Rates & Barrels - On Playing Time & Upside

Episode Date: January 30, 2020

Rundown2:35 Playing Time & Challenges with Projecting It18:42 Finding Overvalued and Undervalued Players Based on PT Projections29:39 How One Type of Sausage is Made (Spoiler Alert: It's Tough)42:27 Aligning Opportunity & Skills Growth53:46 Beer of the MonthFollow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail: [e-mail] Get 40% off a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 65. It's January 30th, 2020. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we're going to discuss playing time and how it shapes projections and player prices during draft season. And of course, its importance over the course of the season. I will make an attempt to ban the word upside from my vocabulary and we'll wrap things up with our beer of the month selections. Some housekeeping to get to before we get started. We are available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, pretty much anywhere you want to listen to podcasts. So

if you're enjoying this show on a platform that allows you to leave us a rating and review, we'd greatly appreciate a nice rating and review and tell your friends if you like the show. Some of you are listening to this show for the first time and some of you are not already subscribers to The Athletic. If you're not a subscriber, you can get 40% off at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. Eno, what's going on today? We are in the... What is a Rubicon? I was going to say we were in a Rubicon. We were in the Rubicon. I don't know what a Rubicon is, but I'm in it.

I've got the rankings that are coming out. I've got a piece on Shoya Tani's value by different settings and platform. I've got a piece on my toolbox, the different tools that I use. It's going to be loosely based on my presentation at the Arizona Fall League. If Mookie Betts gets traded, I got to do something on that. It's time. It's not season, but it feels like it. Yeah, it's exciting.

I mean, the draft kit launching on Monday means a lot of stuff to do after today's show and tomorrow and possibly into the weekend. We got some new fantasy baseball shows, a full schedule launching to begin next week as well. So it's definitely a fun time to get ready for the upcoming season, but a busy one. A Rubicon, by the way, a bounding or limiting line. Hmm. Yeah.

I don't think I used it correctly. I wouldn't have been able to call you out on it without looking it up so well thanks for doing that then so we both learned something here in the the first couple minutes of the show um but i want to focus a lot on playing time and and some of the difficulties with projecting it because what i feel like feel like I'm seeing and hearing more and more, there are more voices than ever in our industry. There are a lot of very bright people doing great research. There are a lot of interesting new ideas being floated around. I think we sometimes get caught up in those new pursuits and lose focus on some things that are fundamentally important to how we value players

and more specifically how projections generate values that most people in our leagues are using to assess players. And I think it's very difficult to project playing time. So anything I say about someone's playing time projection is not meant to disparage them or take them down or to shade them because I've projected playing time before and it is very difficult to do, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. And more importantly, I think we have to just think very critically about some of the numbers that pop up on screen in front of us this time of year. We're going to see things in terms of plate appearances and innings pitch that, frankly, when you break them down, don't make any sense.

And yet they are a driving factor in how a particular room might evaluate a particular player. Yeah, I remember actually coming out of AL Labor last year. I think I finished fourth. And there were two projection systems. One said I finished first after the draft, and one said I finished last. And I think there's a couple lessons to be taken there, which is don't worry too much about exactly what's happening in your in-draft projection system. Use it to kind of have a general sense

of how much speed you have and how much power you have. Don't freak out if you're last because you may disagree with some of the playing time projections that are loading automatically in your system. I was not first and I wasn't last. And the biggest deal was for me, I looked at it and I was like, oh, I think all these people are going to play.

And that's why I bought them. And other projection systems didn't think they were going to play. That was like literally the biggest difference. I don't even think I had that many breakout players. You know, it was mostly like the guys that I thought played, played. That is a monoleague situation, but I think it's true even for a 12-team situation because, you know, who plays the most is not only the source of chaos when it comes to who wins your fantasy league, it's also a source of chaos when it comes to

real baseball. And tied into that is which teams are best at giving the most playing time to the best players, which teams give the least playing time to below replacement players, and injury. How much does injury come in and allow the best players to play instead of the backup players, basically. So I think that's the biggest source of chaos year to year biggest source of chaos with projections versus what what happens in the end um and uh and but chaos is is opportunity and i think chaos if we're talking about one player from the last three years shohei otani would be the player's one-man chaos. Next to that. Yeah, this is the third year now we're looking at him and we're trying to

figure out, okay, what's this going to look like? How are the Angels going to use him? It's complicated by the fact that he had Tommy John, so the hitter-pitcher thing, we've talked a lot about that, but just coming up with plausible numbers for him

as a hitter in the plate appearance column, that could be an hour-long debate because we just don't know exactly what they're going to do. We can try and approximate what they're likely to do. Just for the sake of this exercise, what I was doing is I opened up the 2020 depth charts projections at Fangraphs. They're easy to get to. You can look at hundreds of players or a thousand players on one screen. It's very effective for this exercise. And I was scrolling through and just looking at some players who I thought were projected for a lot of plate appearances. And not surprisingly, Shohei Otani at 560 came up as one of those guys where I said,

OK, I like Shohei Otani. I believe everything we have said about his talent as a hitter. Unless we get some sort of news from the Angels that Shohei Otani will no longer be a two-way player, 560 plate appearances will not happen. appearances will not happen. Yeah. And, uh, you know, there's also, uh, just the idea on the other hand, which is that talent wills out in his case, he's such a supreme talent that, you know, maybe the angels do find a way. And I know you hate the word. I think the upside. But what's really going on at upside, this is also true. So let's say there's an aging curve. The aging curve right now is you get into baseball about as good as you're ever going to be.

And you stay about that good. And then you start dropping off at about 26. That's the aging curve. So when we're talking about upside, we're actually talking about playing time. True. But this is where my frustration with the word has really grown recently. And I've probably said the word upside 10,000 times on radio shows and podcasts. If you count the written articles and blog posts over the years, I've used the word way more than I should.

