Rates & Barrels - Jacob deGrom's Elbow Injury, Alek Manoah's Reset & A Barreling Surprise

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

Eno and DVR discuss Jacob deGrom's upcoming elbow surgery, the outlook for his future as he tries to return in late 2024 or early 2025, the Blue Jays' attempt to press the reset button for Alek Manoah, the struggles of slow tempo starting pitchers in Year 1 of the pitch clock, the rebound of José Berríos, Austin Hays' big barrel rate improvement, and looking at recent snapshots of Statcast data in hopes of spotting trends.  Rundown 0:53 Jacob deGrom to Have Another Elbow Surgery 6:14 Planning for the Eventual Comeback 13:10 Injury Risk Tolerance is Relative 15:33 Examining Slow Tempo Starting Pitchers 20:33 Who Else Has Struggled This Much and Made It Back? 27:03 Losing Stuff & Recovering It 32:56 Buying the José Berríos Rebound? 36:03 Austin Hays' Big Barrel Rate Improvement 48:36 Splitting Statcast Numbers Into Smaller, Most Recent Samples Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You've always wanted to be part of something bigger than yourself. You live for experience and lead by example. You want the most out of life and realize what you're looking for is already in you. This is for you. The Canadian Armed Forces. A message from the Government of Canada. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Wednesday, June 7th. Derek Van Ryper, Enoceros here with you on this episode. We will discuss elbow surgery on the docket for Jacob DeGrom. A big reset opportunity for Alec Manoa as the Jays decided not to send him to AAA Buffalo to work through his struggles, but all the way back to Florida to the team's Complex League,

where he can maybe just start from scratch. So we'll dig into that. We'll take a look at some pitch tempo information, looking at last year versus this year, and some players that have struggled or suffered injuries. And, of course, we're going to dig into a few mailbag questions as well. But a ton of ground to cover today. You know, yesterday we learned that Jacob deGrom will need another surgery on his elbow.

It is going to be a procedure on his UCL, probably Tommy John surgery. He's had Tommy John surgery before. There are a few variations. There's the internal brace surgery, which can come with a faster timeline for recovery. But as we were looking into different surgeries prior to the show, you can have both. Amateur doctoring. Yeah, amateur doctoring, Googling things. Tyler Glass now had the ligament replacement and the brace because if you're getting the ligament replaced, it doesn't seem to add much to your timetable to also have a brace put in.

Oh, so you didn't even tell me that. That's interesting. I was sitting here thinking he got the brace. No, he had both. Dr. Keith Meester. So that's why he had a normal recovery time, right? Like he wasn't any shorter. It was like 12 to 14 months.

It was in the normal window. Yeah. So now they're just throwing them both in there just to have better outcomes, I guess. Right. And I was comparing it to having a floating shelf on the wall that falls because you only have the anchors on the end. So then you add the third anchor in the middle after the shelf falls, and then hopefully the shelf stays up. I mean, I'm not trying to make a joke out of the situation as much as I'm just trying to think of a visual like, well, it's already broken. So if you're going to put it back up, put it back up with a little more there.

And hopefully, you know, you get a guy back and he can pitch for three, four, five more years. And, you know, with the crumb, given his age,

given that he's had Tommy John before I get it, there's no guarantee. I mean, we've seen guys who've had one Tommy John come back and not be the same player. They were post-surgery. They were pre-surgery. That happens more than we realize.

DeGrom is already 34 years old, 35 just in a couple of weeks. And given that he's had one Tommy John before, that 12 to 14 month recovery window might be a little optimistic too, if he does in fact have full Tommy John. So it could be 2025 before we see him again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it most like, I mean,

they'll want him back, you know, next year. And if you do the 14, you, and if they're a good team again, why not, you know,

why not bring them back? Even if it's two or three innings at a time. And you know, that could be a real boon to a playoff team you know hey we got jacob de crom you know coming out of the out the bullpen here um the uh the the success rates on tommy john surgeries have been updated i have a 2022 piece on this from medical news today and uh And it's interesting because they say return to play rates in the range of 80% to 95%

on the first one. And I think probably some of the reason that there's that large gap there between 80 and 95, that's kind of a large gap for me, is that you might consider somebody like Noahah synergard and say you know is this success uh return to job so from a yay or nay it's a yay but but i think different studies have different thresholds or like did they return to the performance level that they were at before or did they not and so you know if you know, if you leave it at performance level,

then maybe it's around 80%. If you leave it at did they come back and pitch, then it's at 95% for the first Tommy John. That same piece says that success rates, oh, see, this is return to play is 80 to 95, but after undergoing Tommy John, about 20% do not attain the same level of play. Right, 20% do not attain the same level of play. Right.

20% do not attain the same level of play. Yeah. Then I have a 2020 piece about the second Tommy John, which there's a, see, then there's, this is like the brace thing, man.

TJ revision. I don't think that this is what's happening with uh de grom because i think tj revision is sort of like closer to when it first happened you know so it's like oh something didn't quite take and we're going back in and cleaning it up as opposed to oh oh no, he had it, and then it tore again. I don't know. Here's the second TJs are Nathaniel Valdi. That's got to be a pretty good success story. Chris Capuano got 718 innings afterwards.

After his second one. I would say that's pretty successful, 718 innings afterwards. After his second one? Yeah. I would say that's pretty successful because he was for a decent amount of those innings a solid innings eater for the time. It wasn't like front line stuff really ever, but he was at least pretty good for a while.

Yeah, and then we have Hong Ching Kuo and Joachim Soria and Daniel Hudson as relievers. So there are some. How about, but I want a second Tommy John surgery here. Anyway, it's lower. It has to be.

