Rates & Barrels - Making Sense of Disappointing Hitters From 2023

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

Eno and DVR discuss several disappointing hitters from the 2023 season with an eye toward their rebound potential and long-term outlook.  Rundown 4:17 Carlos Correa: Did Injuries Sap Overall Performance? 13:58 Daulton Varsho: Going Too Far with Pull-Heavy, Flyball Approach? 28:02 MJ Melendez: Is More Power on the Way? 32:47 Eloy Jiménez: Will He Hit Enough Without OF-Eligibility in Some Leagues? 39:04 Trevor Story: Optimism in Underlying Numbers Post-Injury? 47:32 Paul Goldschmidt: It's All Relative 54:01 Cedric Mullins: Is 2021 or 2022 Still in Reach? Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Subscribe to The Athletic for just $1.99/mo for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Check this offer from our sponsor: Caldera Lab: Get 20% OFF with code RATES at calderalab.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Tuesday, October 31st, happy Halloween if you are observing it. I did not have time to put my costume on for the show because i think it needs to be washed so pictures probably on instagram later you know it looks like you also have chosen to show up today as yourself well baseball dad i've gotta do a throwing session an arm strength session later today and maybe some bat speed work i don't know that i will get dressed up tonight because i got a world series game to watch so i don't know i don't know i've held it i've done the four we have a um a pretty good neighborhood and so we have like five or six kids coming over to our house to

trick-or-treat with our kids uh in which case uh we'll have plenty of chaperones, I think, to go out with the kids. Um, my kids are getting a little bit older at third, third grade and sixth grade where it's really just about maximizing, you know, candy input and not really about anything else. So, uh, it's, I like, I like it. Uh, I've always, uh, you know, I've had some great outfits over the years. Bob Ross. I was a really good Bob Ross. I was a really good Kenny G with the long hair.

I've had some good outfits over the years and I've been a willing participant. But I kind of almost like the adult version better. Like the, you know, like actual sort of adults with you know weird like pun always like a pun costume or something you know um so i kind of like uh you know i went to a fisher spooner show with where everyone was dressed up that was real fun so um the kid stuff early on it's super cute and then at some point it's just like a rabid candy fest i think you are right in the sweet spot for that i'm curious to see if the the older child starts designing heat maps for where the best candy is in the neighborhood and then starts

skipping houses in order to maximize the candy output oh yeah you have have some notes but like skip these two houses go here we're going to cover this eight block radius instead of four blocks, because this will give us the most possible. He might try to maximize his time today. He's going as a baseball bat. So he's got bat wings and it's okay. It's a pun. It really is already starting on the puns.

The younger one, there's a trend. I don't know if you've noticed in, in the sort of medium-sized children uh to have these like blow-up costumes where there's like an air machine inside that's no i'm very unaware so it like inflates the costume so you can kind of wear so it's almost like a bouncy house technology but like it inflates this costume around you so he's going as like a person on a on a rocket but his legs are the rocket and the person is inflated in front of him if you can imagine that he has another version of it where he's uh like a a small person riding

an alien so it's like you know your legs are the aliens legs and you know anyway uh that that's almost seems like cheating to me but that that is a level that when we were children was not absolutely not possible no i mean so i went as a baseball player during the the baseball strike in 94 and i just had a sign a homemade sign that said on strike. And I'm walking around in a baseball uniform. Like that's all I had, right? That was like a lot of effort back in that time. But now we're using a lot of technology, which is, you know, that's fun.

Use it if you have it. Makes everything more fun. But have fun. Be safe out there, everybody. We've got a lot to get to on this episode. We got unusual bad seasons for hitters so we of course asked for recommendations and i kind of pulled together a group of some of the more popular requests from this bunch and we're going to start in minnesota with carlos correa because at a glance you look at carlos correa's numbers

we probably talked about him at some point in the middle of the season. He seemed like a clear rebound candidate in season. What I think was overlooked at that time, and it's much more clear now because we saw him spend some time on the IL with plantar fasciitis in September, is that Correa played with that injury from about late May on. He also had a back injury, a relatively minor one back in April. So there was very little time during the 2023 season in which Carlos Correa was completely healthy. He managed to rack up a decent amount of playing time.

But for a guy that doesn't offer you anything in the stolen base category in a typical year year the margin for error is a little smaller because he has to hit for average he has to be a great run producer and he has to get to more power than he did in 2023 in order to make value even where he was going he relatively was inexpensive because there was a lot of concern after everything that happened with the physicals and not having a deal with the Giants and ending up back in Minnesota, I think most people in the fantasy community looked at this player and said, OK, these teams were passing on him.

Let's temper our expectations that this will be the year that he stays healthy. So all this is to say, like when you look at the underlying numbers from Correa as a hitter with an offseason for this injury to heal, from Correa as a hitter. With an offseason for this injury to heal, do you see him getting back to his pre-2023 form in 2024? I don't know. I mean, Correa was the first person that ever sort of put the light bulb on for me. When I pointed out to him his rolling exit velocity charts

and I said, what happened here in this dip you know were you injured and he said yeah I played through some stuff there and you know I think that just the way that you look at you look at this and you say this barrel rate was the same as usual or a little bit

down from the year before but you know in the range of his normal outcomes his max power was still there uh nothing was really shows that obviously about his pull or ground ball fly ball rates stuff like that um you know you just realize that there's this underlying pain that kept him from doing anything the way that it showed up for him was in his sprint speed where he went from uh you know 45th percentile to 33rd percentile in one off season and um you know that was the second biggest uh drop of his career so it definitely hurt him in terms of outcomes do i expect him to get much better in that regard.

Like, I don't know. Could he get back to 35th percentile? I don't expect him actually to get closer to 50th percentile. I expect this to be part of why the Giants ran screaming. You know, it's like this is kind of what we were worried about. And just because it happened in year one doesn't mean it's not going to happen in year two. just because it happened in year one doesn't mean it's not going to happen year two the only thing that has changed that will change going forward is his price is going to drop even further and at some point the price drops so far on college career that i'm in like if you're talking about

a backup mi or like a util if i you know if i you know took a a chance on an mi that you know if i had jazz somewhere or you know if i had another mi that was also often injured i might just double up on it just to be like hopefully one of these guys is healthy and gives me a starting mi um but right now like where is his where's his adp where's his Where is his would you rather? Because I would assume it's really low and at that point I could take a shot on someone I think could still hit 280 with 20 to 25 homers. That's not

zero value. The current range, we've got five October drafts that are showing up on the ADP report over at the NFBC right now. Current range is pick 250 to pick 327. That is getting to the bottom part of your roster, like a late MI. Yeah, maybe even a bench player based on the later part of that range.

