Rates & Barrels - Luis Castillo's Ace Case, Stuff+ Risers & First-Half Pitching Movers

Episode Date: July 7, 2022

Eno and DVR discuss Luis Castillo's case for 'ace' status and the possibility that he's the best pitcher moved at the August trade deadline before examining other Stuff+ risers from June to July, and a few big movers on the pitching front from the first half of the season.  Rundown -- It Starts (Intro Music) -- Luis Castillo's Recent Changes -- Castillo as a Seasonal Streamer? -- Taijuan Walker's First-Half Adjustments -- Jackson Kowar: Deep League Help in the Second Half? -- Is Mike Clevinger 'Back'? -- Other Recent Stuff+ Risers -- Sandy Alcántara's Continued Ascent -- Trust Level in Luis Severino's Health? -- Kyle Wright: Long-Term SP2? -- Framber Valdez is Better Than DVR Thought -- Joe Ryan v. Projections & The Model -- Shane Bieber 3.0? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Whoa, what are you listening to this for? Wait, who's talking? You know you're driving a 2024 Ford Escape with available Alexa built-in, so you can change the music. Oh yeah. Alexa, change station to 99.2. See? Purchase a 2024 Escape ST-Line all-wheel drive with Tech Pack at 3.49% APR for 72 months with down payment. That's just $267 bi-weekly. Cash value of $40,294. Plus, eligible Ford owners get a $1,000 bonus. For details, visit your local Ford store or Ford.ca.

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Thursday, July 7th. Derek Van Ryper, Eno Saris here. On this episode, we are digging into some big movers among pitchers. We're going to take a look at some notable June to July stuff plus risers. Taking a look at Eno's pitching model. See who's doing things a bit better now than they were earlier in the season we'll talk about some big picture movers as well players that have significantly increased their value on the pitching side compared to where they were back during draft season and at least one faller that i think is worth talking about a player we haven't talked a

lot about in the first half of the season now that we have more information i think it's worth revisiting what we've seen from him along the way. Maybe a few mailbag questions at the end, but probably none of those today. Cause I think this conversation, much like the one on Tuesday is going to run a little bit on the long side. So us,

no, never. No, we talk way too much. Maybe it's almost, it's almost like we need to have more episodes, but shorter episodes. That would be the sweet spot. Would that be a thing

that people would like? If that would make people happy, let us know somehow. Don't send an email though. There's a lot of emails right now. Use Twitter. Like the tweet for this podcast. If you don't normally like the tweet, take a moment to like the tweet

and then we'll know, oh, this got way more than seven likes today. That's all I got. I think I've got a good sense for what would make the audience happy. We do have the metrics. The metrics tell us that most of you all fall asleep after 45 minutes. Right. So maybe we should stop talking for longer than 45 minutes and just have an extra conversation here or there that scratches the itch. But we'll look at the notable movers in Stuff Plus.

I used the very Derek way of doing this. I took the June, I think it was June 5th, like the first Stuff Plus number from June andth, like the first Stuff Plus number from June and compared it to the first Stuff Plus number in July and then put it into a big spreadsheet and found the biggest movers. And the biggest mover among starters appears to be Luis Castillo with my very sloppy method that could have easily chopped off a starter who is bad but got, you know, a little better along the way but castillo is

interesting because he's one of those guys that i don't i don't usually believe in first half second half splits or cold weather players and warm other players but i don't think it's a total situation to ignore and castillo now has this multi-year track record of early season struggles and I'm curious if there's something in the model and the underlying numbers that you see with Castillo that points to this being more than just the weather getting warmer and velo ticking up and things that we often associate with players who might struggle at the beginning of a season. season yeah you know the weird thing about castillo is you know yes the the the weather is up the the weather is warmer and the fastball's up again uh that is uh probably the biggest part of this because uh his fastball stuff plus foreseen fastball stuff plus was in the 80s uh in april and uh in his last outing was 127

jeez uh so you know sometimes uh two ticks as he's gotten uh since april two plus ticks is a lot um you know and then you know the what's also interesting is that as the season has gone on uh he's used the four seam more so he kind of is like a fundamentally different pitcher the beginning and end of the season because he he knows that he doesn't have the velo on the four seam early so he doesn't use it as much uh early in the early goings he's using it 12 15 20 of the time he used it 50 of the time against against atlanta last time out that's just like who is this this is supposed to be a sinker guy so i mean one of one of the things that we like about Luis Castillo is he's a four-pitch guy.

Four-pitch guy means in any given game or any given part of the season, he can feature one of the different pitches. He can change how often he uses them or when he uses them so he can keep players at bay. Four-pitch guy means he can turn the lineup over more, and his third his third three true out cannot three true out third time through the order penalty is lesser because he has four pitches not three or two um so these are all good things there was a good piece in the pitchers pitcher list article about the fact that he uses a four seam and a two seam and something

we've talked about here is that that's a possible way to maybe even outdo the model or just to throw different looks at batters. Cameron Grove, though, the author of another Stuff Plus model, went out and looked to see if guys who both throw a four- and a two seam out did his model and he found no evidence of that so I don't know if we need to just keep scratching at that idea maybe it has to be two four seam and a two seam like he looked at four seam and two seam thrown 10% of the time both and 20% blah blah and didn't find anything I wonder if it has to be of a certain quality like if you have a good enough quality four seam and two seam uh then you kind of unlock a cheat code but in

case uh luis castillo in the warmer months is just fundamentally a different pitcher than he is in the colder months because as he gets more velo on his four seam he uses it more so uh it's kind of a kind of a duh thing like oh yeah it's better with more velo use it more. So it's kind of a kind of a duh thing. Like, oh, yeah, it's better with more velo. Use it more. But it also just means he's a different guy. I don't know how to make that actionable, though. You know, like because it's such a it's such a. Whoa.