Yeah. It's interesting. This is in year one of a five-year deal. At the time it was signed, people said, that's a lot of risk for a guy that has not thrown a lot of innings over the previous two seasons especially. 2020 was a full season. 68 innings in 2020 was a full season.

It just jumps off the page as a low total because it followed three consecutive seasons going over 200 innings for DeGrom. But the big injury issues didn't really start until two years ago. I imagine the Rangers thought a lot about the possibility of this happening, given that it was arm injuries that slowed DeGrom down the last two years. it was arm injuries that slowed DeGrom down the last two years. If he comes back and even it is August of next year, September of next year, finishes 2024, he's healthy, goes through a normal off season, and then 2025 through 2027, the final three years of the deal, if he's 80% of the pitcher he's been up to this point, he's still good enough to be a difference maker and the best pitcher in a rotation. That's how good Jacob deGrom has been on a per inning basis. So I don't want to count

anybody out. I mean, we saw Justin Verlander come back from Tommy John and get back to previous levels or very, very close to it by results. got back. Maybe by underlying numbers, you can say, well, the strikeout rate wasn't quite as good, or you can find little nits to pick. But ultimately, we at least have that as an older player with an elite level that they pretty much got back to unexpectedly because of their age. Yeah, age is a part of it. And then another part of it, as Dane Perry points out over at CBS, is the distance between surgeries. Like I said, this isn't a revision. This is a full, you know, it took and then it blew again.

And 13 years between surgeries for DeGrom. Of the more 40 pitchers, well, I'm sorry, that's not my fault. That's in the text, Dane. I think that means of the 40 pitchers that have had it more than once, just five have seen a gap as long as deGrom's, and those are Hyunjin Ryu,

so we're getting some real-time information back this year, possibly, as Ryu returns, and then former MLB relievers John Axford, Kirby Yates, and Todd Coffey. Matt Bush also had 13 years between Tommy Johns. So that's a less exciting group um we'll get some information from you but the relievers uh you know axford was 38 when he has his has his and didn't really come back from it afterwards kirby yates has is he back he's he's sort of he's trying he's there he's he's around uh todd coffee uh made it back

uh for uh no he did not make it back and he was in his early 30s and did not make it back matt bush has been back but has not been quite as good um and uh kirby yates has 29 of relief appearances since his second so uh you know this I just think this is interesting because there are people, you know, other than like, will we get DeGrom back because he's awesome and we want him back? Is the question of like, if you're in a keeper league, how great of a stash is he? You know, you even texted me today about your Adenue team. You even texted me today about your Audinew team. And the way that it works in Audinew is you cut the guy, and then after a certain time period, he's available at half price.

So whatever his keeper price was, is DeGrom a great stash at half price? And I have to think it might not be. It might want like a quarter price because you're adding uh risk on top of risk when it talk in terms of like you know the regular uh tommy john plus the second tommy john plus the distance between them plus the age there's a plus the fact that he was throwing 99 uh when he comes back can he throw 99 what will he look at at 95 will it be the noah cinder guard uh type return um and so i i'm not sure i think i would want maybe even a little bit more discount off of it than a half yeah i think in in that scenario uh degrom will be unfortunately a release for me given the machinations of the game but going from 99.1 before the surgery down to whatever it ends up being 95 96 to lose three

or four ticks and still have that much that gives you hope you're like okay well that's still pretty good i mean he was pretty successful at 95 and 96 earlier in his career yeah i mean i don't think i want to bet against him from a stuff and skills perspective. What if he can't throw the 92 mile an hour slider anymore? Right, the secondaries aren't as crisp. Okay, that obviously changes things quite a bit too. And you look at Verlander, pre-surgery, post-surgery for him, got all the velo back. I would have bet against that for sure at the time.

I would have said, okay, Verlander was throwing. But it was his first Tommy John, and he had a long time. There is a relationship also between when you had your first one and your longevity of your career. So, something there. And the last thing that is just personally frustrating, because I had the rankings come out recently. I had a number one.

I had Radon probably too high, and people thought Rasmussen at 85 was too high. And I just find it really frustrating the type of news the quality of the news the you know sort of specificity of the news that comes through from teams is only getting worse and worse over time you know we've had the Astros and we had you know obviously hockey and some other sports are worse where they're just sort of circle a whole upper body and say there's an injury in there somewhere, figure it out. Yeah, upper body injury, hockey. Yeah, so, I mean, it could be worse in other sports, but I was trying to read the tea leaves

and was like, he threw a bullpen, you know, he's on his way back, you know, he's going to be back in like a couple weeks, it'll be fine. Rodon, like, was back in New York and, you know, he's going to be back in like a couple of weeks. It'll be fine. Rodon like was back in New York and, you know, said his back felt fine after, after he got a shot in it. I was like, he's going to be back. And people in the comments were like, no dude, like he's not going to be back anytime soon. I'm saying, okay, I don't know. You know, should I just take them off? If they're like injured right now, just take them completely off my rankings. You know, there's like these extremes off if they're like injured right now? Just take them completely off my rankings. You know, there's like these extremes where I guess I've hit one extreme where I was like, you know, I like these guys. I think they're close.

I'm going to put them on here versus the other extreme of like, I don't you know, these guys are injured. So they're not even on my rankings. I don't they don't even exist to me until they're back. Yeah. until they're back. Yeah, the situations for a player's value while that player is unavailable to injury, it's wildly different just based on the type of league you're in

and whether or not the league has IL spots, right? Redraft versus keeper matters. IL spots versus no IL spots, number of teams, all of those things matter because the quality of the player you can get to replace that player ultimately dictates how much risk you can

reasonably take with injuries. If you're playing in a 10-team league on ESPN or Yahoo, my argument would be that you can be about as aggressive as you want. You can have as many of these high-risk injury pitchers. You could have had a DeGrom, Sale, Kershaw, all those guys, and taken advantage of the discounts because the quality of those players on the wire when any or, all those guys, and taking advantage of the discounts because the quality of those players on the wire when any or all of those guys break is high enough where you're still going to be competitive. And while those guys are healthy, the quality of those innings are undervalued relative to the other early round pitchers that are going to be taken. So if you're in a situation like the NFBC where there's no IL spots and it's 15 teams and the waiver wire is pretty crappy every week, you're playing in a mono league, your risk tolerance is wildly different.

