Rates & Barrels - Missing on Adolis García & Mostly Pleasantly Surprising Hitters of 2023

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

Eno and DVR discuss the upcoming World Series matchup between the Diamondbacks and Rangers, and how they drastically underestimated Adolis García when he broke through as a regular for Texas two years ago. Plus, they examine several hitters that were pleasant surprises in 2023 (and one disappointment thanks to lofty expectations).  Rundown 1:26 Assessing the D-backs-Rangers World Series Matchup 9:09 Brandon Pfaadt's Postseason Surge; 2024 Outlook 13:25 Why We Underestimated Adolis García 20:02 Chas McCormick's Breakout 27:17 Buying Lane Thomas' Career Year as Repeatable? 33:56 Spencer Steer's Future Outlook 41:57 Attempting to Make Sense of Cody Bellinger's Bounceback 48:03 Does Vlad Jr. Still Offer an Elite Ceiling? 56:40 Would You Rather Have Triston Casas than Vlad Jr.? (No....at least, probably not.) 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 at $1.99/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Raids and Barrels, it's Wednesday, October 25th, recording midweek this week. Did a 3-0 show earlier in the week, Derek Van Ryper here at the Eno Saris. On this episode, we focus on unusual hitter seasons from 2023, and it is impossible to fit them all into one episode. So the good news is, if you submitted some names that are not discussed on today's pod, there are review and preview opportunities for those players to be covered. So if they don't get covered today, don't sweat it. We'll cover them at some point between now and the peak of draft season when that rolls around again before we get to some unusual hitter seasons we should take a moment to acknowledge it's a rangers no it's not rangers phillies why didn't i write phillies rangers diamondbacks because we just assumed we all just had the phillies in there i didn't even do that i I didn't even make that assumption. I'm just that tired.

Rangers Diamondbacks, game one on Friday. World Series getting underway here in just a couple of days. Good thing I can rest up by then. Yeah, I'm going to edit that out of the video. That never happened. No, it's funny. I didn't pre-make it. The rundown says D-backs Rangers World Series.

I, for some reason, just brain farted because that's what I do. It's a fun matchup, right? It's an elite offense in the Rangers going up against a young team that probably got to this point a year ahead of schedule, which is bothering some folks on the Internet. But frankly, this is a good team that's played well at a very important time of the year. And I think this is a great matchup. I don't know if Major League Baseball is happy from a ratings perspective, but I don't really care about Major League Baseball from a ratings perspective. It's not my job to worry about that. It's my job to enjoy the baseball and talk about the matchup that we do have. I think this is a very good one. Yeah, I think they're actually sort of well matched. The difference in the pitching staffs between Arizona and Texas, which I was tasked to preview for the athletic written.

I couldn't really pick because I think that if you're looking at, you know, the top two, they both have really solid top twos. They both have really solid top twos. The third, in each case, Max Scherzer and Brandon Fott, have very different track records, very different stages of their careers, and very different recent track records where Max has been struggling and Fott has been surging. But if you kind of zoom out, I had to say maybe I give Texas a slight advantage in the rotation. In the bullpen, I would give Arizona a slight advantage.

Neither was the stuffiest bullpen of the postseason, but Arizona seems to have a fair amount of funk in Seawald and Thompson and a good enough thump with Ginkle. And it seems sometimes like Texas really only trusts two guys. They throw a role as Chapman sometimes, but do they trust him? So to me, it looks like Sabores and LeClerc and pray for rain. So I'm going to take the Arizona Diamondbacks, reliever core, and then for rain so i'm gonna take uh the arizona diamondbacks uh reliever core and then lineup wise i'm just taking texas and so for the what fourth series in a row i'm going to pick arizona's uh opponents and this isn't to say that i that i just i I think they're phonies or contenders or not a good team. It's just, I mean, this is a team that won, like, what, 86 games in the regular season?

It's not a juggernaut. It has flaws. It's okay for me to point out the flaws, the middle of the bullpen, the back of the lineup, those sort of things. But they were the second best defensive team in baseball this year, Arizona was. See, that's the way you exceed expectations in the eyes of a lot of folks, right?

You do a good job in run prevention, and it makes a not necessarily deep rotation or bullpen play up because you're playing quality defense behind all of those guys but in some ways it feels like that sells Zach Gowan and Merrill Kelly a little bit short Fott really is the wild card he's pitched really well especially in these last two spots where it's mattered in a huge way. So just to get the best of him right now is huge for that Diamondbacks core. I think it's going to be a great series, probably a high-scoring series.

If I had to put a guess out there, I would assume we're going to see a lot of 5-4, 6-5 type games because these teams can put runs on the board. What I want to see is how much pressure can Arizona get on the base paths too, because they've got the speed.

They started to at the end of that series a little bit, you know, and I think maybe that's a sign of things to come. I mean, all the things you could say about the, the way these teams match up would be pretty similar. I think the Rangers and Phillies are actually really similar teams in so many ways,

the way they're constructed. Do you just do it again? No, no. I think the Rangersillies matchup if it had happened those two teams were like the spider-man meme pointing at each other and all the things you would have criticized about the diamondbacks going into that nlcs against the phillies you could say a lot of similar things right now and it's like well if

they did it they just did it with the same concerns there's no reason why they couldn't do it again it might be a similar script It might take a little more from that offense, start to finish to keep pace. This lineup might be even better than the Phillies one. I mean, one of the things that, that I think is sort of fancy relevant and interesting about that Texas lineup is just the fact that,

you know, you've heard us talk on this show about chase rate and, and, and why it's important and how it ages and how contact outside zone ages and things like that. And so, you know, that at least my bias is,

is kind of away from Adelise Garcia types. And we've, we've even talked about that in particular, but if you look at how, what this Texas team is like, they're a team that, you know, chased outside the zone less than,

I think, 28 teams in baseball. I think they were second or third in chase rate this year. And yet putting Adelise on that team is perfect. You know, if that was a team of Adelise, like, I'm not sure it would be the best idea. You know, they'd all be chasing. You might be able to shut that lineup down.

Just think of him and Evan Carter back-to-back. It's just like trying to pitch to one and then trying to pitch to the other. It's completely different mindsets. Evan Carter is going to wait you out. He's going to be super, super patient. And Garcia is going to wait you out, is going to just be super, super patient, and Garcia is going to go for it.

