Rates & Barrels - Kyle Schwarber heads to D.C., Sung-bum Na & Tomoyuki Sugano stay put, and fantasy fallout from the Lindor blockbuster

Episode Date: January 11, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss Kyle Schwarber's move to the Nationals, MLB teams being unable to work out agreements with Sung-bum Na and Tomoyuki Sugano, the fantasy fallout of the blockbuster trade that sent F...rancisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco to the Mets last week, and a new leaderboard at Baseball Savant. Rundown 3:01 Kyle Schwarber in D.C. 12:23 Treading Carefully with Lower Batting Average Early-Rounders 17:29 Sung-bum Na & Tomoyuki Sugano Stay in KBO & NPB 20:23 Robbie Grossman, the Detroit Outfield and Victor vs. Victor (vs. Oscar) 35:05 Fantasy Fallout of the Francisco Lindor Blockbuster 51:54 The Back of the Cleveland Rotation 60:50 Baseball Savant's Spin Direction Leaderboard Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: ratesandbarrels@theathletic.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 So let's be clear. When it comes to shipping internationally, can I provide trade documents electronically? Mm-hmm. 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.
Starting point is 00:00:22 What? FedEx. Thanks. No more questions. Always your answer for international shipping. FedEx. What? FedEx. Thanks. No more questions. Always your answer for international shipping. FedEx, where now meets next. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Monday, January 11th, 2021. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris on this episode. We'll talk about Kyle Schwarber. He found a new home since we last spoke. He has headed to the Nationals. Two international free agents opted to stay put or at least failed to find suitable deals with MLB teams.
Starting point is 00:01:07 Robbie Grossman went to Detroit. We didn't really talk about that when it happened. We'll also get to the fantasy fallout of the Francisco Lindor trade and a fun new addition over at Baseball Savant. Eno, how's it going for you on this Monday? It's good. It's good. I had a normal weekend, which is to say about the same as any other but we got some stuff done uh downstairs here in my office which oh man over break i did some filing and i'm so bad
Starting point is 00:01:35 at filing i'm also trying to like clean up my my grips and and and file those a little better my grips picks but i'm so bad at filing that i had a pile uh that had stuff in it to file that was 10 years old and that means that i've moved that pile without filing it three times like actual location moves how many different i've moved houses three times in the last 10 years so that pile just stayed a pile i moved it the the the upside of all this procrastination is great though uh half of it went right into the shredder because you know you don't really have to keep stuff that old like a 10 year old bank statement it's not very useful no my wife was just laughing at me i think i actually filed out of that out of this big pile that i've been looking at being like oh god that pile is looking at me
Starting point is 00:02:33 and out of that i only actually filed like eight things so i feel better better about the office right now. Yeah, it's a productive weekend. I actually got a print a long time ago as a gift. It's old baseball cards from the Burdick Collection, which were on display at the Met years ago. It needed to be reframed, and it took me more than a year to get it reframed because lazy. No, actually, I didn't have room for it at my apartment, so it was at my in-law's house. We were cleaning there a couple of weekends ago. I said, hey, actually, I really like this. And I have this nice office space now. I should reframe it. So that finally happened. So it was a good weekend to catch up on some things that we
Starting point is 00:03:15 procrastinated on for a bit too long. The office is finally coming together. Only almost two years into working from home. So I can relate to your 10-year pile. I didn't get to 10 years, so I didn't get to the same level, but same sort of problem. Let's start talking about some of these topics because Kyle Schwarber has a new home, and that's pretty exciting to me. I thought there was a chance that maybe he'd sign somewhere and play first base, but that's not going to happen in D.C. This is a team that really doesn't care about defense, as we've talked about a few times.
Starting point is 00:03:48 But Kyle Schwarber is not there to play defense. He's there to bolster the Nats offense, and he's coming off of a pretty disappointing shortened 2020 season. But I believe in this bat. You know, I think he's one of those players I can look at very easily, talk myself into 2020 being a short season fluke for the most part. I want to get in on that long-term track record. I see a guy that can hit for a decent average, get on base at a better than average clip, and give above average power to us as fantasy players. I think being in the heart of this Nats lineup is just as good, if not better, than some of the lineups he's been in with the Cubs in recent years.
Starting point is 00:04:26 And I think the park is actually an upgrade for him as well. So you want to throw some cold water on me here? Like, am I too excited about Kyle Schwarber ending up with the Nats? Or is it justified excitement? No, you know, I saw some comments to Adam Dunn out there. And I think, you know, I think he's a modern Adam Dunn to some extent. I have no problems with it. The one thing is from a real-life standpoint, it seems like the Nationals are really leaning into the defense-doesn't-matter idea.
Starting point is 00:05:03 leaning into the defense doesn't matter idea. Because Schwarber was a bottom five outfielder by outs above average. And the Nationals were the worst defensive team in baseball by any stat last year. And, you know, Soto's okay. And Robles can be okay. But Schwarber's not going to help them that much in the outfield. Then we've got the whole non-Trey Turner infield, plus Josh Bell, who's no good at defense. It's kind of one of those teams where they're like, we have good defenders at shortstop and center.
Starting point is 00:05:41 That's it. That's all we need to do. We covered it. We got it. Unfortunately, balls go to the places but yeah i mean in terms of the stack cast numbers on schwarber he took a slight dip in barrel rate but you kind of want to regress skills even if they are skills so i would say after demonstrating a sort of league leading type barrel rate for the last three years going into last year and then showing a fairly decent one last year even, I would say that, you know, the over-under on his barrel rate next year is around 13%, which would put him in the top sort of 10% of the league. So, yeah, I think he's right there. He still hit the ball really hard. He lost a little bit of loft, but
Starting point is 00:06:27 he's also facing the same pitchers over and over again. So, maybe there's a quirk there of just seeing the same pitchers over and over again. And not having time to sort of diversify his portfolio and whoop up on some
Starting point is 00:06:44 other pitchers. You know, the quality of his opposition probably goes up a little bit, but the park favors him a little bit. So I think across the board, a little bit of wash, a little bit of undervalued player if people are looking at that 188 average and thinking he's done. Yeah, I mean, I think he's projected at 242 by Steamer. That seems like a very reasonable place to put the expectation. Schwarber hit 250 in 2019, hit 238 in 2018. Thinking about the long-term barrel rates that you mentioned, that's why I think he's reasonably stable in that
Starting point is 00:07:18 category despite the 188 that we saw in 2020. When you hit the ball as hard as Schwarber does, as often as he does, good things tend to happen even if you're not a good runner, even if you do hit the ball in the air a little bit too much, even if you do have some pull tendencies. I don't know if we'll ever get all the way back to 2019. That was the career high 38 homers that season, but he can get back to 30 again for me and the run production should be there. So where he's going in drafts, looking at his ADP since January 1st, I think he's still very undervalued. 204 overall, the earliest he's gone is 164. Maybe he'll jump up a couple of rounds. Not that he has a team. That's not unheard of for guys that are free agents. But
Starting point is 00:08:00 if you said Kyle Schwarber settles in around pick 160, once we get to March or April, whenever the end of draft season ends up being, that's actually right near his new teammate, Josh Bell. I mean, I think they're fairly comparable in terms of my power expectations. Maybe Bell has a little more floor in the batting average department, but I like them both where they're going right now. So I guess you could say I'm buying into what mike rizzo and the gnats are doing here would you go as high as like jorge solaire i mean i think solaire's kind of got a similar power profile he's going around pick 150 overall is that a reasonable 2021 would you rather toss up if you're looking for some mid-round power? Yeah, I think so. They both have power and they both have, I would say, risk when it comes to the batting average.