That's a significant drop for a guy that I think is reasonably safe. In a typical year, you're going to see at least a 270 batting average from Carlos Correa. It's a silly category, but it's a category we use nonetheless. And because the plate skills were so similar to what he's done throughout his career. He hits the ball hard. He makes contact.

I mean, yeah, those parts I think will be there. I just, you know, doubles are not going to necessarily be there. And, you know, there's going to necessarily be there and you know there's going to be you're going to have missed time the the harder it is to roster him when he's injured uh the heart the less i want to draft him you know do you think with stolen bases being more plentiful do you think it's more likely likely you'd roster Correa or a player like him, someone who gives you nothing in the category, or is it less likely because there's more pressure on your entire roster to get to a higher total? Because I think I'm more likely to roster

Correa now than I've ever been, especially with the decreased price. And Corey Seager, for a long time, I thought Corey Seager and Carlos Correa were similar fantasy players, right? I thought it was average run production power. We've seen Seager sort of bump up the quality of his contact and sustain it to a level that Correa never has. So I think it's unfair at this point to say that Correa has that same kind of ceiling. has that same kind of ceiling but if it's a pick 250 adp as the draft season continues i'm very willing to go ahead and take correa because you're talking about a high volume player as long as these nagging injuries don't come up i know i was among the people that thought anthony rendon was a really smart bounce back play up this season so maybe this is falling

into the same trap again not quite i mean he's been on the field more than rendon everyone has i mean that's and he also hasn't been as like ridiculous about it with the media and stuff right rendon disappointing in so many ways and just the way he handled it is even worse like It's not fun to be hurt. I know a player doesn't want to be unable to go out there and contribute, but he was just ridiculous about the whole thing. 1,800 plate appearances, I think, doing the back of the napkin math, close to 1,800 plate appearances over the last three seasons for Correa. That's pretty good.

It's not that bad. It's really not that bad. The durability issues were more in the age 22 to 24 seasons, and I think one of those was sort of like a random catastrophic sort of injury. So I don't know. I think he's got a little bit of an undeserved reputation. I'd be more worried about Correa at age 31, age 32. He'll be 29 going into next season.

So I think there could be one or two more good years here before we really have to worry about the significant drop in playing time. And to your question about stolen bases and stuff, the one thing i think that was a little bit surprising to me was how much the top end of uh the stolen base category changed if i was still trying uh always with my 15s and 20s uh in terms of stolen bases to fill up a roster then it might be hard to put crayon there because now i need to have like five or six 20s you know um and you start running out of roster places you know to like put a 20 stolen base guy but what we did see last year that was a little bit surprising to me was uh you know like 17 players and i don't even I have a qualified thing on. Let me get rid of that.

How many players did we have? We had 23 players with 27 plus stolen bases. If you just want to make it 25, you have 27 players with 25 plus stolen bases. You also had 15, 16, 18 with 30 plus so it's more likely that

i get to the korea place with 330s in my pocket right because you're going to take probably 8 to 10 hitters and then the rest will be pitchers by the time korea is on your roster at the current price you'll know your situation so i I don't know if I'm 330. Yeah, you'll know your situation. But if I had a 45 in my pocket and two 25s or something, I would feel like, yeah, I can have a zero someplace. I'm going back to the well because of the discount. I think we can excuse these injuries,

even though the back thing in April almost gives me more long-term concern than the injury that bothered him for the greater portion of the season. I guess plantar fasciitis is definitely, like, poo holes near the end was hobbled by it. It's not great. It's attached to, it's like,

it's part of an Achilles problem. It's like a whole thing. I don't know. Yeah, it might be related to the ankle and foot problems, right? So that's the scary part. But the price is so cheap. Once you start talking $300 for a guy that could hit 25 and 280 homers, that's not wish casting.

His projections are going to be very close to that. Exactly. Let's get to a couple players that had catcher eligibility and in many situations no longer do. Dalton Varshow, I think, in pretty much every league no longer would have his catcher eligibility unless he got something that says, once a catcher, always a catcher. Varshow has been tricky because his real-life offensive value versus his fantasy value have always been a little bit askew. But because he's a good defender in the outfield,

even a great defender, the playing time floor ends up being really safe. And we look at what happened in 2023. The big drop off was really in slugging percentage. Lost almost 50 points in slug. A lot of the underlying skills look the same. And the thing that looks different to me with Varshow now compared to when he first really broke through, I think it was more like second half of 2021 in Arizona, he used to use the whole field consistently. Even from a power perspective, you'd see home runs opposite way, center field,

and he's become a lot more pull happy. Do you think this is actually a good approach? Do you think it's an approach that maybe started off as a good thing and then maybe went too far? What do you think the next step is for Varsha? I'm not looking at him and panicking

about his playing time in 2024 just yet. I do wonder if, depending on how the roster is built, if they have another righty that they'll throw out there and mix and match with him on occasion. But I think his glove keeps that playing time floor pretty high because through all of his struggles this year, you know, 581 plate appearances on a Toronto team that had World Series aspirations. Yeah, and some big moments late in the season. So, you know, if you're thinking in terms of like NBA, who's finishing the game, like he finished the game too. It wasn't like he was a part-time player necessarily at the end of the season when they really needed to win games. So I think he's a mainstay in that.

I think that there is some bounce back capability. I think we're going to see better work from him. All the projections say he's an above average bat going forward. It just makes me think of a couple things, which is that I think the best single batted ball is a pulled fly ball, single batted ball is a pulled fly ball pulled like pulled hard hit ball in the air um is is the best uh single batted ball and one of the things um that you can uh look at is um just look at uh league-wide trends so league-wide opposite field uh you know batters hit a three 15 with a four 68 slugging. That's a one Oh seven WRC plus. If you just look at pulling the ball,

if my, there we go. No, one more back in. No, it's not going to do it for me. Huh? Okay.