So it's kind of schizophrenic to face that lineup, I think. And it's super deep. If you just think about the bottom of that lineup, you're talking about Jonah Heim, Mitch Garver, Josh Young. They're just better than Evan Longoria and, you know, the very bottom of the Arizona lineup. And so I think it's a lineup that has different approaches, different strengths and different weaknesses. And it's a it's a really, really good lineup. And the fancy takeaway for me is that is two things. One, have some diversity and approach.

is two things one have some diversity and approach I think you know this is something I've been trying to teach myself is that you don't want all of the same guy on your team I don't think you know I mean it's obvious if you just look at the five categories you have five categories there are some guys who can do all five categories but really really the best fantasy team is one that is sort of balanced through the five categories. And the other way that it's obvious is that chase rate does matter for aging. And so it can be good to sort of have a bias

towards guys that don't chase and have good strikeout rates and have good walk rates and are really steady. And yet that'll price you out or keep you out of a pool of players that you don't want to be out on, you know, like, especially in the middle of their careers.

Like, yes, Javi Baez at 32, like stay away. But Javi Baez at 26, don't say, Ooh, chase raid.

I can't have that. You know, then all of a sudden you don't, you're 26, don't say, ooh, Chase Raid, I can't have that. You know? Then all of a sudden, you don't, you're like, you don't get these great seasons from these young athletic players. you know,

I think there's a couple things you can still learn. How about this though? Can we overlearn? So, what about Brandon Fott? Well, I know we talked about him a lot, but but like where would you rank brandon fought next

year like just sort of generally like how how much has this run changed your your your opinion of well brandon fought would live somewhere in the dreaded glob and his place in the glob is more fluid because he's getting this opportunity to show us the things we wanted to see in this extended run in the postseason had this had this team not advanced let's just say the brewers knocked out the diamondbacks in two in the wild card round fought doesn't pitch his season was over and the resume was the 572 era the 141 whip you know the the improvements with the move to the first base side of the rubber that you pointed out before. If we were going off that, he'd be mid-glob or lower.

But because he's doing it on a big stage and did it a couple times against the Phillies team that we all looked at and said, how's anyone going to get these guys out? How's he going to turn that lineup over twice? Having seen that, knowing how people react to it, whether it's right or not i'm not sure but he goes sort of the front range of that glob now he's probably top

40 to 50 starting pitcher by the time you get to the end of draft season you're going to see a slight bump or at least a decent bump now and you're probably going to see another bump later if he comes out in spring and looks like the guy that he was in the postseason, even though these limited samples probably shouldn't be weighted as much as we weight them. It's just part of what we do. I think the best argument for him is that wider range argument. The adjustments kicked in during the second half. It's not just the postseason. It's building on some changes that were already taking place.

So if you want to kind of string it together that way, I think that's an argument that I can get behind a little easier than he was great in the NLCS. Yeah, there is a pitch mix argument too. What we saw beyond the movement on the rubber is the emergence of the sinker. He doubled his sinker usage in September and October, and that made him more of a truly four pitch i mean the curve was down to three percent so i'm not really counting that but with the sinker uh and

the four seam and the sweeper and the change up he's a he's a four pitch guy and hidden within that is sort of he's at least a three pitch guy to lefties you know what i mean and one thing that i've seen though because i've had to live vlog these is that he does still struggle against lefties i mean it like it was way more of a grind and i don't know if that's just the quality of lefties schwarber and harper you know those are good those are good hitters but those were eight pitch at bats where he showed them everything he had and he had to throw high and low and, you know, he had to be really fine. And yes, he threw a really great change up to Schwarber once to get him to strike out, but it wasn't easy. And so, um, you know, I have this good thing of like

the sinker being added and sort of some bad thing about watching him interact with the lefty hitters and being like, I think this is still going to be a little bit of a problem. The sweeper is his best pitch, and the sweeper is not good against lefties. So there's something in there that makes me a little bit nervous. And so, yeah, you're talking about this recency bias of like, oh, he just dominated in the playoffs. If he does it again in the World Series, like it's going to be like, I think he'll actually price out of my range. And I'll just feel so dumb because I will have bought him the year that he wasn't good.

You know, to a certain extent, I didn't have that many shares, but like, you know, I bought I would have bought him the night and then been priced out of the next year. And I'll be watching and seeing what's going on but I will point out that the in-season projections for Fott are very blob-like they all are around 2-4-3 ERA and league average

is 4-3 and what he did after he moved on the rubber was basically 4-3 so I would start your projections with a 4 next year. In-season pitching projections brought to you by the Bob Loblaw Law Firm. Since we're feeling stupid to start today's show, let's just keep that momentum going. Adoles Garcia is worth talking about here.

He doesn't necessarily fit the rundown today, but since we're talking about World Series related stuff, he was a miss for me because I got stuck on the things he wasn't able to do in the underlying numbers that we like to see. Because he was reaching a lot, I looked at the overall plate skills and said, you know, he needs to walk more or strike out less. And based on what he's doing to this point in his career, this is kind of the first full season coming out of 2021, especially, I'm not sure it's going to be there. And I think the way I assessed him was he's going to play every day until this team gets better. And by the time they're good enough to make a run like they're on right now, which was probably another year or two down the road, they'll have

a better option. And part of that was age. And there were a couple of mistakes I made with Garcia. And someone, I think it was Jordan that listens to us, was asking about it. He wasn't going in for a dunk. He was more just like, what can we learn? And I think it's two things. I think Garcia started playing pro ball late because he signed as the international free agent out of Cuba.

And I don't think you can hold age to level against the player who starts late and it could be a player domestically who suffered injuries went to college sometimes the timelines are just different right experience shouldn't always be measured in years sometimes it needs to be measured in plate appearances there is actually some there's some some statistical backup for that um in that piece that we referenced about age at level, I believe Stoltz looked at experience versus age and that they weren't always aligned. And so, yes, experience is a little bit of a finer tool than age, like in terms of how long you've been playing experience versus age. And I think some of that,

I think it changes a lot depending on where players come from. Like what league did you play in previously? If players come from Japan or Korea, I think there's a similar sort of thing that may have happened with Hassan Kim, where we quickly dismissed him because he didn't come over and hit two MLEs right away. And he made some adjustments and it's clearly a lot better now. So there's lessons like in that bucket

for Garcia. Came over from Cuba a little late. As a result, I think we, I at least wrote off the possibility of some improvement. He walked more than ever and he cut his strikeout rate from 21 to 22 to a manageable level.

