Rates & Barrels - Kodai Senga to the Mets, Xander Bogaerts to the Padres & Another Flurry of Hot Stove Moves

Episode Date: December 12, 2022

Eno and DVR discuss a very busy week of movement around the league including Kodai Senga's five-year deal with the Mets, other pitchers on the move including Andrew Heaney, Sean Manaea, Kenley Jansen and Carlos Estévez, plus Xander Bogaerts' move to the Padres, Willson Contreras as a St. Louis Cardinal, Mitch Haniger to the Giants, and Josh Bell in Cleveland.  Rundown 1:38 Kodai Senga Signs with the Mets 11:11 Other Free-Agent Deals for Starting Pitchers (Andrew Heaney, Sean Manaea) 25:37 Kenley Jansen to Boston 34:07 Xander Bogaerts: Rebound Coming in San Diego? 41:25 Masataka Yoshida: Expectations in Year 1 with Red Sox 47:30 Willson Contreras, Cardinal 52:35 Making Sense of the St. Louis Lineup in 2022 1:01:43 Mitch Haniger Lands in San Francisco 1:05:50 Josh Bell to the Guardians 1:11:14 A Few More Starts for Shohei Ohtani? 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 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 Monday, December 12th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we will discuss the flurry of activity that has taken place since our episode last week. Basically, everything that has happened since the breaking news of Trey Turner going to Philadelphia at the end of our last episode.

So we got lots of pitchers on the move. Few other position players to get to. One major heel turn. A couple of news items to sprinkle in. And if we have time, if we have time, a couple of mailbag questions queued up for the end of the show as well. You know, how's it going for you on this Monday? It's good. Nice little like one day break after the winter meetings, which were rough on me.

I got sick while I was there, lost my voice on the first night and didn't get to spend as much time in the awesome, awesome bar scene that is the winter meetings. But I'm happy to see who I saw and if I missed you while I was there, I was going to bed early and being responsible, drinking lots of water. You'll get back to San Diego and there will be more gatherings.

There you go. You get another crack at it in just a few weeks. So that definitely helps. Let's get to the news. Kodai Singha has landed with the Mets. And we were wondering when we looked at this team after they replaced Jacob deGrom with Justin Verlander, how would they round out the rotation? It seemed like they were one starter short.

In fact, I think it was Owen Poindexter who was tweeting last week, and we were going back and forth a little bit, and I said, I think Tyler McGill is really important for them as they're currently constructed. The addition of Senga really reduces the importance of McGill. He kind of pushes him into that swing role, at least for now, maybe makes him more of an extra arm, and certainly with all the injuries that pile up over the course of the season,

he could still end up being important. But five years, $75 million with an opt out after year three. The nuts and bolts of the scouting report, pretty big fastball in terms of velocity, good splitter, but control concerns. So the main question here is what sort of expectation should we have for Senga making the move from NPB in Japan over to Major League Baseball in 2023? Yeah, I mean, what you can do is try to put him in the context of his peers statistically, you know, other players that have come over and, you know, some of the warning signs that were there for Daisuke Matsuzaka, you know, are not there for Kodai Sengo. When Daisuke Matsuzaka came over, he had like a 295 career ERA in Japan. You know,

somebody like Hugh Darvish was much closer to two. He had a two, what is this, to two. He had a two, what is this? A 199 ERA in Japan. Just to give you sort of, that's one of the best and one of the worst outcomes, right? Of a pitcher that's come over.

So ERA is not everything alone, but then you can sort of poke a little bit at Kodai Senga's walk rates, and there's some similarity to Yu Darvish's walk rates. So maybe he's not a plus-plus command guy when he first comes over, especially because he'll be changing balls.

He'll be going from a pre-tacked ball to one with different seams, something that Masahiro Tanaka talked about a lot when he came over was the difference in his splitter when he came over. That's interesting because Senga's best pitch is called the ghost fork. So I'd have to think that actually that'll, that'll pour it over. I mean, Tanaka's splitter got better when he came over. So I'm hoping the same for senga the big question for me is the fastball because we've even seen with you darvish you darvish came over with some of the best fastball vilo in the non-shohei otani

category um and yet he doesn't emphasize his fastball right like he's not really a fat like his fastball gets hit pretty hard and it's not his best pitch it's you Like he's not really a fat, like his fastball gets hit pretty hard and it's not his best pitch. It's, you know, it's more of a, the cutter has been, you know, his fastball now, quote unquote. So, um, there's been some inconsistent reports. I know I've heard some people say he has his fastball is plus shape. And I've heard other people say it does not have plus shape. So I would say a good below shape on the fastball to be considered non change up secondaries to be considered. In terms of sort of American pitchers, you've got the range of sort of Kevin Gaussman, Frankie Montas,

Frankie Montas, that's those are some names that are in that space, good below. The amount of command he has is a little bit of a separator between Montas and Gaussman. But if you had Montas in one of the better stadiums for a pitcher to pitch in right now, which is New York, that's a pretty good pitcher. I was throwing darts because when I did my rankings I did not know where he would end up uh i put him in the low in the low 40s uh and i don't know maybe i'd move him up to like 45 you know 42 i don't know i'm throwing numbers out there but you know what

i'm saying like uh pretty good pitcher and uh may produce more than his draft cost so definitely somebody i'd be interested in. Yeah, the earlier draft season ADP was kind of on the fringes of the top 300. He'll move up. He's on a good team in a great park. So that's obviously going to draw plenty of interest. I think he'll easily push inside the top 200 overall. And maybe even as high as the top 150, depending on how things go for him during the spring. I do think there's a fair would-you-rather

with Senga versus Frankie Montas. Montas doesn't have the benefit of that park, right? He's lined up to be in Yankee Stadium for half his starts over a full season. We just saw what Montas could do in the damp basement. Both of these guys have some health issues. Senga missed time

I believe twice in 2022 with an arm issue and an ankle injury a couple years ago that cost a lot of time. Mostly healthy. Oh, look at that. I have Montas 42 and Senga 49 before he went to New York. That's a really good

would you rather? Well done. I'm going to say I would rather Senga. I think. I love that that the promise of the unknown um but uh above him it gets tricky when you're in the late 30s there's a lot of really good pitchers uh nestor cortez you know logan gilbert nick lodolo tristan McKenzie. Those are guys I have in my late 30s. And I don't know if I really want to push Kodai ahead of that. So he's going to land at like 42, 43, right in there.

I saw our friend Vlad Sedler lamenting how much he doesn't like, I believe it's the hitters after the first two rounds. And I saw someone else on that tweet jump in and say, outfield's never been worse. And I started thinking about those comments while looking at pitcher rankings because I kept thinking the same thing you were just saying, where I'm looking at this group of 30, 40, 50 range pitchers. I'm like, these guys are good. I like all these guys for the most part.

I'm actually happy to have a big group of this as my core starters. If I only had one guy above this group, and then I had five out of this 30 to 60 cluster, I might actually have a rotation that I feel really good about. I wonder how much of that's just the nature of maybe all of us doing a poor job of recalibrating for an offensive environment that was not as power friendly in 2022. Right. That is a natural that is a natural reaction.

