Rates & Barrels - Liam Hendriks to the White Sox, a filthy closer pool, making sense of select 2020 pitching surprises, and six-man rotations

Episode Date: January 14, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss Liam Hendriks' move to the White Sox, their current top-five closers in a filthy 2021 closer pool, what to expect from a few of 2020's surprising pitchers, the viability of six-man rotations as teams look to limit workloads, and more. Rundown 6:00 Liam Hendriks Joins the White Sox 14:50 Current Top-Five Closers 18:00 The Closer Mess 25:27 Blake Treinen Returns to the Dodgers; Kenley Jansen Trust Level? 31:29 2020 Breakouts: Setting Expectations for Spencer Turnbull, Elieser Hernández, Justus Sheffield 45:02 Brad Keller & Seam-Shifted Wake 48:35 Six-Man Rotations & Workload Management Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Want visibly glowing skin in 14 days? With Nuole Indulgent Moisture Body Wash, you can lather and glow. The 24-hour moisturizing body wash is infused with vitamin B3 complex and has notes of rose and cherry creme for a rich indulgent experience. Treat your senses with Nuole Indulgent Moisture Body Wash. Buy it today at major retailers. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Wednesday, January 13th, 2021. Derek Van Ryper, Eno Saris here with you. On this episode, we talk about Liam Hendricks making a move to the White Sox bullpen. We'll talk about some 2020 late-round breakouts that, of course, coming out of a shortened season, are even more difficult to sort out as we look ahead to this 2021 fantasy season.

We're also going to discuss the possibility of more teams employing six-man rotations in 2021. We'll also talk about strategy differences between different league sizes, and hopefully we'll have time to get to some help for those who are new to the Dynasty League formats as well. Eno, how's it going for you on this Wednesday? It's going pretty well. I have two crazy-ass dogs that just like today on the walk, they like just mauled another dog. Like, I mean, they're tiny.

So it's mauled as a relative term. This isn't like some pit bull stuff. But like they just, they were like running around in circles around this other little dog and the other owner was upset. And I had these treats. My idea is to like, you know, pay attention to me instead of the other dog. I've got treats. And so I'm like trying to chase him around. I got treats.

I got treats. And they're like, they're like small. So like if I yank them on the thing a little bit, sometimes they would like fly through the air. So it was just a melee of dog and and my children were like trying to help but also just not being very helpful because they're kids uh it was disaster uh but and my life is a disaster so that's okay i guess it all. Life is a disaster. It seems maybe a little extreme. I guess. I guess.

Yeah. I just had like one of those nights where the puppy woke me up, you know, in the middle of the night. Acid reflux woke me up. And then there's these people that are trying to buy a house for me in Georgia. They cold call me all the time. This one was at 545 in the morning. They see I still have aork uh zip code on my phone

so i guess they just assume that i'm awake and i wanted to kill everybody and then i woke up and i was like you know i don't feel that bad and i was like okay that's that's because i'm just used to feeling like this uh happy wednesday it's hump day yeah your baseline sounds like it is a Wednesday sort of baseline each and every day hopefully things turn around for you I think I've been on the receiving end of the tiny dog melee by the way I mean my dog

Hazel's a 45 pound golden doodle so she's a very medium sized dog she's very social she handles little dogs and big dogs very well and every once in a while there are people in our neighborhood, they have a little dog that slips the collar and it runs up to Hazel thinking,

I don't know what, it's a 10 pound dog usually. Hazel would destroy the dog if it became that. I never want to see that happen. And I actually get scared that Hazel will bite back and hurt the smaller dog. So I try to scoop Hazel up off the ground to get the little dog to go away. But then the little dog just goes at my ankles.

So that's not a good strategy either. So I don't really know. So I've probably cursed the small dog owner on a few occasions when something like that has happened. It is. I think the people with small dogs are like – I don't want to speak for everyone, but I have two of them. They're like basically basically chewinis um and i just feel like you you're like not as worried because you're like what are they gonna do um and then they're lap dogs a lot of times so sometimes they're taken out of the social sphere by the people around them you know they just sort

of sit on laps you know they're just not used to having and then it's pandemic time for us in particular so there haven't been that many people in our house for them to socialize with not that many dogs and you know it all and then we have young kids in the house so anytime you have like a training like when you're supposed to train a dog you're supposed to

like everyone's supposed to have that know what's up right like everybody around the dog is but it takes a village you know and everyone that everyone knows what the things the dog, it takes a village. You know? And everyone knows what the things, the commands are and when to give treats and all that stuff. When you have like a six and eight year old and you're like, guys, guys, you're supposed to wait till they sit.

Okay. Unintentional agents of chaos when it comes to dog training. That's really what they turn out to be. But you're trying to do the right thing. There are so many people I see walking dogs that are out of control. Big dogs, little dogs, doesn't matter what type.

And they don't have a treat or anything to divert the dog's attention. And I look at them and I'm like, how do you think this is going to get better exactly? What incentive are you providing to this dog to change his behavior? We're making slight progress. Now when the dogs see another dog and I have treats in my hand like i will ostentatiously put treats in my pocket when we go on the walk so they know i have it and then when they see another dog one sometimes the first looks is to me yep they'll check you first am i getting a reward am i getting a treat and if i if i time it all perfectly i can give them the treat while we're walking continue walking and walk past the other dog so that's the good one but yesterday i don't time it all perfectly, I can give him the treat while we're walking, continue walking and walk past the other dog.

So that's the good one. But yesterday, I don't know. It all fell apart and I just look like an idiot. I guess, you know, you know, it is actually there's an interesting tie into like my running and to training in to train to add velocity or you're trying to train to run more or whatever there's always going to be like a plateau and even like sort of a regression moment when your body is sort of like tired and um you know trying to recover and you kind of step back a little bit you do some as you feel runs as people call it or um you you kind of uh step back on your velocity training a little bit. And then when you attack again, your body is ready to go past that and break through that plateau.