I think a high 20% K rate is fine when you barrel the ball as often as he does. He was among the players on this team that got better at reaching. He does not swing as many pitches outside the zone this year as he has in the past. And we could argue, you know, whether that's sticky or not for multiple years. And that's all a valid argument, but the improvements he made were just things that I didn't see him getting better at. I just thought he was already a finished product in 21 and there was nowhere to go but down. The other thing we pointed out to that season, Adolis Garcia in 2021 swung and missed at more high fastballs than any player in

the league. He was number one in whiffs on high fastballs, zones one, two, three, 11 and 12, if you're looking at a stack cast map. So everything at the top of the zone and then above it. And you know, that's, that's great to have that information. I think we should continue to look at holes and different things, but if that's the only hole and he hits other stuff, like then you're fixating too much on the hole. So that may have been a mistake that I made to putting a little too much stock in that particular flaw that I made too, putting a little too much stock in that particular flaw in his approach. And yet, uh, I may make the mistake of being out on him a fourth time in a year in a row. Uh, the reasons that I have are that I'm, I'm, you know, after two seasons of chasing 40% of the

time, I'm not sure I'm ready to believe a 33% chase rate right away. Secondly, his stolen base attempts went down a lot. And so I'm just not sure how people are going to value him. If I'm paying next year for a 240 batting average and 30 home runs, then I will buy him. I have a feeling that he's going to go for more than that. I saw some chatter on Twitter. I think it was Bubba. It may have been some other folks too. I'm pretty sure I saw

Bubba tweeting about this and it was suggesting kind of the post-2020 Randy Rosarena hype on Garcia just because it's post-season. It's an awesome run. We're all watching it. We're tacking that on to the impressive regular season. It's an awesome run. We're all watching it. We're tacking that on to the impressive regular season. It's also very demonstrative

and makes it even more memorable. Yeah. The stolen base thing is interesting because when you pop 12 more homers, you just wiped out 12 stolen base opportunities with more homers. That happens a little bit. I was wondering too if there's an organizational philosophy in

the regular season. Keep him healthy, but is that team that's going to run a lot when you look at them? Seager doesn't run at all. The next guy has pop. If your team is that good and you don't have guys

that are 25 and younger that are speedsters, then why bother? The flip side that I could argue against myself though is yeah even if he's 240 uh 30 uh the runs in rvi might be uh pretty sweet because they were this year and it looks like most that offense is coming back next year yeah that whole that whole group's pretty much back so i think that's something that you really want to keep an eye on and something that does keep that floor pretty high i wouldn't be surprised if we looked at the stats at the end of next season and it's high 20s homers again and mid-teen

stolen bases or even 20 steel like garcia looks like a guy that can take off and and steal bases pretty selectively so i think there's a lot of ways you can make value a torn meniscus you know selectively so i think there's a lot of ways you can make value a torn meniscus you know it's like the least important part of your knee man if it's a meniscus like patellar tendon i guess it was if it's the patellar tendon maybe there's a little more importance there but i think with an off season to rest that could that's something that could come back in his game at least to some extent but if the price is like a second round pick yeah maybe that's a little too steep but i definitely underestimated him and hopefully can learn some things from the mistakes to some extent. But if the price is like a second-round pick, yeah, maybe that's a little too steep. But I definitely underestimated him and hopefully can learn some things

from the mistakes I made with Adolis Garcia and certainly enjoying the run he is on this postseason. It is fun to watch if you are a neutral observer of these Rangers series. Six stolen bases in the first half, three in the second half, and since his injury, only one. Yeah, but I think 15 is kind of where i'd put the expectation for uh 2024 in that category as the over under at least let's talk

about some good but unusual seasons we had a twitter request from ryan to discuss chas mccormick yet another astros player who just gets an opportunity and thrives and exceeds expectations, I think, relative to prospect pedigree. I mean, it's the kind they drafted in the 21st round back in 2017. So pretty big win on the scouting and development side and turns in a 22 homer, 19 steals season. Everything in the underlying numbers looks solid or good really across the board, right? 25.6% K rate, no problem there. Draw some walks, 8.8%. Barrel rate, double digits again.

And he was doing that as a part-time player each of the last two seasons. So there's some pretty nice consistency there. You're talking about a guy with 1,000, almost 1,200 plate appearances in the big leagues and a 10.5% barrel rate. So these are good skills across the board. Hits the ball in the air enough. Do you see any flaws that are going to make it difficult for McCormick to possibly carve out a larger role?

Because you could see that plate appearance total possibly go up. 457 is all he had this year. If he gets to 550 or 600, those counting stats should be really nice to go around that power-speed combo. Yeah, I think there's another level for him, honestly. I talked to him this year about his adjustments, and he just talked about being slightly more upright

in his upper body so that he could clear for pull. He used to be really good. My impression of Chaz McCormick going into the season clear for pull. He used to be really good. My impression of Chaz McCormick going into the season was just, here's a guy who hits opposite field screamers. I mean, he hits Stanton-esque lasers to the opposite field, but just never pulled it.

Last year, of his fly balls that he hit, he pulled 3% of them. This year, of his fly balls that he hit, he pulled 20% of them. This year, of his fly balls that he hit, he pulled 20% of them. Last year, he hit his fly balls, 40% of them were hard hit. This year, 50% of them were hard hit. So I just think that you have a mechanical change. And then the last little bit of soft science I have on Chaz McCormick is that there was something between him and Dusty Baker. I do not think it was made up. I do not think that Chandler Rome just pulled this out of his butt. You know, there were weird substitution patterns. There were weird comments from Dusty Baker about Chaz McCormick. He said during the playoffs at some point, Chaz has been struggling

after Chaz had, you know had two hits in two games. So I don't know what it was, but maybe there was behind the scenes Chaz thought he should play more and Dusty knew that and it bothered him. Or maybe it was just this ongoing thing that Dusty preferred veterans or whatever it is. I think that Chaz McCormick is going to play more next year because he was 33% better with the stick. McCormick finally was great against right-handers. He's always been better against left-handers, but he was better against right-handers. And his defense is good by the metrics,

which I think the next manager is going to appreciate. I think he's going to have 600 plate appearances next year, 25 homers, 25 steals, something like that. I think there's another level. So this is one of those times when you have a great baseline and not the very best postseason. So not everyone's going to be thinking about how great Chaz McCormick is. And I think it's an opportunity to buy high in a way. Yeah, and I think the very, very early ADP, I see three drafts in October have been completed so far, at least as far as what the ADP report has.