Right. To what happened last year in terms of the dead or ball. A natural reaction would be to push mid range hitters up and and, you know, just to sort of go to quantity, uh, the quantity approach, uh, for your mid range pitchers, you know, just take the guys as they fall. You know, if you've got, uh, you know, I've got Hunter Green 32nd, which is maybe fairly aggressive, but his projection is good and stuff numbers through the roof. And know maybe he falls or maybe it's uh you know somebody nick lodolo who i have uh 36th you know doesn't get as much pub as the other guy maybe he falls his his projection is actually better than hunter greens in steamer right now so you know

just uh just grab them as they fall i think um, is a good way to approach the middle because there are way more names there that I like. And I could see looking at the 35th best outfielder and being like, oh man, it's already got to this. Right. But I don't think that player is worse. I just think the line for that player is worse because of the environment. Yeah. It shifted everyone down and it elevated a lot of pitchers so it's just we're being tricked we're

being tricked by the changes in the environment at least that's well yeah i mean you have to adjust the question is how much you adjust ahead of the new real changes uh just for uh reference sake, you know, here we go. This is an example of similar pitchers. I just rattled off a few names of pitchers I have ranked between 30 and 40. So among outfielders between 30 and 40, you've got Hunter Renfro Oscar Gonzalez this is by the the projection on the on the fan graphs auction calculator Seth Brown jock Peterson I don't know I prefer the pitchers in that range. I'd want to stay out of that. I want as many top 30 outfielders as I can.

Yeah, so maybe outfielders early will be part of the approach this year if the outfield does in fact fall off worse than it has in the past. But I think Singa probably ends up somewhere in that 40-50 range for starting pitchers on a lot of people's lists. Maybe creeps up a little bit higher again, depending on what happens over the course of February and March. A lot of other free agent deals for

pitchers. We'll kind of run through these somewhat rapid fire. Andrew Heaney landed in Texas. We know the skills are good. It's just a question of, well, most of the skills are good. There's a home run problem that's been there kind of forever. It's a question of health. But I think, as we said on the 3-0 show, Andruheny fits right into that mid-tier free agent level where the Rangers have done very well in recent years. It seems like they have some kind of organizational skill of properly identifying quality pitchers that are available in that range. Yeah, I think the main thing for Haney is to maybe emphasize,

if there is upside beyond what we've seen, and he had a pretty good year with the Dodgers and found something in the slider. It's funny because we were talking about him throwing a sweeper. He found something in the slider by reducing the horizontal movement, but I think he found an angle that really worked for him because he's kind of a low-slung guy that pitches off the edge of the rubber there. So I think the fastball slider is a mix.

I think the home run problem we've seen is that he's predictable. He throws a lot of forcing fastballs. Um, and then if it's not a forcing fastball, it's almost always a slider. So I think, you know, stuff plus says his changeup is above average.

It's gotten decent results. He doesn't necessarily command it that well, but, uh, I think putting the changeup back on the table could be a little bit of a source of, uh, upside for him where it could just help him you know just reduce a few of those homers and you know there is another level for

Andrew Haney yeah I think getting off the fastball would be huge right getting that number down 50 maybe for usage instead of 62.5. Maybe that's the ultimate goal, even if that comes with a few more sliders and then, like you said, the change-up or something else. Man, you could talk about a guy that could do it. If he could find some other fastball, if he had two fastballs, maybe that would help. I mean, in a good year, he gave up 1.7 homers per nine.

He's definitely still pretty homer-prone. Mm-hmm. But really nice skills outside of that. I like this fit. I feel like in terms of the money and the years and everything, that all makes sense to me. I think it'll probably tick up a little bit in terms of ADP, given that the ballpark, new ballpark

in Arlington plays pretty close to neutral. And the rumor was that Texas has more going on. So if they improve that lineup a little bit more, you're talking about a improve that lineup a little bit more, you're talking about a team that seems to have a green arrow next to its name. I think they're going to get a corner outfield bat to help bolster that lineup. We saw Sean Minaya land with the Giants, which just makes a lot of sense.

I mean, maybe it's because he spent so much time in Oakland, so he's back in the Bay Area. Maybe it's because they don't really seem to worry too much about high injury risk pitchers. Although I think Benaiah, relative to the early career concerns about his health, has been more durable than expected compared to where he was when he entered the league. But again, a similar sort of deal to what Haney got with the Rangers. So curious what you think about this fit, because in general, pitchers with decent skills landing in Oracle Park tend to be very reliable for us in our game. Yeah, no, I think it's a great place for him to land. I think there is maybe something when it comes to the Giants and sinkers.

You know, Alex Wood was a, you know, a signing of theirs. They added a sinker to Camilla Duvall. Logan Webb took a real big step forward when he uh you know featured the sinker more than the four seamer um and i know that in our stuff plus model as we've done the research sinkers have sometimes been a little bit squirrely where we've been like are these are these stuff numbers really matching up to the best sinkers in the game um so there might still be a little bit you know almost every team now has i think everything has a stuff plus number there's a question of how much they listen to it and how good it is like there is still a difference in

how good uh those team stuff no plus numbers are and i know uh that change ups and sinkers are a part of that discussion which stuff plus numbers are really good at nailing those downs. Maybe the giants feel like theirs is good in that way. And if that's the case, because it's kind of important because Shamanaya's changeup way in our model looks slightly below average. I mean, it's fastball looks slightly below average,

right? His sinker looks okay, you know? And, and what I would focus on from our model perspective is that his slider and change up fat flashed plus last year. So I would say, oh, you know, when his slider was harder, when he was throwing it, uh, you know, harder, that was, that was when his slider was at its best and was change. It was dropping the most. That's when that was at its best.

Now try to get him to replicate those pitches. Uh. That's what my model would say. But if their model says the sinker is actually above average because of its good shape, then they're acting from a better position of strength, right? They're saying this is a good pitcher and maybe we can tweak these things and make him better, but no matter what, he'll still be worth, you know, $12 million a year. I think that's probably true. Like Shaman million dollars a year is now almost the cost of, you know, your number four or five. You know, and he can be a five for anybody. Yeah, look at the skills over the last two seasons combined. 18.2% strikeout minus walk rate. I mean, that's in line with Max Freed.

Same as Pablo Lopez. Same as Tarek Skubal. Just a tick ahead of Tyler Malley and Tristan McKenzie, Frankie Montas, Sandy Alcantara. It doesn't mean he is better or equal to those guys, but a home run problem kind of similar to Heaney. Oracle Park should help soften that or keep it from getting a lot worse. Surprisingly, a 440 ERA for Sean Minaya over the last two seasons combined. All of your ERA estimators come in lower than that. So definitely some tweaks that could be made here that might make it possible for him to get to those numbers.

And I guess looking at the board, comparing him to even Senga, if you're looking at Minaya versus Senga, is that a fair toss-up? Are they in the same tier for you? I think I'd pretty clearly rather have Senga. I have Senga. I have... Wow.

