Rates & Barrels - Mike Minor goes back to KC, finding fits for a Blake Snell trade, and free agents from the KBO

Episode Date: December 1, 2020

Eno and DVR discuss the Royals' addition of Mike Minor and Michael Taylor, Wander Franco's arm injury, Blake Snell trade rumors, and a few KBO players seeking opportunities in the big leagues.  Rundown 1:14 Smaller Thanksgiving Missteps  7:39 Mike Minor Signs with Kansas City 12:54 Michael Taylor Joins a Weirdly Crowded Royals Outfield 19:46 Minor League Changes & Possible Delayed 2021 Start 28:37 Wander Franco Leaves Dominican Winter League with Arm Injury 32:49 Finding Fits for a Blake Snell Trade 39:33 KBO Players Seeking MLB Opportunities This Winter 51:20 Fantasy Leagues That Didn't Play 2020 55:56 Severino, Sale & Thor in Keeper/Dynasty Leagues Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic for just $1/week: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So let's be clear. When it comes to shipping internationally, can I provide trade documents electronically? Mm-hmm. The answer is FedEx. Okay. But what about estimating duties and taxes on my shipments? How do I find all the... Also FedEx. Impressive. Is there a regulatory specialist I can ask about? FedEx. Oh. But let's say that... FedEx.

What? FedEx. Thanks. No more questions. Always your answer for international shipping. FedEx. What? FedEx. Thanks. No more questions. Always your answer for international shipping. FedEx, where now meets next. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Monday, November 30th. Happy fourth birthday to my golden doodle Hazel. She's a very good girl. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. This post-Thanksgiving weekend, I've finally cleared out the excess of desserts that I had in my fridge for the last couple of days.

the excess of desserts that I had in my fridge for the last couple of days. And, you know, as you can appreciate as a fellow runner, I have put myself on a course to hopefully run 100K before the end of the year. Not all at once, just stretched out over the last month of the year. I got five in on Sunday night, so I'm counting that. So 95 to go before the year ends. I love how runners suddenly love kilometers. I love kilometers so much.

Everything seems so much more impressive in kilometers. Yeah, if I said I was going to run 60 miles, you're like, oh, it's kind of good, but 100K sounds like a nice milestone. I think we're all kind of struggling with too many leftovers given these the situation with this thanksgiving uh i did have my dad over uh just one person over um and

so it was kind of hard i found like the smallest turkey and we cut some sides and we like just i mean because we're eating for like five or six people and the kids aren't gonna eat crap so like you know we just we tried to make a small thanksgiving meal which is really difficult and uh i made some really key mistakes and i'm happy to actually have made them in 2020 because they're much easier to shove under the rug and uh now i know a lot better about uh certain things i did a dry brine on the turkey um and then i combined that with uh salted butter and um and then when we made the gravy we used a salted stock so the gravy was too salty. Even the turkey was a little bit,

I think, on the too salty side. So next year, I will have unsalted butter around and low-sodium stock and be really careful. Also, I didn't really necessarily adjust my dry brine to the size of my bird.

You over-salted. Yeah yeah we over salted so uh so the cranberry sauce actually became super important as much as i don't necessarily love the cranberries it was like okay let me heap some of that on to cut the salt but my mashed potatoes as always were on point i am a mashed potato god and uh it was it was fun like my dad was very happy to get out i i feel really badly for you know it's been hard for me with kids but one thing that you do have with kids is at least they're doing something that's But one thing that you do have with kids is at least they're doing something that's, you know, there's things happening. So at least you and hopefully somebody else can complain to each other about the kids. It's something to do.

I feel I think maybe the worst for people who are stuck by themselves. Yeah, it's just, you know, it's weird. And so my dad is, you know, a bachelor up in San Francisco. He just shut his business down for the rest of the year. And so I don't know. He's seeing like one person a week. So he was very happy to come over. We were happy to see him.

And we won't see him again for a couple weeks. And that's just life, I guess. Yeah, we saw my brother-in-law and then my mother-in-law and father-in-law. So it was just a group of five of us. And I think the dessert mistake that we made, it's not really a mistake, is that everybody's favorite is something a little bit different. So it was kind of like – So you made one for each person. Yeah. You know the old Christmas story?

Everybody gets a whole cake, a whole pie. whole pie where the girl cuts her hair to get money to buy the guy something and the guy sells the thing and you know that whole situation where they both do something for each other we kind of did that but with desserts and we ended up with like one dessert per person you know we had a whole apple pie we had a whole pumpkin pie i made a sweet potato souffle on top of that which as i ate it i'm like well this is delicious but this is clearly dessert. It's another pie. This is pre-pie pie. What was your

post-pie pie? That was a Kringle. Do you guys eat Kringles in other parts of the country, or is that just a Wisconsin thing? I thought that was another name for Santa. No, that is a Santa name. That's very good. A Kringle is an oval-shaped flaky pastry with a filling, usually a fruit filling. And this one, this year, they had a brandy old-fashioned one.

So there was a little bit of brandy and cherries and probably some orange essence or something in there. And it's got a little bit of frosting on top. So it's kind of like a thin croissant with a filling and a little bit of frosting on it. More of a dessert, though. I'm into that. It's a nice breakfast pastry. So we had that on top of pies. That was our morning sugar rush.

