Rates & Barrels - New pitches, Stephen Strasburg's adjustments, and early velocity changes

Episode Date: April 15, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss pitchers working with new offerings this season -- including Lance McCullers and Eduardo Rodriguez -- concerns about Stephen Strasburg, league-wide shifts in velocity, the struggles of Ryan Yarbrough, and the pitch-recognition skills of Jake Cronenworth. Rundown 1:59 Lance McCullers’ New Toy 8:11 Eduardo Rodriguez’s Altered Pitch Mix 9:41 Jeff Hoffman in Cincinnati 13:37 Is There Any Reason to Believe in Huascar Ynoa? 17:57 Reduced Velo, and Pitch Mix Changes for Stephen Strasburg 23:45 League-Wide Velocity Shifts 31:40 Danny Duffy is...Rosterable? 34:07 What’s Up With Ryan Yarbrough? 39:00 Joey Lucchesi as a Met 47:14 Jake Cronenworth’s Plate Discipline 52:37 Called Strikes and Whiffs…for Hitters? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Subscribe to The Athletic for just $3.99/month to start: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Thursday, April 15th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. A shout out to the good people at Comcast for taking down Eno's internet for all of Wednesday afternoon and evening. But hey, they got it back up and we're here. So bonus episode on Thursday, just a make up for Wednesday. And then of course, we have our episode with Britt coming up on Friday.

So lots of rates and barrels going into the weekend. On this episode, we will discuss some pitchers who have shown new offerings early on this season and what we make of their new arsenals. We'll talk about some velocity drops and how concerned we should be depending on the magnitude of those drops. Had a bunch of specific questions about pitchers that came in through Twitter, so we'll answer questions about Ryan Yarbrough and Danny Duffy and Joey Lucchesi. And we'll take a look at plate discipline stabilization

as it pertains to Jake Cronenworth as a result of a question that came in as well. So lots of questions to answer, lots of topics to get to. You know, let's start with the new pitches. You've put together a pitch change report, which at least is something that I can look at. I don't know if that's going to be public at any point, but it's interesting because... Tomorrow. Yeah, see,

tomorrow, Friday, everything's all coming together. There's some pretty interesting movers on this list, some guys that are throwing a new pitch and throwing a new pitch a lot, which to me is a signal of confidence in a new offering. If you see a new pitch and it's being thrown 5% of the time in games, that might not hang around. That might not be a weapon all season long. But if you see a pitch that's being thrown 15%, 20%, 25%, 30% of the time, that looks like a much more permanent sort of adjustment. We should start with Lance McCullers,

who has been throwing a lot of sliders. And it's amazing. It's his most used pitch early on this season. Poor result on Wednesday against the Tigers. He mentioned not feeling particularly well. Obviously, there's a lot to that. It was after he, among other players, had been vaccinated for COVID. It's just one of those things where he was basically pitching with some discomfort. We don't really know what exactly it was entirely, but nevertheless, he didn't pitch all that well in that outing. And I think McCullers,

I think he's pretty interesting for a lot of reasons. I think there's always been great stuff overall. There's always been the ability to get swings and misses. If you add a breaking ball that he's going to throw a lot, and if he can find a way to command it, that might unlock one more level from him as he tries to put together really a complete healthy big league season for the first time in his career.

I'm on team Pfizer, baby. Got my first jab. I'm hoping that I don't have as bad side effects on the second jab as some people have gotten from the Moderna one. I'm

excited to see what happens with this pitch with Lance McCullers because it's an inferior pitch when it comes to stuff in command, at least by the numbers that we've got so far. It's, let's see, 89 command plus and 60 stuff plus.

It's kind of interesting because his curveball is so excellent that, and it's like basically, I think, like a top five curveball in the game uh by stuff plus and it's because his curveball goes 84 miles an hour only one curveball really goes any faster two if you count dustin may um and uh it has more drop than the average curveball so to throw something that goes like 85 and has like it already looked like a power slider you know and so this new pitch which goes 87 and has about half the drop, I guess it's just going to be inferior. Like it's just not as good. Um, and he doesn't command it at a league average rate. However, he's throwing a ton of them. And so if he does get the command up, uh, closer to league average, it would be one of his

better commanded pitches. And I think that's the way forward for him. So I think it's kind of new toy syndrome where he's throwing it maybe too much right now. Um, and at some point he'll, he'll settle down. I think for its worth, I think Tyler glass now,

same situation. He's throwing another breaking ball. Um, and, uh, the slider by, by command plus is 72 and by stuff plus is 80. So he's not commanding this new pitch very well,

which is not a big surprise because it's a new pitch, right? And if you watch a Tyler Glassnow start, it's even harder. At least when you watch him at color start, you can tell the slider from the curveball. I don't know how much you've watched them both live. But if you watch a Tyler Glassnose start, try to pick out the sliders. It's very difficult.

It's very difficult. Because he also, like McCullers, throws like an 83 mile an hour wicked drop curveball, and then his slider is like 86 or 87, you know? So it's like, okay, I guess that was harder. So I guess that was a slider. But in terms of movement, it's kind of hard to tell the difference. So both those guys,

I think I'm going to say adding new pitches, good. It softens your third time through the order penalty. These are probably good things in the long run, but there's a little bit of shiny new toy syndrome in both situations where I think they're throwing it too much. And we're going to maybe settle down into something where they use a slider a little less often and becomes more of a weapon for them yeah i was trying to get to the bottom of why mccullers added this pitch given the strength of the curveball that you mentioned and my best hypothesis right now is that if you look at his career splits he's actually had a reverse platoon split as a right-handed pitcher. He's been better against lefties than he has been against righties during his big league career.

