Rates & Barrels - Opportunity for Cristian Javier, Hard-Hit Surprises & Another Eloy Injury

Episode Date: April 25, 2022

Eno and DVR discuss their weekend roster churn -- including another low-cost closer dart in the wake of a poor outing Sunday -- early hard-hit rate surprises, another major injury for Eloy Jiménez, whether the ball has historically been in a state of flux, and more.  Rundown - Taking a Chance on Tanner Scott in the Face of a Sunday Meltdown - Cristian Javier Moves Back Into the Houston Rotation - Early Hard-Hit Ball Leaders - Admiration of the Yankees' Pitching Depth - Keeping the Faith in Brandon Marsh (& Christian Yelich) - Has the Ball Always Been Fluctuating? - Micro Decisions: Daily League Lineups - Opportunities in the White Sox's Lineup with Injuries Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first six months: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Watch the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Monday, April 25th. Derek Van Ryper, Inoceros here with you on this episode. We recap the weekend, talk about a few players that were added, a few players that were dropped, what we expect for those players going forward. We're also going to take a look at early hard hit rates and try and find some players with some shifting values, focusing mostly on players going in the right direction. Also a couple opportunities with the White Sox as injuries are piling up yet again.

Unfortunately, Eloy Jimenez, the latest White Sox player to go down with a significant injury. We got a question about the ball. We got a question about micro decisions. And maybe even, if we have time, a question about the value of foul balls. So, a lot to get to. Eno, how was your weekend?

I was good. We finished the last birthday party for the 10-year-old. But it was cool. It's changed now. All we had to do was put them in front of the video games. Okay, well that's pretty easy. So you had multiple parties. Family and friends, that kind of thing. Exactly. But the new version of what he wants for his kid parties is way easier. We just bought some Mondo and uh had a cake and

they played video games so i was cool with that that's much easier party to throw you need to put on a giraffe suit or something and dress up do that kind of stuff you ever have to do that you have to do the like dress up as a character thing as a parent? I never did that, no. We usually had to have more sort of activities planned. Like, we're going to do this soccer thing, and we're going to do this thing, and we're going to do this thing. We're going to explore a cave.

Yeah. No, that's probably not it, but things like that. Let's go see how beer is made. Let's go to a brewery. Oh, that's coming up. That's more like how beer is made. Let's go to a brewery. That's coming up. That's more like Eno's birthday, I think. I think I know how this works, but I'd love

to see it again. Moving on. Let's talk about big moves that were made this weekend. I got deked by the weather on Sunday. I had a nice day at the beach, but it was a little cold, a little windy, but still nice to get out there and just get a break from the normal. Northern California, baby. I'm still searching for a hot beach. I think in Northern California, they basically don't exist.

You've got to go to Southern California for the hot beaches. And even there, they're probably cooler than you'd expect. But we move on to some big moves from the weekend. I found myself with a lot of Tanner Scott on my rosters this morning, and I think I can trace it back to his worst outing of the season occurring on Sunday afternoon before Fab ran. Anthony Bender dealing with a day-to-day hip injury right now. I was looking at Scott in the pitching model. His numbers actually pop. I've seen Scott pitch before. He throws really hard. He's one of those guys that you don't really believe the ratios

could be as bad as they are when you're actually watching him pitch. That being said, there are other players like him. It is bad command. It is bad command. It's probably like a Jose Alvarado sort of profile where you just look at him and go, oh, hey. Throw hard, good stuff. It should work. No ideas.

And it doesn't necessarily work. So the reason I still kept with it, picked him up all these places, because I think that Marlin situation is very unsettled. But I do think it's one where Don Mattingly has hinted multiple times at wanting to find one closer. And if Tanner Scott just hadn't even pitched on Sunday, I don't think those 3% bids would have won. I think other people would have swooped in and got them for 5%, 6%, 7%. And I'd be sitting here wondering what I'm doing for saves. So basically, it's a free peek for me. It's a free look at what the Marlins do for an entire week with their saves.

If Bender's healthy, if Scott's pitching the seventh inning or whatever it might be, maybe he's a drop again next weekend. But I'm finding that I'm willing to take chances on relievers in this situation at this lower price as opposed to the, hey, he got two saves in the last three days and now I'm throwing 18% of my budget on a guy that still might be part of a committee. I saw Matt Barnes get scooped up in a bunch of leagues again this weekend and I don't want to play that game at that price

even though I know this game leads to a lot of churn on the roster. Yeah, it's true. What's strange for me is that Anthony Bender has lost so much off of his stuff metric. He was over 120 last year, and he's barely above 100 right now, which for a reliever is below average. But you can see that it's possibly true,

because even though his velo is actually up uh if you look at his swinging strike rate it's much worse than last year he had 11 last year 11.4 and now it's 7.4 so something is missing on his stuff and i think that that makes tanner scott like a a great uh potential guy to jump in there and just take over. I think I might have bought more Tanner Scott if I hadn't gone pretty hard on Josh Stomont the last weekend. And I feel that in Stomont, I kind of have a closer. So I didn't want to drop Stomont for him. And I've been scrambling so much for innings

that I no longer have a place on my bench dedicated to trolling for saves. So I guess that's good news. It means I mostly have three closers in all my leagues. They're not great closers, but they're my closers. Yeah, the other guy that was getting picked up again this week, started to get picked up last week, is Danny Jimenez in Oakland. And Lou Trevino was out, I believe, on the COVID IL over the last week or so. And Jimenez had a save converted,

I think even prior to Trevino missing some time. So on days when Trevino just isn't available because of usage, it looks like Jimenez is at least the next guy up, but I'm wondering how you compare Jimenez to some of the other lower end relievers that people have been rostering over the first few weeks of the season. I'm not that into Jimenez or Trevino. Trevino's stuff has ticked up a little bit this season,

but he's showing poor command. I do think he'll take the job back when he comes back. Jimenez has below-average stuff, which is really below average for relievers because relievers usually have about 105 to 106 stuff plus. So I don't, and just watching Trevino, it's not just the model. Like just watching Trevino,