And, yes, so it was a lot of fun. It was just nice to see just a couple people. And, obviously, we missed the 40-plus that we usually get to see on my wife's side. We didn't get to see my siblings or my parents. I know a lot of people out there changed their plans for the long run better health of everybody

to play it that way. Hang in there if you've been stuck in a situation where you're alone a lot. I can't imagine how difficult that has been. Again, having a dog in this time, Hazel's a good girl, right? That's why she's going to get spoiled for her birthday. Your dog was socialized in the time of,

in the before times. Yes, this is true. I'm having a hard time socializing my puppies. Yeah. We did doggy daycare too. Yes, they see very few people they see very few dogs when they do see dogs it's on the leash in a walk in a way where it's because of masks and stuff like i don't want to like get super close to someone else's dog sometimes it's hard with

the leashes and so like i don't know i don't even know what to do you know i don't know what to do my dogs bark at everything and they're little so you know most people people are like okay well it's just a little dog whatever he's very cute as they back away you know but i tried to take them to the dog park yesterday and uh it was pretty much disaster uh from beginning to end they don't they don't bark too much at people they're they're getting better with people. And the more that people come over and give them treats, I always have a bag of treats to hand to people

so when they see my dogs, the dogs now think, oh, new people, treats. And we've taught them some things. They poop outside, they roll over. They're not terrible dogs, but man, the barking is getting to me a little bit. Barking is tough. I think the trick I heard was that you need to teach them to bark on command in order to teach them to be quiet more effectively, which seems very counterintuitive.

Fortunately, Hazel doesn't bark a lot, so we didn't have to do it that way. But pretty much every small dog in our neighborhood acts like your dogs, so i'm very familiar with the problem that you're trying to work through uh lots to talk about on this episode relatively speaking for late november we have the royals making a splash in free agency and you know i'm putting a little extra sauce on it because well there's extra sauce they're trying you know what i'm not going to rip a team for trying they went out they added mike minor they just added michael taylor a few minutes before we started recording this episode early monday afternoon so i want to start with mike minor and the big concern i think we have with minors 2020 is that we saw nearly a two mile per hour

drop in his average fastball velocity from the 2018 and 2019 levels. He was kind of in that 92 and a half and up range the previous two seasons. So definitely a concern and a guy that didn't have the impact that we expected after the A's acquired him at the trade deadline in 2020. I'm assuming the Royals see him as a starter. He's still a guy that has four pitches, even with that reduced velocity. They have a need for innings, so it makes sense in that regard. But on Miner specifically, how concerned are you about that much of a VLO drop coming out of the shortened season? I am concerned. I think it's surprising to me that they gave him a two-year deal. We don't really have terms yet, though,

so maybe it's that they did better on money because they did a two-year deal. But if you look at velocity gainers in September and cross-reference that with free agency list, there's only one name in the top five that hasn't signed. So number one is Matt Shoemaker. And I think the reason he hasn't signed is he has probably the most extreme injury history of any starter on the market. Number two is Drew Smiley, signed.

Number three is Robbie Ray, signed. He was up plus 1.4 in September. This is comparing September VLOs to March VLOs of last year. So, um, or yeah, is that what it is? September to, yeah, I think September to March, uh, Kevin Gossman up one point one signed Michael Waka is, uh, was up 0.9. Um, and he was being discussed as a, as a, as a good option, um, just last week because of, uh, last week because of that uptick. So I think people look at recent velocity trends as a sign of health and a sign for the future.

So maybe Jake Arrieta up 0.4 in September will get a better deal than we expect. Maybe. I think you could get one plus incentives or something that would be a little more rich up front. But I think with Miner, I look at the 2019 numbers when I do that smushed 19 and 20 together trick. It looks okay. A 401 ERA, 124 whip, 265 innings. That's what jumps off the page, right? You're getting a lot of volume there.

And with that, you get a few extra shots at wins. And obviously those are important. You look at CSW, 30, not bad from the shortened season, 101 command plus. So it looks kind of like Mike Miner an average ish starter the terms aren't out so it's a little bit hard to analyze from a real real baseball perspective but still like you know there this is a an underrated undervalued type of pitcher you know like a pitcher a competent pitcher that will give you innings i think um it's it's the type of pitcher that often

the a's will buy you know so i think the Royals are kind of being like, let's fill out the rotation. Let's have somebody there. You know, let's not just like have this one, like two or three spots that are just like rookies. So I think a lot of these players can be undervalued. But in terms of velocity mattering, like he's at the bottom. Like Mike Miner is, I think like the bottom he's at the bottom like mike minor is i think uh the bottom

free agent when it comes to velocity change uh from september um 20 to march 19 um and a name that's not a free agent but who was also near the bottom uh should should worry you is like madison bumgarner uh i guess the true bottom is Cole Hamels. Yeah. He was down almost three ticks. But Madison Bumgarner signed a deal coming off being down on Velo and it turned out to be pretty bad. He lost even more Velo. Velo's important. It's a big deal. It's one of the few things that can predict the next outing from a pitcher.

It gives you a great sense of how healthy they are. I had Miner at 70 among starters. I don't think he's moving up as a result of landing in Kansas City. Maybe he even falls down a little bit because the team context is not great. They're still kind of pushing through a rebuilding phase, trying to find some young pieces to take more prominent roles there. So I think if he'd resigned with Oakland or gone to a team that we saw as a contender, maybe he would have ticked up slightly.

Decent park, though. Yeah, the park helps the ratios, but I could still see if that velo doesn't come back. Yikes. He could still give up homers, yeah. That could be a pretty big problem for him. But the other move that the Royals made, Michael Taylor getting a one-year deal. Looks like it's $1.5 million.

This, to me, is kind of like your typical, we saw Jake Marisnyk go to the Mets as a free agent, a similar deal. Small side platoon, good defender in center field, a guy that could play more if you needed him to. If the big side guy gets hurt or isn't playing well, you sort of play Taylor more and just have a superior defender at a premium position. As far as what Taylor can do as a hitter, he's coming off of the worst year of his career, but the underlying numbers really weren't that bad. You look at

the slash line, 196, 283, 424. That doesn't look good at all, but he hits the ball hard when he makes contact and his strikeout rate actually got a bit better in the shortened season. Yeah, there's room for him to have a decent fantasy season. I don't know about real life, just the lack of walks has kept his OBP around 300. I think we were talking about this off-air a little bit,

just having Montessi and Taylor in the same lineup, especially with Nicky Lopez, then you're just really torpedo. And then Michael Franco's not really an OBP guy either. So basically half your lineup can't get on base. It's a problem. So looking at this depth chart the way that it is now and thinking about if you're drafting now or you just you're a royals fan or you're just thinking about this team i think that the depth charts don't quite have it right