So hopefully that's what's happening with the dog training. Yesterday was a little bit of a regression, and then we're going to bust out into perfectly trained dogs next week, right? Yeah, that could happen. It's not impossible. It might not be the most likely outcome, but it's at least a possible outcome. The breakthrough is just around the corner. Let's get to our baseball topics for today. Liam Hendricks goes to the White Sox, and I think it makes me a little sad as somebody that wanted to see Aaron Bummer get a chance to close, but this is pretty clearly an upgrade. I mean, Hendricks was the guy that I had ranked second on my rankings for relievers for the upcoming season. I think you could argue that he has a case for number one status ahead of Josh Hader. I think you could look at Devin Williams as possibly a threat to some of Hader's save opportunities. You could look at Hendricks'

core skills and say, you know, I'll give up a few strikeouts from Hader to get a better walk rate from Hendricks. Clearly, it's a good team situation, improving really in all facets. This is a pretty good deep bullpen as a whole. I think the red flag for me with Liam Hendricks is a relatively small one. 80-plus innings pitch seasons are pretty rare for relievers. There were 55 of them that have taken place since 2011. Really only nine seasons where that can happen instead of 10 since no one out of the bullpen was getting 80

innings in 2020. But I look at Hendricks and I say, is he going to fall off because of usage, or should we be concerned about a possible sharp decline because of that high volume that we saw in 2019, which was the best season from a reliever based on F war of the entire decade. Yeah. Yeah. I was, I just, I had that up. You stole my tidbit, but interestingly, the athletics have two of the, the highest war seasons in the last 10 years with Blake trying his 2018 2018. So they seem to be a little bit like the Indians where the Indians, we were talking about this with the injury risk and the rotation, use them while you got them, smoke them while you got them, and then let them leave when the time is right. I'm trying to look for some

research I did once. I can't necessarily find it, but I did look at 80 innings and found that there was a significant thing about 80 innings for pitchers. And it had something to do with just breaking down afterwards, injury afterwards. And I was thinking about it in the context of do we need to have more bridge pitchers? Do we need to have more hundred inning relievers if we're going to, you know, only start starters for four or five innings, you know, and still have like one or two out pitchers? I mean, what happened in the meantime was that we had this rule about three. You have to face three batters in a row.

And when instead of having a bunch of 100-inning relievers, what we've had is the death of the one-out reliever, more or less. And so innings pitched or outs gotten by relievers by appearance has actually gone up in recent years. But we still have these 80-inning pitchers, and even just sort of perusing, uh, you can just sort of use innings pitch by reliever as the top end. Um, it's not really good news.

I mean, you got Anthony Swarczak had 96 innings, uh, with the twins with no games started in 2013 and he was never right again. Uh, Jesse Chavez, I think has has been the most rubber-armed out of anybody where he's had these 80 and 90 inning seasons. But he's also had injury risk. I think Yuzmira Petit is the rubber arm.

He's the guy that made it through. Jalen Beeks had a 92 inning season in relief. That might have been a fair amount of bulk sort of faux starter work because of the Rays. But Josh Colmenter, 92 innings, hurt. Carlos Torres, 92 innings, hurt. Jim Johnson, 91 innings, hurt. Dillon Batances, 90 innings, hurt.

Brad Hand, 89 innings in 2016, and then the VLO just started to fall off, he's actually managed to pitch well while still in but I kind of feel like the innings, the Velo reaper is coming for him at some point but you just look at this

and it came from Jeff Samarja telling me that 80 innings was too much for a reliever and there he is 19th on the list with the Cubs had an 88 inning season, he said he is, 19th on the list with the Cubs, had an 88-inning season. He said he couldn't do that two years in a row. So, I mean, I guess the good news for Hendricks is that he hasn't done it two years in a row.

But even if you look at his player card in terms of Velo, there was a moment early in the 20th season where you thought, uh-oh, we're going to be back to this sort of like 94, 95. He's been at his best since he kind of ramped it up to 96, 97. But again, by the end of the season, he was sitting 97, 98 in the last two months of the season. So I think he'll be fine. I think he'll be fine. I think he'll be fine for 2021.

I'm curious to see how much the White Sox use him, if the usage does kind of fall in line with what we saw back in 2019, or if they're a little more careful with them having signed him to a pretty long-term deal. I mean, they have to think about keeping him effective for as long as possible, while also maximizing his value in their bid for a world series title in 2021 that's a realistic goal for that team you have evidence in both directions one evidence that they could use him normally like a like a sort of uh a top shelf closer you know three how it's not apt to necessarily push them is that the evidence is that

the rest of the bullpen is good yeah they've got if uh i don't know how to say that guy's name how do you say the the guy's name that sits 100 from the left side garrett crochet crochet nice better than the other one which rhymes with rocket um you're gonna go crotchet I mean my instincts is to go crochet but I'm so messed up in my head you know I know French and you know learn German so I was gonna go crochet but I'm so messed up in my head that I often I'm like no you can't be right that's wrong

yeah they've got crochet bummer Hoyer I'm gonna say Hoyer because that's in your wheelhouse. It is Hoyer. That is right in your wheelhouse. Even if I'm wrong, I'm right. That's the correct pronunciation.

It's Cody Hoyer. I like Evan Marshall even. Um, I think even Jace Fry is good. Uh, Jimmy Cordero throws hard. So, I mean, that's a pretty good bullpen. So the, the evidence in the other direction though, is Tony La Russa. Hey,

yeah. So, uh, we'll have to see what modern Tony to release a bullpen looks like, but he was like, you know, one of the first to, uh,

really push the bullpen hard. So I wonder, um, I wonder how he uses Hendricks and if he's going to do a lot of four and five out, um, appearances. I think that you saw some sloughage and some sort of riskiness in the end of the season. I know this last appearance was a good one in terms of getting a lot of outs,

but I think you saw some risk there with Hendricks near the end of the season when he was just really being used hard. Yeah, they were not holding anything back with Liam Hendricks in the postseason, understandably so, right, with everything that was at stake. But that also may have been unique to the fact that they weren't bringing him back as a free agent, too. They may have been a little more comfortable pushing those buttons. What a dirty little thing's a little that came up in the jay gotorizzi interview we did right he didn't quite he didn't quite you know nail the hammer home or whatever but there was this sort of idea that like they're going to use you remember he said they're going to use the best of you yep that's how it goes but i was thinking too i mean cc sabathia pre-free

agency when he had his first deal with the Yankees. He was on board with the usage, at least publicly. He wanted the ball on short rest. He wanted to do everything he could to maximize value. The other way, trying to show all the teams that were interested in him, hey, look, I'll do this. I'll put myself out there. I want every last dollar. I want to earn it. So I guess it can cut both ways. In the case of Liam Hendricks, look, he's got a three-year $54 million deal with some varying flexibility on the back end that could make that a four-year deal. The AAV is at $18 million. So clearly the White Sox wanted one more big piece in that pen. I didn't think they necessarily needed to do it for all the reasons you mentioned.