And the slider is a pitch that he's going to throw mostly against righties, at least it's been the case so far this season. So maybe it's just a way of improving in that particular matchup that he's looking for. And who knows, maybe just the way the lineups have fallen his first couple times through the rotation, maybe that's also led to that usage being a bit higher than it will be against more balanced lineups going forward. Yeah. And that's not too surprising considering that, uh, well change up is his other pitch that has a reversible tune split. Obviously, uh, that's a pitch that's better against someone who stands on the opposite side of the plate, in other words. And curveballs often have reverse platoon splits. It has something to do with the shape of the curveball.

There's a really great piece out there by Max Marchi where he actually breaks curveballs down into like three or four different pitches. There's the roundhouse curve, the power curve, you know, all these different kind of curveballs. And each of them has a different platoon split. So I forget exactly what the power curve is. I think it was the closest to neutral. So theoretically, it should be a pitch that he can use against both sides. And so theoretically, it should be fine.

But why not use the power curve against everybody, the slider a little bit more against righties against everybody, the slider a little bit more against righties, and the changeup a little bit more against lefties? Then you kind of become a three-pitch pitcher to both sides. There are plenty of guys who are like that, and it's useful like that. There are definitely guys that just throw a certain amount of pitches to each side, to each kind of handedness of batter. So I wouldn't say it's a bad thing in any case. And I wouldn't say that I'm out on the colors from the early results. I'm willing to give him that one game.

The strikeouts are there. He's always had a trouble with command. So I can think he can still have trouble command and get this walk rate down. And so generally I'm still bullish on, is that the right way? Bullish means good, right? Bullish means you're in. Bear means, yes, I'm still bullish on... Is that the right way? Bullish means good, right? Bullish means you're in. Bear means... Yes, I'm bullish on McCullers.

All right. Let's talk about Eduardo Rodriguez, one of our most discussed pitchers over the lifespan of this podcast. Increasing the usage of a slider that we saw from him just a little bit back in 2019. Also other changes to his pitch mix, though, early on. Throwing more change-ups than anything else.

Throwing more cutters than four-seamers. So a lot to unpack here with Erod. What do you make of the changes? I bolded all the names on this list that I'm going to write about for tomorrow. I bolded all the names on this list that I'm going to write about for tomorrow. So we shouldn't talk about all the guys I'm going to write about for tomorrow. And I just broke down for my column tomorrow. The pitcher report where I'm changing it up from the command and stuff report because I want to be able to do whatever I want with it.

So Ed, though, I'm still all the way in on because, um, he has so many pitches and he commands them all. The slider is actually not a new pitch cause he used to throw it. Um, it's one that he's bringing back. Um, and it's his worst pitch. Uh, but as I show tomorrow, he has a really specific use for it that I think will be good for him. So he's a guy who I would say has three action pitches and four command pitches. And if that's not enough, I might as well give up on this whole thing.

Well, we should talk about Jeff Hoffman because he escaped Colorado and more accurately was traded by the Rockies to the Reds. Spinsenati. Spinsenati. It's a good nickname. A lot of sliders. And I just think the general approach with any pitcher leaving Colorado is let's see what they do that's different now that they're not having to deal with Coors because they may have tried something in the past, not even using it in games, but Tinkered was something that they didn't think was going to work at all, never used it, and then now

they can actually consider it because the environment is so different. Hoffman's holding on to a back-end rotation spot for now. They're putting Jose DeLeon in the bullpen with the return of Sonny Gray. Should we be excited about Jeff Hoffman getting this opportunity with the Reds? Yeah, I think so. One caveat I have is that Hoffman's stuff on the pitch is about average, but his command is 72. So it's well below average command on the slider. And maybe that's not surprising.

I would expect all the new pitches to have poor command numbers, right? It's like, you know, you haven't been throwing this pitch. But, and I found, you know, some evidence that command is more important than stuff on the slider. So that's a little bit worrisome however um you know overall he doesn't have terrible command uh and now he's looking like a four pitch mix guy uh because he's still throwing his change up and uh let me uh validate those different things i just said so hoffman overall command plus is 90. That's good enough. You know, it's not something, it's not, you know, amazing, but it is something that should be able to work. And let me see how

the stuff plus is on his other pitches. Four-seam fastball, 107. Slider, 99. Hoffman, changeup, 96. Curveball, 95. Well, that's actually sort of surprising, huh? His fastball is his best pitch. Which I wouldn't have guessed just looking at the velocity, right? You look at 93 from a righty, you think, oh, okay, that's fine,

but not necessarily going to be above average. Yeah, but I would, just knowing the coaching process, knowing now that he has four pitches, knowing that he's about league average on all of them, it's one of those weird things where you could add up league average on four different pitches, league average stuff, league average command, four different pitches, and it would add up to better than average. You know what I mean? Because it's four pitches, right?

He can mix them. And there's no real, there's no like, oh my God, that's a terrible pitch, or he can't command that pitch at all. So I would expect the walk rate to go up, but I think the projected home run rate is going too far. Um, and, uh,

I, I think that I would give him something like a four, two, four, three ERA, uh, with, uh,

but it basically, I could strike out per inning. That plays. I think I'd prefer to use them away from home. Um, and, and kind of make him more of a streamer. But if you're in a deep league,

I think Hoffman could be useful. Yeah, probably one of those guys people are a little skeptical of given the very bumpy road during his time in Colorado and the career walk rate, I mean, over 4 per 9, bad home run rate. Got to push reset, though, given that the home park has changed for the better for Hoffman. It's kind of weird that hitters leave and they're better than he expected. Pitchers leave and it's just not,

you just don't know. You kind of expect them to be better than expected, but like, you know, it's more of a grab bag. But, you know, speaking of skepticism, there's a guy on this list that I'm super skeptical of. Is it Waskar Inouye? It is, it is Waskari Noah. So Waskari Noah, you know, I was speaking about action pitches and command pitches.