I mean, you've played in AL labor for a long time. You lose a starter in AL labor. You're lucky if you have someone else that you want to start in replace of that player. Wish I still had you, Jeffrey Springs. Yeah. Yeah, it's's been rough. I did see a tweet from Derek Rhodes from Baseball Perspectives a week or so ago that the injuries have slowed. Earlier in the year, it looked like injuries as a whole were just off the charts high compared to previous years. Now it's

back in line with a normal season, which is good news given all the changes and the pitch clock and everything we've been worried about. But they're still not out of the woods because the first burst of injuries, I think, was, and I think the way that he was describing it was like, in terms of how many people are on the IL now, it's normal. Right. Not in terms of like cumulative. Yeah, the extent of those injuries. And also cumulative, like number of placements to now. Right. Not in terms of like cumulative. Yeah, the extent of those injuries.

And also cumulative, like number of placements to now. Yeah. You know, so there was a peak early on and baseball perspectives themselves had a piece that came out and said slower pitchers that were slow according to the clock last year are the ones that are disproportionately being hurt this year. It totally makes sense. And I mean, we're seeing it. It's not just injuries. Alec Manoa is one of the slowest starters in the league. He was one of the slowest starters in the league last year.

He's one of the slowest starters in the league this year, and maybe he's healthy, but he's not the same guy. And the blue Jays decided it's not triple a Buffalo. It's not double a New Hampshire. It's still New Hampshire for them. It's going back to the complex, being around bigger staff, and sort of starting over. And this full reboot, it's happened before with the Blue Jays pitcher.

You might remember Ricky Romero years ago. Roy Halladay. Yeah, going way back. Roy Halladay had to do it. Last season, Alec Manoa was one of the slowest starters in the league he's second slowest in 2023 if you use the baseball savant tempo I was looking at bases empty just looking at this year versus last year trying to figure out like okay what happened to the guys who are actually pretty slow Luis Garcia the slowest Tommy John surgery Tommy Henry hasn't

changed speeds much from last year to this year, but he hasn't been up that long, so we'll see what happens with him. Springs, Tommy John surgery. Brandon Woodruff, shoulder strain. Nick Pavetta, actually a little faster, I think, this year than last year, but still slow. Nothing bad's happened to him yet. I mean, he's still Nick Pavetta.

Just not good. Right. Chris Bassett went through some early struggles. Corbin Burns, not the same Corbin Burns we've seen in past years. JP Sears kind of looks like the same guy we'd seen before. Kevin Gossman's been thriving, and Jordan Montgomery's skills look the same. That's your top 10. One name you didn't put on there.

Otani was slow last year. Otani was slow last year. He hasn't been slow this year, but the question is the fatigue over the course of the season which is compounded by all the other stuff shohei otani does and how many of these guys that haven't broke down yet are going to break down as we get down so the other point i was going to say is like we had a spike in terms of who's on the IL now it's normal, but then there, you know, from our piece earlier in the season,

um, there's like possible long-term ramifications as that fatigue starts to really ramp up and, and, and sort of build up over time. So I don't know if we're necessarily out of the woods, uh, and everyone has their own,

uh, taste for it. Um, and, and the rankings, my, my solution was to take all the injured guys Woodruff,

Eduardo Rodriguez, Mason Miller, Dustin May, Drew Rasmussen and just put them sort of in between guys I wanted on my roster all the time and the streamers. So I just put like 80 to 85, that's where I put my injured guys.

Yeah, you made a fence with the injured players to draw a line. Players I want are in this part of the yard, and the players I don't want are on the outside of the yard. I think it also makes sense to me, like, just transactionally in terms of, like, how I would do it on my team. It's like, you know, if I'm looking at Dustin May versus uh chris bassett then i'm gonna be like well you know chris bassett is pitching now when is dustin making a pitch again i'm gonna take chris bassett you know but if i'm looking at dustin may versus uh you know michael waka or

alex wood who i would like want to pitch sometimes and not at all other times you know um you know then it becomes a question is do I have space to maybe stash May? Because that's just a streamer. That's not a solution. So that's really the difference I saw. In terms of Alec Manoa, the reason that they're sending him to the Florida Complex League is not also not to shame him or to send him all the way down.

That is also where their pitch lab is. Right. And they spent uh 100 million dollars i think or something on it uh i brought it up in project prospect yesterday um that uh they've really spent a bunch of money on that pitching lab so they want him around all the tech and all the data and and not pitching they don't want him in games they want to like turn it back around and say okay let's just like spring training 2.. The big problem for me is not only is he slow, not only has he lost movement on his pitches, you know, and I think that the loss sweep on his slider is big and it's been gradual over time. So, you know, all that is really concerning for me. The last part is he's just heavier. concerning for me the last part is he's just heavier right and i mean can they maybe they can maybe if you're not playing games and not traveling maybe you can spend some time getting lighter

but all of these things are intertwined and you know and i think that there was uh perhaps you know part of it was that we were overrating him a little uh you know based on some surface level results before so if you put that all together, it's a really tough hill for him to climb. I do think he can get back to being a useful Major League pitcher, but Ricky Romero, there was a reboot on Ricky Romero. He wasn't great when he came back, right? I don't think he really came back and had a prolonged run of success. Maybe there were some shorter runs.