You talked about the depth that they've built, even losing Alex Colomay. I didn't think they had to go out and spend on Hendricks. I think when we were talking about where we thought guys were going to go, the Blue Jays seem like the best all-around fit for Hendricks. But yet again, they are on the outside looking in. Who's your top five relievers right now? Your top five fantasy closers? It's such a nightmare. It's haterater one even though i do think as i mentioned before williams is a possible threat to take some save chances they could mix and match if they wanted to that might be true of any closer these days other than maybe chapman which might be why i have chapman first right now it's it's hater hendrix chapman i have chapman third just because

of job security i think you've been willing to point out his skills flaws for years, and I'm not refuting them. I just think they use him like a traditional closer. Yeah, they use him like he seems super safe. Injury-wise, he hasn't been injured. I think I might have him first. I go Hader Hendricks, Chapman. Rysel Iglesias is fourth for me.

I never thought Rysel Iglesias would get that high in those rankings. And even the fifth spot, you kind of shrug at. I have got Edwin Diaz right now, but Trevor May, who we spoke to on the pod a few weeks ago, he could be the guy. Especially if Diaz has the bad command year. Diaz just seems to alternate good and bad command years. Yeah, I'm surprised at how ugly this looks actually um i think you can do a top five and feel good about it i think i would go chapman hater hendrix i think that three is uh fairly unassailable i like that three uh when it comes to four and five

i might just do presley diaz is the number one by steamer. So I think he's in my top five. Iglesias is good at six. Then I think there's questions almost about everybody you want to put after that. Nick Anderson, you know, you have the whole postseason questions. Maybe Fairbanks already took that job, or maybe it's just going to be 10, 10, 10, 10 and saves there. Maybe Fairbanks already took that job, or maybe it's just going to be 10, 10, 10, 10 and saves there. Taylor Rodgers I'd like, but they also seem like a bullpen that could just find somebody if they needed to.

And I think they would cycle through pretty fast because Taylor Rodgers ascended to his job fairly fast. And they even had Sergio Romo stealing 8 to 10 saves from him while he was in there. And then by projections, you've got names like barnes um you know barnes and and pomerantz and chris martin i was like i don't even what and so so like i think uh my reliever rankings will be tough and i even identify a reliever strategy will be tough because i don't usually like to pay top top uh price but I may want one of those three in terms of Hayter Chapman Hendricks in a mixed league um and then just take a long break and then try to get like two or three guys that I like a lot in the sort of mid to late maybe maybe like sort of Fairbanks,

Jansen, Fairbanks, Diego Castillo, like maybe get a couple Rays. I don't know, man. Maybe get a couple Marlins because somebody's going to take that Marlins, man, right? And they might be okay. Right. So there, I mean,

there's still a few interesting free agents that could jump up a lot as long as we get confirmation that they're not in a crowded bullpen situation. I think you've been concerned about Brad Hand's diminishing velocity for a little while. I still think he has the path to be a top 10 closer in the right situation. I've got him at nine right now, even without a team. Kirby Yates, if he's healthy, he's really interesting still based on the skills. I mean, we're talking about a guy that was a top three, top four, top five sort of closer in San Diego before he got hurt. I made a trade in my Dynasty League with James Anderson.

We traded a fifth round pick. And remember, this is 20 teams and we keep 28 players. So a fifth round pick is what a top 700 type situation. 650. We traded a fifth round pick for Trevor Rosenthal, who belongs on that list. It's not bad. I think Trevor Rosenthal could close somewhere.

I mean, our, our closing list, our list of closers right now, we're not going to keep all these guys, but the list that we're looking at to keep from our Presley, Lucas Sims, Trevor Rosenthal, and Hector Nera. So I think we needed to make that trade.

You know, like you kind of need at least two guys you think will close. And I think Rosenthal belongs on your list that you're making of a guy that when he has a job should be sort of top 10, top 15. I know he has the bad command, but he has excellent velocity, excellent strikeout ability. And there are teams, I think, that these guys that we're mentioning would close on. I think as much as Drew Pomerantz is fun and part of a good bullpen and they may not add to it and he may just be fine as a closer, if they put Rosenthal back on, I think you saw the proof is in the pudding

that last year they went to Rosenthal. And then there's plenty of fine bullpens. We're talking about the Braves. The rumor was on Hendricks the Braves and Astros were at least interested, and the Blue Jays. So I think the Braves and Blue Jays, I think the Astros will probably end up just being fine with Presley, but the Braves and Blue Jays represent decent bullpens that will give their team a lot of saves chances where there's no clear closer right now that if they signed a guy,

could be the closer. So if Rosenthal signs the Braves or Blue Jays, he's the closer. If he signs the Padres, maybe even. If the Nationals find somebody, they could install them as closer. The Nats are one of those teams. I don't think they have their primary closer on the roster yet could be I don't believe it I mean Hudson's been alright Tanner Rainey is the closer of the future with the big C and the big F but he's been that for a while at some point you realize that you got kind of a Dillon Batances on your hand or whatever, you know.

That's amazing, but bad command, bad health, and then all of a sudden he's used up. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one. Just start moving with the Peloton Bike, Bike Plus, Tread, Row, Guide, or App. There are thousands of classes and over 50 Peloton instructors ready to support you from the beginning. Remember, doing something is everything. Rent the Peloton Bike or Bike Plus today at onepeloton.ca slash bike slash rentals. All access memberships separate. Terms apply. So let's be clear. When it comes to shipping internationally, can I provide trade documents electronically? Mm-hmm. The answer is FedEx. Terms apply. Oh, but let's say that... FedEx. What? FedEx.

Thanks. No more questions. Always your answer for international shipping. FedEx, where now meets next. I've been having some second thoughts about James Karinczak, because I had him at eighth among relievers on the first set of rankings. When the update comes up, probably beginning of next week, likely Tuesday would be the day. I think he's outside the top 10 in part because I think putting Karinczak in that 8 spot is dismissing the possibility that Emmanuel Klasse is the closer. I mean, I think there's less that separates those guys skills-wise. And Klasse, because he missed the shortened season due to the PED suspension, is just kind of off our radar a little more than he should be.