And this is one of the pieces of research I haven't yet done, which is that I think there's like a sort of a required number to restart. There's a required number of pitches you can command and a required number of pitches you can get for a swing and strike. Sort of action and command pitches. I think the number is probably two of each. Maybe one pitch can count as two, right? Like it can be both an action and a command pitch. But I think you need

two of each because if you don't have two of each, what happens in a 3-0 count or a 3-1 count? The same thing every time. The pitch you can command right um and and so in you know his case he has only one pitch that's above average on stuff in command it's a slider yeah it's because it has to be the slider he's throwing it 45 of the time his his fastball is going faster but it's still below average by stuff and he's throwing it 45% of the time. His fastball is going faster, but it's still below average by stuff. And he's throwing the sinker and the sinker has an 87 command plus

and an 81 stuff plus. I just don't think either of those numbers is high enough to say, oh yeah, he's going to use it. And also a sinker is not that far different from the four seam. I don't know. 87 command plus,

that means in three one count at some point he's gonna have to go slider or oh he's throwing slider half the time i gotta go sinker here and then he's just gonna walk the guy what's interesting to me at least is i look at the heat maps of where he's been throwing each of those pitches He's doing a good job keeping the four-seamer up in the zone, and he's keeping the sinker down. So, I mean, again, depending on sequencing, maybe he's changing eye levels effectively, and that's helping make those pitches work. But it does seem like he's locating pretty well.

Sliders down and away on righties, change-ups down at the bottom of the zone. He's not living in parts of the strike zone where he's going to get hurt badly and that gives me a little bit of encouragement here it's weird because he's really young he's not a prospect that's ever really crossed my mind before in part because they've got guys like Bryce Wilson and Kyle Wright and even Ian Anderson prior to last season those guys were all clearly ahead of you Noah so he's sort of popped up out of nowhere and I'm not willing to just throw him out there against anybody,

but maybe there's a way for something like this to work, even in just like a spot start sort of role. I comparing him to like a Jeff Hoffman. I'd rather have Hoffman like no, no questions asked. I think the pressure on Hoffman in the form of DeLeon is a lot less than Wilson and Wright

and some of the other organizational arms the Braves have at their disposal. Also, Hoffman has four pitches, you know? And that's where I was kind of trying to talk about like his four pitches are all like sort of 90 to 99. They're all just sort of averagey but he can choose between them right whereas i think you know is going to be really predictable uh you could probably sit slider on him at this point because it's his best pitch

you know um and the other thing that is interesting about you know is they change his arm slot and so they're hoping that improved his command and maybe that is improving his command on his fastballs i looked at his uh usage of the slider against lefties because that's always the issue with a fastball slider guy that doesn't have another pitch is the slider against lefties and normally back foot. And so what I saw in the heat maps for this year versus last year with the slider is he's either back footing the slider

or back door in the slider. So there's no sliders in the middle of the zone it's all down by the feet or on the outside corner i just don't know this early if it if that's sustainable because if you look at last year there's a lot of sliders in the middle of the plate against lefties which is if that starts filling in there are some this year too and if that starts filling in that's that's where it goes to pieces is lefties hitting homers off him he's gonna get hit if he's in the middle of the zone because they're gonna be looking for certain pitches and certain counts based on the way his arsenal is currently constructed the other name on this

list kind of comes into our conversation for velocity concerns. Steven Strasburg, we're seeing some changes. The sinker is what he's throwing more. He's lost some velocity on the four-seamer, got knocked around big time a couple nights ago, and people are concerned. I mean, there was the shot of him rubbing his shoulder between innings, and he was not happy about that getting onto the air. But I mean, if you've watched Steven Strasburg over the years, there's plenty of times where he looks tight and uncomfortable and like he's stretching. Like if you're watching on YouTube, you can see him kind of like rolling my shoulders back. You see him do that kind of stuff on the mound all the time. So I don't want

to read too much into the shot of him rubbing his shoulder, but I do think we can look at the velo being down and the fact that he's throwing a lot of sinkers and say, hey, maybe he's starting to try and adjust to not having that same life that he had on his fastball a few years ago. He used to be 94, 95, 96 back in 2015 with that four seamer. Now he's down. I mean, last year in the little bit, we saw him 91.8. So far this season, 92.1. Definitely a concern. Do you give him a little more of a pass because he is coming back from surgery, and even though he said he went through a pretty normal offseason, it could still take him a little bit more time to get all that velo back? I wish I hadn't pushed him up in my rankings because I was afraid that this sort of thing would happen. And his good spring training starts did cause me to push him, I think, at the back end of the top 40. But I never owned him because even that is kind of a soft ranking.

A lot of people were really aggressive on Strasburg. But I think there's actually a longer-term story here than just what happened between this year and last year. Because if you look at the ride on his fourth seam like four years ago it was excellent it was near elite uh you know plus four inches of ride on the fourth seam um if you look at last year it was below average and this year it's even worse so um you know something that can happen when you're hurting in the shoulder, if there is something in that shoulder he's trying to stretch out, is your arm slot starts to drop. Or you're afraid that your foreseam that doesn't have the same life in that same ride, you need to go to the two seam to kind of get off barrels. And so you think you just need that extra movement because you're not getting that movement anymore. you think you just need that extra movement because you're not getting that movement anymore.

That lines up with his extra shrinker usage. He went from using it 2% of the time last year, 1% of the time last year, to 23% of the time last year. That fits in with the

four-seam ride to give me the story that I don't want any part of Strasburg. If I could sell him low, I would sell him low. He has a 635 expected slugging on the sinker. It's not a pitch that does well by any of these metrics. 94 stuff, 74 command. I think that it doesn't look good altogether. And a shout-out to Justin Mason, my old podcasting pal on Sleeper on the Bus.

