Rates & Barrels - Lars Nootbaar Interview

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

Eno interviews Cardinals outfielder Lars Nootbaar, and they talk about the work that Nootbaar has done at Driveline and how it helped him at the plate. Eno and Al also look at other hitters who share Nootbaar’s proclivity for pulling flyballs and discuss the degree to which they weigh news of changes in players’ offseason training regimens. Rundown 1:17 - Eno talks about Lars Nootbaar’s 2022 breakout 5:00 - Eno takes a lesson in how to identify sleepers from Nootbaar’s progression 7:31 - Eno provides a primer on some training techniques  13:22 - Eno’s interview with Lars Nootbaar 34:12 - Eno and Al discuss the 2023 outlook for some hitters who frequently pull flyballs (Nootbaar, Nolan Arenado, Juan Yepez, Jonah Heim, José Ramírez, Isaac Paredes, Wilmer Flores)  52:44 How skeptical should we be of offseason reports of players adopting new techniques? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Al on Twitter: @almelchiorBB e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hello, everybody. Happy Friday to you. I'm Al Melchior and I'm here with Eno Saris for another edition here of Rates and Barrels. Thank you so much for tuning in and this is a fun one Eno. I know you're excited, I've been excited about this. Eno talked to Cardinals outfielder Lars Neupahr, really, really cool, interesting interview that we will get to a little bit later on in the program. We'll talk a little bit about, well, some of his training that he's been doing and kind of generalize from some of Neupahr's trends to maybe some other players. So a lot of good stuff to get to here. Just want to remind everybody

that the 2023 Fantasy Baseball Draft Kit is out on The Athletic. Go to theathletic.com slash rates and barrels to access that and everything on the site for just $2 a month for the first year. So a great deal. Make sure you take advantage of that. So, you know, I know you've been been chomping on the bit to talk about this interview here. So let's start off just by just kind of refreshing our memory and everybody's memory on exactly what the journey has been for Lars Neubauer. So a big breakout last year, but something that I think has been in the making for a

little while. And again, he talks about this in his interview with you. But what are the key things as we look ahead to 2023, the trends that we should focus on for Newt Barr? Yeah, the real cool thing about his progression through the minor leagues and his progression as a baseball player is, I think, one that you'll hear is sort of an open-mindedness to new kinds of training and improving himself as a baseball player. But also within the context of, say, maybe organizational ideas about how to develop players.

I think of the Cleveland Guardians, actually, when I look at Lars Neutbar's progression through the minor leagues, here's a guy who makes a lot of contact, has a great eye at the plate, and does not hit the ball hard. That sounds like every Cleveland Guardians prospect. You know? So, you know, and I think the hope with the Guardians

is they do what Neutbar did. And you're going to hear about the training methods, but what you see is a progression of isolated power slugging numbers as he goes through the minors as he goes through these and actually even more than a progression a large jump and um you know you'll hear what the the the training method is but one of the biggest ones is weighted bats and it's a little bit like what the guardians do on the pitching side which is take guys with multiple pitches a good slider command and give them weighted balls and see if they can throw harder so in this case the research is clear on both sides and coop de ren is actually a famous researcher from the university of hawaii

well known in player development circles he is the guy who's done peer-reviewed, you know, lock-solid research on the value of weighted balls and weighted bats to increase bat speed and increase arm speed, increase pitch speed. And so there's a real corollary there. And what you see with Nutbar at the major leagues is just a real culmination of all those skills where last year he had a better than average strikeout rate, a way better than average walk rate, a better than average isolated slugging. Almost everything worked out for him except for the batted ball luck. And, you know, I think some of the new rules will help him there. He's a lefty, but you see a 12% barrel rate, a 113 max EV. That's up from a 109.5 in 2021. Basically, all his power numbers are exploding.

Well, and I don't think you can understand or understate, rather, the magnitude of that explosion. If you go to his stat page, I'm looking here on fan graphs, take a look at 2019, which he split across three levels, A, high A, and then double A and not a lot of power at those last couple of stops. And the last stop, double A Springfield, that is a hitter's park. Now he only played 33 games for them. So figure he had 15, 16, 17 games in that park. But he did not homer a single time and had an 0-43 iso in 2019 at Springfield. That's outrageous. So for him to get from that point in 2019 to the gains that he made when baseball, Manly baseball came back in 2021. And then of course what we saw last year, it's, it's remarkable.

Yeah. And it's just, you know, you, it's hard to like translate into like, how do I find sleepers like this? But you know, it is one thing that you can do is look just at strikeout leaders in the minors that haven't had that power breakout. I think if you think about it, the Jordan Groshans trade from the Blue Jays actually makes a little bit more sense under this light where you're like, hey, he makes a lot of contact at AA. He's right there near the big leagues. If we can just coach a little more power out of him, that's going to be great.

Maybe a guy like Joey Ortiz, the double A shortstop for Baltimore. Those ISOs are creeping upwards. Maybe there's going to be a big power step forward for him at some point. People talk about Parker Meadows, you know, is the power enough? Well, you know, the contact and the patience are really there. So it's one reason why I do prefer minor leaguers that have good strikeout rates, because when they put it all together it can look really exciting and it will have a better batting average yeah and yeah that's obviously it's a risky approach but like you gave the example of Groshans and he hit a lot better with the Marlins in that brief call up last year than I certainly would have expected and maybe that's

exactly what the thinking was there in that organization. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, the other thing that is, it's hard, and we'll talk about it a little bit later, is just knowing who's doing the right training to get this out of them, you know? And that requires a sort of weird divination where you're like, well, the Rays are good and the Cardinals are good. And, oh, we went to driveline and, you know, it's like that part, uh, I don't love. And it's also just really deceptive because people do go to driveline and not

get better. And we'll talk a little bit more about that at the end, but, um, uh, you know, just, you know, sort of focusing on guys who do have good contact skills and and could explode if they added power will probably produce you some sleepers. with a lot of hitters. So like you said, we'll get into more of the nitty gritty in terms of what Newt Bart did to get to where he is and talk about some other players too. But before we get to the Newt Bart interview,

I just think it'd be helpful, certainly be helpful to me, to be honest, to talk a little bit about some of the things that you discuss with Lars. You talk about trying out a K-Vest yourself and what that experience was. And there's a lot of different things that one could do at Driveline.