It's a cop-out. It's a word that can mean so many different things to even one person, and it doesn't always mean the same thing to the person listening or reading to the person who wrote it or said it. And that's what makes it just absolutely maddening. It's just like when you remember when you were a kid and you wanted to do something, and it might not have been anything important. It was just, oh, I want to go over to my friend's house and your parents might say no and you say why and they would say because i said so it's like that's that's that's as much

of a reason as is upside in a vacuum tends to be so i think maybe i'm just being picky about how i and other people are articulate our thoughts. But you're right. There is a potential for him to play a lot more than he has played the past two seasons. And let me just put another player on the exact, I don't know if it's the exact opposite, but just, yes, almost the exact opposite. Nico Goodrum. So, Nico Goodrum is projected for 637 plate appearances and one win. Now, because of team situation, that might slash probably is true, right?

Like, they don't have a good team. So they'll play Nico Goodrum. However, if anybody is even a league average player at the positions he plays at, or if multiple players become league average players at the positions he plays at, he won't play 637 play appearances. If the team had a better choice,

they wouldn't do it. And that's something to think about in keeper leagues. It's much more obvious. Oh, well, Nico Grudem's not that much of an asset because as the Tigers get better, he's going to get less playing time. That's an easy thing to say, right? But it's almost diametrically opposed to Shohei Otani,

who is so good and has so much talent but team situation has it that you know his particular situation has it that he's probably not going to play as often in each of each of his roles that people want so i think those are extremes to some extent, but it's very likely we're wrong on both of those. Most likely we are. But again, so I just thought this was a core concept that will help fantasy players, will help people who listen to the show who aren't fantasy players just think about playing time and what teams do. a lot of people who listen to the show who aren't fantasy players just think about playing time and what teams do and you're right to bring up the bad teams because in the case of nico goodrum he's even more complicated because he can play so many positions at least capably enough to get playing time on a bad team so you look at him at first base they had cj crone okay he's not going to play as much first base now they had jonathan scope to play second base okay he's not going

to play as much at second base now go over to Jonathan Scope to play second base. He's not going to play as much at second base now. Go over to third base. Dewell Lugo versus Nico Goodrum. Goodrum's probably a better player than Dewell Lugo, so he probably plays a lot there. At shortstop, Willie Castro versus Nico Goodrum. Kind of like Willie Castro better, if I'm being

completely honest. I don't think Goodrum's defense is really there. Maybe you can try him out in the corner outfielders too so you can put up against travis demerit and and christian stewart and you can kind of see how he's a really tough case because of how bad that team is and how passable he might be at several positions but i just look at this and i say okay what what is really going to propel us to championships and it is finding the surplus playing time from the most skilled players who are currently under projected would you agree that's a fair thing to pursue if we're trying to

win a league yeah and i hate to say it again, but I'll say the other side of the side is downside. And with Renato Nunez, you can play the same game that you play with Nico Goodrum, but it doesn't come out as good. You know, Renato Nunez is basically a DH. And so if there's anybody who comes to the four, like Rio Ruiz,

you know, and, and, and claims the playing time at third base, you know. And then let's say Austin Hayes and DJ Stewart. It's DJ, right? Yeah. Okay. And Anthony Santander. And the last guy is Dwight Smith Jr.

Uh-oh. And Trey Mancini and Chris Davis. Uh-oh. Renato Nunez projected for, let's see here, 623 play appearances, 29 homers, and a.247 average would be a great monoleague pickup. But there's some uh-oh there. But you were kind of going in a different tact. You were talking about finding guys who

were not projected for a lot of plate appearances, but could do more. Right. I think that's one area in which you'd want to very carefully vet projections. And probably the most prime example of that that a player relevant in pretty

much any fantasy league and an exciting player in real baseball would be kyle tucker kyle tucker's playing time is projected to be probably less than what he's going to get like if you look at 427 plate appearances with the fan graphs depth charts charts. If I said bet the over or under on that, and it's even money on both sides, or you've got to pay a vig, but you get the point, which side of that would you take? The over. I'm not a...

Houston Astros are going to fall apart, and they're going to be terrible this year and they're all cheaters and you know, it's, it's all going to come down on them this year. I'm not in that camp. I don't know how to describe that in a nice little zippy title. I'm not in that camp, but I do think that Josh Reddick is old and has one foot out the door.

And I do think at some point we could have some recurrence of Michael Brantley's ankle injury. And I think that is enough to open the door for Kyle Tucker. to open the door for Kyle Tucker. And, I mean, we're talking about a guy who now has played 225 games at AAA the last two seasons. He was 13% better than league average last year, 55% better than league average at his first go-around in the PCL. I mean, there's nothing left for him to prove at that level. It's easy to see even just the one-for-one.

Even if Michael Brantley were the most stable, never-injured player throughout his career, you'd look at this and say, Tucker versus Redick. They can't do what they did in 2019 again in 2020. It seems like a long shot that that would happen. Yeah, I think so. long shot that that would happen yeah i think so there are the one thing about kyle tucker though is he belongs in a heavily mined class of players which is the highly touted prospect the young player that hasn't really played yet there are also kind of veteran situations where they could get more playing time i'm i just sorted the steamer

for the depth chart projections by plate appearances and i'm kind of going through and looking at players that don't have a huge plate appearance projection but do have a good good war projection and the reason i'm doing that is is not because we play fantasy by war uh not we don't play by wins by placement, but those are good players in smaller time that could earn more playing time. And of course, the highest numbers are all catchers. But two names near the bottom, near the 500-plate appearance level that interest me this year are Alex Verdugo,