He did a DFS stack against Strasburg the other day in that Cardinals game. And before that start, Strasburg had pristine strikeout minus walk ratios. He looked really... As much as somebody asked me, would you rather have Bundy or Strasburg had pristine strikeout minus walk ratios like he'd looked really you know as much as somebody asked me would you rather have Bundy or Strasburg and I my heart was like Bundy Bundy Bundy but I was like well you know Strasburg still has a really great K-BB has a long track record and blah blah blah but I

told the person get more for Strasburg and keep Bundy so they all danced around that one. But Mason, full conviction, went in and stacked a bunch of Cardinals against Strasburg, and I think it was like 12-1 or something. So he made some money that day. Yeah, I hope he made a lot of money that day if he had everything else in the lineup around that stack done correctly. It's a crushing sort of lineup. He said it would have been six figures

if he'd put a different starting pitcher in. Oh, yeah. I mean, there's a little bit of that. I feel that way too, where I'll hit like a GPP where I win like 40 bucks or something and you're one player away and you think you're really close.

Like I've always been, oh, one guy, I just made this one decision differently. It's further away than you think, like from a statistical standpoint to hit everything right to take down a tournament but the the game theory of it stacking against someone like strasburg that is the right tournament mindset to have if you see a pitcher that people are generally steering away from entirely you think they're going to go out and get hit loading up against them is absolutely the way to get some leverage.

Interesting, though, that you brought up Bundy because I think he gives me a little bit of hope for Strasburg to be able to figure it out without premium velocity because Dylan Bundy is out there throwing fastballs at 92, which is up a couple ticks from where he was even in the shortened season. But he showed us last year you don't have to have the premium velo to be really effective. And I think with Strasburg, we know there's a curveball that's really good. There's a great changeup.

Maybe the changeup is less effective as the fastball diminishes. So maybe that's a concern to consider. But I think the secondaries for Strasburg are good enough where as long as it's not an injury, I think there's still a pretty good floor there that he can find. Or maybe it's more of a low to mid threes ERA as opposed to three flat. And maybe it's more of a 118, 120 whip than a 110. But that's still a pretty good pitcher if that's the baseline that he's going to end up at. One wrinkle I want to throw in here, though, is that anybody who...

So I want to say on fastball velocity, right? Being down a tick is not that big a deal. One tick. Because we're comparing, especially if you're doing year-over-year comparisons, we're comparing August to April. If you do like, this guy's down a tick from last year, you're doing August to April.

August is when fastball velocities peak. April is when they're at their worst. So you are comparing the worst to the best, and the difference between April and August is almost a tick. So if some guy's down like 0.8, 0.9, I would say no big deal. There's one little wrinkle. The ball this year is lighter. And for the first time, and, you know, in the press release they say it's down a one-tenth of a gram.

No big deal, guys. No big deal. One-tenth of a gram is the largest possible weight difference they could have made without going to the rules committee. It's the largest possible weight change they could have made. So it actually does affect the ball a lot. For the first time in, well, okay. So 2019 average fastball velocity, 93.5. 2020 average fastball velocity, 93.5 in August.

2021 average fastball velocity, 93.9. This is the biggest jump in a long time. Let me see when the biggest jump since when that seems pretty big it's also even bigger considering this is april that we're looking at in terms of a one year jump we haven't had a big this big a one year jump since 2011 so i think the lighter ball goes faster and now that i think about it with dylany, I wouldn't be surprised if Dylan Bundy didn't change a dang thing. Because I did an overlay, and I was like, ooh, Dylan Bundy, check it out.

And I was like, he added more ride to his fastball. He added more drop to his curveball. He added a little bit of velocity. Well, guess what a lighter ball with more drag does? All of those things? It gives you more drop. It gives you the ride, and it goes faster. It gives you more drop, it gives you the ride, and it goes faster.

It might go a little bit slower because of the drag, but generally maybe Bundy is just healthy. Maybe that's it. He's just feeling good and feeling healthy, but I'm all in on Bundy. I think I would try to sell Strasburg low.

Interesting. We're on slightly different pages, but I'm still a little bit optimistic as it pertains to Strasburg. Depending on what you can get, though, sure, shop them around. Always listen. Always consider different things

that could lead you to some extra value. Thanks a lot for that question, Bill. I think what prompted Bill to ask the question was Jake Junis, among others. Glassnow was in his email. Junis is going to be in the piece on Friday, right? So we don't have to spoil that one right now. I'm excited about that. But also, generally

it's a great question because our friend Jason Collette has a new pitch tracker that he does every year. And it's so long, right? Like it's like 40 pitchers long. And that's because also he like throws people in who are like, I reshaped my cutter, you know, and I'm throwing a splitter instead of a instead of a circle change or whatever, you know. the list here of,

and the cutoffs I said was they could not have thrown it more than 10% in the past. And they increased the usage of it by 10%, at least by 10 percentage points, right? There's only 20 pictures like that. So there's only by this sort of definition, there's only 20 new pitches in baseball this year. And honestly,

what the last two or three, Charlie Morton's cutter, Jose Quintana's change-up, Jordan Montgomery's cutter, they threw those 7, 8, 9% of the time last year. It's really more like there's 15 new pitches in baseball this year.