He ended up being a reliever later and stuff. Best Western made booking our family beach vacation a breeze. And it felt a little like... Come on kids, back to the hotel room. Good night kids. life's a trip make the most of it at best western so let's be clear when it comes to shipping internationally can i provide trade documents electronically the answer is fedex okay but what about estimating duties and taxes on my shipments? How do I find all the... Also FedEx.

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FedEx, where now meets next. I took a look at StatHead. I just took 13 starts, and I set the ERA to north of six, and I looked at strikeout rates and walk rates or strikeout totals and walk totals over a similar number of innings just to see who's done this recently. Blake Snell, who's been this bad for a stretch this long? Blake Snell, May to July 2021.

That's a pretty good bounce back and got back to, stayed fantasy relevant for most of that time, even though people were upset when they were using him in 2021. Did Blake Snell have higher strikeout rates? Rates were higher, for sure. I think of all the pitchers I looked at, Blake Snell had the most strikeouts while he was bad. I would feel so much better if Manoa had a high strikeout rate and everything else. Right robbie ray made this list from late 2019 up into the early part of 2021 when he turned things around pretty odd stretch because the 2020 season is in there too michael walker injury with robbie ray um he had t he just had t he's having TJ right now. He's hurt now.

Yeah. Yeah. Michael Walker had a stretch like this that started in June of 2018 and ended in May of 2019. I think that was probably an injury somewhere in there, a shoulder or something that slowed him down. He did have some injury. He also has a weird pitch mix where he has like a good change up and no, he's struggling

to put things around that. It's not that many people like him. Lance Lynn. Lance Lynn sort of made sense to me as a physical comp and I'm not trying to body shame Alec Manoa or anyone at all. I think you do, you wonder with any pitcher struggling with the clock

how much of it is conditioning. This is not a Manoa thing. This isn't, Manoa's conditioning is a problem because he's large. There are other pitchers who are struggling who don't have that body type. Conditioning is a problem because he's large. There are other pitchers who are struggling who don't have that body type. Conditioning is a problem for anyone and everyone. The Lance Lynn thing is like, well, okay, Lance Lynn's been sort of this accumulator, and then he had this late career. He's in a surge where he's been really good again, and now he's tallying off.

Otherwise, in terms of what they throw, they're not that great at comps. No. Because Noah has a great slider and and you know not great command and lynn is like i have a fastball and i have five other fastballs and i can command them i'm thinking about it more from like a durability perspective where you know minoa comes up and shoulders a pretty big workload again yeah it's back to that level for him but 196 and two-thirds innings last year for minoa and, again, seemingly healthy right now in a time when pitchers can't stay healthy. That's a good thing.

So all this is to say, yeah, it's possible that he gets back to being at least a good starter. I don't know if we'll ever see a run like this again. They could use him as a league average starter. It's not like they have tons of starters. Right, and the projections, I mean, no changes, no pause, no sense of what's really happening, what kinds of adjustments he's going to be making while he's down.

The numbers just spit out what should happen based on what he's done so far and what he did in the past. The bat has Manoa at a 439 ERA and a 129 whip for the rest of the season with a very low strikeout rate. Easily the lowest strikeout rate of all the projections, right around 7Ks per nine. What did your rest of season projections have for Manoa, just by comparison? I wonder if the K rate was as low in your system as it was for the bat. 4.5 ERA, 22% rest of season. Okay, so that's actually,

so 22% is actually pretty much the same as ATC zips and the depth charts projection that's out there. The bat is just under 20%, 18.4%. So a pretty big difference, though. If he's striking guys out with those ratios, that works for fantasy. If he's not, that doesn't really work for most mixed leagues. I mean, that's a guy that you stream for favorable matchups because he's on a team that wins a lot. In other words, I don't think it's a guy you hold on to.

I don't think you can stash him in most redraft leagues i guess the question would be for keeper dynasty auto new and in places where he becomes maybe a full off season heavily discounted and you're not playing for right now are you taking a chance on the version of manoa we get after this reboot? In my 12-team dynasty where my IL is, what do I have on IL? I have Cody Bellinger, Willie Adamis, Tyler O'Neal, O'Neal Cruz, Reese Hoskins, Jacob DeGrom, Drew Rasmussen, Brandon Woodruff, Edwin Diaz. Should I maybe just throw like a Brady singer

at Alec Manoa and just kind of uh just to take it take a year off i don't know it's it's a 12 teamer though so like i kept i picked up brady jp france and brady singer and like you know there's there seem to be like okay guys on the wire but and i'm and i'm like trying to stay competitive but I might just have a better season if I just sell. Anyway, it's an idea. But Manoa hasn't been my favorite. It isn't like a stuffist that's having a hard time commanding or anything. That's the type of profile that I would buy in a second.

One piece of news, the corresponding move, which is we should have a podcast called The Corresponding Move. Boundin' Francis is the guy who's up. Just to give you the model numbers, because he was in AAA, there is something nice about Boundin' Francis. A 109 stuff four-seamer

and a 105 stuff slider and an 85 stuff curveball. So So the curveball has poor location numbers, so does the slider. I think that's a little bit of a wait and see rather than a stash and throw in your lineup right

away. And if you're going to watch something when you're watching the game, watch his breaking ball command. I think if he doesn't have breaking ball command, he's going to get keyholed. But there's enough stuff there to make him interesting. He has been serving up a lot of homers. If you look at his numbers at AA and AAA, came from the Brewers organization. That's what I'm hearing about the bad breaking ball command. Yeah. I mean, you see this year, homers per nine

above two. It's only 15 and two- this year, homers per nine above two. It's only 15 and two-thirds innings. Last year, above two and 98 and a third innings. It's been bad for a while. The year before that, AAA Buffalo 2021, 1.85 homers per nine. K-rates, though. It's a pretty sassy K-rates.