I haven't had that much faith in him. What were the other questions? Yeah, just how does he stack up to the other relievers people have been holding? Emilio Pagan, I think, is clearly better than Jimenez right now because it looks like what i'm saying like pagan is wrestling the larger share of twin saves away from the rest of the bullpen even if he's not the standalone guy so i i looked at jimenez as being just a tick below scott

relying heavily on stuff and pushing against opportunity, expecting Trevino to come back and get most of those chances. I just saw a slightly better path for Scott to emerge to be the guy. And this is the game we're playing each and every week right now. But I'd rather play it at this price. The thing I keep emphasizing is 2% to 3% of my budget, no big deal. I mess up, I move on the next week. 10%, 15%, 20% of my budget, I mess up. That's the next week 10 15 20 of my budget i mess up that's gonna cost me a lot more laying around when i'm trying to make improvements late in the year yeah uh you know

i try to buy my closers uh for less than uh 10 percent um i went to about 11 on stonewall just because i've liked him for so long and it just seemed like with Scott Barlow's stuff being down that there was a real opportunity there. They seem to prefer a single closer there. Usually I've tried to buy my potential closers for

more like 5% of my free agency auction money. That's worked in the past. That's how I got a fair share. I got a couple shares of Pagan. I really felt almost like I was price enforcing. I wasn't that into him,

but I was like, I will throw 25 bucks out there to see if I can get him. So I think you just have to stay active. The one thing that I have noticed is I've done my work and I've gotten to the point where I've got the three closers but all the leagues where I did make sure I got Romano I feel a lot better about my

closers than the leagues where I didn't make that jump and somebody like Gallegos or Kimbrel is my number one closer so in those leagues I just feel like, I got to my three closers, but people are going to be beating me with Hayter and Romano and them. There's still a difference. I'm getting my saves, and it'll be fine, hopefully, but there's still a difference. They're getting more strikeouts than I am. Their ratios are better from their closers. So having a little bit of FOMO when it comes to maybe spending

a little bit more on relievers. I'm looking at so many of my teams and I have these amazing offenses and these dreadful pitching staffs. And it's definitely in leagues where I didn't invest in early closers, but they're not the ones completely blowing up my ratios either.

Like there are some misfires in that mid-pack group of starting pitching for me early that I need those guys to get back on track. If those teams are going to actually win the league, which they've got an offense that could win the league, that's, I think, apparent right away from the jump. The pitching has to come together. And one solution in more shallow leagues where he was available

might be Christian Javier. He's moving back into the rotation for the Astros. The first start of the season comes, I think, Wednesday against the Rangers. It's a nice matchup. The only real concern you'd have there is the last time he pitched, he threw about 55 pitches, so it's hard to imagine he's going to throw much more than 70 or 75 in that outing against the Rangers. But skills look really good out of the pen right now. It's been eight and a third scoreless innings for Javier, a 12 to one strikeout to walk ratio. We saw 130 Ks and 101 and a third innings last year,

split mostly between the bullpen and the rotation. Is there a reason it could be different this time around for Christian Javier? Because the last time we saw him get extensive run as a starter was back in the pandemic shortened 2020 season when he gave us a 348 ERA and a 0.99 whip you know there's a case we made it could be better uh because you know everything that he was doing before he's doing the same in terms of you know the action on his pitches and his and his and you know just the different physical properties of his pitches but he's putting them in better locations. I mean, the location plus data matches up

with the one walk per nine that he's done so far. And if he combines that stuff that he had before with improved command, he could even be better because he had a home run problem. He had a walk problem last year, and he still was so good. I was looking to see, like, maybe when he went to the pen the pen he stopped throwing his secondary pitches but he's mostly a fastball slider guy either in the pen or in the starting rotation um you know he just used the curve and change uh when he needs to to kind of get further into games so i'm full bore into this i i'm glad

that they managed to get him to 100, 110 innings last season. I think he can throw 130 innings, and I think that he's in it for good. I guess there's some question when Lance McCullers comes back, but I think at that point they'd be lucky to have five healthy guys anyway. I think javier ends up with another 120 innings 130 innings this year yeah i mean as long as he's pitching well it's hard to imagine that they would push him back into that relief role six-man rotation for now jake odorizzi could end up being the long reliever that could just be the they announced it as a

six-man rotation now for now but i just assumed or is he lost his job so hey that might they might go six-man rotation uh you know deep into the season because one thing i found last season when i was looking at the playoffs was it did kind of matter how many depth i mean bulk guys you had in in postseason series because everyone's trying to just like pitch everyone for two innings or whatever or three innings and then you know it does matter if you have guys that are stretched out enough to do that so you it might actually make sense for a team that knows it's going to the postseason to have a six-man rotation because then you can just basically piggyback you could

have three starters quote-unquote uh for your games and then have guys that are ready in every game to come in in the third or the fourth or whatever it is because that's playoff baseball quote-unquote, for your games, and then have guys that are ready in every game to come in in the third or the fourth or whatever it is, because that's playoff baseball now. But it's still better to have those guys stretched out. So I could see six-man rotation being a good way to set yourself up for a good postseason run. Yeah, would you run it up until mid to late August

and then September maybe start to shape it a little better so that way guys are going on more regular playoff, closer to a playoff schedule amounts of rest. I mean, I think that's the to me the downside late in the year with the six-man rotation is that longer layoff between games and you're not really

in the same routine you'd be in, not the same rest and recovery pattern you'd be in come the postseason when you shorten up. I still don't want to lose Odorizzi for a possible three-inning stint. So if everyone's healthy, that makes it even harder

because then they have seven good guys. But what I could see doing is doing something where you kind of almost have a scheduled piggyback. This is assuming that you're just headed for the postseason, right? Then you're not necessarily clawing for, you know, division win or best record in the AL because those things matter. But if you do kind of have some easy coasting, I think what you do is you take Odorizzi and you take Javier and you still keep them pitching three to four innings,

but you just, you just almost try to schedule it, piggyback them and piggyback, you know, Lance McCullers and, uh, or Keedy maybe, and just have those two guys in there.