And then, you'll see the list tomorrow. What's funny on top of that is a lot of these pitches aren't good, which I think is actually unsurprising because if you had a really good pitch in your back pocket all this time, you would have used it. It's almost like developing new pitches is pretty hard, even though it happens it's pretty difficult

to do it and to do it well enough where you feel good about throwing it and throwing it a lot yeah yeah so uh i tried to highlight the ones you know and it can be good for command purposes or for stuff versus back to that action thing but um uh there there were you know five pitches. And it doesn't spoil it to say Judas' cutter is one of the better ones and one of the more impactful ones, I think, with a little bit of an asterisk. Well, and he's absolutely the kind of player that because he's been around for a few years

and he's just sort of your on-the-waver-wire, off-the-waver-wire, stream-em, cut-em sort of player that it takes a little longer for the league to catch on to changes, the league being a fantasy league, not Major League Baseball. So you might be surprised. You might pick him up in a deep mix league and hold on to him a bit longer than you'd expect based on what you're hinting at here. So it could be an opportunity for someone that slipped through the wire

for a couple of weeks or got picked up, used, got cut, and is now out there for anybody. Absolutely, though. A huge part of my strategy in fantasy leagues is getting people like this because especially in deeper leagues, deeper dynasty leagues, best ball leagues,

there would be a lot of a tendency in best ball to be like i'm gonna go get uh force whitley or you know somebody who hasn't pitched yet and i'm gonna take a shot at getting the next top prospect there are so many starting pitchers that take a really long time to figure it out you know and so many starting pitching prospects that bust i'd much rather take someone who's shown you an established level in the league, and this is something a pitching coach told me, I'd much rather get a pitcher that has shown me that they can be league average or be a major league pitcher, and then maybe I can make that one tweak to bring them to that next level.

Because it's a lot harder if you give me somebody in A ball. There's so many things I've got to work on. We've got to work on everything to get them to that next level. Because it's a lot harder if you give me somebody an A ball. There's so many things I've got to work on. We've got to work on everything to get them there. But if you give me a Jake Junis and I give him a cutter, bang, could be everything, right? I mean, I think Derek Johnson, I think that's Derek Johnson in a nutshell. He's one of the best pitching coaches in baseball. And what you do with Derek Johnson is you say,

hey, can I get you like Gio Gonzalez and like Wade Miley and Jeff Hoffman? Just get you some guys and then you do it. You know, so I kind of try to do that on my own in in in in leagues. So deep leagues, deep dynasty leagues, people will be taking prospects, and I'll be taking old, interesting pitchers. I had a lot of, you know, RIP, hopefully not Johnny Cueto, but I had a fair amount of shares of Johnny Cueto because I thought, you know, good schedule, you know, has been a decent pitcher in the past.

I can probably, you know, he'll probably have some weeks where he's in my lineup, you know. That's a good best ball situation too. So, uh, the, the trick though, is to know when you like thank Jake Dunas for his, for his, uh, service to your team and move on. Or if you start to covet him and start to fall in love. And I think there was a, there was there a question about Danny Duffy because, uh, it's interesting to put him up against um junis i think yeah duffy just kind of a general question this came from aleric on twitter what's up with danny duffy it's early but he looks rosterable which i it's just the perfect description of danny duffy when he's going well it's like oh yeah well we can use him for a little while. We can put him into our lineups.

It seems like it's working. Yeah, and I think I might actually, I was expecting to say he's the guy that you think for his service to move on. But there is one huge number that speaks for his viability going forward, 93.6. He has not averaged 93.6 since 2016 jeez yeah that is a pretty big jump for him yeah up about a mile and a half per hour over his 2019 velo and same for 2020 so yeah that's a pretty significant jump so i'm uh you know i don't know let me see he's never been one to you know the command is not really his deal but 96 command plus and then stuff plus should be up higher because of well 99 It should be up higher because of, well, 99.

Well, I'd be careful about when I use him, but I think I would love to have Danny Duffy on my bench. Much more rosterable than we might have thought just a month ago, which gives you an idea of how quickly things can change when we see Velo take a slight tick up for someone that at least has three pitches he can lean on. I think I have him in TGFBI because he had a two-star week this week. At least one of them was at home, maybe both. And so I will have the same decision on my hands on Sunday.

But I will probably find someone else to drop because if you think about it, if you have Danny Duffy, even if you're going to sit him one week, you think that next week he'll be home again, right? So he just might be a guy you kind of in and out, in and out. I think you're definitely looking at the schedule for the week beyond the drop in some cases, if you could afford to go a little further, right? Yeah. If you get a little bit of buffer, you can consider that because you don't want to have to go back and spend fab to get them back if you don't have to. So keep that in mind as you think about letting pitchers go.

All right, you know, we had a few other questions that came in. One was a pretty simple one. What's up with Ryan Yarbrough? This question comes from Johnny Roto on Twitter. Yarbrough missed the layup this week. He had a great matchup against the Rangers, and he got hit. And I always operate with a little more flexibility, I guess I'll call it, in how I look at a pitcher like Yarbrough where velo and top end stuff isn't

really something that you'd consider to be his strength. I think a bad team can hit a guy like Yarbrough on an off day. A bad team can hit any guy on an off day. But I think it's more likely to happen with a guy like Yarbrough. But I think a guy like that can more likely surprise us in a matchup at Yankee Stadium and go six scoreless on a day where we'd all be afraid on paper to

actually use him in a matchup like that. But as you look at the underlying numbers, do you see anything alarming with Yarbrough? I mean, only the stuff that's always alarming. Because in terms of, at least in terms of stuff plus, he's at 103. I guess it is alarming to see that his command plus has dropped to 97. That is alarming because I think even though his stuff plus is 103,

he is a kind of guy that needs command of all of his pitches. And the one thing I'll say is that Stats Perform says that you need two to three starts. So it could still be kind of early going for his command and he could still get it going. He is the reason he is here. The reason he's in the big leagues is his command. So, uh, that I

have some hope we'll get better. Uh, the other thing that is alarming is that he's at 86 miles an hour. Uh, but that's the stuff that was always alarming because he was at 87 miles an hour last year. So, you know, you kind of have to stomach that nausea when you roster Yarbrough. You know, I actually think that in a lot of leagues he's droppable. I'm not going to try and sell low in AL labor in my AL only league. I think he'll get it going. But he may get it going in the context of an opener. They may say, hey, we just want to get Yarbrough going again,