I did not have Shamanayama top 125. Well, that might be a mistake in rear view mirror. But the stuff plus number is so bad, I didn't have a reason to push him in there. And his pitching plus was below average. This is a really good landing spot for him, right? This is definitely something that could push him in there and his pitching plus was below average this is a really good landing spot for him right this is definitely something that could push him pretty hard i i'll let's say i had uh i was a mistake of line i should have had him around uh he should have been at least above

like a sunny gray zach eflin or at least near them right yes i think at least there i have sunny gray at 60 right now these are still like unfinished ranks pablo lopez at 50 i do think lopez is a fair comp even looking at the model some of the numbers from your pitching model are kind of close actually yeah but the model is low on lopez compared to what he's done on the field whereas they're high compared to what mania has done on the field so it's a weird weird comp there but i think mania is a he's a good reason to not draft pablo lopez around pick 150 if you can get mania 50 or 75 even 100 picks later potentially if he stays in the 200 to 250 range i think he's totally viable there because i think mania will be useful for pretty much all of his home starts and even a decent number of road starts as well. You'll avoid him on The temperatures are a lot different if you're playing at 1 o'clock in the afternoon

versus 7 o'clock at night. And I think that has at least a meaningful impact on some of the borderline pitchers that you'd think about using against the Padres. Day games might be off limits. You got to get Ken Arneson in here too because I'm sure the wind, the way the wind patterns work very differently at day and night. You just think about it. I mean, the whole way wind works is, you know, the temperature on land and the temperature in the water being different.

And, you know, there's, you know, land and water lose and gain temperature at different rates. So, of course, during the day, wind might have one totally different pattern than when it would at night. So, yeah, I think those are good arguments for those. It's definitely also cold out here. They call it California. Everyone thinks it's all warm, but you sit in a ballpark at night in San Diego

or Oakland or San Francisco, and you realize how cold it can get up here. The proper word is cool. It is not cold. I can speak to cold. I could not previously speak to cool. Now that I've lived here for almost a year and a half,

cool is exactly what it is. There's something strange when it's about 50 degrees and it's kind of humid and it somehow chills you to the bone not all that differently than like 20 degrees with a nasty wind. You still feel it and you're like, why do I feel so cold right now? There is something unique about that, but I'm going to say that's cool. That's a cool temperature, legitimately cool.

I've settled in with him maybe in the late 70s around like a Marcus Stroman, Jameson Tyon, Kenta Maeda, Ross Stripling, Merrill Kelly. You know, good fungible veterans. Yeah, Maeda, a bit of a forgotten guy right now as he makes his return from Tommy John surgery. But I could see that being a pretty nice late round value since he should have a pretty normal progression over the course of this winter. Missed all of us here. 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. Impressive. Is there a regulatory specialist I can ask about? FedEx. Oh, but let's say that...

FedEx. What? FedEx. Thanks. No more questions. Always your answer for international shipping. FedEx, where now meets next. Whoa, what are you listening to this for?

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Three other veteran potential starters landed in new places. Jose Quintana is going to be a starter with the Mets, so he's not a potential starter. Kyle Gibson and Vince Velasquez landed with the Orioles and Pirates respectively. As those three teams kind of added rotation depth, or in the case maybe of Pittsburgh,

someone that's a little more big part of their plans in the short term, at least. Do you like any of those particular guys maybe as overlooked additions? Yeah, I've had Vince Velasquez on my sort of personal crib sheet of possibly cheap, undervalued starters that might be interesting. You know, he's like, he was like one of the very few free agent

pitchers that could be a starter that had an above average fastball stuff plus. You know what I mean like that's uh it's something that is kind of rare among starters to begin with they're they're not you know a lot of them not known for their fastballs and it's definitely harder to have a an above average stuff plus for a fastball when you're in the free agent category you know it's your post peak now obviously de grom had one you know like the had one. The top of the line guys have

that, but Justin Verlander didn't. And Vince Velasquez did have an above-average step loss on the four-seam fastball. So that's a good foundation, I think. And then when you kind of look among his different pitches, you see pitches that are rated well for for stuff but not for command and that's that's the Vince Velasquez we know and love um but that would know and maybe love but uh I would uh I I see a lot of opportunity there one thing I just like uh there were other couple players on uh that part of the crib sheet, like Matthew Boyd and Michael Lorenzen, that were just there because they had many pitches and they'd made some minor tweaks to those pitches in the past year. Like, for example, Michael Lorenzen added a sweeper.

And, for example, Matt Boyd changed the action on his changeup last season. For example, Matt Boyd changed the action on his changeup last season. So with Vince Velasquez, I'd just be looking to tweak one of his pitches. He has the type of fastball that you could add a sweep or two. The problem is Velasquez doesn't command his pitches that well. So adding another pitch with great action and not great command might not help him. So maybe it's more you add a cutter, something that he can actually command well that's not just his foreseam.

So I just see an opportunity there in pitches. He has a bunch of pitches. Some of them are good by stuff. Some of them are good by location. There's got to be a good mix in there. I think there's something that you can pry out of Vince Velasquez. Yeah, I thought it was worth mentioning, if only because he has more to

work with in terms of stuff than Jose Quintana did. And it was Quintana that went to Pittsburgh around this time a year ago and ended up being a nice move for the Pirates. They flipped him to the Cardinals and now he was actually a coveted free agent this offseason. So maybe something similar could develop with

Velasquez if they make a couple of adjustments. And we're at the point with him now. He's 30 years old. If it doesn't work out over the first two months as a starter, you can flip the switch in June, make him a short reliever. And maybe you've got a coveted high leverage reliever that you brought in. I mean, I think that's still in there for him because then it doesn't matter as much which pitches he can't command. A lot of those just go away, right? Then he becomes a four-sleeve slider guy,

and both of those pitches were above average across the board. And then maybe it goes a little bit more from above average to one of those pitches kind of starts doing a little bit more elite stuff. So I definitely think he can be a reliever for somebody. Got a few relievers that landed on new teams. Kenley Jansen going to Boston is kind of like his own conversation, but Kenley Jansen goes to the Red Sox. Joe Jimenez was acquired by Atlanta.

Carlos Estevez ends up in Anaheim getting out of Colorado. Never a bad thing for a pitcher. And then Matt Strom goes to Philadelphia. And I feel like my, my interest in Matt Strom has faded compared to where it was a few years ago. Still not a bad addition, though. With Kenley Jansen, are we going down the exact same path where because he's got a clear hold on a closer role, because the stuff last year was actually pretty good, he goes into our circle of trust for draft season,

and then we wait until about August, and then we start having the panic about whether or not he's going to keep the job. And if the Red Sox are in line to possibly make the playoffs, are we going to be worried about whether or not he's going to be the guy for them even at the end of the season? Is this the actual plan that we have to follow every single year for Kenley Jansen? single year for Kenley Jansen? Yeah, the added asterisk for me this year that makes it a little different than years before where I have had some teams where I say, oh, I missed out on all the elite relievers. I'll take Kenley Jansen. The thing that's a little different now is that he's one of the slowest relievers in baseball and there's going to be a pitch clock this year. So it's just a little bit of added risk on top of it and then you know uh he's joined a bullpen where there are you know possible other people that can close to my mind uh john schreiber

is someone that's always been a standout guy in the model and he did fine when he was asked to close last year uh and then tanner hauck you know know, we'll see there's something like, you know, maybe he'll start, maybe he'll not. Garrett Whitlock, they've been saying will be stretched out to start. Houck and like will be a starter is sort of the language I've heard, you know, out of Boston. Whereas Tanner Houck is maybe he'll be stretched out to be a starter, but we don't know where he'll end up. So, you know, I think Tanner Houck will end up in the bullpen. And there's just a question of if there's some slight sort of weaknesses towards lefties, right? I think Jansen and Schreiber don't