And with Karinczak, look, the strikeouts, they've been there everywhere. It's a ridiculous strikeout rate, but you don't see a lot of guys carrying a 13% walk rate holding on to save opportunities in the long run. There's a few guys since 2019 that have got saves that do that. Matt Barnes is probably one of them that kind of stands out as maybe still being a closer. Craig Kimbrell, we've seen the problems he's gone through. Home runs on top of that with Karinczak, at least he

doesn't have the home run issue, so he can get away with it. But it's a really fine line for him to walk as a guy that, you know, command plus is not kind to him. 87 command plus number for James Karinczak as well. So I just think this year more than ever, skills with relievers don't matter quite as much to me as situations do. Like you're always looking at that and trying to balance that out. But I'm looking more for stable situations, especially in no trade situations. If you're playing in anything NFBC where you can't trade for more saves, if you need them, you want to make sure you're getting into situations where even if it's a share, I think Taylor Rogers might share some opportunities with Duffy or somebody else there.

He's probably getting two thirds or three quarters of those opportunities. He's probably that guy. That's where my confidence in someone like that comes from. With Karinczak, I think it's easy to fall in love with that K percentage and overlook the very thin margins between him and the other options in that Cleveland bullpen. Yeah, whatever we've been able to find on bullpen closing rolls, changing hands, you know, they kind of often you'll just find that these guys split the different metrics that matter.

I mean, there's not that much that matters. And what might matter is velocity, strikeout rate, and number one is what you're talking about, usage situation, right? Once the season gets going, you can get a better sense of usage. Before the season, you're kind of trying to figure out usage through manager's comments. And, you know, a lot of times that's full of obfuscation and maybe outright lies. You know, this guy's got the role or this guy's got the role, and then it turns out they don't. But in terms of strikeout rate and velocity, Klasse owns the velocity. Karinczak, for some reason, owns the strikeout rate, but he's more volatile because of that walk rate. I think Klasse, his deal is he might have a 70%

ground ball rate. I think that Steamer's projected 50% ground ball rate is low. I think there's something about that heavy 99 mile an hour. It's like a cut. It's not a sinker, but there's something about how the fastball cuts, the slider cuts. It it's 99 we know that 99 mile an hour fastballs uh suppress home runs so i think steamer's got the home run rate wrong and the ground ball rate wrong and so uh class a could definitely come out there and give up a half a homer per nine walk half as many people as torrent shack and maybe not strike out as many but you know almost along the sort of column a lines of just sort of like i'm going to suppress balls and play no one's going to be really be able to do much with this and um i'm going to be the closer so there's also somewhat we haven't really found too much evidence but but I think the Rays are evidence of this, where teams will move the saves around

with an eye for arbitration. And, you know, since Karinczak had the full season last year and somehow got through it with only one save, he can be cheap. What if you give him a whole season, another season without any saves? Then you keep him cheap.

And maybe you use Class A for saves next year, and then you trade him. Right? And then you still have Karinczak cheap. So there's a lot of stuff going on. I think there is some risk with Karinczak. But given the names that we were just batting around, I think it's hard to push him out of the top 15 or anything. The closer episode when we get to our positional preview series

is going to be just lovely. Looking forward to that one. One more situation, though, I do want to get to on this episode because you mentioned this in passing. The A's actually have two of the heavy usage reliever seasons that were guys that they leaned on and then let go. Blake Trinan was the other one. He's going back to the Dodgers.

And I wonder, based on how things ended last season with Kenley Jansen, if this is finally the year where we see a changing of the guard with their closer spot, whether that be something similar to the Rays, where a few different guys are involved, an actual committee, or if Jansen just ends up in a less prominent role and someone like Trinan emerges to be their primary option for the ninth inning. I have two names for you. One of them's weird.

Austin Barnes. Do you remember when Yosemite Grandal could not catch for the Dodgers in the postseason and Austin Barnes started every game and we were like, whoa, this is untenable. You gotta downgrade Y Yasmany Grandal. And then the season started and Yasmany Grandal was the

catcher again. And the other name is Kenley Jansen. I was already done this before. Like, Kenley Jansen before. Kenley Jansen convinced us that he'd lost it the year that they lost to the Astros?

I think it was the Astros World Series, yeah. Because remember, he was giving up bombs to the Red Sox even? Yeah, he gave up 22 home runs between 2018 and 2019 combined in those two regular seasons. And yet, when the season starts, they go back that Jansen's going to be the guy who does like, you know, three inning, um, uh,

three, three out lead by two or three, you know, here's your easy save opportunity. Um, and he'll lose some save opportunities when he, they either put them into a tie game or they don't put them in a tie game. And they just tell them,

Oh, we're just playing the matchups tonight. Trying and has a super sinker. It's a one-run game. This guy can't hit sinkers. Kenley, you're the closer to tomorrow night. So I do think that Jansen's save total is a little bit at risk.

But I don't think that... I kind of see him as like a... If he falls in drafts, I kind of see him like I took him last year as one of the back end of the front end guys. You know what I mean? As like a fifth closer off the board kind of situation. And I was happy with him.

And he may not do another season where he got 40 saves. But I think could he do what he did in 2019 again where he had a 3-7-1 E 371 era and 33 saves yeah it's not going to be amazing but it's it's value it could be value if he's outside the top 10 consistently among closers which puts him probably in the 130 to 150 range adp wise you could talk yourself into it but i do think you want to lower your expectations your ceiling expectations for kenley jansen saves were probably in the 40s before, at his peak. And they're probably in the mid to high 30s even more recently. Now I think you're looking at mid 20s as your expectation.

As expectation. All right. And ceiling is 30, 35. If you were making a prop bet, where would you put the over-under number for total saves for Jansen in a full regular season? I'd probably put it around 23.5 would be my number if I were the odds maker. Yeah, I might go to like 28.5 or something. But all right. Yeah. Yeah, I hear you. He got a little bit of that velo back.

But because he's now down to 92 miles an hour, steamer projections do have a fastball VLO in it. And it's kind of amazing because his strikeout rate has never been lower than 28%. And he's projected for 25% next year. But he's 33. The VLO is down. It's certainly possible. Yeah. I mean, it definitely is.

The would-you-rathers in this case would be, would you rather have Kenley Jansen or Taylor Rodgers? They're right next to each other in ADP right now. And there's something in me that says Jansen, man. I just think he's the oatmeal reliever at this point. There's something about him where he's just good enough. He's fine. He won't end the season as a top three, four, five closer, but I kind of think he's just the Dodgers guy. They're going to find a way to...

I think they're going to find a way to rewrite history when he finishes and say he was the closer since the minute he was the closer and he never lost his job. And people would be like, what? And they'll be like, shh, he never lost his job. You know what I mean?