so we're going to do an opener. That may not mean much. You know, Yarbrough got a lot of wins in the middle, but it may mean fewer innings. We'll see. I don't think that they have the ability to move on from Yarbrough. Probably not in the short term anyway, but if you think about Brent Honeywell who came up, opened, and was optioned back, maybe you can eventually get to the point where Honeywell's going two or three, Yarbrough follows him for four, and that knocks

out six or seven innings. That could be a really effective combination. It could be a way to improve the ratios from Yarbrough, and it could be a way to more gradually build up the workload for someone like Honeywell over the course of the season. And it would be a hell of a tandem. I mean, Honey's like 97 with a crazy screwball, and then here comes Yarbrough soft tossing it at 86. Yeah, there's definitely things to worry about with Yarbrough.

I'm not going to say there isn't. But there's the stuff that's always there to worry about, and then there's command. So I think if you were trying to make a decision, even in a deeper league or whatever, I would watch the command in the next start. Here's a would you rather for you. Would you go Yarbrough or Danny Duffy for the rest of the season?

This question legitimately makes me wonder if ranking pitchers outside the top 50 is even worthwhile. Oh my God. You're right. Well, the projections like Yarbrough for about a 4-3-1-3. And Duffy for about a 4-5-1-3-5. So projections say Yarbrough. Man, Zips has Duffy down for 4-9 ERA. That's a lot.

I guess I would say Yarbrough, but I wouldn't be surprised if it went the other way. Man, that's a quick drop, though, for Yarbrough. I was pretty confident in him coming into the season. I'm not going to abandon ship quite yet, but I want to keep an eye on his command the next couple times out. I watched some of his first star. I think it was against the Marlins on opening weekend,

and he looked like Ryan Yarbrough typically looks when he's good. So I think I came away maybe more encouraged than I should be, and now I'm just plowing right through the ugly results the last couple of times out. The other pitcher we were asked about, this question came from James on Twitter. Can you share your thoughts about Joey Lucchese, who I swear he's like your least favorite pitcher in the league? I think two straight years I've put him as the last pitcher in my rankings. Someone's got to be there. It's better than not being on the list at all, isn't it? That's true. Tell him that sometime.

If it ever comes up. That would go over real well. Hedgie ranked 148th among starting pitchers, but look, there were like a thousand people that play baseball and pitch that I didn't put on the list at all. Whoa, look at this. His command plus is up to 97. Okay, that's, I mean, but you're just saying with Yarbrough it takes about two to three starts at least and that's is that one start for joey joey has pitched in one game and it was only two innings and oh yeah i wonder he's always had such an unusual delivery too i just wonder how much better he could be in shorter stints like two or three innings at a time instead of five.

I don't know if he'll ever be a consistent every fifth day five inning pitcher at the big league level. No. Let's see. His curveball has a 71 stuff. His sinker, ooh, interesting, 115 stuff. That's it. That's all that he's thrown.

His Chirb and his Sinker. I don't believe that stuff number for his Sinker either. I think, yeah, you know who I... If he had better command, like this 97 Command Plus is really interesting because if he had that kind of command, it would be better if he was a little bit better i think you could use them as like you use mary petite two innings keep them away from seeing too many teams too often right i like

that as as a way to kind of give them a 10-year big league career potentially like that's not bad if that if that's what you are i think think that's great. You've bounced around a few teams, maybe find the playoffs, win a world series someday. Like there's, there's good things that can happen with that. I will say that I got a, a pretty funny anecdote from somebody who said that they were trying to

coach players on how to face Joey Lucchese. And they said the hitters kept coming back and being like, what, what is he throwing? Like, what, what was that? It kind of reminds me of like our discussion about Elisir Hernandez off, off record, off, off pod. And they had tried to be like, oh, he does this and does this and does this. And one of the hitters came back and said, I got it.

I got it. I got it. I know how to prepare for him. Next time I stand up, I know what I'm going to think of. All he does is throw a crappy sinker and a crappy slider. That's all I got to think. And the next time the guy went up, he hit a homer. Yeah. He's like, don't worry about the release point don't worry about the funky this or that don't worry about like what he calls it

if it's a chur for a change don't don't think about any of that just look at what he throws and hit it so i do think that there's a lot of deception born of that weird herky-jerky delivery over the top. I think it was smart for the Mets to take him from the West to the East, and just be like, hey, a lot of these batters have never seen Joey Lucchese, so let's just use him for a year or two. Nobody's going to hand him a six-year deal. I still think this kind of comes back to some of the things we talked about with the Cubs and what they're doing with low velocity

starters. I know Lucchese doesn't have as deep of an arsenal as some of those starters in Chicago do, but our ideas of what good stuff looks like are a little narrow sometimes. And I think Eliezer Hernandez,

just to bring our off air conversation in, he's so unusual that you, you need to see it a couple of times before you could even have a good game plan for it. And maybe the league solves it eventually, but terrible. It looks so terrible on paper, but it doesn't look like anything else anyone else is doing.

And maybe that works. Maybe being different is another way to just get hitters out. I think about that with Brent Suter all the time, just watching as many Brewers games as I do. You look at Suter, and it's kind of like gets the ball, throws the ball, gets the ball, throws the ball. And it's not fast. It doesn't even look that deceptive, but it generally works pretty well unless he misses his spot very badly. Maybe there is something like that to guys like Lucchese as well, where we have this group of pitchers that are definitely not good enough to start and go 5+. Not going to be your 7th, 8th, 9th inning lockdown sort of guy, but can come in and just be the bridge between those starters and those

lockdown relievers. Like you have your A relievers and your B relievers. Well, maybe this is the kind of guy that can be the B reliever who sometimes keeps you in the game to get to the A relievers, right? Like that could be pretty useful. Yeah.