necessarily exhibit those weaknesses, whereas Houck as a a side-arming guy who has a lot of left-to-right action on his pitches, he may have some trouble against lefties. I think for me, Jansen could have firmly in that second group of closers. I'd much rather have one in front of him than have him be my first source of saves. But you could probably do worse if you waited on a closer. I think there's actually a little more job security than you've got forecasted right

now. I think in part because, at least as the Red Sox stand right now, I think they need all of those guys that could be starters, could be relievers. They need them all in the rotation. They don't have good rotation depth right now. Maybe that changes when they add someone to replace Evaldi. James Paxson is listed as their fifth

right now, so I think you're right. I think, again, a free agent signing or two could add some competition, but I actually think it's a pretty good path in the first half for Jansen to be the guy if he pitches well. Probably keeps the job all year. Jimenez, I think,

is just kind of behind Raisa Iglesias. Nice addition makes the bullpen deeper, but I don't know if there's anything outside of saves and holds leagues to really be excited about there. And then Estevez, to me, is just an extra reliever for Anaheim that could make that bullpen a bit better, but not necessarily

someone I expect to see immediately in the mix for saves. Except that in Anaheim, at least, is it obvious who is the closer? No, because Jimmy... No. I always want to say Her-jay. Her-jit.

Jimmy Her-jit. Like, was kind of headed towards there, but they were also getting some saves. I remember this because I was trying to figure it out late in the season last year. And every time I put Hergit in, Tapera got a save. And every time I put Tapera in,

Hergit got a save. So I was pretty annoyed by that. I actually think Estevez is the closer right now. And the reason I say this is, you you know when i look at his stuff plus numbers away from home they were much better than they were at home and so i bet they saw uh something in the course can actually change your stuff plus numbers and so he might have looked you know overall a little bit boring but uh away from home he was putting up uh 115s in the stuff plus uh region and that's like uh other 115s um that closed or daniel bard has a 116 tanner hauck has

a 116 john shriver's in the 116 devin williams had a 115 um you know So there are some good pitchers right there. Jorge Lopez had a 114. So I think he's probably the closer right now. Good news if you're in any of the early leagues, the Gladiator Leagues or the Draft and Hold or anything like that, because he's not going to cost a ton in drafts in the short term. They still have time to add more to that bullpen. They may add, yeah.

Actually, of the remaining free agents, who stands out to you as a possible threat to come in and take saves from either Carlos Estevez or anybody else who's in an unsettled ninth inning situation right now? Because there's certainly more than just

Anaheim where you look and say, yeah, I guess it's this guy, but they're one move away from it being someone else. There's not that much out there still. The Stuff Plus numbers still like Craig Kimbrell and said that it was just a bad year command-wise. And so I could see him getting a one-year $10 million deal and being put in the mix to close.

I think if you have Kimbrell and Carlos Estevez, you feel like, you know, I don't have to, I don't have to just give it to Kimbrell. Maybe I tell Kimbrell he's the closer coming in, but maybe, you know, internally we say, hey, it could be either guy. You know what I mean? Like, I don't see somebody where you're like,

we signed this guy, he's definitely our closer. Closest is Kimbrell. Taylor Rogers is out there. And I think he had a real down year command wise because they were you know fiddling around with a slider i think in a better year command wise he will have a much better year next year so i think taylor rogers and keg crimball are the only last two but if that if i put either of those next to carlos estevez um i guess i would probably lean a little bit closer to Rodgers and Kimbrel than Estevez, but I think it'd be maybe close to 50-50.

You know, it'd be rough to try and draft into that situation because you don't know which one it's going to be, but I'd have some shares late in most of my drafts because that's what I do. I have actually a good bit of faith in a Taylor Rodgers rebound. Right, exactly. The home run issues he had last year, especially after the trade to Milwaukee, were just absurd. I think he could be fine.

He could still be a top 12 closer. If he had a path to a job, I would look at Taylor Rodgers very similar to Kenley Jansen. But I do say that as someone that would say it's worth taking a chance on Carlos Estevez late right now because the way they used Aaron loop last season I know he was popping in the model a year ago the way he was used makes me think they don't necessarily look at him as a clear-cut ninth inning guy they kind of like him as more of a

high leverage mix and match guy in the bridge to the ninth inning and he's a lefty loop right so you know they're gonna have uh this year there's gonna be uh a added need for lefties given the new shift rules you know lefties that can strike lefties out so that's something i think with loop where you know they you had this finding a while back that that teams used lefty lefties that can strike lefties out so that's something i think with loop where you know they you had this finding a while back that that teams used lefty lefties as closers about half as often as you'd expect and i that my theory was always they wanted to have a situational lefty and so you know i made it hard how many teams had two really good lefties where they could do that and i think we're going to return there was a little bit of going away from that where there were teams like the Astros that just had righties, you know,

but I would assume that, you know, the teams are looking for lefties, you know, and they want to have situational lefties. You know, not necessarily, we can't do the one-out thing anymore, but if you have a couple of really important lefties coming up and you just can't have them, you know, getting on base, maybe batter's on.

Here comes Luke. And I don't think that sends him up for closing. Let's move on to some of the other position player moves. Xander Bogarts ended up with the Padres. That was not something we would have expected a week ago. But knowing that they were pursuing Trey Turner, knowing that they may have even been pursuing Aaron Judge, nothing's off limits right now as it stands for San Diego. I think there's been, with Bogarts, some injuries he's played through that have reduced his

in-game power. That's complicated by the fact that he just turned 30 in October, might be losing a little bit of power anyway with aging, but I think they could actually get some seasons that still look a lot like what we saw between 2018 and 2020, where that slugging percentage gets back up over 500 again. I think that's still on the table for Bogarts. I love the plate skills.

I think, you know, over the life of the contract, maybe he moves off of shortstop, but you're not really worried about that right now. They said he's going to start the life of the contract, maybe he moves off of shortstop, but you're not really worried about that right now. They said he's going to start the year at that position, and if there's something better they can do defensively, maybe they'll address that at some point in 2023. But I was looking at Bogarts already as a nice rebound candidate from a power perspective anyway. I think the counting stats would have come along with that. And now that he's landed in another really good lineup, i just think that increases the chances of everything falling back into place for him so

long as he's healthy yeah he's really interesting because uh all of the the process stats that i use um sort of suggest that this is an overpay for the the padres and that he was maybe the fourth best shortstop on the board. Like I'm getting to it. I know, I know he's put up great batting averages and great OBPs and he has great results. But I just have to point out that like, you know, in terms of his chase rate, he's, you know, 67th percentile. In terms of his barrel, he was 56th percentile. In terms of contact rate, swing strike rate, he's 37th percentile in terms of his barrel he was 56 percentile uh in terms of contact rate swing

strike rate he's 37th percentile his arm is 32nd percentile his legs were 49th percentile so you know across the board he has weaknesses in you know how fast is he how's he going to age according to his legs his arm doesn't seem to be uh of the strength that will keep him at short stop for very long uh and he doesn't stand out in of the strength that will keep him at shortstop for very long. And he doesn't stand out in terms of power and patience like a Carlos Correa does, you know, who looks like a prototypical slugger who plays shortstop. What I think is not caught, there's two things that come to mind that are not caught by these process stats. Perhaps sort of hit tool is not captured by swing strike rate and power. You know, that there's something in between there that's hit tool.