Yeah. He could be okay, but I'm very, very hesitant given the long issues with the homers. This is tough, though. I think we look back at historical comps from more of a statistical perspective because that's what we have, easily accessible. accessible the longer you go having pitching plus the more we might be able to find guys that had a good slider and then didn't and then press pause and found a way to get it back or get something else right i mean the the probability of of fixing your arsenal that has to vary wildly

depending on your age and a bunch of other variables but we're talking about a guy who's 25 years old that has to give you just a little glimmer of hope that they can figure something out well uh funny that you should say that we do have uh four years of stuff plus data um even if i take 2020 out because it's short and a terrible year, we all want to forget. I can do one where I look at 2021 Slider Stuff Plus and 2022 and 2023 and see who lost a ton of Stuff Plus from 2021 to 2022 and who got it back in 2023. And we'll just do it on the slider because Alec Manoa has lost 16 points of Stuff Plus on his slider from last year. So just looking at comparables, I've got here one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,

nine guys that jump off the page. Alex Wood, for example, his Stuff Plus in 2021 was a 113 on the slider, and then it was 92 in 2022, and now it's back up to 124. So that's the success story you're looking for. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of other success stories like his. In terms of getting it back, Jacob deGrom hadom had a 160 a 141 and a 178. I don't know if it's a great comp I don't think it was ever lost like it was never that bad uh how about Freddie Peralta 119 102 in 2022 back up to 123. I think that's probably a similar success story. So you've got a success story there.

And then you have the non-success stories, which were Shane McClanahan was at a 130 in his debut season. He's down to 112 and 112. He didn't get it back. You've got Logan Webb, who had a 121. It's been on a slow slide down ever since. Recently, actually. He's throwing a sweeper. He's throwing Jake Junis' sweeper. And I think there might be a chance for him to get that back. And it hasn't affected his overall because it wasn't his best pitch. But Alec Manoa's best pitch is a slider. Joe Musgrove has gone from 139 to 123 to 118.

Yusei Kikuchi has gone from 117 to 103 to 99 as he's transitioned to more of a cutter-based approach. Yu Darvish, 141, 128, 123. Drew Rasmussen, 116, 104, 113. He has two sliders that are baked into there, so I don't know

how much to learn from that. But we had 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 guys. I like that these nine guys are all starters that have had some up and down. They seem like a good group of pitchers to kind of compare Alec Manoa to. Of the nine, we had success stories, if we're going to count to Grom, we had success stories if we're going to count to Grom we had success stories on

3 4 so 50-50 that he gets it back yeah and that's just looking at sliders and again there's so many other ways you could salvage your career but I just think that was a really good pitch that you probably wouldn't give up on if you

started where he started and used that as long as you did you wouldn't say done with that that's probably wouldn't give up on. If you started where he started and used that as long as you did, you wouldn't say, done with that. That's probably not the outcome. There's a lot, though, here of the sort of whiff of injury. Wasn't Freddy Peralta's 2022 injury written?

Shoulder injury, I believe, was last year, yep. And Alex Wood had a real bad back injury last year. So that's part of it. But maybe that's what's underlying here with Alec Manoa. Or maybe the weight is similar to an injury. And that he gets himself physically correct will get him back to the mechanics that produce the good slider. He needs that good slider. He needs to get the good slider back.

That's the big deal. But, you know, I would say 50-50 chance he does get it back. I mean, he's also, is he any younger than most of the guys I just named? Other than Freddie. I think maybe Freddie's about the same age or not much older. Yeah, I mean, you know, but Joe Musgrove's decline, you know, he went from having a really elite one to having a really good one, and he's

gotten older, you know? That doesn't seem like a great comp. This really does put the Blue Jays in a pretty bad spot right now, though, because any expectation you had for their rotation going into the season was probably something to the effect of Gossman is great.

We like him at the top. He's been better than expected so far. Bassett is solid. And Manoa is probably a little better than Bassett, but not as good as Gossman. That was, I think, a pretty consensus. A little better than Kikuchi, who's like a kind of a total wild card from start to start. Yeah. So you had him clearly in their top three.

You probably went into the season, even if you didn't think manoa was going to repeat what he did in his first two seasons you probably went in thinking he starts their second playoff game or he's at least starting the third game at worst he's clearly ahead of barrios coming off the down year and head of kikuchi and the other options they have okay so, so you can take that and say, oh, he's gone. What do we make of Barrios? Can I put the pieces back together this year? This is sort of similar to me where it's like we have this long track record of this pretty consistent guy, has an awful season in 2022,

and now he's kind of pushed his way right back into that mid-three ZRA. He's got a 125 whip right now. That's exactly the number he's got for his career. He looks pretty well fixed. I mean, the home run issues that plagued him a season ago have not been a problem this year. And the K rates back up a little bit too. Yeah, I mean, he's gotten the stuff plus

on his sinker back up to league average. So he's gotten some of it as a stuff-based thing. But otherwise, it's remarkably similar all the way through where he's had league average-ish fastballs, the really good breaking ball, and an inconsistent changeup. The weirdest thing about this is, by the model, he's been very similar all the way through. And yet, uh, he's had these wild variations around it.

And I just think, you know, part of that is like, I think in some ways the model is correct. You know, like he is, uh, he is an above average pitcher. It's just how wild, how much variation even you, uh, one pitcher can have around his true talent. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, look how solid and normal he was from 2017 to 2019. He was just a 3-8 guy. He was just the same guy.