I mean, Petit's made a career out of it and he's been the glue in Oakland for a while. You know, so yeah, I think, yeah i think i think it is good but i think that in the context of like a third time through the order or a starter you want to go deep into the games to get wins or a starter that you want to bet on long term and dynasty or in real life when you're trying to build a team. I think that I would lean a little bit more towards a guy who can get out without the deception. Cause I feel like deception is like,

let's say you, let's say you have Joe Lucchese, right? And you're in the, in the NL East and you use them all year. And he's got like a three, two ERA and he's been really huge for you, and then it comes to the playoffs,

and you're facing the Braves in the second round or something, right? The Braves have now seen Joey Lucchese four times over the course of the year. Five times, right? I think they're licking their chops. Right, and the Dodgers, of course, have seen a lot of them from his time with the Padres. So yeah, you could run into some trouble with a guy like that when you're facing the top end lineups, especially if those top end lineups are comfortable with that unusual delivery, that unusual repertoire, whatever it might be that worked pretty well moving around the

country through the regular season schedule. And there's also now an increased use of VR in the dugout. So as virtual reality gets better and better and can trick our brains into being like, oh yeah, this is a real at bat I'm having right now, or this is at least very, very close to a real at bat. I think the more deception will go out of the door because you could have a whole at bat with Joey Lucchese before you step to the plate. You'd be like, oh yeah, I got that release point.

I know where it is. Fun from just a real professional baseball standpoint. Oh, I can get looks at this guy without actually being in the box against him. That part's cool. Also cool if this becomes public facing somehow where people sitting in their chairs and step in against this guy who's the 148th best starting pitcher in the game like i could put on

the headset and just take some horrible hacks trying to figure it out right it would just be shut me up in a second yeah it'd be so good oh you put him last in your rankings did you you know saris against his last ranked pitcher let's see how good you look oh man i would look terrible it'd be so fun to have that though as uh as something we could do so the future could be cool we heard a little bit of the future before we started recording uh robot voice you know not necessarily going to be a hit. Maybe something if we ever get on TikTok or something could play up there. Yeah. Yeah. Wasn't, wasn't our best moment, but Hey, we got the pot off the ground today. So, um, I'm in a good place. All right. You know, we had a question here from Shane, a lot of pitching talk on this episode, but a hitter question. The question was about Jake Cronenworth specifically, uh, in the email Shane writes Cronenworth specifically. In the email, Shane writes,

Cronenworth clearly has a very advanced skill in identifying pitches he should hit on fan graphs. He's the minimum plate appearance qualified leader in contact percentage, outside the zone contact percentage, zone contact percentage, and swinging strike percentage. Looking at his stat cast numbers, he's yet to whiff on a fastball this season, and he's actually seen the most fastballs out of any player at the time of this writing. So the question here, and he also points out the overall exit velocity has gone down since the shortened season, but his exit velocity on fastballs has actually gone up. So he appears to be seeing the zone so well he can lay off secondary pitches and wait to square up fastballs. The question is, what is this actually worth?

You look at some of the other numbers, launch angles haven't been great, but a pretty good max EV last year at 110 miles per hour. Is there any reason to believe you could develop more power to his approach a la DJ LeMayhew comparing like 2016 to what he's done with the Yankees? Or is CoronaWorth always going to be a guy who's average and OBP first because that's all that matters in real life baseball? Good question here from Shane. What do you make

of what we're seeing from Cronenworth in terms of his plate skills? You have to separate fantasy and real life value first of all. Because a guy with a 404 OBP and even a projected 340 OBP is going to be super valuable to a team no matter what

but one of the people I thought of strangely was Jed Lowry because I've been thinking a fair amount about him hopefully it will be a big story coming up soon but I also have been thinking about him

because he does not have great athleticism. Just in general or at his age? Yeah, right, either. I don't think he started. I mean, he didn't start with, I mean, he's more athletic than I am. But, you know, just in terms of when we talk about hitting, he says, I have to control the zone.

I need to be able to do what I want to do with the pitches that are in the zone and lay off of the pitches that are outside the zone because those are the pitcher's pitches. I want to hit hitter's pitches. If you just look at exit velocity and launch angle you know they peak inside the zone so you know the better plate disciplined you can be the more the closer you will get to your best outcomes so i think it's a lot like command i'm always going to bring it back to pitching uh it's a lot like command. I'm always going to bring it back to pitching. It's a lot like command in...

Plate command is a lot like command in pitching. So if you have good command, I think you're going to hit your best outcomes given the stuff you have, right? And if you have good plate discipline, you're going to have the best outcomes you could have given the ability you have to hit the ball hard. That's your stuff in this case.

So I do think that players can maybe hit the ball a little bit harder with some K-Vest work, some swing mechanics work, some approach things, some weightlifting. Yeah, I do think you can start to hit the ball harder, but there probably is a given range of like, I don't think i i could train the rest of my life and i would not hit a ball 120 miles an hour like john carlos ten you know what i mean yep like i could bulk up i could i could just i could try and almost look like him and i

still wouldn't hit the ball 120 miles an hour so uh so i think that it's only good news for Cronenworth, and I think that there will be more power coming just from the fact that he has such great discipline and he's shown us some ability to hit for power in the past. His max EV isn't amazing, but at 107, I wouldn't say it's terrible. His barrel rate is zero, but he's had 48 ball events. I don't know. I think I'd even take the over on the projected isolated slugging, which is like 130. I think he can hit 12 more, 15 more homers over the course of this year. Yeah, I do think I maybe underrated C cronenworth a little bit coming into the season

and i would agree with that assessment like the things he does really well are things that are valued more in real baseball than in fantasy baseball but just as great defense can really like drive playing time i do think having good plate skills and just taking good at bats can help you find more playing time too. That sort of gives Cronenworth this playing time floor that might be higher than I expected it to be.