Starting point is 00:09:01 I thought that Jorge Soler would never have even a 265 batting average that he had in 2019. So I kind of think that they're almost exactly the same kind of player, like very similar. But I kind of have a little bit more confidence in Schwarber's natural contact ability, even if that hasn't really been shown necessarily in the numbers because i see schwarber making huge i mean i'm just biased towards him because i i see him making huge adjustments from year to year um and having like sort of two or three different swings and
Starting point is 00:09:37 kind of um i could see him still having one more sort of peak type year in him whereas i think solaire's peak years behind him also you know his play discipline is better so i think i i prefer him actually a little bit i don't know i know that the projections prefer uh solaire i think i can't find him in here is he not outfield eligible he might not be i got his player page up. He's 246, 341, 486 with 33 homers over 616 plate appearances according to Steamer, which is almost identical to Schwarber. I think if they were both on the table, I'd be fine leaving them on the table until one was gone and then hopefully get another one the next round. Yeah, Soler here has a $12 projection, and then hopefully get another one the next round.
Starting point is 00:10:24 Yeah, Solera here has a $12 projection, and I think Schwarber had an $8 projection by Steamer. So supposedly they're different, but I see them as just being really, really similar. There's a pretty funky group of hitters. Not funky in a retro, cool sort of way, but funky in a, these guys used to be either really good, or these guys are old breakout guys, or these back? Do I want to buy into the possible breakout in the case of someone like a Dylan Carlson? Or I would say Wander Franco's in this range for me. I'm talking about hitters that are sort of in the 60 to 100 range among hitters. And you can kind of group guys together, but you could also put almost identical players, 40 players apart and justify it somewhat easily based on the makeup of their last year and a half of performance.
Starting point is 00:11:33 Yeah. And one of the things that – there's also something here about managing your team well early on. your team well early on. If you have a good batting average, this is, I think, mostly important in smaller leagues, but it's important in all leagues. If you keep your batting average
Starting point is 00:11:54 high in the early parts, you allow yourself more interesting endgame pickups. Because if you're in the endgame trying to find batting average along with something else, then you're going to be in trouble. But if you have a strong batting average near the end game,
Starting point is 00:12:14 here are some power guys that have the worst batting average component to it that might be available to you because other people are still chasing batting average. So Randall Gritchick, Joey Gallo. Let's see here. These are all minus $3 guys on batting average. Teoscar Hernandez, Kyle Schwarber, Ian Happ, Justin Upton, Hunter Renfro, Will Myers. So these are all guys that have positive value in homers that will be available to you if you have a good batting average late on.
Starting point is 00:12:50 That's something I think of when I look at those guys. Stepping back for a second then, if you're getting that batting average foundation early, are you sidestepping guys that hit in the 260, even 270 range with your first couple of picks. I mean, if you look back from 2019 forward, Jose Ramirez has a 267 average since the start of 2019. A great player, power and speed, so maybe he's an exception, but Bryce Harper at 262, right? I mean, he's clearly going to get you power. He's going to have run production, but that does ding you
Starting point is 00:13:22 pretty good in that category. If you have a couple 260, 270 type hitters right off the top and you can't find a lot of high quality batting average later. If you're getting batting average late, a lot of times it. Those types of players are certainly useful, but if they bring five home runs over a 162-game season, that is problematic. So do you stay away from some of the lower average early rounders kind of thinking ahead to what the middle and late rounds tend to look like? Yeah, somebody asked me about Bryce Harper versus Kyle Tucker recently, about Bryce Harper versus Kyle Tucker recently. And it was, I believe, fairly close when it comes here by Steamer in the Fangraphs auction calculator. They're separated by Kyle Tucker's $18 and Harper, I think, is $19.
Starting point is 00:14:24 $20. dollars and harper i think is 19 dollars uh 20 dollars so you know if you're a strict projection numbers these are the numbers this is evaluation then you would take harper um and that was the this person asked me like three would you rathers basically and this was the hardest one for me because um you know i think t Tucker could steal more bases maybe. He's younger. He should. He should steal more bases. The kind of the upside-downside favors, I think, you know, he has more upside possibly given his age.
Starting point is 00:14:57 Like just in terms of if you miss on him, it might be below what he does. And then there's this batting average component where if bryce harper is your first batter like if you went you know sort of like pitcher pitcher harper then you're you're already behind in batting average but if you also got someone that didn't necessarily figure to be a huge plus on so if you paired jose ramirez with bryce harper you may not in your head think that you have a batting average problem but you probably are behind where your team league mates are in batting average at that moment it might work out fine if you're not going after the
Starting point is 00:15:37 low average big power guys later if you feel like the the next few rounds as you're putting more hitters around those two guys you're getting ample power with each of those picks you know being in the 260s at season's end in a lot of formats is going to be okay it just gives you a lot less roster construction flexibility later if you start off that way but if you're getting a lot of speed up top i think harper is a little more problematic but if you look at obp he did almost have a 100-point gap on Tucker in the shortened season. Tucker was at 325, and Harper was up at 420. In OBP leagues, a lot of this changes for sure. But even when you think about counting stats and just general run production and where they are going to be in their respective lineups,
Starting point is 00:16:20 I mean, Tucker with the losses in Houston should be pretty firmly in a prominent spot. Harper, you're not worried about that at all. That's where that separation is for those two players for me, even though I'm with you. I think Tucker probably steals 10 more bases over a full season than Harper, but Harper runs a little bit, more than a little bit even. But if it's a batting
Starting point is 00:16:39 average league and you've got this not as bad of a minus on batting average and more of a plus in stolen bases it's an interesting thing to think about how tucker might set you up for better picks later you know maybe that's worth a dollar at some point you know it's not quite something that's baked into the projections so these these are things that I think that the season, the best fantasy players, I don't think that they, I mean, there's a few out there that'll tell you
Starting point is 00:17:10 it's the number, it's the number, and it's only the number, and that's all I care about. But I think that the way the numbers fit together is important. The elite of the elite players completely understand the importance of how the pieces fit together. That's what separates them. That's a big part of what separates them anyways knowing that there's a chain series of chain reactions that will take place if they go with plan a versus plan b versus
Starting point is 00:17:37 plan c early i think that's truly what makes a great player and you have to have some different ways to get in and out of the various problems that are created by the foundation that you build, which again is why draft champions leagues or best balls or mocks, whatever it is you like to do to get ready. That's why those are so important to go through that process. So important. Yeah.