Anyway, this is not useful for fantasy, except that it is. I do want to point out we're in a crazy place for rostering right now. That's why we're not seeing guys go deep. We have all these extra relievers, and this crazy roster will basically be in place until May. We're going to have extra relievers until May.

And so then there's maybe the tempting idea that, oh, after May, teams will have to go to depth and stuff. I don't know. know you've shortened that yes they have the five option thing where they can only send guys down to the minor leagues five times um you know after may but you've shortened the season by then it's only four four months at that point i think they could probably play the same games they played last year with getting getting guys up sending them down, having those extra relievers. I would expect that we have the worst innings per appearance for starters in the history of baseball this year. Not great.

I mean, outside of maybe 2020 where it was short and weird all season. I have repressed 2020 to the best of my ability, so let's not unpack that if we can help it. Would you rather for the rest of the ability, so let's not unpack that if we can help it. Would you rather, for the rest of the season, have Christian Javier or his teammate who you just mentioned, Jose Urquidy? Yeah, I'm getting some questions about Urquidy. He's had the best start to the season, but still looks pretty good in the model.

Still looks pretty good in the model. Javier has a more obvious skill set where the things he does are tied to whiffs and strikeouts. So I do think he'll strike more people out than Urquidy. Urquidy's changeup means he's going to get some soft contact even when he's going well. I would have them both probably in the late 50s, early 60s, and Javier maybe up a couple spots. Okay. How about Corey Kluber versus Christian Javier for the rest of the season?

I'm going to take him over Kluber. Did not look great last time out. And I think that injury is such a concern with him. I would assume that Javier actually gets more innings than Kluver. Would that be your assumption? Probably, but I don't think it's by a lot. That's a pretty close workload comp for me. How about... One thing that's nice about Javier

is he probably won't be in New York and Boston and Toronto a ton. I still like the AL West, relatively speaking, for pitchers, especially when you're talking about someone who's pitching for the Astros or the Angels because they're not facing those two teams. That always carries a little extra weight for me right now, too. All right, one more. How about Christian Javier versus Chris Bassett for the rest of the season? I'll take Bassett.

That's a really nice home park. He's going to have some good matchups. Stuff Plus doesn't love him, but the location does. He's always had good location, good pitch mix, I think. I'm going to still take Bassett, even though the Stuff Plus really favors Javier. I also think that Bassett out-ittings him by a fair amount. amount yeah I think Bassett's one of those guys just let him go as much as he possibly can can be pretty efficient too which also helps rack up that volume quite a

bit I think the the takeaway here though is if you're in a league that allows trading and Christian Javier wasn't available on the wire you should reach out to the team that has him either to trade for Javier directly or to trade for another starting pitcher if there's another starting pitcher on that team that you like. I think I find that it's often difficult to actually trade for the guy whose value just popped, but it's easier to trade for someone else, especially if there's a buy low.

Well, now that you have him, maybe you can get rid of this guy. Right, and I think it depends on the person you're dealing with, but I would imagine you might have a little more success because they had him on the roster for a reason. They believed something good was going to happen all along with Christian Javier. Therefore, they want to see it through or they're going to want a premium if they're going to trade a player like that. But I think we're both excited about what he might bring. I think that 50 to 60 range makes sense for now with an up arrow. He's got the talent to jump even higher.

Let's get to some early hard hit ball leaders. I was looking at it just from a volume perspective because as I was clicking around getting ready for the show today, one of the pages I saw was the Roto-Wire earned auction values page, which at this point in the season, two and a half weeks in, it's a little silly, but Ty France is off to a fantastic start. And I thought I was definitely among the people that said, yeah, he's just kind of oatmeal-y and I'm not really interested. And it looks like I've been wrong about not being interested in Ty France, at least through the

first two and a half weeks of the season. Not surprisingly, with the start he's off to, a lot of hard hit balls. He's got 56 batted ball events, 24 hard hit balls so far. Puts him pretty firmly inside the top 25 overall in the category. If you had a mulligan, is Ty France among the hitters you'd want that mulligan on? Because I have him, I think, on zero teams this season. And he's been the best hitter in baseball by some fantasy calculators to this point. That's wild. I'm looking at hard hit percentage and he doesn't show up in the top 30. What am I doing wrong?

He just puts a lot of balls in play. Yeah. It's wild. It's the DJ LeMayhew effect, right? He doesn't LeMayhew sometimes run to that because he hits so many balls? Yeah. I generally think that skill set is a little bit overrated. You know, as you see, like, it can lead to some bonkers batting averages in the short term.

And he's, you know, to be fair to him, he's putting up the power, too, the five homers. So it's not just batting average but um it's funny when you you see that all that and then you see that his barrel rate is basically in line with what he's ever done and so to me i think uh he's much more likely to end up with like 22 homers even though he's fit 15 you know i don't i don't necessarily buy it uh in terms of power but he was he's always been a really good asset for batting average he's the low swing strike rate hits the ball with authority um doesn't chase much so you know i do think that he'll end up this year with like a 310 average and i don't know something like 20 homers so it's really not that different from last year so i don't i feel too i don't feel too much foma it's not it's not

off his projections very much i just thought last year was kind of the ceiling for him if there wasn't more power a year ago why would there be more power now and now i'm a little bit spooked in my own assessment based on on how this season has started. But speaking of DJ LeMayhew, is he back from a skills perspective? A 58.5% hard hit rate. He's got 41 batted ball events, 24 hit at 95 miles per hour plus. I mean, at the very least, he seems to be healthy again. Yeah, yeah.

It's interesting to see the worst swing strike rate he's had since 2012. He is maybe trying to swing harder and missing a little bit more than usual, but that's still a tiny swing strike rate compared to most people. The barrel rate has never been a big thing for him. I just wonder with this ball, I don't think he's going to get those oppo homers that he got in 2019 with the juice ball in New York, you know? So I think that 26 homer mark will be his high watermark for his career and we're still talking about 10 to 15 homers for him.