who is projected to be a two-win player, 518 plate appearances. You know, who knows if he plays in Boston or if he plays in LA. There's still a little bit of the Mookie Betts situation hanging over that head. But I think in general, he's the type of player who could play himself in the more playing time another name that shows up is brandon nemo and you know i think the mets outfield playing situation is super up in the air because you know in terms of center field like they bought jake marisnick but jake marisnick's best year was in 2017, which is not a great thing to say right now for a former Astro. J.D. Davis, not great defense. Yannis Cespedes out there. Michael Conforto, I don't think he's not my center fielder. So Nimmo seems like the kind of guy who could

maybe fake center field for a little bit. And if he can, then Marisnyk becomes more of a backup and then Nimmo can get closer to 600 plate appearances. And that's the difference between, it's not a huge difference, but it's the difference between, you know, maybe getting 20 homers and maybe getting 15 or 10 or 12 stolen bases. And, you know, with any sort of batted ball type luck, we could be talking about a guy who's going to hit 250 with a great on-base percentage, a lot of runs, and add that to sort of a 2010 season. So that's where a veteran could still push his playing time a little bit. And then there's the case where you're talking about people who are behind other people like Tommy Edmund, 490 plate appearances, 1.3 war, a situation where if Matt Carpenter is either hurt or doesn't recover to where he used to be, there's an easy place for

Edmund to play every day. Yeah. I mean, this general concept obviously applies to everybody, but there's so many different paths to use it to find players undervalued and to find players who are overvalued. The other guy that comes up, you brought up Alex Verdugo, just thinking about the Dodgers outfield and how playing time might be distributed, is A.J. Pollock. And the reason his three-year totals, go back four years, he missed almost all of 2016 with that elbow injury, and then I think he got hurt once he came back again too. When injuries are dragging down playing time year over year,

I think durability sometimes has an overcorrection that shows up in playing time projections. sometimes has an overcorrection that shows up in playing time projections. And you can't completely dismiss an injury history. But keeping in mind, if we're overcorrecting for it, we want to find opportunities to take advantage of prices that have lowered too much. And I think AJ Pollock is one of those players. I look at him and I say, okay, is he likely to go 145 or 150 games

and get into the mid-600 plate appearance range? No, that's not really likely at all. He's been under 500 every year of his big league career, except for one. But do I think he's very likely to at least hit the 450 range? He's at like 448 on depth charts. Yeah, I think that's very likely. I think there's a good chance he's in the 5 to 550 range. He's got power. He's got a little bit of speed. He's not a batting average liability,

and he plays for a good team. That to me is a clearly undervalued player in large part because his playing time projection is at least a tick on the low side. And there's also the interaction between what the replacement level looks like in your league and where that sits, right? Right. A.J. Pollock in an NL only league. Well, now you've got to have you got to spend some maybe reserve picks or some FAB money when he gets hurt, which seems somewhat inevitable. Right. And the person you're going to replace him with is likely not going to be very good. And so you may may hurt yourself in the times he's not out there. And so you may hurt yourself in the times that he's not out there. But if you're like the Dodgers, who have great internal depth and a great sort of internal replacement level, I feel, and that's like you're in a 12-team league,

then he becomes a better pick. And yet people in the 12-team league will say, ah, 250, 15 homers, bad playing time projection. He doesn't show up in my auction calculator. Well, maybe he's a really good reserve pick. Maybe he's a really good bench pick. Maybe he's a really good last outfielder if you just sort of let that last outfielder spot sit as I do mostly. You know, because when he's in, he's perfectly capable to play. And when he's out, you have a nice waiver wire to look at.

So, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if I have Pollock on some teams this year. Yeah, I just thought he was one of those guys that kind of stood out to me in a good way as an undervalued player based on low playing time expectations. And to be clear, he has the mix of devastating injuries and the kinds of things that can be more chronic in nature. So I'm not, again, I'm not trying to write off the fact that he's been hurt a lot, but I think the market, the projections, the playing time projections especially, tend to overcor correct a little bit for

players like that here's an interesting name that falls in between all of the different things we've said he's been injured he's not a prospect but he's young he's got some opportunity to be better in the future. See, I didn't say it. But he's been around long enough that the bloom has come off the rose. However, his real-life stats are better than his fantasy stats so far. There are people who think he's a bum, but the guy behind him, or the guy he's fighting with, is even more of a bum.

And he could, given 600 player appearances hit 25 homers and steal 10 bags you have any idea who i'm talking about david doll that's pretty good i am talking about an outfielder i'm talking nl central hmm and i'll think a little bit less exciting a little bit bad batting average sliding bad batting average nl central harrison bader oh well you're just like sort of ticking off my list of outfitters i like so i'll just give you this one ian hap that's that's a good one too ian hap behind he's fighting albert almora who has neither shown the defense that was supposed to float him nor has he shown any semblance of being able to be league average on offense year to year and ian hap so far the defensive numbers are okay, and in terms of what he's done offensively, you may think, oh, he's like a 230 hitter, strikes out too much. Dude's been 12% better

than league average for his career, projected to be above league average with the bat, and with the depth charts putting him in center field saying he's a scrapped center fielder. So, putting him in center field saying he's a scrapped center fielder. So, you know, I think he might will out on that one because they need someone who could be better this year. You know what I mean? That's why they picked up Jeremy Jeffress and Steven Sozi Jr. They need anybody that could be better next year because they're kind of nearing the end of their window.