And I would assume that he has it because he's put up these high BABFs. His career BABF is 336. That's, you know, league average is like 296. That's pretty good. You know, you also have strikeout rates that are better than his contact rates. That seems to me also kind of hit Tooley, where he's making contact where he needs to, even though the overall contact rate is below average, frankly. That's one thing that comes to mind.

The other thing is he's played a very interesting ballpark. thing is he's played a very interesting ballpark um and if you just look at where his doubles were i mean last year he had i don't know 15 doubles off the wall in venway off the monster yeah and uh so i wonder how that affects uh his batting average on balls in play and what you think of him going forward. And that's part of why, even though he's projected to have a similar walk rate, a similar strikeout rates, and a little more power than he had last year, and an above-average league BABIP, he's still only projected to hit.267 next year. So part of this is hit tool. Part of this is how he's meshed with his park. And those things, I think, have an outsized importance for him going forward

since he's not a standout necessarily with the legs or with the power or with the patience. So that's why I have reservations about giving him 11 years, where Trey Turner has the legs, I think, to age better than the general population. And Kaz Correa has the kind of power patience bat that seems like it'll age better than something where you're depending on a line drive stroke. You're depending on base hits as opposed to walks and homers. Looking back, I threw this on the screen. If you're watching us on YouTube, the 2021 percentile rankings for Bogarts, 90th percentile in max exit velocity. And that I think was with a little more health. I wonder if I'm buying into how you were describing hit tool and how that sort of explains some of the differences in what you see in the underlying numbers versus what you see on the surface with Bogarts.

I wonder if he might fit the bill. We've talked about this with Freddie Freeman before, a hitter that can really change who he is. Maybe he can become someone that sells out to get to more power as he ages, right? As spraying the ball becomes more difficult, maybe it will be a little more happy with raw power. Or he doesn't have the green monster. Maybe he gets it over the wall instead of trying to pepper the wall. Yeah, so I mean the 11 years thing is just the function of let's keep the AAV down.

That's what it took to get him to. Yeah, to me, this is just more about in these next three to five seasons especially, I see the skills, the underlying numbers here, and I see it's still going to be a really good, if not great player for them. And I think they'll be praised, I think, for the discount, at least in the early part of the deal, even if six years from now people are laughing at them for it. Well, I mean, there's been some long deals right now. To your argument, I think is very interesting. The last two years have been very different, where in 2021, he had

the highest pull percentage of the last five years and the highest barrel rate of the last five years. And then in 2022, he had the lowest pull rate of the last five years and the highest barrel rate of the last five years. And then in 2022, he had the lowest pull rate of the last five years and the lowest barrel rate. So that suggests a little bit to your argument that there's a little bit of variability here in approach and that he's shown basically that he can be successful in a couple of different approaches. How weird is it too that he was in the 88th percentile in outs above average in 2022. And he was in the first percentile in 2021. When I had that up on the screen, 13th percentile back in 2020, fourth percentile in 2019, pretty big year for him defensively. And I think it will

take more to show us that that wasn't just a one-year blip. Yeah, that's true. But with below-average arm and legs, this is a player that I would expect to be at third base within three years. Makes a lot of sense. Now, plenty of fans in Boston are upset right now that Bogarts is gone. They have made a few additions. Masataka Yoshida cashes in with the Red Sox five years, $90 million.

I think compared to what a lot of people out there had expected for a contract, it's a lot. That being said, when you start digging into what Yoshida was doing in Japan and trying to come up with an approximation of how the skills are going to translate making the move over to Major League Baseball. Who do you think the Red Sox have? Who currently in the MLB pool does Yoshida most resemble, at least on paper or in a spreadsheet? Yeah, I think one of the questions you always have with the hitter coming over is how the power is going to translate um i think there's just there's just massive differences between especially with a guy with 15 to 20 homers like he's had i think the the outcomes homer wise in america are anywhere from 6 to 18 you know i mean like he's either a guy who just randomly hits one out and he had more opportunity against worse pitching in Japan to get those like a mistake hitter, basically, or he's a guy who has legitimate power. He did have a peak with 29 homers one year in 2019. But I do know also that the ball was changing in Japan around that time.

So, you know, he settled in mostly as like a sort of a 15 to 20 homer hitting guy. The standout part of the stats are his strikeout and walk rates. He had a 14% walk rate last year and a 7% strikeout rate last year. And you know where I'm going with this. Stephen Kwan had in AAA a 12% walk rate and a 7% strikeout rate. So I think he is somewhere between Steven Kwan and Alex Bregman. Kwan works a little bit better because he's a corner outfielder, but I think he showed plus defense. So I think the worst case scenario is Steven Kwan with a little bit less defense.

Stephen Kwan was a four-win player last year. So that's all-star level. And so we're talking about, I think, a floor of someone that is just below an all-star, like an above-average regular, somebody who's two and a half to three wins. That's a sort of floor for someone who makes that much contact, a lefty with no shift. I think that's a floor. The upside is he has more Bregman-esque power. He won't necessarily have

the defensive value of Bregman, but if he has Bregman-esque power, I think you're talking about someone who could have four to five wins. So that's a pretty good signing, even for $100 million. Yeah, I think the Kwon comp gives you a really safe floor. If that's the player he is and that's how you draft him, okay.

You're going to get tons of runs, good average, decent number of RBIs, depending on where he's at in the lineup. Maybe you're a little under in RBIs if he ends up being a leadoff guy or at least a part-time leadoff guy. But that would be, I think, a pretty positive outcome at that AAV for the Red Sox if that is what they get. And room for more, like you said. I think the thing I would love to see

is how hard was he hitting the ball in Japan? Was he already in the lower end of the range for exit velo there, or was there actually a good bit of hard contact, even if you kind of soften that against better, more consistent pitching across the board, that gives you a little more optimism. Remember Fukudome came over, Kosuke Fukudome came over to the Reds, right?

Or is that the Cubs? Fukudome is the Cubs guy. Fukudome, who's the guy who came to the Reds? Just happened. Shogo Akiyama. Akiyama, yep. Yeah, and I think there was a sense that they did not hit the ball that hard.

And so I guess if I'm being fully honest, I mean, you have to consider that part of the floor. But I think he had more power than those two guys. Those guys were hitting like 10 homers at a time in Japan. Let me see. Shogo Akiyama. Is Akiyama stealing more bases

in Japan too? Is that part of the package that people were excited about when he signed? Well, see, Akiyama did have a 25 homer season in 2017 with Seibu have a 25 homer season in 2017 with with seibu uh and some 20 homer seasons but he also had some 13 homer seasons he had a season where he had 484 plate appearances with five homers like uh those are not seasons that uh that masataka uh uh Yoshida has had. So the lower end for him was lower. But, you know,

okay, so that is something that has to be considered. However, Akiyama also struck out more, right? So what would have happened if Akiyama came in and was at least able to put the ball in play all the time?

That's something to consider. And then Fukudome. Kosuke Fukudome. Let me see. In Japan, he was hitting... Wow, he had a 34 homer season in Japan. But he settled in... Wow, he had 13 homer, 15 homer seasons,

but he had some 30 homer seasons in Japan. He also struck out more. So they're betting on a different profile here. But Fukudome's 30 homer seasons translated to 10 homer seasons with his first three seasons in Japan. First three seasons with the Cubs. 10 to 13.

