Rates & Barrels - Ohtani's Return to Pitching & Pitchers We've Overlooked In 2025

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

Eno and DVR discuss Shohei Ohtani's first outing back in the big leagues after having Tommy John surgery in September of 2023, and the return of Logan Gilbert from a flexor strain, before acknowledging several pitchers who have received very little attention on the show over the course of the season.Rundown0:41 Shohei Ohtani's First Start on the Mound Since 20238:43 Logan Gilbert: 10 Strikeouts in Return from IL11:26 Carlos Rodón Is Healthy and Pitching Great17:31 Checking In: DVR's Extreme Risk Pitcher Build23:05 Robbie Ray & Logan Webb28:38 Jack Flaherty's Quietly Productive Season32:30 Is Brayan Bello Unlocking A New Level with His Cutter?34:12 José Soriano's Underwhelming Results Despite Electric Velo36:48 What Happened to Bailey Ober?Follow 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.

Welcome to Raids and Barrels, it is Tuesday, June 17th, Derek the Riper, Inosiris here with you. Today we are talking about a few under discussed pitchers after we get to a few noteworthy returns, maybe one of the most over discussed players But for good reason show hey Otani returned as a pitcher on Monday night against the Padres We also got Logan Gilbert back 10 K's and his first start off the aisle. So certainly some good things there So news first, you know show hey Otani Start number one. It was only one inning inning the Dodgers did not deceive us in

this instance I looked at the numbers a 120 stuff plus overall a 90 location plus 110 pitching plus that location number is really not that surprising given the duration of his layoff and considering that without the benefit of a rehab assignment facing MLB hitters live in-game action is actually a pretty tough way to get back to pitching. Yeah, I mean, normally one of the things you have to overcome is fear that it's not fixed or fear that you're going to blow it out. And so, you know, just getting over that hump is a big deal.

Maybe they felt he'd already been over that hump is a big deal. Maybe they felt he'd already been over that hump but if he was effectively rehabbing in front of our eyes then that takes quite a bit of intestinal fortitude especially when you know you throw a hundred mile an hour fastball and Fernando Tatis puts in the outfield for a base hit you know then you start hitting the doubt that's coming in. You know from my test test, you know, the Velo was obviously good, although in a one-inning stint, you would expect a different type of Velo than you would in five innings. I do think that it's possible that the arm slot was a little bit lower for him because the vertical break on his foreseen fastball was down a little

bit and the sinker had more drop. So it's possible that he becomes more of a sinker sweeper guy with a good split, you know, a Clark Schmidt, but at 98. Okay. Yeah, Clark Schmidt at 98. That could work. I mean, the other thing that was obvious, you know, and we'll talk about this a little bit tomorrow with Trevor May, but was that he was yanking Ball's Glove side and that the command wasn't quite there.

Although I would have to point out he does not ever had great command. And so I do believe that in the range of outcomes for him as a pitcher still exists being a closer because he does not have great natural command and as the stuff comes down there will be a Moment of reckoning between his stuff and his command So it's what if you combined babe Bruce with John Smoltz with? Probably one other player, like three different era players all mashed together for one?

That's Shohei Otani. It's kind of like, yeah, it's kind of like Babe Ruth plus, you know, the early career Tyler Glass now and reliever John Smoltz. Yeah, the ways to describe Shohei Otani, limitless. We're gonna go to completely new places comparing him to players from multiple eras, all different roles. That's our goal here on a regular basis but I think the arsenal will probably get wider as he works deeper into outings as well. The silver lining too of the Otani return in the opener role at least for one night only. I mean routine wise I think even as he's going you know one inning, two silver lining, too, of the Otani return in the opener role, at least for one night only.

I mean, routine wise, I think even as he's going one inning, two innings, three innings, whatever, as he stretches out, I think they're gonna keep doing the same thing. He's going to start and someone else is going to follow. It just makes sense to do it that way because preparing to be a two-way player does not lend itself to the bullpen role.