Geez. Well, I'm going to bring up the bleep. It's just such an obvious. It's such an obvious split. And it's such an obvious thing that happens every year that you're not gonna be you're not gonna be able to actually like do anything with it like oh yeah buy luis castillo low in may luis castillo owner is like yeah i know what you're doing they know because they've seen the pattern before what what have you what have you uh i guess here's one thing you could do you could draft luis castillo and treat him as a streamer early you think you can dodge those raindrops though

okay could we have this year should we play the start don't start i'm gonna guess again you can pull up the game log okay milwaukee at home wrong milwaukee at home start don't start. I'm going to guess. Again, you can pull up the game log. Okay, Milwaukee at home. I'm going to guess we would have been wrong. Milwaukee at home. Start, don't start. Don't look at the game log. I'm going to do it. Milwaukee at home.

Start, don't start. This is the very beginning of the season? Yeah. I would have used them. I wouldn't have. Milwaukee at home? Cincinnati. I'd be more careful.

So that's less than five innings, three earned runs. So that, in my treatment, if you're a little bit more conservative, let's say more conservative than you, then you avoided a stinker. At Pittsburgh. Definitely would have used them. Both starting. I'm not going to lie. Five innings, three earned.

A little bit better of a start, but not much better. At Toronto, no, right? That would have been a no if I had gone in with a plan of just being careful with them early in the season, yeah. So I would have missed that start. Six innings, two earned, five strikeouts, zero walks. That's close. I'd want that.

It's indoors. Cubs at home. Cubs at home cubs at home i would have used them this year i would use them for sure because the cubs okay five or five uh five innings two earned not bad this is funny so if you're gonna be a conservative at boston in april i think you'd say no based on the weather that would have been a no right based on the matchup it would have been a maybe i still probably would have erred on using him previously but if in this construct this would have been a possible a clear sit because it would have been 45 50 degrees maybe yeah six innings 10 punchies no runs one hit i think this gets back to the, even with some reasoning, you're still more likely to miss on these decisions.

I think, okay, so here's the last play. Just draft Luis Castillo because he's cheaper than he should be and he's a decent pitcher. Yeah, and just know that you're going to get more of the quality later than you probably will in April. Okay, well, I'll avoid the frigid tough starts, but I'm not going to go overboard. But at Toronto, it was a tough matchup, but weather-wise, it's indoors. You're not worried about how cold it is on game day. So, I don't know. The other asterisk for him is just that he might get traded right well

here's the thing you brought it up on the 3-0 show that went up on thursday is luis castillo an ace i think is the way you frame the question and i think there's a million ways to try and define an ace but if you go back to 2019 let's go back to the year of the rabbit ball, and let's set the minimum innings pitched at 200. Luis Castillo is 11th in war among pitchers. Wow. There are no bad pitchers ahead of him. Wheeler, Cole, Scherzer, DeGrom, Bieber, Nola, Morton, Lance Lynn, Corbin Burns,

who with innings, of course, would be higher on the list. He strikes me a little bit more as a Lance Lynn than a Corbin Burns. Well, of all the pitchers on that top 11, Castillo has the highest walk rate, so he stands out in a bad way there, but he misses bats the way. Yeah, it's not a bad walk rate. For the whole time, it's a little high, but it might be a little better right now. He's kind of, I don't know, he kind of looks like Giolito in the

peripherals. Giolito with a better home run rate? That's more or less what Luis Castillo has been. Probably the best starting pitcher on the market. I think so, yeah. And you get one more year of him after this. I think the Reds should trade him because I think the demand is going to be very high. What if he goes to the Yankees, though?

I don't think the Yankees should use long-term trade pieces to trade for a front-line-ish or front-line starting pitcher. I don't think that's addressing their needs correctly. Who needs it the most? The Twins. The Twins, yeah. Actually, that would be a net positive for Luis Castillo, I think. Twins, Cardinals, plenty of teams, but those two,

the two teams that come up the most with Frankie Montas, those are the teams that would also make sense to pay the premium for Luis Castillo. And I think in the Twins case, this is why I thought Herman Marquez made sense for them as kind of a buy low, multiple years of control. This is a problem for more than one season for the Tw you're going to compete for more than one season get someone that can help you for more than one season and we know the reds are cheap as hell so getting rid of castillo for that that next year oh that that nothing makes the castellinis happier than saving 17 million dollars on a player that was actually really good. And the Twins seem to really care about years of control.

I think this might be lining up for the Twins because I think they would be like, oh, we also get them next year. Cold weather team, though. It's colder. It's like the worst cold weather place you can go. Spicy. Uh-huh. See, look at the problem you've created. If they only put a roof on target field back in the day. You can go. Spicy.

See, look at the problem you've created. If they only put a roof on target field back in the day. You know who's really used to pitching in the cold? Montas. Yeah. He's pitched in a damp basement for years. Fortunately, he hurt. A damp basement, thank you.

I agree. Is the Oakland Coliseum not pitching in a damp basement if I have misread the situation? No, no, no, 100%. Okay, yeah. It's got flies and problems with the plumbing. I've never actively tried to delay visiting a ballpark before. Like any chance I get to go see a new ballpark. I still haven't been.

I've lived out here for almost a year. And I still, and you go, you go every, I don't know, every other week or so at least. You probably still, and you go, you go every, I don't know, every other week or so, at least. You probably go to San Francisco more than you go to Oakland. Like from a work standpoint, it's, you know. Well, they're bad. They're a bad team also. Yeah.

That's not helping the cause. Yeah. I don't know. We'll do a day game. We'll go to some matinee in Oakland and we we'll be one of like 2,000 people there because John Fisher, and that's just how it's going to go. Well, Saturday day games are pulled more like 4,000. All right.

Well, 4,000. So it'll be like the, I don't know, Fall Stars game roughly in terms of crowd size. Fair. I'm in on Castillo right now. I think what he's doing right now makes sense to, you know, go trade for him in fantasy. I think it makes doing right now makes sense to go trade for him in fantasy. I think it makes sense for major league teams to go trade for him.