So before we go to the interview, probably a primer would be something that could be useful here. So what are some things that we should know going into this interview? Yeah, sometimes you get into the context of somebody where you all know all the terms and you forget that people are watching

that don't know all the terms. I mean, like for example, a K-Vest is a vest that you put on that you wear that has sensors on it and it can tell you your sequencing. So it tells you how, and there's a sensor on your arm too. So it can tell you if your arms,

you know, if your shoulders are, you know, you want to go, you want to go back with the shoulders and the arm, and then you want to come forward the hips, and then you want to drag the, you want to bring the shoulders and the arms come last, the hands come last, right? So there's a sequencing that's been researched that shows that that's the ideal sequencing and the vest can tell you if you're doing those things. So that's a, it's just such a wearable technology. But other things that, that he'll talk about that are important are weighted bats. And I just talked about them a little bit. I think you can understand that pretty well in the context of weighted balls.

They look like regular bats, but what's interesting is there's over and underweight. And the idea is that an overweight bat sort of works you out in the baseball sense. Like you're taking swings and you take a lot of swings and you get tired and then you recover and then it's easier, right? Like it's working out in the baseball sense. Instead of doing a bunch of like push-ups or, you know, like squats or whatever. you know, like squats or whatever. Yes, those things are useful, but there are smaller muscles that you use in the swing that you may not work out except for in the swing. And so weighted bats take advantage of that. They'd make you work out these, this, your muscles in the context of the swing. And so that's why they work underweight works because it gets you used to swinging fast.

So this happens in sprinting they do a thing where they sprint downhill or they turn the uh that you can actually turn the uh the the treadmill on so that it's like you're you're going downhill right and it's less resistant and the idea is to get your body used to running that fast you know Like first you have to do all the workout, but then you have to just get used to moving that fast. So underweight bats get you used to what is it like to adjust to a pitch or do my swing and do it in a really light context in a really fast way. And so you kind of, by toggling that overweight and underweight, you advance.

And then one of the last things is what the environment looks like. I mean, you know, we both did the motion capture where you take your clothes off, you take your shirts off, and when you put little balls on you, I put balls on your hat, and these little balls are captured by the cameras. And then they can reduce you to a skeleton. And these little balls are captured by the cameras and then they can reduce you to a skeleton. And then they can say, oh, you're like, they told me my, you know, minus minus pelvis and you know, this and that. So, you know, like, you know, you get a readout and it tells you what to work on. The nice thing is in this context now in player development, now you can say, okay, here are

five drills. We hear the things we want to see out of your biomechanics, right? Here are five drills we think will work. You can do those five drills or you can do, or here's one drill. Try it. Do the biomechanic assessment again. Well, I didn't do anything. So they're learning.

They can actually assess these drills. We've had all these drills and people have said, oh, do the towel drill. Well, they checked the towel drill with the biomechanic assessment and it didn't do anything. So the towel drill is not actually that useful. My kids are now doing the towel drill and I'm like, grumble, grumble, dad knows better. But, you know, that's the idea is you do this biomechanical assessment, you do a bunch of drills, You get in front of the machines.

The guy tells you, I want to see a 78 mile an hour bat speed out of this. And there's a little marker there that says that spits out your bat speed every time you do it. And there'll be a training session. It's not every training session, but there will be a training session where everything that everything Lars Knutbar is doing is swinging as hard as he can and trying to get that number to 78. Yes. In the context of a ball coming at him can and trying to get that number to 78. Yes, in the context of a ball coming at him and him trying to hit it. Yes, still in a baseball context, not just like swinging to see what the number gets, like still in a regular, I'm trying to see this pitch and hit it. But after the pitch, he doesn't even look where the ball went or what

happened. He looks at the number that says his bat speed, because that's what that training session wants to do. So you'll hear him talk about different training goals. Those are different training sessions, different years to years. And I think his conversation about, you know, he worked with John Sotoropoulos at Driveline. You'll hear their growth. their growth. And I think their growth as a player and coach really mimics some explosive growth in the hitting space recently. Finally, hitters are kind of taking advantage of all the tools that pitchers have been using. And so we're now hearing much more about weighted bats in the news. And here's an interview with a guy who just really exploded based on his use of weighted bats. Treat yourself to Tim's new fudge brownie lattes.

Made with freshly ground espresso beans, frothy steamed or ice chilled milk, and topped with marble chocolate curls. Now that's music to our ears. Available hot or iced, only at Tim's. Now that's music to our ears. Available hot or iced, doing something is everything. Rent the Peloton bike or bike plus today at onepeloton.ca slash bike slash rentals. All access membership separate. Terms apply. All right, here we are with Lars Neutbar, soon to be star outfielder for the Cardinals. star outfielder for the Cardinals. And we got to know each other.

I met you at the AFL by the batting cage. We talked a little bit about how you were taking control of your career and trying to tend to get better. Then I saw you when I was visiting up in driveline, and I saw you doing some of that stuff. So could you tell me a little bit about uh what you spent uh the offseason doing at driveline this season and last season and how you got there like how how did you end up there yeah so um i guess i'll start with this offseason this offseason was a little bit different from last um last offseason it was more bat speed focus this year at the beginning it was more bat speed focused. This year at the beginning, it was more bat speed focused. Once we kind of honed in on that,

it became more of like ball flight specific along with bat speed stuff to make sure that, you know, obviously we're swinging the bat hard, but then also we're making sure that we're hitting the right specific part of the baseball, making sure we're efficient in our movements. And that cleaned up some things mechanically for me. That's also went hand in hand with my bat speed because i'm moving more efficiently i think

bat speeds come along and then also having a having a focus for um you know optimal launch angles i guess is you know one way to put it so that's kind of been my focus prior it was mainly just bat speed and then um how i got there was 2020 season got canceled came back from spring training uh my buddy john that you know um you know he was working shut down he brought a kvess and a laptop down to southern california and me and him were kind of and another buddy angelo who was with at the time the Rays um every day we kind of just went in the cage and threw that thing on and and tried to get better um you know and it was kind of like uh early on in the process of him as a as a hitting