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Starting point is 00:19:06 before their respective windows closed. Both those guys are 31 already. They could certainly make another run at it next offseason. But it's just kind of sad, really, that they couldn't find a deal, especially Sugano as a pitcher in a market that doesn't have
Starting point is 00:19:22 a lot of high-quality pitching in it. That one surprised me the most of those two, but I really thought we were going to see both Sugano and Na coming here stateside in 2021. I mean, he got a pretty good deal and I bet you from the giants in Yomiuri, as opposed to the giants in San Francisco. And I,
Starting point is 00:19:43 you know, I think that it ended up actually being about money, you know, because he got a I think like a four for 40 deal over there. And it has an opt out after every season. So he can, you know, kind of sniff around and see if he can do better in America just by opting out. and see if he can do better in America just by opting out. And then he doesn't have to go through the posting system, and he can kind of just be a free agent, you know? And so 4 for 40, I had him projected for something like for 550, 560, because the team has to bake in the fact that they don't know exactly
Starting point is 00:20:20 what he will do in MLB. You know, there's that uncertainty. Plus they have to send extra money on top of what they spend back to Japan. So there's that sort of extra of $5 to $10 million they have to throw on the contract at the end. That's real money.
Starting point is 00:20:38 That puts more emphasis on him being at the top end of his projections or whatever. I saw him as being slightly better than Tanaka. You'd think that with Tanaka being out there that there would be interest in somebody that's slightly better than Tanaka. That would mean he's probably the second best starting pitcher on the market right now. Thought that would be more than enough for a team to find a way to make it work. Yeah. I think maybe we have a little bit of a COVID situation there.
Starting point is 00:21:04 Yeah, I think maybe we have a little bit of a COVID situation there. You know, if he just feels like I have to. Also, he mentioned that maybe the deals would have gotten better if he had more time, but he was forced by the posting structure to only negotiate within these seven days or whatever. You know, or 10 days or whatever the amount of time was. So he can't wait for Bauer to sign and then to go to the team that missed out on Bauer and say, Hey, you can get me. I'm the best pitcher on the market now,
Starting point is 00:21:34 you know? So, um, yeah, I don't think it's great. Uh, hopefully we get to see him over here sometime. Um,
Starting point is 00:21:41 and, uh, hope, you know, he probably made the best decision for himself. Yeah, it certainly seems that way, given what we've had happening over the course of this offseason. Robbie Grossman signed before our last episode that we did with Britt.
Starting point is 00:21:56 Didn't quite make the cut with the Lindor trade happening while we were recording, of course. So I'm just kind of curious. With Robbie Grossman, I mean, the OBP skills are legit. He's had those really ever since 2016 in Minnesota. He's always been this kind of productive fourth outfielder playing a lot against lefties, occasionally against righties. Where did the power come from last year? I mean, we've seen the A's do this with Mark Kanha as well. Most people are pretty skeptical that Grossman is going to come out and hit 20 home runs over a full season. I think that's fair skepticism to have at this point. He was eight for nine as a base dealer
Starting point is 00:22:35 as well in the shortened season. It's a two-year deal, $10 million. It's not a big deal for a rebuilding team like Detroit. Plenty of available plate appearances there. And bad news for some of the younger guys like Kristen Stewart and Daz Cameron, because having someone like Grossman there just makes it even less likely that both of those guys could have a regular spot to call their own, at least to begin the season, but perhaps even throughout 2021. begin the season but perhaps even throughout 2021 yeah it's unfortunate but you know these guys have had some chances already um if you want to be honest about it i mean uh i've i've had shares of kristen stewart for two or three years now because he hits the ball hard but you know he's a little bit like um robbie grossman in fact in the the way that like maybe
Starting point is 00:23:26 he only has one skill um robbie grossman's one skill used to be not swinging he's top 10 and not swinging uh since he got into the big leagues um interesting skill uh but uh stewart's barrel rate was okay at 11 last year that that would that would play. The problem is that he made no contact, had no patience. He's not a good defender. He's not a good base runner. Yeah. I was waiting for something nice to happen. I got nothing nice, man.
Starting point is 00:23:59 So I think he's 27 years old at this point, too. He's 27 years old, and he's had 587 plate appearances. I don't know. I don't think you need to make room for him. I was thinking the Tigers should be betting more on upside than somebody like Grossman. But Stewart, DeMeritt, Badououx, Reyes, Daz. None of them are really good. No, I actually would have thought that David Dahl,
Starting point is 00:24:33 instead of getting $3 million to go to Texas, I thought he would have been a good fit for a team further away like Detroit. That would have made sense. Yeah, that would have made sense. I bet you they talked to Dahl. They had $10 million for Grossman. They talked to Dahl. It's not my million for Grossman. They talked to Dahl. It's not my money, but I would have given Dahl two for $10,
Starting point is 00:24:48 even though I know he's arbitration year to year. If that's what it would have taken to get him, I would rather have given two to $10 to David Dahl than Robbie Grossman. That would have given you a chance at more upside, younger player, more impact, and more facets of the game. That's all being said despite the fact that Grossman's an okay signing. I mean, this is kind of
Starting point is 00:25:09 the signings that we want more teams to do, right? This is the signing that gives these mid table veterans more of a lifeline. It shows that the Tigers are trying to put a better team on the field next year.
Starting point is 00:25:26 So it checks some boxes. I also like that you have this guy who's elite at not swinging who just put up the highest swing rates of his career. So you kind of have this idea that he's just become a little bit more aggressive. He's catching the ball out front more. And that led to his first above- above league average barrel rate of his career so like some of this could just be a slight change in his approach um leading to you know the the numbers line up between his power numbers and his sack cast numbers they look okay so you know he
Starting point is 00:25:58 may not hit 20 next year but he could hit 15 to 18 steal you 10 bags uh more of a deep league player for fantasy purposes but you know for the tigers a credible outfielder which now gives them maybe one and a half credible outfielders yeah he's outside the top 300 overall in terms of his january adp i don't think he's going to get any higher than 300 even with a pretty good path to playing time he's actually going really close to jacoby jones who's doing some interesting things before his shortened season he's cut i'm being more short jacoby jones is is probably a league average outfielder while he can still play center seems like you might be disrespecting victor reyes then victor reyes is the tiger with the highest adp at least among position players now that's among all players.