I think he can be the best pitcher available. And if you're worried about this twins cold weather thing, at least that's more of a next year problem. Yeah, you're not really worried about that for the rest of the season. Maybe those last couple starts at the end of the season could get a little cold, but you're not worried about that. It's not going to be like April up there where it's pretty nasty, even though it's a great ballpark and great place to be. Some other pitching movers behind Castillo in terms

of stuff plus risers. 14 minutes, we've talked about one pitcher. This is why the show has a problem. We've recognized the problem. Tywon Walker is a big riser. That one's easy. Six and stuff plus. Six points is a lot.

What's the difference with him? I had a DM or a tweet or something where somebody was asking, this is the Tywon Walker that falls apart, right? He always falls apart. I think this is a little bit different because what we're seeing is a fundamental pitch mix change. There was a month this year? There was a month this year, the month of June, Tywon Walker threw more splitters than four-seamers.

Do it. Throw your best pitch. I love it. Yeah. It's a throw your best pitch thing where he's zeroed in on the slider and the splitter as pitches he wants to 30-30-30 so he throws uh you know right now in july he's throwing the sinker again a little bit but mostly he's 30-30-30ing slider four seams uh a splitter and you know i don't know that anybody can command um you know a splitter really well so it you know it could be a little bit predictable in that uh

he's using the slider and the four seam for for command and the splitter for action but the good news is the slider is among the best stuff he's ever had the four seam at 91 stuff plus is not amazing but he's locating it well and it's an average pitch and by splitting the slider in the four seam he's never as predictable as you can say and he is putting splitters in good locations and it's a really good pitch by stuff plus so i do think this is a different taiwan walker there were other taiwan walkers that use these other pitches the cutter and the sinker and the curveball more, and those are suboptimal pitches. They're all below average

pitches, well below average pitches by Stuff Plus. So the fewer curveball, sinkers, and cutters he throws, the better he gets. It's a pretty easy math problem. I'm in on Taiwan Walker, plus really nice home park. I don't think the in-division matchups are all that scary, other than maybe Philly in Philly. But even if you skip a couple Phillies in Philly, I think you will get a good schedule out of him too. At Atlanta in the heat might be one. I'd be a little careful with Walker in more shallow leagues.

But yeah, I think in city field, he's probably more likely to be in your lineup than out unless you're in a really shallow format. I do think the increased splitter usage probably has something to do with the ground ball rate being up and that on top of the park factors helps explain why the home run rate has improved so much. I'm not sure he's a 0.46 homers per nine guy going forward.

I think that's probably a little bit of good fortune baked in too. home run rate has improved so much i'm not sure he's a 0.46 homers per nine guy going forward i think that's probably a little bit of good fortune baked in too but the home run issues we've seen from him going back to the pandemic shortened season those might not be coming back that might not be the baseline anymore with this approach the ability to avoid the most damaging contact seems to have changed with this pitch mix change yeah Yeah, and the splitter may not, you know, changeups, we've said, the research is that the relationship between changeup, swinging strike rate, and overall strikeout rate is the weakest of all the pitches, and a splitter is,

when I do work, I count splitters as changeups. It's not maybe that surprising he doesn't have a great strikeout rate the nice news about him because I don't also see him as an ace or two and if you're really behind in strikeouts he's not necessarily the guy you go after however if you just need good endings I think he's attainable because somebody will be looking at that seven per nine strikeout rate and say well that's awful dude why do. Why do I want... This guy is going to be a pumpkin. The projections all say he's going to be a 4 plus ERA guy. I see a guy who's going to be low to mid threes, I think, going forward.

I believe in this pitch mix. So that's an attainable guy who should be a good pitcher and maybe not give you a ton of strikeouts. So it a little depends on your needs, but also a guy I would buy. Speaking of attainable, we talked about Jackson Coar. I think maybe an episode or two ago, you mentioned that his pitch mix

had actually changed with a fastball in particular, right? It's not the same fastball we've seen. Yeah, what would you prefer? I think of all the changes that are believable and interesting i think pitch movement is really exciting however pitch movement changes happen less often like how often does someone in season just add like two inches of ride you know like that's a season a season thing that's what you work the whole off season on it. Kowar came back, and he added an inch-plus of ride,

and his slider is totally different. So that's kind of amazing to do that in-season. It must have been something about the product of some offseason work. But when it comes to vertical movement, his fastball, since he's's come back has two inches more ride plus and his slider has has nice horizontal movement it didn't have before four inches more horizontal movement so he basically went down and came back up with a riding four seamer and a sweeper which is what

everybody wants in baseball right now and it's kind of amazing he did it on the royals i have to admit now he just doesn't have good command uh so we're not suggesting that he needs to be someone i would say that you need to go get in all your leagues. But, you know, if you're in a deep dynasty situation, if you're in an AL only, this is a fundamentally different pitcher. And if you look at per appearance numbers, you know, let me give you an idea of his upside since he's gotten back 105

stuff plus since he's gotten back that plays and even the early numbers on location are not something you want to believe in too much but even better location he did it by changing his arm slot which is another crazy thing to believe in too much, but even better location. He did it by changing his arm slot,

which is another crazy thing to do in season. But there's some differences in the way he's releasing the ball. I just think it could turn into a thing where you pick him up because there's a good matchup coming up. You're optimistic because of what we're talking about right now. Pitches well. You decide to keep him for another week. Pitches okay again.

He just hangs around your roster longer than expected just because it's been pretty difficult to find a bottom of the roster pitching, especially in 15-team mixed leagues. I think that's been an ongoing challenge for a lot of us. If he's a two-starter anytime soon, jump on him. I love

home matchups. If you're an AL only where you can bench him and and and put him in the lineup and bench him then that's a really good use for it like there are going to be some matchups like would i throw him in chicago against the white socks right now i don't know that they seem like they might start getting dangerous they've been putting up some eight spots recently so i don't know if i want to throw core out there for that but home against most teams yeah a couple other names that are risers here in stuff plus over the past month mike clevenger not a surprise for a guy that missed all last season while recovering from tommy john surgery i'm kind of curious how his improvement

now might dovetail with some other players who've come back from major injuries where it takes maybe a few months before things look the way they did we talked about noah cindergaard in the 3-0 show and i started to wonder if maybe he's going to hit that phase where the velo could tick up a little bit the things things we saw from him pre-injury maybe more of that comes back do you think we're seeing that right now with Clevenger? Yeah, it's kind of weird. The progression normally off of Tommy John is that you have your stuff and the command is what takes a little bit. But from Clevenger, we're clearly seeing a

four seam that started out in the 80s and low 90s that's been above 100 in in stuff plus for three out of his last four starts um and we're seeing a curveball that's improving he doesn't really throw it that often though um and but we're seeing like okay the cutter uh started out at 80 and 60 and 70 and uh in his last few appearances has been above 100. So I don't know. The slider has been consistently there for him and that's a really good basis in today's league is to just always have a slider. But to have his other pitches kind of growing to meet it. I think we're seeing also that he's staying in longer. The outings are longer, and he's pushed Nick Martinez basically into a bullpen role.