And that's the most interesting thing if it does become Shohei Otani closer in the future, how do you prepare to go in and close a game when you are serving as a DH? That's the unique thing. That's why he has to rehab in front of us is because he can't go to the minor leagues to rehab as a pitcher while still hitting, still hitting at the big league level. Doesn't work. I mean, you go pitch underneath, right? I mean, you hitters get ready in the tongue,'t go to the minor leagues to rehab as a pitcher while still hitting. Still hitting at the big league level doesn't work. I mean, go, you go pitch underneath, right? I mean, you hitters get ready in the tongue,

go to back to the tunnel and go hit to prepare. So I think you just have some kind of setup like that where in between innings, as long as he's not actually hitting actively, like he's going to warm up seventh, eighth inning, if he's ever going to be a closer in the future, but that's hopefully years. Oh yeah. When, when we do the closer thing, there's going to have to be, yeah, there's going to have some weird way for him to warm up. But there's the reason he's rehabbing like this and Ben Casperius is following and he's going to stretch out in front of us is

because he can't go to the mind leagues because they need him as a hitter. So that's unspoken part of the story. Ben Casperius, I like him a lot. You know, the, the stuff is there and you had in the rundown a question if he's the new Ross stripling, but you know, he has more Velo and he has more stuff. So I think on another team, he would just be a starter. And I'm a little surprised that he hasn't just taken the starter's role in all of this flux that they've undergone. And I think that there's even a non-zero chance that he takes the job from Emma Sheehan, who FanGraphs has plugged in as a starter there, and moves ahead. Do I like him better than Lina Nack? Yes. Do I like him better than Emma Sheehan? Yes. Do I like him better than all... I think I

even like him better than Tony Gonsolin. So there's a point where Ben Casperis, I think, separates himself and he's gonna be the follower so he gets two or three more chances and almost everybody in this rotation only gets two or three more chances because it's like there's always somebody that could be returning or there's always another young guy they can go to. It's not easy being a Dodger starting pitcher right now but Casperius has the stuff that I like and I would try to hold onto him in deeper leagues. I think in shallower leagues, you're just, it's, it's really hard.

You know, you've got two or three follower bulk. He might steal some wins. You know, he might, he might get some wins by doing three or four innings in the middle of the game. Well, I think that was the silver lining I was referring to is at least this way Casperios is win eligible. Whereas if he was going a little shorter and they were leaning heavily on the pen behind him He might be less likely to rack up wins

I do think the stripling comparison for me was more just the guy that goes between the rotation and the bullpen who we really Like I do agree with you I think the stuff is just clearly better with no disrespect at all to Ross stripling I think Ben Kasperius has a higher ceiling if he ever does get that opportunity. The question I punted on on Monday's show, you asked me who I thought would be in the Dodgers rotation at the end of the season or for the playoffs, right? And I basically just ignored the question and we moved on with our lives. Yamamoto, Otani, Glass now should be healthy by then, right? There's your first three. Dustin May, probably not.

I mean, Snell's gonna be back too. So there's your first four. Yamamoto, Otani, Glass now, Snell. In the playoffs, you're probably only going 40. The reason you didn't answer it is because we just don't have any idea who's gonna be healthy. Too many questions about timelines for return. But I think based on where they're at

in their various levels of rehab right now, skills, if you're assuming health for all of them, that's the primary quartet of starters you're talking about at playoff time. And this is why the Dodgers rotation is ranked fourth going forward, even though it seems impossible right now. I mean, it's because at any moment,

the Death Star could become fully operational. And that's the gamble, right? That's the gamble they took, being willing to roll the dice on a lot of guys that have poor track records health-wise, is that you get enough of them healthy at one time, and the ceiling is still so high on a start-by-start basis that you end up with that higher-end outcome.

And that's where I took issue with it. It's like, well, we don't know that they're all gonna be healthy. So they're closer to average because they're missing guys all the time.'s the huge huge question with the dodgers but nice to see Otani tick another box as he continues that pursuit of getting all the way back to being a two-way player in the big leagues again let's talk about Logan Gilbert for a minute we were maybe a little split as far as how aggressively we would have considered using him in weekly

leagues it worked out at least for the first leg, if you did it, 10 strikeouts and five innings from Gilbert in the first start back from a flexor strain. He didn't win. That's kind of disappointing. He actually took the loss, but a really good start all around. The bigger question here,

and this was pointed out in our Discord, is, can Logan Gilbert avoid the more severe arm injury that you often see following a flexor strain, right? A lot of times flexor strains eventually are UCL problems and those UCL problems are corrected with Tommy John surgery. Yeah, I don't have an answer for you. He throws pretty hard, he throws pretty close to his max, he throws, you know, a 86.7 mile an hour slider,