yet because i'm looking at fan graphs like nikki lopez is not going to start at second base for me i think he had a shot he can be a valuable part of a team because I think he can probably play outfield and infield and play shortstop. So that is a pretty valuable piece when you're building a team to have a guy who can play shortstop and maybe centerfield. That's pretty amazing. He won't be any good, but he's the guy who can back up all those positions and be a really good piece on the bench i put wet merrifield at second and that opens up two outfield positions uh for some combination of franchi cordero michael taylor edward oliveras maybe like nikki nikki uh in the mix at some point khalil Lee but that's two places uh where now if you just sort of

platoon Cordero and Taylor and you put Oliveras and Wright I think you've you're getting somewhere in the outfield like you're you're doing okay and it's opportunity and fantasy because that means that like Oliveras and Cordero could both be close to full-time bats and not cost a lot probably considering their past performance yeah i think olivares is pretty interesting just because he can fill all five categories potentially i mean we saw some really nice numbers from him at double a with the padres i know what we saw in 2020 was a lot less impressive at the big league level but he's the kind of guy that would have spent most of the season, if not all of 2020 at AAA, had there been a minor league season.

So I think he's on the list of players you could see maybe going back down, seeing some time in Omaha, maybe coming back up in the second half of the season if he doesn't come into spring training, tearing the cover off the ball and kind of locking in a spot. But if your holes are in the outfield corners, you can get short-term solutions to take those spots at low prices. Yeah, there's no shortage of guys that can capably be glue guys in those spots.

It would be weird as hell to see Yasiel Puig in Kansas City, but why not? Let's try it. One thing that it brings up is, I'm working on a piece with Britt Garoli and Melissa Lockhart about Britt Garoli-Cain, sorry, about the current coming year, the way it's going to look, also the

lost year and what that's going to mean for baseball going forward. We're working on this, but it seems like the beginning of next season is in debate. That debate goes from the Major League level where I think maybe they've shown that they can play baseball, even if it's pandemic baseball. They've kind of established that to some extent.

So I think the regular season will be fine. However, the minor league season may be pushed further to accommodate the major leaguers, so you're not bringing so many people to camp and you're not trying to sort as many situations out uh which i think would be difficult because you still have somebody like oliveris who you're like where does he start and do you bring him to camp and then you know so you just don't have a minor league camp or you have the minor league camp maybe in april when the major leaguers leave yeah that could work uh so you have some of your high

minors guys in camp, and then you have to decide with Edward Aliveras, should he stay back here with the minor league camp or should he break with the major league team? It might have an effect on the shape of prospect seasons again next year, if you think about it. I'm about to have a Keeper League auction Saturday night. It's the XFL auction. We do the reserves in the spring, so the prospects and the guys that round out the

bottom part of the roster, we still have some time to figure out what that's going to look like. As far as choosing players that played up to AA and then didn't play in the big leagues this year, I have no idea what I'm going to use to justify going after those players. I feel like it's an extremely difficult year in keeper and dynasty leagues to decide what matters to you. And who's going to play. Who's going to get the opportunity, who's still in favor within their respective organizations, because we don't have any public facing data on most of these guys, as we've talked a lot about. A lot of the stuff, we have people doing the best they can to do live looks,

but you know that there's going to be more Rolodex working this year in prospect evaluation, and that's always just subject to whatever the will of the leaker is. Are they trying to pump a guy up for a trade? Are they trying to hide a guy? No, he was okay, whatever. And he was like the best dude in alternate camp. They just didn't want anybody to know about it.

So I don't know. Yeah, it's going to be tough. And there might be this weird thing where maybe everyone's less likely to break camp with the team because minor league camp hasn't even started yet. So they're just like, oh, he's just going to stay here. He just needs a little more time. Maybe it's easier to do that if minor league camp is just starting up. Yeah. I don't know.

The minor league season so much hinges on people being in seats. We've talked about that before, right? That's the critical aspect of that business. seats. We've talked about that before, right? That's the critical aspect of that business. The job, if you work for a minor league team, is to get- Figure out how to get people to come. As many people as possible to show up. With a craft beer festival or some weird local band or Star Wars night. I mean, the best ideas in the major leagues have come from my league parks trying them out.

Right. So I think part of the thought process in waiting to start that season is to try and see how things progress with the vaccine and what kinds of gatherings are going to be held in America when we get to the second quarter of 2021. And I think trying to forecast that at the end of November, clearly it's very difficult to do. So if you want to err on the side of caution and not play minor league games in empty stadiums or nearly empty stadiums, I imagine minor league teams where allowed

would at least push social distancing and put pockets of fans at the stadium just to get something. And maybe they'd find some really clever way to make it unlike anything you've ever seen before in your entire life. And you'll pay a premium price to go. I would never put that past minor league marketing people. They're some of the more creative people on the planet. It's kind of just a coincidence there's baseball going on. It's really just like, pretend you're running a circus. What will get people to show up to your circus today?

Well, there's a baseball game over there if you're into that, but really you're here for the circus. And it is all the things that you mentioned, right? It is the craft beer festival. It is, you know, come... The Voltaggio brothers did like a dinner thing at Fredericksburg one time

that was like one of the best attended minor league games of all time. Yeah, you see Seinfeld nights all the time where various characters from Seinfeld, like you can go take a picture with Newman. I'd actually like to see Newman versus Jose Canseco in a home run derby. So if someone could put those things together.

But Newman gets to hit softballs and Canseco has to hit off of a pitching machine that can also throw curveballs more pros versus joe stuff for sure for sure but you know what one of the things is cool too is like what they do between innings when i was out in san jose they had one where like you had to demolish a truck you just they gave you balls and you had to throw them at this truck and you're just trying to demolish this truck by throwing baseballs at it. Another one was they were just they had a chipping contest where you were on top of

the dugout and you tried to chip it into a little kiddie pool. That was like 30 yards out or something. Anything that you can put together and clean up in the amount of minutes you've got. Yeah.