I think Clevenger is back. Nice to see it, given that pre-injury, we're talking about him as a pretty steady top 15 to top 20 starting pitcher based on strikeout rates and ratios that he was providing around a few injury concerns during his time in Cleveland. Some other interesting names here, Luis Garcia. What is happening in the background? The cousins. Wow. The cousins are being loud again. Incredible. Luis Garcia, among the other risers. Here, I'll just run through the rest of the names on this list that stood out to me. Luis Garcia.

Oh, yeah. You're not going to do 15 minutes each? No. Luis Garcia, Mitch White, Lucas Giolito. Which Luis Garcia, though? Are you sure you got the right Luis Garcia? I'm going to check the IDs momentarily to make sure it didn't match the reliever with the starter and then spit out a big stuff plus jump.

Sonny Gray and Trevor Rogers. Lucas Giolito has been improving the stuff underneath the hood. It's weird that the results aren't there yet. But he's gotten the ride back on his fourth seam, and that was what he's working with with Ethan Katz. Theoretically, once he has that ride back on his fourth seam, all of his other pitches are going to go up in Stuff Plus too. So, like, I don't know, man.

Like, yes, I can see the same peripheral stats you can. And yes, I'm super nervous about Lucas Gilito. And yes, his VLO is down, but I think there's some buy low-ness to him. Does that mean we're buying low with the expectation that he's a good SP2? Or are we buying low, hoping he comes close to the initial expectations for him this season?

I would like to buy at the level that he's an SP2. That's the price I'd like to pay. Because I think that he can get back to SP2s, and then if everything clicks right, then you can get some SP one action. That's that's how I want to buy. And, you know, I would say a little bit lower for Trevor Rogers, but a similar situation for Trevor Rogers where, you know, he has been pitching better recently. It hasn't totally shown in the numbers,

but he has a really nice home park, and I think the underlying numbers are showing that his stuff is increasing a little bit. So I would buy Trevor Rodgers as a three and maybe hope to get some twos out of him. I'm confirming that I matched correctly with Luis Garcia. This is a real spreadsheet problem that people have. You should use IDs when you can't,

if you can. If you can't, then you have to just double check with Luis Garcia. Early in the season, I think we were just, we just put all the Luis Garcia stuff together. Well, and I think something happened where Diego Castillo for the Pirates pitched at some point because half the position players in the league have pitched. So then I matched Diego Castillo, the pitcher, the position player to the pitcher. And it looked like there was a huge jump.

I was like, whoa, Diego Castillo is going to take over that Mariners bullpen. I was like, wait a minute. Hold on. Oh, there it is. There's the mistake. So errors in spreadsheeting, very real. Luis Garcia, you know, gives me the same. He makes me think about the difference between changing your pitch mix to improve your stuff plus and improve your life versus changing your pitch movement.

And while I really liked it for Tywon Walker, I think there's a little bit more of an asterisk for Luis Garcia because the way that he's improved his stuff plus is by stopping throwing his foreseam. And if you look at his different pitches, the foreseam is his worst pitch by stuff. It's okay by location and overall it's near average, but it's an 89 90 stuff plus pitch whereas the

cutter he's replacing with is 106 stuff plus so uh yes that makes sense in the sort of mathematical way i guess but in terms of i think what happens over the course of the season, the, the, the type of fatigue we saw out of him in the past, the, the, there is some risk that this comes around and batter start focusing on the cutter,

right. And start sitting cutter and start treating the cutter as the foundational pitch and that there is some risk to doing what he's doing. You know what I'm saying? Yes. And I'm looking at the home run rate and wondering too,

like, is he a guy that has a home run problem or is he a guy that's been unlucky with home runs so far? Because that's up again compared to where it was last year. And it was a tick on the high side i mean 1.1 homers per nine is not terrible but 1.63 homers per nine so far this

season in an environment that is generally not going to boost homers that much and does that have anything to do with going to the cutter over the foreseam more because you throw like you know maybe the cutter hangs or you know like maybe a miss with the cutter is more egregious uh in in terms of the locations you're throwing it like for example even in the model itself the locations the cutter going to are not as good as locations the foreseemer is going to so he's chosen to have as a found a foundational pitch a pitch that he is more about stuff about action than it is about command. So will that have some ramifications for him?

The location plus on the cutter is 98. The location plus on the foreseam is 103. So maybe that has something to do with this home run rate. All in all though he's a good pitcher and again he's got a lot of good pitches.

And maybe he can bring the foreseam back or feature another pitch of his. He at least is really good when it comes to slider, cutter, changeup, foreseam. Four-pitch guy. Gets good whiffs. Looks good by strikeouts minus walks. Looks good in the model. Gets good whiffs. Looks good by strikeouts minus walks.

Looks good in the model. This is the faintest of asterisks that it comes from not throwing the foreseam as much. And kind of throwing the cutter more. At least with Walker, you've got that 30-30-30 split. Luis Garcia is going to that territory of cutter is the foundational pitch at 40. And everything else is down around 20. Yeah you know what's really impressive with Garcia too though is when he kind of first emerged in 2019 probably at high A's when people started to really notice him he had 108 K's

and 65 and two-thirds innings he had a 12.4% walk rate that year. Walk rate has come down every single season. Aside from making the leap from high A to the big leagues in the pandemic shortened year, he's improved his walk rate each season he's been in the big leagues. So, I mean, this is a really high floor pitcher, another mark on Houston for great pitching development. Obviously, a guy that has good stuff and is putting in the work to get to that level as well. But are we talking about him in the same breath that we're talking about Mike Clevenger?