They're nearing the end of the – all their players are kind of past, you know, 25, 26 and are most likely going to be worse going forward. And so Hap is just one of the few at 25, having not gotten really a full blow of a season that, you know, you could look up and see 600 play opinions in the year and, you know, You could look up and see 600 play opinions in the year and 25-plus homers and 10-plus steals. And these days, like a 240 average, I don't think hurts as much as it used to. Yeah, I think at least in his case, the plate appearance projection I see

is kind of in line with what I think could be realistic. DepthCharts has 483, but that makes him a 21 homer, 7 steal guy. With a good OBP, kind of a low average projection in the high 230s. I think he could maybe beat that. We did see the K rate come down a lot last season from Ian Happ. Definitely a guy that's in a mixed league, like a free endgame sort of play. NL only league is probably a a five to $7 player,

depending on when he gets nominated. Yeah. It's a good player. Yeah. But sometimes this happens like the, the prospect luster fades, you know, a year or two passes,

a player might bounce up and down between triple a and the big leagues. I think it came up on our last episode we were talking about brendan mckay and how he gets dinged because he came up and got knocked around a little bit in the big leagues and the price and perception of brendan mckay would be different had he not debuted for the raise last year like i can almost guarantee if he continued to tear up AAA, never came up, people would pay more for him in drafts right now than they're paying for him having come up and struggled a bit in the big leagues last season.

Yeah, the bloom has come off the rose. That's kind of where I sit with Ian Happ. There's definitely people who thought he was going to be great, and he's maybe not going to be great, but there's a very real possibility he's better than his projections. The pitching side, just thinking about some surprisingly high innings totals and where I feel like critical thinking would be particularly important, it comes with Hingen Ryu.

I think pitcher injuries are a little different than hitter injuries, and with Ryu we've got some pretty nasty arm injuries in his history. with Hingen Ryu, I think pitcher injuries are a little different than hitter injuries. And with Ryu, we've got some pretty nasty arm injuries in his history. We have a lot of seasons with smaller workloads for a starter, even though the quality of his innings has generally been very good throughout his time in the big leagues. To see 186 innings next to his name, which would be even a little more than what he did last season with the Dodgers, be his highest total since his first year when he got to 192 back in 2013, I just can't buy that. I can't look at that and say that's right. Jin Ryu, you go in knowing that 145 to 150 is probably your fair middle-of-the-road workload

expectation. If you get more than that, fantastic. But I think if you expect 180, 186, you're going to be disappointed. Yeah, and I would have had him higher in my rankings. I'm currently trying to Yeah, and I would have had him higher in my rankings. I'm currently trying to perfect that, except for that he's kind of extreme on the innings front. Another one that's a little bit like him is Charlie Morton is projected for 195 innings, and that would be a career high. And that would be a year after he had 194 in two-thirds innings, which was a career high. So, you know, the flip side is that it's really hard to predict pitcher injury.

And no one's been really great at it. In fact, I think I saw a tweet, I forget who did it, but someone was asking, you know, a player has just thrown three 200-inning seasons in a row. In this season, does that make him more likely to throw 200 innings because he's shown that he's durable? Or is it B, he's had a lot of innings on his arms, and he's less likely to throw 200 this year? And I think we've even seen it with play with position players where they you know they play you know full seasons year after

year every year and then all of a sudden they break apart and that's why we're having more sort of load management and sitting people when they're healthy and trying to stay out in front of this stuff um but at the same time i also look at the leaderboards and see people like Justin Verlander, you know, old players near the top and think, man, are we sure that durability is not a skill? You know? Lastly, I want to say something about how the depth charts are done at Fangraph since I used to be a part of that team. And there's sort of two things you have to do to get it right. And the way the system is set up maybe doesn't necessarily set you up for success when it comes to innings pitch. So the way that you kind of assign innings on a staff is like a percentage. So you say Justin Verlander is going to get like

17% of the starters innings for the Astros. And the way, the reason that is, is it's a smart thing because there's only going to be a finite number of innings that the Astros are going to throw. And so if you do it by percentage, you can kind of just avoid anybody sort of adding up something ridiculous like 1,200 innings from their starters. You just do a percentage. You take the innings that you would give to every team. You pull it out, and then Justin Verlander is projected for 217 innings. Boom. Done. Great. I like that.

And I'm not necessarily saying it's the wrong way to do it. The problem is that you're not necessarily thinking about injury when you're doing that. You're kind of thinking, oh, Justin Verlander is one of their best pitchers. He's going to pitch. Then when you get down to like the fifth one, you say, oh, you know,

Brad Peacock may start a little, may relieve a little. I'm going to give him this percentage. You don't necessarily think, oh, well you have to, you have to kind of take that second leap and say, okay, now I've decided who's good and who's going to play, which is the number one thing you do in depth charts to be like, who's good and who's going to play and assign the right innings and stuff. You have to take that second leap and be like, oh, he's also going to be injured a lot, which means his other guy's going to play more and he's going to play less. So it's a,

you know, I think they're getting better at it and more and more of that happens, but that's why Ryu and Morton might flip through the tracks. And then if you're, if you're, you know, a strict, what have people proven in terms of injury projection?

If you're a depth chart person, who's like, I've read, you know, what's out there, and I don't think people are very good at projecting injury year to year, then you might say, hey, Ryu's just as likely to throw this many innings as any other pitcher, because we're not very good at predicting injury, which is a defensible stance. However, it doesn't seem to

line up necessarily with how players work. I doubt Charlie Morton throws 195 innings this year. Right. I mean, possible? Sure. Anything's possible. But likely? Probably not.

Here's the other kind of part of this question. That was Ariel Cohen's tweet, by the way. I saw that one too. There it is, yeah. The pitcher has thrown 200 innings for five consecutive seasons. Do you say, A, that pitcher is consistent, good chance he does it again, or B, that pitcher has a lot of mileage? It went 75%.

He's going to do it again. There's an A, chance he does it again. 25% we're on, chance he breaks down. And then Rob Silver replies, neither. The write-ins are important. But no it's it's just funny i think we we just choose instead of looking at the data in the case like that most people are just going to say well i feel like it's this or i feel like it's that and they just believe that they say oh well a thousand things in five years is a lot i'm going to stay away from that picture. That's too much.