trainer and me as a as a hitter you know really. And so we were kind of diving into this together. It was a great, you know, relationship. We had a friendship, obviously, before, but he kind of used that, and we both used it to get to where we are now. But it was pretty cool. It was, you know, during the midst of COVID, we weren't really doing much else, just kind of hopping fences, finding wherever we could and just kind of getting to work, you know every day we could and i don't think i i don't think

i knew all that i know john sotteropoulos through through driveline but uh you guys knew each other before you started training so that's kind of cool yeah we we had a relationship and my buddy ang that we that we hit with as well who was with the rays at the time um they went to high school with each other so So they were buddies. So John would come down my freshman year, sophomore year, all three years at USC. And he would hit with us. And he always had such a,

he was always so, I guess, like receptive to hitting knowledge and hitting tips and everything. And so I was always, you know, willing to learn from him too, because he knew so much more than I did at that time. At least he thought he knew more. And so, you know, I've always kind of trusted him as a hitting guy that once he kind of got into this, and we had real data behind, you know, what we were working on, it kind of took off there. Well, that's really interesting. You kind of because you start off with the K vest. And,

you know, I tried the K vest on my story about the k vest is um you know it's cool to uh use different cues and then like see the results right like i tried like um so they told me that i had uh near pro hand speed there you go that was going for me they also said i had a minus minus pelvis okay okay so uh so i tried the cue where i'm like i'm just gonna try and just rip my midsection through yeah my pelvis just gonna try and rip my pelvis through that'll be my cue and that that was when everything lit up green you know on the k vest everything looked good i missed the ball the ball was on a t i missed the ball so i sometimes i worry with the k vest is you're sort of training to uh training to the tech and you're like you're just trying to

do you're just trying to make the lights light up green and you forget about hitting um so so tell me about the sort of advancement in the actual things you were doing so you went from k vest to some some weighted bat training and and how did you what was the last piece of the puzzle when you added in the sort of launch angle and stuff what was what were you doing to kind of work on that aspect it was a lot of that it was i went into the uh what do they call that like the biomech lab, basically, whatever. Yeah, the mocap. Yeah, mocap, right.

So I got all stickered up. And my Batsy was good, but they were like, your sequencing is terrible. So let's work on that. So I was like, oh, okay, like, sweet. That's awesome. You know, so. And those are different cues. You just work on different cues and see how it does.

It was similar. Like my pelvic wasn't firing correctly. And so then the next few days, that's what we worked on. And then my bat speed ticked up along with, like, you know, exit dealers or launchers, whatever. Like, my body was just able to move, and I was able to be more consistent in my swing because I had a cue to work on to help myself move more efficiently. And so, again, me and you are very similar hitters in that sense but

yeah i'm just about to just about to play with the cards right exactly um yeah no and and that's also another thing you brought up a great point is that not just hitting to the tech understanding yourself as a hitter what you need not everybody needs exactly what i need um And so, you know, that's kind of the main thing. But, but yeah, I mean, everybody's specifics and what they need is different. But, you know, like I said, understanding that not just hitting to the tech, but using the tech to help you develop. Is there also sort of after a while limiting returns on the weighted bats? Do they like help you get to like 75 or wherever you're trying to get and then it's harder to add more was there have you sort of hit sort of a bat speed where you're not improving i know an improvement is one of these things or

it goes up for a while then it plateaus and then maybe it goes up again where where are you like i think you were trying to hit 74s uh with the bat speed when i was up there and where are you? Like, I think you were trying to hit 74s with the bad speed when I was up there. And where are you now? Yeah, now I'm a little bit higher than that. I was a little bit higher at the beginning of the offseason than that. And then, like I said, when I kind of made that mechanical adjustment, it ticked up a little bit too. So, you know, you kind of think of it as a bell curve, right?

You know, when you start, like I i did at one side of the bell curve there's only one way to go and it's up the gains are much quicker so now it's kind of you know trying to get a little bit better every single day um in terms of bat speed you know there's obviously i need to be a much better hitter completely but in terms of the bat speed training that's kind of what we're focused on and so um the gains are less of it now uh yes i do less than the bat speed specifics but i i yeah i yeah i do i do and then um but make making like monitoring it making sure that i'm not dipping right where um i need to be at a certain threshold or else uh john john or andrew is not even gonna let me swing so you know i heard some interesting stuff too about this idea that um you know when you do the mocap you know

they'll talk to you about your hip shoulder separation and that's really important for hitting it's people talk about the rubber band you're trying to sort of stretch the rubber band so that you can have more bat speed, have more trunk speed, right? That's the idea, even for pitching. It's just sort of separate the shoulder and the hip, you know, and the bringing back together is where you get that speed from. What helped me was that my dad, he trains pitchers, and he's worked with Tom House for a long time.

That's another thing I didn't know about you. That's cool. Yeah. It's like he's told me about that on the throwing side for so long. I played, you know, obviously baseball growing up, also played football. So what's cool with that is that, you know, Brady and Breeze and, you know, obviously now Dak, and they've got so many quarterbacks that I was able to do those drills. And so being able to, for me, understand that from the throwing side and then make that adjustment on the hitting side is kind of, you know, where where for me, I think it's been I've benefited from my dad having that background and understanding that stuff, too.

Yeah, but there's this fundamental difference in hitting, which is when you're pitching. Let's say I could I could have hip-shoulder separation possible ever. Right. I can snap that together and release the ball because I decide when I want to release the ball. But theoretically, a hitter could have the most separation ever and then just couldn't get it there on time. Like a back versus wide receiver, you know what I mean? Yeah. The bat't get it there on time versus wide receivers you know what i mean

you got it like the bat has to get there on time like it's it's not oh i'll release the ball when i want to it's like no the bat has to be there on time have you seen any ramifications for your contact ability have you do you have to start earlier because of your your your swing is yeah i do bigger or you know yeah and that's a good point and and i did at the beginning of 2022 and um that was kind of where i was like man you know going through this i was like uh you know maybe i'll you know barking up the wrong tree kind of you know i didn't really know what was going on but i started loading earlier which helped me and i think it just helped me sequence myself better but but also see the pitch longer and be in a position where my head wasn't moving so much.