Yeah, it's kind of true, mostly true on the BS meter. Right, right. It's generally true, but not absolute. And it's not just that he went to driveline. I'm not that much in the tank of the driveline, but I like the fact that he went to dryline as a representation of his effort to do something different you know right hey it's not the i'm 32 i can do what i want approach going into last season it's i gotta do something to stay in the game and through more

yeah through more sinkers than he ever had last year you know there's still some opportunity for that slider to be better so I'd like Jansen. He might be on some teams this year. I totally see all the flaws, I think. I just have to make sure I don't overreach for him. He's going to go right in that spot where if you haven't drafted a closer yet, you're going to talk yourself into reaching a little

bit because you feel good about him. He's the Callahan auto guarantee on the box closer where you feel just a little warm and good about him he's the that's where i'm calahan auto guarantee on the box closer where you just you feel just a little warm and fuzzy inside because he seems safe i can take a bump in a box see i said the actual word there yeah right i was just watching that over break we were watching with the kids we were like uh kids can you go do something else a couple spots yeah a couple spots you gotta send the kids out of the room for uh for that one a lot of great emails came in in the last couple of weeks so we're kind of plucking away at those

on a show-by-show basis the first one for today comes from peter he writes high rates and barrels i want to ask you about a few late round pitchers who enjoyed mini breakouts in 2020. You were all over Spencer Turnbull, for example, and the results were mostly good, but did what he showed in 2020 make you think you can do it again or even build on it? The other pitchers I was thinking of are Justice Sheffield and Eliezer Hernandez. Eliezer in particular, I remember Eno being down on, and I see the below average Velo in just two primary pitches, at least from my eye test. It looks like his fastball walks a tightrope, but he also pulled

off a 27k-bb and a 13% swinging strike rate. So he kind of splits down the middle of the pitching stats you guys tend to focus on. The slider is a different shape, but is he like a little riskier Patrick Corbin? So we'll kind of go through these guys one at a time. Turnbull, I think, was always pretty

interesting because of the depth of his arsenal. I think that was one thing that you pointed out about him. And I think something else I stumbled into when we were looking at the third time through the order splits, Spencer Turnbull has pretty good third time through the order splits, which gives me some hope. Related to size of his arsenal. So that gives me some hope that he could be one of the higher-volume, mid-late-round-type starters, right? If we're talking about a year in which teams might be using more six-man rotations or carefully monitoring workloads, going to their bullpens earlier,

there are going to be a few guys that surge up to take on larger roles because they're built for it. And Turnbull ticks a lot of those boxes. Let's put aside volume because we're going to, that's next on the rundown. I actually read the rundown for once. It's next dollar. So, and I think it's, it's an excellent conversation. This is going to take us away from these actual pictures, right?

There's a lot to unpack with that. And I think that's maybe one of the big ticket items on this podcast is just this discussion because there's a lot going on. There's some good pieces and some good thinking going on today. I just wanted to be specific about Turnbull in terms of why I like him.

You know, he has a 107 stuff number. Ethan Moore gave me his stuff recently. It's basically in line with Zach Wheeler, but also in line with Hyunjin Ryu, who I think Turnbull could become. A guy who has good command of a lot of different pitches. Hyunjin Ryu has 114 command plus, Turnbull has 102, But they both have really wide arsenals, good stuff, and above average command at least. He's right there with Carlos Carrasco in terms of stuff, a little bit slightly better command plus. He's a little bit behind Shane Bieber and Pablo Lopez in terms of just these metrics.

So I think he's in a really excellent spot, you know, in terms of this guy has above average stuff and this guy has above average command. I'm going to make him above average. Now, obviously, yes, you talk about strikeouts minus walks. They're not they weren't that good last year. In fact, they were below average. I think average around 12 percent strikeouts minus walks, and he was at 9%. So that part worries me a little bit. I did watch a lot of games where he's trying to live high in the zone with the four seam,

and sometimes the command wasn't there, or sometimes he's going above the zone and hitters are not reaching at it. But I still go back to above-average stuff, above-average command, and now there's this little bit of this opportunity where he has a new pitching coach and he's been identified as a seam-shifted weight guy. And so he's one of these guys that throws a four-seam and a two-seam. The two-seam really benefits. They show the same observed axis on Hawkeye. So in terms of spin axis, his four-seam and his two-seam come out spinning the same way. And yet there's a massive difference in movement on them because of the

grip. And that's basically what seam shifted wake is. So I wonder if there's maybe some more ride to be found in his foreseam. And again, I just go back to that big arsenal. There's opportunities there for, I think a pitching coach would love to work with someone like Spencer Turnbull because they'd be like, this guy's pretty good command, pretty good stuff. And he has so many pitches.

Tweaking one of those pitches might really unlock something. So I'm not going to push him too hard, but he's definitely going to be in my top 75. He might be in my top 60. Is that sort of where you got him? I got him at 89 right now. Okay, so I'm a little bit more excited.

But I don't want to push him too hard because the projections are for a 460 ERA. He had the bad strikeout minus walk rate. Those things do matter. He does not have amazing fastball velo, but at 94, it's above average. So I'm going to push him into my top 75. I believe in it. Yeah, I mean, we've said this before. When you're looking at rankings, the further down the list you go,

like the more flimsy the arguments become to keep one guy even 20 spots ahead of the other. If you said Turnbull over Matt Boyd makes sense to you for 2021, I don't think I'd fight you on that, even though I've got Boyd at 70 and Turnbull at 89. Yeah, I think I'd take Turnbull over Boyd. So, Elisir Hernandez has basically average stuff and average command. I just have to tell you, man, that slider he throws is the weirdest pitch I've seen in baseball i put it on my list of weird

pitches and i think it was actually the inspiration for the list of weird pitches uh the way the best way i can describe his slider and i don't even know what to cut it to call it but the best way i can describe elizabethan andrews slider is a cutter that goes 79 miles an hour. It's a cutter that goes curved speed. Yeah. I don't see a lot of those. I don't think there's another pitch like it. I don't know what to do with that.