Then he jumped to 4 and 1-3-2, and you're like, oh, what's going on here? He gets traded. First year in Toronto is great. That half in Minnesota and Toronto, it's great. And then he has the worst year of his career. So, you know, this is a guy who was steady Eddie, and yet he's still found the variation monster, maybe. And I think he's sort of back to where he was.

Not really a Toby, as some would have it. Not just a guy, but he is not elite. He seems like a good two or three now again. I think that Toby needs a little bit of an explanation. So our friend Nick Pollock over at the pitcher list refers to pitchers as Toby's when, well, if you watch the US version of The Office, Toby Flenderson, HR, Michael Scott's primary rival,

I guess you'd say, throughout the show, that's Toby. It's the boring, oatmeal-y sort of starter. That's the conversion. Oatmeal is more or less what Toby is. That nobody wants, though, is a little bit of an aspect to it. Unwanted oatmeal. A middling pitcher who has little upside but a steady enough floor that may earn

a spot in your roster for some stability but is to be avoided against tougher matchups. That guy who goes to work every day and gets the job done but he's super boring and you don't want to talk to him, like ever. You don't even want to acknowledge that he works in the same company as everyone else named after the office character

of the same name. So there you go. The official explanation from the pitcher list glossary for a Toby. Slightly better than a Toby. Slightly better than a Toby. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one. Just start moving with the Peloton Bike, Bike Plus, Tread, Row, Guide, or App. There are thousands of classes and over 50 Peloton instructors ready to support you from the beginning.

Remember, doing something is everything. Rent the Peloton Bike or Bike Plus today at onepeloton.ca slash bike slash rentals. All access memberships separate. Terms apply. Want visibly glowing skin in 14 days? All access memberships separate. Terms apply. cherry creme for a rich indulgent experience treat your senses with new olay indulgent moisture body wash buy it today at major retailers let's get to a few other topics here as we uh we dig in i saw austin hayes reaching some new levels and it's pretty interesting because he's barreling the ball more than ever he He's the second biggest barrel rate improver, depending on how you set the parameters. I was saying players who had a minimum of 200 plate appearances last season and have 100 plate appearances or more this season to sort of filter that list down. So 12.8% career high.

Strikeout rate's up a little bit, but if you're going to increase your barrel rate that much, a few more strikeouts are not going to break you. It looks like a slight increase in opposite field. Opposite field usage is helping a little bit. The BABIP is at a level even with that where you're kind of like, all right, this isn't quite the final result. This is an improved version of Austin Hayes. So where do we go from here? Is this kind of a delayed breakout for a guy that showed some pretty tantalizing tools early in his career and even in 2021 may have been improving more than we realized because the ball made things very complicated that year

and last year was the supposedly dead and ball in fact if you kind of uh track his iso along with how the ball has flown and the walls in baltimore you could almost uh you could almost explain half of his slugging percentage just by external factors alone. Because his barrel rate has fluctuated a little bit, but before this season had been in that sort of okay range most of the time. You know, one thing that I like about this is that we can't find a relationship between barrel rate and chase rate just one-on-one. So if you just take all of the people's chase rates and compare them to the barrel rates, there's no real correlation there. But at the same time, if I had a player that had established a barrel rate of a certain quality, then you told me this year he's going to chase less i'd buy you know what i mean and what you find is if you look at the top 10 or top 15 in barrel rate improvers and chase rate improvers you find a lot of names that are on the same list you got austin hayes, but you got Brandon Marsh, Randy Rosarena, Brian Reynolds.

They're all on these lists, on both of these lists. And I don't think that's a mistake or randomness. I think that if you have an established level of hitting the ball hard, and then you improve your discipline around that, I think that your ability to hit the ball hard improves. It's all because, you know, hitting is spatio-temporal. So like, you know, you have to get the ball out in front

in order to hit for power, which means you have to start earlier. But, and that means that like, sometimes I'm going to chase more to hit for power, right? That's something that we've seen on this show is like, yeah, sometimes the guys who chase a lot are the guys who hit for a lot of power. But if I can just improve that chase rate a little bit, I'm going to hit that ball in the zone more often, given how hard and how early I'm swinging and how hard I'm swinging. You know what I mean? So I think there's like sort of like a given a certain talent level,

if you improve your chase rate on top of that, think it's going to do good uh things for your batted ball stats uh as well and so you know his his uh strikeout rates up a little bit uh he is you know trying to swing for power but uh and he's getting lucky on balls in play i think a 380 babbitt is a little bit over his head. But I believe this power level, and I do think he'll clear 20 homers and 5 stolen bases and end up this season probably with like a

275-280 batting average, 25 homers and 5 stolen bases. Not quite the runs in RBI you'd expect out of a top-line outfielder, but probably sort of 75-75 type deal. Definitely one of those players where he's not going to make or break your fantasy season,

but if you have a couple of these guys in your OF3 and 4 slots, your team is doing a lot better than you expected. So what I find a lot of times, it doesn't matter what type of league you play in, usually a player like austin hayes is a good player to trade for because it's not top shelf where the person that drafted him is saying i have to hold on for this breakout it's more like i'm comfortable selling here he's probably not better than what he's shown so far and you end up getting a guy who exceeds projection

for the rest of the season and maybe part of it too, is the Orioles lineup is still a notch better than it's been the last few years, too. So those counting stats, on top of just being better because the team is better, get an extra bump from the skills growth, too. With people on base, too. Right. So maybe it's a 90-run season instead of a 70 or 75-run season. Or maybe it's a 90 RBI or 95 RBI season because of things that are just better around him. That's the other part of where I think you can get a little bit of hidden value from a player like this. But you were looking at both the barrel rate and the chase rate and the players who improved in both.

