Rates & Barrels - Jac Caglianone Debuts & Park Factors v. Park Effects

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

Eno, Jed and DVR discuss the highly-anticipated debut of Jac Caglianone on Tuesday night, and take a quick stroll down memory lane to remember Jed's debut back on April 15, 2008. Plus, they discuss the diminished stuff from Spencer Strider, Corbin Burnes' second opinion, and Eury Pérez's upcoming return to the Marlins' rotation, before looking at the way in which park factors might not be capturing unique park effects.Rundown1:23 Jac Caglianone's Debut with the Royals6:14 Jed's Major League Debut13:55 Elite Bat Speed Already on Display20:10 Corbin Burnes Seeks Second Opinion & Expecting Changes From Spencer Strider29:12 The Giants Shuffle Up a Few Roster Spots37:37 How Well Do Park Factors Capture Park Effects?56:24 A Seemingly Unavoidable Collision Leads to an EjectionFollow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.socialFollow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.sociale-mail: [e-mail] our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFeSubscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrelsHosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno SarrisWith: Jed LowrieProducer: Brian SmithExecutive Producer: Derek VanRiper Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What Greats and Barrels? It is Wednesday, June 4th. Derek VanRyper, Inosaris and Jed Lowry here with you on this episode. We discuss the Major League debut of Jack Caglione. He arrived with the Royals on Tuesday night. We'll dig into some takeaways from game one of what should be a long and productive big league career. We got some baseball news you should know from around the league to get to. We're gonna dig into park factors a little bit later

on in the show. Do park factors properly and completely capture park effects? Big question we've been wrestling with a long time on this show, get a lot of thoughts on that. And time permitting, we saw a pretty unusual play in a college game this weekend that we're gonna break down. So we'll talk about collisions and trying to make some rules that might make things a little better.

So we'll save that for a little bit later on in the show. If you're watching us on YouTube, be sure to smash the like button, especially if you like the shine on my forehead, I'm extra clean after my time off thanks to Eno, everybody that pitched in extra while I was gone. You guys sounded great last week. It helped me pass the time as I was packing and unpacking boxes, so I am grateful for all of your help. I did get to see a little bit of Jack Caglione last night, and it's an interesting thing to look at a debut now,

compared to the way we looked at debuts even I don't know 15 20 years ago because we have a lot more granular information it was 0 for 5 but with four fire emojis that's pretty good right four fire emojis four hard-hit balls and I feel like that's a good like modern like how was your debut really? How was your game really? Did you hit the ball hard? The interesting thing too is that I thought watching him take the very first Pitch he saw and hack at it. He was just looking first pitch fastball like watching that he's like I'm taking a rip I'm looking first pitch fastball. He followed it off. Announce my presence with authority

Yeah, I'm just gonna get that first swing off it off. Announced my presence with authority. Yeah, I'm just gonna get that first swing off just to break the ice and everything else will feel good after that. But what did you guys see watching Jack in that debut on Tuesday? You know, I know you've been excited. You've been talking about him for a few weeks now

as someone you've been waiting on, hoping he'd come up and make an impact right away. Well, yeah, like, you know, 80 bat speed right off the bat, just sort of elite, elite bat speed. I think that was pretty obvious from the minute you saw the thighs and the swing. And then, you know, it was also set against Gerard and Carnassio and just came back for the Giants. And my son and I watched him have a 100% swing rate for his first game back. And the announcers are trying to give him leeway, being like, well, you didn't really have spring.

He kind of hurt himself. He's trying to get back. And Gérard's swings were pretty terrible across the board. Like the 100, it was like 100%. He swung at like pitches that were like three feet out of the zone. And that's a certain level of discipline he has. He's also behind. Jack has been playing. I just want to throw this up. These are the swings outside the zone for Jack. It's just a freeze. I didn't think

that was that bad. You know, these are shadow zone that first one on the left is a 95 mile an hour fastball. It's like three, four inches above the zone, but some people can hit that for homers. Like that's not, that's not an impossible pitch to hit. And the other one was like two inches off the black and here they are in, in, in real life. So, you know, like I didn't think he was aggressive. He swung a lot. He made contact in everything he swung at. He hit balls really hard and I don't think that he was so aggressive that I was like, oh God, this guy has no idea what's going on. You know? And this pitch could have been a double. It's 79 mile an

hour curve ball in the outside corner. Pretty good pitch. Victor Scott, it's only an 80% catch probability. So it's not, it's not like he made a huge play, but 90% is supposedly like where the line is for gimmies or whatever. So that was a, he had to make a play on the ball. It could have been a double if it was a worst defender up out there. And it was well hit.

And it was a 79 mile an hour curve ball on the outside corner. So it was a pretty good pitch. So I think it was all positive. I mean, I have a little bit of, if we don't pick the nets, I can get two, but I also wanted to get Jed's opinion on that, on that start for Jack Hagland. I feel like I'm the guy that, you know, I've been in the box, right? I know what those

emotions are. And for him to take the swings that he did in his debut, you know, that first pitch, it looked like the one at the top of the zone that you showed there, that was his first pitch that he saw in the big leagues right there. The emotions of that, like that's exactly what, you know, pitchers are trying to do. They know he's fired up.

They know he's a big prospect. They know who this kid is. They're gonna challenge him, you know, see if he's gonna chase. And so of course, he's gonna swing at a pitch that's slightly above the zone. So I was thoroughly impressed. I mean, the two swings, obviously people are saying he got robbed of two hits.

And I, I couldn't agree more for him to be able to have the back control and the presence to take a curve ball that he's slightly out front of, but have the, have the mechanics to stay through that ball and drive it into the right center field gap and then take a fastball and hit a rocket the other way. You don't want to get too high or too low on one game. But if I were betting, I would say this kid's going to have a really good career and if he stays healthy, it could be great. What was it like your first time? You remember your first time at the box? I remember talking to my grandma after the game and she said that she was really nervous

but then when she saw how hard I was chewing my gum she's like I knew you were more nervous than I was. So yeah it was in Cleveland and I had a couple games in Boston to, you know, I was available and on the roster, but didn't play. Frank Kona told me on the plane that I was starting at third base, the first game in Cleveland. And I remember there was a foul ball and I didn't have a ton of experience at third base. I had played, you know, a little bit in AAA

before they called me up. There was a foul ball that was probably 20 rows up, if not more. And I went sprinting over to the wall. And like I was going to catch it. And I walked back and I can't remember who the umpire was. But he looks at me. He knows it's my debut. He says to me, you thought you were going to catch that didn't you? I said, Man, it sure felt like it.