Well, let me do this real quick. I didn't think I'd have to do it again. I thought I could just press the back button. Play me off, Johnny. Yeah. 169 WRC+, with a 659 slugging to the pull side. That's 60 points of WRC+, difference between pull and oppo.

So that's a big deal. And then the other aspect is ground balls versus fly balls. This is removing line drives from the equation. So you're talking about the extremes. Ground balls, 243 average, 267 slugging for a WRC plus of 35. If you switch that to fly balls, you get a 231 average. Not that much of a difference in average. 694 slugging on fly balls, and a 134 wrc plus so you can see already in just without looking at just pulled fly balls or

pulled up balls in the air you can see that pull balls are better and fly balls are better and so dalton varsho really seems to have taken that to heart. And yes, his pull rate went from the sort of high 30s to the 50s. And his fly ball rate also advanced. Where's the problem here with him? I think the problem is that he went from a 44% fly ball rate to 47% fly ball rate. Now that doesn't seem like a huge increase. ball rate to 47% fly ball rate. Now that doesn't seem like a huge increase, but at the top ends, you know, at 40 degrees, um, launch angle, which is, you know, the top ends of your fly ball rate,

um, you really have to hit the ball, like 115 miles an hour to get anything out of those balls. Your, your production really falls off there. So I have a chart here uh from jacob on the launch angle debate uh on medium and he just has them in buckets of exit velocity and launch angle if you look at um if you look at a 41 through 50 um and you look at wobah uh in the 41 through 50 angles, anything from 75 to 105 miles an hour has a WOBA that starts with a zero or a one. So like 40 is bad. 40 is where you really, like that's the, you don't want to hit 40s. Now I did a quick search for Dalton Varshow

and number of balls over 40 degree launch angle 2023 98 2022 72 2021 49 2020 18 so he is really aggressively putting the ball in the air and it's gone too far um but given that he this is the very peak of his fly ball rate and the very peak of his you know too many uh balls over 40 i feel like you would bake in regression there and you would you would expect him to kind of maybe realize some of that and uh to maybe calm down the fly ballness of his approach um and so that's a long winded way of saying, I think generally what Varshow has done has been good, but he's taken it a little too far. There's a complicating factor in Toronto. I mean, you look at his home splits, which,

you know, for any particular season, your home road splits can be pretty noisy. Dalton Varshow has never been worse at home than he was in 2023. It was his first year in Toronto, a new place to play half his games, but also a place where the dimensions changed. And Varshow wasn't the only player in this lineup to take a step back, right? I was taking a look at the overall team performances from 2023 against 2022. The Blue Jays as a team lost 11 points off of their wrc plus right i mean vlad jr we talked about him on the last episode he wasn't quite the same player bo bichette looked like he took a small step back um you look at matt chapman i think at home he wasn't quite the same guy that drop in wrc plus was tied for the fourth biggest drop year over year. Slugging

percentage, they lost more than all but two teams. Only the Yankees and Brewers had bigger drops in slugging percentage from this season compared to last season than the Blue Jays did. And in the case of the Yankees, that was an Aaron Judge absence really driving those numbers. So I wonder how much of this is, you know, a group of hitters maybe that need to make a few adjustments based on how that ballpark plays now. You know, is that something they would have to do on an individual level? Is that something that the team would have already dug into and possibly given some ideas to these hitters to say, hey, let's let's try to change approaches this way to better fit our home park. It's an open question for now. I don't know if maybe Caitlin McGrath has some insight on something like that, but it's a problem, at least for now, that they are not hitting the way they were built to hit because they looked to me a lot like the peak Astros teams as far as how they were

constructed just a couple of years ago, low K rate, big time damage, and they didn't look like that team up and down in 2023. Yeah, I would assume they don't do anything just because one-year park factors, it's something I've written about a lot. One-year park factors in San Diego, I've written about twice now. One-year park factors in Houston, I've written about. Parks do have some noise in them, you know, year to year.

Sometimes the wind changes. Sometimes there's something built around them. Sometimes it's the dimensions like it is in Toronto. But you don't necessarily know after one year that this is exactly how it's going to play. And so I would assume that as anybody who has done a remodel of their house might attest to, it's no small thing. You start to, you have to get in the architect and then the contractors and the subcontractors and all,

you know, it becomes a whole big thing. You know, I think the last year when they did this, they started now, you know, it's not something that you start, you know,

January one. It's like, it's like, it's a big project that you want to start right away. And I would guess they haven't started it because we haven't heard about it. And so I would assume that they aren't going to change it. Now, then the second question is, how real is the problem? And I did see that, you know, Vlad Guerrero Jr., Witt Merrifield, and Matt Chapman were all down 60 to 150 points in OPS at home from 2022 to 2023. But on the flip side, Kirk, Bichette, and Springer went the other way. So it's not a slam dunk that it's all the park. And I would say that, you know, having 30 more balls at our 40 degree launch angle plus, that's like a very concrete factor.

We know those 30 balls are very unproductive. And if you change those 30 balls to line drives, which is aggressive, and I'm not saying that's exactly what it's going to do, but if you just did it as a thinking experiment, then his BABIP would have been much closer to the 270-290 range that he'd done the last two years, and his batting average would have been much closer to 240-250, and he would have had a much more normal line, and we wouldn't be talking about it. So I would assume that it's more the fly balls he's gotten to the top end of his range there and he needs to calm that down a little bit the last thought i've got on on varsho before we move on it's a lot of dalton varsho content

on this episode uh looking at how he's performed against righties even just year over year throughout his career i like the splits tool over at fangraphs because you can see the the production 2021 304 obp against righties that's the spot where he should be good right uh 317 in 2022 268 last year even if he gets back to the hitter he was in 2022 i don't think there's enough here for varsho to make a leap to the top part of this lineup i do think he's the kind of playerarshow to make a leap to the top part of this lineup. I do think he's the kind of player that's now stuck in the bottom half of the order for the Jays, even if he's not losing playing time because he's good enough against lefties and or the glove is so valuable they keep him out there. That's a limiting factor in terms of the runs and RBI is probably not being there. So you have a little bit of batting average risk on the downside, not much ceiling in the category,

decent power speed combo, but probably average or even slightly below average for runs and RBIs because of where he's likely to be in the lineup, barring some kind of massive improvement. Yeah. I mean, even look at his best season, 79 runs,

uh, 74 RBI. So, I mean, if we're doing the back of a napkin sort of quick projection, I would guess 240 average,