That's their philosophy. I think I come down. I'm on the sort of Chris List side of things where I've heard him talk about we are internalizing the decisions. We know all the information, and we can be a computer, and we can decide things. And it's fine to just use your brain and think, this is what I think, and go that way. And I think that's true because if we were all strict projectionists, auctions would be boring. It would only come down to injury. And I don't think that the strict projectionists win every year. The way that I do my pitching ranks, the first thing I do is I go through and I just look at the names and I kind

of throw like a 10, a 20, a 30, 40, 50, 60 on it. I put them into basically tiers of 10. And that's the first run through where I just throw them all on there. And yes, I'm using projected auction value. I'm using stuff data. I'm using command data. I'm looking at all those things. I'm thinking about injury concern. Boom, throw a number on there. Then I sort them.

I've got them all in place. And then I do one more thing where I just look at two or three players in an area and I go, should they be near each other? Or should I bump one down like 10? And then I do one more pass where I go, should they be near each other? Or should I bump one down like 10? And then I do one more pass where I say, okay, these two players pick one, these two players pick one, these two players pick one. And then I do one last thing where it's like, you know, where I just sort of generally go through it and say, okay, you know, does this look reasonable? Um, so I, and, and I think that there is an

opportunity to, to do better, uh, than, you know, to do better than what's out there. So Mike fires 191 innings, uh, projected to be below average pitcher. Um, the athletics, if everyone's healthy and everyone's going well, go, you know, in terms of talent, something like, let's just throw Montas, Lizardo, and Puck all together, and then drop down to kind of Mania Bassett, and then I would put Fires in terms of true talent, probably somewhere between Bassett and Mengden.

So there's also a chance where a fully healthy Fiers does not throw 191 innings. Right, and they got guys that aren't even on the major league depth chart right now who aren't far away. We were talking about Dalton Jeffries, right? Dalton Jeffries, yeah. Those guys could push their way up too.

So the A's have a ton of ways to have Mike Fiers hit the under on that projection, even if he's healthy and then, you know, injuries can obviously derail something like that too. But again, it's not, this isn't a conversation based on Mike Fiers because he's interesting for

fantasy purposes. It's more just thinking about, okay, where'd that number come from and why might it be wrong? And there are a lot of reasons why that number can be wrong in his case. It's a fun exercise. It could go on forever. But in more practical applications, just talking about some actual players that we like because of how playing time works,

because of how playing time works. I think in the early rounds, there's a corner infielder who I'm higher on the most, also happens to be an Oakland A, and it's Matt Chapman. And a lot of times when we look at playing time from previous years, we are careful to not just keep buying at the very, very high end of the totals. Last season, we saw 670 plate appearances from Chapman. He had 616 in 2018. The depth charts have him right there at 672 again. And I think he presents this interesting challenge for us to think about.

It's like when we have an elite defender who a team has minimal incentive to not put in the lineup on any given day, we do have a path to the extreme heavy workload. A lot of those players are five-category superstars, or at least four-category superstars in fantasy baseball. I think Matt Chapman's just one notch below that level. He's an early-round guy. He's a very good player. And I still think there's a little bit more he can do with the bat, mostly in terms of batting average. Just look at the way

his whole profile fits together. And I don't see a guy hitting 249. If his average goes up, the OBP goes up. If the OBP goes up know those runs get up even higher than the 102 we saw last year potentially um so he's just the kind of guy that pops into my head as but like safe relative to a high playing time projection because of extraordinary talent there's also just the fact that like he got really close to 700 and if if you look at the players that got to 700 plate appearances, as a group, they averaged, you know, like 625 to 640 the next year. He's really close to that just peak playing time

where there's nowhere to go but down. So I feel comfortable, you know, with the sort of 650 projections that ATC and Steamer do because that allows for him to miss some time, not much time, and allows for some of the projected improvement in terms of batting average and stuff to kind of counsel each other out. And I think he's very likely to have a very similar season to last year.

He's 26 years old. He's right in his peak. This is the year they need to do it. He's an extreme competitor. But I think I tend to agree with you that this is also a team that's going to be playing a lot of shenanigans with playing time elsewhere. They're going to be playing Mark Kanha, Robbie Grossman, Laureano, Stephen Piscotty, and maybe Chad Pinder in the outfield. So that's like five, six guys in the outfield.

They may keep three second basemen going into the season with Barreto out of options, Sheldon Noisy being maybe slightly more in favor by some parts of the organization, and then Tony Kemp being acquired, and just kind of throwing the spaghetti at the wall when it comes to second base. And if they throw the spaghetti at the wall at second base and they're keeping nine outfielders in second baseman, they kind of need Matt Chapman to play every day even with the extra roster spot that's still a lot for for matt chapman but i think we do have these uh these ideas about teams the a's have been one for a long time they were probably the first team to really embrace platooning uh at a modern

level the rays have it too we've talked about them at some point in not so distant past where brace platooning at a modern level. The Rays have it too. We've talked about them at some point in the not-so-distant past where you get kind of spooked looking at the teams that have all these moving parts because most of those moving parts, while they're very good on a per-plate appearance basis, they're going to be out of the lineup maybe two and sometimes three times in a week.

You're playing four or five games instead of six or seven that starts to add up over the course of the year um chapman's a guy on a team like that who just doesn't have those rules applying for a pretty concrete reason yeah i mean semien had 747 plate appearances last year after 703 the year before. And I mentioned that because he had 386 the year before. So, you know, when does the playing time add up? When does the, oh, he's thrown 200 innings for five seasons in a row. Does that change your poll results? You know what I mean? You know, how many times can a guy hit that 700 plate appearance mark and keep it going. So I would assume that Mark Simeon takes a fairly large tumble off of that 747. And the 747 plate appearance he's had last year, it's partly due to what we were talking about.