What they do here for the Northwoods League, we got the Madison Mallards, they do human bowling between innings where the players, I think, stand out there as pins because the guys that aren't playing are just kind of sitting up on the berm. Again, small summer league baseball. So they jump down out of the berm

and they stand up like pins and they put a kid in one of those giant bubble ball things. And then they roll the kid at the players, and the players, they all fall down, right? And that's the thing people get excited about. And it works. It sells tickets. It's amazing. So if you're wondering why the minor league season might be delayed, it's really because you need people in person for the circus to work

just a real quick like sorry to my like baseball today has been kind of a bloodbath there's a bunch of announcements about different things and and it's funny of course because it's baseball they're like they're putting a they're trying to put a positive spin on everything so they're like the pioneer league is now based it's like baseball like mlb adjacent it's we're announcing the pioneer league as a partnered league uh dude what you're actually saying is you kicked the pioneer league out of affiliated baseball good job on that one nice spin on that one and then they they i think they took a bunch of this other uh of people that were kicked out of affiliated baseball like the trenton

i don't even know i think trenton lost their affiliation like i don't i know that the yankees like uh made a change there but anyway there's this new thing called the draft league and my my my sneaking suspicion is that there's there are a lot of uh other parks that were kicked out of affiliation and they're going to create these new leagues and yeah okay so independent ball is going to be better in the future but my understanding from players is that they hate independent ball and that it's mostly just a slog and i don't like other than the saint paul saints like i can't think of a lot of places that draw a lot and it's mostly just people trying to get a shot you know i don't know i i don't think that i don't i my my i understand about efficiency and i understand um that maybe

the mileys have gotten too bloated that that that makes sense to me uh but i also don't necessarily think that today is a very good day for for baseball no today is a horrible day for baseball and the impact of what's happening is really hard to even fully calculate and describe right now but it's considerable in those communities where teams are either just gone because they won't be affiliated to anything but even in situations like the pioneer league i imagine they's still going to be a hit there. Even though it is more about just showing up for something to do, it's not the same. It will not be the same anymore. And I think that's going to be

a big setback for those places. I look at this and I also wonder if we were building Major League Baseball from scratch today, how many affiliates would we really have? Did Minor League Baseball grow to a point that didn't make sense from just a basic logistics standpoint, even though the league continued to push through with this model because it's favorable to the league, right? I mean, it's very good for business to run things the way things were running. But if you were trying to come up with the smartest and best system for developing players, turning high school kids and college kids into big leaguers, it wouldn't necessarily be putting them on a bus and sending them 600 miles to play a game game there's some things about it that just don't quite add up in terms of player development the you know some of those leagues are the first time where a player it becomes more responsible for their life you know yeah when you're on the when you're

in the complex you know it's a lot easier where like the blue jays give you food the blue jet you know like you're just sort of living in a blue Jays dorm and the Blue Jays give you food and you play Blue Jays baseball. You know, that's that's that's like more like school. But a lot of these, you know, rookie leagues and low weight like that sort of stuff. There's like the first time when a player has to like rent a place and like live somewhere and like, you know, pack and travel and stuff like that. So to some extent, some of those are important. But I guess you can still have that with maybe one level of A ball instead of two. That's what I'm getting at.

And again, I'm not the person that wanted to take a hatchet to the minor leagues and do what's happening right now. This, again, is awful. But I do look at the number of affiliates teams had. I do look at the way the minor leagues work and how unfairly compensated players are and the conditions of travel and how miserable that really is,

poor nutrition, and step back and say, this really isn't the best way to make the most talented players in the world as quickly as possible. This wasn't what minor league baseball was supposed to be though either. When minor league baseball started, this was not how baseball worked as a whole. Right. I think the richer teams have even found a way to leverage the minor leagues to fit their needs by, you know, just like, you know, the Phillies and Yankees supposedly just have hundreds more minor leaguers in some of the places, you know, like,

like they, they just found a way to kind of like, let's have two, you know, winter ball leagues and this and this and this, and let's just gather more and more, uh, lottery tickets as we see it, especially on the young end. Um, and just, young end, and just putting more people in this situation where they're not making much money. They think they can make it, but we're just sort of letting them battle it out like crabs in the bucket. So yeah, maybe it's just the reform that we needed.

I don't know. It's just an unfortunate way that it's happening because again, lots of damage being done in the process. guide, or app. There are thousands of classes and over 50 Peloton instructors ready to support you from the beginning. Remember, doing something is everything. Rent the Peloton bike or bike plus today at onepeloton.ca slash bike slash rentals. All access membership separate. Terms apply. Let's get to a few more news items we learned at the end of last week. Wanda Franco has a biceps injury. It's being described right now as sore right biceps. It's his throwing arm, so that's definitely concerning.

He left the Dominican Winter League to be evaluated, and this was according to, I think, Mark Feinsand of MLB.com when the news came through. Still awaiting more details. That evaluation might be happening today, tomorrow, literally right now. Totally possible. Definitely a concern, though, because right now, totally possible. Definitely a concern though, because I mean, a long period of inactivity and then ramping up to play games,

something like this could be relatively minor. But if Franco has to shut down for a while, I think it could have a pretty significant impact on when he arrives. If he's completely healthy come spring training, I think there's a very good chance we see him after the minimum 10, 11 days have passed for the Rays to procure that extra year of service time. Because as you said back during our playoff episodes, he fixes one of the biggest flaws in that lineup. The Rays struck out too much in 2020. Franco would give them a guy at the top of the order who puts a ton of balls in play. And you can shift things around. You could turn Willie Adames into a super utility guy.