22 homers, and 15 steals with sort of 80-80 runs on RBI, or 70-70. I'm more comfortable with 70-70 just because of where I think he's going to hit. And then, even if you project some positive regression for the lineup as a whole,

which doesn't seem unreasonable given who these hitters are and just how regression works. You're right. He's not at the top of it. They're a little better. So 70, maybe 75 runs in RBIs each are a possibility. But tempering my enthusiasm compared to where I used to be on Varshow.

It's a good place to buy him if you are in a league where people just remember all the bad. He drops a little far. As an outfielder that you're kind of looking at versus other outfielders, I would have to assume that... Let me see here what is this this is steamer i mean you're looking at varsho versus nimmo varsho versus kerry carpenter varsho versus

jaron duran those are the types of right outfielders you're looking at i might put him behind uh duran just because of maybe a little bit more upside in the speed category. I put him ahead of, um, when I put him out of Nemo. Nemo's tough, man, because Nemo doesn't really, he doesn't.

Yeah. Like the lineup position seems so stable because he really owns that, that real skill, right? A career three 80 OBP Nemo's a lead off guy. That's going to happen. And he has been able to get to power more consistently. So I think you're getting a lot more in that runs category

I may not take him over any of those guys I guess Kerry Carpenter you know doesn't have the speed has a strikeout a little bit of a strikeout problem but yeah maybe I take him over Kerry Carpenter I think I

probably would because i think i say this all the time i think what carpenter does is still easier to find later on in the player pool at least varsho steals those bases it's a little bit of everything other than average i think that's the category where i just i'm not expecting much of anything if he's not hurting you in batting average then you've done pretty well another former catcher in some places but not all mj melendez who actually caught enough if your league has a requirement of 10 or more games he's still a catcher if your league is higher like the nfbc is 20 he's no longer a catcher he'd be outfield only in those spots i look at mj melendez you know and yeah the k rate

ticked up a little bit 28 last year still had a double digit walk rate, still got to the power a little bit. The barrel rate was double digits again. He didn't hit the ball on the ground too much. And he actually had more, more in the hard hit column overall, almost a 50% hard hit rate. It's a 49.6. I don't understand how he slugged 398. The underlying numbers just don't fit the slash line here. So is the real MJ Melendez a guy that's going to push up at least the average and slug because he can do more damage based on those underlying numbers?

Or do you see that K rate kicking up and say, yeah, this is going to be tricky because his real flaw is that he really doesn't have a good defensive position. And, you know, whereas Varsha, you say, the glove keeps him in the lineup, Melendez doesn't have that to fall back on. I think what he falls back on is he's young, the quality of the contact is good, and the Royals still aren't good, so they need to make MJ Melendez a big part of the middle of their order in the long run. I think there's still enough positive stuff here for a 24 year old, you know, in that,

in a team that that's bad, that bad that, yeah, he's got a couple of years still of, you could be doing this for a couple of years before we start talking about him losing playing time. I think I want to blame the park for his slugging percentage problems, but he actually has a four 19 slugging at home and a 371 away

um so i don't really know uh for his career and lindez does so i don't i don't know exactly what it is but if i if you covered up slugging and you showed me the rest of his line i would assume this is a guy who hit 25 homers so So I think that's still worth buying into. And I would assume that his would you rather's are even lower than than Dalton Varsha's. That is correct. He's in the outside the top 200 in a lot of leagues. 175 was the early pick. 279 was late.

I would say split that difference. I think if he stays in that pocket from pick 200 to pick 225, I might have a lot of MJ Melendez. I think I would prefer him to Varshow, especially with the discount, and maybe even straight up, because I think I like guys that hit the ball hard,

and I think MJ Melendez could take a pretty big step, unless you think they're going to take playing time away. I just don't see that happening. I don't think they're built like that. I think there's more in it for them to make sure he becomes good. I wonder, I'm trying to think of like a pie in the sky. If everything goes well, like who hits the ball hard, took a few years to really reach their current level. I mean, Kyle Schwarber is a little bit so they're complicated solaire yeah that's probably a good one too yeah i mean he took i mean he took a long time so you don't want him to take as long

but he also didn't get the same amount of chances right like he got 404 plate appearances in chicago and then 264 and then he was in kansas city where he got 110257 before he finally got the full-time fire hose and got 48 homers but uh yeah his max EVs and barrel rates and strikeout rates and walk rates he looks a lot like Solaire he looks a lot like Solaire I think the the range if the barrel rates for Schwarber were a little higher but I don't think that's completely out of bounds as a ceiling if everything clicks. So Soler probably is instructive in terms of how long it can take.

And a Schwarber outcome is the reason you keep dreaming on the potential. But part of the reason it took so long with Soler might be that he just never got the full-time playing time, whereas with Melendez, you feel like he's going to get

500 played appearances next year. Yeah, you're right. I mean, that first good season, of course, full-time playing time, whereas with Melendez you feel like he's going to get 500 played appearances next year. Yeah, you're right. I mean, that first good season, of course, first complete season from Soler was 2019. He played every single game that year. Year of the rabbit ball. Right, that's part of the story. Jorge Soler didn't need the rabbit ball to hit home runs.

But like Schwarber, you know, in 2017 started playing full-time right away. He also did better from the beginning, Schwarber, you know, in 2017, you know, started playing full time right away. He also did better from the beginning. Schwarber did. So a little higher floor. Consistent slug right away. So I think that's where it's a little bit of a reach.

But I'm still in on MJ Melendez despite the struggles. You know, kind of close to a league average bat despite the flaws up to this point let's stay in the al central eloy jimenez another player who's lost some eligibility in leagues he was actually someone i had a chance to keep in that xfl league that i co-managed with ryan bloomfield we talked it over and he's ut only in that particular league that league requires i think 15 of the position to qualify. So again, 10 games? Yes, he qualifies.