so it seems like in our Goldilocks zone, we were looking for sliders that weren't 94. He has this huge extension. He's been fairly healthy. We didn't, we have a flexor strain for Max Fried, and that was now more than a year ago, two years ago. Yeah, sometimes flexor strains are okay. And then they're not. I would say that, you know, I wouldn't sell him so close to the

injury. I would assume he can make three, four or five starts in a row now, you know, he came back healthy. And so if you do think this is going to be a long term injury, and you are maybe selling in a dynasty or something, then I could see selling. I can't see selling the first start back is not a great time to sell because people still remember the injury. If you're selling for this year you still have to wait a couple starts as well I think. But I wouldn't necessarily be rushing to to sell him. I think pitching especially top-end pitching in leagues is so hard to come by

you're probably in that better position to just hold anyway unless you found a really nice combination of replacements during Gilbert's time on the IL. I mean, I think he was fifth in your pitcher rankings originally to start the season. Yeah. Yeah, I think so, yeah.

And partially because of a nice health grade. This has been the brutal year for guys with good health grades on the injury front for pitching So hopefully Logan Gilbert can avoid that but certainly a big return for the Mariners and for those who had Gilbert on their rosters Anyway, let's get to some pitchers. We've mostly ignored this season. It is a companion episode to the hitters We've mostly ignored that we talked about last week I don't think we've talked about Carlos Rodin on this pod much this year he's the number seven pitcher in the Fangraphs player Raider this season a 301 ERA a 0.99 whip about 107 K's already this season and I think this is from the pitchers with poor injury

history sometimes stay healthy why take poor injury history, sometimes stay healthy. Why take the risk? Because when they stay healthy, this is the type of payoff that you can get. Yeah, I also think that you can point a little bit to just really, I think, excellent pitching coaching in New York. While he's been in New York, he's really upped the usage of his change up,

brought in a sinker, changed some aspects of his pitches. His foreseam in particular, I believe before he got there, actually no, it hasn't gotten much more ride. Just adding the sinker, adding the change up, improving the change up, the change up since he's been there has added eight inches of vertical drop over time. So, yeah, I think that they've gotten the best version out of Rodin. I think also, you know, some of the work that he did in the playoffs where, you know, he was so full bore,

so full energy, you know, with them in the playoffs that he found that like there was a relationship between that energy and his command. I think he's kind of found a way to get that Goldilocks level of, you know, energy and get the better command outcomes. So he's gonna feed off of his emotions and he's going to, you know, have the bare chested, you know, screaming animal look screaming animal look to some aspects. But he seems like he's harnessed it and he's got more pitches he can go to. It's like a peak version of him, I think.

I liked him going in, but going into the season you have to... I think this is a prime candidate for how do you rank before the season and how do you rank in the season? I do think before the season you say okay reasonable expectation of innings for him is 140 and therefore I can't rank him in the top 15 or top 20. Once he comes in and he's healthy I think you can allay some of those concerns and bump up your personal projections from him closer to the 175 he did last year. So just the prime reason to move somebody quickly in the season as somebody who's been unhealthy in the past and seems to be showing health.

And I would say that one thing we talk a lot about during draft season is managing risk appropriately, right? We would never say you want a whole fantasy rotation full of Carlos Rodons even though the results have been great so far because if you had 10 players like this on your roster there's a very good chance that five end up on the IL and you're going to be dealing with an above average number of injuries, probably having to cut some guys or at least trying to replace a lot of holes on the wire. But again, this is why you take the chance when the prices are good,

when the risk profile lines up, team context also being good helps to be tacking a lot of winds on top of the great ratios in the case. Like all the pieces are falling into place. Really important distinction here, too. I'm glad you've mentioned porridge a couple of times today, like truly, because I have educated myself on porridge. This, according to Bob's Red Mills website, lots of great grains there, maybe a future sponsor of the show. Surprisingly, oatmeal is a type of porridge. Though oatmeal is considered porridge, the term porridge does not always refer to oatmeal. The more you know.