I wasn't rushing. I was just kind of in a better, more controlled space. And so whether that's the mechanical adjustment or that's just helped me as a hitter load earlier, I don't really know exactly. But for me, that was an adjustment that i did make so cool i saw you uh you know you i think that your favorite uh i mean if you're talking about sort of ideal launch angle and stuff your favorite hit is you know like 110 uh to the pull side in the air right something like Something like that. Yeah, if I could do that all the time, that'd be great.

So I think to some extent, you know, you're going to like some of the shift rules because you're going to be hitting on to that side a little bit. But you are in the unique place, not unique, but you're in this place where younger players are, where they've seen some of these rule changes, you know. Younger players have come up through the minor leagues, have seen uh the the bigger bags i don't know what have you seen you've seen bigger bags you've seen bigger bags done the

uh the pickoffs over the first or i guess all the bases yeah pitch clock hitters clock did you ever see automatic balls and strikes no or i did excuse me i did that one one place spring training complex in um in the arizona fall league so it's just like a game yeah yeah uh so so you've got these other things coming uh and and i just wondered uh one thing that stuck out to me is if people don't really talk about this is that the hitters have to get in the box. They have about eight seconds. Did you, were you surprised that you had to be like, Oh shit, I got to get in. Or were you fine? Did you see a lot of other hitters be like, they weren't, they weren't fast enough to get in the box. And yeah,

it was pretty, it was pretty bizarre seeing, seeing it guys. It's just like, there's just, there's walking straight up to the dish. Stepping out is kind of like, you're like, you know, you have like anxiety stepping out of the box in between pitches. You're like, oh, shoot, I got to be back in here. Then I saw some guys get rang up 10 innings because they weren't set, you know, quick enough. And so it's going to be an adjustment for sure,

especially at the big league level. You know, guys have their routine. They've done it for so long you know it's it's more of you know something that guys that have been up there for 10 years have kind of you know grown to be a part of their routine or their pre-bat routine or whatever it is if they take their time and so um i'm interested to see how it'll be being a younger guy and having some of the experience with it i think it'll be easier for me to just adjust to it because you know it is what it is but um for some guys you know there's you know they they enjoy it and there's a little bit of an art to it too for for them to do it so i mean uh it'll be interesting it'll be interesting for sure i took my kids to san jose and they they

pretty much liked it how did you i like the pace you it's more baseball and less standing around did you did you have a opinion about yeah i mean i i i didn't i didn't mind it but i didn't i didn't like it as well i really don't have an opinion on it i i get it like it speeds up the game and does all that the only thing for me is like as a hitter the mind game between a pitcher and a hitter where there's like sequencing right like it during a certain at that okay he did this he did this i think he's gonna do that so it takes a little bit of that away from it where you don't have as much time to process it um and so you know the game will be faster for sure it might

be a little different but but it may be a little different, you know, and who knows. And I'm sure, you know, the league will do something to adjust or whatever, you know, if something happens. But I understand it, you know. I get why they're trying to do it. We'll see. You know, I'm not going to say yes or no to that. It's just, you know, I'm curious to see how it's going to be

because easier to make an adjustment in the minor leagues than the big leagues, I think, you know, as curious to see how it's going to be because um easier to make an adjustment in the minor leagues in the big leagues i think you know as league wide and then when you were on first um uh with the stealing rules like you're kind of interesting in an interesting spot where you're like um you're not like a like a turner burner like a trade turner but like uh you've got speed you could did you feel uh like you wanted to take off more? I mean, I think you had, like, two stone base in the minors. Yeah, it was, like, it's so weird. Like, you're, like, thinking about it differently, too,

because the bigger bases is nice because you're, like, sliding in. If you go toe in, it's great because it gives you that extra couple inches or whatever. But, like, mentality-wise, I wasn't down there long enough to really understand but like some guys were like abusing it in the falling like i saw like taking getting picked up picked on and then they're taking this huge lead leaning back to the pitcher or whatever you know it was just like a cat and mouse game over so um which is is nice like it'll be bring back an art of the game that i don't think is has been there for a

while uh i think the cardinals specifically do a good job of that and we've had base dealers you know over the past two years that i've or past couple years that i've been up and so um but yeah i think some of that value will get brought back up um and like you said you're kind of all in that yeah with the shift you think it'll be good for good i'm all in for the show i'm actually yeah i'm all in for the shift i've made some like again hitting wise like i've made some adjustments to not necessarily have to rely on the shift so i was like of course now you know they're doing it but uh i think all in all it'll benefit it'll benefit me so i can complain yeah you're the outfield there is pretty interesting because you guys all have a little bit of speed um you none of you would maybe be like 30 30 base stealers in a normal year but i could see all of you stealing a little bit more than usual yeah yeah

all right so just that's pretty interesting to to get an idea of where you're you're at with the new rules and the new season the new season coming up uh i just uh i wanted to do you think um do you think you would have fallen into some of this uh new type of training without knowing john um you think that that was just almost like a happy occurrence like how yeah like is there another you that like another universe that you didn't do any of this yeah potentially there there potentially is um i think i think i was always curious enough to try and find a new way of training um again when i started it was 2020 it was pretty pretty dang early for for them even with hitters and stuff um the whole weighted bats thing and so um you know, I don't know if I don't do it,

but I'm definitely glad because I definitely got a kickstart out of it. And what's funny is that I wasn't invited to the alternate site, which obviously was a bummer for me. But I really do think that, you know, you got to kind of make do with what you got. And that's part of why you ended up at dry line the whole time. Yeah. I mean, John kind of just like spent all 2020 just like in empty cages, kind of hiding out

from everybody and kind of doing that. And so, you know, it's funny. We do things a little bit differently today than we did back then i think we have more information and more knowledge but um it's pretty yeah but uh what's it like when you talk to other hitters about what they're doing like are are you do you have a sense of like oh yeah there's a couple guys in our org a couple guys i know who like do the same kind of trainings i do or there's nobody or like how does that how does that does that does it come up like you guys got to talk about like what you're what you've