Starting point is 00:26:49 173 overall in January, only a half dozen drafts. The only Tiger in the top 200 right now is Victor Reyes. So I imagine we're going to see some sort of Grossman Jones Reyes outfield as the default configuration. Yeah, but I don't know. Reyes doesn't hit the ball hard. Looks to me like a Robles. Doesn't walk a lot. Yeah. But I don't know. Reyes doesn't hit the ball hard. Looks to me like a Robles. Doesn't walk a lot. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:27:09 Strikes out more than he should for a guy that doesn't walk a lot. You kind of want a 15% K rate if you're going to walk less than 5% of the time. 90 average exit velocity career high in 2020. He hit the ball a little harder
Starting point is 00:27:21 last year. One of the worst reach rates in baseball. 8 for 10 as a base stealer. That's where I think that 170 ADT is coming from. But, you know, he is in this group
Starting point is 00:27:34 of mostly steal, almost no power, iffy batting average, iffy player group that I just don't want to buy from anymore. Like I kind of don't want them. Somebody put up a thing that said Oscar Mercado, Victor Reyes, and somebody else. Maybe it was Robles.
Starting point is 00:27:55 And I was just like, and they had their, you know, per 550 plate appearance averages or projections or whatever. And I was like, which one of these three is going to make it to 550 plate appearances? If one of them gets there, it's most likely Robles. And there's some thought that Andrew Stevenson is going to play a little bit as the fourth outfielder. And it would come probably at Robles' expense if everybody's healthy. outfielder, and it would come probably at Robles' expense if everybody's healthy. But that assumes that Robles is more the player we saw in 2020 and less the player we saw in 2019.
Starting point is 00:28:36 For all the things that went right in 2019 for us as fantasy players with Robles, the 17 homers, the 28 steals, he was a below-average offensive player that year. He had 91 WRC+. He had the low average exit velocities. We talked about that. It wasn't just the bunting. Tons of blue ink. All the flaws have been discussed. But if he's a premium defender, he will stay in the lineup. He will get that playing time and he will have more chances to continue developing as an
Starting point is 00:28:58 offensive player. And I think that's what still makes him interesting to me, is I see his path to playing every day in center field. If the two places they care about defense are shortstop and center field, then Victor Robles plays a lot for the Nats because he has to go out there and cover for Soto and Kyle Schwarber in the two corners.
Starting point is 00:29:19 In this group that we've now created of Mercado, who was announced, I don't know if it's announced, but it was sort of said that he will be the opening day starting center fielder. Most likely. It's a weird statement to make for a guy that was so bad that he was at the alternate site last year when he should have been a starter all year last year.
Starting point is 00:29:37 Like he seems like the kind of guy that would need to earn that spot again. It seems even more likely Mercado will still have a spot in center next year. So that comes from Mandy bell at MLB.com. Take it for what you will, but I would say that I just wanted to bring out that between Mercado, Reyes, and Robles, despite the fact that Robles has the lowest average EV, that is maybe one of the least important stat cast stats, I think.
Starting point is 00:30:09 And one of the most important is barrel rate, and Robles has had the best barrel rate out of the three hitters. Right. Taking some pitches that you can drive and actually showing you can drive them. That's possible. That's encouraging. I think the other thing that stands out to me is the hit tool.
Starting point is 00:30:24 You're still talking about a guy in Victor Robles that had a 60-grade hit tool. An above-average hit tool with well-above-average speed, defense, and an arm. That is a good, real-life player, even if
Starting point is 00:30:40 he doesn't do what we all want him to do, fantasy-wise. I think saying that he won't reach our expectations fantasy wise is still premature clearly had put on a ton of weight when the season started things were never right for him in 2020 I can't
Starting point is 00:30:55 give him a complete pass because he's not free in drafts I mean compared to what the ADPs are not the same are they ADPs are really important well Victor Reyes and Victor Robles are not that far apart. Victor Robles goes at 149. At least he has been in January. Victor Reyes has been going at 173, as I was saying before.
Starting point is 00:31:17 But then Oscar Mercado is your traditional sort of buy low. ADP is 365. And if that good news about him having the center field job to start the year holds up, and we know Cleveland probably doesn't want to spend money at all, he's cheap, he's there, Delano DeShields isn't, things are pointing in the right direction for Mercado
Starting point is 00:31:36 to have a chance to get his job back. He was going 200 plus picks earlier in drafts just last year, and Cleveland didn't have their hitting coach, so maybe that was something that really did enable Mercado to fall even further than we expected. So where he's going, I would take a chance on Mercado, even knowing that there are flaws, because cheap speed's hard to find, and he comes with a little bit of pop to go with it. So I like him where he goes. You can't really
Starting point is 00:32:02 compare the group all in all, but Victor Robles is better than Victor Reyes to me, and it's not even really a debate. I'm surprised that Victor Reyes goes within a couple of rounds of Victor Robles. That doesn't make sense. Yeah, yeah. Who's going around 170 just to give a better, like, who could you take instead of Reyes or Robles? Who could you take instead of Reyes or Robles? You could go all power, low average. Joey Gallo. Holy cow. That's not going to stick, right? Gallo's going to start going a little earlier.
Starting point is 00:32:30 He has to. Randall Gritchick, who you mentioned earlier. Leote Tavares, who, if you said, who is in danger of being this year's Oscar Mercado? Yeah. Leote Tavares kind of has some of the same traits as oscar mercado think about how baseball like what what baseball values in terms of playing time i think you're better off setting yourself up so that at the end game when you're making these decisions between all power no average or all average no power you want to be picking with the rest, with the things that baseball values. You want to be picking all average,
Starting point is 00:33:09 no, all power, no average at the end game. Cause there's going to be more of them and they're going to be more likely to hold their jobs, right? Like what's the, what's the chance that Joey Gallo loses his job this year versus the chance that Victor Reyes loses his job this year? Yeah. Am I kidding? Big difference.
Starting point is 00:33:28 Huge difference. Big, big difference. And I know that people value steals, but I guess I'm making an argument to some extent to sort of paying a little bit more for steals and batting average at the beginning so you're not stuck needing Victor Robles or Victor Reyes. But I can tell you that's not a good place to be. This isn't way out of left field. This is something we've been talking about going back even to last draft season
Starting point is 00:33:51 as the concern and trying to figure out where to get steals from. I think it ties back into replacement level or near replacement level players giving us unexpected production in fantasy and then having the bottom fall out in terms of playing time because they're not good real-life players. Danny Santana was the main player in that piece that you wrote. So if you look at a player and go, is that profile kind of like a Danny Santana profile?
Starting point is 00:34:20 Well, yeah, then it's a pretty risky profile. And that, to me, is where Victor Reyes kind of falls in. He's definitely not a guy I'm drafting in the 170 range at all. If he were going in the back of the 200s, like 275, sure. I'll take a shot on him there for some cheap speed. Yeah, where Mercado is, I'm okay. Now I'm interested in Mercado. Last year, I had a share of Mercado, and I hated myself when I took it.