Did you let him go? It doesn't matter. We actually threw him back because of the price and the roster mechanics. Yeah, we didn't really have a UT spot to spare. We had a cheap keeper we wanted to throw in that spot instead, which actually hurt quite a bit because we traded a decent reserve pick to get Jimenez mid-season thinking he's going to put it together. 2022 is the baseline. I don't know. Is 2022 an outlier or is 2022 attainable? We've seen four years with double-digit barrel rates. Last year,

just dipped to 9.3%. Still a lot of hard contact, more ground balls. Why is Eloy Jimenez hitting the ball on the ground even close to half the time? 53.2%. That's the worst we've seen from him as a big leaguer. So you can either make me feel better about the decision Ryan and I made to throw him back or make us feel terrible and give everybody a reason to still believe in Eloy Jimenez, who I've been waiting on now for several years. I'm Linus in the great pumpkin patch waiting for the Loyamenez MVP caliber season as a hitter. You know what's interesting is that he actually is a highball hitter. Did not expect that. He's a highball hitter with a decent sense of where the zone is. I wonder if it's a little bit similar to the Vlad problem where they're filling up the zone in the bottom of the zone uh against him and he's expanding not outside of the zone but he's

expanding within the zone and hitting too many ground balls because that's where pitchers are pitching him where he wants you know to attack the high attack the high pitches in the zone and take those. That's where his swing is at its most effective. So what does that mean, though? How does someone get out of that? What do we think about? I mean, this becomes a question again about what we think about Vlad Guerrero Jr. You know, how likely is he to tighten up that swings area

and learn the Soto tactic where he just even spits on low pitches in the zone because that's not what he can drive. The Alex Bregman philosophy of, I only swing at pitches I can homer on. Do we want a little bit more? It's a great philosophy if you can execute it. It might mean more strikeouts

because he'll take some called strikes though, right? Yeah. I think if you have a set of skills and you choose to have this more balanced approach at the expense of kind of getting away from your best attribute like when you look at the tools that eloy jimenez has look at the scouting grades raw power it was graded in 2019 70 grade raw power 80 future right if you are giving up that power to make more contact you're probably making a mistake yeah we like guys that do both if you can only do one of those things and he should be able to do both because it's not a bad hit tool right he can hit he can hit pretty much could we go back to like 25 strikeout rate but have a 250 iso like we'd rather that i i think he's more likely yes i think that the 2020 even though we don't talk about 2020 a lot that slash line is probably more ideal to the skills he has that's

getting more out of him as a hitter i mean he did it for a while in 2022 as well. But I think more strikeouts in this case might be better because it means he's getting to that power more consistently. Not because he's striking out, because the types of swings he's taking, the balls he's hunting, like working the count a little longer to get those pitches. I'm surprised also, seeing that the K-rate improved, that the O-swing was still close to 40 that's a little bit puzzling to me yeah it does seem like there's this over emphasis on avoiding the strike

out in his approach yeah i would assume that's him battling off low pitches right they're in the zone so they don't count as reaches but they and they they count as contact but not good contact They count as contact, but not good contact. You know, hard hit down. Frequently hurt player, too. He's a puzzle. And I bet you the would-you-rathers are not that exciting for him. I might not take him over some of the would-you-rathers.

He's in the Varshow range. And again, UT only in NFBC leagues. Without any steals? You're not really expecting a lot of steals from the UT slot, relatively speaking, I guess. You could probably get away from it. His comp is almost like, which player do you believe in more

as a hitter? Eloy or Carlos Correa? Even though Correa goes later. 270 with 25, 27 homers are the projections. A more recent gnarly injury history on Eloy Jimenez, but the greater long-term concerns on Correa. Both injury concerns, yeah. Absolutely.

Don't know if you should roster them both at the same time. No positional value for me, Eloy. None. None whatsoever. But it's just really puzzling to me that he's hitting the ball on the ground that much. And it's got to be, look, you're saying it's got to be just trying to not strike out and ending up hitting pitches that he can't drive. And that's just sort of how it all comes together. Yeah.

Like there's selectivity strike not, but then there's also selectivity within the zone. Like, what can I do damage with? Absolutely. So I'm quietly still in, but with that caveat, there's only so many players like this that you want to take chances on. You can't wish cast on three to four hitters across your group of 14 because you're probably asking for too much. Especially with zero steals.

Yeah, you need a lot from everyone else if you're going to take a spot or two and take on these guys that don't run. One caveat real quick is the more shallow your league gets, the more some of this stuff becomes viable. Because in a shallower league it's completely comprehensible that you might actually have a starting lineup full of guys that steal like in a 10-team league you know if you three outfield whatever like if you get to a certain part in your draft and you realize well i was a little bit light on on power and maybe some of my

guys are a risk and batting average i've got estuary ruiz and jazz chisholm and you know what i mean and like it looks like i went really hard on stolen bases you may may be able to fill your bench with like correa and jimenez and somebody you know and like and uh and and profit that way because in that league correa might be droppable if he does the same thing he did last year. Yeah, I think that's true. I guess the other part of this that is kind of interesting with Jimenez is because he's kept the K rate down, the upside from a fantasy perspective might be something that actually works against him a little bit. Putting the ball in play more often, RBIs might be a little better. If he's whiffing, he's not driving in quite as many runs unless he's getting Putting the ball in play more often, RBIs might be a little better.