I mean, if it's a would-you-rather toss-up for the rest of the season? I'm taking Luis Garcia. Yeah, I think with Garcia, just because there's less of an injury concern too. I think with Clevenger, there's that red flag. Clevenger's hurt all sorts of things, not even just the arm.

Mm-hmm. So we're probably looking at Garcia as what, a top 20 starting pitcher rest of season given the team context where did i have him before probably too low yeah man i had him too low he was low for me coming into the season and i liked him because of the fade at the end of the season i think i put a little too much weight onto that as uh i was trying to figure out what to make also his this year. You know, in the model, he didn't look as good because he's had a really great month by the model by changing his pitch mix. So in the model, he was 100 stuff plus 98 location back in the day.

He'd be among the big pitching movers. And I think that's a perfect transition to what I want to talk about for the other part of this show. to talk about for the other part of this show. I think Sandy Alcantara is getting the league-wide, Twitter-wide sort of appreciation that he's probably deserved going back to the early parts of last season. And I think if you were trying to adjust where pitchers were going to go for a second half draft

or for 2023, among higher-end pitchersers he'd be one of the biggest movers it wasn't like he was cheap this draft season but he's up in value i mean he's probably we've talked about some guys coming down because of injury walker bueller comes down we're talking about shane bieber in a few minutes i would have him exactly where i had him preseason i i think he's at least well you may have just had him in the right spot i think the market was a little bit lower on sandy alcantara and i think i was kind of in line with the market i had him around 12 and i would have him around 12 i still think that the guys who strike guys more guys out or are preferable so but sandy versus nola was a

toss-up on draft day i assume you had nolaola ahead, or you had Alcantara ahead the whole time. I did. I have Nola ahead now because of the strikeout rate. Plus, Nola seems like he's in one of his good command years. And his stuff. I just, Nola has more strikeouts. I'd rather have the strikeouts. I wonder if starting pitching is going to get squeezed up.

We were wondering if maybe the first round would only have two starters instead of the usual three. I think it's probably three. I think McClanahan creeps into that spot because I think it's Burns, Cole, and McClanahan for people. It's some order at the top. Maybe we see a few more pitchers get jammed into round two and early round three, and that's the difference. Whereas in this past draft season, that pick 45 range is where Alcantara was going a lot. Maybe it's more like pick 30, pick 35. Maybe he creeps up 10 to 15 spots on the overall list for people.

I think it'll be an interesting place for me to shop. I like the third round because I get those two bats, and I think even next year, I'll still be shopping the same place I shopped in the third round this year. I got lucky with the Wheeler, but I think given the shape of Wheeler's season, we may see Wheeler in the third round,

and I think you'll have first-round pitchers will be Cole, Burns, and McClanahan. Yeah. I think second-round pitchers will be Gossman, Nola, Otani. Woodruff can still pretty much. I think Otani is still a first rounder. I don't know what to do with him. First round, bad pitcher guy.

Second round, I see Nola, Woodruff, Rodon, DeGrom. Maybe, yeah. If DeGrom, I think you and I both know, if DeGrom comes back from this injury and is fine for the rest of the season, he's good, rest of the second half, he's going to get through the playoffs. He's a first-rounder again.

I think healthy for a half season pushes him all the way back to the first round in the NFBC at least I don't know if it does that for everybody in other formats but I think with that overall component I think that would push him back into the well now we have 35 players in the first round

thank you stop playing snake drafts that's what this conversation has brought me back to. It's like, wait a minute. Why are we doing this this way? This is a stupid way to make rosters. So who are third round pitchers?

Third round pitchers are old guys that had good seasons. Is Verlander a third round pitcher? Yeah, I think so. Verlander. Wheeler is borderline second, third. Scherzer. Yeah, I'm going to live in the third round. Second, third, third. I second, third. Scherzer. Yeah, I'm going to live in the third round. Second, third. I think maybe third. He's older.

He's going to be older. He had some injuries again this year. And then there's Sandy and Dylan Cease and maybe like Musgrove. So some guys that maybe haven't ever been higher before like Musgrove. Control issues maybe for Cease. I still would love to shop in the in the cease Alcantara

like if you're gonna if you're gonna be a choice of cease Alcantara and Scherzer in the third round I think I'm I'm just gonna take a third round pitcher I think Manoa is gonna get jammed up in that area as well too so and I think I'll probably take the young guys so I think it'll be Alcantara cease or Manoa for me. I don't see a problem with that. Those guys are aces, right? I think I might still take Manoa or Cease over Alcantara because of those strikeouts. We had a question about Alcantara from one of our listeners.

John wanted to know, should we be concerned about Sandy sitting too close to his max given the workload volume? I thought it was a fair question worth bringing up. So as someone who's all in on Sandy, how do you feel about that? How often, I guess, is he sitting there? That's the challenge. His max is 100, 101, and he's sitting, ooh, 99.

That is a little spicy. He hasn't been doing it all season. Early on he was 96. ooh, 99. That is a little spicy. He hasn't been doing it all season. Early on, he was 96.5, 97.5. Now he's at 99 out of 100, dude. That is super close to his maximum. That is super close. The league used to be at, like, 3, and in the postseason, it was, like, at 2

in terms of difference between max and sitting, and then it moved towards where the postseason it was like a 2 in terms of difference between Max and sitting and then it moved towards where the postseason is so the league is more around 2 and so 1 is being aggressive even in an aggressive league and he's had some injuries

before but he's also I mean look at this 200 innings basically in 2019 205 last year 26 years old in his prime i think it might be more of a thing to worry about long term than it is to think to worry about this year yeah i think in this particular instance john's in a keeper league and uh alcantara's ace but at the same time what's the actionable move here if you're doing well in the league this year you're not trading him away you're you know if you're playing for two years from now

maybe you're cashing in right now because you're maxing out on value which you would do with almost any pitcher in this circumstance this is not even about the max velo thing this is about the timing of moving your aces if your team's not competing. Yeah. And there are some really fun young pitchers that you might be able to get. You might be able to get

a Strider and somebody. Who would it take? What did you get? Could you get Strider and Baz for Alcantara right now? No, no, that's too much.