He is playing a bit more than people might have expected looking at depth charts when the season started. They've played 16 games so far. He's started 14 of them. So with LeMahieu, you're getting starts at first, second, third. He's got one start at DH. He's let off four of those 14 games he's played, including each of the last three.

Yeah, what I don't get is that the same is sort of true for Gleyber Torres. I mean, he has 15 games in which 12 are starts. Yeah. And he's playing second. He's 15 games in which 12 are starts. He's playing second. He's played a little bit of short. Who's losing out on these Yankees? It's not Kiner Falefa

because he's started all but one game so far. He's the shortstop just stuck in the bottom third of the order. I think is the trickle down change here? Is some of this the absence of Luke Voigt? Like you have Stanton playing a little more in the outfield. Stanton's played in the outfield, I think he started six games in right field

out of the 14 he's played. So they've had to push that a little bit more often. And as a result of moving guys around, they're floating the DH more because Donaldson DH is basically when Stanton doesn't. I mean, that's not perfectly the core. But usually if Stanton's playing right field, it's because Donaldson's DHing. Yeah, and that opens up basically a spot on the infield. Yeah, so that's how they've been able to do it so far.

And then other guys get occasional days off, except for Kainer Falefa. He plays every day. It's working out pretty well. days off except for kind of falafel he plays every day it's working out pretty well and you know isaiah isaiah kind of falafel does offer this lineup a little bit of a different look than it has i mean it's it's a little bit dj lemay who ish but at least there's two of them you know what i mean like two guys who can make a lot of contact uh you know can hit you some singles when you need them right because a little bit of a of a swing and miss go for the homer offense in the pass. So I think they probably did that on purpose with that trade where they got

IKF in there. But their catching situation is a mess. Kyle Higashoko was hitting balls real hard in spring, but he's got a minus 19 WRC plus right now. So I guess maybe they're just, they're more like other teams where they're like, hey, we're going to have one spot that's a negative. It'll be catcher.

You know, that's whatever. You can live with it and you can figure it out later. Those things are absolutely just fine. The pitching depth in New York is amazing. I just want to say this off the, you know, this is off the chart, off the rundown, but, you know, Clark Schmidt and Michael King are exactly, I mean, even Nestor Cortez are exactly what this team needs, you know, in terms of guys who can give you some innings and guys who have surprising stuff that's really good. Michael King, whatever role he's going to be in, he's going to be an opener. He's going to be a bulk guy.

I bet you he gets him a couple more saves. He's going to end the season with six wins, five saves, 90 innings, and 120 strikeouts or something ridiculous. It's going to be a really good season from him, but people will never know when to put him in their lineups. Yeah. Clark Schmidt is 26, by the way. For some reason, in my mind, I don't know why. He was a first rounder. He was drafted out of South Carolina, went to college. I just thought he was a high school prospect for some reason. I think it's because he was hurt all the time. In my mind, that reprogrammed Clark Schmitt's bio to be a high school kid.

No, he's 26. And I think when you get a guy like this who's dealt with so many injuries and he's 26 years old, I think you're a little more willing to push him and just say, let's just see what happens. We're not playing the long game for his age 31 season. We're just trying to make him as effective as we can possibly be so we can push him a little bit. At some point, as the Yankees, as an organization,

we just need a sixth starter. We need an actual sixth starter, and Clark Schmidt is that guy this year, I think. Michael King is close, but I think Michael King is a Band-Aid. Or is it a Band-Aid? A Solvall, like Gor like gorilla glue neosporin yeah tape are we fixing a wound or are we taping together pbc pipe no i like the duct tape one because it's just it just wherever you need them you know whereas i think clark schmidt is a little

bit more like i think they do want to be a little bit more careful in giving him a lot of rest days and stuff. So I think he's more like the sixth starter. And King, you could call him the seventh starter or something, or you just call him the Gorilla Glue. A couple more hard hit rate surprises. How about Sean Murphy? 23 of 45 on batted ball events, so over 50% for his hard hit rate so far. And he's got a top 10 max exit velocity.

And because he is an A, he is hitting third or fourth most days. He has started 17 of 17 games so far. They DH him on occasion, I think, of those starts. He's got five starts as a DH. So when he's not catching, he's playing. So not only is he hitting the ball hard, he's playing a lot and he's in a prominent spot in this rebuilding, this duct tape together lineup.

I mean, I don't, I'm not trying to be rude to anybody, but I think he's the only good hitter in Oakland. It's possible. I go to these games and I look at these lineups and I'm like, I don't think, I'm not sure any of these guys are major leaguers. Pache is,

is close, but, and he's, he's on this list. He's actually right there tied with Murphy and he's got basically the same hard hit rate, but he has none of the good swing, swing decisions.

I don't think he has a walk yet this year. Yeah. So like Murphy, Murphy's easy. Murphy is the kind of guy that if he wasn't drafted in your 10 team one catcher league you picked him up already or someone probably picked him up already if he's still available there's nothing actionable you can buy high if you want to buy high you can buy high like this is this is the real sean murphy well i think you can buy hide because the playing time is going to be top of the charts the way

things are going right now he's going to possibly lead catchers and played appearances this year, and he's not going to waste a large share of them, which some catchers would if they were playing that much. So I'm in on Murphy. I liked him going to the season and got him a few places and happy to see what he's doing. I think Pache is a really difficult player to figure out because I saw him get dropped in my 15 team big league this weekend. I think Pache is a really difficult player to figure out because I saw him get dropped in my 15-team big league this weekend. I talked about him with Al a little bit on Friday on the Athletic Fantasy Baseball podcast as a possible pickup, but you're buying an ugly line and you're buying these underlying numbers. You're buying a hard hit rate above 50%. You're buying a 12%

early barrel rate. The question comes back to, should you be willing to look past the bad surface numbers and tell yourself, look, the A's are going to give him all the playing time. If he plays better, he'll move up in the order. If he doesn't, he'll stay low in the order and maybe the counting stats will lag. The problem we've had with Pache,

going back to his time as a prospect, is the lack of success on stolen base attempts. would run a lot in the minors but he wasn't successful nearly enough to earn a lot of big league green lights and one of the things that is sticky in early season going and this might be interesting to people is stolen base attempts uh that's a team-wide thing that becomes meaningful early and it's a player specific thing. So he hasn't even attempted one yet. 17 games in. How many times is he going to attempt? If he attempts

one every 20 games, how many stolen bases does he get? That's not enough. It's just not enough. Stolen bases attempted so far this season. The Angels. The Angels are 12 for 21. Your go-go Angels.