So really, the powerubs 10 to 13. So really the power is, is the big question mark. Yeah. I think if you project them for eight to 10 homers, that's probably a fair starting point. And you're hoping to get a lot of value in some of those other categories. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one.

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and has notes of rose and 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 talk about wilson contraris now a saint louis cardinal which is just a strange thing to say out loud, probably particularly painful if you are a Cubs fan. Very sorry to continue raining on your parade. I know I've been talking about this on a few different episodes in the last couple of days, but the thing that I noticed with Wilson Contreras, I was just looking back at catchers over the last 20 or so years, went to fan graphs, threw up the leaderboard from 2000 forward, looked for the top 10 catchers by WRC+.

Number one, Will Smith, 132 WRC+. Probably an underrated player in the broader conversation. Maybe not in fantasy circles, but definitely underrated just in terms of how people around real baseball talk about him. Buster Posey at 129. Jorge Posada, 127. Mike Piazza, 125. Joe Maurer, 123. Mitch Garver, 119. Mike Napoli, 119. Jorge Posada, 127. Mike Piazza, 125. Joe Mauer, 123. Mitch Garver,

119. Mike Napoli, 119. Wilson Contreras, 118. And you got Victor Martinez and Yasmany Grandal at 117. I think Victor Martinez is actually a really funny name there because there have been people who sort of disparage Wilson Contreras' defense. And Victor Martinez

was one of those players that did not have the greatest defense and ended up transitioning to DH later in his career, but had so much bat that he was still valuable. I think Contreras has enough bat to eventually make that move, but I also think he's

a good enough defensive catcher for the next three years at least to play most of his games behind the play. I think that's something you're talking about in year four or year five, depending on a bunch of other factors. Also curious to see if anything changes. Moving to a new organization, right? You go to the organization where Yadier Molina just spent the last 150 years and, you know, you get a fresh start. You get a fresh start.

I just think the lineup around him is better than what he's had ever since the Cubs started to break up the band, too. I like the counting stats possibly ticking up again this year for him. Yeah, his framing stats are consistently negative. His rookie year, he was above average, and in 2020 in the shortened season, he was above average. Every other year, it's negative. In 2018, he must have been the worst framer in baseball because minus 18 runs framing is uh pretty bad that's a whole win of runs that he gave up uh with this framing we know maybe that

we're headed more towards a challenge system than a full automated balls and strikes that seems to be we're hearing on the ground so his framing will matter but having talked to different players and different teams teams definitely have different training methods for framing different philosophies about you know the leg out so this that different ways to improve someone's framing even when it comes to how they relax before they receive the pitch and maybe the Cardinals have that institutional knowledge where

they can help him not necessarily improve his true talent when it comes to framing but sort of work around it, adjust for it. I wonder if Yadier Molina is going to hang around in the spring this year. It would not surprise me at all if Yadier Molina is just kind of around. Right?

Why wouldn't he be? It's the funny thing about recently retired baseball players is they don't know what to do with themselves. There's this there's this little known fact that i mean this it's it's true in all or in all sort of walks of life but you know there's divorce rates get high among most recently retired players uh that's something that players should be looking out for as they approach it because you went from being on the road all the time uh to being home all the time and And I've seen that in my own family.

It's like, ah, this dude used to be on the road all the time. Now he's backseat driving me. Shout out to my mother-in-law. You know, it's just, he's's gonna want to do something with his time i know he has uh like a i think a basketball team that he owns in the dominican or a soccer team like i know he he's uh interested in other sports but i you know when somebody has that much knowledge you can easily become kind of a special assistant either either to a GM or that kind of roving assistant coach where he doesn't have to be there all the time and he doesn't have to go through the

whole season where he's like traveling with the team. But yeah, in spring, he's going to show up and he's going to help and he's going to tell them what he knows. And then then he doesn't have to do the rest of it. You know, Barry Bonds was a terrible hitting coach because he didn't want to show up at like, you know, 8 a.m. or whatever after a night game. You know, he wasn't he wasn't he wasn't that guy, you know. But would you love to have Barry Bonds at spring training talking to your hitters? Yeah. So, yeah, I would I would assume Yachty will be there in spring. So we had a question from one of our listeners, Michael, and he's pointing to all the great performances up and down the Cardinals lineup last season.

You know, Paul Goldschmidt having a 177 WRC plus at age 35. Even Tommy Edmond and Lars Neupahr getting up above league average performances in WRC plus. They were both up like 15 or 20 points in WRC plus from the previous year. Pujols Renaissance, Nolan Arenado's career year. Michael's just wondering, is there anything that really explains it across the board? I know we've talked about Goldschmidt and Arenado and the bats they were using and how more or less the story from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about that had a really good assessment because it was Goldschmidt talking about how

it's like club fitting in golf and getting the weight within the bat to be distributed in a way that works well for your swing and that subsequently increases your bat speed. That to me is kind of like a satisfactory explanation, at least for those two guys, but you start to think that if the two best hitters on your team are doing something like that, the other guys around them might also try it or do something similar. I don't know. I think that's at least part of where this came from.

I know in the first part of the season, there was some unseasonably warm weather in St. Louis when the park factors were pretty weird too. That was further confused by the Pirates being in town all month, which is only, you know,

they're there for like a series. It was a prolonged series. Anyway, what have you seen with the Cardinals that could add to the explanation of like how they actually did this with so many players exceeding expectations at the plate in 2022? It's actually, it's a fascinating story.

And I think it has to do with how good teams are good because good teams are good because they know what they can do when they know what's good they know what players are good when they want to acquire them but they also know which players are good in a certain way that they could get them to another level you know and so what I see

especially out of Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt are guys who have traditionally been able to hit for power all around the park. Right. These are guys who traditionally had opposite field power to some extent. Right. So what did both of those guys do last year that they'd never done before in their career that they did to the most utmost level last year? They pulled fly balls at higher rates than they'd ever pulled fly balls. Both of them set career highs in the pull rate on their fly balls.

How many of their fly balls were pulled? Guess what the team did as a whole? St. Louis, among all the teams out there in terms of fly balls, pulled most of their fly balls. They pulled 29.6 percent of their fly balls number one in the big leagues and by two plus percentage points over the yankees who had 27.9 the orioles the rangers donnie ecker is there and the braves are top five the giants donnie ecker's old team are sixth so you know you know, the Blue Jays are eighth.

The twins who are the barrel rate kings, you know, and the fly ball rate kings during the StatCast era, they are tenth. So these are teams that prioritize pulling the ball in the air because the pulled barrel is the best outcome in baseball. And so what you have are, you know, some guys who have some hitterish ability, you know, Arenado and Goldschmidt, who've been going the other way that you say, hey, let's do some bat fitting. You've never done bat fitting. Let's do some bat fitting. You know, oh, you haven't prioritized pulling the ball in the air.