Probably not. How about strider? And can you get a by low hitter? Could you do strider in a by low bat? Like I would actually want to do that because I was trying to run out of it. Eloy or something. Yeah. I would want to get a bat out of it.

That's, that's my whole move in, in dynasty is to, to trade pitching for hitting and just try to always be improving the hitting uh and picking up pitching along the way so that's a yeah i would i would take strider and eloy for for eloy for uh sandy right now yeah in a dynasty if i was if it wasn't competing this year so a slight concern given that he is very close to that max on a pretty regular basis. I'm starting to get some Luis Severino vibes from Sandy just because he's got that very team-friendly contract.

So at this point, he's just going to air it out because he got the guaranteed money. So there's not a big free agency payday around the corner to sit back for. So why not just do what you can do? But Severino was another one of those guys that I thought was always kind of close to his max he eventually blew out missed almost two full seasons with the injuries looks really good again right now 94ks and 84 innings it's close to what we saw pre-injuries in terms of strikeout percentage and walk percentage the ratios are really good obviously Obviously, the team is great. So you get run support, you get bullpen help, everything you could possibly want from Luis Severino

is there. I just wonder how much can we move him up now that he's healthy again? Is he all the way back to pre-injury Luis Severino or is he always slightly discounted from those levels because the risk of another injury is higher as a result of the recent significant ones one thing that i like out of the luis severino situation is you know don't buy the guy in his first season back uh from an injury wait till he's pitched and buy him the next season uh i think severino and cinder guard are the most extreme versions of that right where they pitched once or twice four four relief appearances for severino

six innings but like basically one start but scattered over four appearances and both of those guys um had reasons why you couldn't even necessarily trust the stuff model, right? Because Severino, Syndergaard didn't throw his breaking balls at all. So we just didn't even know what the state of his breaking balls were. And Severino was coming out there in relief stints. So you couldn't tell, like, is this going to port over to starting or is this who he is now? Is he basically a reliever? I think that was an open question because we're talking about a guy who's coming off of major problems.

But in either case, if you want to make kind of a general rule where you don't buy the guy in his first year back off the surgery and you buy him the next year, I think it serves you pretty well. So don't wait for Glasnow to pitch. You wouldn't want to draft Glasnow this year,

but you hope that Glasnow glass now this year but you hope that glass now pitches some this year and you drive glass now next year that sort of deal so yeah so the difference for you is if you see glass now for five to ten innings even in september you're more likely to take that chance on him going into 2023 than if he doesn't get back and show up in a game and we're seeing it for the first time in April. A major league team, a medical team, a medical team said it was okay. Like some doctor signed off on it, you know, and a team put him out there. That's like a major hurdle.

There are other players that get close to that hurdle and then have setbacks. Yeah, that's just tough because for Glass now, his surgery was in August, and he could be on a pretty normal recovery timeline and still just not quite be cleared to pitch in games again. When you had surgery, when you got hurt, has pretty significant bearing on when exactly you're able to come back so he's right on that borderline where we could see him this year i think it's more likely that we don't

than we do just based on 14 months being a little more of the guide than the typical 12 months yeah and i know i understand the the um the randomness of the calendar in this situation. I understand that everything could be fine and you could have a good next year. I would be less likely to draft Tyler Glass now if he doesn't pitch this year. And even if it's just random, I just want to see him. Now, maybe if he comes out in the spring and looks totally fine before I draft. Yeah, if he's throwing 98 in the spring and, like, okay. And throwing all his pitches.

A big mover then. You know, throwing all his pitches, you know, because he brought that slider. He really developed that slider, right? So if he's throwing three pitches in the spring again and he's throwing 98, maybe I'm on board. I still want the reduced price. I still wouldn't want to pay a high price because you just haven't seen it.

He hasn't been cleared to throw in a major league game. The fights about Tyler Glass now and durability and projected innings that people are going to have on Twitter and on podcasts in February and March are going to be obnoxious. Just hold your nose. Just cover. Just hold your nose. Just cover.

Just bathe in it. Or just mute Tyler Glass now as a term on Twitter. I mean, you need the updates. You have to find a way to get those updates. Just to get out of the debates. I'm buying Severino. If I can get Severino right now, in Dynasty Leagues,

much more bigger asterisks. I don't know. I don't know i don't know you know we've got 100 innings over three seasons now um and 84 of them this year so there's still kind of an open question there but uh for this season if you can get him because the other person is worried about injuries then go for it because i think he's a top 20 starting pitcher the rest of the way and if we could erase more injury concerns, he might even be higher than that. That's sort of baking in added risk that comes with a player who's gone through what he's gone through. Let's talk about Kyle Wright.

I think we talked about him a lot in April. I'm curious where things stand with him now that we're a half season in. He, to me, is a classic example where at the beginning of the year, you could just see he's not the same pitcher that he was when last season ended. So it was easy to look at him as a massive early season riser. Where does he settle in right now? I forgot to pop open your rankings before we started. How much of a leap did he have at that last set of rankings compared to the bottom of the list or near bottom of the list status that he had for a lot of people back in March yeah the the model uh really loved him uh and so I bumped him I don't know if I bumped him enough I bumped him up to 50 and the reason uh why I mean 40 in the 49 and with injury he'd uh he'd already be in the sort of 45 range but um the reason I didn't bump him further, and this is the difficulty with the model, is that he alternates good starts with bad starts with locations.

His command is like that little hair up your nose, where it's there and then it's gone. And it's so annoying to me me because the stuff has been absolutely different and i would totally bet on him just based on stuff but like literally goes from 108 location plus in his first start to 99 a second 110 in his third start 92 in his fourth 103 96 103-96, 101-91, 101-99, 109-89. You know what I mean? It's just like literally every other start. And it's the last thing holding him back because the new mix that he's got is really excellent.