Maybe you could move Brandon Lau off second base. You could make a trade. You make it work for a player this good. So as for now, the Rays and the prospect community sort of hold its collective breath, kind of waiting for the final word on Franco's injury. Yeah, I mean, that first blush doesn't seem too worrisome. Although, if it ended up being Tommy John, that would delay his development for a significant portion of time. But, I mean, I doubt it. It's the first time we're hearing of it they didn't

mention elbow um i'm just hoping it's at worst a strained bicep or something um and it comes at an okay time i guess the one thing that sucks is that he was gonna get some playing time he was gonna play some games you know and playing games is important so uh but those leagues are having troubles of their own in terms of COVID diagnoses and testing. And there could be some cancellations there too. And he may not miss all that much baseball. It remains to be seen there a little bit. But one thing that was interesting to me was I did get a chance to see some

batted ball statistics for Wander Franco. And I can't share too many of them, but I can share that. The max SACV that wasn't great and that the average launch angle was closer to zero than I'd expected. So I wonder if I'm going like I personally might revise the power projection down to sort of like a at least first, a guy who's going to hit, you know, 15 or so homers in a full season. But as you said, contact rate is great. Eye at the plate is great. The tools, the defense, and I think he would be a superior option at short than Adamas.

So that, you know, it does make you wonder how they fix that, especially with the Snell, you know, news that they're shopping Snell. The Rays are just hard to peg. I think the most fascinating, one of the things that I always circle as like a sort of a last minute thing to do, one of the last things I do, it actually is funny. I do it first and last. The first and last depth chart that I try to figure out for my AL only, for AL labor, are the Tampa Bay Rays.

So the first time I go through any of the, I do the Rays and I sort of circle some places that I'm like, oh, this is, what is going to happen here? What's going to happen here? What's going to happen here? And then I know that I have to put it away for a long time and then look at it again in spring because they might have signed Yoshitomo Sotsugo or done three other trades or whatever. The crazy stuff they do every year. But this team is always moving stuff around. So Margot and Kiermaier in center as a bit of a platoon. That looks maybe like you can pencil it in but i know

that they've been trying to shop kiermeier forever you know and maybe the snell trade is an opportunity for them to pair snell and kiermeier um and but then the one thing that's left for me is like well then who plays center i guess you just margot and phillips i think they would just play margot a lot yeah i think we saw the usage of him in the postseason. I'm going to point to Margot being a player that they see to their level. Yeah, but I think they see a little more in that bat still. Okay. Look at where he was hitting in the order.

I know part of it's who else did they have, but he played a lot more than I expected when it mattered most. So to me, that was a bit of a signal that they have quite a bit of faith in, in Margo. They did that. You know, one of the things that was tough for me, I have a piece of the day that's up about snow.

And one of the things that's tough for me was I trying to put, I was trying to model it against the Chris Archer trade in the past. And you know, having lost Charlie Morton and then trade away snail, I think that what, what's left is, well, we need starting pitchers back, right? But the way that they work is they'd rather get a controllable bat back, right? So, you know, now you're asking the trade to look like one controllable bat and two pitchers.

Maybe if you put Kiermaier in, you don't need that second pitcher back. And you can trade Snail and Kiermaier for. You don't need that second pitcher back. And you can trade Snell and Kiermaier for some controllable bat and some pitcher and then take the $10 million that you had for Kiermaier and go to the market. And there's still some good, I mean, even if it's like a combination of guys, but there's still some good one-year deals out there

if you have that $10 million. But theoretically, they should have the $15 million from Morton. So maybe then you have $25 million. You go sign Bauer. And pitch him every fourth day so that you don't have to worry about that fifth starter spot until your rotation gets healthier

because Yanni Chirinos, recovering from Tommy John, Brendan McKay, arm injuries, Brent Honeywell. I don't think you can count on him at this point. I mean, they know more about him than we do on the outside, but there are some legitimate questions of who rounds out this rotation

if they also trade Snell away after losing Morton. I think as some of your scenarios and your piece laid out, getting a major league ready pitcher back is probably part of that return. It's getting a less proven one back. I thought that White Sox package was a snap except for the raise. Andrew Vaughn plus Kopech? I'll admit it. Not every piece that I do is my A plus. If I made a mistake, because I started with the archer deal as a model i may have uh over i may have made it uh too slanted in the race favor i'm getting a lot of feedback from white socks fans they wouldn't do that trade and and they wouldn't put kopeck and vaughn together um i'm getting

feedback from toronto they wouldn't put lords guriel together with um uh aljohander kirk and simeon woods richardson um i don't know man it's one of those things where you kind of try to model together with Alejandro Kirk and Symbian Woods Richardson. I don't know, man. It's one of those things where you kind of try to model it after things that have happened. You try to get in people's heads. I think that prospects right now have less value than at any time before in some ways

because you tell me Andrew Vaughn's value right now. That's what I was kind of referring to with that Keeper League auction that's coming up and thinking about prospects is you just have a missing data point. Yeah, the White Sox didn't even share data. So if you're looking at Andrew Vaughn, you're like, well, all I see is he had like poor ISOs for a slugger. He had okay, you know, KBB stuff,, but he didn't really hit the ball that hard. He did not hit for power. He did not hit for power as you would expect from a first baseman. Now I don't even have exit velo, so I don't know.

There were other people that thought that the Toronto package was the most reasonable. Maybe that would... If they got a catcher and a pitcher and a bat, I think they would do it because the catching for them is not in a great position. But then there's a lot of teams that just sort of punt on catcher and just get a decent

framer. The Rays used to do that. They had the lesser Molina forever. Mike Zanino was punting at catcher for a few years too. No disrespect to him. He's not a plus player

offensively. He does a good job defensively. That was their plan for a while. I think the Padres and Rays having hooked up on some pretty interesting trades in the past certainly makes sense too. You had Adrian Morajon, Luis Patino, Luis Camposano. I mean, and they've got depth to pull something like this off.

But maybe they're a little gun-shy after Clevenger. Yeah. But, I mean, I like the idea of that sort of trade because they've got catching depth so they can afford to trade away Camposano. They still have more pitching prospects. Camposano's in jail.

Oh, right, right. That was in Georgia, right? Yeah. Hey, if I overshot, then let's change that deal. Let's make it Francisco Mejia. That makes work. You know, one of the things that I forgot, I think, about the Archer deal is that some of those, like, you know, Ed Meadows wasn't necessarily performing at what he did after the deal, right? the things that i forgot i think about the archer deal is that some of those like you know ed meadows

wasn't necessarily performing at what he did after the deal right and glass now wasn't performing at what he did after the deal so there was a little bit of buying distressed assets really even though in retrospect you're like holy crap they got such a haul so let's say they they see something like a mejia now maybe that becomes more doable, right? You keep Camposano, you deal with whatever legal issues, and you come out the other end with a replacement for Nolo when he's gone, right? And you trade away Mejia, who you might have soured on. So now you're talking about Mejia, Patino. There's the command questions.

It's like Glassnow. So now Mejia is, you know, like the distressed bat. Patino is the glass now. And I think it needs more. I think it needs more Ahan. So now if you get more Ahan Patino, the Rays will turn that into two starters. They'll put Mejia behind the plate and sign some sort of D in framing guy to go with him. And it might make sense for them.

It might make sense for both. Because then the Padres are like, no, now we got Snell and Lomet at the top of our rotation. We can wait for a client under. Which is totally fine, too, if you're the Padres. I think you can pull that off, and you feel good about it. You're giving up a lot in terms of Patino's ceiling, but it seems like a fair trade on both sides. I think there's definitely something there that could work. I am curious if

the Padres are hesitant to make another move like that, though, after what happened with Mike Clevenger and his health. Let's get to a few more items that are trickling in on the news front from the KBO. Mel Rojas Jr., who's been the best hitter in that league, he's seeking an MLB deal. So he's going to try and come back stateside if the right deal comes along. A couple of the players have posted Seungbum Na and Haseong Kim. You've seen Kim getting drafted in early drafts. I don't think Na's getting scooped up until the end game of drafts. So he's a little more iffy in terms of his profile, but Mel Rojas Jr. has done very well in the KBO. And I'm curious, how well does he translate coming back over? What kind of expectations should we have for

him as a hitter if he does end up returning to MLB? Well, he's getting a little bit older. He was born in 1990. So we're talking about a guy who's past 30. And that's kind of meaningful because in the meantime, you know, he left as more of a plus defender, I think that you would think. And he's coming back more as a plus bat. So it's a little bit weird this is age 31 season coming up but his age adjusted Davenport translations for last season

were amazing 294 batting average 354 OBP, 515 slugging but the two seasons before that, even though they rated really well in the KBO they weren't as good in their translations, more like a 440 slugging. So if I just sort of eyeballing this, I would project him for something like a 330 OBP and like a 440, 450 slugging.

And, you know, let's see. Let's see who can do something like that. I think in like a corner outfield, it's not amazing, but it could be useful. And like the Royals. I think the Royals would actually be a really good fit there. Trent Grisham with less speed is showing up as a as a jerickson profar oh jerickson profar maybe a little bit more power than jerickson profar david peralta yeah not a bad player yeah

we're okay we're talking about like a like a major league average starter jd davis kind of fits that in terms of his 2021 projection really surprising oh i'm looking at uh retroactive numbers not projected you're right there you were you did the better thing you did the better thing let me rare win for me i'm looking at projected slugging now let me get past these this first page he's on the second page of projected slugging um justin upton yeah yeah i think a justin upton comp is interesting it's actually pretty comparable to like yassiel puig's obp and projected slug as well a few comps there i think yeah a useful outfielder um it is interesting to think of like who would want because there is of course risk

right so then you like what teams would want uh like a major league uh outfielder you know and be able to absorb the risk you know the padres are actually showing a 1.1 in right field right now in terms of projected war uh so they're an interesting thing the athletics are always interesting for situations like this i feel like um so that's the kind of team the indians can't put together an outfield so why don't they try something something other than what they're doing so anyway there you know there's teams i i would put it in the teams that are like looking to compete now have a want to spend a little bit money, but don't want to spend on Ozuna, and would rather spend $3 million, 1-3, 1-5 for Rojas

and see if he can't be a major league average outfielder. Yeah, I wonder if the Cardinals would see him as someone they would just play over Dexter Fowler and just eat the Fowler money at this point. Yeah, they seem like they have a lot of options in the outfield, but sometimes when you have a lot of options, you don't have enough. Yeah, look at the other teams in need of corner help. I mean, the Royals, as we kind of mentioned in passing,

they certainly make a little bit of sense as well. The Brewers have a 0.5 in right field right now, and they would actually be an interesting fit. Well, they did it with Thames a few years ago, too. Yeah, exactly. So they've done it with some success. I think part of the problem with their outfield, though, is that you're going to put Lorenzo Cain back in center,

and then you've got Jelic and Avi Garcia in the two corners. So without Universal DH, I don't think they make that happen. I think Cain's return probably pushes that aside based on the way they're built right now. But there could be a surprise trade coming. Well, in any case, that's interesting. But as I'm doing this, I'm doing a roundup of international free agents like this. And one thing that I'm finding is that maybe NA is the most underrated, if that's the right way to put it, because people aren't drafting him for example.

And then one pitcher that pitched in Korea told me that Sungmung Na would be the best bat coming over. And now we're talking about a guy who was kind of a star center fielder before a really drastic knee injury and last year he came back and he played so well um and he did it with um he did it with being in his recovery you know what i mean uh that was in his recovery year so like i i think that he could with another year year separated from his knee injury, be more of an asset on defense. And his, you know, translated numbers are a little bit more exciting in terms of higher OBP. He had some higher slugging years. And then I guess he's 31 too. But if he costs less, and it sounds like he will in fantasy, I would be looking at both those guys if I wanted something like that.

You look at the numbers from 2020, 34 homers, 324, 395, 96. It's a 155 WRC plus in the KBO. Going back to the Thames, which is an example of a hitter that came over and played pretty well. Thames in his three-year run with the Dinos had WRC pluses of 165. He had a 216 in 2015.

Yeah, that's a big one. And a 165 again in 2016. Eric Thames is 2015 with the NC Dinos. 47 homers, 40 steals. He walked more than he struck out that year. Just an absolute monster year. And you were listing

the 156 WRC Plus. You were listing that was Sung Woon Na? Yeah, 155. I don't know. He's interesting. I think my roundup will include Dan Str straley who uh was probably the best pitcher in the kbo last year he lost out uh in the cy young basically but um i'm gonna look at kohi i har i i i he hara i think i have that spelled wrong there. But, and then Tomoyuki Sagano,

the two pitches that are going to come over from Japan. And then Haseon Kim is the shortstop, but I think that there's a fair amount of defensive value there. So I do wonder, you know, if you look at Haseon Kim's translated stats, Jim's translated stats, they're not quite as good as the prototypical slugger types that we've been talking about. They're a little bit better in OBP, but the power is more of a question. I'm glad you brought up Straley. He ended up with 205 Ks in 194 and two-thirds innings for the Lotte Giants.

It's a 250 ERA, 102 whip. So just good numbers across the board. You look at Straley's big league career, he's had two seasons where he's basically been a two-war pitcher, but he's had multiple seasons where he's been below replacement level as well. Obviously the most recent one we saw in 2019 with the Orioles. What adjustments did Straley make this year, and how do you think that would help him fare better, kind of be more like the guy we saw earlier in his career in 2013,

or even as recently as 2017 with the Marlins, which was that other two-war season? Well, one of the things was he was healthy. He had torn a meniscus in 2019, and he had to have surgery for that, I think. And then so, you know, he was healthy. He said that he got a curveball grip from one of his, Park Se-Wong gave him his curveball grip. Straley said that his fastball would have been 13th in RPM in the big leagues if he was over here. And he sat 91, which is one of his better numbers for when he's a starter. So the VLO came back. The health was back.

He added a curveball. And then he was working with a coach over there called Josh Herzenberg, who used to be in the Dodgers organization. And they were working with the best data and tech just on par with major league teams. And so they made some small adjustments to his slider and his changeup based on what they saw. And so what I see is a guy who has the potential to kind of throw four or five pitches and be really unpredictable and show some good command of

that secondary stuff. So I don't know that I would sort of say like Tanner Roarkish. Tanner Roarkish? Tanner Roarky. Yeah, Roarky on that level. um maybe the chance to kind of rewind and be tenor rock a couple years ago yeah i mean that's serviceable for for deeper leagues especially uh we just went through this with josh linbloom and he didn't really put it all back together in the big leagues i mean he held his rotation spot for most of the shortened season i think the underlying numbers for lin bloom are better than the results, so he's kind of an interesting buy-low consideration going into 2021.

And just for reference, I've got Lynn Bloom at 88 among starting pitchers. I think if Straley comes back over, he's probably in a similar range, kind of one of your last starting pitchers in your active lineup most of the time, but not a guy that you're just throwing out there for every single start in your typical Mixley.

You're going to be playing it kind of carefully with him. Yeah, it's slightly closer to only league status. Yep, definitely a guy that's in all the time in those formats. The Giants are rumored, though. I think even with the changes to the park there, it's still... I think Giants Park is now on the order of St. Louis. I think it's no longer i think giants park is now on the order of sort of st louis um i think it's no longer

like st louis and then like six blank spots and then san francisco on the bottom i think i think that uh san francisco is going to play a little bit like st louis in the future just a normal pitchers park um and i think australia ended up there i think it would be a good fit for him yeah i think that would be as well. I think, again, that would support the 80 to 90 range sort of rank that I think currently makes sense for Lindblom. So there's a good rundown of some of the players that we might see coming over to. More detailed stuff coming later this week.

Looking forward to that one. We got a question from Steve G., one of our loyal listeners. to that one. We got a question from Steve G, one of our loyal listeners. He wants to know if we have any tips for those who are in leagues that didn't have a fantasy season in 2020. I mean, there's keeper leagues that just skip the year and that creates a whole bunch of problems. If you didn't address those at the beginning of the year, I recommend starting to troubleshoot those problems now. That way, you're not doing it while you're trying to draft in March. What kinds of tips do you have for anybody that didn't have a season in 2020? I don't know, man. I think this is almost the time when you have to go softest. You have no data data right so you have to you know read some analysts that you respect um and you have to hope that they are sifting through their sources for the more reliable

ones and they're looking as much video as they can they can scrounge together and the little bits of data they can get um and uh it's uh it's going to be a heck of a time to try and look at somebody's ground ball rate from 2019 and single A and decide what they're going to do. So I'm not going to point you to any statistical markers right now because they're going to be a year old. You don't know. There's a big missing thing there. Even if they hit 50% ground balls in 2019 in A ball,

maybe they hit 45 in the alternate side this year. They've been improving their ability to drive the ball for power. I don't know, man. I don't know. I really don't know. I asked James. He said,

I'm just doing my best. I'm texting people and calling people and trying to find video. That's the pursuit. But yeah, I do think trying to track down what players are doing in various workouts, things like that might actually be somewhat helpful as we're looking to just put any pieces together that we can. As far as the actual league setup, Steve writes, we had our draft order set and didn't declare keepers in their league. They can have three keepers. Should we keep the same draft order for 2021? I would say there's no reason to change it coming off of 2019.

If you didn't play in 2020, whoever had the first pick going into 2020, based on however your league decides it, they could keep the first pick for 2021. I would say if you drafted in 2020 and then didn't play it out, but you kept the players, then you would have to have some sort of random lottery system for first pick. You wouldn't want to give the same team the first pick in two drafts in a row, right? Because then they'd get the top prospect last year plus Torkelson or Dominguez or whoever they're going after this time around. Yeah, I don't think you can change the draft order if you didn't play any fantasy baseball.

There's nothing to change it to, right? So I don't know what to do there otherwise in terms of like fixes or or things that i would do um you know some leagues they played a little bit like they played like a redraft league and then they were gonna they froze their dynasty league um and i think that'll be really i think you're right to just start conversations now so that everyone's happy with the decision that's made and they have enough time started before you open up for trading. Right.

Because like, let's say you're the person who won the redraft league wants to be like, Hey, I want a reward for that. Give me the number one pick in the thing. And be like, well, we didn't talk about that.

So probably not. But if everyone's on board or can we find a way to reward the redraft or we're just gonna ignore that that ever happened or so anyway just get everybody talking now so that that you can come to some solution because you really want to come you want to fix all of the situation for your next year before you open up trading that's the big deal you have to you everybody has to be on the same board when it comes on the same level when it comes to what these trades mean you know you can't have a trading session and be like okay we're adding another roster spot or we're adding a util spot we're adding mi what i just traded away in mi because i thought i had depth. Now I'm behind.

So just start the conversations about settings now, nail the settings, then you can open up trading. Yeah. And I think if you have a league that uses ADP or something to determine keeper costs, use the 2021 ADP. Don't go back at 2020 or anything like that. I mean, there are some changes that happen, but just predetermine these things before any action happens. The trades are the main thing you're worried about in Keeper and Dynasty Leagues, as Eno pointed out. Thanks a lot for the question, Steve. One other question to get to. This one came in from Jared. He wants to know, Luis Severino in Dynasty Leagues, is he a buy, sell, or hold? If you're selling, what are you looking for in return? And I would say that the situation here is pretty similar to what you might say about Chris Sale or Noah Syndergaard as well,

where you have really good pitchers coming back from Tommy John surgery, and they're probably not ready for the start of the season, but they're probably coming back sometime around June, give or take maybe a month in either direction. But what's your general approach with these pitchers in this situation? This is fairly common to have a top 20, top 25 starting pitcher in the later stages of Tommy John surgery. Are you usually trying to wait until the first full year of health or do you actually try and buy in long-term leagues before they come back and return to those previous levels i mean the only way that you can the next time i want to roster luis everino in like in redraft leagues is 2022 like i just i the the general consensus is to kind of push and wait and wait and wait.

And if there's any sort of elbow bark or anything, stop, shut it down, start over. You know, it's always like, you know, there's been some research that shows that the longer you wait on Tommy John return, like the better it is. So like most teams are now sort of 13 month, you know, and maybe even pushing it. So I don't want him for I don't want him for 2021. So if you are buying him, that you're buying somebody that you think can be good in 2022,

that means you have to hold him on your roster next year without getting much value out of him, which means I think I want you to be a rebuilding squad. If you're a rebuilding squad that's sort of percolating and getting close,

then I could see buying Severino. Maybe with some lower level prospects, if that's possible, or with some veterans that you think will be not so great in 2022. So you're playing a game there to try and figure it out because it's just really awkward fitting for like me as a contender in my league i was i was fourth last year and i want to win it next year i'm not buying severino yeah i i think you can't afford to give what is a fair offer at this stage because someone who waited for severino is only a couple of in-season months away from getting him back. So they're going to expect something pretty close to full freight because the assumption, the reason they held them as they think he's coming back, he's going to be at that level.

None of those three pitchers, by the way, are in the top 100 overall of our friend, Ian Kahn's updated dynasty rankings. He's got a set of rankings over at Roto wire that are really good trade guide of, you know, what a really sharp dynasty league player is going to expect in a return.

Syndergaard, I think, is actually the lowest at 169. Sale, I think, is the highest. I guess the other way to think about this problem, though, too, if you are going to trade for Severino or Sale or Syndergaard, I'm looking at the pitchers that are high up in Ian's rankings and in Dynasty rankings, right? You see guys like, I'm not going to give away his whole list or anything, but guys in their early 30s, like DeGrom, just for a frame of reference, is 30th overall in those rankings. But not among pitchers. Sorry. That's 30th overall.

What? Fifth among pitchers in Dynasty ranks. You go a little further down, guys like Woodruff, Snell, they're kind of back in the top 10. There's a bias towards bats in every dynasty. You want to build with bats. You think the top 25 would be all bats. Yes, I agree. You're probably not skying up much higher than those guys.

To even get to the deGrom level would be a stunning upset for any of those guys at this stage in their respective careers. And if one of those guys was actually going to do it, I guess you got to put your money on Sale because he's done it before, right? I mean, if Sale's basically the same guy post-surgery that he was pre-surgery, he's the only guy that has a chance

to maybe be a top five Dynasty League pitcher again. And even that is a stretch. That is a very high bar to clear. Yep. So you do have to be a little bit careful in terms of the ceiling expectations for these guys, given where they're at in their career and how people generally approach pitching in keeper and Dynasty Leagues. I think just generally, I don't want to bet generally i don't want to bet i don't want to know already that i'm going to miss half the season from a pitcher you know what i mean it's definitely not happening for me in redraft leagues with maybe the exceptions of only leagues uh labor like we've talked about unlimited dl spots unlimited dl you know five

seven bucks in the end game move them off then I can use my reserve pitchers for the first half of the season. Maybe in those leagues, I'm okay taking that chance, but in typical leagues, missing two months is almost as much of a do not draft as you can really put on a player who will play at some point in the upcoming season. Yeah. So hopefully that helps Jared.

Always fun to try and speculate on those players. And I think, as Eno said, if you're in a long-term league, you're looking more to compete in 2022. It's not that you expect those guys to kind of put you over the top in the second half of 2021. Some good news,

if you don't already have a subscription to The Athletic and you're listening to this show the day it was recorded on Monday, our Black Friday deal, Cyber Week deal, Cyber Monday deal. I don't know what they call these things anymore. It's $1 a month for the first year at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. It gets you all of Eno's pieces,

our fantasy baseball rankings, all the great stuff we have on The Athletic. Doesn't matter what combination of sports and teams you care about, we definitely have you covered. It's the best deal around. Best deal we have all year. 80% off at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. On Twitter, he's at Eno Saris.

I'm at Derek Van Ryper. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Wednesday. Thanks for listening. Thank you.