Yeah, I think that the first time you see that, you're like, what the hell? But eventually you're like, well, it doesn't move much and it doesn't go hard. So if I see something soft out of the hand, I just have to train myself to think that it's not going to drop. It's like a floater. It's weird though. He also has a change,

or at least a pitch that gets recognized as a change, but the usage on that dropped. He went from 11.4% in 2019 down to 6% in the shortened season. And it has just as boring movement. In fact, it might actually mirror his slide, whatever that thing is, his breaking ball, because it has the exact same movement just in the other direction. Maybe he could use it. I mean, the stuff same movement just in the other direction maybe i mean maybe he could

use it uh i mean the stuff number still comes in above average i'm looking at the game log and he actually got maybe he was he a covid guy because he didn't see a team twice last year and i just that's what i'm worried about i'm worried about what happens the second time he sees a team because i feel like the first time they'll be like what was that the second time he sees a team. Because I feel like the first time they'll be like, what was that? And the second time they'll be like, yo, I'm ready to hit that. The season ended with a lat injury. That was in September. I'm going to really struggle with this ranking,

man. I'm going to... He's behind Turnbull for me, and he'll be in the top 100. He'll be maybe in the top 90. But I don't think I'm as excited to put him in my top 75. I had him ahead of Turnbull in my initial rankings because the K rate was great last year,

but we're talking about 25 and two-thirds innings. It's really not much. That's not much at all to base anything off of. So they're obviously same tier, same part of the conversation for sure. But yeah, did not miss time with COVID, which given the Marlins outbreak is surprising when a player wasn't directly impacted by that. It was just that lat injury that knocked him out at the end of the year. Two starts against the same team in the same season in 2019.

The second try was not as good. The Dodgers torched him for six runs in six innings the second time they saw him. Atlanta chased him out after four innings. Only one run, but the strikeout minus walk rate wasn't the same. The Nationals got four runs off of six innings the second time they saw him. I think he's best suited to some sort of Yuzmira Petit-ish usage out of the pen where his weird stuff gets him through the order once and he can maybe pitch a couple innings because he's built up as a starter,

I think that's where he's headed. It's not a bad long-term outcome for someone like that, but it would be disappointing if you draft him as a starter in 2021 and he loses the job and damages your ratios on his way to the pen. I don't see a lot of people itching to take his job unless they sign somebody.

The sort of starters that could take his job but aren't in the rotation right now are jordan yamamoto who just has awful stuff in command numbers let me see if i even have any uh 85 stuff 82 command i mean he that reminds me of like Luke Casey, man. Those are some of the worst numbers I've seen. Then there's Rasta Twyler, who's just a dude. And then you've got Braxton Garrett, who made the roster and didn't pitch in the postseason. Pitched 7.2 innings last year, coming back from Tommy John, you'd have to hear something.

You'd have to see something. Braxton Garrett would have to be having a great spring to push Hernandez out of the rotation. For what it's worth, I think Hernandez has the stuff. This might be somewhat of a segue into the next thing. I don't see the Marlins as having the personnel to do a six-man rotation or limit

these innings significantly. Right. You have to have depth to pull that off. I actually think the biggest threat to a bad starter in Miami, if we're going to call Eliezer Hernandez that or anybody else that they bring in to take a spot in the back, I think it's Edward Cabrera.

Yes, there it is. He had some right shoulder discomfort. That's the name that's not on this thing I'm looking at. Geez, yeah. I do like him. He touches triple digits, like electric stuff. He's possibly their best starter. There's a chance that he comes up and does things that exceed even what Sixto Sanchez could do.

To me, that's within the range of possibilities for Cabrera. Yeah, yeah. Was there another name on that list? Yes, one more. Justice Sheffield. Oh, yeah. just as Sheffield. Oh, yeah.

Sheffield, the one risk I think with Sheffield is just a possible sort of bad fastball situation, I guess. It's not an amazing fastball. He went to the sinker and had a lot of success with it. But the list of sinker forward starters that are very successful right now is very short. His best skill, too, looks like it might be avoiding barrels, which

is a good skill. I like that as a secondary trait, not necessarily the thing that gives me confidence. I've got him outside my top 100 among starters. I think he does have a job. I think there's reason to believe he could get a little better because

it's not just two pitches. He's actually got three that he throws even if the fastball is not good. I don't want to say he's without any sort of glimmer of hope, but if you're not in my top 100, there's a decent chance that

you're only on my team and like an AL only league. Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, he's the kind of guy I like a lot better in AL only. Um, I will say that, uh, he's got a one Oh six, uh, stuff numbers. I will also say that in previous iterations of stuff numbers, um, sinker guys have been a slightly overvalued. Um, he has has just below league average command last year. So those are good. Those will probably keep him in the top 100 for me.

If you look at his Brooks page, you'll notice that his changeup and slider, neither of them got league average whiffs last year. 14% on the slide or 7% on the changeup. So he's lacking in the whiffs category, which is obvious from his strikeout rate. But, you know, the ground ball rate's really high. And if he keeps the home run rate low because the sinker is actually legit, low because the sinker is actually legit. That'll be the way he turns a 4-5 projection into a 4-0-5. That's where I see him. I see him as a 3-9-4-0-5.

You're lucky if you get a strikeout branding from him. Back-end deep league starter. Top 100, but not top 75. I feel like you're describing brad keller like if you get excited about brad keller in your league maybe justice sheffield going a bit later is the kind of guy that can brad keller by the way is actually the seam shifted weight guy um there are you know there's a list it's a really interesting list um that glenn healy who's a really interesting list that Glenn Healy, who's an electrical engineering computer science guy who does a lot of work with Alan Nathan, with MLB, and with Baseball Perspectives. He did a piece where he basically took Magnus Force out, which is the force on the ball that sort of pushes upwards. It's the lift force.

And then he took, uh, drag out. Um, and he basically said, seam shifted wake is what's missing. So I took the drag force out and I took the gravity force out and seam shifted wake is the effect of the seams and the number, uh, 13, Brad Keller's number 13. However, according to Barton Smith, Brad Keller's unique because all three of his pitches benefit from seam shifted wake in different ways. That might be why he's managed to be really decent despite just utterly horrid strikeout minus

walk rates. I mean, for a career, he's at 7%. League average is 12. He should be worse than he is. So I think, you know, I don't want to say, though, it's not like everybody who has season-restricted weight is good. Let me give you the list. Come on. Here it is. These are side force movement leaders on the sinker.

Lance Lynn, Kyle Hendricks, Adrian Hauser, Lance McCullers, Jared Hughes, Dane Dunning, Gregory Soto, Zach Britton, Frankie Montas, Corbin Burnswell. Actually, these are all pretty good pitchers. Those guys are all more good than bad, or at least the one thing they have in common is they've almost all exceeded expectations relative to just general stuff. And look at this part of the list. Those guys are all more good than bad, or at least the one thing they have in common is they've almost all exceeded expectations. They have. They really have.