Oh, man. Go-go right into the outs. That's good. You know, Brandon Marsh looks really good. If you look at quality of contact, if you look at reach rate, I know that he's seeding at-bats to lefties to Joe Adele, but Brandon Marsh looks really good.

I think if there's one more injury, then Joe Adele becomes, you know, Marsh becomes a regular and, you know, everyday guy, and Adele becomes that guy who steps in. So Brandon Marsh on a team that likes to run a lot is running. Strikeout rate is down. Chase rate is down. The barrel rate is up.

I mean, Brandon Marsh is a guy i would buy looking at this kind of analysis a couple other guys i would buy still christian yelich has a 150 point difference at trail between slugging as expected slugging 60 hard hit rate great barrel rate there's this whole analysis on sunday night if you watched where they were you know dissecting his his his foot tap and and how he's late on balls, and that's why he's hitting the balls hard, but he's not on the ground because he's late. There is some truth to that type of analysis because mostly you get the ball out front, you pull it, and you pull it for power.

If you let the ball travel, you mostly hit grounders and hit the other way. So there could be some truth to that. I just don't think i i think it's preferable to have this problem with christian yellish than the old problem right like this problem is maybe he's we're talking about three or four inches in terms of where his contact point is otherwise he's hitting the ball well and he looks healthy in the past it was he didn't even look healthy you know right So I'm definitely willing to buy this version of Christian Jelic. What I'm trying to look at with Jelic, too, this is pretty strange to me.

He's got the O-swing percentage nice and low. It's been low even since the struggles started back in the shortened season, like a low 20% range. Striking out 30% of the time with an O-swing percentage near 20 it's rare it's kind of like when you see the bloated era over a full season's worth of innings next to a pretty good whip you see like a 450 era and you see like a 118 whip and you're like wait a minute those two numbers don't go together that that's kind of how i feel about the the k percentage right now with yellich with that o-swing still being good one thing we've seen in the past from him is that he sometimes benefits from being more

aggressive. And so you have this normal thing, this normal thing that every hitter does. Like as a group, as a league, you swing less in April and then you become more aggressive as the season goes on. And that meshes well with how the ball flies in order for August is when offense peaks, right? meshes well with how the ball flies in order for august is when offense peaks right and so i think that you know if i see a guy with a low o swing and a low swing rate and then a high strikeout rate i think that is actually one of the few times where i say you know what this guy needs to be more aggressive you know he needs to he doesn't have he's letting too many called

strike threes go by right he's being too passive he needs to sort of swing out in front of some of his swing decisions so um i think that there there could be that sort of heating up with with with christian so i buy i buy him and i'm not as worried about carlos correa's barrel rate there were some questions to me one question was an interesting one yeah here's a who would you rather uh would you rather Carlos Correa or Fernando Tatis rest of season? We're still a full month at least away from Tatis, right? Yeah, and I think that embedded in that question is, are you really worried about Carlos Correa?

I'm not that worried about Correa because I think Correa's profile as a hitter is one that not only ages gracefully, but doesn't seem to have a very wide range of year-to-year outcomes. I think it's a more narrow set of lines you get from him. I think the variance you get from Correa is injury-related.

It's not the way he plays. And yet he's hit a ball 113 this year already. So, you know, he wasn't injured when he hit that ball. Have you been to Minnesota this month? Yeah. The weather is not great. 60% hard hit rate for Correa still. So, you know, I think he's set to go.

I am working right now with Ken Rosenthal on a piece about the ball, and I don't want to cut that one off at the knees too much, but I will say that offense is down across the board. So to some extent, if a guy's a little bit off of where he was before, that could explain it. And offense is down a little bit more in humidor stadium so i'm going to have to look at that if you want one little nugget that i just found the batted ball distance on barrels in places with that already had a humidor is down two feet okay so that means there

is something other than the humidor that's also going on. But in places that didn't have a humidor last year and have a humidor now, the weighted difference, and this is weighting all the differences by how many you've seen, how many barrels there were, the weighted distance is down 10 feet

in parts of the humidor. So that's not necessarily all of korea's problems because he's at the three percent barrel rate so it's not like he's barreling tons of ball and they're all dying at the warning track however he is in one of those parks that has added a humidor and my theory my working theory is that this the effect of the humidor will change over the season and that in a lot of places, we're taking dry balls

that have been stored in a winter situation and we're basically adding water to them using the humidors. And that would be consistent with, I think, what would be happening at target field. It seems appropriate to bring this question up. This came in on Twitter from Chris. Chris writes,

do y'all think the ball always fluctuated and we just now have the data to recognize it and as a follow-up do you think we keep the dead ball all year i'll hang up and listen thanks yeah 100 he's right and i the year that i think of always is 1987 let me just do a little. 1974. Since 1974, we had... That's when free agencies started. We've got some of the biggest home run years.

Can you guess? I mean, one is super easy. We just had it, and it broke all the records. Oh, 2019? 2019, the rabbit ball year uh but then you've got so then you've got some other juice balls years uh in second and third 2017 2021 um 2016 and 2018 are in there too so like that's the juice ball era right five five of the six biggest home run seasons of all time uh fit in there but then you've also got uh 2000 2001 which people you know 1999 people thought of that as a um as like a steroid thing right sure is that the

steroid era the late 90s uh to the early that's the other uh biggest uh home run rates but then it's really funny because you're going along it it's all 2000s and, you know, and recent and like kind of steroidy. And then the only season that starts with an eight, you know, in terms of 1987 is 25th and home run rate of all time is 1987. And it's snuck in there, you know, between 2014 and 2011. You know what I mean? It doesn't make any sense.