You can't platoon at every position. So the A's can platoon at a lot of positions, but they can't platoon at every position. You can minus Steven Piscotty's numbers because there's so much going on in that outfield, but you shouldn't minus Marcus Simeon unless this is all going to add up and lead to injury. And a lot of what he did last year, the 33 homers, yes, that was a big improvement in ISO, but if you look at him sort of ISO versus the league average, it's a little bit smaller of a leap and then a lot of his you know value in in leagues was the 123 runs and 92 rbi which are going to

come down if he doesn't have 747 plate appearances so i mean no i know he got moved to the top of the order uh but he played 162 last year after 159 the year before i just think they're going to give him a blow. And the way that blow is going to come is from all the second basemen they have. Barreto, at least, can play short. And if Jorge Mateo makes the team, he can play short. So they're probably going to pick somebody that can... Barreto's probably going to make the team because he can play short.

Yeah, I think that gives them a little more flexibility on the roster that they didn't have. The key there, I'm glad you touched on it, is that he did because of performance. He was drawing more walks and getting on base at a career high clip. That propelled him to the top of the order. He ended up in a spot that in previous

years he just simply didn't reach. If you look back at Marcus Simeon, know 2016 he played 159 games and 621 plate appearances but he opened that season batting ninth and spent most of the year in a low spot in the batting order he was in the bottom third of the order for more than half the games that year so I think you you can also find high volume players again mostly because of defense who take a skill step forward and in some cases that alone just drives them to the top of the order in other cases they need something else to happen an injury to a table setter or

a player to leave in the offseason to be a free agency to open that door but that can also really just fuel a new level in five by five leagues i've got uh some names for you because this deserves some names i think i wanted to i just used the fangrass slits per leaderboard and drew up the uh the leaders in batting seventh eighth and ninth i just all seventh eighth and ninth hitters umters. And I just did a plate appearance to sort. And now, again, this is less than scientific. It's just my brain here. But there are some names that leap off this page. Victor Robles batted seventh through ninth last year.

We've talked about this before. Willie Adamas. That team has a lot of moving parts. But if Willie Adamas takes any step forward, I think he could get out of that seventh, eighth 9th spot where you lose plate appearances. Harrison Bader is down there. Michael Franco, I'm not 100% in on that, but on that Royals team is probably going to get out of the 7th, 8th, 9th spot.

It's probably going to adversely affect his walk rate because he had a lot of intentional walks. There's a little bit of a give and take there but i could see i could see michael franco getting out of the bottom three um i don't know if anybody else sort of leaps off of this byron buxton i guess but that's a pretty loaded lineup i think he's probably going to stay down there but man if he did like just just think about it like if byron buxton ended up becoming the twins leadoff man with that lineup around him he could have that sort of simian leap with the counting stats obviously something else is happening with him performance wise that leads the twins to go down that path also. So there's skills growth and there's playing time growth.

And, of course, he meets the criteria as an excellent defender. So he's in the lineup every day anyway. That's not going to go away. It's only a matter of health for him. Yeah, like Lily Adamas is going to play every day for the same reason that Marcus Simeon played every day, which is that you can't platoon everywhere in Tampa. It's a very similar situation there. Yeah, Adame, I mean, a lot of times it is,

it happens to be players who play shortstop because they're just the best option defensively at the position. Anderson Simmons is the kind of guy that, I don't know if the skills at this point are really at a point where you could look at him and say, oh, there's more there. I don't think that's the case with Andrelton Simmons. But he's an accumulator who is probably underpriced coming off of a season in which he missed a lot of time with an injury. So I'm back in on a player like that. But I like this list that you pulled up because there are some younger players in there who aren't necessarily finished products.

I said I don't want to use the word upside. So we're going to use every other word in the we're going to use all the other words that try and describe that but with so so here's what i mean so victor robles in in the sense you can fairly say victor robles has upside but if you leave it at that i just don't think you've really described what yeah he could be and it's also that's my contention it's also but yeah i like how you're saying it's vague. What is it based on? Is it based on the fact that you want to take his buns out of his exit velocity and that's going to make him better? Or is it based on the fact that he's going to be in the top of the lineup

instead of the bottom of the lineup? Do you see some skills growth in his plate discipline? That sort of stuff. It's better to be more precise about where that's coming from, where the improvement's coming from, especially since we then, you know, as listeners and as other analysts, we can say, oh, well, I don't buy that, you know. No, I see the Nationals lineup as having a fairly solid top and he's going to be in the bottom. Or even if you take the bunts out, he still doesn't have great exit velocity. Or, you know, I don't see his plate discipline getting that much better

at his age, but there I really disagree. He's 22. I think he's going to really improve both his walks, his strikeouts, and his power next year. He's 22. This is one of the few places where you might actually improve. So, yeah, I think Robles is a fun one. And Damas did really well for his age. He last year was 24, coming into the league, first time really playing every day, 20 homers, four stolen bases, nearly league average offense. He's going to play every day again.

And all the projected systems, he's going to fall off in power. What if he doesn't? If he doesn't, then next year, he gets 620, 650 plate appearances, hits 25 homers, steals seven bases, hits 260. Bam, that's your quote-unquote upside. Yeah, if you had to try and find a shortstop who is this year's Marcus Simeon, it's always a fun exercise, trying to find the next one. Adonis is pretty close. Yeah, he's that sort of profile. You can see that growth slowly happening.

