June 1st, 13 of my teams had cleared

the 450 inning threshold. And of the eight that failed, two were within a start. Each of those eight has since well cleared 450. Eight of those teams are in first place, and four are within seven points of the top spot at the time of this email. Given how penal the failure to accumulate 1,000 innings is for the NFBC, and this is true in any league that has innings minimum, you end up going to the bottom of the categories for pitching if you don't if you don't actually hit the minimum uh you know what do you do to manage that i think greg's idea having these targets is great he wants to know should i aim

for 900 by august 1st or 900 by september 1st where would you set the bar in an nfbc draft and hold league where you don't have the ability to go out and pick up more pitchers? I mean, because there is definitely concern about a war of attrition with your roster when you can't make moves. If you keep losing starters to season ending injuries or any pitcher to season ending injuries, eventually you don't have anybody to throw. And you may have been well on your way in May and June, and suddenly you get to August, and that pace changes considerably. So I think the way he's handled it so far is great, you know, but I think he's got to keep his foot on the gas pedal and just keep pushing innings as much as he possibly can. Because I think we're just starting to see the beginning of the pitcher injuries piling up. Like earlier in the year, it seemed like it was position players who were getting hurt at astonishing numbers.

More pitching injuries have been piled up probably in the last few weeks. I want to see where we're headed, but I'm assuming we're going to get more and more pitcher injuries as this season wears on. To answer the question, I think 900 by September 1st is okay. But if you want to move that up a little bit because you're nervous about the injuries,

I can understand that. But I think that what's really interesting at play here too is that there's a few things going on. So I think offense peaks in August. So you'd almost always want to get more innings in April and May than you want to get in July and August. Right? Just from that standpoint.

What's working against you in that regard is moving too fast, right? And playing pitchers like, I'll use one that I predicted to be good, Alec Mills, you know, too much early on, and then swallowing that six ERA before you realize you don't actually want to start him, right? So that's where I see the value of stuff in Command Plus being so useful is that you can be aggressive early on. You can move fast on your appraisals of pitchers

and be able to stream effectively early on and to gather innings early on without taking all those bad numbers from the pitchers that were bad that you just didn't know were bad yet. So generally, I would try to get more innings early and not have to be desperate for innings late. So you'd aim for that 900 by August 1st if you could pull it off. Right.

I just don't think I'd freak out and start streaming crazy if I didn't make it right away. It'd be sort of a benchmark, something to watch. I think 900 by September 1st you can make it. But you definitely don't want to be low on innings in those last, because first of all, you may run out of fab, or be pushed into some really poor choices like a double stack of Jorge Lopez in Baltimore

at the end of the season just because you need those 15 innings no matter how bad they could be or whatever, those 12 innings. You don't want to put yourself in a bad position later. I feel like you maybe have made some Jorge Lopez two-start weeks a priority in the past. Somebody whooped my ass last year. Who is it? It could have cost me the championship

because I didn't put Lance McCullers in. Was it Cobb? Oh, man, somebody. Oh, man, somebody. Oh, man, somebody really hurt me last year. You know what? I'm going to leave that out of my memory banks. Why bring it back? I don't want to think about it.

If that doesn't come to mind right away, don't dig that up. Who knows what else you'll find on the way there. But it's a great question, Greg. I think Eno's soft target of 900 by August 1st makes it, if it's low to mid eight by August 1st, I think you're still probably going to get to a thousand by the end of the season. But I could definitely see the concern being greater

in draft and hold, even than it is in any other league. The more shallow the league, of course, the easier it is to stream, despite the fact that offense peaks in August, because there's at least more options out there. In 15 team or it's a little more challenging at 12. It's really not that bad, but definitely something to be mindful of. And if you haven't looked at where you're at in your innings count, you should probably check in on that. That's actually that's actually the number one thing I'm getting from this is I better check. Check those rules because I generally I

think I'll be fine because i have been pretty aggressive about streaming so i've been like getting two starters in there and stuff but i would be surprised if i was in trouble but i do want to know what my number is yeah i gotta check labor in particular so on that note uh if you don't have a subscription to the athletic you should get one 399 a month at the athletic.com.com slash ratesandbarrels on Twitter. He's at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. I need to go check and see if my labor team is actually where it needs to be. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels.

We are back with you on Wednesday. Thanks for listening. Thank you.