You know, you haven't prioritized bat speed. Oh, well, come to our organization. We're going prioritized bat speed oh well come to our organization we're going to prioritize bat speed we're going to prioritize pulling the ball in the air and your natural hitterish abilities are still going to be there you're still going to be able to go the other way if you need to if you need to you know convince hitters to come inside or whatever it is you're trying to do so you know i think it was a real sort of meshing of scouting acquisition player development and i think it's a real shame jeff al of scouting acquisition player development and i think it's a real shame jeff albert was their hitting coach this is all jeff albert type stuff you know

bat finning is use the best data and tech that's available to you pulling the ball in the air is what's the best thing you can do pull the ball in the air you know pull the pull a pull a barrel and they they did that and jeff albert who does all these things and they did that and Jeff Albert who does all these things and they have their career years and his coaching gets through and you know he's doing the best somehow gets hounded out of town and feels like

you know he's being blamed for anything that the Cardinals do and feels like he needs to do something else and goes to New York where people like suppose like you know New York where people like, suppose like, you know, New York's supposed to be the rabid place where they, they, they chew you up and he chooses to go to New York over St.

Louis. So there's something that's a shame about that. I don't, maybe it was just a play for more money or a better title. I mean, kudos to anybody who does this baseball, the really tough place, you know,

if you, if you're playing the long game, then it's fine. At least what Jeff Albert said was part of it was just he felt like he was getting too much blame and not enough credit. He should get a ton of credit because St. Louis did some

things under the hood that were amazing last year. You think about New Bush Stadium and how it's played. It's not as pitcher friendly as City field, but I do think city field presents a pretty unique challenge for any hitting coach, trying to unlock as much as you possibly can. If you have an optimized approach, maybe you've got a better chance of beating the park than if you don't. also the ball change we know the ball is going to be deader oh opposite field homers down 30 pulled field pulled homers down 15 they were out in front of that they knew that was going to happen what did what happens when you're dead in a ball the opposite field homers are worse one last thing about that park because we've talked a lot about how that those park factors change and the park might be changing in st. Louis. I had a really interesting conversation with Ken Arneson, who models wind.

They model wind in 20 out of 30 parks. And I think he was optimistic they'd nailed down the last 10 at these winter meetings. He said he had a lot of great meetings. And the thing about modeling wind is you have to have 20 sensors in the park, right? And then he said what's really important that people don't know about or don't think about necessarily is you have to actually build the buildings. You have to make a 3D model of the buildings around the ballpark. And that's because if you have a big building next to the ballpark, buildings have shadows, wind shadows, right? If you think about

it, it's like an eddy or whatever, like the wind goes over the top of the building. There's no wind here. So that creates different wind patterns. And if you have a big building that's next to a ballpark, you might actually have a wind shadow that covers the whole ballpark. So the wind will just go over the top of the ballpark. And that creates some implications for how the ballpark will play. So as these ballparks may not even be changing their dimensions, there are buildings going up around them. Kansas City may play the way it does because there are no buildings around it.

Now they're considering building a new park in Kansas City, and they say that's when it's going to be downtown. That one might play way more hitter-friendly just because there's buildings around it. We've seen buildings change the way San Diego plays. Because there are new condos around that everywhere. And there's reasons to believe that the new condos changed the way the Nationals Park played. Because when Nationals Park was built, there was nothing around it. Now there are big condo buildings all around it creating wind shadows. So I thought that was fascinating. I think if I was an organization, I would be calling Ken right now

and having him do the wind modeling because it also tells you a little bit about optimal strategy. What should our hitters do? Where do the balls play best in the stadium? Where are the wind? Where is the wind hurting us? And where is it helping us?

Yeah, I think maybe 10 years ago or so, my friend Bernie Pleskov would say that at Coors Field, there was always this jet stream in right center field. If you got the ball to right center, you could hit the ball really far in that part of the ballpark. Obviously, the ball travels everywhere at Coors, but it was just the spot that if you, as a left-handed hitter, could drive the ball there, you could be rewarded. These kind of micro effects within each park do seem like they're very much worth digging into. By the way, looking at the final count for the baseball savant park factors using the three-year rolling average, the park factor for Citi Field, 96, Bush Stadium, 95. Home runs are actually a bit different. Citi Field has a 96 home run factor, Bush Stadium, 82. So Bush Stadium actually a little more pitcher friendly when you account for the homer factor,

at least looking at these three-year rolling averages. Arenado and Goldschmidt this year. Nope, it didn't. Any St. Louis listeners, if there are some new buildings around that ballpark, I'd be fascinated to hear about it. Let's get to Mitch Hanegar going to San Francisco. We kept wondering if it would be Aaron Judge or one of the other big free agents. Maybe it's still Carlos Correa, possibly headed to San Francisco.

So far, Mitch Hanegar, the big addition aside from Sean Minaya joining the rotation. I think with Hanegar, he's one of those guys that you seem to like a lot year over year, and I'm always kind of afraid because of the combination of injuries he dealt with during his time in Seattle. And thinking about how teams are very careful with players that are corner outfielders, that are 15%, 20% better than league average hitters, and this type of player seems like it can be frequently non-tendered and traded. I was surprised that the Giants gave him a three-year deal because he looks so similar to a Hunter Renfro type player to me in a lot of ways. But what makes Mitch Hanegar different? Why would he potentially stand out and be better off on a long-term deal than some of those other guys that end up getting moved around a lot more uh i mean it could be a question of of spray charts on how he fits into uh you know like compared to renfro a lot of it is patience henniger does not uh traditionally swing at

pitches outside the zone has better walk rates and that's been a big thorn in Renfro's foot. He's been aggressive and sort of powered his way beyond that. But if he was able to take more walks, he'd be a better player. So that's part of why Hanager has the upside. I'm also looking at the spray charts. And yes, Hanager does have right center sort of, Because Henninger does hit the ball right center a fair amount, which is triples alley in San Francisco and a terrible place to go for it. His homers are mostly pulled down the line, and that's going to play just fine in San Francisco. So just a question of're just a question of, will he lose, uh, some of those doubles and opposite field homers? But, you know, since 2019, I count, uh, maybe I'd call that maybe seven opposite field homers for Mitch Hanegar since 2019. Um, and I don't even see that many doubles really out there. You know, I see

maybe five or six opposite field doubles. So I don't think he's risking much in terms of how his how this ballpark will play for his skills. He tells me that last year was a little difficult. It was his one of his worst years for chase rate and strike out rate. And he just said with the ankle injury, it was just difficult to make these adjustments you have to make on a sort of game to game level. And he just didn't feel right all year. So as a projection, 16% better than league average with the bat is, is a comfortably that's a better than even sort of an average corner outfield bat. And then the question is how the defense will play.

I'm with you on, on that explanation. I think there are slight differences, but man, I, I miscalculate those differences relative to how the giants do right now. So maybe that's a blind spot for me uh maybe it's also for the for the giants uh they would much rather use money than players to acquire players yeah that could be money not really a problem in san francisco they have a lot of room between them and the luxury tax and and in terms of you know trading away so you know the types of players that took to get to os Hernandez and Hunter Renfro were relievers. And the Giants bullpen last year was bottom third.

So, you know, it's not like they want to trade any of their relievers right now. So that's the value of that definition, too. Yeah, I think that's a good point. Last player, Josh Bell, heads to Cleveland. He gets a two-year contract. This one seemed like it made a lot of sense from the very beginning. I think Josh Bell to Cleveland made sense as a possible trade addition back during July. You look back and he ended up in San Diego, of course, but it would have made sense then.