And if you look at it sort of season to season, 1985, there were 3,600 homers. In 1987, there were 4,500 homers. Yeah, per game, per team game. In 85, you had 4.33. I'm doing runs per game for a second. 4.33 runs per game. Then it was 4.41. Then it was 4.33 i was running them doing runs per game per second 4.33 runs per game then it was 4.41 then it was 4.72 in 1987 so offense exploded and then it dropped to like the 4-1 range right back to where it was before like in 1988 it was 300 3200 homers so it's like

what it went from 4500 to 3200 homers, 100%. 1987, there were some other things. I think they changed the strike zone a little bit. And I don't know how close that is to expansion, but it's pretty obvious that something happened to Ball Day. Yeah, there was a little bit of a run-up to it, but it was the first time in Major League history that there was one home run hit per team game for a whole season. And it dropped by.3 homers per team game from 87 to 88. It went back to what baseball looked like for most of the

60s and 70s, which is highly unusual. And then, as you mentioned, expansion was 93, so there was an uptick in offensive production or a decline in pitching quality. Wasn't there expansion coming off of 81 or 82? I thought there was a lot of expansion coming off of labor problems. 1977 was an expansion year. Wasn't there an 80s Mets? 1969 was an expansion year from 20 to 24.

And then 1977, we went from 24 to 26. You didn't add anybody in the 80s? Nope. All right. So then the 90s was Arizona and Colorado. Colorado in Miami first in 93, and then Arizona and Tampa Bay in 1998. There you go.

All right. So no real explanation for 1997. No, no. That one doesn't have a lot of clear explanations uh at least it was coming to our minds but we were pretty young back then so there's a there's an underlying sort of um there's an underlying thing there which is like should we should we not get as bothered about it right like is that the sort of there's a little bit of underlying idea that like well this has been happening forever and we just we're chicken littling about it now because you know we can measure it um but i and i and i guess i understand that and that's cool but we can measure it and so and it does seem like baseball

wants to become more consistent they talk about consistency the human door is an effort at consistency so you know i think that we'd like it to be consistent and i think it is a little bit weird to have large jumps in home run rates and and declines like we had in 1987 like i don't think that it would be good for baseball if a year like 1987 happened every two or three years. Because then anybody who broke a record in one of those years, they would be like, ah, but he did it in that one year. Yeah, we get that feeling about 2019, both with major league numbers we see and with minor league performances at AAA that year, since the AAA leagues were using the big league ball. And we know that those PCL parks, especially with the elevation and hot, dry conditions,

play extremely hitter friendly. So there are some seasons you look at and go, oh, that was nice, but it was probably only 80% as good as it looked on the surface because a lot of that came from just the ball being different that year. I don't think I'm being an alarmist.

I don't think anyone who's bringing up the lack of offense early in 2022 is being an actual alarmist here though, because as I mentioned in the three Oh show last week, if you look at the league batting average, we don't care that much about batting average in general, but just as a way of seeing how many balls in play are turning into hits. The league is hitting two 32 entering play on Monday.

It's the lowest ever. It's the lowest in 150 years. It's five points lower than 1968. That led to changes in the game. Next lowest season was 1888. I mean, that's like the Oyster Burns era, so we're going way, way back. We don't want the

league to hit 232. That's not a good product. Now, I think the humidor, the lockout, messing up spring training, cold temperatures, that number is not necessarily stuck at 232 all season. But imagine if we had made more changes all simultaneously. Now, the other changes the league talks about, banning the shift, that would swing things back in the right direction. If we get to a point in 23, 24, and you can't shift anymore, batting averages are going to go up.

Hits per game are going to go up. They just will., batting averages are going to go up. Hits per game are going to go up. They just will. More balls in play are going to find gaps. So each tweak is going to keep moving this around different ways. And I think as long as we're keeping the big changes isolated, at least we can have a better understanding of what exactly is happening at each layer of the change. yeah and it's pretty complicated it's it's getting really uh sort of granular right now and it's an interaction i think between the humidor and the new ball uh that's going on right now so um you know you this one thing that i like i like when you make a change and you make one change and then you isolate that change

and you get to know that change really well and you say, okay, that's what that change did. It's a little bit tougher when baseball makes three changes in one year and they're like, okay, we're going to do humidors everywhere and we change the ball. You know what I mean? It's like, which is which? What is happening here?

It's kind of hard to tease it out exactly, but we're going to try that for you. Coming up tomorrow or Wednesday, we'll have a piece out on on this but it's not it's not your imagination that like definitely offense is down yeah the runs per game so far this season 4.02 runs per team game that is the lowest we've seen scrolling scrolling scrolling all the way since 1976 and like baseball was really different in 1976 than it is right now. How many strikeouts per team game do you think there were back in 1976? So you really don't want to take the run scoring environment of 1976

and then add the strikeout environment of 2022. That's not what you want. Yeah, and Angel Hernandez is not helping the cause either for what it's worth boosting up strikeouts in ways that look i'm a brewers fan and that was just like everything kyle schwarber said and did showing him up was deserved yeah fully deserved strikeouts per game in 1976 per team game 4.83 now we're at 8.57 right we've lived above eight for the last seven double the strikeouts but we're still only going to get four runs per game doesn't seem great i mean obviously we've optimized for power and that's why we're still scoring this much that's a fair question

too like will that will that create uh the incentive for people to go back to slappy mcslappers in a little bit you know uh but i kind of don't think it'll work that way man i just i think the home run is still the best thing a hitter can do and they're gonna try and hit home runs i think that worm has turned like it's that's i don't know what that means but uh to me it means that uh you know we're not going back yeah worms don't turn very often so once they turn they that's it they've committed we've looked this one up already you know jesus uh but yeah the it's just not like you're not you're not gonna tell today's kids to be like no you know you know we we were you're the you're like middle school coach was right we all we want from you is line drives the opposite way you know on the ground take a nice

level swing i don't i don't think that and if it did happen i think it would take 10 years you know what i mean like undo it yeah you you got all these people coming up through them through the minors that have been taught this way in one way well and in thinking about it from the if i had my way and we we tried to play a season where hitters walked on ball three i mean on the athletic baseball show keith said keith law said they're just gonna walk they're just gonna stand there and draw the walk because guys aren't going to throw enough pitches in the zone. And my thought was, I think guys would be in the zone more, and they're nasty enough to at least induce weak contact.