Okay. Just wanted to clarify. I would have assumed, I would have actually just assumed they were, it was porridge. I thought they were almost equal maps on each other. Frequently used interchangeably and from our DEFCON levels talk last week, movies frequently mess up the scale, which is why my scale was wrong. I'm pretty sure it's Matthew Broderick's fault that I did not know that Defcon 1, Defcon 5 were where they actually are. By ADP, I think the smart thing still is to take a low injury risk as your first pitcher and then it's not a bad idea to take a high injury risk as your second pitcher. The kinds of pairings that would still that would be possible with that kind of an approach would have been

Zach Wheeler and Carlos Rodon. I mean then you're you're leading your league. Your pitching staff is great. Even if it doesn't work out and it's Logan Gilbert and Kodai Senga, you know Kodai was healthy when Logan wasn't. You end up with one really good pitcher. I mean, that's some of the math that you have to be doing. I think maybe who was risky? Chris Sale was risky but he has he's turned out fine. He's been fine. Glass now would be the DVR example of going wrong. I had Snell 12th. So if you take Snell 12th you've taken injury risk then you have to take non-injury risk second and And non-injury risk second would have been somebody like Christopher Sanchez,

but you might have also taken Arenola. And if you went Blake Snell Arenola, you are in trouble. Do you remember the team I drafted in TOWARDS this year that was just the all injury risk pitching staff, just the pure gasoline group of pitchers? It was the, I remember you talking about, yeah, this was the one that was skeins, glass now, Snell, Strider. This is the lead that has unlimited IL spots. So I was willing to really lean into the risk. Brian Wu, Drew Rasmussen, Kershaw, I was either a late dart or a pickup when he, I think he was a pickup when he came back.

I didn't have him originally. Otani the pitcher, who I'm still waiting on. And then it's like a Soles league, so I really just waited on. How are you doing in pitching? So it's 15 team league. How many pitching points do you think I have across the five? Innings pitched in place of wins, so volume matters. The two usual ratios, strikeouts and holds plus saves. How many from the? Perfect would be 75. Perfect would be 75. And throw out the relief category. Just worry about the four that we would think more about

with starters. Out of 60, how many points do you think I have? 35. I have 45 on those four categories alone. That's not bad. The reason that team isn't good is because it doesn't steal bases and it doesn't get on base. It has nothing to do with your pitching strategy.

I drafted too much pitching despite all the injuries. Yeah, that's right. And your pitching should have an up arrow on it because a lot of these guys are coming in. It does. And it means I've got a bunch of the thing that a lot of other people need. I have a surplus of pitching that I can trade. You can actually make trade.

And I can actually make up some ground in those offensive categories because I can trade. You can actually make trade. And I can actually make up some ground in those offensive categories, because I can trade in that league. So to me that was like leveraging the format and being a complete goon in terms of the approach, bullying injured pitchers to have a surplus of pitching later. Hopefully it pays off. Let's give some love to Drew Rasmussen, who is saving your bacon in that league to some extent.

God, I love bacon. Is there 74 innings, the 255 ERA. He now going back to 2021 when he joined the Braves has an ERA under three. He's really, really good. And as far as, yes, the strikeout rate this year hasn't been great. His biggest bulk season, 2022, he had essentially

the same strikeout rate. Yes. So. So I think that there's something about his stuff, which is really, really good, that is about suppressing balls and play and suppressing home runs that doesn't always lead to strikeouts. You know what he is? He is, you know we were just joking about Otani as a 98 mile an hour Clark Schmidt? Drew Rasmussen is like a 96 mile an hour Chad Patrick. I mean, literally, he's fastball cutter sinker for 84% of his pitches?

Yeah, I think he's Jamis and Tyon with better home run suppression. 77, 78. Well, the V-Low helps with that. Right, yeah, I think the strikeout rate being low this year does make more sense, air quotes, a little lower than you would like. It makes sense when you look back at what he did in 2022

and how he did it. The concern I would have is that he had 12.1% swinging strike rate under the K rate back then. He's got 8.9% right now. And his home run rate is up. It's the highest it's been since he's been in Tampa Bay. It was higher when he was a reliever for the Brewers back in 2020.