General stuff. And look at this part of the list. Alec Mills, Justice Sheffield, Spencer Turdball, Brad Keller, Aaron Savali. Wow. Well, that was kind of fun. Side force leaders on changeup. Pablo Lopez. I don't know who Phillips Valdez is.

Kyle Gibson, Zach Gallin, Luis Castillo, Dylan Bundy uh luke weaver dallas keitel logan webb carlos carasco these are all good change-ups side force movements leaders and curve this is a weird it's very short framer valdez jose barrios they have good curves side force moving these are cutter lester wander serrero you say kukuchi, Ryan Yarbrough, Trevor Bauer, Will Harris. It's not bad. So anyway, I still don't want to say that it just means they're good. But the leaders are pretty interesting. I think it's particularly interesting with someone like Keller who people have literally asked, what is it that you see in him?

This is when I draft him in a really deep league, and it's like really mostly just innings. But results that defy our expectations, maybe this helps satisfy an explanation as to how they're doing it, how they might be inducing a lot of weak contact, avoiding barrels, right? Like quantifying the magnitude of that skill or giving us a peek behind the curtain as to how exactly they're doing that. And maybe it means it's a little more sustainable for someone

like Brad Keller. It's not just luck. There is something to what he's able to do limiting damage. I want to get to the six-man rotation question because there was a piece that Ben Clemens wrote over at Fangraphs today on some of the costs and benefits. And really, if teams are trying to cap individual workloads of starters, this is one way to do it. You can knock about 30 or so innings off of everybody's total. Obviously, you don't have to distribute innings evenly and how you have a bullpen built behind your starters can enable you to change the shape of each starter's workload anyway. But the key to making it work really is having a sick starter who doesn't destroy your chances to

win. And that's a legitimate concern for a lot of teams out there that might be even greater than their desire to be careful with workloads. You can still be careful with workloads without using that sick starter. This isn't the only way to do it. It's just one way to do it. So my question for you is, how many teams are going to actually employ a six-man rotation for more than a temporary stretch in 2021 based on how they're structured, how they run their organization? Do you see this being something that more than a handful of teams actually do? Seattle kind of fits in as a team that will almost certainly do it for a while. And it kind of makes sense when you look at the number of arms they have.

You run through their depth chart. Marco Gonzalez up top, Yusei Kikuchi, Justice Sheffield, who we talked about, Nick Margevicius, just kind of a guy, Chris Flexen, who they brought back from the KBO. Justin Dunn, LJ Newsome. And they've got prospects that are close, George Kirby, Logan Gilbert. It kind of makes sense for them. I can get on board with Seattle doing it, but a lot of teams don't have depth quite like that where it makes sense to me. Yeah. There's a chart in, in his piece. And Ben Clemens is,

um, I love his stuff. He does really good stuff over at fan graph. Sometimes it gets a little bit mathy if, if that's, uh, too much for you. So we'll break it down for you.

But if you do love that stuff, read Ben Clemens. Um, and, uh, he, he thinks really interestingly, has interesting questions. He has a chart in here that says six starter costs by team

and it's the ERA gap between kind of the top five and the six or seven starter. And I think this is an excellent chart because it shows you the depth. It basically just shows you depth in a very concrete manner. The projected depth between sort between the top five and what comes beyond that. And you'll see that the Mariners actually are near the bottom of this in terms of depth, probably

because of how you would project a lot of those young guys. You wouldn't project Gilbert and Kirby to be good without Major League numbers. You wouldn't project a guy coming back from the KBO necessarily to be great. You know, so there's, there's certain, there's maybe a quirk of the projection,

but also given where they are in the wind cycle, you can kind of say, okay. And then on top of that, they said they're going to do it. Right. So the Mariners said they're going to do it. You can put them on a list like that. The Tigers said, they're going to do it. You're going to put them on a list like that. Now you look at the teams that have the least amount of six starter costs. So the best depth, the Royals, the Orioles. Okay. So I think the Royals will do it. You know? So you think of that. So let's put the Royals on the list. It's possible the Orioles do it. The next group is the Angel Giants and Rangers. I think

at least one of those teams will do it. I think the Giants started out last year with six-man rotation. So I think it's possible that the Giants or Rangers do it. Angels, I don't know, because they're trying to win. And then it gets real muddy when you get to the Angels, the Twins, the Athletics, the Phillies, the Braves. They have some depth, but they also want to win right now, right? So they may not want to cost themselves that. They may not want to put their sixth starter out there unless they have to. And teams will have to use their sixth starter eventually anyway because of injury. So I think that for those teams, they'll just hold on to that sixth starter

and use them when they have to. They don't want to start Kyle Wright every fifth day. They'll use Kyle Wright when they need to, you know, when Drew Smiley goes down or whatever. So that's how I think they'll act. And then there's the teams that have no depth that want to win this year, which are the the White Sox, the Yankees, the Astros, the Nationals and Padres. That's the bottom five teams in terms of depth. They're built to win now. They want all five of their guys to stay healthy.

They don't want to use their sixth starter ever, and they'll use it when they have to. So you can sort of look at that depth chart, think in your head, watch the news, and sort of say, okay, these are the teams that might do six-man. These might limit. These teams are going for it. They don't have any depth and you can kind of put together maybe some sort of team factor of like what the innings will look like. But on top of that, you want to do, uh, an injury factor. So you want to think of like, you know, in my piece, I said, the Mets have the, uh, highest injury factor, right? So you, and then each of these players have injury factors.

Carlos Carrasco has a fairly high injury factor. So you have to, and even somebody like Noah Syndergaard coming back from injury will have a very high injury factor. So you'll have these personal injury factors and you'll have this team factor based on what they're going to do about innings. And this is the struggle because I was talking to Derek Rhodes about this online. He's really struggling for that word. Where else would you talk to him?

Yeah, right. Exactly. And he said what he struggles with is he doesn't want to double count. You know what I mean? Like, he doesn't want to double bang somebody for innings. You know?

This is what he said. Derek Rhodes said, I want to make sure I don't double penalize players, lower their IP projections, and then subjectively lower them based on team situation. And there's gonna be a third factory, maybe you lower everyone's IP, right? So let's say you lower everyone's IP across the board, because you just think that's what the baseball is going to do. And then you say, okay, well, I have to further lower the Mariners and Tigers and Royals because that's what they're going to do. And then, oh, this guy has a high injury risk on the Royals.