Plenty of guys get swings and misses in the zone. But if he were right, if Keith were right, that'd be an unwatchable disaster game. Walk after walk after walk, that's not what you want either. And in fact, I'm working on a piece about that. But if you did get the change you wanted at the big league level, walking on ball three does not work at lower levels where command is worse, right?

At least not without an expanded zone. You have to make the zone big enough for the pitchers at whatever skill level they're at to be able to hit it. That's the only real chance you have. If you make a change like that, I think you're right. It takes a long time for young players to catch up, for everyone's approach to catch up. And I think you're still looking at the home run

being so rewarded relative to everything else that you're still going to be optimizing for that. Yeah, I mean, it's like a board game where you're like, oh, that one card lets me just destroy all your guys. I'm learning Magic the Gathering now. My kid's into magics. It's like, oh, what? That card can do what?

Yeah, that's a great card. I want a card like that. You're out here buying cards on the internet to beat your kids in Magic the Gathering. Is that what this has come down to? I need a plus 10, plus 10 guy with death touch to beat my son. Spending hours. Here's $200, please.

Hours online doing the research, finding these optimized cards. The kids are sitting there like, what? Why? What's happening? They'll catch on. They're smart kids. They're going to catch on. A couple more questions, at least one more question to get to before we go. Micro decisions, a question from Tim.

Tim plays in a daily league, so obviously a lot of us play in weekly leagues, and in there, you've got to consider the number of games you have, opponents, lefty-righty, all that kind of stuff. In a daily league, the questions are different. Assuming you know that all the hitters on your team have a game on a particular day let's call it tuesday usually every team plays on a tuesday and all your hitters are starting what kinds of things do you prioritize to decide who is in your fantasy lineup that day obviously you have the skill level of players how do you balance things like what park they're playing in

recent performance starting pitcher that they're facing how the hitter performs in splits against lefties versus righties if there's not anything else to go off of like if you like bvp batter versus pitcher i don't think you or i really lean into that very much is there any sample size large enough for history against a pitcher to matter at all do any starters go deep enough in games for handedness or history against them to matter? Is there ever a scenario in which you'd bench an Aaron Judge for a Bobby Dahlbeck? That is an extreme example, but I wonder how much I micromanage my team versus just

letting the best players play every day. So, you've played I think a few more daily leagues than I have, but we are in one this season. The 3-0 show league that we started this year is a daily moves league. And these are questions that we do have to think about as we shuffle players in and out of the lineup. Yeah, I think that one thing that can happen is you can kind of look to baseball itself

and the way teams use players to kind of get a sense of how often you should be platooning. Obviously, you have the ability to platoon more than a baseball team because you don't have the same roster restrictions but if you notice that a hitter uh when you notice that a hitter sometimes sits brandon lau versus lefties um who are some other guys that sometimes sit against lefties there's uh there's some pretty good players verdugo sometimes i think sits against lefties trent grisham trent grisham sometimes sits against lefties if they sometimes sit against lefties that's a big big warning sign and i think that that also gives you a sense of where the talent level is like i am not

you know benching aaron judge so there will be players on my teams i'm just not going to bench i don't care what the matchup is i don't look at what the matchup is these are my stars i think that maybe top 50 hitters are like that. Is that a good way to sort of think about it? Yeah, there's probably a point. I mean, I'm looking at my 3-0 show roster right now. Will Smith, the catcher, I don't have a second catcher. He stays in.

Kyle Tucker always stays in. Yeah, even if Todd Tucker's struggling, he stays in. Pete Alonzo always stays in. It doesn't matter on the matchup. We get down to like a Matt Chapman. I like Matt Chapman a lot, but in a daily moves league, Matt Chapman can probably sit against a tough righty if I've got someone else on my bench who has a platoon matchup

that looks a lot better. I don't know how much I think about park factors on a daily level. I mean, I think if it's a really – Colorado. Yeah, like an extreme park like that i'm looking for guys to play in colorado i'm looking for i'm looking at if i'm looking at that though it's probably like for a non-colorado situation i'm looking at that as one of my last factors that i'm considering i think the handedness of the opposing pitcher matters a lot handedness

and quality i think i would go handedness first, quality of the opposing pitcher second, and then quality of park third. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good general way to go about it. And I realize these are some of the questions you start to think about in a daily fantasy sports contest too,

but the difference there is that you have to consider what the rest of the pool is going to do in a contest. So there's, there's a leverage component that's probably more important than any of those individual factors because you're accounting for those factors, but everyone else you're playing against for the most part is accounting for those factors.

So then you have to get an edge doing something different than what everyone else is doing. Fortunately, in a season long daily moves league, that is not part of the decision-making. You're just focused on each individual decision. But I think that's a pretty good basic rubric to follow. I also tend to do this in the outfield more because I just think it's harder to have –

like there are certain positions where it's just really hard to find a left-handed shortstop. There are some switch hitters and stuff, but there are just certain positions where it's just harder to find a platoon pair where you're like always oh i can always put this guy or this guy in right so what i try to do generally when i'm building teams is have a strong infield and then if it's a daily team i don't mind having like six or seven outfielders so the 30 show for example um i don't really muck around with anybody on my infield with like goldschmidt albies jose ramirez like you know rizzo i don't touch those guys they're always in but my outfield is uh ben intendi buxton gritchuk peterson jock peterson verdugo uh pollock suzuki and seth beer that you hear a couple right like set Like Seth Beer, I never play against

lefties. I don't even think he does play against lefties. Uh, Verdugo, I will sit against lefties. Jock Peterson, I will sit against lefties. Um, and then Gritchuk, uh, I'm mostly playing in Colorado, but it also depends on if Jock Peterson's seeing a lefty and Verdugo's seeing a lefty. So, uh, that's sort of, and think suzuki and buxton and ben intendee for the most part are the guys that are almost always in there but ben intendee is also a little bit uh you know touch or go so that's i think that gives you a sense of the talent level i'm looking at what i'd be looking at like richick will play uh in colorado over you know some of the other guys.