been doing or what you do yeah yeah yeah for sure and and now like guys are starting to trickle in and and um you know a lot of guys are using tech or video or whatever and then you know guys know their swing so well that you know a lot of them have a good idea. I like to listen to everybody. But, you know, like Nolan, for example, Nolan. Nolan went to driveline, too. Right. So I like talking to him. You know, he's always sending me video and stuff, too. So it's pretty cool. So just more and more every year, right? I would say so. And but I mean, I talk to Nolan on a on a daily basis you know so it's like whether it's

hitting or whatever um but having him you know we we we talk and work on a lot of stuff together and so um with him it's nice um but then but then you know there's guys that that don't do it don't need it and you know they're they're awesome and you know like nolan's a cage rat swings a thousand times goldie doesn't necessarily do you know like but you know well one thing the cardinals were really good at last year was pulling fly balls they were like i think you know top two or something in the league and pulling fly balls so like you know jeff albert had something to do with it and there was a there was a bit of a hitting philosophy in general it wasn't you know wasn't just a couple guys i think yeah i think too i think too um our ballpark man it's tough it's tough to go you know like tough to go off a big fly oppo you know you gotta have

some juice to do that and so uh i think guys kind of intuitively like understood that we're like okay like you know this is kind of what's going to help best for me be successful so the ball has changed a little bit too right so the ball doesn't fly as much off though right and so um like i said like it's teeth their own if you're playing at a different part different whatever it is everything's going to change but uh but yeah i mean whatever's going to help you get to where you need to be you know know, that's kind of the way I look at it. Well, I'm really excited to see what you do this year. I know John's rooting for you, even though he's not allowed to say it publicly anymore.

He's working for a different org. I'm going to miss that guy, man. But do you have any personal goals for the year? Do you work like that? Just have a good season. Yeah, I mean, it's day-to-day for me. You know, with John, it was just chasing barrels. That's what we did.

Hopefully, guided ball luck wasn't with me last year, so I'm not going to – you know what I mean? You want that 12% barrel rate. Yeah, exactly. Chasing the controllables. So, you know, hopefully have a good year, stay healthy. And then, you know. What's your max EV right now? I don't know.

You know, I don't know. I mean, it's training so different than in the game. In the game, I think 113, 113 something. So I got to get – I fouled a couple that were harder than that too. So I got to make those fair. All right. There you go. We got it. that too. So I got to make those fair. All right. There you go. We got it.

All right. So we got it. We got it. We got a 12% barrel rate, 115 max EV, 15 steals, 25 homers. That's what we're talking about. That's going to be the year, man. All right. Thanks for coming on.

Thanks a lot. Good to see you again. Good to see you. Well, great stuff, Eno. Really, really enjoyed that. I'm sure everybody enjoyed that interview with Lars. And also very cool that, you know, before the interview, you referred to your minus minus pelvis,

but you came away with some pluses too. Yeah, yeah. My plus hand speed but didn't hit the ball. You know, everything has to be done in the context of baseball. And, you know,

I think that's what the growth has been a little bit. Like early on, especially in, you know, when there was no baseball and there was no live pitchers to face during the pandemic, I think he was right

to be like, hey, let me do the lifting portion. Let me do the weighted bats and just get my bat speed faster because I'm not going to be working on picking up a slider out of a low lefty release slot right now because I don't have any lefties to pitch to me. I'm not even allowed to go anywhere. So I think that, as he said, being left off of the alternate site roster in a way was a blessing for him and allowed him to really jump into these advanced statistics and data and tech in order to get the most out of his work. It's also interesting to hear him say a bit more of a focus on pulled fly balls in this year's session. That's a very sort of specific baseball skill.

Now you're talking about, hey, my bat speed is really good, but I want to just hit it on a line to the pull side. And I want to make sure that, you know, I'm not hitting many grounders. And so that's a little bit more of a tweak rather than like the lifting portion. I need to get bat speed. I've got the bat speed. What do I do now? Yeah. And it's, you know, it's correlated. Hitters who pull flies generally produce more power. So that's, I think it's one of those overlooked things. And so I was really glad that that was something that you touched upon in the interview. And so I wasn't sure that I necessarily wanted to expand on that in this discussion. But then when I looked at some leaderboards, you know, I saw some really interesting names

come up in terms of players last season who pulled flies at a really high rate and also that in combination with their barrel rate. Now, where this sort of departs from the new bar story is that he had last year, the high pull rate on fly balls with a really good barrel rate. So for me, that gives me a lot of confidence that he's going to come back this year and be a reliable power producer. But it was sort of interesting to look at some of the players.

St. Louis is, is number one in this. And that's, I think Jeff Albert, who just went to the Mets to do this. And let me see if I can do this by team. Let me see how the pulled fly balls by team.

Let me see how the Mets did last year. St. Louis number one, New York Mets number 27. And rising, maybe. Yeah, right. and rising maybe yeah right i mean so so what does that what does that mean for uh for players on the on the the mets i mean uh let's see if we can we can spot anybody that really could benefit from it well yeah while you're scanning that that leaderboard uh just something that occurs to me is that and i don't know if this was an organizational thought if the, if this related at all to what happened last year with the Cardinals leading the majors in that stat.

But I think kind of similar park factors for the Mets and the Cardinals. Ah, that's right. And people say you can't have a power team in St. Louis. Well, let me show you last year's Cardinals. Yeah, I mean, Jeff McNeil, but he's kind of a spray hitter. Starling Marte has a surprisingly low pull rate. I mean, we're talking about, you know, Nupar had a 35% pull fly ball rate,

and the Cardinals led the league, you know, near 30%. You know, Starling Marte is at 14%. That's really low, yeah. That's surprising. But then Brandon Nimmo at 19%. Nimmo and McNeil are guys who let the ball travel, spray the ball around, but Nimmo has a little bit more power than McNeil.

