Rates & Barrels - Minor league games return, trading for floor, drafting for ceiling, and xStats outliers

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss the start of the minor-league season, what they're looking for in prospects early in the year, the continued patience necessary with Wander Franco in redraft leagues, xStats outliers, and more.  Rundown 1:03 The Value in Starting Assignments 14:58 Is Raw Power an Overvalued Tool? 19:30 If You Think He's a Star.... 24:00 Trade for Floor, Draft Ceiling? 33:07 Prospect of the Week!!! 41:29 Eno Steals From DVR 50:03 A Masterclass in Managing 54:31 Matt Carpenter, Tommy Pham and xStats 62:43 Is Alex Wood Back? 66:21 A Surprising Change in Splits by Pitch Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Subscribe to The Athletic for just $3.99/month to start: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

welcome to rates and barrels presented by tops check out tops project 70 celebrating 70 years of tops baseball cards derek van rper here with Eno Saris. The minor league season has begun, so we'll talk about a few observations from opening day there. We're going to bring back Prospect of the Week already. It took one day of minor league games for Prospect of the Week to come back to life. We'll talk about some things that we think might be actionable with prospects coming out of 2020.

Of course, all the missing information from last year is going to lead teams and prospect analysts and keeper and dynasty league players to have to make quicker decisions about players and their evaluations of those players. I've got some really good stuff here about X stats to some questions have been rolling in. So we'll get to those later on in the show. But you know, let's just start with some minor league chatter. And I'm excited to have the games back because I love minor league stats. I love seeing highlights from prospects. And it didn't take long for Wander Franco to make some highlights, three hits in his debut at AAA Durham. The starting assignments for a lot of prospects was something that I was very interested in as those started to roll out last week. And I think it gives us a pretty good

understanding of where organizations are seeing players from a development standpoint. How far did they go in a year without games? without games you know like if wonder was an a-ball player pre-pandemic and he's a triple-a guy now obviously i think he's knocking on the door being big league ready that's kind of obvious that's like a low-hanging fruit one that we already knew but when we see it with a guy like alec manoa in the jays organization a college pitcher who only pitched at short season ball, which doesn't even exist anymore. When we see a guy like that start at AAA,

that really moves the needle for me as something that gives me a lot of confidence in his chances of not only being a big league contributor this year, but also being a lot better than I probably would have ranked him going into 2020. To me, there's actually some value in just the assignments themselves. Yeah, and there's some organizational differences and philosophies at hand about how to value

that time, the instructional league, the alternate site, and what to do about that. Like, Kelnick is at AAA. And, you know, I think the Blue Jays looked like they were pretty aggressive. Same time, I guess because of the injuries maybe, the Mariners still put Julio Rodriguez in A ball, you know. And so there are differences within organizations, and then there are differences from organization to organization. There's a fair amount of organizations that seem to be like,

and I think it probably also has to do with just how, where your major league team is in the win cycle, right? The Blue Jays look like they're ready to go. They kind of want to see Manoa against top competition. They want to be aggressive with him because of all the things that they need in the Major League team, it's pitching. And so, as one farm director said to me

before this whole thing went down, he said, if I've got Major League pitch grades, and this whole stuff thing that I do and command stuff command and stuff like they have numbers like that that are different from the numbers that you would see in a box score right and so they're evaluating their players based on stuff and command and they have grades on their on their pitchers on their pitches on each pitch uh that are like basically a stuff grade and a command grade on every pitchers, on their pitches, on each pitch, that are basically a stuff grade and a command grade on every pitch. And one farm director was saying,

if I have major league pitch grades on these pitches, why am I pitching them in the minor leagues? Why am I wasting any time? Why don't I just put them in the major leagues? And so I think that's where probably the Blue Jays come from. I know they're very analytically inclined. They might just be looking at Manoa's pitches and be like, we don't have anything to tell him anymore.

In terms of the pitch grades, they're all good. He's getting the ride that we want. He's getting the drop that we want. All that he needs to do is sort of figure out how to game plan and get batters out and sequence and stuff like that. So let's put him in AAA and see how he does against advanced competition and then get him in the major leagues. So yeah, definitely some philosophical differences.

And then some player-by-player differences as well. Yeah, and I think for Manoa, we're talking about a guy who's now 23. He was the 11th overall pick in 2019, pitched collegiately at West Virginia. So he was going to be a relative fast track to the big league sort of guy. But just seeing how much they're into him right now gets me really excited. It makes me think that we could get to a point this season where Ryu, a healthy Nate Pearson, and Manoa could be the first three starters in that rotation. And that changes a lot about what the Blue Jays might look like. If that materializes for the final two months of the season and they're hanging around in the playoff race, that makes them a lot more dangerous.

Yeah. Yeah. And then you have some really exciting guys like CJ Abrams, Yeah, and then you have some really exciting guys like C.J. Abrams, who was a high school pick, right? Yeah, Abrams is the same as Bobby Witt Jr., same draft class. Witt was a little bit older, but still a high schooler. Bolton AA, pretty exciting. I mean, the Royals have maybe a need on the infield, and so they might be pushing him a little bit before that. The Padres don't have a need, but I would say that's an organizational thing. The Padres just seem aggressive.

They just move their guys. They put Tatis in the big leagues from day one. They're just like, we like this guy. He's here. We like that guy, we're going to trade for him. There's something I dig about the way they work. Well, I think they make a lot of their organizational decisions the way we want teams in general to approach it. Take your best players in your organization, put them on the field at the highest level as soon as they're ready. I mean, it's something that it's unique to baseball that we

have to wait sometimes extra years before guys get these opportunities. I think with Abrams, if you're looking at a top prospect list right now, if he doesn't debut this year or doesn't get enough time in the big leagues late in the year to burn off his prospect eligibility, he could be the consensus number one prospect in the game by season's end with graduations. We're expecting Wander to come up in the next few weeks, probably, if everything goes well with his start at AAA. He'll graduate from LIS. Kelnick will probably graduate from LIS. Adele will either graduate or regress. He'll either graduate and we'll be like, okay, that was good,

or he'll be in the minor leagues still and he won't be a number one pick, one number one prospect anymore. Yeah, so you're probably looking at Julio Rodriguez versus Witt if he doesn't come up, which I think is unlikely, versus Abrams, and then there's probably a drop already.

I mean, Andrew Vaughn, if he gets sent down relatively soon, would still be prospect eligible. Otherwise, he's going to graduate. Maybe Marco Luciano is the other guy that has a chance to stake that claim. But I could see Abrams, if there's a significant injury in San Diego, and we saw it once already with Tatis going on the IL, that injury didn't seem to be as bad as we initially feared, thankfully. as we initially feared, thankfully, if they were to lose a key player for a long time, Abrams can play other spots. I think there is a chance for him to have a meaningful role before the end of the year if there's a need

or if he just forces the issue with his own performance in the upper levels of the minors. Yeah, it seems like center or seconds could be pretty easy for him, provided they gave him a little time to adjust. I want to ask you, though, we've talked about this a few times because decisions to make drops have come up five or six times already this season. How much longer are you waiting for Wander in redraft leagues? Some of the times you don't have the choice.