If he's whiffing, he's not driving in quite as many runs unless he's getting to the power a lot more often. So I still think the floor as a run producer is really good for him. Even if he sticks with this approach, I think it would be better if he took more hacks and tried to avoid swinging those pitches lower in the zone. Trevor Story came up, and I know coming off of elbow surgery, there weren't lofty expectations for him because at various points, it didn't even look like he was necessarily going to come back and play in 2023. But I thought the question was pretty interesting, that we've seen these splits from Story against same-handed pitching, the righty-on-righty splits going back to 2021

that really aren't very good. A below-average player in those matchups. We talk about the ballpark. A righty in Fenway should be able to pile up a lot of singles and doubles, hitting the ball off the monster. It's tough to grade him because of all the stuff that's happened to him in the two years that he's been in Boston, but it ultimately comes back to a bounce back to what, you know, and the K rate has gone up over 30% each of the last two seasons, decent quality of contact underneath, you know, even with the bad numbers in the 43 games he played this year, 9.7 barrel rate, pretty close to his career norms. So what kind of expectations do you have for Trevor Story coming out of just two injury ravaged

seasons so far with the Red Sox? One thing that I like is he actually improved his sprint speed a little bit and he stole bases and he's 86th percentile in speed. So he's retained his athleticism and

that's going to make him interesting to me. I also like that he played 36 games at shortstop last year. Is he going to be dual? Nope, not dual. Just shortstop.

But I think I might buy some shares. I don't really have an answer for you why. You know, I just, I like that he's stealing bases. I like that he's still barreled the ball 10% of the time. The raw power wasn't all the way back, but this is right after injury.

A full year of rehab, like a full offseason normal offseason of rehab like his career line is 265 with a 28 strikeout rate i think he could do that next year and if he does that next year with any sort of recovery of power due to his injuries. Like you're talking about 265, 2020, right? I think the 20 bags is like the, that's the skill that makes the most sense to me off, like out of the box. Like I think 20 steals seem very reasonable. Maybe the 265 is the biggest reach because he doesn't have the Coors inflation anymore.

But even if it's 250, 2020, like he's going to be cheap. Right. It's basically Trevor story versus tyro estrada yeah and i'm gonna take trevor story actually i think i'm with you on that good park in fact the the park can inflect it inflate his babbitt a little bit like cores used to yeah even if it's only you know half as much as cores does that's still a boost over what a neutral park would be giving him yeah I think it's it's a little bit like a TJ pitcher that came back

and wasn't great but showed good velo like yeah you know like good exit velo good running velo you know like it's like a pitcher who who came back from tj had five starts and it's almost exactly like that because five starts i mean maybe 10 starts but like had started and showed that he was healthy enough to play but didn't play that well i think there's lots of people that would buy low on a pitcher like that it's really interesting and that's a good comp because i think sometimes just getting back, showing everyone you're healthy for more than a couple of weeks, and then having that clear runway to not be rehabbing all winter, but to actually be working on getting stronger and working on things that you want to work on, that's a big difference. I do think the price is pretty funny.

We talked about Spencer Steer on the last episode of surprises and i was really surprised to see his adp kind of around that pick 80 mark and when you start to say what is trevor story going to bounce back to i think he bounces back to a guy that ends up in that range you think about like hasung kim josh lowe these guys are kind of going in the pick 70 range tell me story costs less than that. Oh, we definitely got. Okay. Thank you. I thought you were going to set me up here for saying stories.

ADP is 75. I'd be like, what? No. Okay. His range in those five drafts is one 33. There you go. Two,

like at the earliest two 13 at the latest. I don't, I don't think that's going to be real. I think around one 50, like you could buy him around one 50, like ninth, 10th round. I mean,

to, to get someone who could still steal you, you know, 20 bags without, with non-zero homers, like, I think he'll be a great MI, you know? Yeah, I think he makes a lot of sense where he's going right now. And I think if you could, if you nudge him up to Zach Galoff territory, like who do you trust more? Zach Galoff with his kind of unique swing and some of the things he does versus Storix. I could see Storix ADP ticking up a couple of rounds. Once we get more volume, once people get a little more time. You could see Zach Galoff's BABIP taking a few ticks down.

I mean, 27% strikeout rate, 267 average, 331 BABIP. It's like, do all of these things match up for zygo off i don't think so i i think they might be a lot more similar than people realize so that might be that might be the sort of toss-up we end up reaching between now and if it's a true toss-up same price i'm taking gal off just because he's younger and we don't know the top end you know we don't know his true talent babbitt you know we don't know but if you're drafting on saturday which i don't think you and i can draft because our our pod overlaps the the start of drafter noon but that's fine the uh then you get it galoff of story. Assuming he goes like a couple rounds earlier.

Are you saying, ah, well, I'll wait. Story's back there. I'll pass on Gallop. I'll do something else. I'll try to get Trevor story next time through.

I might, because get off, we'll be going then in the eighth round. And in the eighth round, a, I might need pitching and B, I might want more sure things. The 10th round is like literally this weird moment where I'm,

I start becoming more okay with taking shots. Yeah. I think that's like seventh and eighth round. I'm like, I want to be more sure about this. And then like, I don't know, maybe it's just stupid,

but like ninth, 10th round, I'm like, man, Yolo, this guy could be great. Pick one 50. Let's just air it out let's see what happens I ran a couple of things together in a jumbo messy spreadsheet and I was looking for players who had at least 450 plate appearances in 2023 and I was looking at the difference between auction calculator dollars

earned in 23 versus 22 and even though he missed time with an injury Aaron Judge was the the biggest faller because he had an amazing season in 2022 missed time you know for stretches wasn't quite himself blah blah blah this isn't about Aaron Judge I was really surprised to see Paul Goldschmidt was one of the biggest fallers in earned value because he was the number two hitter, according to the auction calculator, in 2022. So he started from a high place, and he was still a $19 player this year. It wasn't like if you drafted Paul Goldschmidt in the second round, you didn't lose your league because of that. But he had this sort of setback year or downturn year, given his age, not a big surprise, with 687 plate appearances. I would have figured, oh, he missed some time.

He had an injury. I don't think I had Goldschmidt anywhere. So I didn't realize that he just wasn't quite the same guy. Again, not a big surprise. Lost 10 homers from the previous year. Run production took a hit that lineup of course wasn't the same they had a lot of injuries guys didn't step up so that worked against him the stolen base output was still there and it's pretty much the exact increase you'd

expect a guy that went 7 for 7 in 2022 he went 11 for 13 in 2023 that's like the exact bump someone would ordinarily get with the stolen base rules in effect this year. So what's going on with Paul Goldschmidt? The underlying numbers still look pretty good. The plate skills haven't changed all that much. The strikeout rate was the highest it's been since his first year in St. Louis. And we're talking about a guy who's 36 years old now. So I think what you see is probably what you get, but what you see is still not that bad, even though it was a harsh drop from the previous season.