We've talked about Bell a lot on this show as someone whose power tends to fluctuate quite a bit from year to year. We've seen a 37 home run season. Of course, that was 2019, the year of the rabbit ball. But back in 2017, he popped 26 homers, popped 27 homers during his full season with the Nationals in 2021. Ended up sitting at 17 homers in 156 games a season ago. Barrel rate, the last few seasons, right between 7% and 8%. At his absolute best, we've seen that 12% season. Again, you're the rabbit ball in 2019. And the other problem, I guess, that we've seen on occasion is inflated ground ball rates. And even when he's going well, it seems like he hits the ball on the

ground a little more than you'd like. But good skills overall, right? Draws walks, doesn't strike out a lot. It doesn't chase pitches outside the zone. I guess the big question for everybody is how much power are you expecting from Josh Bell in 2023 over what should be a full season now with the Guardians? Yeah. I mean, despite those high ground ball rates and when he hit 26 homers in 2017, he had a 51% ground ball rate. And when he hit 27 in 2021, he had a 54% ground ball rates and when he hit 26 homers in 2017 he had a 51 percent ground ball rate when he hit 27 in 2021 he had a 54 percent ground ball rate so he's still able to hit you know 20 plus homers in a given year uh even with the high ground ball rate and this is a very much a guardians or raids type hitter where it's a guy who hits the ball hard and has good play to someone who makes contact you know why wouldn't any hitting coach in baseball want to start with that?

A guy who can hit the ball, he's hit the ball 116, 117 in his career, so he obviously has the raw power, and then it's just a question of is there a tweak to get him back to the 30 homer guy? And if not, he still, over the last two years, has been better than 20% better than league average. So maybe he only hits 20 homers next year. He's still going to be a guy who gets on base around 350 on base percentage.

Still going to have like an 800 OPS and still going to be a really good player. I do wonder what it means for the rest of the Guardians team. I've been, you know, a guy who liked Naylor, Josh Naylor, and then, you know, Josh Naylor has really similar kind of skills in that he, you know, at his best, will make contact, have patience, has hit the ball 115, has had those similar kind of barrel rates and has some problems with ground ball rate. Like he seems almost duplicitous with Josh Bell, except that Josh Bell is a switch hitter.

So I'm guessing that Bell gets more playing time. Naylor gets sit against lefty sometimes. We've already seen a little bit of that uh but they can probably share first and DH and uh no one uh becomes a uh do not drafter uh because of it I mean would you where do you where do you sit on Josh Naylor next year I think it's fine that that they're both there because they can be first base DH and just kind of mix and match within two spots. Two players that are in the lineup every day to share

the two spots. I don't know if you look at either one of those guys and say they're a consistently good defender, so maybe it's kind of an even split. I think I would rather have Bell because I think Josh Naylor's injury history is a concern.

I think it's his knee, right? That was the main problem. That's the sort of thing that can always come back around. But the gap between them actually is very small as a hitter. I think the other thing that makes me like Josh Bell a little bit more, just a little more patient. So I think that keeps him in the lineup a little more often, whereas Naylor might end up sitting against some lefties.

Naylor somehow stole six bases last year, though. That's weird. That's surprising. We've seen a little bit of that I think from Josh Bell in the past, too, right? A handful of bags. That was a few years ago now. Just a couple. Yeah, he was two for six in 2017 and two for seven in 2018 and then almost

stopped running after that. Yeah, I mean Naylor could be in that area where the extra five inches means something and he steals 10 bases next year. There is a pathway for Naylor to be worth more valuable than Josh Bell next year. It's there,

but I think as a lefty as opposed to a switch hitter, I think there's a slightly greater chance that Naylor loses some playing time to a righty that comes in for those matchups. Especially since Bell can play first. Bell's still in that lineup.

Slight, slight preference for Bell. Home run totals. Who do you think hits more home runs? Is it just Bell because of more playing time? Or if we make it more fun, let's say we give them both the same number of plate appearances. Who hits more homers? That's more interesting. I think I like Naylor more on a per. Who hits more homers? That's more interesting. I think I like Naylor more on a per

plate appearance basis for homers. He's slightly lower ground ball rates for sure. Age points towards Naylor. All right. A couple notes on the way out the door too. Shohei Otani is on a slightly different schedule plan for pitching. We learned this. It's actually going to be still a six-man rotation, at least that's the plan for now, but the Angels are going to use off days to skip someone else in the rotation. So what happened was last season, Shohei Otani made 16 starts on six plus days of rest.

So when it happens to be like a Thursday off, instead of that thing where you get to the pattern where Otani basically pitches like every Sunday because of the extra day off, they're not going to do that anymore, which will add a few starts over the course of the year if that plan sticks and if he stays healthy. So there is a slightly higher ceiling on Otani's innings workload and starts total with that tweak, even though at this time they're not shifting down to a five-man rotation, which I think Sam Blum wrote about that for the Athletic as maybe a possibility, but because of the World Baseball Classic,

it might be something they would change in season depending on who's healthy and a whole bunch of other things. Puts some stress on his fatigue i mean to be honest uh because we're also talking about the slowest starting pitcher in in baseball when it comes to tempo and someone who may have to adjust his tempo uh to to work with the pitch clock now he might be the best athlete in baseball. I think he is, probably. I mean, like, how could you argue against him? He's one of the fastest players. He hits the ball super hard. He pitches super hard. Like, he runs, throws, you know, he's the best athlete in baseball.

the best athlete in baseball so you know maybe with maybe he can pace himself and be not necessarily as stand out on any single place you know what i'm saying like just pace himself a little bit more not throw necessarily as hard which might mean you know giving up a league average home run rate or whatever and having a you know 275 era or a low three zra instead of a low two zra uh just to make it through the season um with these new parameters but uh i think he can do it because he's such a great athlete but i just wanted to add that you know along with the pitch clock and this revelation there is going to be a little bit more stress on him fatigue wise and probably already doing what he needs to do to be prepared for that. That's probably what's happening this winter, right?

Trying to do everything he can. I'm sure he's had conversations with someone in that organization already about the pitch clock and how he's going to be better prepared for it. I would not bet against Shohei Otani doing anything as far as making an adjustment at this point. I think we've all learned our lesson by now. I'd never bet against Shohei Otani doing anything as far as making an adjustment at this point. I think we've all learned our lesson by now. I'd never bet against Shohei Otani. The question though with fatigue is just when we will see the ramifications and how. I don't think it's necessarily if.

You know what I mean? I think that either it's maybe someone who has a poor end tail to the aging curve, right? At the end of his career, just ends up being injury prone. Or maybe he just has pockets of injuries throughout his career that teams just have to deal with. I mean, you're just asking someone to do something that's never been done before. You know? And there's got to be fatigued applications for it. Yeah. We'll see how it plays out. That is going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrel. you know, and there's got, there's got to be fatigue applications for it. Yeah,

we'll, we'll see how it plays out. That is going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. If you would like to get a subscription to the athletic $2 a month for the first year, gets it in the door

at the athletic.com slash rates and barrels. So be sure to get that. If you don't have a subscription already on Twitter, you can find, you know, at,

you know, Sarah's, you can find me at Derek Van Ryper. We're back with you next week. Thanks for listening.