Willie Adames, I've talked about this for a few years, he's the type of prospect who does not get the hype that the Victor Robles, Byron Buxton, the guys that pop up at the very top of prospect who does not get the hype that the Victor Robles, Byron Buxton, the guys that pop up at the very top of prospect lists, they get hype. They get driven up in price and redraft leagues. The guys that are just better than league average at a advanced age at every

stop that do everything well, but have nothing that pops off the page. When you look at their statistical profile, like those guys just don't command that sort of hype, but they still bring a ton. And you, you see that reflected in the scouting grades. Now I know part of what makes Willie Adam is a future value 60 player in the

eyes of a talent evaluator is his arm and his defense like that's part of it but there's projectability you can even see it side by side you know present versus future hit tool power raw power everything across the board is at least average and a good player i have a perfect name to put up against it he has 160 tool right throws right now on this list of young players that batted more than 300 times in the bottom of the order is ahmed rosario and i think even with as flawed of work that as ahmed rosario put in his first two years there was more excitement about him and he's got a 60 hit tool, future 60 hit tool, 60 speed,

60 fields, 60 throws. They all, they, they end up very close to each other in terms of expected future value anyway. Um, but I think there are more people hyping Rosario as an improvement this

year. Um, and maybe rightfully so he steals more bags. So he's going to, if steals more bags, so if he does kind of improve, then he's going to be more valuable. But he's also going to cost more because people are more excited about him. Right. The gap between those two players is more narrow than perception

or the conversation about them. I think that's a very fair way to look at them them it's not saying abed rosario is not interesting it's more saying willie adames is more interesting than his adp would lead you to believe yeah exactly but i did want to throw rosario on there because that's another interesting name that's on this list i haven't ever really uh pulled up this list before but it it is exactly another kind of... It's right. It's another corollary to this play appearance thing that we're talking about, this playing time thing.

It's a way to get more playing time. Yeah. I mean, again, it sometimes requires skills growth and something else. Other times, it just requires some skills growth and the team makes the adjustment along the way. Last kind of question, semi-related to this. Do you think we, not you and I, but just people, the fantasy baseball community in general,

is better at projecting skills or projecting playing time? Or do you think we're more accurate? I think we're better at skills. We do more research on skills. We look at which skills, which stats are sticky year to year, which become useful quicker. We do that sort of analysis. I haven't seen a lot. that involved playing time, it was when someone was taking two projection systems and battling them, kind of saying, you know, the battle of projection system, who wins? And one of the findings that I saw in that piece was that the biggest difference was playing time. And this was described to me by a person who's now in AGM on a major league team saying, person who's now in AGM on a major league team saying even the test is flawed when you test these projection systems because let's say Paul DeJong let's say I'm projecting Paul DeJong

you know my projection system is going to say he's this good so therefore he should play and it's better for me to say he's either really good and he's going to play and get this many plate appearances and then get into the test or if he's he's going to be really bad and not get into the test and then i can't lose on paul de young am i explaining that you know what i'm saying like either he's in and i projected him well and he's in the sample that we test or he didn't get enough plate appearances to get into the test because he was bad and therefore I'm incentivized to kind of you know really tank the plate appearances on anybody who's below average so that they get out of the test and then really kind of inflate the plate appearances on anybody I think is any

good so they get into the test. So basically what this guy was telling me was that anytime you test projection systems on some level, you're just testing the playing time. That's a really interesting way to think about it. But yeah, I mean, I think that I hope I described it right. But that's how I understood it. Yeah, I think that supports kind of the main point we're trying to make on this episode, though, is that playing time is very important. And you have to look very carefully at the numbers in front of you because there are opportunities to both lose value but also to gain value on players if you are making the right adjustments on your own. Yeah. gain value on players if you are making the right adjustments on your own yeah let's wrap things up with our beer of the month segment i realize now that we're on this uh earlier twice a week

recording schedule that uh opening a beer at what will usually be around 10 30 a.m pacific time on a thursday is probably uh not gonna happen All right. So here's the cue. Insert opening beer sound here. We'll have to use that one from the past. But yeah, I'm not going to be drinking at 10 o'clock. I've got too much to do. Maybe on Super Bowl Sunday. But that doesn't mean I couldn't try some beers leading up to this.

I think that's a nice little thing about making this a monthly thing, too, is we have a little bit more time to think about it. We have a little more time to sample. It's not just, hey, you know, a lot of times when we used to, you know, do the late one, I would say, hey, wait a second. We're all ready. Let me run to the beer fridge and just find something. Oh, beer of the week.

just find something oh beer of the week so uh this one i thought about a little bit longer and um what i thought i would uh highlight is and i've talked about you know sour ipas before but i wanted to bring it up again because what's happened now is we're taking the New England IPA and we're doing sour IPAs, which I think is a fascinating kind of combo style. I always liked sour IPAs because I've said this before, what it does is it allows you to taste the hops really in a way where you're like, oh, now I know what Galaxy tastes like. You know, now I know what Galaxy, now I know what Mosaic tastes like.

Because you don't have as much of the malt. You don't have as much of that other stuff. You know, sours are generally crisper and cleaner. And so you throw in that sour thing. You throw in that hops thing and you can, oh, I know what that hops tastes like. So that's why when Almanac came out with their first suite of hoppy sours, I've been recommending those forever.

If you can find an Almanac hoppy sour, it's still a great decision to make. But I had this rare barrel hoppy sour called, IPA sour, called the Rill Rill. And it looks a little disgusting. It's a little bit kind of in that kind of almost ody looking like kind of white, orange juice kind of look. But it smelled just huge, just so much galaxy, just so much sort of stone fruit, just a great smell. And then it was interesting to me, too, that with the NE IPA, we've gone away from bitter IPAs,

but sometimes the beers can get cloying and thick, and I call them chewy, and you don't have a way to sort of finish off the taste and crisp it up like you used to when you had the bitter IPAs. But with sour, you can kind of bring that back in. The sour becomes the thing that cleans it up and makes you want to take another taste. So what I would say is I found this beer sort of crisp, tart, refreshing in a way that I wouldn't say about other Northeast IPAs. So if you can't get Real Real, I understand. It's a rare barrel, doesn't have much distribution. It wasn't a can,

so maybe you're going to see it around California, but they don't have great distribution. I wanted to big up Crooked Stave, has a good sour IPA. Almanac has a good sour IPA. The Veil, if you're in the Northeast. Stillwater. Cloudwater in England even.