Being high up on both of those lists certainly seems like a good combination. So did anybody else pop on both lists? Yeah, as I said, Marsh and Azarain and Brian Reynolds. You know, I don't know if there's anything that's really actionable about any of those. And, you know, especially like Jesse, you said, like trying to acquire Randy or Azarena right now is going to cost you an arm and a leg. You know, I even think Marsh, you know, might be more expensive than you want it to be, especially with a 390 Babbitt. But he did run really high Babbitts in the minors. 390 babbit but he did run really high babbits in the minors and so maybe what you just said about hayes could be true about marsh too because they're going to look at his projections and like

hayes especially if you're an obp league they might say eh this guy's gonna have like a 300 obp he's over his head you know maybe i'm selling i'm selling high uh but there could be a real change in approach that we're finding on both these guys in terms of the chase rate improving and the fact that their bail rate is improving on top of that just says that this is a good change for them. I see this 9.7% swing strike rate for Brandon Marsh and think that there's a chance that that strikeout rate goes down a little bit. And if you get a guy next year, let's just say next year,

Rand Marsh is 26. 26 is a peak year. Let's say next year he has a 10% walk rate, a 28% strikeout rate, a 9% barrel rate, and a 25%, 26% chase rate. He could have an awesome year, especially is a especially in that ballpark so you know i don't think this is necessarily this is probably near the top of brandon race brandon marsh's best outcomes uh but uh you know there might be another level and his his owner might be thinking that he's selling high i tend to like a lot of the changes that marsh has done under the

hood i think it's pretty interesting i've seen Marsh on a few trade blocks for teams that are trying to win right now, saying, you know, I can do a little better than this. I've got him at a low price. He could be moved. I would draw the same conclusion. The other thing about Marsh that's kind of interesting is we know certain guys based on the way they hit the ball, either in terms of how hard they hit it or where they hit it or how well they run or any combination of those things can run high BABIPs. We've seen this from Brandon Marsh for his career. He's got a 379 BABIP for his career. BABIP is sort of relative to a player's skills and career norms. So he might be one of those players that possesses enough of those things to carry a higher average than you'd expect, even if the K rate settles in at 26%.

I would say the same thing though, with the with the O swing dropping, the swing rates being what they are, I kind of think this is a good time to trade for Marsh. There could be one more very good season there, and he's in that cluster, kind of like Harrison Bader, where you can find more than one path for him to exceed expectations in any given season. In Marsh's case, think about him running it back with better skills in a healthier Philadelphia lineup next year. Even if nothing gets significantly better, the counting stats will improve. So you'll get a little bit of bonus value just from that. I think he's pretty clearly their best option in center field for the next year or two. So I don't think you have to worry about playing time going down. So I'm totally on board with Marsh as the

kind of player that you could sneak into a deal right now and be pretty happy with in the longer run. Bit of a win there, too, just really quickly for outs above average. There was a big debate on these airwaves inspired by some conversations with others about how believable corner outfielders with high outs above average are and like whether or not that that is actually something that would port over to center uh marsh is still in the uh well it's top 30 for all fielders and and plus uh plus defense but you know among center fielders still top five top 10 ten type production defensively. So that really did port over from where he was before. I don't know if any teams are looking at corner outfitters.

They might stick into center. But Jake McCarthy is right next to Brandon Marsh. And I wonder if the Diamondbacks see themselves as having a surplus of outfielders still and if they make a big move a big sort of surprising move at the at or near the deadline I'd love that they're still hanging around because I have a lot riding on the Diamondbacks I don't have a big bet on them I have a lot just a reputation just personal personal. Yes, the bold prediction that the Dodgers would miss the playoffs, narrowly miss the playoffs, and the Diamondbacks

would make it. It's still actually possible. Maybe you could get the half of it true too. You always want to claim those half victories. It looks so much better on June 7th than it did on May 7th. Some of the things that were going really right for the Dodgers earlier are not going right now. James Altman has kind of fallen back apart.

The pitching injuries have piled up. They've got pitching depth for days. Urias is coming back. Urias is coming back. Sunday. This is not quite the same juggernaut we're used to seeing with the Dodgers. Still a great team. They just keep taking.

Freddie Freeman, grand slam. It's just like, of course. I know. When I saw that happen, I was like, of course. I think they were in the middle of going through a graphic. They're like, oh, he's hit this many Grand Slams and then Grand Slam. They even make the announcers look

they're already good announcers, but they make me look even better by doing that kind of stuff because that's how loaded they are. I think when I still look at the underlying numbers for McCarthy versus Alec Thomas, I still like Alec Thomas more. If I had to bet on one of their futures as a big leaguer, I'd still bet on Thomas. So if the Diamondbacks are going to trade one and you're trying to acquire an outfielder,

Thomas is the answer. I mean, I don't know what the Yankees would give up. I mean, we can't build a trade in real life, in real time like this super easily. But they obviously are thinking about center field and shortstop pretty hard in New York. And Bader is a free agent and hurt again. So other contenders that... Thomas would be so good with the Yankees.

Yeah, it would be a good deal for McCarthyccarthy the rockies uh i think are keep trying people in center i don't know if they feel like they're locked down in center the reds like do they necessarily have a center fielder that they they believe in long term maybe uh and they have a lot of other types of players um but they're not necessarily contenders contenders that would could use a center fielder i don don't know if the Red Sox count. I don't know. The Astros are running out okay guys, you know. The Dodgers, I don't think they'll trade to the Dodgers.

No, that's not going to happen. And that's not because... The Giants have been looking for a center fielder for a while, but that's in the division too. Yeah, I still think they'd be more likely to make that trade in season with the Giants than in season with the Dodgers. Yeah, I still think they'd be more likely to make that trade in season with the Giants than in season with the Dodgers. And off season, you just trade with whoever you can make the best deal with.