Well, one real quick, shout out to the Cardinals for a pretty good contract. Yeah, that extension, I think got a little bit laughed at in some circles. Well, just because they spent a bunch of player capital to get him

and then also spent money on him. You just feel like, why did you give up Kelly and all those guys when you could have just waited a year and paid that same money in pre-agency? But in retrospect, what did they lose out of it? Who did they trade? It was like Kelly and... Luke Weaver and as our friend Chris Welsh and Scott Bogman said, Uber driver Andy Young was the third player in that trade.

And Kelly was supposedly the catcher of the future over there, but he's on his third team since and whatever. Yeah, I think the Cardinals did well in that. The other thing is, I think this is a Hall of Famer. Is that crazy? I have no argument against that. You may want him to get to 400 homers or something, but if he gets to 400 homers, close to 200 stolen bases,

he won't necessarily have that 300, 400, 500 pristine line, but he'll be close to 200 stolen bases. He won't necessarily have that 300, 400, 500 pristine line, but he'll be close to it. I think he could be a Hall of Famer. Last, I do see a little bit of the aging bell curve happening finally for him where his pull rate went down. He came into this league as more of an oppo guy, and he learned how to pull and uh learn how to pull in the air and uh he'd been steadily sort of progressing in pulled fly balls uh over his

career peaking in st louis the last couple years and he took a fairly significant step back from uh the peak fly ball rate and the peak pull rate. And I just don't know that he's necessarily going to regress back to where he was in 2021 and 2022 in terms of pull fly balls because it fits so well with how he came into the league. You know what I mean? It just looks like, okay, this is the beginning of the end. And the nice thing is it's such a great peak that the beginning of the end could be useful in fantasy for three, four, five years. But I don't know that I would buy him assuming that next year he's going to hit 300 with 30 homers and 15 steals or whatever.

And assume that all this regression is going to be positive. He's 36 years old. Paul Goldschmidt is not likely, I i don't think to put up another season like 21 or 22 again yeah i wonder how much you know the aging of joey vato might be somewhat instructive here like you see that you know vato and that power season he had in 2021 was just such a bizarro outlier that i wouldn't want to put that on anybody. I think more about how 2015, 2016, 2017, high 20s, even mid 30s home runs, everything looked like typical Votto. And then, you know, 2018, it was a pretty big drop in power, even though average and OBP were fine, right?

Like sometimes you just kind of fall off into that new valley. You just don't know how the injuries are going to, you you know like what kind of injuries will goldschmidt get when he gets hold of will he play through them and have lower power or he missed lots of time i mean vato and 18 and 19 put in 1200 plate appearances but was he fully healthy because right that's a weird iso to put up in in 1200 plate appearances yeah it's a pretty ISO to put up in 1200 play appearances. Yeah, it's a pretty funny little part of the draft, though, in these early drafts. Paul Goldschmidt, around pick 75. Some other older players, not as old as Goldschmidt.

Mike Trout goes in that range. You see Nolan Arenado going about 15 picks later right now. Given the age difference, I think I'm more inclined to take Arenado in this range. Wouldn't be surprised if the gap between them closes and they end up being two guys. You can't get together in a draft situation because you take one and someone next to you or near you takes the other. I could see them being pretty similar in terms of output. I,

I would be a little bit more assured. I think of Arenado's power and more assured that Goldie would steal 10 bases again. Yeah, yeah. So solid player, but not buying and expecting another $30-plus season in mixed leagues from Paul Goldschmidt. Here's another player that I didn't have many places. Cedric Mullins. He did miss some time.

He started to platoon a little bit late in the year, too. This is an Orioles team that got a lot better, so you'd think the supporting cast would buoy some of those numbers a bit. Where do we go from here? Cost them some playing time, maybe. Right. They aren't going to

be willing to tolerate struggles against lefties and different slumps and all these different things that can happen to a player. We saw Mullins strike out a little bit more, kind of split the difference between his previous two seasons and barrel rates. I think we kind of know. He's like a 6% barreler. Usually, it makes

a lot of that value in the run scored and stolen base department. Because of the lost time and stolen bases being easier to get, I feel like that worked against Mullens quite a bit. He's exactly the kind of player that became more common because of that uptick in stolen bases around the league.

Yeah, he didn't push it into that 30-40 category where he's not a category winner, but a real impact in that category. At 19 stolen bases, he's in the glob of base stealers. Still efficient, though. He's 19 for 22. So if you scale playing time up, you could see him getting to 25 or 30 bags again

as long as the role is there. And what's the would you rather on him? Because I feel like sometimes just an injury can create weird gaps in your season where like, you know, in the first half of the, in March and May, he hit, you know, 270 with eight homers and 13 stolen bases. That's like most of his production for the season, right? And then when he gets hurt, he comes back second half, 209, seven homers, six stolen bases.

It's just like maybe he was still being affected by the injury. Maybe he just wasn't able to get going in a way that somebody who played through the season could get going, you know? Yeah, here's here's a good ADP comp because I think they do kind of similar things skills wise to when it's all going good. TJ Friedel versus Cedric Mullins, right? Like I look at TJ Friedel and like that seems like it's about as good as it can get in 2023. Maybe it's repeatable, but low-barreler, someone that I think needs a park like Cincinnati to continue being a mid-to-high-teens home run contributor, but 27 for 33 as a base dealer, good on average and OBP.

That helps kind of drive those counting stats. That's sort of reasonable Mullins barrels the ball more strikes out a little more than Friedel but I think in terms of the the categorical value I think they would be reasonable comps is it fair to just you know kind of take a step back from the minutiae and the and the little stats and everything and just say buying Friedel is buying at the top and buying Mullins is buying at the bottom. I mean, if it was the exact same price, I think I would take Mullins actually.

Yeah, I mean, the way the Orioles used him the previous two seasons, he was a true everyday guy. And I think you have to really get inside the process of that front office and the roster and say, is that no longer true? Or is that just a thing that was temporarily not there for Mullins this season? I want to look really quickly at who played in center field other than him.