But Chaz McCormick has an early pick of 142, a late of 193. That puts him at 162 as the average for the three drafts. And what's the word you'd rather on him? The outfielder's in that bucket. James Outman is in that bucket. Oh, I'd say McCormick in a second. I trust the playing time a lot more. I think Outman's probably capped as a big side platoon guy

because the team plays on how they intend to use him. More swing and miss, too. So McCormick by miles, even though those guys are together. Ooh, here's one. I think in many leagues, though, he's UT only. Eloy Jimenez as a by low versus Chaz McCormick. They do very different things, right? You're looking for, like, it's kind of like two different guys that you want to have on the roster because they provide their value in a different mix.

You might be looking for batting average at that point. I mean, there's a needs argument there where it's just like you know you might go in different directions but i don't know even there like mccormick is it's close to a five category i do think maybe the batting average might regress a little bit um next year but he is a guy who hits the ball hard and he obviously has the ability to spray it the other way and pull it. So, you know, he may be a 330 true talent BABIP guy, and if that's the case, then he should be able to manage at least a 260, 270 average, even with that strikeout rate McCormick. So I think I'm arguing him over Eloy,

who has a really hard time staying healthy too. It's an unfortunately long history of Eloy underperforming, just being able to stay healthy, but also not being consistently at his kind of higher end for skills. Masatake Yoshida is in that range. Wyatt Langford goes a little earlier than Chaz McCormick. I love prospects, but that seems maybe a little aggressive. So I do like where McCormick is going right now. There's a little bit of a gap before you get to the next cluster of outfielders. But if you said, Cedric Mullins is going that late? Mullins, Ian Happ, Riley Green. This is a nice little pocket of outfielders going outside the top 100. So it could be a good draft season to wait a little bit to round out that outfield. What do you want out of Wyatt Langford that Chaz McCormick's not going to give you?

You just think he's going to hit like 30 homers in his first season? I guess the batting average is enticing, but yeah, I guess the batting average is what's enticing. Man, Wyatt Langford was just on a tear this summer. It was pretty intense. His batting average is at each stage, 385, 333, 405, 368. It's like a dozen games at AA, he had a 519

OVP. Did everything he could to say, I'm ready for the big leagues, and he is, but wow. That's a nice swinging strike rate and walk rate combo. I think what's really hard about evaluating a player that gets drafted you know in the middle of the summer and comes up and just dominates at every level is that the the minor leagues just get depleted over the course of the

season because of big league attrition right and i'm not trying to lay the triple a that he hit 368 and i know it's only 26 plate appearances but that's not a very good triple a at that point in the season no but at the same time like he dominated whatever watered down version of those levels you wanted however diluted they were it's still impressive what he did it's just a really small sample so pretty wild to see him going there but when you look at the, you start to understand how people maybe came to that conclusion. Here's the one that I think we're going to be a little less optimistic about. Lane Thomas and the knock for Lane Thomas.

He exploded for 28 homers this year, maxed out the playing time, kind of had to sell out to get the power, giving away some of the patience, maybe ambushing some stuff earlier in counts to get there. OK, that's all fine the k rate didn't jump that much a 25.8 k rate it's like two percentage points higher than when he did two seasons ago no problem there but he walked a lot less and the knock on lane thomas this came from one of our listeners all the way back in the winter if i remember correctly was that lane thomas really hadn't been that good against same-handed pitching righty on right righty, he had really struggled. He'd done a lot of his damage against lefties, and as an everyday player, he may have been leaving something on the table even if you scaled up the playing time. And even with the great numbers that Lane Thomas put up in 2023,

he struck out 29.2% of the time against righties, hit 242, 292, 427 against them. So a 91 WRC plus, that's up from an 86 for his career prior to 2023. And he walked half as much against righties this year than he did previously. So definitely a change in approach and some kind of skills improvement. But where do we go from here with Lane Thomas? and some kind of skills improvement, but where do we go from here with Lane Thomas? Yeah, I'm a little bit more optimistic when you have a righty that is in this situation

than a lefty, and my evidence for this is kind of anecdotal, but it comes from a weird place. I mean, I watch a lot of Little League. My kids are in fall ball now, and they're going to be in spring ball, and it's Little league all the time. And there are I think there's been one lefty pitcher in both of their leagues in the full year.

So you just don't see lefties. And then maybe you see them a little bit more in high school and you see them a little bit more in college. But you just don't see lefties that often and so uh a lefty you know with lefty platoon splits they just don't have all that time in their development process in which they've been getting better at lefties you know but a righty has seen righties his whole dang life you know And we're talking about a guy now who is approaching league average within his first real full season, maybe his second. I think that number could go up.

He could combine the patience he had before with the more aggressive, more power that he had in his second try at righties and in his third year be above league average against righties, in his third year, uh, be above league average against righties. In which case you might expect the two 75 average, uh, maybe 30 homers,

uh, 25 stolen bases. I don't know. Those things are all possible for him in a way that, um, I, I think nobody's going to believe, you know,

I don't think that the ADP, I bet you that his ADP is nowhere near Chaz McCormick. It's earlier. It's earlier. It's earlier? Yeah, so far it's been earlier. Lane Thomas, fringy, right around that pick 100 range. Wow. Well, now you're pushing the limits of my arguments.

I'm not, I'm not, the other reasons I can say that I'm not sure about this guy is he's 28. You know, he is right-handed, so he does see the platoon advantage to a lot of people. I can't say I'm that excited about him. Who is a would-you-rather on him? You're looking at Lane Thomas versus what? Lane Thomas versus Mike Trout in some instances when Trout falls? What? What world is this?

I guess the stone faces. I can't do that. Thomas had a career-best 20 steals, too, to go with that power. He had a really good season. He really did. Yeah, but on some, it's still 109 WRC+. A 109 WRC+, 28-year-old corner outfielder is not something that the league values. And if the league doesn't value

it you have to take some cues from that you know what i mean yeah how about lane thomas versus brian reynolds they're very close in adp i'll take brian reynolds brian reynolds he's done it longer year to year yeah yeah i think the the supporting skills right it's a lower k rate it's a slightly higher walk rate multiple Multiple years is a track record. Similar in age. They're both 28. Reynolds turns 29 in January. Thomas will turn 29 until August.

The defense hasn't been historically that great for Lane Thomas. So the projection for him might be under two wins. And under two win players are not league average players. A non-league average player on a rebuilding squad might get traded into uh the wrong side of a platoon on a better team uh at some point in the season too so if it becomes you get uh three quarters of a season out of him um you know full-time starting and that comes at you know basically a league average bat rate um i did want to add that context about righties and lefties, but in sum, I'm out on Lane Thomas at that price.

Yeah, I think it's interesting if you take a look at righty on righty numbers, like you go back three seasons because we want to make these handedness splits bigger. Like who else plays a lot against righties and struggles? Lane Thomas, the 87 wrc plus brian hayes 83 wrc plus but his defense is keeping him in there right and i think that's the really important part is like what's the team situation do the nationals have enough young talent ready right now yes push lane thomas out of that spot or is it in 2025? There could be one more year there. Yeah, but I think you're walking a fine line because Dylan Cruz hit double-A last year.

I know he only just started out, and it wasn't like he blew it up like Wyatt Langford, but what happens a month into the season, Lane Thomas has regressed a little against righties, and Dylan Cruz is just destroying the ball in double A. You got James Wood reasonably close as well. Just those two guys alone could make that depth chart a lot more crowded. I wouldn't be surprised if you get one more pretty good year from Lane Thomas before the playing time starts to take a bit of a hit. I'm on Chaz McCormick over Lane Thomas straight up.

I think lineup quality is as great as Thomas was. He maxed out everything this year in terms of playing time, run production. That's right. It will be a little better. Chaz McCormick has another 100 plate appearances he could get. That's what I think the playing time shift between these two guys could level things out a little bit. Here's a positive one, at least I think a positive one.

Spencer Steer. And Spencer Steer is a little bit tricky because he's another player with a relatively low barrel rate, 6.7%, good power results, very good all-around slash line. At a glance, you think, is this kind of like another Isak Paredes, kind of plays a bunch of positions, good plate skills.

I looked at the spray chart. It's not Isak Paredes because no one is Isak paredes kind of plays a bunch of positions good plate skills i looked at the spray chart it's not isak paredes because no one is isak paredes like spencer steer at least hits home runs the center field once in a while hits the ball pretty hard up the middle is kind of isak paredes bregman's a little more in that bucket but then i wondered okay maybe spencer steers this guy that hits three quarters of his home runs at home because it's great american ballpark no 13 of his 23 home runs were actually hit on the road. So you have that. He did hit nine against lefties out of 23, which is like a little bit of an elevated rate against the platoon advantage,

but that's not alarming. Same handed pitching split is 256, 348, 431. Not bad. Like good enough to play against righties, I think. Maybe because it's a little crowded, tough righties occasionally would be his days off. But what do you think about Spencer Steer? I mean, I wondered if he also fasted on fastball, feasted on fastballs and struggled with everything

else. Nope. He kind of hits breaking pitches pretty well, actually. So I actually don't see a major flaw unless he's a super utility guy that doesn't have room to max out playing time. He did have a negative pitch type value against fastballs, which is a little bit surprising. And it was slightly positive against four-seamers

and very negative against sinkers. Sinkers, yeah. So some possible weakness there with sinkers. But when I do see a player that has so many positive pitch type values other than that, he's positive on every other pitch other than splitters, I guess. And he was positive on four-seamer. So you're talking about sinkers and splitters where it gave him some trouble. Well, you're not going to see a lot of splitters.

And sinkers is a sort of a specific thing. You know, it has to be a righty for him to see a lot of sinkers. And that could be an adjustment he makes. And just talking to him, I found him to be a fairly cerebral guy that has an advanced two strike approach. So what you're seeing is when you see that 20 percent strikeout rate, it's one that I believe. is uh when you see that 20 strikeout rate it's one that i believe and that is going to reduce some of his power ceiling uh because you know you have your mark trumbos who say you know uh i don't care if it's two strikes i'm gonna swing hard because i'd rather hit a homer than than and or strike out and let the next guy try to hit a homer you know um i don't think that's steers approach

but for fantasy that's a good thing because I think that I believe this lower strikeout rate, I believe the good batting average. I don't think he's going to be a league leader in any one category, but I do think he is going to be a solid player. So there's always a question of how much you will pay for a solid player that doesn't have first round upside which i'm pretty sure he doesn't um but uh i'm guessing that his adp is manageable and that i would take him over a lot of people around him spencer steer goes even earlier than the last couple guys we talked about and part of that's the multi-position part of that's the home park.

I might still be in on him, though. Where are we going? 80? Yeah, right around pick 80. Ranges 77 to 95. So you're looking at him versus Manny Machado. Okay, I'm not taking Spencer Steer over Manny Machado. I don't think.

That seems a little strange. Spencer Steer versus Spencer Torkelson? Yeah, I'm taking Steer. They're very different players. Torkelson, by the way, I got a little note. It's interesting. Corbin Carroll is one of the ways that Corbin Carroll gets to more power out of a smaller package is a lighter bat.

And Torkelson switched to a lighter bat last year. And at some point last year, I don't know if I have it right on my hand, but maybe I can find it. But here it is. Last offseason, yeah. So he switched to a lighter bat before he played last year, Torkelson did. And what you saw from that was, you know, more barrels, more pulling,

and getting to his power more, but he isn't going to steal bases, and he doesn't have that two-strike approach, I don't think. I think he wants to hit homers. And so what you've got instead is a more traditional, low-batting-average, high-power guy. I'm going to take steer over that because I think he can contribute in more categories. There are some tasty would-you-rathers on this ADP chart already,

like some real nice ones, like Christian Walker versus Spencer Torkelson. That's going to be interesting because those guys have similar mindsets, right? Those two guys are trying to do the same thing out there. Walker strikes out less and is more refined, better part of his career, more adjustments in his rearview mirror, however, 32.

Right. And the way it ended up, I think a slow start this year ended up kind of pulling down where Spencer Torkelson could have finished 233 31 homers 94 rbis 88 runs especially in that home park on a rebuilding team that's a nice power output yeah you're betting on more growth from him you're betting on but what if you let's say we push him right and uh in season projections uh oh, I think we might have some. No, those are preseason or whatever.

230, they all wanted him to hit 230, which I get. But let's push him to 245 next year with 30 homers and five stolen bases. That would be the worst year of Christian Walker's last three years or whatever. It would be his worst full season output. So I still think I'd take Walker over Torkelson. I'm such a massive bozo because when I see Machado

and Arenado next to these guys, I'm like, how would you not take Machado or Arenado over Spencer Steer and Spencer Torkelson? Like, what do you... And I know Arenado had some back spasms at the end of the year. Being 32, and I think he turns 33 soon after opening day,

you worry a little more about that. It wasn't like... Arenado didn't have an Anthony Rendon injury. He still got the 600 plate appearances again last year. That seems a little silly to me. why manny's so low because he i i think manny actually we know that manny played through injury

um so i i could see him being better next year and at 31 he's younger than arenado uh it's the elbow surgery that's what it is for machado right but it's not it wasn't it wasn't big elbow surgery oh repair the extensor tendon for Machado. But it wasn't big elbow surgery. Oh, repair the extensor tendon? Yeah, it's four to six months for the recovery. So he's not going to have a normal offseason. So I guess that's the, why is Machado falling that far? That's the reason.

And I have to look at similar surgeries and see if we even have enough guys to even come up with a reasonable estimate of how much of himself can he be right away. But it wasn't Tommy John. It wasn't Tommy John, but... Actually, I haven't seen extensor tendon surgery listed very often. That actually seems a little more unfamiliar to me. Well, it's interesting he played through it, you know? Mm-hmm, played through through it but needed the surgery and couldn't play third i might be inclined to say that in like a keeper or a dynasty league

you know if you're just looking at long-term value probably someone you'd still be going after right now as opposed to someone you're trying to move while he's hurt i think there's a lot to like there here's another tough one codyer. I mean, we talked about it a few times over the course of the season. We had an email from Max, I think in September, who wrote, it's been a joy to watch Bellinger work this season. Can't help but wonder why his stat cast page doesn't seem to be in line with his results. My eyes may be playing tricks on me, but seeing him day in and day out, it seems like he has unusually good timing for when he makes impact with the ball.

It looks as if he's going and getting the ball at some sort of optimal point in his trajectory for his swing. So is this a thing? Is this part of what makes Bellinger? Bellinger, like how do you rectify the difference between the production and the underlying stack cast numbers being pretty far away from where you'd expect them to be with the results he was able to put up? I mean, how, how would that, how would you measure that? I mean, yes. A contact point would, you know, in terms of out in front of the plate or whatever, get it out in front. Yeah.

Yeah. That would be something that if we had that, uh, it would be great to measure. Uh, you can, I do, uh, I just looked at pull fly balls. It was the best pulled fly ball rate of his career. But when I say that, that sounds a little bit more impressive than it actually was. So he had a 33.2% pull rate this year. In 2021, he had a 33%. In 2018, he had a 32%.

2017, he had a 32%. But it is interesting that most of his bad years he was down at 27 percent so is that a huge difference it's a difference uh he pulled more fly balls he went back to the kind of pulled fly ball rates that you saw in 27 and 2018 which is when he was better so that's a good sign and that doesn't show up with just looking at all this. It's also a good way to make more of your barrels is to pull your barrels as opposed to push your barrels. But I just am a little bit skeptical of him because we just haven't seen that full health. And the way that I demonstrate we haven't seen full health from him, that pre-shoulder surgery health,

is we have not seen him hit a ball 110 since the shoulder surgery. And that continued this year. So I kind of feel like it's fool's gold to some extent. So the raw power is down. And I think what's interesting here is it it's, it's free agent year again for Cody Bellinger. And I think about how the Yankees were the frequently rumored destination for Bellinger when the Cubs were certain

sellers. And then, of course, they were playing well and it looked like they were going to make the playoffs and, well, womp womp. But with Bellinger... He's a true fan. He had to throw that in there. You know what? I only do it because of Twitter. I don't actually have a deep-seated hatred the way most people do. I'm level-headed about these things.

If Bellinger ends up in Yankee Stadium as a free agent, it's a little easier to buy into the repeat, right? Just because of the way he's been doing it. Those pulled fly balls for a lefty in New York. You max out the rewards of that approach. And I think it's going to be fascinating

from a real life perspective. What does this contract look like given the highs and lows we've seen for his career? I hope for his sake that he can cash in in a way that he gets everything he wants. This offseason isn't a multi-year deal, but where he lands might actually dictate how aggressive i am going to be the market early on has him as a fringe top 50 player so you're not

you're not really in a position to you're paying full freight yeah you're not going to feel great about him at that price when you look back at pre- pre 2023 like that's just oh it's tough when if we went and also what if you draft him and uh he ends up on the giants or something i think that would be kind of devastating yeah yeah he could still pull some into the water but uh you know the pull power alley there is triples alley is death to flying balls yeah i mean you just think about the barrel rate 6.1 and it wasn't like it wasn't like the hard hit rate was high and hit the ball on the ground sometimes and it was just like a mix of hit rate was poor the worst of his career bad 31.4 but the k rate was as good as it's ever been so it's like he made all these tweaks and changes

and was still chasing outside the zone, but he wasn't striking out. There's a ton going on there. I feel like it merits an even deeper dive. Sometimes it's worth zooming out and being like, oh, he just had two

superlative seasons in his career, maybe three. He's had two okay seasons in his career, and he's had two devastating seasons in his career uh maybe three he's had two okay seasons in his career and he's had two devastating seasons in his career like does that sound like something you want to buy into like just think about the the like let's say manny machado has been injured and you're just looking at an older guy or nolan arenado nolan arenado is just like excellent all the way through a little bit older i could i can buy into that package a little bit more because I'm just like,

worst case scenario, it's just a little bit worse. Worst case scenario with Cody Bellinger is he hits 180. It's happened. You have to think about the worst case scenario. You know, in draft day, we're always like, best case scenario, he's going to go 30-30.

Have the little devil on your shoulder it's like yeah worst case scenario he has 180 i need uh you know what i need i need a friend jeff zimmerman to to write a one-liner the thing he likes the least about every single player in the pool so that way when i'm sitting there trying to make a decision i can be like this i feel really good about cody bellinger then I can read comment from Jeff. Like, I feel terrible about Cody Bellinger now. And then let's go to the next player on my list.

Like that's, that's the tactic that I want to use during draft season. The inner Jeff Zimmerman. Yeah, for sure. Like, what are you doing? He's not going to do that again. Why would he do that again?

It is interesting though, in XFL, it's Keeper League. I've mentioned a couple of times in the podcast, 15 team leagues, contracts and salaries. Made a big trade with Jeff Erickson. It's the team that I co-managed with Ryan Bloomfield. And Cody Bellinger, Jeff has decided to do a rebuild.

The principal of the trade was Vlad Jr. And in a weird way, Cody Bellinger felt like a throw-in just because of when we made this trade a couple weeks ago. And I think you can look at felt like a throw-in just because of like when we made this trade a couple weeks ago and i i think you can look at him like a throw-in if you want to it was vlad jr plus cody bellinger at keepable prices like bellinger i look at as kind of like a keeper for this year and a maybe for next year probably just a one year like makes the team better right away so fairly expensive cody bellinger. $14, I think, is the price for this year, and he's plus $5. $19 in 2025 if he's good.

So there's a chance he's a keeper again, but no guarantee. So I looked at it as kind of like a nice secondary piece. Vlad Jr. incrementally goes up like three a year. I think he's 16 this year. So it's either 16 or 19 this year. It keeps going up. Anyway, the point is...

What'd you get back? We got those two guys. We gave Jason Dominguez, who will be cheap and good forever, and a couple other prospects. Guys, we had a keeper crunch. You can keep 15 in that league, and we're wrestling with 17, 18 names, so we had to bundle a couple guys together and get a couple back.

I feel like it's hopefully a win-win deal. That's what you're always looking for. But I just felt like Bellinger in the eye of the person trading for him, you're like, yeah, Cody Bellinger, definitely a keeper for me, obviously for this year, probably a keeper for me next year. You could live that for a month or two and go, holy crap, I can't even start this guy. That's in the range of outcomes still, even though 2023 was really good. The fun thing about your trade, though,

is that I feel like, I mean, the worst case scenario is pretty bad. The worst case scenario is you don't have any keepers next year. Yeah. I mean, somebody was bringing up that like if vlad guerrero jr doesn't do better next season he could be a non-tender candidate which really blew my mind but i mean he was this is this might be uh being too perennially on fan graphs of a type of a take you know um because he still was 18 better than league average with a stick and i think most teams

will take that uh but with the defense and everything it was a one win season by fan graphs war um and they did pay 15 million dollars for that one win so i can see where the take was born um i don't know that i necessarily believe it uh first of all you know defensive statistics a little bit further behind secondly um teams will pay for superlative offense so if he doesn't necessarily improve but it's still 20 better than the average i think they'll just keep tendering him so i don't think that that's something that would happen but it does point to what a disappointment this season was for vlad guerrero and uh it's funny if you took his name off of it 264 26 homers five stolen bases that feels like like i could tell you that's what christian walker did this year so okay a little more to the story

here because this is this is i think part of the reason why Jeff was comfortable trading him is this is an OBP league and escalating prices. If this is who Vlad is, then there's a year or two where he's underpriced, then he's appropriately priced. And that's not necessarily that valuable then you get really nothing later on, like a corner infielder that hits mid twenties power and kind of has an average ish OBP. Like I get it from that perspective. I think what's maybe lost here with Vlad jr. For a lot of people is like,

he's going to be 25 in March. And if this is the, the floor and we've seen this multiple times from him, this is a really good floor. It's a question of how much you believe there's still more ceiling. A 49.2% hard hit rate, that's still excellent, right? The swing decisions haven't been as good this year or last year as they were in the shortened season in 20 or as they were in 2021 when everything fell into place but what do you think is the most likely outcome like what would your back of the napkin projection be for vlad's 2024 when you look at that high high peak of 2021 with a lively ball and what he's done the last two seasons right like you probably if you just kind of like off the cuff

marcel it you're leaning more heavily on what just happened and then a little less on what happened a year ago and a little less on what happened two years ago. But it's still in there. It's still better than what you just did. You have to put aging in. And in this case, aging is a benefit. You know, he's still actually in a place where you the aging would improve his projection. And so I think I land on 2022. 274, 339, 480 with 32 homers and eight stolen bases.

That's somewhere in between. I might even nudge the walk rate up a little bit, right? Because we saw that skill in a good place again this year, even though it wasn't at the 2021 level. And the lineup's still really good, right? So all those counting stats we talked about a little earlier with the Rangers bats, Jay's still got plenty of quality there.

So you're still getting lots of runs in RBIs. I don't know. I think as disappointing as it was, I thought from a keeper perspective especially, the window was perfect just based on when Jeff started trading. He also had Juan Soto. He traded Soto. Unfortunately, I had bedtime duty,

and Juan Soto got traded while I was on bedtime duty. I was like, well, Vlad's still out there. Vlad's going to be cheaper. The timing of trades, when you know someone's rebuilding, after each piece goes, it's a little bit of a feeding frenzy, but eventually it's like, well, you're committed to the rebuild, so you might be a little morezy but eventually it's like well you're committed to the rebuild so you can you might be a little more likely to get a deal done if you don't do the first if you're the second or third deal yeah that's how i felt about it you're not getting

that much of a discount on vlad and redraft relative to how people talk about him anyway the range is picked 24 to 42 the uh the the sort of game to game-game, the adjustment, the reason for where Vlad Guerrero is now came very clear to me watching him in the Home Run Derby. He was yelling at John Schneier to... Not yelling. He sort of gestured to John Schneier to pitch him high and tight. And I just looked at the heat maps again. He's a high and tight guy. He loves it high and tight. And, you know, I just looked at the heat maps again. He's a high and tight guy.