Starting point is 00:34:43 And when the whole thing went down, I was like, you idiot. You knew it. You frigging knew it. Why did you, because I wanted steals. I taught myself into like,
Starting point is 00:34:53 I'm going to buy a bunch of guys who have 20 steals and that'll be good enough. And I thought I could put Mercado down for 20 steals, but I forgot about the stuff. He's not that good at, and maybe he'll come back and be better this year and I'll be fine. But I do think that of the ceilings of those three, the ceiling is highest on Robles.
Starting point is 00:35:09 And so if you're going to, if you are going to pay the 170 price on anybody, it should be Robles, not Reyes. Yeah. And it might even be a little earlier than that price on Robles, but that's still, that's not unreasonable when you look at the core skills.
Starting point is 00:35:22 Yeah. But it's probably better just to pass on that profile at 170 and pick it at 300 where it's baked in that that person may never play for your team. Man, I hate to say this, but I keep looking at Dalton Varshow because he's sitting right next to
Starting point is 00:35:38 Victor Robles just inside the top 150. As much as I like Dalton Varshow, what are we doing here? I mean, I know some power and some speed from the catcher spot especially when he might get surplus playing time playing in the outfield like and he's a good hitter it looks like he'll be a good hitter he hasn't necessarily proven it but in the major leagues or anything but i mean it was it was a debut but you're right you're right what if what if the defense is not good enough for center and not good enough for catcher and the bat is league average is projected to be like average then
Starting point is 00:36:11 where what like what are you doing you're gonna play him over david peralta the playing time downside is worse than i want it to be yeah that's the problem with dalton varcho and i i don't want to be the skeptic about Dalton Varshow. I want to be the optimist. I want to have Dalton Varshow on my team, just not where he's been going in these early drafts. Let's talk about some of the fallout from the Lindor trade because it was fresh. I mean, it literally broke while we were recording on Thursday. And I know I can say with confidence that I like the return Cleveland got more than Britt likes the return that Cleveland got in the deal. She did not like what they did
Starting point is 00:36:52 at all. The thing that bothered me about the trade was just that Francisco Lindor is a franchise player and he should have stayed in Cleveland. Whether or not Cleveland did a good job getting a proper return is sort of a different question. And when you look at it, two middle infielders, a pitching prospect, and Isaiah Green's kind of a nice sleeper outfield prospect, it's not really a bad return in the grand scheme of things. And I think it leads me to a question. I put this up on Twitter. I'm curious what you think of this. Have we seen Ahmed Rosario's best season as a big leaguer already?
Starting point is 00:37:30 Have we already seen it? He's only 25 years old, and that best season was 2019. 15 homers, 19 steals, hit.287,.323 on base, had the K-rate under 20%. He was a 2.7 war player. Above average defender at shortstop, league average hitter with a 100 WRC+. I mean, is that the best we're going to get? Because there were people that liked him a lot as a prospect.
Starting point is 00:37:57 We saw a 65 future value put on him by Fangraphs back in 2017 was the year of that report. It seems pretty weird to me that his best season is already behind him. Certainly not impossible, but where do you fall on this in terms of, I guess, how bright is Ahmed Rosario's future at this point? Yeah, there was, like, what do you want to see in a skills progression? I remember Starling Castro, like, every year he improved his
Starting point is 00:38:27 fly ball rate a little bit, you know, and he improved his strikeout rate a little bit. And I was like, oh yeah, Starling Castro, he's going to, you know, strike out 16% of the time this year and have the best fly ball rate of his career and still steal all those bases and we're going to get like a 25-25 season from
Starting point is 00:38:44 him with like 290 average. I remember thinking that when i was looking at starling castro let me see if i how far off i was and what year i was i was uh looking at him with the cubs and his first three years this is iso was 108 125 147 right And he stole 10 bases and then 22 and then 25. He's hit three homers, then 10 homers and 14 homers. It's like, oh, look, it's perfect. It's perfect. You know, his walk rate is getting a little bit better. His strikeout is getting a little bit better.
Starting point is 00:39:16 Everything's getting a little bit better. 2013, here we come. Starling Castro, 300, 25, 25. And he went 245 with 10 homers and 9 stolen bases and never stole 20 bases again and just settled in as like a 270, 20
Starting point is 00:39:34 homer guy. My point is, you know, with Ahmed Rosario, you can tell yourself the same story. You see these little progressions where you're like, oh, you know, his ISO is getting better, his ground ball rate is getting better, like he went from 50.9% ground ball rate to 49.5, 48.3, woohoo, like, oh, his ISO is getting better. His ground ball rate is getting better. He went from 50.9% ground ball rate to 49.5, 48.3. Woohoo!
Starting point is 00:39:49 Everything's getting a little bit better. There's a lot of things to compare with Stoncastro actually. Not great walk rate. The thing is, Stoncastro actually barrels balls, and Amon Rosario does not barrel balls. He's a below average barrel. And then this year he had a 57.8% ground ball rate. So do you think that that like takes away from all that progression
Starting point is 00:40:11 and tells you, no, the best he can ever be is that two, eight, seven, 15, 19, or is there something, uh, just like a bad year where it's, you know, he went the wrong direction and he's going to get back on his horse. I tend to think this is a little bit like Starr and Castro. He had the best year he was ever going to have, and he's going to settle in as like a 280, 15, 15 guy at most going forward. Okay, so that's a pretty reasonable ceiling then. It's not exciting, but it plays.
Starting point is 00:40:41 It's a regular for the next several years, but then you get to Andres Jimenez, where the future value is never expected to be nearly as high as Ahmed Rosario. And he fits, I think, as the starting second baseman. Again, saving money, clearly a priority for Cleveland. I wasn't going anywhere near Jimenez in redraft leagues before this trade because I thought his playing time ceiling even with the Cano suspension was probably going to be that of a super utility player but I do think now we're talking about a guy that plays pretty much every day eight for nine as a base dealer last year three homers in 49 games so maybe is he a 10 25 guy over a full season I'm very skeptical of that power.
Starting point is 00:41:25 He's very young. He could easily add a little more because he could just get stronger. Where do you fall on Jimenez and how much more he might bring to the table offensively? Yeah, he added a leg kick, and there was sort of a power outburst for him in terms of high A. He had a 149 ISO, and then double A, he had a 137 ISO, and those were remarkably better than some of the other numbers he put up in between. So if you're listening, those ISO numbers aren't that great. So his power explosion was still to have below league average power,
Starting point is 00:42:01 and I think that means that that's the best he's going to do going forward. In fact, I think now that I'm looking at him, he looks very much like Ahmed Rosario. So I think they kind of got the same guy. Both of them barrel at sort of a 3% to 4% level, and league average is like 4.5% to 5%. Both of them don't have great walk rates. Both of them can make good contact,
Starting point is 00:42:25 and both of them should be around league average real-life players. And maybe even with the steals, real-life fantasy players. Somebody who can hit 10 to 15 homers and steal more than 15 bags is probably useful in most leagues. If those guys are both getting green lights, I mean, Rosario and Jimenez are better fantasy players than real-life players, most likely.
Starting point is 00:42:51 But I think with... I think the other thing that I have to look at with Cleveland is nobody expected Jose Ramirez to be this kind of player. And maybe one outlier. Really, it's two, because we've talked about this before. Cleveland got more out of Francisco Lindor development-wise as a hitter than I think anybody ever expected. When you go back
Starting point is 00:43:09 and read old scouting reports on Francisco Lindor, which were effusive with praise, people liked Francisco Lindor a lot as a prospect, they didn't point to a 30-30 type player. And Jose Ramirez, when he came into the league, was far from the kind of player that we see in front of us today. He had low barrel rates. I mean, he was a 3% barrel rate guy back in 2016. And that would have been, let's see, how old would he have been in 2016? About 22, 23 years old. So I don't think it's impossible for one or both of those guys to exceed our expectations. It's at least in the range of outcome still, even though what we've seen so far is underwhelming.
Starting point is 00:43:49 I think one of the key differences for me is that Jose Ramirez controlled the strike zone better than either one of Rosario or Jimenez does right now. Even when he was brand new to the league in 2015, Ramirez was a low K percentage, good walk rate sort of player. Neither of the two players they acquired fit that description. So I think if you want to have pie in the sky expectations, they still shouldn't be as high as what we've seen from the two middle infielders that Cleveland turned into stars in the last decade. I suppose there could be something in
Starting point is 00:44:22 there for Ahmed Rosario. I mean, his barrel rates have been better than what I would expect out of Jimenez. He had some success hitting the ball hard in the air in the past. Maybe they could unlock something out of Ahmed Rosario. I think that they bought floor. They bought two league average middle infielders that they won't pay that much for the next few years. And they got some lottery tickets otherwise. What I don't like about it is that they bought floor and cut salary.
Starting point is 00:45:00 But if they don't spend the salary, then floor is less interesting than ceiling. You know what I mean? You're almost better off gambling and being wrong, having the possibility of finding other four to five win sort of players and getting guys that are two win players. I mean, I think that, you know,
Starting point is 00:45:16 the raise by floor, when you, when you look at that Mahia trade, they could have gotten better prospects, the Snell trade. They could have probably gotten better prospects, quote unquote, if they had gotten people who hadn't played the major leagues yet, who hadn't established some sort of baseline. Instead, they took Mejia and Patino because they were like, at least we probably have a good reliever and a backup catcher here, right?
Starting point is 00:45:36 And there's a possibility for more. But the Rays are trying to compete every year in this sort of way that they do. And I guess maybe the Indians are trying to act every year in this in this like sort of way that they do and i guess maybe the indians are trying to act like that but do we have the like when we think about that snell trade i think we always add in like oh also james paxton for 10 million right so it's like right it's would you rather have snell or mejia patino and pa right? That's the sort of mental math we're doing. But we don't know if we can make that mental math when it comes to the Indians, you know?
Starting point is 00:46:11 It's not, would you rather have Lindor or Ahmed Rosario, Andres Jimenez, Lindor and Carrasco or Ahmed Rosario, Andres Jimenez, and James Paxton. You know what I mean? They don't give us the idea that they're going to do that. Whereas the Rays are always good for one short-term deal in a given season. And for what it's worth, I've heard they are considering spending a certain amount,
Starting point is 00:46:40 sort of that Charlie Morton-esque money, $7 to $10 million on a one-year starter. Yeah, so it all lines up to at least fill that void, whereas the Cleveland, we're not really getting any indication that they intend to spend money at all. But I think we deserve, we should say, we should give Cleveland more credit in some ways because they have had sustained success at multiple points in the last 25 years and
Starting point is 00:47:08 they've done it without spending a lot. If we praise teams like Oakland and Tampa Bay, we should praise Cleveland in a similar vein for their successes in player development and drafting and scouting and different things because since 1995, they've been to
Starting point is 00:47:23 the playoffs 12 times. Like that's actually really good for the way they run the franchise. Yeah. And I got some pushback when I tweeted that, you know, uh, they get, uh,
Starting point is 00:47:36 you know, close to $60 million in national TV money, uh, even with the reduction from ESPN, um, their local TV deal gives them $40 million. So, you know, they're making on TV alone about $100 million. And I think from what I've seen in estimates on things like streaming,
Starting point is 00:47:56 naming rights, and merchandise is another sort of 20% on top of that. So we could assume, I think rightly, that the Indians would bring in $120 million or so before fans are included in the math. And now their payroll is the lowest in big leagues at $40 million. Someone pushed back and said, well, they pay, you know, Chris Antonetti is among the best-paid GMs and that the front office has spent a lot on player development more than other places.
Starting point is 00:48:31 But I have a knowledge of the highest-paid player development execs in the league, and that's on the order of sort of $300,000 to $500,000. So I can't imagine that even spending a lot on coaches and hitting coordinators and pitching coordinators and player development and spending a lot on GMs is anything more than we're talking like sort of $10 to $15 million. The last time Cleveland was in the top 10 for payroll was 2002, according to Kotz. They've been 15th or lower in every season since then. They've got plenty of 25s, 26s, 27s sprinkled in there as well. So this is the way they run their team, and they're allowed to run the team that way. There's no rule preventing them from that. But I think where we all get frustrated and ticked off
Starting point is 00:49:23 is that it's seemingly not for the the best long-term interest of the game when there are only maybe 10 teams that keep franchise players like that doesn't seem good for the players but also doesn't seem good for the fans either if somebody asked me also like what would you what would you do in their in their standpoint like they had to do this quote-unquote uh they just went from having basically like a top five top six type team by projections to being middle of the pack um and they did that just to to cut uh salary it seems like i would have just kept lindor at the risk of not getting anything more than a pick on the way out i think you could trade him at the
Starting point is 00:50:04 trade deadline and get something. You wouldn't get this entire package that you just got, but you would get something of value back at the trade deadline if you weren't going to be good this year. And that's what I would have done. I would have gotten somebody for him at the trade deadline. I would have kept Carrasco. I would have kept trying to be good.
Starting point is 00:50:24 somebody for him at the trade deadline, I would have kept Carrasco. I would have kept trying to be good. But maybe there's a race for the middle when it comes to the centrals, AL and NL. And maybe they just feel like they can do this and be in it for the wild card and continue to be good better in the future. But for me, Tyler Freeman, I like Tyler Freeman. We've talked about Tyler Freeman in the future but like you know for me tyler freeman i like tyler freeman we've talked about tyler freeman in the past tyler freeman had way better strikeout rates than rosario and jimenez in the minor leagues and better uh power numbers than both of them basically um and good speed and seems like he can play shortstop so if you're gonna bet on rosario
Starting point is 00:51:00 or jimenez you know you could have bet on tyler freeman a replacement. The guy that I thought they should have gotten the trade, maybe it was just impossible, it was never going to happen, is Dominic Smith. I think Dominic Smith in Cleveland makes so much sense. It's a part that also boosts up left-handed power a bit too. It gives him a regular spot to play, lets him play his natural position instead of having to be a left fielder. It gives him a middle-of-the-order bat, right?
Starting point is 00:51:24 Now, what's the middle of the order? Like what's the beef of the order there? It's Jose Ramirez and Cranmel Reyes, and everyone around them is flawed. Yeah, a lot of lighter-hitting, speed-first sort of players. Maybe a team that has to be active on the base pass just to generate offense could be a bigger part of who that team is going forward.
Starting point is 00:51:45 Not that they were shy about running before. I mean, you have stars that run. Everybody can run if they're good at it. When you think about this team, obviously pitching is a strength too. Is there enough of a drop-off in the infield defense without Lindor where you're lowering expectations for Cleveland's pitchers? Well, that is an excellent question that I'm not prepared for. And so I will tippity-tappity real quick.
Starting point is 00:52:09 I do want to look because without looking, I would say that there's a fairly big drop-off. But I do know that Lindor is getting older and that these guys are younger and that generally shortstop is manned by younger men. And so I do want to check and see what outs above average said on this. Lindor was the second best shortstop defensively last year. And we have Rosario as 13th best. Still looks like a positive on par with Trevor Story and Trey Turner.
Starting point is 00:52:43 And Andres Jimenez is 15th bust. So yeah, a little bit of a drop off. Um, but I think probably given that second base, we'll get a little better probably that, you know, it's not,
Starting point is 00:52:57 it's not something I would dock to the Cleveland pitchers for. No, I don't think so. Yeah. I was going to say, I wonder how much better Cesar Hernandez is actually good. He was four outs above average. He was tied for second best among second baseman.
Starting point is 00:53:09 But I don't think it's a they suddenly got below average defenders. They have above average defenders up the middle. They're just maybe not quite as far above average as the guys they're replacing. The other side of this, you know, obviously, Carlos Carrasco leaving opens up a spot in the rotation. Long-term favorite of yours, that might be rounding up a little bit, but Cal Quantrill might have a spot to call his own in the Cleveland rotation. So he kind of strikes me as one of the biggest winners overall in the trade when you start shifting everybody around and assigning people new opportunities. Yeah, I'm surprised the fan gave Logan a lighter command
Starting point is 00:53:48 and seemed to end with some of the stuff the Indians have done in the past, but he also has struck out fewer than 6-9 in the major leagues, which seems to mean muted upside at best. I would go with Quantrill myself. I think anytime Cleveland opens up a spot in the rotation, we have to pay attention. That's pretty obvious based on what they've done over the last few years, turning Bieber into a first-round pitcher.
Starting point is 00:54:19 I mean, that was something that nobody would have expected when he came up. Plesak and Savali having a lot of success last year. Tristan McKenzie, I thought, looked pretty good. Quantrill versus Allen for the fifth starter job. I mean, that could become a moot point. If anybody else gets hurt, they're both in the rotation together anyway. And I think with McKenzie, he's the guy that I worry about the most from an injury perspective with that lat injury that knocked him out
Starting point is 00:54:41 for a prolonged stretch a couple years ago in the minors. Obviously, the frame is not that big. But I try to worry less about the frame than traditional scouts do. I mean, you look at him and you're like, yeah, that's like a C.J. Edwards sort of body or a Chris Sale sort of body. The long and whippy, I think you've called it before. Like, that's certainly – it's there. It worries you when you think about 170 or 180 innings going on. I'm not going to point it because of his frame,
Starting point is 00:55:07 but when you put the frame together with the dropping velo, I mean, he went from like sort of 94-ish in his first start to 90.6 in his last start. Like that's huge. That's not even like, you know, there is what I call a debut bump where you, you know, in your debut, you throw about a half mile per hour faster than you sit the rest of your career usually or the rest of that year because you're all adrenaline up and it's the first time in the big leagues. But that's one of the more aggressive debut bumps I've ever seen in my life. So that worries me a little bit.
Starting point is 00:55:41 I think he's a lot more interesting at 93 94 than he is at 90 91 um so i'll i think i'm not saying i'm out of mckenzie i just i just want to know in spring you know what he's throwing i'll be definitely be um asking around on that yeah it's not cheap he's going in the back of the top 200 80ps's 188 in January yeah and you know as for you know something like you know why why Quantrill
Starting point is 00:56:14 over over another reason why Quantrill over Alan Quantrill I've got as a 101 stuff and 102 command those are so both above average. And Allen I've got as... Not Zach Gallen.
Starting point is 00:56:33 I don't even have Logan Allen in here. That's what I'm finding out. So I'll have to get on that for you. Quantrill interest is a bit greater in the early drafts right now for what it's worth. Pick 366 in January. Logan Allen buried, but people haven't had a lot of time to react to this trade. Again, we're talking about a handful of drafts that have happened
Starting point is 00:56:51 since the start of the new year. With Lindor and Carrasco, Lindor is already an early round guy. I'm not sure there's a whole lot to change about his value. For you, progressive field to city field is there a slight park downgrade overall for lindor that's probably offset by being in a very loaded nl lineup yeah i didn't realize this and it still hits me kind of wrong um but i don't know i don't know how to use this information so apparently apparently Cleveland has a hitter's park. It's just cold.
Starting point is 00:57:29 But it's still cold. You know what I mean? I don't know how to use this knowledge. I mean, I guess over the course of the season, it gets warmer there. And so then they can hit for more power eventually because it's more of a hitter's park but if it's still cold it's still cold they're still gonna have these bad beginning months for hitters i don't know um i i think that uh the door might not be affected much i don't i don't necessarily think that he's a true talent 38 homer hitting guy anymore,
Starting point is 00:58:09 but I do think that he can hit 30 homers in New York. I do find it interesting that Carlos Carrasco is now going to go to more of the pitcher's part. I think he gets the bigger bump of the two players going to the Mets. I mean, again, in part because of where Lindor already is, it's hard to make an impact and move up a lot when you're a top 15, top 20 sort of player overall. But even if we're operating under the assumption that the NL has the DH,
Starting point is 00:58:42 city field is a more pitcher-friendly environment than progressive field, and that gives you a better floor for Carrasco. Yeah. One thing that's interesting about this trade from a real-life perspective is I was looking at injury projections, and I worked with Jeff Zimmerman on putting together sort of DL percentage projections for pitchers. And like somebody like Davey Garcia actually has the least likely to hit the DL by our numbers.
Starting point is 00:59:16 He's young, doesn't have a history of arm troubles. There's certain stuff that goes in about DL days and then zone percentage, a little bit of proxy for command goes into this. So put it all together, and David Garcia does pretty well. And on the other hand, at the very top of the likelihoods, you've got Carlos Carrasco. Very close to the top. Let me see where he landed.
Starting point is 00:59:41 Carlos Carrasco. Very close to the top. Let me see where he landed. And it's interesting because I was looking at the likelihood of rotations injury risk, right? And the Indians came in as the least likely to get injured next year. And so I was like, oh, they develop pitchers. They're such a good job. And then I realized, no, they trade away all their pitchers before they get hurt. Yep. Kostka Rasko, here's the most likely pitchers to get hurt next year. Number one is Garrett Richards. Poor guy. That seems about
Starting point is 01:00:17 right. Number two is Rich Hill. Yep. Okay. Number three is Johnny Cueto. Four is Homer Bailey. Yep. Okay. Number three is Johnny Cueto. Four is Homer Bailey. Five is Nathan Eovaldi. Six is Michael Fulmer. Seven is Brett Anderson. He's pretty good so far. Eight is Matt Shoemaker. And nine is Carlos Carrasco. Ten is Charlie Morton. Anyway, Carlos Carrasco is high on that list. Michael Clevenger obviously is injured for the year, so that's 100% DL chance. They seem to get the best years from their pitchers and move them. So the Carlos Carrasco part was always going to happen, I guess.
Starting point is 01:00:51 And that's, for what it's worth, probably what the Rays are also trying to do with Snell. Just get out ahead of those injuries, trade them before they get injured, and they don't have as much trade value. But this is going to be something that's going to be in part of my pitcher rankings because I think on the extremes it means something. You can be excited to pick up Lance McCullers Jr. on a discount because his stuff number is great and his command number is league average, and you'd think there's going to be a lot coming out of him,
Starting point is 01:01:21 but he also is just in the top 10 for injury risk and you can't really argue with that and you darvish is right behind him so i wanted to include this as part of it and it also became part of uh this discussion because now the indians have the best injury risk uh in their rotation in baseball and the mets have the worst yes both teams leaning into uh what they've got so far. If you're going to have injury risk, you're going to have great skills. Well, don't hide from more available skills with injury risk. You've already gone this far. And Cleveland, yeah, I mean, there is clearly a recent pattern there based on some of the things
Starting point is 01:02:02 that have happened to guys that are leaving. And I thought we'd at least see a partial season from Corey Kluber last year in Texas. And we weren't even lucky enough to, uh, to get that. So that's the, the full breakdown of the fallout from the trade, from a fantasy perspective.
Starting point is 01:02:17 The last question I had for you for today is related to a new leaderboard over at baseball savant. It's called the a new leaderboard over at Baseball Savant. It's called the Spin Direction Leaderboard. I'm going to ask you a simple question that's probably on the minds of a lot of people out there listening as they've either just heard about the tool five seconds ago or heard about it last week when Darren from Baseball Savant was tweeting about it. How should we utilize this particular tool over at Baseball Savant? Yeah, it's tough. There's two concepts that are, it's a really cool board.
Starting point is 01:02:51 And there's two concepts that are relevant that are now easier to study. And the two concepts, one is called seam shifted wake, and another is called spin mirroring. The first, seam shifted wake, I do not think actually has a lot of actionable content for fantasy. The reason is, so we used to have
Starting point is 01:03:15 a spin direction that was inferred. And so you looked at the movement and you said, what kind of spin direction would create this movement? And boom, that's your spin direction. But with Hawkeye now, we can observe.
Starting point is 01:03:27 So up on this baseball savant tool, they have the spin base, the sort of inferred axis, and then they have the observed axis. And you can search from the deviation between the two, which is called deviation, and you'll find that Corbin Burns, Natey Ovaldi, Alex Cobb, Merrill Kelly in one direction have the the highest deviation and if you click on it again you'll get in the other direction and you'll find guys that have a large deviation in the other direction and the the that's Lucas Sims, Luis pordomo uh there's a certain
Starting point is 01:04:06 amount of curveballs that that take advantage of this and from a player development standpoint this is really interesting because what it means is that um there's a additional force on the ball that creates movement that has nothing to do, that has more to do with grip. This is the value of grips. Because if you put the grip in a certain direction and it has the same spin as another ball with a different grip, you can get more movement. So these pitchers, like Kyle Hendricks,
Starting point is 01:04:39 really, he has two fastballs that have the same observed spin direction, but different outcomes. His four seam and his two seam have very different outcomes because of the grip. So from player development, you can see why that's so exciting, right? You can be like, oh, okay, you have this spin direction, this observed spin direction. And we've seen that these other players get more movement out of their ball, out of their sinker than you do. Can you look at their grips and see if one of those grips works for you? Oh, boom, you just got a bunch more movement on your sinker. You know what I mean?
Starting point is 01:05:11 So it's very exciting from a player development standpoint. From a fantasy standpoint, we often, like a lot of these stuff metrics we do and what we're looking at from the outside looks at movement. So we don't care as much about the spin direction because we just look at the resulting movement. If the resulting movement is good, then we give it a thumbs up. You know what I mean? We're not as concerned with how they got that movement. That's what Seam Shifted Wake will do is we'll teach some pitchers to change their grip and get more movement. So that's cool for baseball, not so great for fantasy baseball. The other concept, spin mirroring, is just that I've shown in the past,
Starting point is 01:05:47 other people have shown that if your breaking ball and your fastball have exactly opposite spin directions, that can be good for outcomes. And that's not necessarily now captured in any stuff metrics because we had this incorrect, basically basically spin in the past. Now we can put it into our stuff metrics. We can put it into our analysis and look at, you know, pitchers and see like which ones have really good spin mirroring. You know, I think someone that comes to mind is Shane Bieber.
Starting point is 01:06:24 His fastball and his curveball have exactly different spins. And that makes it really hard for the batter to pick up which way the ball is spinning. They just look the same. The forcing of the curve starts to look the same. That can be part of our fantasy analysis.
Starting point is 01:06:40 I will try to look into it and point out the best spin mirrors and see if we can find some sleepers based on that. So those are the two concepts that came to mind when I saw it. It's really cool to think about basically the difference between what this ball should move like and the way the ball does move. That's what the deviation column is. You might find you're just not getting as much movement as you should. Like you said, a grip adjustment might be the key to unlocking it.
Starting point is 01:07:10 Showing us some potential or showing player development people potential, which they've had this all along. This is just sort of new to us facing the public over at Baseball Savant. Enjoy. If you're clicking around over there. And I mean, look, there's so many ways to get lost in that website. This is just one of about 100 ways to do it now. But hopefully Eno's explanation helps you understand what you could or probably couldn't do by looking at that particular new tool.
Starting point is 01:07:41 If you're enjoying this podcast, we'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to leave us a nice rating and review. It goes a long way to support the show. If you're looking for a subscription to The Athletic, theathletic.com slash ratesinbarrels will get you the best deal we have going right now. $3.99 a month, I believe, is the price if you're a new subscriber right now. It's about 30% off the regular price of a one-year subscription. On Twitter, he is at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. You can email us, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com. We'll start cleaning out the email inbox very soon.
Starting point is 01:08:15 We are back with you on Wednesday. Thanks for listening. Thank you.

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