I don't think Hicks. Is Hicks even under contract? I don't think he is. Is Hicks even under contract? I don't think he is. Let me see. I'm not saying that with certainty. So it's free agent 2026. Oh, that's right. The Yankees are paying that.

But the Yankees are paying that. Does that mean that the Orioles just have him again as a minimum guy? They should, yeah. Oh, that's pretty killer for the Orioles. Yeah, I mean, a good bench outfielder. Hicks, I think, is fast as his time in Orioles with the Orioles

started. I don't think you think, oh, they're going to, you know, Hicks is going to take every lefty at bat from Mullins next year. I don't really think that. I don't know how often you want to have Hicks in center. Jorge Mateo had five plate appearances as a center fielder. It was Mullins, Hicks, McKenna, Couser, Hayes, and Mateo. That was all just like long tail.

Couser, Hayes, and Mateo were all under 10 games in center field. McKenna is a defensive center fielder, and I believe he bats righty. Yes. He does. So McKenna is actually probably the biggest threat however McKenna in those plate appearances had a 61 WRC plus are we sure that McKenna even with the platoon advantage is that much better than than Mullins

for his career he has a 75 WRC plus he doesn't really have much power and he strikes out a whole ton McKenna is a backup to me if you believe Kouser is a center fielder then that could be true but even in the minor leagues he almost had an even split between corner outfield and and centerfield.

But yeah, I think the real threat is Kouser. The sort of on-the-roster, stealing-a-few-at-bats-against-lefties threat is McKenna. But if you think the future for Kouser begins next year and they're going to start him in center field over Mullins some and maybe even move Mullins off the position or anything like that, then you would bet against Mullins. But I don't necessarily think that's going to happen this year. It's coming here.

I feel kind of similar about Mullins as I do about Varshow, and I feel like because of the defense, especially Varshow's playing time could be a little safer. Both of these guys have questions about their their offensive value on the positive side of their platoon splits. So Mullins against righties 305 OBP last year, 318 in 2022. That doesn't go to the top of the order for a contending team, right? That's a player that goes more to the bottom of the order. contending team, right? That's a player that goes more to the bottom of the order. So I think even though the lineup around him is better, his role in that lineup is probably different, even if you want to give him 600 plate appearances again. So I'm not, I'm not looking at him and

saying absolutely great value. You're going to bounce back to early round status, but he's also not an avoid player. I think he's sort of like an appropriate correction based on some of the things that have happened. Would you take him or Friedel? I think I'd take Mullins over Friedel. The Reds have a crowd too. Obviously more crowd on the infield than the outfield but if we're choosing today I could see things getting trickier for TJ Friedel between now

and opening day. And maybe Mullins gets traded. We talked about the glut of outfielders the Orioles have. Maybe there's some other team that ends up with Cedric Mullins. And maybe Friedel gets traded because the Reds need pitching. And I think Friedel would suffer more from a trade than Mullins. 100% agree, because I do think that power contribution in particular, given the underlying contact numbers for TJ Friedel, the quality of

that contact outside a great American ballpark, he's just not going to be a guy that hits for that much power. So that would be a pretty big deal if they flipped him. Curious to see how it plays out for both of them though, and reasonably priced where they're going. But I think I prefer Mullins to Friedel right now, just given what we've seen from these guys up to this point in their respective careers. We are going to go. We, of course, as expected, left a few more names that will come up in review and preview episodes of this pod in the weeks and months ahead. On our way out the door, a reminder, $2 a month gets you in for a subscription

at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. We are headed to First Pitch, Arizona. Our friends at Baseball HQ put on a great conference every year, so we've got a live pod recording for the people at the conference on Saturday. That'll drop sometime early next week. I'm moving again. My mom's going to game four tonight, and I'm going to game five tomorrow night with Paul Sporer.

Game five tomorrow night with Paul Sporer. And then you might see us on the TV if you watch the Arizona Fall League All-Stars. Because what we end up doing is we end up sitting right behind home plate. Because it's, A, fairly easy to do so. It's not super well attended. I'll be going from a game that has 50,000 people in attendance to a game on Thursday in the Fall League that may have 50 people in attendance. And so you'll see us behind there. But we also play a game,

which you may be able to organize on Twitter or somewhere else, that's called Paul Stars. It's very simple. Everyone gets two picks. It's a snake draft. It's very simple. Everyone gets two picks. It's a snake draft.

And you just pick two players in the lineup for the All-Stars, the Arizona Fall League All-Stars. And I don't know. It's like sort of DFS-ish scoring. Total bases, basically. Yeah, something like that. And then that's pretty simple. We put a couple of ducats down and and enjoy ourselves. So if you see me waving or even if you don't see me, because one year somebody got mad at me for waving.

I was waving to my kids. And so if you don't see us waving, we're waving at you metaphorically. Yeah, right. If we blink twice like that, like I said, that's our way of saying hello. You know that, who was it? Hornacek. He used to, when he, Jeff Hornacek, when he went to the line in the NBA to take foul shots, he would always go like this in a very sort of obvious way. And someone asked him about it. He's like, I'm waving to my kids.

There you go. Ours will be a double blink. I'll forget about that literally 10 minutes after I say it. Probably just do it accidentally because the lights will be bright or I'll be tired or whatever. All those things. But should be a good time in Arizona. Looking forward to that. Safe travels to everybody who's going to be meeting us out there.

Again, if you like this podcast, drop us a rating and review. If you're watching us on YouTube, be sure to hit the like button on this video. If you're not watching us on YouTube, be sure to hit the like button on this video. If you're not watching us on YouTube, subscribe to the YouTube channel, the Rates and Barrels YouTube channel. Lots of good stuff there and always more. We have tons of ideas. We're in the heavy ideation phase. We need to be in the increased production phase. More production value on the YouTube next year, I think.

We're going to try and do more visuals more because it's a visual medium. Like try to take advantage of the fact that you can see the charts and see what we're talking about and do some of that. So yes, less of our faces

is the goal in 2024. And we'll be here, but just covered by nice graphics is the it's the actual hope. That's going to do it for this episode of Rated Barrels. We're back with you next week. Thanks for listening.