I think maybe I had him a little bit too low, and I think he's more of a top 30 pitcher now because even with those little blow-ups, he's been excellent overall, and I believe the new swing strike rate, I believe the new strikeout rate, and even if he regresses to the projected walk rate, he's going to have better strikeouts

than the projection systems have, and I think at least sort of a 3-5 guy going forward. All right, so a viable SP2 in a 15-team league, probably a nice three if you're playing at something a little bit smaller. One other big mover, another astro, Frambois Valdez. Going back to the projections we saw for him

at the beginning of the season, he was projected by the bat to have a 377 ERA and a 134 whip and 153 Ks and 173 innings. And I think I definitely took that to heart because I care about projections. I think the bat is a great projection system. And I thought, okay, yeah, the pass control issues I think are worth being mindful of and maybe doesn't miss quite as many bats as we'd like guys to miss. So I was kind of out at the price on Valdez.

And when I watch him, the more I watch him, the more I like him. And the projections have also moved quite a bit. He's now projected for rest of season numbers from the bat at 334 for the ERA. So almost a half run improvement. A 128 whip and 89 Ks in 95 innings. So a lot more in terms of strikeout rate. We know Frambois is a ground ball machine. Now he looks kind of like another

Dallas Keuchel for them from a development standpoint, someone that comes out of relative nowhere to possibly spin multiple sub three ERA seasons. I think I've just gone from skeptic to believer to the point where I might even like him a tick more than the

projections do, especially with the whip. I think that whip comes in a little high for me at 128 the rest of the way. I think he's probably under that. It's possible he's the new Dallas Keuchel in that he is really great at 93, 94, and there's some sort of velocity shelf for him. We saw how badly Dallas Keuchel fell off. So maybe lesser of a dynasty asset than a win-now asset. As that velo starts to go down, we may see this sort of fall apart. But the other stuff that I like is I did a piece on underused pitches, and Framber's cutter was on there, or slider, whatever you want to call it. So he's got a new pitch this year and

the changeup still rates well in the model. So he could be a four pitch pitcher. It's just that his curveball is dominant. And his sinker just has one of the lowest, I think it might be the lowest launch angle on balls in play. So he's got a pitch that kills all power in the sinker, and then he's got this curveball that's an excellent weapon that he has multiple shapes on that he feels really comfortable placing wherever he wants and has just excellent shape.

Like Max Fried, right? Big old curveball, not super fast, but just has a shape that is very difficult on people. And so, Frambois, sinker, Max Friedian, curveball, I buy. I think this is – he's a really good pitcher. He's not going to get you a bunch of strikeouts, but if we are going to like Sandy Alcantara, then we should like Frambois Valdez.

Yeah. And I think Valdez, because of the way he works, the volume might help offset the K rate a little bit easier to ding him for the rate, not being that high. But if he ends up being higher end on workload year over year, then that makes up for it.

And I think that part, I probably underrated that a little bit about Valdez too when trying to figure out what his true ceiling was. One more name to throw at you. 20 second in strikeouts this year despite the below average strikeout rate. Yeah, it's a volume game.

I mean, most leagues are using Ks not K by 9. I want to throw Joe Ryan into the conversation again because the projections are still skeptical. We know it's just different, right? Rest of season ERA 423

is the projection from the bat and he's got a 309 so far. He might have some room to bring down the walk rate. I think that's one of the core skills that could still be a tick better than it's been so far. What do you make now

that we've seen about a half season's worth of starts from Ryan against big league hitters? The model does capture things like interesting release points and vertical attack angles, the things that make Joe Ryan a good pitcher other than his command. His command in the model is good. The model should be capturing who he is,

and it says he's about a league average pitcher. So, I think I agree with the projections, man. And he's such a unique look that it doesn't surprise me too much that the home run rate is rising as people are starting to see him more.

A lot of fly balls. Let's see who's seen him twice. Seattle saw him once and had beginning of the season, four innings, two earned runs, four strikeouts. The second time Seattle saw him, four innings, four earned runs, three strikeouts. Who else has seen him twice? Nobody else has seen him twice. Orioles have seen him twice this year.

Cleveland has seen him twice. In the second outing, three earned runs. First outing, one earned run. Still 7Ks, one walk, though, in that second outing against the Guardians. That's true. Baltimore, in the second time they saw him, it's a tough offense. So, man, I don't know how much I'm learning from that. We'll see.

Cleveland, probably going to see him again. And, you know, I would be really interested to see what happens when Cleveland sees him a third time. And then also the scouting report is going out there. And then lastly, the way that people train is to the better teams when they're hitting, they're training their hitters is to kind of over exaggerate the qualities of the pitcher they're going to see that night and make the machine do basically what the pitcher is going to do times 10 percent, like with an extra 10 percent. So whatever Joe Ryan does, plus 10%. So that they're over-trained.

They think Joe Ryan is easy when they see him. So the longer that he's in the big leagues, the more that people can say, okay, this is how we want to calibrate the pitching machine to get ready for him. So I don't know. I remain skeptical. I understand vertical attack angle

I understand that he has a low release point and that he throws high in the zone and that his fastball has a flat approach and that is hard for some people to match up but I also understand that the league the league's hitters have seen a lot of four scenes high in the zone over the last few years and they started to train for it and there are adjustments for it and there are there are

players that are all over it taylor ward fashioned his whole approach based on that marcus simeon hit 45 homers because he figured out how to hit high four seamers so i don't think the like high four-seam low vertical tack angle uh thing is like a cheat code anymore you know i think everyone knows about it and everyone's trying to do something about it either it's lay off all those high four-seamers completely or develop some sort of swing that you can hit them so my reason for including ryan here is that I expect the market to move him up quite a bit based on what he's done so far. Is he the kind of guy you're very skeptical of? It kind of sounds like, yeah, you're if we're talking about Joe Ryan and the ADP creeps up into maybe Chris Bassett range. Chris Bassett had a 117 ADP.