But I don't think when you're going toe-to-toe with the Dodgers to the division, you're trading with the Dodgers. And vice versa. I just don't think it works like that. That'd be really unusual. I would rate this as about 5% to 10% likely. The only ones I can come up with are basically the real contenders that could use a center fielder is

the Yankees and maybe the Rays. This is not a Rays type trade. No, I don't think it is. The Padres, but they are playing Tatis in center, like I said. That's what they should be doing. Makes a lot of sense to continue down that path.

There was something else that just caught my eye, and now I lost it. Where'd it go? Oh, we had a good mailbag question that was kind of on target with this question about Austin Hayes. This came from Christian. We've seen so many more rookies get significant playing time this year, and with rookies, obviously, come adjustments. A guy like Ezekiel Tovar has been getting much better results lately, but his baseball savant page doesn't back it up.

Is there a way we can see a last 30 days of these underlying metrics? And maybe we're just not getting a full picture of a rookie just figuring something out, which at a glance, true. If you're getting the full season, you might not see improvement that's happening. So what do you do? Do you use the fan graphs last 30 days tools and then just go over to the StatCast tab? What's your method for digging into those numbers on a on a smaller basis i mean you using the search tool on savant admittedly it's it's not necessarily the most intuitive and uh i myself i feel like i'm pretty good at it i will still go to mike petriello and say like you know like uh did i what am i doing wrong in this

query but uh yeah i i like the the fangrass one because it's to me it's i don't know it's where i grew up uh in baseball and uh it seems like super intuitive so you just have to go to the stat casting you can put last 30 days in uh i don't know uh what i'll just do a hard hit uh it's interesting to me that julio rodriguez is second in hard hit uh over the last 30 days that's probably probably wasn't there before uh juan soto is sixth uh you know josh jung is is eighth uh but you can and michael garcia there is 16th that's interesting uh but you can just you can play around you can do the last 14 days too um so you know brent rooker 20th mj melendez still hitting the ball hard so um you know i i think this is it's a good tool it would be nice if you

if you want to like sort of compare what you can do is do the uh you know do the april split or uh and then do the may split uh do the data export button then you have to learn v lookup which uh if anybody wants any v lookup help on excel it is super powerful because basically it's a way for you to just take the april put the may on it uh and then do a do a differential and see who's had the most hard hits since april yeah so a few ways to go about it but i do think that the fan graphs method is probably the easiest most user-friendly method and again i think the other tool that i keep looking at for year-over-year changes which isn't necessarily a smaller window is that uh season stat grid page that we were talking about earlier.

That's how we dug up the Austin Hayes barrel rate year-over-year improvement, which is always something you're looking for. If you have Tovar's full season numbers up, his last 30, a 4.9 barrel and a 34% hard hit. a 4.9 barrel and a 34% hard hit. You could just have another thing open where you just, you know, if you're looking at certain players, just have the last 30 and then pour it over to their player page and compare it.

Yeah, that's a good way to do it too. I think with Tovar, I like how patient they've been. I said it on Project Prospect a few weeks ago. I don't always trust the Rockies to do what I would do if I had the keys to making those decisions, and they've really been pretty patient

with it. Getting closer to a league average number in May for WRC+, I think that's a pretty big step in the right direction. It's something that doesn't speak that well to Austin Hayes that does speak well to Brandon Marsh and Ezekiel Tovar, which is if you can play above average to elite defense

at a key spot, it'll buy you time. It'll buy you a lot of time. So he's only 21 years old, and it doesn't look great right now, but he could be an interesting buy in keeper leagues too because even if he has like a 315 obp or a 320 obp that park is going to float that average uh and he you know he could be a sort of 15 15 guy with a 275 average even without a major skills growth and then you add the fact that he's

21 and there could be just a big leap forward at some point yep still some tools to get excited about and uh it's pretty clear he's the guy that they want to have at that position for the next half decade so i'm with you if you're not playing for this year you need a short stop shouldn't take a lot to get him right now relative to what it would have taken in the offseason to get him so take advantage of that while you can. Anything else on your mind, you know, before we sign off? No,

no, I've got, I've got a big piece coming up tomorrow on the athletic that an A1 about whose fault are all the strikeouts and what can baseball do about it. So it's actually funny. We were in the process of editing this and writing this and my editor, Emma Spann, sent me a piece five years ago that was by me. That was like kind of similar.

But I would say we have new data and new tech. And so there are different ways. And there's a visual in the piece tomorrow that goes so hand in glove with what I'm trying to talk about. And that's a little bit about the sort of talking about that hitting a spatio-temporal, that whole bit. That is key to understanding the strikeout increase, I think. And so I hope people like it.

It's got stuff going back from 2015 to this year's rule changes and how all of these sort of long-term and short-term trends fit together to we just keep breaking the strikeout records every year. Every year we just keep breaking them just over and over again.

I don't know if people think it's an existential problem or not. People don't care. People care. But it is interesting when baseball just keeps marching in one direction and you have to kind of think about what they could do about it. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure since logically you'd want to see over a few years, how much the pitch clock wreaks havoc on major league pitching before you change anything else, they won't change anything too soon. Yeah. Right. Could be this off season. Oh, and we're moving the mound back. Yeah, that's right oh okay sounds good

add more to the absolute chaos that is trying to unpack mess up stuff plus again thanks yeah cool well we're looking forward to checking out that piece theathletic.com slash rates and barrels gets you a subscription for two dollars a month for the first year if you don't have that already so be sure to pick that up you can find eno on twitter at you know saris you can find me at derek van riper we got a 3-0 show coming out in the athletic baseball show feed on thursday Thanks for listening. Thank you.