So if Nimmo can actually unlock some of that power, that'd be amazing. Lindor's power has gone down, and he's at 24%. So those are, I think, the three names that kind of stick out for me. Mark Canna, those, you know, Canna, Nimmo and Lindor could really benefit, I think, from, from the teachings of Jeff Albert as he goes over there. Oh, that, that is interesting. Cause yeah, I hadn't really thought about the number of

hitters in that lineup that are more spray hitters. And that's obviously going to limit power. And just to give people some context, you mentioned like 14%. That's really low. I think the norm is somewhere right around 20%. Anything that's up around 30% and certainly above 30%. I mean, that's a fairly extreme pull hitter on fly balls. And while that's generally a very good thing, if you just go to a site like fan graphs and you look at overall pull rate you do have to separate out the ground ball from the fly ball pull rate because somebody with a really high pull rate that might be grounders disproportionately on grounders and that's a lot of ground ball outs yeah the league average is 25 percent um 24.5

percent and uh the best way to do this, I think, I mean, other than a savant search, is you go to the splits leaderboard at Fangraphs. If you're at the leaders, you go down. There's a splits leaderboard that's by itself. You highlight fly balls under batted balls and splits. And once you do that, look at uh pull rates uh so and click team because the default i think is individual individual players right if you want

to look at your team aspect you do that if you uh if you want to look at you can put it you can set a limit so you see uh more regular players uh but the highest pulled fly ball rate in baseball last year was matt carpenter which makes sense because all he's trying to do, the only thing he's trying to do, the very only thing he's trying to do is pull fly balls. He had 51% of his fly balls were pulled. Um, but I think you had some other interesting names in a, in a sort of sleeper list that I thought I liked the most of those names. Yeah.

And Carpenter didn't come up for me. I set my minimum at 75 fly balls. So I'm not sure with Carpenter couldn't have been too far below that. But so with the minimum set at 75, it was Albert Pujols at the top. And I think by a pretty good margin. And it was five of the top 16 in those rankings were cardinals and 200 some odd i want to say like about 260 maybe 240 hitters that reached that threshold of 75 fly balls so the top 16 that's like you know less than the top 10 percent And within that, that top 16, five Cardinals.

So led by Pujols and then Nolan Arenado. And then below him, Lars Neupahr. Oh, I think Juan Ypez. And then Corey Dickerson. And he's kind of an interesting outlier among those five Cardinals. So Neupahr, as you mentioned mentioned before 35.3% pull rate on fly balls arenado not

too far behind that but some people might be surprised to hear that arenado's barrel rate was barely more than half of what new bars was last year and this is I'm sorry two years ago this is exactly this is exactly how players over perform their barrel rate people players overperform their barrel rate.

People that underperform their barrel rate, I've written that Tommy Pham is a sleeper every year. And I love Tommy Pham, but Tommy Pham is a spray hitter who hits the ball hard. Opposite field homers were down twice as much as pull side homers with the new ball. So he himself is just thinking about whether or not he wants to pull the ball. He might have a great marriage with Jeff Albert

because he's right now thinking, how do I pull the ball in the air? And Jeff Albert is a guy who preaches that. So that's going to be an interesting thing to watch too. But he's always a guy who underperformed his barrel rates because he would hit it to the opposite field. You just know when you hit it to the opposite field, not only, um, are you hitting it further? Uh, but you're also, um, giving imparting more slice on the ball. And that slice is going to take energy away from the direction you want it to go.

Anybody who's golfs knows that if you slice it, you're not likely to hit it as far because it's going somewhere else. You know what I mean? It's, it's, it's energy deflecteded from you want to go straight, you know, and it's really rare that you hit just, you know, Chaz McCormick does hit sort of these really crazy straight opposite field line liners, screamers, and he's managed to hit like 15 homers. He's the lowest pull fly ball rate in the majors with 3%. He's an outlier.

And there is a discussion to be had that part of pulling fly balls is going and getting the ball out front, which means starting your swing earlier, which means more strikeouts. And Chaz McCormick is already at 27% strikeouts. Maybe he can't start earlier to get more homers and have a 33%out rate you know maybe that just doesn't work for for his his package but if you are looking for people who are going to overperform their barrel rate look at this pull fly ball leader you know you say arenado

well his barrel rate's not that great but his homers are great well look at somebody that the the stakes are a little bit lower but maybe he's you're in a two catcher league. Jonah Heim, Jonah Heim is on this and I'm just stole that from you. Thank you for, I'm previewing the next list we're going to, but Jonah Heim had a 6.9% barrel rate. That's not nice. That's, that's not great. And what you, what you normally expect from a 6.9% barrel rate is, you know, like a 150 ISO or something. He got 16 homers, 172 ISO because he pulls everything that he hits in the air. And that's something you'll see when you look up and down this next leaderboard you've got are people who are overperforming their barrel rates. And this is why.

All right. Yeah. Good preview to that. And we will come back to that in just a moment. I just want to provide a little additional context because I'd made the comment that Arnado's barrel rate was about half of Nuke Bar's. That was true in 2021, 6.7% comparing to Nuke Bar's in 2022. But if we do apples to apples, 2022, it was a little better than half of Nuke Bar's, 8.2%. But that's still a pretty mid-range barrel rate. Certainly not what

you would expect in terms of that. But to me, there's an interesting comparison to be had with Juan Yepez because his barrel rate's a little bit higher, or it was a little bit higher than that last year in his rookie season. And obviously, there are more playing time concerns for Yepez than there would be for Arenado, different position, of course. But in NFBC drafts so far, Ypez is outside the top 300. And given the power potential that maybe he didn't completely make good on last year, but that he's shown in the minor leagues and given the batted ball profile last year, a lot of pulled flies, pretty decent amount of raw power.

Is he somebody that maybe we should be targeting a little higher or, you know, or waiting on as a sleeper? Yeah, I mean, I was just on radio in St. Louis and, you know, and talking to people who know the depth chart a little better than I do. I had assumed that there'd be a loser between Tyler O'Neill, Dylan Carlson, and Juan Ypez if Jordan Walker makes the team. But there's a sort of growing sense that they can all make the team. That with the DH as it is, with certain handedness,

with somebody having a cover center, that it would be okay to have four outfielders and Juan Ypez. To have basically five guys that handle the outfield and DH, especially with Juan Yopez being able to play first if Goldie needs to DH or take a day off. So that does seem to be the kind of modern roster making where you have that flexibility at every position, and it does give you a chance to kind of give Jordan Walker this chance

and see if you're catching lightning in a bottle and a superstar right away out of the gate. So that's, I think, what's keeping Yipez down, is this idea that Walker's going to make their team, and that means there has to be a loser between Juan Yipez and Dylan Carlson or Dylan Carlson, Tyler O'Neill and Juan Yorpez, that there's somewhere in there, there's a loser. Well, that's, yeah, that's some interesting insight into the depth chart. And I think that makes him a good, a good late round flyer. You can just monitor that as we go along in spring

training here. But if he does come away with something close to an everyday job, I think he could be a real steal in drafts. But let's get back to that leaderboard that you were referencing a little while ago. Jonah Heim is on it. But these are hitters, just a handful of hitters who have pretty extremely or had pretty extremely high pull rates on fly balls in 2022. 34% or higher, but with the barrel rate below 8%. or higher, but with the barrel rate below 8%. So maybe just a hair below that Arenado level. And of course, the lower the barrel rate,

then the less good they can make on the pull rate. Actually, let me start at the bottom. We'll start at the top because he's the patron saint. All right. He's the patron saint. I was going to make a point. Corey Dickerson was a name that I mentioned before. Okay, you can start at the bottom.

Low barrel rate. It'll be a big reveal of the patron saint of pulled fly balls. See, a little trivia for you listeners. See if you know who's number one on this list. All right. Well, interesting name. Well, actually, I don't have the list in front of me, so I'm not sure. Okay, Haseong Kim.

Is she the right? Corey Dickerson at the bottom. Wilmer Flores. Jonah Heim Isak Paredes who's on all my sleeper lists and I love him especially in draft and holds because he's got first second and third eligibility

I think he's going to take third base there because I think Yandy Diaz is people ask me if I'm down on Yandy Diaz I'm not down on Yandy Diaz except that I think that his glove is falling apart a little bit I think he signed a first baseman type deal. And so I think he's going to be the first baseman, and they're leaving third base open for Paredes, Aranda, whoever.

We're going to see who – Aranda doesn't necessarily have the glove, so we're going to see who steps forward. I think it's Paredes. And then, da-da-da-da, the patron saint of the pulled fly ball, the guy who's always overperformed his barrel rates, the guy who doesn't look like a slugger, the guy who looks like Eric Young but hits 30 homers a year and is going to win a MVP someday, Jose Ramirez.

Right. So I got a little thrown off when you were saying patron saint because I was like, oh, wait, was he... I didn't do these in order. I put him at the top because he's the most interesting player on this list. So, and in fact,

he's not number one because Pujols was number one of the sort that I did. But he's the Patriots State because he's the guy who makes the most of it. He's the guy that has been pulling fly balls forever.

That's his whole approach. And he's why, know why new bar makes so much sense and why the guardians were somebody that came up with because it's like the guardians and jose ramirez they have a guy who makes a lot of contact has good eye to play doesn't have much power you know add some bad ball the bath add some bat speed to it and some pull fly balls and bam you have jose ramirez like everybody should be trying to follow that model. But let's not bury the lead here, you know, because yeah, he, he's the patron saint of the pulled fly or, you know, certainly up there.

You know, one of the elite from year to year in that regard, but we're talking about him now because he had a barrel rate in 2022. That was below a percent. It was 6.6% in the previous couple of seasons. He was up in double digits. And his average exit velocity on flies and liners was really quite low, 91.2 miles an hour. I mean, when you start to see numbers dip into the 91s, 90s, and obviously down into the 80s, there's a little bit of concern there.

So given that Ramirez is somebody who's typically going first, second, third, overall in drafts this year, is that a red flag? I don't know. I think he's always going to outperform his barrel rates. Even when he had the better barrel rates, like, for example, in 2021, he had 11% barrel rate. the better barrel rates. Like, for example, in 2021, he had 11% barrel rate.

You know, other guys with 11% barrel rates don't hit 36 homers, right? So, you know, yes, he went down to 6.6. I think you'd project him for something like a 7% barrel rate, right? Because he's had these better years and he had a down year. That's how regression works, how projections work. They look at the last two years. They look at the year so i think he brought projecting for a seven percent barrel rate well he had a seven percent barrel rate in 2018 he had 39 homers you know so like yeah he had a 6.6 last year he had 29 homers so i think he's pretty safe what if he hits 28 you're not

going to say oh i made a terrible pick you pick. And then you've got all these, the fact that he's a lefty that pulls a lot. I mean, he's not a lefty, he's a switch hitter, but he's going to hit lefty and pull a lot. And he does have speed. So there's all these rules that are coming together that should affect him in a positive way. He hasn't had a batting average on balls in play over 300 since 2018

because he's trying to pull fly balls. If he has a batting average on balls and play over 300 since 2018 because he's trying to pull fly balls he if he has a batting average on balls and play over 300 we could have him you know have a season where he hits 285 with sorry 28 homers and like 25 steals you know like so i i think uh this will be a good year for him and i think this is uh something that he gives us that we should listen to. It's hard sometimes to know always what to listen to. You listen to this and we come up with new stuff. And I've seen people be like, stuff plus whatever. And's a there is some sort of relationship between um uh open mindedness and cynicism when you come to these things maybe it works for jose ramirez but maybe it does not work for everybody else yes that's probably true the guardians have not produced

another jose ramirez and they've been trying to um but at the same time uh you know open-mindedness itself served me well in in in like sort of reading research. And I think it's served you well. I was really fascinated by some of the stuff you were looking into, the atmospheric, you know, differences from game to game and how that played out. How do you feel about the sort of interaction between open-mindedness and cynicism when it comes to new research and new techniques and new ways, even in fantasy, of new ways of finding breakouts? Well, I'm well prepared to answer this question because I actually had a conversation with my wife, I think it was yesterday, and I was talking about some player or other that I liked as a

breakout. I don't even remember who it was. She said, yeah, but what did that person do in the off season? I'm like, well, I don't know. And that's always her response to what we have these conversations. And so I said, even if I did know, I would probably disregard it because I don't know what it means. I don't know enough to distinguish between player A that went to driveline and player B that went to driveline and maybe did different things or did the same things differently. Or different bodies that it takes differently. Yeah. So I kind of let that stuff wash over me and it's become sort of a meme and a joke, right? Best shape of my life. Yes. Is going, right? You know, best shape of my life.

Yes. Is going to driveline the new best shape of my life. Exactly. So yeah, I, I probably, I, I guess this is just a way of saying that I,

I err much more on the, on the side of cynicism, understanding that then I wind up missing out on, on breakouts that other people are able to identify. But I just, I, I know what I know and, and, and I like to think I know what I don't know and try to stay in my lane, so to speak. Well, one of the things that I think is most difficult is when you have an impartial delivery, so like a partial delivery, like a biased delivery, which is, uh, by driveline is going to tell us the good stuff and not the bad stuff, but also just an incomplete data set.

So when we don't know everybody, we're never going to know everybody went to driveline because they, they, they sign NDAs with teams. And like, we, you know, we just never going to know, like that. Not every player wants us to know we went to driveline. So, you know, we're never going to know the entire thing. It's almost like these minor league batted ball stats where we're like oh like this player did this or this player did this like well we don't know the full context because only teams have the entire minor league batted ball set we are the ones that just have these little drips of oh this guy hit it 111 oh we're so excited um but the thing is there are small sample things that can make a difference. So the

things I listened to, and that might be interesting for anybody who's on Twitter all the time and seeing these videos and hearing, oh, he did this or did this. I'm interested when they say they added a new pitch. I always find that interesting. And if you can then back that up with, oh, he actually threw it 10 times in his spring training start. That means he believes in it, right? So now you've got a pitch he said he added in the offseason, and now you say he's believing it. In the age of data, that pitch is likely to be high stuff because all of these development labs are working with stuff plus numbers, right?

So they're saying, let's build a sweeper. This is what a sweeper looks like. These movement profiles. All right. Did you do it? No. Try again this way. Try again. That's it. Do that. Do that. Do that. Do that. Now you come to camp. You have a sweeper. So Mitch Keller is an example. I think Mitch Keller is a great example because he didn't become an ace. He had a four ERA. He was a decent pitcher. But last year,

we heard from Tread that he added Velo, he added a sinker, and he added a sweeper. He did all three of those things in the major leagues last year. He was the second biggest improver in Stuff Plus year over year behind Kyle Wright. And I think that was a breakout. I think there might be another level as he gets used to all those things. But those are things you can listen for. So did he add Velo this offseason? Wait for a number, you know?

And not just would he hit. Because if he hit a number, he's going to sit two below that. So, you know, you want to hear some numbers about that. You want to hear, you know, have he added a pitch. And I know it's early going, but I think if someone says they added bat speed, it's like they added Velo in the offseason. You don't have to necessarily jump that guy five rounds.

Don't jump Gavin Lux five rounds because he added six miles an hour bat speed because that's in a training environment. I guess you want to be skeptical of those numbers. I think if he doesn't add that bat speed, which is tracked now by BAM, then people are going to look badly at driveline. So I think they're reporting an actual number.

But how that plays out in the play concept, can he actually get to that bat speed when he's trying to face a 98-mile-an-hour fastball? That's still a question. But am I more interested now than Gavin Lux than before? Heck yeah. Heck yeah, because he had great skills other than the bat speed. We have Lars Neupahr as an example, right, of a guy who had great plate skills,

could contact good plate discipline, and had a bat speed and took off. And I've seen Gavin Lux's biceps, and I've heard the six-mile bat speed. I think it would be foolish not to like, you know, incorporate that somehow. Am I going to make him my fifth, second baseman in our rankings?

No, but am I going to push him up against like, let me see real quick before we get out of here, but an auction calculator, you know, projection system. I'm just going to use steamer, second base, Gavin Lux. It shows up 29th in a 12 teamer, like not draftable says the auction calculator. I'm sorry, man. Like, uh, John Segura in here is a $1 player and I'm fine with that, but he's going to Miami. Is he going to hit seven homers and

steal 12 bags and hit you 275 this year in a 12 team league? I think I'd rather take Gavin Lux and see what happens. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a particularly good example because yes, a girl might get overrated because of having played in Philadelphia for a few years. And again, you don't take taking a look at the barrel rate and how that plays in different

parks. And yeah, it's going to play less robustly in Miami. And just, you know, at most positions, definitely at second base, there's so much inter interchangeability. Yeah. When you get close to the fantasy replacement level. Why not? Right. If you've got a piece of information on a player like Lux, why not make him your late round sleeper,

your late round flyer? He's behind Jonathan Scope. He's behind Colton Wong who's going to a park that has murdered hitters in the past. So I think you can move him up against certain guys. And especially when you start talking about bench dynamics, about like, okay, well, I've got my whole starting lineup. I'm looking for a sleeper.

My weakest position is MI Gavin Lux is out there. You know, I can drop them if it doesn't turn out right. So that's the kind of impetus I use this on. I use it a little bit more for sleepers than, you know, top of the line guys, the top of the line guys have given us results that we can see year to year that we can project. They're really projectable. They have high floors. I'm not moving them around a lot based on where they went to work out, you know,

fair enough. I think excellent advice. And I just, I like this approach, you know, of, you know, not necessarily putting too much stock in,

in these off season reports, whether it's driveline or some other place, especially vague, you know, just, he went to drive. Right. Exactly. Exactly. We don't know. whether it's driveline or some other place, especially vague, you know, just, he went to drive. Right. Exactly.

Exactly. We don't know. I went to driveline. You've got, you've got a plus. I still throw 59. Yeah. So,

well, very, very cool stuff, you know, so, you know, appreciate you doing the interview and certainly appreciate Lars Neutbar taking the time

to join you and share all that information with us here. So really, really great stuff. If you do have questions for us about anything that we've talked about here or anything maybe for a future episode, you can send us an email at ratesandbarrels, that's all spelled out, ratesandbarrels at gmail.com. You can ask in the comments section under this video on YouTube.

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That's right. AlmelcurefB as somebody entirely different. So you can find me at out milk your BB. So make sure that you find us there. Maybe you can give us a follow if you're not doing so already.

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Thank you all so much for joining us. We'll be back here on Monday again. So have a great weekend, everybody. Thanks for listening. Thank you.