Partially due to the stadium, I'm sure. Right, but he's managed it really, really well. And what I see when I look at the Projections rest of season numbers the bat has a 391 era and a 118 whip I guess the the worst combination I guess the 371 with a 122 from steamer probably similar in value reminds me of Like all the like really positive Vlad Guerrero projections where like it kept projecting Vlad Guerrero to do things he'd never done. Like how can you project Drew Rasmussen have a 391 ERA after two, three hundred and seventy-five innings of a 280 ERA?

Because they think his home run rate is going to be worse than it's been for his career. That's what the projections spit out. And because they're really intensely focused on the strikeout minus walks. Yes, K minus BB is is normally very projectable. But I think in this case, the high stuff really matters. It's high stuff is going to keep that BABIP down. That's why you see, oops, he has a lower BABIP than the bat. I mean, it doesn't. A lower home run rate than the bat. I also want to say this, I think that the bat has the wrong run environment right now. Ooh, maybe we should talk to Derek Cardy about this. Yeah, maybe we should have him on because the projections for ERA from

the bat are super high across the board. We know that drag is up on the ball and it's not flying as far and you know that slugging is down and so I Think that those numbers are too high. It's possible. I wouldn't be surprised if Derek agreed with you'd say Yeah, this is not turning out the way we expected and adjustments need to be made But I'd love love an explanation, but maybe we'll just shoot an email if he doesn't want to give us, you know, 20-30 minutes That's fine, too But let's talk about some Giants pitchers here. Robbie Ray and Logan Webb. I think Webb gets the occasional mention because he's Logan Webb.

Robbie Ray's been really good, man. 12th pitcher in the player radar so far this season. I don't know if many people expected that. And Logan Webb is right there next to him. 13th with a higher K rate than we've ever seen. The closest we saw was back in 2021, 26.5%. So he's not way off his previous norm. But the last three years he's been between 20 and 23%.

So more strikeouts, back by an increase in swinging strike rate and he's getting hit in the zone a little less than he has the last two seasons. Is this a new level for Logan Webb where if you're trading for him right now you're actually doing better than the projections that kind of the reverse Rasmussen where projections all say the K-rate is gonna be lower but the changes he's made might actually enable him to beat those projections I wish there was a way to incorporate pitch mix changes into projections in a reliable manner. I think that's coming with all

the research that we've done into ArcelonFX and the value of an extra pitch. You could right now throw into the projection system number of pitches in order to soften or you know in order to manipulate the third time through the order penalty. So if your projection system is robust enough that it has a third time through the order penalty for the pitcher, like you could, we know from research that more pitches is better. I think that's why Robbie Ray is doing well and why the home run rate is down is because he's become more of a three-pitch pitcher than he's ever been.

The change-up he's throwing harder, throwing more often than he has in a long time. He got the grip from Terrence Goobel and it's, there's similar arm slots and I think it's not a great pitch by itself. His fastball is still his best pitch but for Robbie Ray it's just keeping the home runs rate down and for Logan Webb it's a similar story. He's added a cutter and the cutter is allowing him to strike out more lefty batters than he ever has before because, you know, before with the batter, lefty batters, he was sinker change and so they were basically hanging over the plate. Now he's cutter, foreseam, sinker change and they have to cover more parts of the zone,

therefore more, you know, liable to swing over the top of the change-up because they have to remain vertical enough to honor the cutter. So his splits have changed, his strikeout rate has changed, he's still devastating to right-handers with the sweeper, he goes right on right with the change-up and the sinker, but he's really improved against lefties and the cutter is a big deal. Even if the cutter itself is, you know, not a great pitch. It's the same story for both of them.

Sometimes throwing not a great pitch can really unlock the rest of your arsenal. If you have two or three good pitches and you had one more that's good enough to use, I think that's what it does. It puts that doubt into the mind of opposing hitters But I could see Logan Webb being treated pretty easily like a top-10 pitcher the rest the way you had an eighth in your Latest rankings update. I have no

Arguments against that right now and Robbie Ray kind of strikes me as another Rodin type or maybe he can be a little underrated at times and perhaps because of Lost more recent significant lost time even it's still a notch below that in terms of how some people look at him but I'd love the setup for him. I also think that Webb represents something so important in terms of strategy which is that you know if you think it's boring that somebody takes a Logan Webb or a Fraumrove Aldez as their ace or as their high end number two, and you think it's better to go after ceiling. I understand that because a full season of Chris