Yeah, I'm cracking up my team in that league, by the way, because it's hitting 200 as play begins on Monday. I look at my roster, like, these guys aren't bad. Why are they hitting 200? This is bizarre. Blame the ball. It's the ball's fault. I did nothing wrong against the GM. I did nothing wrong.

I didn't take on too much risk. I didn't have too much fun with this. It was the last team I drafted. I thought, ah, I don't have a bunch of these young players everybody seems to like, so let me just get on board. Oh, did you yolo that draft? Nah, only a little bit. I like the pitching of that roster a lot.

I did the opposite. I pushed a little more pitching in that league, and I waited and went fun hitters, and I have the opposite problem of all my other leagues which is you know find some balance I guess is the the takeaway there but uh thank you for that question Tim a little pitching plus nugget from the weekend I know it was a start in Oakland um and he didn't have amazing numbers last year but Glennenn auto has a 106 stuff 103 location this year and he improved the ride on his four seam and the sweep on his slider uh so there's a lot of changes under the

hood i think that this might stick and so there is a flashbang whiz pickup of the week yeah if he didn't go already i saw him get scooped up in my 15 team or i need pitching i didn't want him on my roster this week because of the matchup against houston that was a mistake i should have picked him up and stashed him instead of tanner scott i've i've stashed him a couple places and then i'm starting him because houston hasn't been amazing either um and then uh uh but he's he's valuable in 12 teamers iers. I think we're talking about I'd rank him in the 70s. All right. Well, that's actually really good if you're desperate for pitching.

So regrets for me, hoping I can still find him in a couple of leagues where I need him. Last question here, opportunities with the White Sox. You mentioned it up top. Eloy Jimenez, I feel like he's going to miss a lot of time. Again, six to eight weeks, I think, was the first timetable I saw thrown out there. I'm just really disappointed because it didn't look –

I mean, I know people will say it looks bad because of his reaction, but the thing he did didn't look that bad. He just ran to first and kind of a little bit awkward on the base. It's concerning. Yeah, I'm upset about that a little bit. It makes me – you know, your listeners know, and you know that I don't like to put the injury tag on anyone, but there's now these two injuries that have taken them out

for a really long time that you're like, okay, you did what? Stepped on the bag? That's it? It's definitely a concern. Now you've got an opportunity for Gavin Sheets to possibly play more. We've got Yohan Mankata still dinged up right now. And I think prior to the weekend, there was a report that he's still feeling something in his oblique when he swings from the left side. So Jake Berger keeps filling in there.

We looked at the White Sox depth last season, and we had questions about it. Do you think their depth is improved? And is there any way you can squeeze some value out of sheets or burger or anybody else who might get to play more with the injuries that are starting to pile up for the white socks i like burger a fair amount i mean he's hit the ball at 114 again he hit the ball 115 last year so he's got the raw power the barrel rate for his career is 10 that's pretty good uh it's not a really robust sample or anything, but it matches his minor league stats and the ability to make powerful contact, although maybe not that often. So I think you've got your sort of prototypical 230, 25 homer hitting guy in Jake Berger. So that means more homers are coming.

I guess Sheets has a similar profile. He just doesn't have any defensive value. So if Mokata comes back, I mean, I guess Sheets could hit his way onto the roster over Berger. But Berger

offers him more defensive versatility and may actually stay on the roster over Sheets if he hits a few more homers. But they're very similar. I guess Sheets may strike out less. So maybe Sheets is a superior hitter, but they're similar guys. I think, especially given the lack of third base options on the wire,

I think even just getting someone for a couple of weeks that can help you out that position is is helpful so i think burger is one of those players that creeps up a little bit and at least has some short-term value even if moncada's current status is that he's a couple of weeks away instead of just a mere few days away i think the hope was that he would have been back by now i know yeah and yeah. And then in shallower leagues, I wonder if Vaughn gets more run. I mean, it's just been really frustrating to see his usage. He's doing so well, but he's not playing as often as you'd expect. There's a nice sort of three

day run here against Minnesota where he started every game. Maybe that's partially because of what's going on with injury. So if Vaughn, if he has to face more righties, some of his overall numbers will go down. But if I had to take one of these guys as a hitter, if all three were available, like 100% Vaughn. Oh, yeah. Vaughn by miles, I think.

And he should stabilize playing time-wise I'm surprised he's had four four games out of the starting lineup out of the first 15 he's good enough to be an everyday guy even in a good White Sox lineup but a few others are weighted a little bit early on where I thought like oh my god they're only going to play him against lefties but that has that's evened out a little bit ridiculous i just i don't understand it but i think our thoughts about tony larusa being chosen to manage that team well i think they were accurate at the time our concerns were validated and continue to be validated i don't think they're making a change though because that's a that's a friendship sort of hire with

the owner so the odds of tony lara being shown the door mid season seem pretty low to me. So that ain't happening. Tough break for, for your white socks fans. If you are hoping for a change, that is going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. Before we go get a subscription to the athletic at just $1 a month for the

first six months at the athletic.com.com slash ratesandbarrels. You can read the stuff that Eno has coming out soon. You can read the stuff that he's written already. Everything else we got for fantasy baseball, regular baseball, NBA playoffs are happening right now. NFL draft is coming up. No matter what you like, we're covering it. $1 a month for the first six months, theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. You can find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris.

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