I have to further lower him. Where's that guy going to end up? With a 90-inning projection? And you binged him three times for that. So it's very difficult. I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to have a developed with Jeff Zimmerman like an injury factor for pitchers where there's a percentile of injury risk. And that's going to be a yellow-green-red flag. I may force a yellow flag on teams that have admitted they're going to do six-man rotations.

Because that flag will be basically an innings risk flag. I wonder just comparing a six-man rotation to actually using tandem starters. If you have two guys you're particularly worried about, why not tandem start them instead of reducing the starts for everybody? Is that a more effective way to keep everybody on a regular schedule, but to also, you know, not expose yourself to this, this penalty of having your sixth best starter, who in some cases actually is really bad or quite a bit worse than your other guys. That's,

that's the key to the table. The Royals fit this because as Ben points out in the piece, singer, minor boobage, Keller and Duffy project for a four 70 ERA. So June is projecting for a four 87 is not that different from the five guys they rely on. But for the Nationals, Austin Voth or Eric Fetty or whoever that sixth guy is, his projected ERA compared to Scherzer and Strasburg and Corbin and the other guys that were good, that's a bigger gap. Just because the core starters there are a lot better than kansas city's

core starters so i just wonder if the the better workaround is actually just to tandem start at the back end of the rotation and get through it that way because then you're still getting the innings you want from the better pitchers and maximizing the effectiveness of your lower quality guys instead of trying to work them like a regular starter or giving them an early hook and draining your bullpen going into a new series or going into the restart of your rotation? Yeah. I mean, right now it's like it gets really kind of unique to each team almost, right? Because the Padres are kind of a hybrid of the two different teams that you were talking about where they're a little bit more like the Nationals and they have a great team, but they have also more depth. I think the Padres are the perfect situation for Tandem doing something there because Morhan's already been used in these sort of two to three inning stretches.

And you can either you can go into spring and say Gore is going to be the other two or three innings or Lucchese's improved something or Weathers is ready to go. And you've got these two guys and they kind of combine for a start. You have to see what that does to your bullpen. It has something to do with how big the rosters are that seems more tenable in a 26 plus man roster type situation than it does on a 25 man roster. But the Dodgers, I think, could do something similar with May and Gonsolin, right? Because now with Price, Uriz, Kershaw, and Buehler, they've got top four. But with May and Gonsolin, either install May and just let him go or do something where you had your bets with Gonsolin. But the Yankees might be able to do something on that

with Davey Garcia and Michael King and Clark Schmidt, where they just sort of combine for a roster splatter, too. And what you need to do is they need to be young. You need to be able to you need to be able to promote and demote them right where you demote them to basically soften their innings at some point. Yeah. And then you have to. So they have to have options. Does Tyler Molle still have options? I think you just have to set him in. Yeah, I don't think he has options anymore. So I think you put Tyler Molle in that rotation, he has to be in that rotation. Who are you going to play around with? Lorenzen and TJ

Antone? That's one one spot it's possible. Um, I don't know from a workload standpoint, what the right answer is for all this either. And I think that's one of the things that people throw their hands up a little bit on health. The, the thing that you want to do is you want to build up, um, you want to build up with regular work so that your your day game work like the the game day work is is you're you're ready for it you definitely don't want to like not pitch at all and not throw it all for five days and then throw uh five or six or seven innings on game day that's why they have bullpen sessions and throwing in between all that stuff. So throwing is good. Like you want to throw, but throwing in games is stressful.

So you have to just balance that somehow. And also, then you have to think about this. Veterans, more than anybody told me, like Jeff Samarja, other veterans have told me, I don't want to go out of my process. I've been an every five day starter. This is where I'm comfortable. I want to do it this way. And so if you're going to take a guy and then say, no, you have to do it this way,

I don't know if that's going to work with veterans. So it has to do with how many young guys you have at the back end of your rotation and how good they are. That's going to be some sort of toggle that's going to be hard to figure out. Yeah. I think for me, the tandem starter gives you flexibility though, because you want to know when you're going to work. If you lose a start, if your team like San Diego, they're a great example. I think you said on the last episode, they have the most injury risk, or maybe they were second to like the Mets in terms of total injury risk in their starting rotation. If you lose a starter, you lose one of those top four guys. You lose Snell or Darvish or Lamette or Paddock, you want someone ready to go stretched out who's been facing big league hitters ideally to take that spot.

If you're tandem starting in the fifth spot, guys are throwing 65, 70, 75 pitches, they can step right in and then start and continue to work on regular rest. You might have to bullpen it one time through based on when the injury happens and off days and everything, but you have guys already there who are more prepared than if they were pitching at AAA, facing crappy AAA hitters or being in a goofy, high altitude sort of environment. And I think that flexibility

is going to be huge because you can shift roles around so much easier. If you need to go to six at some point, your five and six are closer to stretched out that way. There's so many different ways you can move things around if you build in a tandem spot as part of your five. And I think you can get away with less skilled guys working in tandem than you can trying to use them more like traditional starters, stretching them out over a full six-day sort of rotation. I think also the thing with tandem starting is that you're kind of betting that one of them at some point answers the question for you, right? I think so, yeah. I mean, that's something that even came up in this piece was that, yeah, you are losing something.

There aren't that many teams that have a sixth guy that's just as good as their top five. But there is enough sort of give in pitcher projections and a lot of variance in pitcher performance from year to year. So there is a little bit of like, okay, who's got it this year? All right, you're the fifth starter congratulations so there may be some feeling out uh process on some teams where somebody wins out in the end suffice it to say this though i like i don't think there's gonna be that many people that throw 200 innings this this year coming up um i don't think that any innings projections will be amazing no we're we're all guessing a lot more than usual

as a result of what we just saw and that's what like i i asked a guy who works on this for a team, an analyst that works in this sort of capacity about like how they are setting innings limits for next year. And he said, in the past, we didn't know what we're doing. And now we really don't know what we're doing, because in the past, we would just look at stuff and be like, oh, the industry standard is add 10 to 20 percent. And if there are no if there are no red flags on any of his stuff, then we'll just add the 10 to 20 percent and if there are no um if there are no red flags on any of his stuff then we'll just add the 10 to 20 percent right we don't know why it's 10 to 20 percent that's just what we do and now well we can't add 10 to 20 percent that won't be enough we have to get through the season somehow so we're gonna really be uh flying by the seat of our pants and if that's what people are doing in baseball

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