Sale or Garrett Crochet is just very enticing. But I do want to point out that guys with floor also have ceiling. You know what I mean? Like, guys with floor will have that Cy Young ceiling at some point. So you know maybe we should think about our top 10, top 15 pitchers. The way we sometimes think about batters is that you know you're buying floor with your first round pick. You're buying floor with ceiling but you're buying floor to some extent. You know and it's later that you can take the risk. So Webb has always been someone who's popped in my projections and somebody I always want to have higher than I do in my rankings. And I've always put him sort of 12th, you know, in my rankings and the

series going to maybe win the Siong. I think to bring a hitter sort of comp to the conversation, think about the years, like three, four, five years ago when Freddie Freeman was a late first round, early second round pick and it was just kind of like, oh, that's the boring thing to do. Well, the ceiling was that he could also run a little bit on top of that, you know, with the just being more aggressive all of a sudden. I mean, no one expected more than the 13 bags he had in 2022. And then he comes out and goes 23 for 24 the following year. And if you took him late round one, early round two that year,

yeah, you got even more than you expected. And it would have been a boring floor sort of move going into that year. Another guy that deserves some flowers on the pitching side before we talk about a few from the discord that have not met expectations. Jack Flaherty, it's been a top 20 pitcher, last 30 days in the play orator, you know, it's a 338 ERA,.99 whip, 34 Ks during that span. A lot of continuation of the skills we saw last year, kind of in his resurgence, his return to being,

what I would say is probably a fantasy SP2 in a lot of places. The guy that the Dodgers sought out via trade, right? And the guy that the Tigers actually wanted back in free agency. He's ticking really most of those boxes. I would say if I'm looking for a possible red flag, it's that the walk rate has kind of crept back up closer to previous norms. So you're not getting all the skills from last year. But overall, given how erratic Jack Flaherty was during his time in St. Louis, this seems like a guy that sort of found a new solid plateau to pitch at at this stage of his career.

I'm a little nervous. I know that home run rate is the biggest source of noise and so therefore Jack Flaherty's basically the worst home run rate of his career. He's going to regress in the positive direction, most likely. But I am worried that I'm circling that number because, you know, if you look at the stat cast park factors that we looked at in terms of added distance, Detroit right now has a minus five feet on batted balls, right? So he's giving up 1.7 homers per nine, Jack Flaherty is, and he's doing so with temperature

suppressing his balls and play at home by five feet. Now that 63 degree temperature in Detroit is going to change, is changing, is getting warmer. So, you know, I wonder if he really is just going to end up and we look at the end of the season and he's had, he has more than 1.5 homer per nine and he's a surprisingly high strikeout high ERA type and I also would like to point to the worst sitting velocity of his career at 93.1 as a portion of that concern.

So I think he's good but I always feel like I'm on the razor's edge with Jack Flaherty. I think he can go either direction and literally, because he could still go either direction because he's had seasons with 499 ERA, a 425. I mean, he's multiple seasons with a 490 ERA and he has multiple seasons with a 3 ERA. And right now he has a four. He's like literally right in the middle of his good or bad seasons. And I could honestly see it going either direction. The VELO isn't good, the home run rate isn't good, and the park is about to give up more homers.

They could keep her in dynasty leagues. You might be at a point where if you can find an optimist, it's a great time to trade him. Sell. Sell. Sell. But you may not have an optimist. You may just have to hold him and just use him until the value fades in the next couple of seasons. I do think it's interesting. He's one start away from bumping his player option up to a $20 million player option. There's a very good chance he'll test free agency again.

But if it's a $20 million option, I think he might take it. It's going to depend on what happens in the second half, for sure. Like, it's still, it's got to be healthy. And if he pitches this well all year, then I think he'd probably test the market again. What I'd be really curious to see is how many years the most optimistic team goes on Flaherty. Cause I think the league as a whole probably shares some of your concerns with the VELO sitting where it is, even though he's found a way to make it work.

Right. Like they're going to be, that's going to be a league full of skeptics as it pertains to Jack Flaherty. Maybe it has a lot of options and things in it where it's like he unlocks more years if he throws more innings. I would bet it's something like that. A creatively designed contract, lots of incentives. I do want to give some love really quickly to Brian Baio, who did something in his last start that he'd never done before, which is throw the cutter more than any other pitch almost.