He loves it high and tight. The reason he is where he is now is because he can still hit the ball hard low and he's being pitched low and he's being pitched low so consistently by everybody. The book on Black Guerrero is pitch him low. And what he does with that is hit ground balls. He hits hard ground balls.

And sometimes those turn into singles and maybe even, you know, if it's in the right place, a double. But by doing that, teams limit his power output. And he just seems content to go with that. He has some good discipline. He has a good sense of the zone, but when he sees a ball that's low and in the zone, he's going to swing at it as opposed to Juan Soto, who also hits the ball high and tight, loves it high and tight.

If he sees the ball low in the zone, he spits on it until he really has no other choice. And so that's kind of the difference between Soto and Vlad Guerrero. And in fact, I know one's a lefty and one's a righty, and they're not mechanically almost the same thing or anything, but I almost would love to show tape of Juan Soto at bats to Vlad Guerrero Jr. this offseason. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see what kinds of adjustments he ends up making, because if the book is just that consistent and it's working and it's turned Vlad from a possible superstar bat into a good above average player, like opposing teams are going to settle for that every day. Like this guy was a monster in 2021. Right. So if you can make him just a opposite field, you know, fine.

He's going to crush the ball to the opposite field. Not going to go deep against you you you can live with that um so what's funny about all this is as we were trying to put together an offer we have tristan casas on this team again it's an obp league and casas is coming off of a nice you know like kind of breakout choice of sending casas or dominguez or was that really on the table well it's so internally, when Ryan and I are going back and forth and we're looking at it, I looked at Casas and I looked at Vlad's numbers and I'm like, who would I rather have if Casas is cheaper by like 10 bucks? So he's going to be cheaper for a long time. Would I rather have Casas straight up than Vlad Jr.? And that sort of informed like that feeling sort of informed me to not go like crazy and pay for 2021 Vlad.

Right. So the trade ended up being Dominguez, Chase DeLauder, a very cheap Ronnie Mauricio, who because of power speed, playing time should be good. I think he gets a little dinged in OBP. But Mauricio should play a ton for the Mets in 2024. There's nothing for him to prove. So I think he's going to be a guy that I get a lot of this year. Chase DeLauder, some people are saying, some people are saying is the,

it's funny how that phrase can be ruined like that. Some people are saying. Chase DeLauder is one of the best talents in the AFL, you know, getting an extended chance after some injury issues, I believe, and so he might be on the fast track too. You might have given up a lot of talent, but

you got two guys who have MVP-type seasons in them. Wide ranges. You're buying it on Bellinger coming off the bounce back, and you're kind of hoping for the bigger bounce back from Vlad Jr. Miguel Vargas also part of that deal as a buy low, too.

Yeah. I mean, I just felt like it was fair. It felt like I parted with guys that I wanted to keep and couldn't keep and got some guys back that I wouldn't have been able to get before. The added value to your team of those secondary pieces goes down with every piece. And it just lined up really well for us. One of those guys would have well for us because we couldn't keep them all, but Jeff could. But if you didn't have 15 keepers, you're like, well, shoot.

These guys should be kept and they could be awesome. They could be part of my next good team. That's part of an adage I have that there is no overpay when it comes to limited keeper status. If you got the best player, then there is no real overpaying, you know, because everybody is trying to slim down to get to that 15 or get to that roster number. So, you know, there it's, it's not a blanket truth that there is no overpaying, but it's, uh, you know, if, if you got what you wanted and you know, you didn't have space for all of them, then kudos. Dominguez, because of the injury, especially to have to wait longer, he's the perfect player to trade for if you're in the rebuilding situation. If you're in Jeff's position where you're trying to win a couple of years from now, great. Dominguez being out for most of this season, that doesn't matter. He's going to stay cheaper longer as a result of maybe not playing much in 2024.

I don't know. The mechanics of the keeper trade is always a little bit fun to dig into. But what I'd rather have Cassis or Vlad Jr. moment was, and sometimes that's like inflating the guy on your own roster a little bit. But in this instance, I'm like, in this format, OBP especially, Cassis has always walked. So that category is probably a win for him. Run production power still probably leans vlad homers might be even though so uh interesting thoughts there and part of why we didn't send casas back dominguez is probably would be one of my number one targets

in in in um dynasty and keeper leagues if i was rebuilding because like even if you want jackson holiday you know good luck you're not gonna get him you can get him the the the shoulder injury and some of the up and down nature of dominguez's wrc pluses and the minors uh offer just the slightest bit of opportunity to to pry and and lose. Yeah. Not shoulder injury, the elbow injury. Perfect storm. But let's hope that, uh,

that Ryan and I are right about Vlad jr. I, again, I make trades hoping that it just works out for everybody. I think this one has a chance cause there's lots of different ways for it to play out. Uh, we will get to some disappointing,

unusual hitters beyond Vlad jr. On our next episode, too much. We can't run this one any longer because the power company, they're turning off the electricity, not because we didn't pay the bill, because they're replacing power poles in the area today. So I'm going without electricity

for four hours in the middle of my Wednesday. But hey, you know, it's going to be okay. Is the next time we're going to talk to people, is it going to be in Arizona? Nah, we'll do one early in the week before we go and then we'll do some disappointing hitters and then uh probably from the afl i figure uh i will have some afl stuff plus uh numbers for you and we'll have chris welsh on uh we'll be live from first pitch arizona so we'll be talking all the prospects from the AFL

and have some pitching stuff plus numbers from them. That'll be a good show. Excited for it. It'll be fun. A couple of fun ones lined up and that's always a great trip. A little late if you haven't made plans yet. If you can squeeze it in, do it. If you can't do it this year, make your

plans and prepare to do it for 2024. As we go, a reminder, you can get a subscription for year, make your plans and prepare to do it for 2024. As we go, a reminder, you can get a subscription for $2 a month for the first year at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. You can find Eno on Twitter slash x at EnoSeries. You can find me at Derek from Riper. The pod is at ratesandbarrels. If you've got a few more disappointing, unusual

seasons from the hitters, you can tweet those our way at ratesandbarrels is the best way to reach us. Otherwise, ratesandbarrels at gmail.com also does the trick. That's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. We're back with you next week. Thanks for listening. Bye.