So there's a bunch of good ones. There's a piece on Vinepear that said that the ones from Hudson Valley, of course, very good. And Six Point, which is a little bit more easy to find. Six Point is out there. But the ones from Hudson Valley, of course, very good. And Six Point, which is a little bit more easy to find. Six Point is out there. They've got one called Party Piñata, which you might be able to find.

So there's your list of some interesting sour IPAs. I think it's a cool thing. I think it's cool that it's come back around now with the Northeast IPA. And now we've got these hazy sour IPAs. Some people make fun of them because it's like, Jesus, we're just going to combine everything now. But I found it fun and new. Yeah, I think the last sour IPA I had was maybe one that I used for a beer of the week during the summer, the Raspberry Guava Sour IPA from Drecker Brewing Company in, oh boy, one of the Dakotas. I don't mean to combine the Dakotas into one state. You're a Dakotaist.

It's from Fargo. That's where it's from. Nevertheless, it was really good, but it was unique. I mean, there's not a lot out there like it and i think for some people like a sour is just a little bit too much i think the sour ipa might actually work for them yeah there's a chance that that sort of uh a sour doesn't burn your mouth but it definitely does something to your palate that makes people uncomfortable. I'm trying to describe what exactly that is. I like that. It's kind of like that pucker

feeling you get from sour candy, but I think the sour IPA mellows that out a little bit without completely throwing away the tart quality. Yeah. And the body of an NEIPA also reduces the acidity, I think, that you get overall. Sometimes when you get just sort of a real fizzy... Oh, man, there was one that did these really fizzy, really sour...

Sours in a can that was in the Midwest. I forget what they're called. Anyway... Bastille? Huh? Bastille? Yes, yes, yes. Anyway. Destiel? Huh? Destiel? Yes, yes, yes.

Nice. Yeah, those are intense. Those are just like you feel like your enamel is coming off your teeth. Yeah, no, that's like you just took a handful of Sour Patch Kids and just shoved as many in your mouth as you could and held on to them until they were no longer sour. That's the intensity of those beers. Some people get heartburn from beers like that.

I don't get a lot of heartburn from anything. That sour was giving me a heartburn. And I did talk to a doctor about it. They said, yeah, I mean, if you put something super acidic down, then you're changing the acidity level. And those are super acidic. Yes. Yeah.

I agree with you. These aren't as acidic. They have a nice body and that body i think uh cleans or not cleans up but sort of balances it out and makes it more like a a thick tart hoppy haferweizen i mean i don't know how to describe in any ipa anymore but you know sort of i mean the the juicy quality of of the hazy IPA is still probably the most prominent. Yeah. My beer of the month selection was a regular hazy.

It was M43 from Old Nation Brewing in Michigan. Their distribution, I think, is still pretty limited. I get it once a year. I go home for Christmas to see family. It's always on the shelves. It's always fresh, too. a year. I go home for Christmas to see family and it's always on the shelves. It's always fresh too. They must

be selling a ton of it everywhere I go because I don't think I've ever bought it even from just a regular grocery store where it's more than a week old. It's just really nice to have good fresh hazies readily available. They had a double at one point

called Boss Tweed. I didn't see that this year. That was also really good but i mean all the all the prototypical qualities of a really good hazy that normally are from the coast you get those now here in the midwest m43 probably as good as any hazy i've had around here do you count king sue as a hazy you know does it qualify Yeah, there's this weird one, but it kind of is one. There's this weird, like the ones that led the way are so old school that they definitely not like these oat based. I'm pretty sure I do not like oat based hazy IPAs. Like if it says oats on the label, I don't want to buy it anymore.

Like I just, I think it tastes like oat water. It just, I don't know what, they anymore like i just i think it tastes like oat water it just i don't know what it they're hitting me the wrong way right now and i even had one from monkish which everyone loves and i was just like oats man oats i do not dig it where i was starting i was thinking about something else so you were saying oh the old ones the old ones king sue qualifies like it technically qualifies but it doesn't pop into my head when you say hazy IPA. I think they didn't take some of these shortcuts. I think they didn't do the flour.

There are people using pizza yeast and pizza flour and shit. I'm sorry. I think we're allowed to do that. Anyway, there were people taking these shortcuts where they're putting oats in and they're putting flour and all that stuff. The first hazy IPAs just had sediment and like tired i think there was used kind of a tired yeast that didn't clean it all up and so what you got was heady topper you know where they say don't pour it out of the can because they didn't want you to see how hazy it was and and soon... Well, yeah.

Before its time, like Hattie Topper was before its time. The first hazy IPA. But now, if I pour out a hazy IPA into a glass

and I can't see through it at all, that's a good thing. I want almost a sludgy look to my hazy IPAs. Yeah, and they used to tell you

not to drink it out of the can. Don't pour it out. Yeah. I mean, sometimes you get some gunk from the bottom of the can that comes out and that's not pretty, but that's just part of the process. You're just going to get that. As long as it doesn't explode in your hand.

Yeah, exactly. So, Kingsue, if we're going to count that as a hazy, because it is a double New England IPA, King Sioux would be the best in the Midwest, but M43 right there in the same sort of conversation. I think they did that good of Lansing. Definitely one that if I time it out right, if I can go to Michigan before a trip to Florida or Arizona or something, I'll bring some along because it's definitely worth sharing. As always, you can reach us via email, ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com if you want to get in touch with us that way. Of course, on Twitter, he's at Eno Saris.

I'm at Derek Van Ryper. As I mentioned at the top, several other great pods launching next week here at The Athletic. Several others already underway. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you with Pitcher Week next Tuesday. Thanks for listening. Thank you.