He threw tons of cutters in this last start. It was great. And if you are looking at the screen right now, you'll see a combination that I think is a good, a good comp for him. Logan Webb, Brian Weyo and Logan Webb. Now, so Bayo has a slightly higher arm slide at 31 degrees, Webb is 23 degrees.

But if you're looking at this map, it looks very similar. And you can see how the cutter for Bayo has a slightly higher arm slide at 31 degrees, Webb is 23 degrees, but if you're looking at this map, it looks very similar and you can see how the cutter for Bayo could do the same thing that it's done for Logan Webb. I think there's a real potential here. I don't know what's happened to Bayo's change up. That's the thing that is really annoying because if he still had his change up,

then I could be like, Logan Webb, it's the whole package is there. He's got the change up, he's got the sinker, he's got the sweeper, he's got the cutter. So I'm not gonna go out on a limb and be like Logan Webb. It's the whole package is there. He's got the change up. He's got the sinker. He's got the sweeper. He's got the cutter. So I'm not going to go out on a limb and be like Brian Bale is now Logan Webb. But I am more interested in him now. And I think he's a pick up in 10 and 12 team leagues, just in case.

This really is the same thing that is a mocking something for Bale. Like it did for Web. Hey, somebody on this podcast that I'm not going to name names thought that Tender Hulk might be trying to become the next Logan Webb. And maybe health was a factor in why that didn't happen. But yeah, maybe Bayo is the guy instead now at least someone on the Red Sox is trying to become more like Logan. Not the worst call that someone hears. But not a good call, to say the least. I noticed that we had a request from Sierra six to bring up Jose Soriano I mean, we know the stuff can be electric

He's in this clear group of the ERA is fine, but the whip is bad groups I think the reason he's avoiding the ERA that catches up is that he keeps the ball in the park Homers are just not a problem for Jose Soriano point three one homers per nine this year point five six homers per nine for his career Really an extreme ground ball approach right now 65.9 percent ground ball rate this is not the team that you necessarily want to have a high ground ball rate for it's a bad defensive team overall but if you look at who the bad defenders are Luis Renejizo big culprit maybe losing a little bit of playing time lately Logan Ohoppy behind the plate doesn't hurt you as a ground

baller just hurts you with like framing and different things. And then Joe Adele being miscast in center field. If you're starting to kind of say like, why are the angels of minus 33 by defensive run saved at a minus 15 and out above average the team? Those three guys bring a lot of that negative value just in their spots alone. Soriano continues to surprise me.

I liked him because I thought the slider was good and the splitter was good. Well, he's not throwing those pitches. And you know what he has done to break out in this little mini breakout recently is improve his sinker, which was already nasty, but now it's even nastier. If you can see on the screen right now, he's got his average vertical break on the pitch has just been getting mostly better with every start. You know, it's gone from, you know, having five inches of vertical break

before induced vertical break to it's now around two. So it's added three inches of drop over the course of the season. He's throwing it more. It's really working. I still think he has the ability to maybe bring the splitter and slider back, you know, as things go well for him.

As he gets a head and counts, he can't really command those pitches as well. So there tend to be pitches that he can break out with two strikes to surprise people. You know, I'm still in on Soriano. I did drop him in a place and I'm sad about that. I didn't pitch him against the Yankees in a two-step this week in places where I was nervous But in all my head-to-head leagues where I had Soriano, I did pitch him and got that gem. So It's nice sometimes have head-to-head be like well if he ruins my week, he ruins my week At least it's sort of just over and you can move on to the next one

It doesn't feel like you're just carrying the dead weight on the ratios quite as long in that sort of format. I had one question about Bailey Ober before we go. This one I believe came from Andrew on our Discord. It was just, we can drop Bailey Ober at this point, right? There's just nothing there and I think you pretty safely can. Where did the strikeouts go? 17.6% strikeout rate for Bailey Ober. We've known that the home runs were always

gonna be a problem, but when you don't walk a lot of guys and you miss as many bats as Ober has previously, it tends to work. Yeah, I don't know what happened. He just really dialed down the fastball usage, perhaps because he lost another tick on the fastball. And by dialing down the fastball usage and up the slider usage, he lost strikeouts because

his fastball is better than his slider. But neither is that good and the home run rate is still there. I am pegged for sort of a mid to high fours coming into the season and I have no shares and I'm out. It does not help. But I saw in one of Aaron Gleeman's story, Bailey Ober's been dealing with something he's referring to as left hip stuff since spring training.