I think he's their second baseman, right? It seems like he's that guy. They want to play him. He's an ideal top of the order hitter even if he's not going to necessarily hit a bunch of bombs. Yeah, so I'm here. I'm here for the Cronenworth being better than I thought, and I do think this means something.

By the way, while looking at the leaderboards here, I didn't notice. I knew they had called strikes and whiff percentage, the CSW for pitchers. Fangraphs threw that on the plate discipline leaderboard too, and I just started thinking about it from a hitter's perspective. If you're not taking a lot of called strikes and you're not whiffing, that's a pretty good sort of measure of how well you control the zone

and recognize pitches that hit. So just kind of cool to see that on there. Rymel Tapia. That's true. I hadn't noticed that before. Rymel Tapia is number one among qualified hitters at least, 16.7%, lowest called strike and width percentage in the league. Albies is in there at two.

Seager's in there at four. It's not as unqualified of a good thing, though, because even within the zone you don't have you have strengths and weaknesses right so uh why is tapia so high because he doesn't swing ever i mean he swings all the time so if you swing all the time you don't get the called strikes and if you have a good hit tool you don't get the whiffs right but? But it's not like he's the best hitter in baseball. No, yeah. It's just the stat that I'd never even thought about

applying it to hitters before. So I'm kind of perplexed seeing it on a leaderboard that way. And it's not, like, just because I only bring up that example because you know, I bring up that point because it's hard to know exactly how to use it.

I mean, Ryan Miltapia swings 53% of the time. The average is 45. So he's just really aggressive but has a good hit tool. And that's why he has the lowest call strike whiff percentage. I'm not sure what to do with that. Maybe it could be a good hit tool proxy. I'm going to look back and see if it goes back past years and dig into it a little bit.

If anything interesting comes from it, it'll be subject to... For what it's worth, Tapia used to be worse, I mean, going back. I still don't really believe in him as a hitter. I mean, good for him getting the opportunity and playing well enough to keep it. But last season, eight steals in 10 attempts. Only one homer in 51 games,

which playing half your games in Colorado, it's hard not to hit for more power than that. Doesn't walk a ton. Just classic bench outfielder for me. And they're like, leadoff guy. Let's playder for me. And they're like, leadoff guy. Let's play him a lot.

And given their reticence to do that with anybody. This is kind of surprising. Willans Estudio is number one if you make it go three. But Jeff McNeil, Hanzo Alberto, and then number four, Freddie friggin' Freeman. Not a hit tool on that list. If you paired it with power,

then you would start talking. Eddie Rosario is on there. Melky Cabrera. Francisco Lindor's seventh. Albies. I mean, they're not bad hitters. I think it is kind of, it's kind of a decent, but it is, it's not, Albies. I mean, they're not bad hitters. I think it is kind of a decent.

But it's not just hit tool. It's the same way that called strikes and whiffs kind of pairs two skills in pitching, right? It kind of pairs command and stuff into one in a way. Called strikes and whiffs for hitting, it pairs plate discipline with hit tool. A nice Frankenstein stat. We'll see what it might mean on the hitting side, though, as we

consider it through... Consider it longer, I guess. Look at players multiple years. Kind of. I mean, it's not... I guess, at the very least, not bad to be on a leaderboard with this, right? I mean,

I wouldn't say it's like, oh, you're too passive. Let's see, the worst players on this are Hanzo Alberto, who, I mean,

you know, Eduardo Nunez, Dee Gordon. So there has to be kind of a minimum level of power. And that's going to be the question for Tapia, right? Can he have league average power?

Then he's going to be on the better side of this list. If you flip it and look at the – I've got a three-year leaderboard going now, going back to 2019. And if you flip it to go to the other end, guys who are bad in this regard, let's see, John Ryan Murphy, Keon Broxton, Joe Adele. I mean, that was his debut. Bobby Dahlbeck, Chris Davis in Baltimore,

Chris Owings, Evan White. Evan White. Yep. A lot of guys that have fallen quickly out of playing time opportunities that they had. Oh, no.

I wouldn't look at Adele. Kyle Lewis, Tyler O'Neal, Sam Hilliard. Oh, no. Yeah. What if it's a better warning sign than a sign of a player that we'd be really into for being good in this metric? It's a graveyard almost.

Well, on that happy note. Oh, oh, oh. One last pitch. Old Irving Brewery, Chicago. oh oh oh one last one last pitch um old irving brewery chicago uh everyone seems to love it it might be running out soon go get ephus ephus is on sale now at old irving brewery at the brew pub in chicago um i'm gonna get my in the mail very very soon. And I think I'll enjoy it. Apparently, even other brewers have come by to try it because they enjoy it. So the whole idea was 5% but bodied and with some body and some really pungent tropical aroma. So, yay.

Congrats again on that release. Yeah, I've heard good things from a few people that we know that have had a chance to try it too. And debating, just taking a quick road trip down there to pick up a few and just driving back. It's probably about two hours and 15 minutes each way. Well, let's see what I get mine. If they overnighted it to me,

then maybe I get it to Eric tomorrow. Maybe I can overnight you one. It'll have crossed the country. I'll see if a Chicago friend can hook me up if I can't get down there on my own. But you're right. Get there soon if you'd like to get some because it'll run out pretty fast.

As we mentioned earlier, Eno's got a great piece coming up on Friday. If you don't have a subscription to The Athletic already, theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels will get you in at $3.99 a month to start. On Twitter, he's at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. You can always email us, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com. That is going to wrap up this episode of Rates and Barrels.

We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening.