Rates & Barrels - More Bad Luck for the D-backs, Underperforming Indicators & Firing Up the Trade Master 3000

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

Eno and DVR discuss Corbin Carroll to the IL as another injury hampers the D-backs, one benefit of choosing to trade away players ahead of the Trade Deadline, the Reds' decision to DFA Jeimer Candelario, and Kenley Jansen's abrupt exit Monday. Plus, the current league leaders in "Combo Meals", James Wood's first full year in the big leagues, Ben Brown's underperformance relative to ERA estimators, and a few trades we would like to see as a birthday present to Eno, courtesy of the Trade Master 3000.Rundown1:32 Corbin Carroll Headed to IL w/Chip Fracture in Wrist7:57 Benefits of Deciding to Trade Players Away Early14:55 Kenley Jansen's Early Exit, Jeimer Candelario DFA'd17:58 Does Byron Buxton Leads MLB in Combo Meals?24:54 Ben Brown and Falling Short of Indicators40:27 Clay Holmes' Rest-of-Season Value, Fade Concerns?48:04 Trade Master 3000: Jacob deGrom (assuming he would waive his No-Trade clause), Cedric Mullins & Taylor WardFollow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.socialFollow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.sociale-mail: [e-mail] our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFeSubscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrelsHosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno SarrisProducer: Brian SmithExecutive Producer: Derek VanRiper Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it is Tuesday, June 24th, Derek and Ryan for InnoCeros here with you on this episode. We've got some baseball news you should know including a follow up on Corbin Carroll who will be going on the IL with the wrist injury that we talked briefly about on our Monday episode. An early exit for Kenley Jansen. A decision made by the Reds to part ways with Jamer Condolario. Got a nice group of mailbag questions here covering a wide range of topics and in celebration of Eno's birthday we are going to put forward a handful of trades that we would like to see as a gift to Eno for his birthday.

The least expensive gift you can give someone on their birthday. Happy birthday, Eno. Here you go, some work to do. Ha ha ha, trade scenarios that you worked on. Yeah, yeah, wee. Ha ha ha. It's going well.

Watch the little arcane with my older kid this morning. We're enjoying that series. It's weird because it's based on a video game and I don't care about the video game. I've never played it. My son has played it some, but it's just a good anime. It's just a good animated series. I enjoy it. Good start to the day.

Found something. Yeah, good start to the day. We'll see if we can do well for the next hour and then get you on with your birthday. Unfortunately, we get the follow up on Corbin Carroll. He is going to require a stint on the IL after being diagnosed with a chip fracture in his left wrist. This is according to Jody Jackson

from Belly Sports, Arizona. We've seen the Diamondbacks play Randall Gritchick pretty much every day in the time that Carroll's been hurt. It sort of bumps Tim Tawa into more of that part time role that is usually occupied by Gritchick. But the hard thing for this particular injury is I don't know if we have a lot of comps that give us a clear indicator of just how long Carol's going to be sidelined. I think we're in that sweet spot of the schedule right now in the later days of June, where you kind of automatically take an IL stint now

and assume that returning before the all-star break is the less likely of the scenarios. Yeah, I guess what we don't know is how much, and the wording there, chip fracture, I would assume that there's separation between the bone, because when that bone gets separated, then you usually have surgery to push the bone back so that the bone grows into, you know, doesn't like,

I have one where they didn't do the surgery and I have a big old thumb. So you don't really want the bone to like grow to it, you know, and make a bigger area there because then ligaments and it's not good for it. So if it is, then that requires surgery. Surgery changes timetables. It also takes longer just generally to recover from that. So I can't imagine he's back in shorter than a month. And even if he is back quickly then you have your is he going to be playing nearly as well as he was playing before he got hurt questions, especially from a power perspective?

Yeah, it's been a really terrible week in Arizona a venue Suarez is hurt and Josh Naylor is hurt and Corbin Carroll is hurt you want to have a sober approach You don't want to sell when you don't have to sell but this really seems like a snake bitten here in our stuff I think I might just take a mulligan and when you don't want to sell, when you don't have to sell, but this really seems like a snake-bitten year in our style. I think I might just take a mulligan and trade Gallin and Kelly. Because if you trade Gallin and Kelly,

you're trading two of the best four pitchers that are most likely to change hands at the trade deadline. You might actually get something nice. And who's saying you can't get back in on them in free agency if you want them? This is true, and you look at the way things sit right now. As play begins on Tuesday, Diamondbacks two games above 500, 31.9% chance of making the playoffs

according to fan graphs. I mean, that number could drop substantially between now and the deadline. You could get an update on Carol and how everything's healing and the need for possible surgery. You may have more information a month from now too that makes it easier. But I do think for the teams that are clustered in the middle, the expanded playoff field levels things out in some ways. Some people have made arguments that it causes teams to choose

mediocrity or just choose being good rather than pushing all the way to great and then maybe they make those upgrades at the midway point in the season when they become available. I think what it's gonna do though is it's gonna force teams like Arizona each and every year to make a decision like the one you outlined to say hey what if we have enough guys who were not guaranteed to be here next year where we can become the primary seller at the deadline. Is there enough incentive? Is there enough incentive? Is there enough demand? Can we do well enough for our future to justify kind of moving away

from a possible playoff run this year in order to sustain runs next year and beyond, right? And I think it's tricky because when you look back at recent trade deadlines, a lot of the returns for the teams that were sellers were underwhelming. And it's not because there were absolutely no good players available, but we've kind of hit this new plateau, I think, where the in-season movement

is often a lot of players who are farther away from the top of the prospect list than ever, and you really have to either gamble on guys that are a long ways away, or guys that probably need significant changes in their development in order to be impactful big league players. So if you're Arizona,

yeah, Suarez it seems like is gonna be okay. He's in the lineup on Tuesday, at least the initial lineup, or he's not, but Naylor is. I think they were diagnosing Suarez with a bruise as a result of a hit by pitch. You start to look at all these things and say, I could understand why they would sell,

but I also understand why you hang in it because if the Carroll injury news isn't that bad and you think about the way your team puts runs on the board, you're still a dangerous team in October, especially if you can get a better version of Galen in the second half. It just seems like the returns are not enticing enough for a rental piece in particular to give up completely on a season. Ken Rosenthal in today's issue of the windup with Levi Weaver was writing about the twins and not the Diamondbacks but he

had Derek Falvey saying that selling was not my focus right now by any means quote-unquote. I think when you have the team that you believe you have and you hope they get healthier and get guys back here soon you feel like this group and we've seen it again is capable of putting together good baseball, Falvey said. Ken finishes the piece with, this is now Ken, don't hold your breath waiting for a trade frenzy to begin anytime soon. A number of other potential sellers feel exactly the same way.

So it doesn't sit right as a fan, I know, to have somebody that's above 500 or has like a 20% chance of making the postseason sell. I know that doesn't sit right. However, just as a purely analytical front office running a team kind of from that perspective, there is an advantage to be gained by being an early seller. The earlier trades I think are ones where you get a little bit more of a return. I think there's a clearer benefit, getting an extra month from a player, especially if you're talking about a rental.

But I mean, even the buyer side, yeah. Even in the Rafael Devers blockbuster, I think the timing of that trade was in the favor of the Giants in that case. But typically, I think a trade like that would favor the team giving away the best player because they are going to have the, hey, here's an extra month, here's an extra, and that was obviously a long-term deal.

That was different. I'm thinking of, well, even the CC-Sabathia deal forever ago for the Brewers, it seemed at the time like the Brewers give a lot for Sabathia and we found out later it wasn't really that big of a deal, giving up Matt Laporta and I think it was Michael Brantley was the second player in that deal. In the grand scheme of things was making the playoffs and having Cece for that run worth it.

Yeah, of course. And was that an early deal? That was an early deal. That was a June, right around this time. Oh, I should know the date of the Cece-Sebastia trade to the Brewers, but it was a June trade. They should at least accept phone calls and think about it. Just because like I said, we are putting together a list of all the players that we think are available.

And we had to put players that we don't even think are available on the list. You know, just to make it look better, honestly, like Freddie Peralta. Do you think Freddie Peralta is being traded away? No. Will your Brae is on our list. I don't think we're your Braves getting traded away You know, we do have a helpful sort of red yellow light red yellow green light being like likelihood of trade So at least you can kind of skim that and be like, oh, he's red like I doubt he's gonna get traded

But you know in terms of like green light Will get traded arms It's like Sandy Alcontra, Merrill Kelly, Zach Galen, if they, you know, they're yellow even. So in terms of green, like it's Sandy Alcontra. I haven't, I don't, I can't think of any way to stop that because a lot of the sellers are just like, yes, we don't really have anything.

You want a nice starting pitcher? Yes, so do we. This is why we're bad. We don't have enough pitching, right? Yeah, so, I mean, you're not going to the White Sox to get a starting pitcher, you know, because if they, the ones they have, they're like, no, we're building on these guys, we need these guys.

So, you know, and so I think that they have to think about, it's not fun to think about, and maybe they should just hold, but when everybody's zigging, like, and everyone's zigging is saying, everyone right now is saying we still have a chance. I think about it working backwards from the Orioles trade with the Marlins, where they added Trevor Rogers the deadline last year and gave up

Kyle Stowers and Connor Norby. And for the beginning of this season, especially the reaction was, holy cow, the Orioles got completely fleeced. What were they thinking? Trevor Rogers looks like he's figuring something out, at least getting back closer to the guy he was when he first broke through and had some success in Miami, even if the stuff numbers and the velocity and the different things you look at on him

aren't eye popping. It's at least better. It might be even more of a command first sort of approach. And it made me wonder, could that be the kind of trade like the Trent Grisham, Zach Davies, Luis Urias, Brewer's one with the Padres where it flipped a couple of times and probably ended up being pretty fair in the long run

or at least close to fair. Yeah, because Stowers is not as hot as he was the beginning season. Norby hasn't even really established himself and... Right. Rogers is throwing the sinker, you know, again and, you know, he's got the VELO back up to... This is what they thought. They could get the VELO. I'm pretty sure they thought they could at least get the VELO back up to 2023, if not 2022.

And they did, you know. Rogers is back up to 93-7. There have been some changes and I remain skeptical that he is much more than a backend guy, but that's also something they needed. They needed a backend guy and they needed depth. So I still think it was a bad trade. But it's like a little bit. But the reason I brought it up, I mean,

one being wrong and then right and then wrong, and then just kind of like even on a trade, like that does happen. Like it takes a little bit of time to really put a full final stamp on something like this. But I do look at this and say, you know, it's possible to just, it's possible to not like a trade at all

at the time it happens. And the opposite could be true too. Like you could look at that sort of deal and say, well, you don't know who is available. like that was the thing we said at the time Well, maybe the Orioles made two or three or four other calls before that and Rogers was the best they could do and they just Felt like they had to do something as opposed to nothing the benefit of acting early is that you don't end up in that situation You sought out the trade partner you wanted you got the return you wanted because someone else didn't get there first we see that happen in fantasy leagues think about your keeper in dynasty leagues where someone else

swoops in and gets some of the best expiring players available before you even reach out to the person that was trading them away oh it's so annoying happens in real baseball too there's only a limited number of really good impactful players available and someone else beats you to them then you're settling for your second and third choices and still trying to make your team better and you're actually overpaying for those upgrades because what else are you gonna do?

That's an argument for some teams being like, oh, let's just wait as long as possible on selling because then we might be able to get into that feeding frenzy at the end too. Yeah, it just depends on how many buyers, how many sellers, what the needs are and what you have. There's a lot of factors that change every single year that are going to shape those dynamics.

All of Roger's shapes are exactly the same. The only difference is he got back to his Velo, the 93 mile an hour Velo, and he threw six sweepers so far. If you want to get my quick assessment of what I think Trevor Rogers can be, 2023 when he had a 4 ERA, a 122 whip and 24% strikeout rate is probably a ceiling. But that ends up being a pretty good pitch. That was only like 18 innings to get hurt that year but if you do that over 150 or 160 that carries plenty of value I think the thing that will keep the Orioles from doing really well in that trade in the long run is that Rogers is a free agent at the end of next season. The other guys involved in that trade will be rostered much longer it gives the

Marlins more window to do well with those guys maybe eventually flip them for something else and get even more long-term value that way but more on the trade front here in just a little while, really quick update. If you saw Kenley Jansen leave early on Monday, he is okay. Apparently it was just a peck cramp, which is a, I think that's a new one for me. I don't know if I've ever heard of any pitcher leaving a game with a peck cramp before, but no need to worry about a major injury there based on that follow-up. We did see Justin Berlandander leave a game with pec issues

and then it was a minor pec strain and he was only gone for the minimum or something. So, could be we aren't missing Jansen for a week. Down three miles an hour in the outing was not great. Yeah, that's a good indicator. Something was not feeling good at all. And at least we know what it is at this point. Jamer Candelario, DFA'd by the Reds,

still has a full year left beyond this one on the three year $45 million contract that probably never made a lot of sense because Jamer Candelario for as good as he is when he's good has shown some pretty remarkable replacement level valleys in his production along the way. I assume he will become a free agent and once he's available for the league minimum someone might take a flyer on him but it was a really underwhelming year plus for Candelario as

a member of the Reds. A total of 22 home runs combined in the two seasons, but well below replacement level, a full win below replacement level during these previous two years. Yeah, I mean, I guess just because the deal is short and medium level in terms of expenditure doesn't mean that it can't also go horribly wrong. I don't know why so much, like what you have known ahead of time

I guess one his defense was never very good and he was already being played off of third base at previous Previous teams so you should have known that like he could be your first baseman and not your third baseman But if you're the Reds you're like, oh we have new Albemarte We have other guys like he can be our first baseman and not your third baseman. But if you're the Reds, you're like, oh, we have new O.B. Marte, we have other guys, like he can be our first baseman, that'll be fine. I think then also buying a guy that has like pretty mediocre barrel rates and fluctuates O.B.P. wise, just means that I think that's where the Valley's happened.

It's like, oh, the Valley's happened the year he has like a 7% barrel rate and a 290 OBP. He had some really good seasons and he was an interesting player, but I don't know that he's going to be a regular again. Now it looks like a bench guy for a couple of years and then that'll probably be the end

of the big league career of Jamer Candelario. Good on him for getting the multi-year deal though when the opportunity was out there. It's a rare opportunity and he was able to cash in on it even though it didn't work out in Cincinnati. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad

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This is a kind of a throwback to the old 06 010 fantasy baseball podcast over at ESPN. Does Byron Buxton lead at Major League Baseball in Happy Meals? That was the question. I think Combo Meals was the original name. Same thing though, I clarified that a Happy Meal and a Combo Meal are the same thing. It's a game in which player has at least one homer and one stolen base. The answer to this mailbag question is no. Byron Buxton has three, and I believe there are seven players with three combo meals this season.

There are two players that have four, and there is one player who has five combo meals. Ellie De La Cruz. Ellie is in the group of players with three, so he's in there with Buxton. Corbin Carroll. Ellie is in the group of players with three, so he's in there with Buxton. Corbin Carroll. Corbin Carroll, very surprisingly not one of these players.

Does he even have, he's gotta have one, right? He's Corbin Carroll, how could he not have a combo meal? Does he not do those things on the same day this year? Yeah. Highly, that's very surprising. Corbin Carroll does not have a combo meal this year. O'Neil O'Neill Cruz has four so he's one of the two players with four Pete Crowe Armstrong you'd think Pete Crowe Armstrong has a bunch of them also he's got one geez so I'm missing a four you're missing one of the fours and

you're missing the leader who has five. They're missing the five. The five. The five is actually Jose Ramirez. No. Jose Ramirez is a great answer. And he doesn't have any Fernando Tatis. Tatis has two. Christian Yellich. Christian Yellich has five. Wow. Christian Jelic has five combo meals this season. Wow. And as people may have noticed over the weekend, Christian Jelic also has the only game in Major League history that we know about anyway with eight RBIs and no runs scored. It's a very hard thing to do. Happened against the twins this weekend.

Just don't hit a homer and get a bunch of two out hits and then the inning ends after you do your damage. And the bottom line up is bad. Well yeah, or yeah, just didn't work out behind you on those days, but yeah. He is having a great season. And I'm really mad because I don't have any shares, but I did not not like him. It's one of those weird things where I just must have been doing something else where he was picked.

Because I just don't I Don't have him. I thought he was gonna be a good pick this year. Hmm Congratulations, if you have him because he's on pace for something like a 30 20 season or something Not quite what I expected I was worried he wasn't gonna run as much or if he did run a lot that the power wouldn't be there post surgery on His back and seems like things have gone very well. ADP at the end of March. Maybe cleaned up something that was bothering him. Maybe he just feels good for the first time in a couple years. But he was a top 100 pick

by ADP. He would have been clustered with some pitchers like Freed, Nola, Bailey Ober, Tanner Bybee. Right next to Brian Reynolds and Alex Bregman for position player ADP's will Smith I don't think you're taking will Smith there Marcus Semi and I might have taken some catcher ones there I have some Brian Reynolds so okay. Yeah, I guess I was thinking oatmeal there opportunity was out there the other player with four combo meals by the way you got O'Neal Cruz right. Aaron Judge has four. A bunch of guys have three. Cal Raleigh has three combo meals. When you hit out that many homers you're leaving the door open right.

We haven't given him enough love. We could have a Cal Raleigh fact every day almost I feel like. We pretty much could. The other guy, I shared this on Blue Sky this morning, James Wood's got two and now we're at the point. James Wood is about a full season into his big league career. Combining rookie season with this season, he's been phenomenal really. Like he deserves more credit and the year-to-year improvement too. He's cut the K-rate down just a little bit, 26.4%. Lifting the ball a little bit. He's lifting the ball. It's got two 79 game Snapshots now last year and this year 31 combined homers 22 have been hit in 79 games this year

it's got 23 combined stolen bases between the two seasons a 102 RBI's and 93 runs scored so he's walked into the league as a 30-20 guy with 195 combined runs and RBI is on a, you know, rebuilding Nats team. Very impressive. Yeah, he's another guy where I mean, this one was obvious because you can use your eyes and you can use scouting and there was also minor league groundball rates that weren't as high as his major league ones. But James Wood is somebody who

had a max CV that was out of line as his major league ones, but James Wood is somebody who had a max EV that was out of line with his barrel rate and produced power. He had a 115 max EV in the minor leagues last year, he had a 10% barrel rate in the major leagues, and a 163 ISO, and he immediately corrected those things that they were in line. Yeah, but really nice start to the big league career of James

Wood, and it's fun to project on the future. I think he's pretty safely looking like a first rounder as we look at 2026 draft boards. If you were doing a second chance draft for the second half of this year, probably pretty easily a top 15 player with that power speed combo. And doing it without really showing a lot of batting

average risk because he hits the ball so hard. And because the K-rate is in that acceptable good, kind of fine range right now, I don't really see any reason to think he'd be different than the way we treated Jackson Churio and Jackson Merrill as players that were going at the end of round one, beginning around two, three plus months ago. Yeah, and our ongoing conversation about like,

you know, minor league strikeout rates. Here's a guy who had 31s and 33s in the minor leagues. He had a 33.7 in AA, James Wood did. So he's actually has better strikeout rates in the major leagues. Not what you'd expect. Closed up some holes, figured some stuff out, learned some stuff.

I mean, he's super baby faced and he looks all of 22. And still lots of room to get better. But thanks a lot for that question. HP, always nice to send those questions in on Discord. If you haven't joined our Discord, you can do that with the link in the show description. This one came in from the Morrow Brothers and actually is very much on topic because you and I and JH were having a little bit of an exchange about Ben Brown on a group

text last night. Morrow Brothers here, after wearing that awful Ben Brown start on Monday, how do you handle and think about a player where many of the underlying stats show how he should be much better than his surface stats but they are just not getting those better results? Looking at Brown's last month of starts, it's either a bad start like Monday or it's great. I think we're getting off this ride next fab run but at some point they're just not playing up to those sweet underlying stats you think you found and you're just left with ugly numbers like Fox Mulder on the X-Files we want to believe but we can't

keep taking hits like that looking forward to his next outing in Houston on Saturday. So Ben Brown was the guy that I actually sought out in a league where I was playing for the future last summer. I thought I was going to get a breakout like the Morrow brothers. I thought there was enough reason to believe that if you got long runway in the Cubs rotation we could get Mid to high threes in the ERA department, a boatload of strikeouts and probably at least a good whip Maybe even a very good whip. Those are the kinds of skills

He flashed last year working mostly, almost entirely, mostly kind of split out of the pen and the rotation the concern that you outlined is that Ben Brown is really a two-pitch guy and Really only one of the two pitches is good it's not like a Strider situation when Strider broke out and he had two phenomenal pitches and You can get by you can do really well with two great pitches. So What's next for Ben Brown? To answer the Morrow Brothers question to think about it in the context of a half season now of underperforming the advanced indicators like what do you do if you have him and what leagues are you actually riding this out and

What does the future look like? there are certain players where you know the stuff plus is high, but the K-Bb is not, and I'm comfortable starting to fold those K-Bb results into my analysis of the player to reduce my expectations of them. An example of this is Jack Leiter, Jackson Job. These are players where the K-Bb is below average, the stuff is above average. There are, in Jack Leiter's case, there's an obvious command question that's leading to some of these outcomes. But even somebody like Luis Severino, who's an established older player,

has surprising stuff plus poor K-Bb. I'm not going to keep ranking him super high just because he has good stuff plus. So, you know, there are different sort of results and process metrics that can line up and I can start to weight them differently. But this is a it's a little bit different story than Ben Brown because the stuff is okay. The K minus BB is great and that's supposed to be predictive. And then you have the small arsenal. So what I've brought to do to find comps for him is to look at two pitch pitchers with nearly average or better stuff and above average K minus BB. So here are those comps. And if you look at Ben Brown's line versus the comps,

it lines up almost perfectly. You know, he's a little bit below on some things, but in terms of K's walks, K-BB's, he's right in line with this group. The list of comps is 2024 Justin Steele, who had a nice ERA. 2021 Christian Javier, who was fine. 2023 Bryce Miller, before he started really adding

the splitter and becoming, having a wider arsenal. 2021 Blake Snell, who did throw some curve balls. So that's a, it's not a perfect comp there. This might be the perfect comp. 2022 John Gray. And you may have a shiver go through your spine when you hear that, and it may upset you greatly. But in terms of stuff plus for the fastball,

stuff plus for the breaking ball, and K minus BB, they are almost in lockstep. Here's the thing though, John Gray was an eminently useful guy, you know? And he did not have a 6.13 ERA, as Ben Brown does now. So he did have like one bad year in 2020, but that was kind of an injury-ridden year. Most of the time, John Gray has been around a four ERA.

And I think maybe at the end of this year, Ben Brown ends up with a four-six ERA, but that means he's gonna have some better days ahead of him, and that's just using his comps. But on the other hand, let's say your team is in third, and you're trying to get to first. And that is not a great reward. So you have to, there's risk and reward

you have to think about, right? If the reward is John Gray, then the risk is not worth hanging around for in a lot of cases. Right, even that good version, high 3ZRA, better than average whip, over a strikeout per inning isn't elite. It's very good.

I think you have to look at Brown and wonder, can you predict the good starts? Does he at least tend to have his blowups and tougher matchups, or is he just the victim of his own small arsenal where if he's not locating really well, he's just going to get knocked around by anybody because he's only got two pitches. We need a name for this. It's like the game log game or like the game. The avoid the avoid the avoid the mines. I don't think it works for him, but his worst starts like at St. Louis, I would have started him at Philly would not have started him.

That's eight. That's six runs at Cincinnati I would have started him. At Philly, would not have started him. That's eight, that's six runs. At Cincinnati, would not have started him. That's eight runs. At Miami, you definitely would have started him. Who wouldn't you start there? Especially because he just had Miami at home and was fine against them. It's hard to avoid the Pat Falls.

Although, I would say like, if you avoided Philadelphia and at Cincinnati, that alone wipes 20 runs off the board. So, you could have gotten better out of Ben Brown if you were careful. You also still would have gotten some blowups. And I think if the reward is modest, then the risk isn't worth it at some point. Yeah, I mean, six scoreless at home with nine Ks

on the May 31st against that Sam Reds team after the blow up, you're gonna use them at home. You would've used them at home against the Brewers. He was good in that spot. I think at Detroit would've felt safe. Like this to me actually looks a little better. Some of the times we would look at these game logs were like, oh, you just, you couldn't have got that right.

You had no chance. Well, there's still the six, the 14 runs that he gave up at Miami and St. Louis. You're just like, what is that? Yeah, well, at Philly, at St. Louis, those two, at St. Louis, I feel like just about anybody rostering him would have said, yeah, I'm going to do that.

The only thing you gotta remember though that's different about the matchup right now compared to that matchup just in the vacuum, the heat and the humidity right now in St. Louis throughout the Midwest, throughout many parts of the country is so high, pitching conditions are just awful. You gotta throw somebody.

So unless you were able to avoid that with a lesser pitcher in a better environment, that may have just been the only choice you had for that last starting spot. And you say, well, hopefully it's just not as bad as it could be. But what if a bunch of your pitchers are all in that same part of the country, the schedule just lined up that way, right? You may have to deal with that. Like you said, the Twins Mariner series was crazy. There's been a couple of crazy series in terms of run scored. It's just been really tough and this is why some people like to stream more at the beginning of the season, you know,

rather than trying to do it now. You know, if I was coaching him, I think Ben Brown, I think I would tell him to throw more curveballs and fewer fastballs. I think I would try like heck to learn a cutter, lean into that sinker, there's got to be like just throw some more different fastballs because your fastballs not that good. You cannot be throwing that fastball as often as you are. That is such a relievery sort of thing to just be like, I'm 5050 got two pitches as a starter and I'm gonna go 50-50

It's either a curveball or a fastball coin flip Good luck. That just seems like a really tough way to get big league hitters out consistently Especially trying to get through the lineup three times and sometimes he does it like that's the wild part is like it keeps pulling you Back in every time you're ready to give up it pulls you back in if you look at the Ben Brown projections for the rest of the season oopsie comes in as the most optimistic 368 and a 124 if you're in a shallow league okay you can probably beat that like in a 10 team league or smaller you might be able to find a pitcher that beats that if you're in

something that's more competitive, something that's deeper, I don't know how you can, in a typical situation, justify cutting him. He seems like a rotational guy that is in and out of your lineup that you probably have to hold on to. I don't have a strong enough case against him right now. And I think the thing that J.H. was trying to argue with us was that Ben Brown's BAB

IP has been weirdly high. A 362 BAB IP is very, very high. I wonder if of the comps you polled, how many of those guys have similarly elevated BAB IPs and how many of them actually are really, really good at suppressing damage on balls and play. But if you pair a 362 babip with the home run rate that Ben Brown has right now, that's a really bad combination. That's how you're going to overshoot that Sierra by two and a half runs.

That's what's happening right now. A 356 Sierra is right in line with the more optimistic projections. That's the wild part of all this. And what did he say? He said the largest BABIP. Mitch Keller in the 320 range, I think, was the highest of a starter he could find in the last several years.

Andrew Haney was a possible outcome. But he was like, if you give him a 329 BABIP, you're already erasing a lot of the problems that Ben Brown has had. But the other problem is that 147 home run per nine, that's what I'm pointing out is that could be a legitimate issue because of the small arsenal. Yeah, do you think, I mean, it's kind of like another

offshoot of the Andrew Abbott conversation. If someone like Ben Brown is going to be able to match the projection, they have to be able to match the projection. They have to do extremely well before the warm weather comes. You almost have to front load production with the two pitch mix. That's like baked into most projections somehow. Like you just have to be exceptional in the first half. Like yeah, okay, maybe the...

So you're projected for a 250 250 but you got to throw a 225 in the first two and a half months of the season and then everything else after that is just pulling you back toward that Projection because conditions are more hitter friendly and your arsenal just is much harder to execute September comes back around and becomes a little bit more friendly. However, by that point, there's fatigue factors through the roof, right? Right. So then things are a little bit different there. I respect anyone's decision to move on in the case of Ben Brown in particular. There's enough flaws there where you're like, like he's a two-pitch guy. Like what's, you know, like, I understand the K minus BB is good, but the K itself, the one thing that stood out to me was like a lot of these other two- pitchers in the in the comps

list had more like 28 30 percent K's and The way that Ben Brown got onto that list was not through the K being large is through the BB being small You know, I prefer it when the K is large, you know, like a Christian Javier type You know 30 percent strikeout rate 10 11 percent walk rate 1.2 1.3 homers per nine because of the small arsenal But not not a 60 RA, you know was trying to look at some recent Elite Sierra's or good Sierra's and just find the the outliers for guys that have just been Way above that to kind of working the problem another way. If you look back through the last five seasons,

maybe there's another comp right here. Twenty twenty two Charlie Morton, three forty eight Sierra four thirty four actual ERA. You know, and you think about late career Charles Walker. Hmm. Fastball curveball. Yeah, just a heavy, heavy mix of those two pitches and it was a 28.2% K rate, 8.7% walk rate. So yeah, popped on the K minus BB, 434 ERA, 123 whip.

That kind of makes more sense to me as a rough back of the napkin ratios projection for Ben Brown than some of those more optimistic projection numbers that you'll find on his player page. I have him in the Devils Rejects 20 team league and I did get a couple nibbles and then people realized that we're not doing that well in the league right now like in a one-year stance but they were always building for next year so they've stopped bugging us because they're like oh yeah you're gonna hold on to this guy. Because we're gonna give you a prospect for Ben Brown.

Like you'd much rather figure out what Ben Brown's gonna do over the next two years. You'd rather just take your time and see if a winter in the pitching lab leads Ben Brown to that cutter or to something else that at least gives him a third option. It might not be a four or five pitch mix anytime soon, but even a third could go a really long way a four or five pitch mix anytime soon, but even a third could go a really long way as he tries to figure it out. Thanks a lot for that question

from the Morrill Brothers. Shop with Rakuten and you'll get it. What's it? It's the best deal, the highest cash back, the most savings on your shopping. So join Rakuten and start getting cash back at Uniqlo, What's better than a well marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy zero0 delivery fees on your first three orders.

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Escape the city to a net-zero ready bungalow at Watercolor Westport. You're only 75 minutes from Ottawa and a short drive to Toronto or Montreal. With new homes starting from the 600s, you can live better in Watercolor Westport. To find out more, visit watercolorwestport.com. This one comes in from another Mark. Clay Holmes, wondering about the rest of season value there as he's stretching back out this year. Of course, he was someone we were pretty optimistic about going into the year. In Mark's question, we saw Jordan Hicks

have a good start to the year last year and then lose his effectiveness as the innings piled up. I know Holmes is a different pitcher than Hicks. I have to convert into a starting role. But are you worried about the same kind of regression? I don't know. For velocity, his last start was the best velocity of the season.

Well, surprised by that. 94.7, he started out 94.1, Clay Holmes did. velocity his last start was the best velocity of the season. Well surprised about that. 94-7 he started out 94-1 Clay Holmes did then it was mid 93s and then against Tampa on the 13th of June he had the lowest VELO of the season 93 and then he comes back he's 94-7 in the next start. I do expect the long-term trend to continue. He'll have oh he had a 92-5 in there. I think he'll have some games where he sits 92, high 92s on the fastball. He's not a guy who does it on VELO. He's a guy who does it on movement. And so I don't know how much that'll affect him. It'll affect him some, obviously. But he also has a really nice high floor that is helped by his home park

so I think the worst case scenario for clay homes going forward is that you start to use him less on the road and You don't use I used him. I think in that Colorado start which ended up being great But in the future you don't use them in Colorado Maybe you don't use them in Atlanta the next time he goes. But that still leaves you using him in 75% of the starts you have left. Now, what do you think they'll do innings-wise? I don't know.

I have no idea. I have no idea. They need him right now. I think that they'll keep going with him. Yeah. I think maybe when they start being flushed with the arms again, they'll make a different decision, but they're not taking them out of the rotation right now.

And I think when we were trying to forecast a workload for Clay Holmes, last year's Renato Lopez workload was 135 and two thirds. I kind of thought that was a reasonable target, and that was with an IELTS stint in second half of the year for Lopez. So if you avoid that, 160 is probably in play for Clay Holmes. They they've got a lot of pitching prospects, but they'll bring some of those

guys up and take a little bit of the burden off. But with some of the veterans being banged up throughout this first half, it's harder to see the easy path to get Clay Holmes rest anytime soon. And how much rest is like, hey, we're moving into the pen. Oh, great. So I got to be I got a pitch now like twice a week, three times a week. Like I got a pitch when you tell me, you know what I mean? Like how restful is that?

I don't know. He might really be taking to the five day schedule. So, and then if you fully shut him down, that that's a problem because then you have to fully ramp him back up. So I don't know, maybe some piggybacking, maybe a little short IL stint, maybe he skips a start around the all-star break and comes back slowly. I don't know what it is, but I just can't see them fully pulling him out. The one thing about him that I think is true that wasn't necessarily true about some of

the other conversions is that he was a consistent, high-volume, healthy reliever. And Hicks had plenty of injuries on the ledger that made it seem less likely that he was going to hold up physically with that move back to starting. My argument from believing it would work from a stuff perspective is that when Hicks was a prospect, he had a pretty deep arsenal and shortened that up

as he became a reliever and thought maybe he'd go back to three or four pitches with two or more of them being better than average I thought that was also possible there. So it's a really low slot sideways guys So, you know being 99 100 was really important to that His movement is not necessarily surprising given his arm slot clay Holmes's movement is very surprising giving his arm slot Yeah, so I'm not as worried about a fade on Holmes as I would have been with Hicks a year ago, but it's something to think about for sure.

And I think as Eno said, eventually you may just move away from leaving him in your lineup as often as you were earlier this season. Got one more question here. This is from Thiago Splitchange in our Discord. Grant Taylor, trying to make sense of the model numbers relative to what the stuff looks like

when you watch them with your eyes. I think it's the arm angle thing. I can't speak for all of the other models, but something like Pitching Bot, I know for a fact does not have arm angle in it. It does have release points, but it does not have arm angle because arm angle just came out and Pitching Bot has remained unchanged since he started working for the

Guardians I believe. So you know when you take a guy that has you know great V-Low but also in terms of movement you know 18 inches of IBB then you're pretty much gonna say well this guy's really good and I'm not saying he's not good I'm just saying he's not good. I'm just saying that his movement profile is not at all surprising given his arm angle. And in fact, all of his pitches have zero side-to-side wiggle and are very up-down.

He looks almost like a righty Drew Smiley, with a lot more view, though. I'm not saying he's Drew Smiley. I'm just saying. No, no, no. It is strange to see that movement profile chart where three, even four different pitches are lined up on that center, that Y axis.

Like you just usually see some more left and right spread, but 55 degree arm angle is just weird in today's game. And like, you know, Clay Holmes has a very over the top, but he has stuff that comes out of that does not, that you don't expect. Taylor's, you know, stuff is more expected in terms of his arm slot. Now, you know, soon we'll cross a threshold

where his K-minus BB matters more than the stuff, and his Velo is there, and the pedigree is there, so I wouldn't expect him to be bad. But that can be an explanation why his stuff is closer to average than you might think. Yeah, 129 location plus, 129 pitching plus though. I think there's still a lot to like with Grant Taylor, but it's a little bit of an unusual combination.

Another thing I'd point out too, just from why that fastball might play up a little bit too, 98th percentile extension. I mean that's just top end velocity that's just getting on hitters really, really fast. So keep that in mind as well. But definitely an intriguing late inning arm. I just want to know what their longer term plans end up being. Are they going to try and follow the Garrett crochet model? Will Taylor's pitch mix even make that a feasible thing to choose to do in the long run? I think that's maybe more of a question

than it was with crochet, kind of looking at how things have played out for crochet in the long run. Let's fire up the old trade master 3000, Eno's birthday edition. Peep, peep, peep, peep, peep, peep, peep, peep, peep. Ohep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep

beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep

beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep be Two weeks ago, I think it's two weeks ago now, I came up with the galaxy brain idea that maybe the Rangers would trade Jacob deGrom, and I believe it was TPHnoob in our Discord said he does have a no trade clause, so it might not be easy to do that, but we see veterans

at that stage of their career wave their no trade clauses. I think Verlander and Scherzer have both had them and waved them in recent trade deadlines in order to have chances to win a World Series and I know deGrom was on the Rangers roster when they won it in 23 but he obviously was not pitching in the postseason because he was hurt so you go back he pitched in the World Series at the Mets loss to the Royals back in 2015 so he's been there he does have the World Series team on his resume, but he has not been able to pitch in a World Series in which his team won.

So that might be important enough for Jacob de Grahm to wave a no trade and to go to a team that I think has the long term up arrow next to it, right? For the duration of Jacob de Grahm's contract, it's not hard to tell yourself a story that the Cubs will be a perennial contender this season, next season, and the season beyond that. That doesn't seem like a stretch. So if deGrom were to waive the no trade clause, you know, what does a trade that sends deGrom to Chicago actually look like?

What if the Rangers get back in a situation like this where there are two and a half years of a very pricey deal attached to the Grom if you ignore The health risk which I know is a huge Big if but he's pitching now looks good now and is on his way to about a four win season If you just take traditional aging methods of you know shaving a half win off of each season, his contract is not underwater.

It has surplus. That's a temporary state, so consider that. Right? I'm going to operate under those assumptions. Here's why. Because a lot, like if you look at, there's some trade calculators online, and I would say that almost every deadline trade that gets made fails the deadline calculator because it's an overpay or whatever.

And I would say that if that's the case, then maybe the model's broken because it can't be that every team is overpaying all the time. And I think another way of saying it is, if you want to get Jake DeGrom, you gotta pay for him. So even if I'm wrong and there's not $10 million of surplus, you probably have to pay $10 million of surplus to get him. Right?

It's also this, there will be no pitcher as good as Jacob DeGrom traded this deadline. So you could get the very best player, and if you're the Cubs, not only do you get them now, you get them for the future, and how much does that change things if you can have deGrom one, Imanaga two? You know, like I feel like that makes things so much better.

So it's going to be a little bit painful. I'm preparing you. I'm not asking for your number one prospect. Chicago Cubs. I'm not asking for Kevin Alcontra. I am, however. I'm going to ask for Owen Casey. And I know there are people in Chicago right now says, do we won't give up. Oh, Casey, no, I don't do that. And I know there are people in Chicago right now says, do we won't give up Owen Casey?

No, I don't want to do that. But I say it's worth it. Casey's strikeout rates make him a risk and your lineup is very good. And that's what they're going to demand. I'm going to also put Jackson Wiggins into the deal. Fangraves has him as a 40 plus guy with poor command but a great fastball. I think the Rangers will want some pitching in the deal.

They would love to have somebody with a good fastball. He's a double A right now, Wiggins is. So there's, I think that's a pain. That's some pain. That's some pain. That's two of your top 10 prospects at a time when you've been trading away some prospects and your and Your prospect hoard is thinning out a little bit Those are players like at least in Casey's standpoint that I think people were excited about getting

But you get Jake deGrom for three years including this one two and a half years Whatever it is and you get a game one starter Nobody else is adding a game one starter at this deadline. And there's, as I've outlined before, there's no other team that needs it as much. This is the worst projected starting rotation in the playoffs. You need impact.

You can't get another starter that's the more in the get you there mold. You need a difference maker. And I think that's the best case I could possibly make for it. I think if you're a Cubs fan, you look at the quality of that roster right now, and you're sweating a possible trade like that,

where Casey and Wiggins are like the two main pieces, or maybe the two only pieces, if you're taking on most or all of de Grom's money. Oh, that's the other part. You gotta live with that. How do you see the finances playing out? Do you see the Cubs saying we'll take most of the money? All of it?

I think they can do it. I think they can do it. You know it's at a time when they're doing well and they're just not anywhere close to the first apron. I was dreaming this up for the Red Sox because I thought oh you know save some resources there, add them to the pitching side, deGrom would make sense there. However, the Red Sox are at the first apron right now, and I don't know that they wanna go over.

Whereas the Cubs have, you know, something like 30 million this year, 40, 50 million next year. I mean, they have enough to add deGrom and still be competitive with Kyle Tucker. All right, I like this one. I think this one makes a lot of sense. We'll get some thoughts on this in the Discord, I'm sure,

once we put these trades up in there after the show. How about Cedric Mullins as a trade piece? I thought Houston needs some help in the outfield. And Houston's also a very right-handed lineup, even more so without Jordan Alvarez. So getting a left-handed bat, someone that can play center field, someone you could move to a corner if you want to have

Jake Myers out there and sort of optimize total outfield defense gives them some flexibility. How realistic is a Cedric Mullins to Houston deal? Do you have a nice combination of players the Orioles would be happy to get back in return? Houston is 17th in WRC plus against right handers. I know some of that's been, you're on Alvarez missing, but yes, I believe that we can pull a trade.

Again, here, I don't think it makes a lot of sense to look at surplus value. You're gonna get a win. It's gonna cost you some money. I think you think a little bit more about the needs of the other team that you're talking to and I think right now it's pretty obvious that the Orioles needs include pitching and I think what I came up with you came up with a name that I liked and I came up with a name that I like and that is Michael Knorr is a you know I think he's got a wide mix he's

got some good strikeout numbers he's still considered a 40 future value by Fangrass perhaps because of a 4550 command so he's got some command issues he's already hitting triple-a so you know Michael Knorr and you know they have to be close the Orioles aren't a team that's far away. So, they have to be close and they have to be pitching. The other one was Miguel Ulula, who we've liked from the beginning of the season for having incredible stuff and incredibly bad command. So, you know, if he ends up in the bullpen, that still helps the Orioles in next year

because this bullpen hasn't been that great either. You know they just demoted Yenor Cano. I think the the reason I could see that being enough is because we had Chandler Roma on the show maybe three or four weeks ago now. He reeled off a list of names in that organization they would have to rely on for depth in Houston this year. I don't think he mentioned Ulula as one of them, right? They have enough pitchers, they can move a guy like this, a little more of a project, probably above average risk to become a reliever.

So it does sort of make sense on both sides. I also look at Mullins as one of those guys, as great as his time overall has been with the Orioles. I don't think they would wanna to give him a qualifying offer. I mean, 20 plus million another year for Mullins seems kind of borderline for them, given how tight they've been with money. Right, but they want him to take it. You know, they might rather just have Colton Couser play centerfield and spend that money on pitching. Yeah, that's the impression I'm under at least. Not that it'd be egregious to give Cedric Mullins the qualifying offer, but my uninformed

estimate is that they probably wouldn't do it, given how much that actually is and given their needs elsewhere. So I think that could be a nice balanced sort of trade that would actually make a bit of sense. We've got one more here that we'll try to get today. We're going to fire up the trade master 3000 a handful of times. We got one more here that we'll try to get today. We're gonna fire up the trade master 3000 a handful of times between now and the actual trade deadline which will be here before we know it.

Did we send Taylor Ward to Philly? Was that trade number three? That was trade number three, Taylor Ward to Philly. And I think it's just because you were pointing out the outfield is a problem. It's a poorly projected outfield. There's some issues there. Even if you like Castellanos, there's more help that can be put out there.

The projections for Taylor Ward are pretty interesting because they're good for fantasy, but with middling defense and not actually being like an impact-impact bat on the offensive side. He's basically projected to be maybe like a two and a half win player this year and that would make him, you know, because he's already 31, a two win player next year. That's not a player that's highly valued. It's basically a 110 WRC plus corner outfielder. However, it's not going to cost you that much in trades. And so, you know, I forget what we came up with now

when I'm thinking about it. Oh, let's see, it was Gene Cabrera? Oh yeah, Gene Cabrera was the pitcher. And Griffin Burkholder. Burkholder. Those are the two names we put together as being just interesting enough and just far away, far enough away where it could actually happen.

Griffin Buchholder is a 19 year old who's played some complex ball in 81 games of A-ball. He has a 99 WRC plus that doesn't look good right now, too many strikeouts. He's 19. So I think that's, you know, you take the faraway bat that you like. There's not a lot of prospects in the Phillies organization that meet this kind of trade, you know? It's either, you know, better ones that probably they don't want to give up. Like if you're the Phillies, you're not giving up Justin Crawford for Taylor Ward. I don't think. No, I don't see that happening at all. I mean, I Taylor Ward is

just kind of in that group of just better than the typical guy that we see get non tendered going into his final Arby year. And even even that's in his range of outcomes. Like he's having a nice season from a power perspective. 19 homers in 76 games. I was joking with you before the show. I don't know if anybody who's a homer away from 20 before the end of June is doing it in a less spectacular way right now. I mean it's a 210, 279, 464 line for Taylor Ward and yeah projections always kind of nudge you back into the he's pretty good he's pretty good two and a half three war player and that might be what he still is at this point but I think if you're the angels, you're doing well.

If you can get a couple of guys that are possibly part of your future in a trade like this and you just sort of say, OK, well, we're Taylor. Taylor Ward's not changing our future directly. So let's just get a couple of guys we like and move on. Yeah, I think next year, by the way, I mean, if you're in a fan, if you're in a keeper league and anybody wants Ward, I think you'd do it. 31, this is a kind of a late debut, kind of, he's a Ryan Ludwig all-star, if you ask me.

You know, one of these guys that, when he got closer to his peak, was a major league player, but that means also that the other side of the bell curve could take them out of the big leagues quickly too. Yeah, especially as that strikeout rate continues to tick up for Taylor Ward, right? Up to 26.4% this year. It's a three year high.

Actually, it's a five year high looking further back. So I'm a little bit worried that that could be something that's changing in a way that's gonna make him even less productive than he's been despite the power being there consistently this year. So three trades in the books and again hopefully many many more to come. We are going to take a deep dive into the AL playoff picture. We did the NL about 10 days or so ago. We're going to do the AL tomorrow with our episode with Jed. So we're looking forward to doing that. Got a

couple teams we haven't talked a lot about. Tampa Bay Rays, Toronto Blue Jays, among them. They'll be a big part of the conversation, I think, on Wednesday. You can find Eno on Blue Sky, enocerous.bisca.social. Wish him a happy birthday if you're not already following him on Blue Sky. You can find me, dvr.bisca.social. Thanks to our producer, Brian Smith, for putting this episode together. We're back with you on Wednesday. Thanks for listening. Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep

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