And I think with all the injuries they've had in that rotation, maybe he feels a little extra pressure to just kind of grind through it, where if they were healthier as a group, maybe they would be comfortable giving him some time on the I.L. to rest, rehab and work through that injury. So I think you could maybe chalk it up to that hip injury, hurting the VELO, the lack of VELO being at that threshold causing a massive, massive problem for Ober and it all sort of just unraveling from there. I can see with a clean bill of health next year and a much, much lower draft day price over ending up on a lot of rosters. It's just kind of like the last picture in that you sort of trust because you want to use them for division matchups.

You want to use them at home. You want to use them in cold weather. Like I think there's enough of a track record there where in the future I'm interested, even if in the present, I'm letting him go in just about all redraft formats at this point. Sure, keep him in AL only because you don't have anybody. I wonder if the you know 91 or 92 is the new cliff. It used to be that you know between 90 and 94 you know fastballs were all in the kind of average-ish range you know and then over 94 you start to separate yourself. Well that's obviously not true anymore because the average fastball is 94. So I feel like 94 you start to separate yourself Well, that's obviously not true anymore because the average fastball is 94 So I feel like now you have to separate yourself with 96, you know, you start to oh, you know, Soriano Oh, yeah, how hard is it? You start to think about it?

Like oh, yeah The guys who throw 96 plus even Strider coming back and throwing 94 95 that wasn't good enough And he once he pushed it to 96, he got the 13 punches, right? So I think maybe 96 is the upper level where you start to differentiate yourself, really differentiate yourself just on velocity and velocity alone. And I would assume that that means 90 has moved up to 92. And that would be really salient for over because he was at 91.7 and now he's at 90 something. So that might, he might, that might actually be, even though it's just one tick, it might be a really important tick where you've now, there are some guys like Ryan Yarbrough is slightly successful

and Stuff Plus likes him at 88. But Stuff Plus liked Cooper Criswell a little bit and Stuff Plus sometimes will get enamored with shapes and maybe not really reflect the reality of how difficult it is to be successful between 89 and 92 in the big leagues these days. So it's weird to say, I would say like next spring, if he's sitting 92, I might be more interested again. I think you've probably said this before, maybe I'm just imagining you said it,

but imagine if you had stuff in command or velocity and command kind of plotted on a chart, like the more velocity you have, the more wiggle room you have with command. So as you lose velocity, if your command isn't flawless, and maybe that's the problem, mechanically he's struggling with that hip injury, he's not locating quite as well. That's the, it's not even so much the tick,

as much as it's that he's also lost some command with it. Like it's two things maybe happening simultaneously. 102 location plus this year, but he was at 107 105 113 in 2021. So like this is someone who went from elite command to just basically average. And I think that matters a lot when you're on that part of the velocity band as Bailey Ober is so maybe maybe maybe better days ahead with some health. But we have to go. Slightly shorter episode today.

I'm gonna guess we'll talk longer than we usually do tomorrow, though, because we already got our show ready for Trevor May. Jed's off this week. We got no show on Thursday. Trevor moves up a day, so a four-show week. You're on Rates and Barrels. Meetup announcement for the Bay Area.

Auto new meetup on Thursday at Bear Bottle. So that's the Bear B bottle in Bernal Heights. And it's at six o'clock or something. It's after the game. So that's this Thursday, auto new meetup with Niv Shaw and Ben Clements at the bare bottle Thursday evening. Great beers, great friends, and probably hot dog talk. If I had to guess, I mean, right.

Probably some pre pre meetup hot dogs. He? Probably some pre-meetup hot dogs. He previewed the next hot dogs he's gonna, oh boy, he's gotta do. I'm gonna start making up hot dogs at my house. I think it's that time of year. See what kind of monsters I can create here in the next couple of weeks. But we are gonna go on our way out the door.

You can find Eno on Blue Sky, EnoSarastop, Bscout at social, enocerous.beescott.social, imdbr.beescott.social. Thanks to Brian Smith for putting this episode together. We're back with you on Wednesday. Thanks for listening. God, I love bacon.