Almost got that one kid. Like I said, must have been 20 rows kid. Like I said, it must've been 20 rows out, but it felt like I was going to jump over the wall and run up the bleachers to catch it. It seems like it's one of those days. Paul Bird, Paul Bird. Yeah, I missed a double in my first at bat by like three inches down the left field

or right field line. Ended up striking out on like nine pitches. I had an RBI ground out and then I got my first hit in lefty. Oh shoot, I can't believe I'm blanking on his name right now. Lefty reliever ground ball in the six hole two RBIs. Rafael Perez? Yeah, there it is. There it is.

I was looking at the box score for this game. Let's see how many players Eno can name that started in that game. It was a Boston, Cleveland matchup, April 15th, 2008. Jed can help him out after Eno goes for a bit. I mean, start with the Red Sox. Who else was in that lineup with Jed that day? Jason Veritek, Red Sox. He played. He didn lineup with Jed that day? Jason Veritek? Red Sox? He played. He didn't start that game, but he played in that game. Yeah, so that's the right era.

Was Pedroia still there? Oh yeah. Pedroia had three hits that day. God, who was the shortstop? You're gonna have a hard time remembering the shortstop. You should definitely know who the three and four hitters were. Cabrera? Nope. Ah, geez. Even the outfielders.

Um, Oh, Johnny Damon? Nope. No. Ah, you're just, I'm just going to embarrass myself. Jed's like, I remember every single person on the field. Not everybody. Not everybody. All right.

Who else was there? Jed. Julio Lugo. Julio Lugo was the shortstop. He got three hits that day too. Nice. Coco Crisp. Yeah, he led off.

He was the center fielder. Yeah. Ortiz was, I'm pretty sure David was D.H.ing that day. Yep. Was JD Drew in the starting lineup that day? He was not. Was Ellsbury? Yep.

Ellsbury was in. Oh, that's right, Ellsbury. I was playing third, so that means Mike Lowell was not in the game. I think he... Yeah. Euclid was in first. Euclid was in first. God, I should have done way better than this.

And then Manny would have been in left, right? Manny was in left. Yeah, and it was Kevin Cash that got the start behind the plate. Oh yeah, that's right. Is that like the year or two after they won it all? That was 08, so yeah, it was Kevin Cash that got the start behind the plate. Oh, yeah, that's right. Is that like a year or two after they won it all or that was oh, wait. So, yeah, it was it was the, you know, after the seven World Series. How about the guys on the Cleveland side? You mentioned Paul Bird started that game and the first hit was against Rafael Perez,

the jet had there were two other guys that pitched in the game. Extremely obscure relievers that you probably won't remember, but there's some pretty interesting players on the Cleveland side that were in that line. It was a quality team. I, I for who, who were the other pitchers? The other pitchers were Jorge Julio and Jensen Lewis, who actually played in the fantasy baseball. I remember Jensen.

Yeah. I think he, isn't he doing games for Cleveland now? He's, I think he's doing TV for them. Yeah, I believe so. I remember, oh, you know who know who the guy I played against all through the minor leagues to two is a as Drupal Cabrera. Was he was he there? I can't remember. Yeah, he was there. He had some great years in the big leagues. Holy cow. He was like a switch hitter with like power and contact. He was pretty good. He had some great years. Just a little bit slow, right? He's a little bit slow. Yeah, no, yeah.

Not getting paid to run. Yeah, right. Kind of like a Wilber Flores a little bit, but like switch hitter. Yeah, yeah. I like that. I like that. Was Prank there? Travis Hafner was there.

He was there, DH. Yep. Yeah, that was a Hafner, V Mart, Grady Sizemore, Johnny Peralta. Oh, Grady Sizemore, yeah. Solid squad that they had at that time back in 08. I know Ryan Garco was on that team in 08, I don't know if he was in the lineup that day.

He was. So that was a college teammate. So he was a college teammate. So he was a, I remember walking in. He was like the GF of the Tigers or something. Yeah, more or less. I remember walking in my freshman year, he was a senior. I walked into the Stanford locker room

and I saw Ryan Garco and I was like, oh my God, I have no chance of competing again. Like if this is what college baseball is, this was a full grown man. And I was just like, here I am. He was one of those guys who was like also a full back on the football team. No, he wasn't that, but he looked like one.

Yeah. And I mean, just a man. And I'm walking in there and I felt like a little boy. Freshman. Yeah. The debut day feels like one of those milestone days in your life, like for regular people, maybe it's the day you were married,

the day your first kid was born or something, and you remember things about it, but it seems like it would just fly by. Like it would be a day lived in fast forward, like almost like nothing else. The heart rate, I mean, you're just trying to control your heart rate, right? Keep your heart in your chest, basically,

because it's, I don't remember what the attendance was, but it felt like there were a million people in the stands. It's a special moment, you're just trying to control your emotions and play the game that you know how to play, that you've been doing your whole life, but just never on that stage before.

So yeah, it's always a special one. I happen to know the attendance, 25,135 in attendance for the debut of Jed Lowry. I think it was Ed Monague, the third base umpire that was laughing at you for trying to catch a ball in his 20-row stance. Could feel my anxiety. Uh...

Well, just what Zach was real quick was just the one thing that stands out from his swing data other than the elite bat speed was he makes contact nine inches or he made contact nine inches closer to his body than average. So he really let the ball travel. First I was one game. I guess with that kind of bat speed, I think I'm okay with it. I feel like he has enough bat speed to have oppo power. And the tilt is fine. He's not super, super flat or super tilted. So he's got like...

Yeah. What was the tilt? I didn't see that. 30 degrees. It's kind of like middle-ish. It's a little flattish, but it's not super flat. It's not, Junior Camaro's like 26 or something. So he should be able to hit high fastballs. He doesn't have the super tilted swing. And if he can hit high fastballs, that means he can let some of those high fastballs travel and still hit them out.

And since he has that elite bat speed, this could be good news that he's letting the ball travel, you know, like, I don't know. And it also allows if he does make contact but not hit for power, it does allow for an easy adjustment, which is like, okay, you're gonna have to go get the ball a little bit more. There's a level of comfort that happens where, you know, you have to get in and see big league pitching, gets him at bats, and he'll start to understand his strike zone, the pitches that he can and can't drive in the big leagues.

And like I said, he looks like a kid that has the mechanics to just play free, right? And I think as he matures in his career, he will have the ability to make those minor adjustments. But I like I said, I'm very excited about the about what I saw in the first five at bats. I had this just this weird brain fart. But you know, I saw from Jeff's, I mean, did this work that showed that like kind of pull goes up as you age, just generally. And he was sort of referring it to like, in order to get to

the power you once had, you have to kind of pull more as you get older. Like your batsman is kind of going down, you kind of have to take more shots, take more chances, go get that ball a little bit more to kind of have the same power. And so you'll see, you can see a little bit in Mike Trout as he's gotten older, swinging misses gone up, pulling the air has gone up. He's become a little bit more of a like, you know, all or nothing slugger. Now, I think he's an inner circle Hall of Famer. I'm not saying anything bad. I'm just saying this is sort of, you know, he's showing you what age can do. So, I wonder if you had an aging curve for contact point, if it goes from deep to further out in front over time.

You know, as you mature and you have more bats and you have more experience, you also know when to pick your spots, right? You know when to pick your spots, you know when the appropriate time, like what the situation is calling for. Like, you know, your first couple of years in the league, you're just going on instinct, right? It's like, I, I'm, yeah,

like literally like, you know, you're, you're surviving on instinct. It's a fire hose, right? Like there, there's so many things coming at you and at the same time you're having to perform and try to, you know, try to go out and help the team win while you have all this information and all these new inputs that you've never experienced in your life happening at the same time. I'm so mad that I missed David Ortiz, but David Ortiz, I think is this is actually kind of a good example of this where he generally pulled more over time and he generally pulled more in the air over time and he was it's, it's,

it's like a, it doesn't sound nice to say he was the best guest hitter of all time, but he just anticipated with the best. I had this story that he was feeding people in the dugout what pitch was coming. He would just be up there, top step, being like, slider's coming. And so you gain that anticipation over time where you're like, I've seen this dude, slider's coming, you know? And so that's the sort of, you sort of gain that anticipation over time where you're like, I've seen this dude, he's done this a million times, he's about to double up on the slider, you know?

Like I know what he's gonna do. And you know, once again, like you're picking your moments, when you have that tight, you know, you have that many of bats against a certain guy and you know like where it becomes more of a chess match, you know where to take your chances versus early on you got no idea who these guys are there you know it could be any pitcher it doesn't matter right like you're just you're trying to find a pitch that you can handle it has

nothing to do with the the strategy of it or the the the chess moves that could happen versus like a David where he's got, you know, he's seen all these guys enough that he knows what they have and when to take his chances. Yeah. That's also why I think he, he had that DH skill, which is just the skill is to be mentally engaged with every pitch in the at bat and to just basically be like almost like a second manager, just be like the way to kind of stay engaged when you're not physically engaged is to be mentally engaged and just sort of try to anticipate every single pitch even when you're not at the plate. Definitely seemed like a strength of David Ortiz.

I was looking at the Jack Caglione projections. There's a little bit of a range, but the, the bad X two 45, three Oh seven, four Oh four nine homers and 72 games, almost 20 homer pays, basically 20 homers if you double it up and give them a few extra games. That seems doable and it seems pretty impactful for a Royals team that has generally struggled to put runs on the board throughout this season. Hey everyone, I'm Catherine.

I'm David. And I'm Matt. And together we are the Tennis Podcast. The news is out, we've officially joined the Athletic and we cannot wait to get going. We are three friends and journalists who love tennis and have been talking about it on the Tennis Podcast for the last 13 years. We cover the sport in exactly the same way the Athletic do with passion, depth and a critical eye. We're weekly throughout the year and daily on site at all four Grand Slam tournaments in Melbourne, Paris, London

and New York. So check out the tennis podcast now part of the Athletic. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get into some other baseball news you should know. Corbin Burns getting a second opinion from Dr. Neil Eltrash on his elbow. That one, you could see when he was talking on the mound, like basically F my elbow. That usually leads to surgery, but we'll see what that second opinion actually reveals for Corbin Burns he's now officially on the IL not a surprise there. I feel like second opinions themselves are just not good although Jed has some experience in this matter he sometimes a second and third opinion

was in Jed's benefit it took a while to figure some of those things out. the ultimate goal is to get the player, you know, healthy and get them back on the field to be productive, then from a team's perspective too, if you have confirmation and, and quite frankly, like, you know, it goes, a lot of that second opinion falls on the player, right? And so now it's the player who's coming back and obviously the team has the right to say no. The team ultimately controls all of your medical decisions, right? When you sign that contract, they control all of your medical decisions.

And even if you have a second opinion that says, you know, the recommendation of surgery is necessary, the team can say no. If I was running a team, oh my God, would I never ignore that, dude, because you just had an example of your Don Alvarez saying, yo, my wrist still hurts. Can we go get that imaging? You never ordered the second image? Can we go like the one after the inflammation has gone down? Who get that image?

Oh, look, it's broken. Hey, you know, so if I don't know, if I was running a team, I would, I would give anybody any, any tests they wanted, man. I'd let, I'd listen to the player because the player's the one, it's his body, man. He's the one, you know, I'm not going to have a doctor be like, no, it doesn't hurt. Shut up. We got the player. Don't tell him it doesn't, nothing's wrong here.

Oh yeah. Well, I'd tell it to him. He can't, it takes them like 20 minutes to get out of bed in the morning. I've got personal experience with that. And, uh, and particularly with, uh, you know, with initial images that, you know, don't reveal an underlying problem that has to be addressed. So I agree with you. I, I would always, um, siding on the, you know, coming down on the side and listening to the player

more is where I think the appropriate place for these medical decisions are. But you know, once again, the club does have that right. And sometimes they exercise it. It would make it a little bit more complicated on the pitcher side, because the pitcher might be pushing for surgery, because they feel like the outcomes are all positive, you know, so they're just like, let's just get the surgery and get it over with. Whereas a team might say, you're not really focusing on the sort of 15% of Tommy John returners that are never really come back. And, you know, we just had an example last night, Spencer Strider, you know, is not who he was before surgery. You

know, he's 95 now instead of 97. The breaking ball, which used to be 86 plus, there's a dividing line for sliders at 85. If it's 86 plus, the slider is almost always good. And if it's 84 minus, it's not always bad, but it has to be really special to get to be a good slider like 83. He went from 86 on the slider to like 83. So, you know, he's now throwing middle middle like he used to because we used to say, Hunter Green, Spencer Strider, they can throw middle middle. We've talked about this on the show a lot. You can't throw middle middle at 95 the same way that you can at 97. I will take a look at some point at internal brace because

there's some rumblings of people being like, is this, you know, is internal brace not having the same outcomes? It is pretty early on that surgery. We're talking about it being really popular over the last like three, four years. There's always risk with surgery. I always viewed it as last resort. But if, you know, if we've tried everything else, and you know, the problem is staying the same or getting worse, then that risk is worth it, right to then go into that surgery. But you know, you don't want to you don't want to jump in and make that decision too soon. But like I said, if you've if you've tried everything, if you've exhausted every

other option, and it's you know, if the problem is getting worse, or then you know, what's the downside, you're going to end up being a non-productive player anyway, so you might as well take the opportunity to get the guy back healthy and have him productive. And to Strider's point is like, yeah, but that's also like a natural agent thing too, right? He's not gonna throw 100 miles an hour the rest of his life. And so from a hitting perspective,

we were talking about like taking your shots and you know, knowing the zone a little bit more, somebody who's going to come back from surgery and potentially has lost some velocity, you know, they're going to have to focus a little bit more on star or sorry on command and sequence command, yeah, sequencing. And I think that's a natural progression of pitching too, is as you age, you're going to lose velocity and you have to focus on the things that still make you productive. Yeah, I did an aging curve for fastball usage and it just goes down. You know, for starters, it's because they're using their other pitches.

I think if you were predicting Spencer Strider's pitch mix going into 2026, like this time next year basically, what will his first two months look like? It's not gonna be 54% fore seam anymore. It's just not, like there's gonna be more change ups, more curves, something new. But a little bit hard to do that coming right off of surgery because you're not supposed to throw

the breaking ball at first and you know, there's different protocols that people have in place and so maybe it's not the best time to add a new pitch, you know, while you're trying to just get your arm back to normal. So I'm more hopeful about Spencer Strider next year than I am necessarily about the rest of this year. We talked about Strider, you know, the Braves were being, uh, what I think we described as cautious with some of his rehab starts earlier on.

And we had a discussion around, let them get that work in the big leagues. Right. And, you know, I think I, I, I mentioned think I mentioned a few weeks ago, I was like, no, there's like, there's the emotional aspect of it too. And like making sure he finds his stride and feels comfortable. And so, you know, you're looking at what he's running out there right now. There's still some there's still some buildup that needs to happen. And it would have been way premature if he would have jumped right back into the major leagues

a few weeks ago. Yeah, I guess I got a little excited. Well, I mean, I get it, right? Like you look at the upside, you're like, okay, we need this guy in our rotation as soon as possible. The braids are scuttling. Yeah, exactly. I'm not saying the logic was wrong.

I'm just saying that there is a buildup process, especially coming back from a major surgery like that. I was just thinking about this in the context of Yuri Perez, who's gonna make his return to the Marlins on Monday. And they took the longest possible route with his rehab assignment by design, really built him up slowly. I think it's because now as he gets back,

he can work more like a regular starter without hitting the innings cap for the season, right? They just kind of slow played it a little bit, but given some of the returns we've seen from major elbow surgery this year, as good as he's looked in rehab, I still am very cautious about my expectations, even though I'm excited to see Yuri Perez

back on a big league mound, is next Monday it comes up. Yeah, I'm excited about some of even though I'm excited to see Yuri Perez back on a big league mound as next Monday comes up. Yeah, I'm excited about some of the stuff I'm hearing about adding a sinker and that the stuff is all there and reading the accounts. I was fairly aggressive in my ranking of him and I'm pretty excited about him. Just risk, as you can see on his own team, Sandy Alcantara has taken a long time to get it all back. The Giants made a bunch of moves. So let's dig into this real quick. Lamont Wade, Jr., Sam Huff, DF,

Dominic Smith signed to a one year deal, major league deal as a replacement for Wade. Daniel Johnson, an outfielder, and then Andrew Kisner, the backup catcher added to the roster, Christian Koss optioned down, and then Bryce Eldridge got bumped up to AAA. So changes happening here for the Giants. This is a lineup that I think by Woba is 23rd in the league with a 3-0-2 entering play on Wednesday. It's going to be an uphill battle for them with the current group to score a lot of runs. So I think if they're going to get a lot better, some of that's going to be trade deadline additions. And to get there, they just have to continue playing as well as they played up to this point, right? You look at this team in a loaded NL West, 39.7% chance of making

the playoffs. There's 33 and 28, only four back of the Dodgers. So it all looks pretty good on paper. I took all of these moves to be the clouds gathering for an eventual promotion of Bryce Eldridge. Maybe we're talking about Eldridge debuting after the deadline, two months from now, in addition to whatever other players they're able to acquire between now and then.

Yeah, I think so. I mean, there's the corresponding move here was Dominic Smith being signed. He opted out of his minor league deal with the Yankees. And there's a little bit of intrigue there where, like, he's pulling the ball and hitting the ball in the air. The pull rate is higher than it's ever been in the major leagues for a full season. And he's always been a guy who has a decent eye in terms of walks and can make contact. So if he can pull the ball and hit the ball with authority, that is something that is sorely missing. The Giants are last in hard hit rate. And the thing that makes it so difficult, they have the 11th highest strikeout rate. So they're not doing either thing super well in

terms of either hitting for contact or hitting for power. But I agree with you. I almost feel bad for Don Smith because this is an opportunity and I'm happy for him to get it. But he knows he's got somebody breathing down his throat. He knows he's got Bryce Eldridge in just moved to AAA. And he knows that he may have two weeks. What does that do to your plate discipline? What does that do to your approach at the plate? Like how comfortable can you get? We're speculating on where Eldridge ends up, right?

There's obviously a big time prospect that has a high ceiling, but you know, I think if you're Dom Smith, you go up there and you play your game, right? Whatever opportunities you get, you play your game. And I think this like, to your point, like being a little more pole in the air, it's this natural progression that happens.

You know, how do you consistently do damage as you get older in your career? Hopefully Dom is in a good spot where he knows when to take those chances. Cause the guy, you know, he's got, from what I've seen, like batting practice and you know, the way that he can hit the ball. He's got bat speed.

I don't know how it shows up on some of the metrics in the game, but I've seen it in batting practice. And so just learning, learning when to take your shots. And I once again, this is a guy that I, you know, I root for. I love Dom and I'm really happy to see him get this chance. And if I'm if I'm the Giants, I'm excited to have the player. And, you know, for however long that is, Eldridge you know pushes him out so be it but I think for him you just have to focus on your at-bats what you can do

and quite frankly if that means that you know Eldridge is the guy in San Francisco and you go and take some at-bats then there's you know maybe there's an opportunity somewhere else in the big leagues you know that exists so you're you're not necessarily worried you know from a player's perspective like you're not looking backwards to see who's coming up behind you you're not necessarily worried, you know, from a player's perspective, like you're not looking backwards to see who's coming up behind you. You're focused on what you can do today to help yourself and the club,

put the club in a position to win. Yeah, I think even on that roster, I just was talking about some of Gerrard and Canassi's flaws and he's very different than Don Smith in that he has elite bat speed, but struggles to make contact. And then the Wilmer Flores is there too. So it's, you know, there's two or three spots there that, you know, could be in flux. So you never know, you know, who, who takes the

job who, you know, as a team though, you have some sympathy for them because they're just trying to, to find some way to, to, to toggle the dials to get more power out of this lineup. Yeah, my guess is the power they've got from Wilmer Flores up to this point doesn't hold at its current level, right? 10 homers through 60 games is a surprise to all of us. You'll probably get a lot more from Miliadames the rest of the way than you've had

through the first 60 games. So basically flip their lines and then you've kind of got that built in fallback. It's just weird because Patrick Bailey is just not the same guy. I know he's had multiple concussions now. And I think the one last year since then, he just has looked like a completely different player

at the plate. And I know it's always been a glove first sort of profile, but to see, you know, 239 Woba 31.8% K rate, that's pretty surprising to me. I thought Bailey was going to be like a top 15 top 20 catcher offensively, but then elite because of his glove. And that's been one of the other key missing pieces for them so far. Do have to give Elliott Ramos a tip of the cap though.

Holy cow, he is playing exceptionally well right now. 139 WRC plus, easily the highest on the team right now. 11 homers through 59 games. Like a great story of a little bit of a late bloomer, a guy that really kind of lost that prospect sheen before breaking through a year ago and showing all of us that what he did last season wasn't a fluke. I mean, the only guy who's ever, only right-hander who's ever gone into McCovey Cove, has now added a pull dimension to his game.

Just went out in yesterday's game to center, which is a feat in San Francisco, it's cold. Just a really dynamic player that, kind of a five tool aspect. Maybe the hit tool isn't his very best tool, but also beloved in the clubhouse and in the fandom. So, you know, yeah, just a really great story. I love that we're talking about a 25 year old like, you know, somebody who is, you know, potentially on the on the cusp of, you know, aging out or not like living up to the hype, right? And like,

I get it. You know, you start, you want to make conclusions and start drawing conclusions from, uh, the sample size. But, but yeah, I mean, this is a guy, you know, 20, as a 24 year old, you know, hit 270 with 22 homers in the big leagues. Like that's, that's an impressive, impressive number. I mean, the, you know, hit 270 with 22 homers in the big leagues. Like that's, that's an impressive, impressive number. I mean, the, you know, the on base percentage is, you know, he's not a guy that's going to walk a ton, chases some. So you know, there, there'll be some natural, you know, shift in his approach if he's going

to stay productive as he gets older. But you're still talking about a 25 year old kid that I think has some more upside in the production. So yeah, exciting young player. Think they've been saying it for years, growth is not linear. Just because you struggle for a little while at AA or AAA, it doesn't mean that you're cooked. It just means you gotta make some adjustments.

It's a game of failure. Exactly, baseball is hard. I think people, it's easy to start drawing conclusions from some of these numbers and take the emotions and the growth out of the game. At some point, you have to draw the line. But I would, I think it would be a mistake when you start judging a 25-year-old that's

had 500 at bats in the big leagues that he's not going to be able to do it. But I'm happy to see this guy, you know, produce. He's also kind of interesting from, you know, a segue standpoint in that he has this difficult park that he's dealing with. And you know, I get some sense there was a sense that I got from I watched him in Modesto and I thought about him a lot coming up with the Giants and I thought repeatedly, why didn't the Farhan Giants give this guy a shot?

And I wonder if to some extent they thought, hey, he's just a right-hander with push power. He's just not a good fit for our park. I wonder if they thought of him as like, this is a guy who we're going to use a little bit and then we're going to trade at some point. It's just not going to fit here. And then you give him the chance and he becomes the first right-hander to ever go splash. And you're like, oh, maybe it's not a great fit for a lot of people, but if he proves he can do it,

why can't he hit some doubles off the brick walls out there too? It's not impossible. San Francisco itself remains like kind of a conundrum for me because generally I thought Willie Adamis could hit for okay power there because there is a little bit, sometimes you can get a little bit of wind going towards left field. Left field is not very deep there. The cars out there are like a attainable home run distance and like people hit the there's like some cartoon cars out there like that's part of the wall that seems attainable and I've always thought that for right-handed power it's easy not easy but easier and that's not something that's captured. You can go into the park factors and the way the park factors are done is you take

this hitter and you pair him. You say, OK, Jed Lowry in San Francisco and Jed Lowry outside of San Francisco, you know, pair him up. This is what he does on. This is what he does there and this is what he does there. And this is how many played appearances he has in San Francisco. And so we will weight his difference in production by how many plate appearances he has in San Francisco, and we add them all up. Now, that's obviously going to have a lot of noise in it because the players themselves, and that's why you do three-year

versions of this. So you take three years of players. So you have a lot of sample. But it's still going to be heavily moved by, like, let's say Barry Bonds is in your sample. You might think, well, you know, San Francisco is not that bad for left-handers. And you might be wrong. So that that's an inherent flaw in park factors. But you had a story that you wanted to point us to about Brandon Nimmo and Citi Field. I saw this in the athletic the other day where Nimmo hit one ball 104.5 miles an hour at a 23 degree launch angle,

and it went 412 feet for a home run to left center field. Same ball, Citi Field, I don't know the game in terms of like day, night, but 105 hit harder, 27 degree launch angle, arguably better, and it goes 332 feet. I experienced some of this at the Coliseum. I mean, I went back after finding this, I went back and looked at my splits. The majority of those at bats happened in Oakland.

My home career average as a right-handed hitter where you know the balls carry to left field better in Oakland, 293 right. Home versus righties, 239. Then you look at away totals, lefty 246 as a right-handed hitter so you know I was a essentially a 50 point lower on the road than I was at home. And then my average on the road as a left-handed air was 262 versus 240 at home. Some of these balls, and I could go back and look at some of these balls.

I watched Matt Olson hit a ball 110 miles an hour at like a 30 degree, 32 degree launch angle in the Coliseum. And it didn't even make it to the warning track. Depending on the elements of these games, like this Nimmo one is a perfect example. This is arguably a ball that has hit better. It's half a mile faster at a ideal launch angle of 27 degrees. And you're talking about an 80 foot difference

in actual outcome. This is something that I know is super compelling to players. You asked me about it as a player and Yonder Alonso asked me about it as a player and we tried to do something where we modeled expected distances based on launch angle and tried to do like basically a heat map of the outfield. And that was something that I did based on a question you did for Oakland. And a heat map of the outfield so you could see where balls went further than expected and where they went shorter than expected. And one thing that we found was that there might have actually been in Oakland certain sort of wind power out like wind alleys where the wind does go through

and it's fine. And then other places where the wind stops. You said that Mount Davis was sort of, and I think we found a little bit of evidence with it. There were other places where the wind stops, you said that Mount Davis was sort of, and I think we found a little bit of evidence with it. There were parts where the wind hit Mount Davis, came back and pushed balls down. Where Mount Davis ended, there were some parts where the wind would go through. And so you would find the balls would actually go a little bit further than expected, just around those corners. But then at Mount Davis just sort of died. And so that's a kind of, I think it's really interesting to the player because that tells them a little bit like, how should I play at home? Like, what should I do?

I had a different approach when I played in Oakland than I did on the road. I knew that that if I went up and I tried to launch, like lift balls to the pool side in Oakland, it was going to lead to, to poor results that, you know, cause I knew that when wind, I would always look up and I knew that there was those tunnels on either side of Mount Davis. And if I looked up and I saw that flag in the right center tunnel blowing out, I knew the wind was actually blowing in. Because what the stadium did between Mount Davis and the bowl on the right side is it

just whipped that wind back towards left field. So if that wind is escaping that tunnel that way, the majority of the wind was actually being pushed by the stadium out to left or in. Yeah. And wind is a great piece of chaos. If you've watched a local cast that has the sort of wind map at the beginning, Oakland does this sometimes. I've seen it on a bunch of casts. You'll be amazed by how minute, like how different the little wind patterns are.

You could be blowing out to right and blowing in from left, you know? And there could be just these, there are all these. When you're doing wind management, you know, for a architectural project and they come out and they measure it for, you know, building a building or something, they will measure wind like every 10 feet up, you know, for hundreds of feet. They will create an entire map. The way that the wind people are doing it for baseball is that they've basically created a wind model of how wind moves dynamically through space. And so then they can map the space and then they can basically use the model to project how the wind would move through that space. And so that's a good way to do it,

but I think it does bring up a point here. So Nimmo goes in the story, he goes, and this is a great story by Tim Britton. He goes in the story, he goes to Joe Lefkowitz, the Met senior manager of baseball analytics integrations. He says, how much could temperature play a part? And it didn't feel windy, but could the wind have knocked it down that much? What about spin?

And Lefkowitz guessed that maybe those varicose explain about 12 feet of difference in the ball's flight. I would suggest that he's wrong because I think if you did know, and he mentions batted ball spin, right? I think if you did know batted ball spin and the wind and the temperature, and if you knew the wind in very precise directions in this way, I think that the noise is not 68 feet. I think you could actually figure out why that ball didn't go. I would say it would probably have a little bit more side spin than the other one. I would guess that the wind, and the reason that I have

this guess, and I reason that I have this guess and I think that I can sort of show you a little bit of where this comes from. I hadn't actually seen this before. There's a piece I love when you are playing around Savant and you're like, what is this? And so Jed, I was trying to show Jed the different park factors. So if you go to Statcast and you go to the Park Factors and then you click on Coors Field and then you're on the Coors Field page, at the top it says Primary Park Factors. That's calculated the way we talk about matching players to themselves, all that sort of stuff.

The next one is Speed and Angle and that's calculated a little bit differently. That's saying if you have a ball that was hit 95 like the example if you have this ball that was hit 100 miles an hour at 27 degrees and how would that do here versus Coors Field versus wherever you know so you can match balls instead of players and I actually like that better because you're taking the player out of it so it's not as much noise you're just saying this ball was hit like this you know how would balls like this do in all these different places? So I like speed and angle factors. But he pointed out, oh look, Coors Field adds 16 feet.

And then there's this little thing here, it says extra feet of distance versus average. Click here for more. And when I clicked here for more, I saw a page I'd never seen before. Park Factors Leaderboard, where it shows extra distance added. Now Coors Field is number one, 16 feet. Sutter Health Park number two, 10 feet. But what's even

more interesting is it's broken it down into each of the different ways that the ball is affected. So there's a temperature park factor here, an elevation park factor, and then environment, which I would say is shorthand for wind. And that is maybe the sort of 68 feet of unknown. They're just sort of saying that's the last bit, right? And so interesting that D-backs field plus 10 feet of distance, it has a temperature park factor because it's cost, not only is it temperature controlled while other places can be cold, but the door's open, you know?

So, you know, Arizona weather is gonna get in. Like it's gonna be warmer than average in that place. It also has good elevation. Yeah, even at just at a thousand feet of elevation, it's adding an extra three feet. And then you look at, you know, you look at a place like Colorado at 5100, adding 23 feet just because the elevation. Yeah, yeah. You know, if you look at temperature, right, and they're there, I'm assuming they're counting for the entire season, because they're saying the temperature is a negative four, you're really talking about negatives early in the season. Once it warms up in Colorado, it's 90 degrees, I assume, you know, is every 10 degrees Fahrenheit adds 1% distance here. Once it warms up in Colorado, it's 90 degrees. I assume, you know, every 10 degrees Fahrenheit adds 1% distance here. Once it starts warming up in Colorado, that 16 feet probably goes even higher in the summer, because now the temperature is probably on the plus side of this. We've been talking about monthly park factors. And then this last little thing that that sort of links it back to Nimmo is, I can see how Lefkowitz came up with this number because they have a minus five feet for city field

in this thing. And it's minus five feet, it's minus 4.6 for temperature, minus 2.3 for elevation because it's right on the water, and then 1.6 for environmental. So they think that sometimes the wind helps. I would suggest that the wind in Citi Field is extremely variable. It's right by the water. So I would suggest that that's why he got to this, okay, well, I've got, you know, it's normally minus six, maybe with some extra wind, it's 12 feet. That's where he's getting to. I'm suggesting that

that wind park factor can be enormous. If you look at the wind park factor right now at Sutter or in Tampa or in Wrigley, it is enormous. And I think that there could be just a little bit of a jet stream that like one of those little mini arrows that he just caught one of those mini arrows in the wrong direction. And then batted ball spin, I think, can be on the level of 10 feet of difference. If you really hook a ball or you slice a ball or you get it flush, I think that that can be sort of a major part of distance.

So I'm suggesting that it's more like 30 or 40 feet we could explain. Maybe there's an extra 20 feet there that we couldn't explain. This all comes down to one question that I have is do we philosophically want out of park factors to be able to say that we've really drilled down to every single piece of information that we can have on this ball? We have the bad ball spin, we have the launch angle, we have the exit velocity, we have the wind that day, we have the temperature that day, we have the micro wind that day, we have we have, you know, all of this, we know the mass of his bat. You know, we know every little aspect. Do we really do?

Is that what we want? Maybe the answer is yes. I don't know. I'm not trying to set up a yes or like a no. But is that what we want to be able to say? Okay, that should have been a homer, that should have been a double or a single or whatever and wash all players through this and sort of have a park. Does that what we want? Like we want to drill all the way down and just really, maybe the answer is yes,

because you have to think about like hall of fame stuff. Like, would it be unfair just to be like, no batter that hits in the city field, go to the hall of fame because, you know, or San Francisco, you know, like, they're just not going to hit enough homers and they're not going to end. We're not going to give them enough credit. I don't know. Or it's balancing, right? It's a guy that hit in that in those parks gets extra credit. I don't. I mean, I do. And then, but I think player evaluation too. And like, you know, they do want if you're evaluating player evaluation to, wants that they want to go all the way down. I wonder if the fan answers the same. I suggest that to our listeners, if,

you know, like how, how granular would you want your park factors to be? It does become a question. Like sometimes when you get to the end, and I'm voting on the side young, like, do I want to know how that picture would have done and all these pictures that have done in front of pitchers would have done in front of a neutral defense, in front of in a neutral park? Do I want to educate all that out and really figure out who was the best this year? Or do I look at some of the things that actually happened and you know give some credit to that too? So there's some like head things

that happens like you will pitch differently in San Francisco than you would somewhere else because it's San Francisco. If I dock you and say, Oh, well, you pitched to contact in San Francisco and that's not great. If you'd pitched that way in every, in a neutral park, then you would have given up more hits. Right? Yeah. I think that's one step too far. Then I'm like, well, now I'm docking you for pitching to contact in San Francisco where you're like, dude, I did it because of San Francisco and it was a good idea. I was more efficient.

I threw more innings with better ratios. So why are you mad at me for doing the thing that was optimal for the environment I was in? Yeah, I think there are some interesting philosophical things here, but I know that this is something that players talk about a lot. I mean, it's especially in the age of Exvilosity and Launch Angle. The first time that I ever heard Exvilosity and Launch Angle used by players was in this context.

Dude, I hit that ball at 30 degrees, 105, and it didn't go out? What the hell? That was never me. That was never me. That was never me. Never you. Only Matt Olson, sure. Spin efficiency for hitters does seem pretty important in this case.

You suggested the possibility that Nimmo hit the ball that didn't go as far with a lot more side spin. That certainly satisfies at least a good part of the explanation. The drag on the ball, what if it was a particularly dead baseball that he hit too? I mean, this just sounds like a combination of three or four factors that we can't easily see

with our eyes that are all very real and very easy to start to break down if you end up having all of those variables at your disposal. It makes sense the further you drill into it, but on the surface, I would, I'd react the same way Nimmo did, be like, wait a minute,

that should have at least been within 10 feet or 15 feet of the ball I crushed. 80 feet doesn't make sense. I got it wrong. Justin Choi said that on Fan Graphs that it could be as much as 40 or 50 feet based on batter ball spin. I mean, spin efficiency's huge.

I don't know that much about golf, but I would imagine it's a huge part of why the best golfers get extra distance too. No doubt. All right, more to come on spin efficiency as we bring on scientists to explain it to us because I don't think we're going to solve it completely on our own despite our best efforts.

You guys put something on the rundown that I thought was kind of interesting. It happened over the weekend in a game between Oregon and Utah Valley and it's a play we used to see a lot in the big leagues. I do have the video if you're watching on YouTube if, if, if, if, if it actually wants to load and play. It's a pretty big file. It might not. OK, so if you're just following along on the podcast, the audio version, fly ball to left

field runner on third is going to tag up and there's a play at the plate. And as we often used to see, there's a collision at the plate. The runner goes back, slaps the plate. It looks like a run that brings Oregon within, I believe, one run in the eighth inning scores. And they would have tied the game. That was a tying run. Okay, so I saw the bug after they took the run off the board.

So that was a tying run in a critical spot. Upon review, the player gets ejected for a malicious collision, more or less, which is pretty bizarre because when you watched it in real time even, it didn't look like the, those collisions never looked good, but if you're grading them, that one didn't look horrible. And then when you watched it on review slowed down,

you can actually see the way, it looks like the runner was gonna slide and then decided not to at the last second, and then kind of just pulled back, tucked in his arms and just collided with the catcher, which is going to happen. There was some indecision on the runner's part, but I think he was a little surprised

to see the catcher in his lane and he's supposed to get to the plate. Like I don't know what the runner was supposed to do otherwise. I look at that play and you're putting runners in danger by making this call because that runner is going to the plate and he's slowing up in all reality trying to avoid that collision.

But if that play happens in the major leagues and if the catcher catches that ball and tags him out in the major leagues, that's overturned the other way for blocking the plate. The catcher is sitting in the baseline without the ball and as a runner, you have no choice. There's nowhere else to go. I view that as putting the runner in danger

and setting a precedent where you're putting more runners in danger, because now that runner has nowhere to go. Like you basically, what are you supposed to stop running? Because the catcher is sitting in front of you. To me, I think that was a really poor decision by the NCAA. This is a little bit of just arguing for argument's sake, but just say they know the rule. They know what the rule is.

They know that that catcher is allowed to be there in college. Maybe they do. They should. Should he have run to the side of the plate and tried to do like a swim move, like you know, like slide by the plate? Like should he have just avoided the catcher and tried to touch the plate from the side? But look how far out in front the catcher was.

Like, you know, he's out in front of the plate. Where is the runner supposed to go? He's in front of the plate. He would have to like run out of the base path. Yeah, like you're running around the home plate. Where is the runner supposed to go? He's in front of the plate. Like you have to like run out of the base path. Yeah. Like you're running around the home plate. Like, like there is nowhere to go. Like he's, he's slowing up right there and, and like almost, you know, he's putting his hands like there was no like push through, right? He's putting his hands down. He's trying to avoid a major collision.

He doesn't push through the guy. He just has his hands in front. Like it just sitting there. The first couple of steps before he goes into the collision are actually slow down steps. Like you can see it in his legs that he's like, he's bracing and slowing down. He's not like Pete rosing where he's like, yes, turning into like a Superman. He's, he's like, he's like trying to stop running, you know. That's a really dangerous precedent to not only overturn that call, but then to call it a malicious act and to suspend him,

eject and suspend the kid for a game. That's a really bad precedent because you're setting up a lot of base runners to get injured. They got eliminated the next day too, right? They did. Their season ended earlier than expected as a result of this sequence of events.

So I mean, if you're an Oregon fan, you're upset. If you're a senior, your last game is you getting ejected and you're suspended for the game your team gets eliminated in or something, that would be a bad situation too. It's just, I don't know. I know there are simple, simple things you can do with the paint on the field. You can make lanes, you can make boxes, you can make extra things, and there should always be,

no matter how you want to write the rules in college, if you want to have different rules in college than the big leagues, fine, that's your prerogative, I think it's weird, make the rules the same, make it consistent, but if you don't have an established place for the runner to go, you're putting everybody in danger. Because the catcher's looking for the ball in a lot of those cases. Those are bang bang plays. So he's gonna set up and look for where the ball's

coming from, not know exactly where the runner's gonna be coming from, and you're gonna run the risk of concussions and broken legs, like all those things. Like if the runner runs around him and hits the plate and is called out for running out of the base pass, then you're just like, what are we doing here? That runner, the only thing he can do is just stop? Come on.

He wants to, he's trying to score. Like what? I thought it was a bad weekend for college baseball in particular. I just wanted to point out that Wake Forest's manager acting really, really poorly and using a homophobic slur about an opposing player and getting caught on camera. Just awful and shout out to that player for hitting a home run and sealing the game and just being himself no matter what this guy's saying about him. So just it would not make me want to

play for Wake Forest. I'll tell you that. So I don't think it was a great day for college baseball. A great couple of days. So clean it up, guys. Yeah, I'm with you. Clean it up. Indeed. We are going to go on our way out the door. Reminder, you can join our discord at the link in the show description. You can find Eno on Blue Sky, EnoSaris.Bscout. I am DVR.Bscout. JED is over on Instagram, just JEDLowry.

Thanks to our producer, Brian Smith, for putting this episode together. Scott at social, I am DVR.Be Scott at social, Jed is over on Instagram, just Jed Lowry. Thanks to our producer Brian Smith for putting this episode together that's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Thursday. Thanks for listening. Thanks guys. Announce my presence with authority.