He was the 40th pitcher off the board. If you look at April NFBC ADP. I could see Joe Ryan maybe topping out there if the second half is mostly as good as the first half. I assume you'd be out at that price because there are other pitchers that you just like better that tend to be available in that

range. I have a possible would you rather that might end up there depending on how the rest of the season goes. Ronzi Contreras. Ooh. I would take Contreras. Just has a fundamental grouping of pitchings that I like better. Has a lot of really good pitchers.

High stuff pitches. More velo. A lot of different looks. It's not all like, oh, my fastball's kind of deceptive. My gut reaction was to take Ryan, but obviously we get a lot more information before we have to make that decision. I might also get a round or two on Contreras.

That's totally possible. But I think that speaks to the, there are other guys that go around that range that are still available. You'd just rather have. You feel better about their chances of coming close in terms of what they will do and maybe even significantly exceeding Ryan's ceiling.

I probably won't pay the tax on Joe Ryan. Yeah, that's kind of where my head is at too because I think that Bassett price might be the indicator based on what we've seen so far. I mean, it's a very high fly ball rate and it's not the best strikeout rate, right? So you could even use more like we're 70 70 innings in you can use k minus bb a 22 minus 7 k minus bb is not elite yeah 15 is pretty pretty like

average for starting pitchers i think i think average is 14 yeah so average for fantasy yeah i mean yeah like how much do the bottom you 20, 30 pitchers matter to you in fantasy? You don't want to touch him. Yeah. Maybe Joe Ryan's the next Ian Anderson. Maybe that's where my mind's going. Like the guy that people slowly get into and then, oh, the correction is harsh. Sorry, Twins fans.

Better command from Ryan, I think, but not a bad comp. Not a bad comp. One last question before we go, what's up with Shane Bieber? He's kind of on the faller side of this conversation, which probably is its own episode down the road. Season fastball. Velo is down.

Kays are down. Control is good. Not a surprise. Given who Shane Bieber has revealed himself to be home run rate is good. At least so far. Is he destined for the SP2 cluster, somewhere in that 20 to 30 range among starting pitchers? Again, just to rewind it back to some games that were in that group this year.

That's where Joe Musgrove was going this year. That's where Gossman was going this year. That's where Barrios was going this year, and things have turned out kind of poorly for him so far. So what do you think is going on with Bieber? Thank you for putting a hole in my balloon there with the Berrios

mention. You can miss in that range. I was about to do a little bit of dancing on the grave. My pitcher rankings, which I for some reason can't find when they came out but uh i'll do it in a second here it is june 9th oh this is too too too good uh june 9th uh i came out with some pitcher rankings and one of the comments was, are you going to address your Shane Bieber ranking?

You couldn't be more wrong. Do you even watch the players? Does the author of this list even understand baseball? No. Yeah. Sometimes that happens. A lot of that stuff was, so that was unsaid,

but I just love this idea that like, I have to address every time I'm wrong. On this show, people know that I celebrate my wrongness often and do dissect when I'm wrong. For Jake Bieber, we just had, I had awful stuff numbers

and the worst of his career and related to things we can all see the fastball velo being down being one of the biggest drivers of it um but uh you know I just didn't I didn't see him as an elite guy I never had him much higher than 20 uh and so at that point uh he was correct to say that I couldn't be more wrong. But I said basically at the time, listen, my model says what it says, and I'm sticking with it, and I think that he's going to become more hittable as the ball flies better

and as we get into these warmer months. Since that ranking, Shane Bieber has a.455 ERA. Couldn't be more wrong. So happy for you right now. He does have a decent strikeout minus walk rate. He always has during the season. He's a good pitcher.

I don't really, I'm not excited. I might sound excited i just sometimes get excited because you know we get these comments and reactions on twitter and it gets exhausting sometimes but you know a 91 mile an hour fastball velo does not say uh st beaver is who he used to be so that's i'm going to stick by uh what the numbers tell me and i'm gonna take the under i'm gonna take the over on all his projected eras save maybe the bats so if you want to know where i where i do land 376 era 121 whip it's not bad that's not a bad picture that's a that's probably top 30 i mean who is the guy that we just put into the top 30? Kyle Wright? Who would you rather? Wright?

Barely. Barely. I mean, it's more just because I still have injury risk concerns about Bieber. That's probably the difference for me. I don't think his injury is completely behind him. I think that drop in Velo is very problematic. So if you can get some Velo back this offseason, maybe Bieber becomes the clear option for me.

It's a little bit interesting that three of his four highest Velo outings have been recently, but he's still not cracking 92. Yeah. Average-wise. He's got a lot of things he does well. Good command, great breaking balls. Sorry. I think it's time for you to check on the people in your home

to make sure that they're all well. Oh, my God. They're going to Great America. So, like, you know, it's like this. I could graph it for you, the tension and then the apprehension and the excitement. Through the roof. I saw some news item.

It's closing soon the great america in california in the bay area and then i clicked on it and read it and said within 13 years i think is what the timetable was and i was like don't you sometimes hate headlines dude soon soon right yeah within within 13 years okay let's go yes i'm gonna go now 13 years. Okay. Let's go. Yes.

I'm going to go now. Really worried about 2035 right now because, you know, things have gone so well aged out of going to those things. Anyway, your kids could own the park by then and keep it open. It's possible. Anyway, if you've got questions for a future episode,

send those our way. You know, is that, you know, Sarah's on Twitter. I'm at Derek van Riper best way to get an email in, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com, even though there are a ton of emails right now. Keep sending them. We'll get to them

eventually. It's nice to have those. You can also leave a comment on this video on YouTube. Be sure to hit the like button. If you're watching us on YouTube, subscribe to the YouTube channel, and if you haven't done so already, take a moment, leave us a nice rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. We really appreciate everybody who has done that. If you'd like a subscription to The Athletic athletic it's a dollar a month for the first six months

at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels just a hunch that deal probably is going away somewhat soon so get on that if that is something that you're interested in that's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels we are back with you on monday thanks for listening