You have enough injuries. You have to let someone like this go. If you waited this long, now that he's playing at Durham, it's very tempting to say, I have to cling for the next three weeks. I have to wait until the end of the month. And if he doesn't get the call by the first weekend in June, at that point, maybe I'll go ahead and let him go and redraft leagues. I mean, is it fair to keep holding onto him if you've waited this long? If Willie Adamas was hitting on the level that he did in 2018 or 2019.

I mean, 20 was league average or last year. I mean, yes, then I would say maybe drop him because Willie Adamas looks like at least a league average guy. And there's just not that sort of need. And they might even use Taylor Walls if there was a short-term need, you know, like literally replace. He's not even projected to be that good. So like his true talent estimations have changed. Now the bat thinks he can still manage to hit.243, basically be league average the bat, and maybe be a league average player. But when you are a team like the Rays, there is also some pressure beyond league average where, let's say, Willie Adamas against lefties is one thing, you know, and Willie Adamas against righties is another.

So what if Willie Adamas and Joey Wendell at third base as a platoon is actually a three-war situation. And Wanda Franco himself is a three-war situation. That would be better for the Rays, who have championship aspirations, than sort of delaying the service time and keeping another league average guy around. And so anyway, I think there's a lot of arrows pointing towards, and then you add in Wanda Franco at AAA. They didn't even put him at AA, you know, AAA. I think that we're about two weeks away from Wanda Franco in the big leagues.

Now having said that, if you were in a shallow mixed league, like an 8, 10, maybe a 12 team where he's still out there, you probably have to pick him up now if you want in a shallow mixed league like an 8 10 maybe a 12 team or he's still out there you probably have to pick him up now if you want to get him so you have to hold him for a couple of weeks even in those shallow leagues do you think we're going to get enough of an immediate payoff with the bat to justify picking him up even in the shallowest of leagues that i'm not so sure of because one of the things that uh you know what the reports that we've gotten along the way, and then we've passed them along to you here, is that, you know, he may not have a power hitter's launch angle, you know, per se. And you've got sort of a wide variety of possible outcomes for him. And a lot of those don't include league average power.

for him and a lot of those don't include league average power. So full season in his first season, you might be talking about a guy who can hit 280 and 12 homers and 15 steals.

It's a good player though. It's a good player but in a 10 team league. Yeah, it's closer to replacement level in that spot. It's like Jake Cronenworth out there. I guess the way you have to look at it, though, it's the probability of getting something better and then knowing if you have the discipline,

if he's not exceeding that level of production, to replace him with somebody who is when the time comes. Because he might be better than that. The rapid growth potential for a player like wander is such that you would rank him over similarly projected players because you could get this extreme outlier sort of performance relative to guys that can do that breakout yeah this agent level is is is pretty amazing it's true it's true. Could be worth holding for a little bit and waiting for some sort of standout StatCast event where, oh my god,

he hit the ball 116. Let's sort of reevaluate what we think of his power. Yeah, maybe he hits a ball and it explodes like Benny in Sandlot. I mean... Oh, one cool little thing for people, enterprising people that want to look into this.

Eric Langenhagen, it's on his Twitter feed. It was like a late night, breathless, you know, in the dark tweet, but it was pretty cool. He figured out that the parks that were equipped for StatCast for spring training are still emitting their Stat their their stat cast information um and now they're minor league parks so if you go to and i think he said they were florida state league um fsl uh teams if you figure out which one of those teams is also a spring training facility um then you can go to those games, you can get the game log ID from those games, and then you go back to Baseball Savant and you click on the, you know, when you're on Savant, and you click on a game, and then you put those six numbers in, in the Major League Savant ID, and it just loads a Savant page for, you know know like a savant game day page where it's like

here are the top exit velocities for this game that's actually a really good hack yeah yeah kudos to eric longhanger for figuring that one out so um the one thing about it is it's not it it's it's for those intrepid users out there that are listening it's it's it's uh it's not like uh oh there's a nice little leaderboard, right? Just check it out. No, it's going to be a little bit of high effort. But if you do that work, you will be ahead. And the benefit of that stat cast is that some of it is really fast-moving stuff.

So I think there was a prospect that long and hanging saw that hit the ball 119 wow that would as as soon as the prospect does that he should he should have a i don't know a 60 power grade at least yeah like and i'm not talking about present but maybe even present you know like he did it you know, like he did it. Oh, it was 109. Sorry. 109.

109 would be like a 50 power grade or maybe a little bit, maybe 55 or something. Yeah. 119 would be Stanton S. That would be 80 power. It'd have to be. But it got me thinking, this conversation with Todd Zola

last week on the Athletic Fantasy Baseball podcast, actually two weeks ago, starting tomorrow. But he wrote about Max Exit Velo and the lack of correlation to all the other stats that we generally care about. And his conclusion was, it doesn't really mean much of anything. And that got me thinking, well, it doesn't mean absolutely nothing to me. I'm not quite ready to go that far. But maybe it means that the raw power tool is actually one of the more overrated tools. Because if you had 65 or 70 grade raw power and your hit tool was awful and you couldn't get to it,

or you could only ambush just really horrible mistake pitches that only a low a or high a pitcher is going to make that doesn't really mean you're going to consistently do that later on like even though just about any professional player with reasonable strength can murder a certain type of pitch on the right day so i don't know it just got me wondering if raw power could be a little overrated it also runs counter to a fair amount of research by Alex Chamberlain into the benefits of Max Exavilo, so I'll have to check that out. I think that's a great way to think of Max Exavilo, though, generally, is raw power. A ceiling for what a player might be able to do in that.

The other Raze player that I want to talk about is the guy you see on the screen if you're watching us on YouTube. Well, you don't see the player. We're not quite there with graphics yet, but you see his name, Vidal Brujan. And as I was looking at the Wander results from day one of the minor league season, Brujan playing with him at AAA Durham played right field. And I thought, wow, with the infield possibly getting more crowded once Wander comes up, I kind of like the idea of Brujan being able to play in that outfield mix too, because I think if you move him around a lot, he becomes a problem for Willy Adames. Vidal Brujan might be a guy that pushes Adames even further into that small side bench role or platoon role. And Brujan, I think he's going to do some serious damage on

the base pass. I think he's the kind of guy that's going to be maybe even a better fantasy player than a real life player, which is not to say he won't be a good real life player too. But I think, you know, 70 grade speed for a guy that gets on base is something we desperately need. And if he were to come up and find a regular spot somewhere, I think he'd be worth spending a significant share of a fab budget to go get in redraft leagues. Yeah, I wonder if they're thinking about him. 23-year-old switch hitter, can play second.

I wonder if they're thinking about him being their next infield outfield guy that can come in. Because those are really valuable players if you can play both. There are, if you think about roster construction for teams, you usually think about outfielders as one group and infielders as another. To have a guy who can go in between gives your roster a tremendous amount of flexibility. Brandon Lau is that guy right now but

he's kind of become a starter he's kind of ensconced there so you know who's the next infield outfield guy and it looks like it's gonna be Brujan and the eventual landing place for him might be center I think Kiermaier is not not only injured, but his best tool is defense, and that's got to be, it's already, you can see in the numbers, but it's got to decline. And, you know, Margot, I think, is a little bit stretched as an everyday center fielder. So if you looked, like, through the three-year lens on this team,

which is basically as far as they go anyway, I think almost center becomes the biggest need. Because you're going to put Wander on an infield place somewhere. Center is the place where you need something. I almost wonder if you look at Kiermaier as a possible trade candidate, maybe a guy they could try and flip to the White Sox. Oh, they've been trying to trade him for a million years, dude. Oh, my God.

If they could do it right now, even in the middle of being competitive, they would do it in a second. They'd pick up some of his money, too, I bet, even. Call the White Sox. They're in need. Yeah. You got to get to the White Sox before the Marlins do with Starling Marte and Corey Dickerson.

Yeah. And that's going to annoy some people that teams that are, well, the Marlins have already sort of fallen out. They're four below 500. I had somebody pushing back on the idea that they should just give Monte Harrison a chance in the big leagues saying,

well, it's a little early to throw in the towel. And it's like, well, are you already not throwing in the towel by playing Adam duvall in center field a bit and like running garrett cooper out there a lot like garrett cooper is a nice kind of bench piece corner guy but he's older than 30 is he on your next really good team not in a prominent role i mean and is he even that great of a situation right now like you probably should take a a bit of bit of a swing at something.

Yeah, so I think what irked me, yeah, I was irked. That's the proper word, irked. I wasn't angry. I was irked. It was that the comments Don Mattingly made upon the news of Harrison getting sent back down were, well, we think he's going to be a star. It's like, he's

25. If you think he's going to be a star, you better start letting him figure out big league pitching now because he's not going to be a star at 32 if you keep waiting. Let's go. Pitter-patter. Let's make this happen. Marte's out.

They're playing Brinson out there now. Magna Sierra looks like a long-term fourth outfielder. Duvall was a sneaky good pickup and I could see Kim Eng kind of doing that sort of thing where she continues to sign Aguilar Duvall

types to round out the roster something that a team like the Giants and the A's I think they're have the best records in baseball right now. Oh, man, put that one in your ledger. You know, that's what the Giants and A's do all the time,

is pick up guys like that. But I think you're right to kind of be like, you know, when are these guys going to pan out? And, you know, having seen Jazz Chisholm pan out, giving a guy a starting role and saying, you're our center fielder or you're our right fielder, has some value in that process. But it also kind of is an interesting microcosm of what they've done in the past.

I don't want to put this all on Kim Ang or the current regime, but they took a lot of long shots in Louis Brinson, Monty Harris, Eson Diaz, and Jazz Chisholm. And, you know, those four guys are not just guys they picked up off the scrap heap.

They were all key players in huge deals. You know, kind of, they were guys they went out and acquired and i would say that they were one for five on those players and going with i did i name four players i think you think you may have named five maybe there's sierra you can throw sierra in there but anyway they're they're one for those players and uh now think about the team we just talked about the rays or maybe even the red socks and some other teams that trade for

floor seemingly and when they when the rays went and got uh mejia and patino i think they say look worst case scenario we got a competent backup center catcher that can take over cheaply for Zanino next year and be maybe a second division starter, but not a competent catcher. And we got, worst case, like an eighth inning, ninth inning reliever, but we think can be a starter, right? I think that's in some ways training for floor and ceiling, but there's good floor there. It's not like Brinson or Monty Harrison, right?

And then you think about the Red Sox trade that got panned so much. You say we get Verdugo at least for Mugi Betts, right? We get Verdugo. That's a lot of floor with some ceiling. And then we also get Jeter Downs, which, you know, probably worst case scenario a guy we can move around the infield and use a lot of positions and probably some sort of major leaguer so I think that this does have ramifications for fantasy where it's like like think about

like the other person that you're trading with. If they have Wander Franco, you have to just blow them out of the water to get them. So most of the trades do not include floor and ceiling. And if the other team thinks that they have a ceiling guy that also doesn't have that many warts, they're very unlikely to trade them. So when you're trading with people, you should maybe trade for floor

and just be like, this is going to be a useful guy, you know. And when you're drafting, maybe that's when you draft for ceiling because you're not you're not trading away assets. You're not you're not working the same way. You're you're getting someone that's new to the system. of the system. I think you would rather be the Rays and Red Sox than the old Marlins organization. Yeah, I think maybe Red

Sox fans and some people around the game might say, well, they traded away Mookie Betts. They should have got two more floor guys to go with the two floor guys they got. And then we'd all be happier with that trade. But Betts' contract was up. I'm not saying sort of specifically every trade. It's a little bit more of an overall idea.

Well, you think about it, though, from the standpoint of Keeper and Dynasty leagues that you've played in or any league with young players. I mean, redraft leagues have young players in them too, so I don't want to just make this a long-term thing. But people tend to be pretty clingy to their own prospects, especially tooled up, hyped up players. I mean, I think about the players I take chances on a lot of times. If you think about it like a portfolio, yeah, I want mostly high risk, high reward types with a few good floor guys sprinkled in. If I get 10 prospects, seven or eight are going to be very young, high-risk,

high-reward types. And the other two might be college bats that I really like or college arms that are going to be quick to the big leagues because then I've got guys that can either help me soon or they're going to be high enough on prospect lists where I know I've got trade ships if I need them. That's generally how I look at it. So examples like Carlos Colmenares and Christian Hernandez were guys that were drafted in Keeper and Dynasty Leagues in the last few months. Those are the kinds of guys I want because if they pan out, they're future stars. If they don't,

they're easier drops in the long run. In leagues where you only keep 10 prospects, if you don't like what you see in the low levels, easy come, easy go. You make that move, let them go and maybe get him back later because the development's gonna take longer than you want we had like the evan white carousel with you you picked him up because he had good a ball numbers you dropped him because he got

injured and you like maybe he slopped off a little bit you know then you were mad that you didn't have him because he got signed to the deal and got put in the big leagues. Now you're probably like... I got him back in that league. Now you got him back for the crap. The league folded, thankfully. I'm bummed the league folded

just in terms of Evan White being a key piece for that team ever becoming good. I'm a little worried about that in the long run. But I think this general philosophy works. But I think it's easier to get attached to those top-end prospects. You're right. Anybody who's got Wander or Julio Rodriguez or even Spencer Torkelson, maybe Torkelson's the kind of guy that if he gets off to a slow enough start, you can find someone willing to move him. Generally, they're clinging to those players

because they see future titles on their roster. They see those players and think, that's the next player or next group of players that's going to make my team win this league year over year over year. So you have to move and get players before they pop or you have to move on guys that have that steady floor and then can still take another step forward that people might be overlooking. might be overlooking, right? So this is where it's easier to trade for a Brandon Marsh than it is to trade for an 18-year-old who is playing at A-ball for the first time, who's also a similarly ranked prospect just by comparison. So I think this philosophy does hold up pretty well

for most of the leagues I played in. Yeah, yeah. And then maybe even take it to the Rays level where you don't even bother training for the prospects that are super hyped and you just identify some interesting young major leaguers that haven't really popped yet. his minor league, his rookie status, and someone has to decide, oh, do I put this guy in my roster or not? If Andrew Vaughn finishes this year hitting 280 with 12 homers,

15 homers, in an OBP league, it might be a little different. He's probably going to have a standout OBP. But in a non-OBP league, that might be the time to go trade for him. And it might be easier to get andrew von in that situation even if you're rebuilding then it would be to get it would be way easier to get andrew von than to get julio rodriguez right yes but maybe maybe be the race and maybe andrew von

in the second year uses that obp better has a d he has decent max power because his max evs all right so maybe taps more into his raw power and his second year all of a sudden he's a 280 35 guy yeah i'm trying to think of another good example of uh what went right if you were trading for jesse winker when he wasn't showing game power in the upper levels of the minor leagues and you were trading for him because you said good hit tool everything everything here says hit tool like he is going to hit and the power should come eventually and whether it's sort of average power or something better maybe we don't know on that but i'm getting a guy who's going to the big leagues who's going to play on the big side of a platoon at a minimum and i might be getting something more you timed that really well if you got him

back in 2017 or 2018 when he was first breaking in, especially if you traded for him in 2016, the first time he got to AAA and he hit three homers in 106 games that year, that was probably the lowest Jesse Winker's value had been in two, maybe three years in keeper in Dynasty Leagues. Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to find somebody like him um i've got some i've got it's the fangrass board sorted by uh future value hit tool uh i got a player for you i wrote him up for

my columns i'll throw him out on the pod because people think i know who it is isaac paredes ah there you go i was gonna go with corby Carroll. I think he was in your article too. Yeah, I think Carroll might be a little harder to get. Too hot. Yeah, if you look in the right places, you're going to find pretty aggressive ranks on Corbin Carroll. I do think Paredes is more of a hits, controls the strike zone well, and we're not quite sure on the power ceiling. We're not quite sure where he plays.

But on a rebuilding team, a guy that hits the way he's hitting the minors at the age at which he's done it, that guy finds playing time eventually. And I know it's complicated. Miguel Cabrera's got years left on his deal, and he's a first ballot Hall of Famer. So you can't just shove him out the door. I know it doesn't work like that. That's not how the game works. But you have a bunch of other guys in that roster who will not be on a playoff team, and they're certainly not going to be on a Tigers playoff team. Those guys need to go.

Once you get those guys out, Miggy really falls into the background as just a once or twice per week bench piece. You can keep Jamer at first base, get your DH spot to float, and a guy like Isaac Paredes finds a spot pretty quickly. I'm looking at guys like that who have played enough to lose the prospect status

and are just flat-out guys that hit. That's what they do. And guys around his age, like India is a little bit like that, but he's already playing and doing decently well. But some older prospects in the back end, Nick Gonzalez, um, is already 22. And, uh, you know, some people, you know, don't have, are not that excited about him. He's a back end top 100. He might be an interesting pickup.

Um, and, uh, I see parade is here as a future value 60. Uh, but also, um, uh, who was the other name that I remember just looking at? Jacob Amaya, shortstop in the Dodgers organization. Never know what happens with Corey Seager. Xavier Edwards, also with the Rays. A little bit older. We haven't heard from him. We don't know what's going on outside of the top 100,

but interesting player. Yeah, I think with Edwards, there is some speed. So you could get just a really nice source of steals down the road if he's able to do enough to get a regular roll. So it's like hit tool and speed with almost zero power. I do think you want to be careful with guys that potentially have no power at all.

That is one way it can bottom out, but I'm curious to see what the Rays are doing with Edwards this season, how much they move him around defensively, and if he does get a little stronger, if he does add something to what looks like a pretty low power profile. But hopefully, hopefully that is helpful as, you know, it's that time of year where people are starting to get the itch to make trades.

And who you get even as throw-ins back in those trades, it's really important. And there's definitely an opportunity for the guys that have graduated off prospect lists to either be replacements off the wire or to be throw-in type players in those deals. All right, you know, let's get to our first prospect of the week segment in almost a year, probably more than a year. I don't think we did any prospect of the week segments at all in 2020, probably late 2019.

So we're probably pushing 20 months since we did one of these. A little bit difficult without the minor leagues. Very difficult without numbers as people who number scout and don't get a lot of live looks at prospects. It kind of points us to a question. What is actionable prospects coming out of 2020? What is going to get you excited about somebody when you're looking at the early days and early weeks of performances at any minor league level. I'm hoping that, you know, more and more of these,

uh, you'll see these player development feeds on Twitter, uh, giants, Mariners, a couple of the teams have these things, um, we'll tweet out.

Um, and I know that like, there's a bit of a saturation on a major league level where people are like, I don't care about the exit velocity on that Homer. And I hear you, man. I think there are better stories to be told than that ball was hit 112 at a 26 degree angle. It's not the most compelling story in the world. But when you're talking about minor leaguers,

like you, you like you're talking about raw power, right? Like even if it's just raw power, to hear a guy hit 115 or 118 as a starter at 96, that'll pop for me. And then I tend to think a fair amount about strikeout and walk rates just for both hitters and pitchers. I think that they're very powerful. They've been proven to be super powerful in the major league level and smaller samples. And they just tell us a lot about it. So my prospect of the week is Evan Carter, who I'm stealing from Jared Seidler at Baseball Perspectives, who had a little mini thread on Twitter today where he was talking about how he is a guy with a capital H, a capital A, and a capital G.

And doing some myself, Evan Grant had his fall instructional league numbers, which were 304, 467, 446. Pretty amazing. As many walks as strikeouts. And in his debut game he didn't get a hit but he walked three times and struck out twice and um uh has really good speed i saw a nice play where he scored uh scored on uh on like an error and um on top of that uh center field for the rangers he's in high a now just as we talked about um how aggressive teams might be and how things might move i could see him moving fairly

fast because um you know i think i think an a ball like he's in low a i think a low a assignment might have been in the cards for him anyway. So what happened to that year of instructional and alternate instructional? What happened to that year? He must have developed some. So what I'm saying is I think it's highly likely he finishes both A balls this

year and is in AA next year. And if next year he's raking in AA in June and Leotis Tavares still sucks and Evan White looks like a fourth outfielder, which I think he is. I know the timetable says 2024 on Evan Grant, but there is a chance that, you know, things get wonky in the next couple of years. And you're talking about a 2022 late season debut in center field for Evan Grant. Oh, sorry, Evan Carter.

Grant is the writer. Evan Carter, yeah. Not the guy covering the Rangers. That would be amazing. I don't think he would be a very good baseball player. That would be an incredible Benjamin Button trick. I mean, I've never met Evan Grant. No.

I don't think he's someone you want to have on your keeper and dynasty rosters. Seems like a nice enough guy on Twitter. But Evan Carter is the guy that you want to – if there's some other guy in the system named Evan Grant, and we see roster rates tick up to 2% or something on CBS, what happened? Who's this Evan Grant guy we've never heard of before?

Why is he at 2% on CBS? That would be... I didn't make that mistake from the very beginning, did I? Just after I mentioned Evan Grant. I think you got an Evan White in there instead of an Eli White. Alright, well, I got it all wrong. The guy's name is Evan Grant. I think you got an Evan White in there instead of an Eli White. Alright, well I got it all wrong. The guy's name is Evan Garth.

Cedarfield for the Texas. Actually, not even Texas. Where is he? He has a funny name. East Wood Ducks. It's just like one of my favorite places. One of my favorite.... It's one of my favorite. Down east.

Anywhere from, say, Maryland to Miami. Yeah. Everything in my world is about up north, and we never – like, down east is Chicago for me. So, you know, Chicago's fine, but I've never thought of referencing it that way. But if the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers became the up north Timber Rattlers, which they probably should, and it would sell a lot of merchandise. I think if they were the up north utter tuggers, whatever they called themselves, for a game,

it would be the most popular thing in the state until packer season started but aren't are you is your is your prospect of the week on the rocket city team oh the trash pandas yeah or the or the trash pandas trash pandas trash pandas it's the trash pandas that's a hunter brown right there hunter brown is uh he is a member of the trash pandas it's the trash pandas that's a hunter brown right there hunter brown is uh he is a member of the trash pandas and he is not a trash panda emphasis is very important i thought brown's pretty interesting because the astros pitching development is really good and i think if we look back to the shortened season and the number of players they had who made leaps from A ball to the big leagues. I think Enoli Paredes was one of them in the bullpen.

Luis Garcia, who I know you really like, was one who did that and has done it in kind of a swing role, getting some starts. And he's handled that pretty well. I think we could see them be pretty aggressive with a guy like Brown if he hits the ground running at double A. Kind of a non-traditional background. D2 instead of a power like D1 program pitched at Wayne State was a fifth rounder. The stuff's always been good. You see above average grades on the fastball and the

curveball. Looks like he's got a decent slider. The command's been the issue to this point. That apparently is getting better. Jake Kaplan had a really good Astros notebook. One thing I did in my prospect piece was I tried to gather as many links as I could to all the great stuff that our team beat writers have been putting together, looking deep into their minor league system. So I highly recommend, even if you think the stuff I wrote is worthless, read the stuff everybody else wrote, because that's very

insightful. And they're the ones talking to managers and farm directors and people around the minor league players throughout the shortened season. But I think it's just trusting this organization. I think with all the attrition and graduation they've had in that system, Hunter Brown is the number one pitching prospect in the Astros organization. They still have a pitching need. I mean, they're one injury away from being like, who's next? Yeah. They're one injury away from being like, who's next? Yeah, and I think in a lot of instances,

he has not seen his prospect ranking get a boost yet. He's one of the few guys. As I was writing my piece, I kept looking at James Anderson's rankings to get a feel for, well, how much has he moved on Alec Manoa and Michael Harris II? And of course, James, very good at what he does, quick to respond to these things, already had those guys

elevated to where close to where I would put them if I had a ranking set of my own. Hunter Brown, though, is buried on James' rankings. That's a big set of rankings. It's 400 deep. He's at 362. If you're looking for a big mover, a widely available

keeper in Dynasty League guy, Hunter Brown is the guy that you want to go out and get. Also amazing how because we're playing so much catch-up and I think I'm stealing a point from you. Anybody listening, this is DVR's point first. I'm just stealing it because

that's how shows work. But it's amazing to look back at that list right and because we're playing so much catch-up and and we're getting all this information we just got all this information from the assignments right that's so much information it's so much information that frankly i haven't seen a great piece like your your piece was very good at at starting to do it but like there's there could even be a more comprehensive one that really looked at which organizations

were the most aggressive and sort of teased some of this stuff out. But we just got so much information. I think everybody who makes a prospect list should have a new prospect list next week. Yeah. And that's not the normal schedule. No, no, it's not.

There's usually kind of a mid-season update. Baseball America has like a kind of a rolling hot sheet, whatever, but it's not quite the full update. Like we would normally, and listen, I know there are a lot of work, and I'm not asking everybody to do more work. Thanks, Eno. Now all these people are asking me for a new prospect list. I just finished my prospect list.

It took six months. It took the whole offseason. Thanks, you dick. But maybe some sort of update to it where you just push around games and you don't like reimagine the whole list, right? That's the one thing that's so hard about a prospect list. You know, when you make it from scratch is like, it's like when I did my first, uh, pitcher ranks of the new season, I re-imagined that I didn't even look at my old one. I didn't move guys around. I was like, I've got stuff numbers for everybody. I'm going to just start over. And so I think

that's what the off season list is like and what the mid season update is like, let's just start all over. But let's have in the next week or two one where you just took the list that you did in the offseason and you move guys around. Right, because the difference is I would imagine I've never had to maintain public-facing prospect rankings in my life. It's never been part of my job at Rotowire. It's never been part of my job at The Athletic. in my life. It's never been part of my job at Rotowire. It's never been part of my job at the athletic. Might be something I have to do for fantasy purposes real soon. So I know it's going to be difficult. I know it's going to be really difficult, but I've done regular fantasy rankings before. And I know that the further down the list you go, the less conviction you have in player 67

versus 68, right? So it doesn't take much to flip things around. You can move a guy 15 at the bottom sometimes when he gets really far down. Right. And I do think it's good to account for these things sooner rather than later because, again, having done big sets of rankings before, if you wait four to six weeks until, whatever, June 1st, June 15th,

whenever that next normal update would be, the amount of work it's going to take to update it is going to be more than usual. It's going to be worse than usual. So you might as well start the process now and avoid some of that volatility. But my thought, and I put this in the column too, is just that because some people do not look at more dynamically updated lists, there will be opportunities to leverage value in trade because the lists won't necessarily catch up to what's happening on the field as quickly as they ordinarily would. The lag will be worse. There's always a little bit of lag. There's going to be a lot of lag this year.

Yeah. What was it? We picked up two prospects in Devil Rejects and one was Evan Carter. I'm trying to think of what the other one was but yeah you gotta like some of these guys will be free you know some of these guys if you're in these deep leagues like we have in devil in devil's rejects um you know then you can just go to the waiver wire and pick them up and and you sort your own guys better you know what i mean like be on top of your own guys better. You know what I mean? Like be on top of your own guys better. Um, and realize when there's a chance to just pick up a guy that may be at the back end of a, of a top 100. Like that's what Jared Seiler was saying is that if he ranked a top 100,

um, right now he would do, he would put, uh, he would put, uh, Evan Carter on it. So,

um, let me just see here real quick. If can get my roster up on my phone. That's why it's taking forever. Who was the other prospect that we picked up? I can't remember now. I wonder if Hunter Brown's available in that league. I know it's a really deep league with people coming at it from a lot of different angles.

So if there's a league where he's rostered, it's Devils Rejects. Yeah, yeah. I don't think he is actually. I can't remember now who it was. Yeah, you got to sort of... I don't know if you need to maintain a full list yourself, but you got to kind of look at your guys and kind of judge where you think they are and try and stay on top of it.

Yeah, and I got to come up with a methodology that I'm comfortable with if I'm going to put a list out there at some point, because without a method, I think you're going to get completely rocked by the 2021 season. It's one of the more difficult seasons I can imagine trying to get into something like that for the very first time. But the other thing that's interesting about the Astros real quick, Pedro Leon is starting the year at AA. And when they signed him, initially, I thought, well, he's a center fielder primarily. They let George Springer go in free agency, didn't really replace him.

Maybe they have visions of him taking over center field before the end of the season. Apparently, he's going to play a lot of shortstop at AA a so it's an aggressive assignment to be clear but it kind of tempers my enthusiasm about him getting a chance to contribute before maybe september i don't know though i mean you could read it a couple ways maybe it like maybe they're just trying him at shortstop and you could almost go a week like remember when they tried your mean mercedes the third it took like two games and they were like, They gave him one start at first base this season. So they could just be like,

hey, let's try Leona at short for like a week. And then they're like, this ain't working. And then he goes back to center, and then Myles Straw is still kind of predictably not good. Who knew? Who could have seen that coming?

And, you know, they can't play Tucker in center, but, like, it may just be like, oh, hey, Leon. In September, maybe August, July, like, just be like, we're going to pull the plug on the Straw experiment. We're going to pull the plug on Leon at short. Like, things can change pretty quickly. So I would say yes. Generally, I think that maybe they're grooming him to be the

Carlos Correa replacement. Another thought here, and Leon's not necessarily the main reason to think about it this way, but teams are going to be wrong about some assignments for players in both directions. They're going to have some guys that they pushed and were too low, and they're going to have some guys they pushed too far. I think we're going to see more

players going down a level fairly quickly think we're going to see more players going down a level fairly quickly like and we're going to see more players moving up levels faster than usual too i just think there's going to be some some chaos that results from all of this like as well as the organizations know their players they're still going to see things that they don't like right away and have to make some changes. Yeah. And remember when the giants were like in the business of making waiver claims and like giving a guy two weeks and then moving on, like there may be that sort of two to three week thing where people were like, Whoa, we were totally wrong.

Uh, and, and I think of there's, there's another guy. So there's two guys from Cuba, both started in double a, both playing positions that could be of need for their teams this year and both have wildly different the Cuban stats just I

just this is just a fun comparison so Pedro Leon and over he was in Cuba at 20 years old and hit 383, 467, 789 slugging with a 1300 OPS. Murdered the league this year, maybe not. Yoelkas Cespedes. Dude, we love him, right? Oh, and how old was Leon? Leon was 20, so he's actually a little bit older. But here's Pedro. here's yulka cesspit is 20 years old hit 319 355 389

uh and like hey and that team dude just a little sidebar here real quick when we were like preparing for this show the end of the white socks game went down and it was it it was just like a master class in like what the hell is tony larusa doing just like what the hell was that uh so i think he did a double switch to get liam hendricks in the game fine, I guess he needed someone to bat in the ninth, and he wanted to get Liam Hendricks in. Maybe he did a double switch. It's NL game, right? So anyway, that guy made the last out.

So then Liam Hendricks is at second base as the ghost runner, and they get a hit or a walk. They hit a hit. Liam Hendricks is at third, they have first and third with one out in the 10th inning, Liam Hendricks is the runner at third, and you're like, what is Liam Hendricks doing at third base, like, I don't understand anything, and then, then Billy Hamilton comes into play, one out, you think, okay, just Billy Hamilton, do no harm, you know, do no harm, just strike out and get out of here, you know, do no harm, you know, do no harm, just strike out and

get out of here, you know, like, like, you know, just do no harm. Instead, Tony Russo has, has Larry Garcia take off from first base? Gets thrown out by a mile? Was this to like, maybe get out of the double play? No. Billy Hamilton's not going to get, he's not going to get double play, he's not going to hit the ball hard enough. He's too fast. He's not going to get a double play. Is it to maybe get Liam Hendricks to steal home? Like, to have them throw the ball around?

Well, anyway, the result was a very predictable two outs now with a guy on third, and it's Liam Hendricks, so it's not like he's scampering home on a wild pitch. And Billy Hamilton finally strikes out, and you're just like, Larissa, man, what are you doing? Anyway, they have some obvious needs. We were talking about Kevin Kiermaier as an option out there. Adam Engel is going to come back.

I think Adam Engel and Andrew Vaughn could combine to give them like a league average situation in one outfield spot, but they need a second outfield spot. So that's why we're kind of wish casting people onto the White Sox. And you could look at Cespedes' name and say, oh, here's the top bat prospect for the White Sox. But that's all the relative term because the White Sox graduated all their guys. for the White Sox, but that's all the relative term because the White Sox graduated all their guys. And we just pointed out that Cespedes had a.389 slugging in Cuba

in a league where Pedro Leone doubled that. And then Luis Robert's Cuban stats, I just love them. They're pretty good. Cuban stats. I just love them. They're pretty good. 401, 526 OBP, 6'8", 7'7". Oh, God. Yeah, so assessment is probably not the answer to how they overcome this.

But I think there's one move that has to be done. Because Engel can be like a one-win guy. Vaughn can be like a one-win-plus guy. I argue that they need two. That's why I think the Marlins, who have two that they should trade with Starling Marte once he's healthy and Corey Dickerson, they could send both to the White Sox, and they get the upgrade in center and left.

Duvall's got to be on a short-term deal too, right? Why not just send Duvall? Send the whole bundle. Send all three. Has it ever happened before three major league outfielders getting flipped in the same deal and all having spots in the new roster? I'm just going to give you our whole starting outfielder.

We've got some young guys we've got to play, so we're just going to need to take all three of these guys. What would be funny is I bet you Kim Eng would do better sending those three out than the last regime did sending out Stanford. three out than the last regime did sending out Stanton. Wouldn't that be a thing, man? I mean, wow. I think to your point, though,

Yoleki's cesspit is seemingly unlikely to provide a significant offensive upgrade in center field this season. If he gets there and plays, it's because they think he's a good defender and something didn't work out with the other things they tried more likely than not. I don't think it's because he completely mashed at double A and triple A and wildly exceeded all of our expectations. That's the vibe I'm getting based on some of the numbers that we're able to pull from his time in Cuba. But man, it's wild out there, especially the end of that White Sox-Reds game. What a disaster.

All right, we had a couple of questions come in about some early X stats. I know this is something that Katie Wu has written about for The Athletic about Matt Carpenter in particular. Are we at a point now, a little more than a month in the 2021 season, where we can look at X stats and the difference between X stats and actual stats to this point and draw some conclusions about a player being either very lucky or, in the case of Carpenter,

very unlucky with the bad balls that he's hit so far this season? balls that he's hit so far this season well carpenter was funny is like this is maybe the like millionth time that i've i've like this story has been told it's like the third time the first the first time it happened i thought this was the end for matt carpenter and most people said no it's not and they were right he came back and he was great yeah and the second time it happened people said look what happened last time he's gonna bounce back and he really didn't and that has me saying i think he's actually done for good this time but it's really hard to say that when you see him with the biggest difference in actual wobba versus x wobba among all qualified hitters yeah um and when it's the difference is that large um i suppose it's worth paying attention to it's just complicated by the ball i'm sorry it's complicated

by the ball the ball is about plus one ev across the board and you know alex chamberlain chamberlain just had a piece on fangraphs where Fangraphs where he rejiggered barrels, and basically the number for barrels used to be kind of around 97.5 for exit velocity. That's where you start gathering barrels, and he just put it up to 98.5 because that's how the ball is performing, and so that's hard to do.

You know what I mean? I can't just look at a person's barrel number and be like, minus 1.5 EV? Okay, I got it. So there's no like. What's wrong with you? Why can't you do that? Matthew, idiot. Such a disappointment.

you idiot such a disappointment um let me see if i can find uh chamberlain's piece here because he did actually do the math for everybody and um he's very good at math by the way yeah just just let's click his name that makes things easier my parents used to think i was good at math as a kid, and they don't really know most of my friends that I've made through work over the years. If they could only see how much better at math most of the fantasy baseball community is than me, they would laugh at how good they used to think I was at math. I did three years of, what is it? I did like linear algebra and like I did three years of advanced math in high school. The calculus?

Yeah, three years of calculus in high school. And everyone was like, oh, he's going to go places in math. And like I got to college and took a math class and was like, what? What is happening? is this another language uh he does not have carpenter on his list so i can't tell you but um fran milreis had a 24 percent barrel rate and the new number is 20 percent um it's just not it's not gonna be minus four percent for everybody but but it's like there's a bunch of 0% changes here at the bottom. But at the top end, it looks like there is, like the higher your old barrel percentage is, the more likely it is it's actually like 3% to 4% points off.

Even with that, though, if you have to lower it, I mean, if you lower the threshold to 25 batted ball events and look at the barrels per plate appearance leaderboard matt carpenter's seventh he's right i mean it's kirilov amazing start for him by the way we should probably get into that at some point it goes kirilov otani buxton devers acuna fran mil reyes but you're looking barrels per batted ball event i'm looking per plate appearance so that even factors in the bad strikeout rate which i think is probably here so that even factors in the bad strikeout rate which i think is probably here to stay he seems like a 30 strikeout guy at this point his career

i wonder if at this stage of his career is he that different than a guy that was in st louis last year and is now in philadelphia and brad miller where he's just kind of like yeah not a good defender a little bit three true outcomes, but does damage. I would say this, though, generally. I don't use those X stats. You know, X-Wobo was never meant to be predictive. Tom Tango did a whole thread on that this week. He's the creator of it.

It was never meant to be predictive. So I don't really look at those. I look at barrel rate, though, and he does have a great barrel rate. So however you look, you kind of figure better days are coming. But I also had to look at him in the context of the last 300, 400 batted balls he's had, which have produced a 214 type average. Are we talking about a situation with Carpenter that is not totally different than Gary Sanchez? He doesn't run well anymore.

You shift the crap out of him. The infielders play back. So he can get beat pretty badly by his own X stats because of some things that have changed in his profile over time. Yeah, yeah. I could see that. Yeah. So even if he does bounce back, it's Yeah, yeah. I could see that. Yeah. So even if he does bounce back,

it's not, hey, I'm getting all this back. I'm getting 30% of it back or whatever that number actually is. But thank you to Kerry for bringing up Carpenter because we got a question about Tommy Pham from Steve and kind of running Tommy Pham through the same sort of process. I mean, a 7.6% barrel rate, that doesn't look terrible for him.

It's kind of, I think, right in the – geez, that's actually pretty good when you look at it. It's 82nd among 324 hitters with at least 25 batted ball events. So top quarter. And he's never been like a huge barreler because he hits the ball a little bit uh in lower angles so yeah i but he the max ev is up there so i think he's healthy the overall exit velocity is there the barrel rate is there the uh extreme eye is there i i i remain uh total by low situation on tommy fam i want you to hold him. To be fair, I have Pham's shares

where I'm holding him on the bench. And, you know, maybe I missed that first big game, but, you know, I won't miss the whole season, I don't think. And also, I think a guy like this could get super hot super quick.

Just because he's not like an all or nothing trying to hit homers, super quick. Just because he's not like an all or nothing, you know, trying to hit homers every time guy. So he's the kind of guy who could have like a 400 average one week and just a ton of hits and maybe only one or two homers. But, you know, and then you know that that team, the Padres are the most aggressive base running team. So you remember how we talked about he had like one week where he had like four stolen bases and we thought he would have a million that year. He's going to have another week like that. He's going to have a week this year where he hits 400, hits two homers and steals four

bags. It's going to be fun if you have him in your lineup that week. Well, yeah, I'm glad I have him in a daily league. I might miss the first day, but then I'm glad I haven't been a daily league. I might miss the first day, but then I'm like, oh, fans back. Let's go. You can miss the first homer in the first two bags, but you'll get the next homer in the next two bags. That's the important thing, as long as you get some of it. So yeah, I just, I don't see anything in that profile glancing through it that makes me concerned that he can't be the player we expect him to be. I

think you get a good average, you get power, you get some speed. If he's 260, 15, 15 the rest of the way, I think that plays in a lot of formats, and there's a chance he's a little more than that. I think the streakiness is definitely worth bringing up. So thanks a lot for that question, Steve. I had a question come in about Alex Wood and the start he's had to this season. That question came from Ryan.

I think I hit this point with Alex Wood, you know, where I finally stopped throwing that dart because of the health and just the lack of innings really over the last few seasons between Cincinnati and Los Angeles. You got you. Yeah. Here it is. 22Ks and 23 innings, sub-2 ERA.

The walk rate's good. There's nothing on the surface at all that looks bad this looks like vintage Alex Wood and then some he's getting a lot of ground balls too yeah I'll just have to tell you stuff hates him just absolutely hates him stuff plus

has the change up at 82 the sinker at 61 and the slider at 51. Maybe it's so bad that it's good again. I don't know. Actually, when you get to those extremes, you're kind of like, huh.

Because CSW on the slider is 40%, which is definitely above average. If it doesn't look like anything else hitters are seeing, that could be good. He's mixing three pitches. Yeah. I just, I'm going to trust my model to some degree

and just say he's a really good streamer. Holy crap, look at the projections. They're all under four with mid-120s whips. And there's another thing. The relationship between when you should use Stuff Plus and when you should use traditional metrics, actually, now I'm going back on what I'm saying,

I think maybe you should just use the regular projections because he's made it this far with this stuff. He has a career 341 ERA. How much does Stuff Plus matter? To me, Stuff Plus matters a lot more when Shane McClanahan comes up. right? He has a career 341 ERA. How much does stuff plus matter to me? Stuff plus matters a lot more when Shane McClanahan comes up and Ryan Weathers comes up, right? And you have these two guys that you don't know how much to trust their

minor league numbers. Their major league projections are pretty much useless, you know, and you don't know what to do. Ryan Weathers comes up and gives you a 95 stuff plus, even though it looks good. And Kyle Bodie had a whole thread about how velocity is not as important in the big leagues anymore

that lines up with the research that I've been telling you about on this show, which is that velocity is not the number one factor in stuff anymore. And it's not because velocity doesn't matter. You need to be able to throw 95 or 94 to get to the big leagues. It's just that once you get to the big leagues, the difference between you and the next guy who can throw 93 is vertical movement and breaking ball velocity. You know,

those, those two things are very important. And so he had another thing on that. Anyway. So with wood, it's like, well, you know, why not just use his results, you know, to kind of project the future, I guess. Um, but I bought all the shares of Shane McClanahan. I could, I was the, I was the guy who went, went in pretty deep, I guess. Uh, there's probably, I got like three shares and

averaged around a $200, maybe like 150,, $160 output for those guys in NFPC formats. So I went in hard and everyone's like, well, I don't know if he'll get to five innings. I'm like, I don't care. I think he'll throw a bunch more innings and I think they're all going to be awesome. And then he went out and looked pretty awesome against the Angels with Patino coming in after him. So side note from that is Waskar. Oh, yes. Waskar Inouye.

There's something about him that stood out to you, right? Not the Grand Slam either. Right. You were not that excited about him when he first came up, but something has changed well um there was like a first run stuff number that wasn't exciting uh but mostly it's the fact that his slider has a 125 stuff right um but his four-seam fastball has a below average stuff and he's kind of a two two pitch guy um. And so I thought, you know, traditionally two-pitch guys

have problems with platoon splits. So I thought, here's a guy who's kind of wild, only has two pitches, lefties are going to get to him eventually. In that Kyle Bode thread on Twitter the other day when we were talking about, I don't know what inspired it, he said, platoon splits on pitches are changing. And so he basically intimated that sliders to lefties aren't a problem anymore. And that might be part of the slider explosion around the league. So I thought I'd look at it real quickly. And I did just a uh a savant search where i kind of just did righties versus righties and righties versus lefties for each for each uh pitch type um and

um you know sinkers have the biggest platoon split uh sliders have less of a platoon split four seam are almost um uh neutral and cutters um have less of aatoon split than spliders. So I'm not sure that the ranking overall has changed in terms of the platoon split. For example, the sinker had a 15%, 16% platoon split.

The slider had a 7.6% platoon split. The cutter had a 6%. So they're still kind of ranked like they were before. But I did notice something, dude. When righties throw sliders to lefties, the WOBA in the StatCast era has been 283. Whoa.

283. When righties throw a four seam to a lefty, it's 353. When righties throw a sinker to a lefty, it's 353. When righties throw a sinker to a lefty, it's 376. And here's the big one. When righties throw a cutter to lefties, and cutters, that's supposed to be the platoon neutralizer, right? I learned a cutter. I throw it in on the hands of the lefty. The wall was 322.

So the platoon split itself hasn't changed. So the platoon split itself hasn't changed, but throwing a slider from a righty to a lefty gives you the best outcomes of all the pitch types. That's how good sliders are. Sliders are so good that even with the platoon split, it's still a good idea to throw a slider to a lefty. I wonder how many organizations are behind it. I'm sorry, I'm wrong.

I was working with some sort of outdated ideology. Yeah, but how many teams are still thinking that way? Well, I think, you know, with Mike Fast, the leadership, Alex Anthopoulos,

and also just looking at Oscar Hinoa, they're just like, hey, you know, yeah, he has a changeup. He throws a couple of games. He's our starter now. The fact that they were fine with it and went with it suggests that they have some inkling about this. I put them on the list of teams that developed pitching pretty well.

So I'm just wondering if half the league has a fear of righties throwing sliders to lefties that they shouldn't have, and that's causing some of their pitchers to get hit more than they should. Yeah. I wonder. You talk about something else. I'll try to run a real quick savant search just to see if maybe there are teams that do this more often than other teams. If I had a piano, I could play it and then I could just interlude. But that's the wrong song to sing. This isn't a circus.

Come on now. All right. So we're going to do team uh let's just do team this year we'll just do this year uh number of sliders from righties to batter hand and lefties we're just i'm gonna do should i do raw number no i'll do percentage and okay so this is percentage of sliders thrown of overall percentage of all sliders thrown by righty to a lefty philly is doing it 43 percent of the time 43 percent of their sliders are from a righty to a lefty. Colorado is second. The Padres with Austin Adams and some other guys like that are third. Cubs fourth. Miami fifth.

Who's at the bottom? Not good. The Dodgers 7%. That's a big difference. The Phillies doing 43% of this and the Dodgers are doing 7%. Oakland 9%. Cleveland 10%. hmm the philly's doing 43 of this and the dodgers are doing seven percent uh oakland nine percent cleveland ten percent toronto 13 so clear divide and some teams that we think of as being on the front end of progressive um you know stat-based uh analysis like the dodgers the indians and maybe toronto and the astros are 25th. So there's a divide here. And it seems like maybe an opportunity.

When you have a divide this big, I feel like there's an opportunity for arbitrage, for doing something differently and acting differently and succeeding for it. That's how a team makes a trade that you look at and go, okay, that trade seems fine. And then one team crushes the other because they had something in their process

that they knew was going to work or were confident it could work. Like an all-righty pen where you're just like, yeah, I don't care. With the right righties. All our righties throw 90-mile-an-hour cutter or slider hybrids. You put up doing research. A little humor for the YouTube crowd.

Yeah, you really should subscribe to the YouTube channel and tell your friends to subscribe to the YouTube channel because I have a lot of fun putting random stuff on the screen. I'm only going to have more fun with that going forward because I'm getting better at it. You can't give me new tools because I will use them. Absolutely will use them. We had a couple more questions come in that we're going to save for Friday.

There's really good follow-up stuff about pitching injuries kind of related to Dustin May, but also pitchers getting to their max more consistently and some possible downside to that. So we'll address that on Friday's show. If you want to drop us a line, you can do that at rates and barrels at the athletic's show. If you want to drop us a line, you can do that at ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com. If you don't already have a subscription, you can get one at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. $3.99 a month gets you in the

door. I don't say it very often, but if you've listened this long and you have not left us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, we'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to do that. It's a good way to help people who might be looking for new shows to listen to actually find our show on Twitter. He is at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening. Thank you.