Rates & Barrels - Opportunity in San Francisco, Struggling Pitching Prospects & Weekend Waiver Targets

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss Ronel Blanco's sticky-stuff suspension, Austin Riley's quiet start and recent injury, another opportunity for Luis Matos in San Francisco, and the bullpen woes of the Cubs before digging into the early struggles of many prospect pitchers, and a few waiver-wire targets to consider as the weekend approaches. Rundown 1:29 Ronel Blanco's Sticky-Stuff Suspension 7:38 Austin Riley's Side Injury; Slow Start 11:39 Jung Hoo Lee: Structural Damage in Shoulder 19:26 Adbert Alzolay to the IL; Searching for Answers in the Cubs' Bullpen 27:39 Still Waiting on Junior Caminero 33:16 Heston Kjerstad Usage & Demotion to Triple-A 44:37 A Look at the Early Struggles of Many Pitching Prospects 54:57 Weekend Waiver-Wire Considerations Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Thursday, May 16th, Derek the Riper, Eno Saris here with you on this episode. We'll dig into some fantasy baseball news you should know. We have a sticky stuff suspension to happen this week. We've got a slugger in Atlanta that's dealing with an injury but not on the IELTS. We'll talk about some implications of that. Plus, a lot of injuries hitting the Giants recently. Zhengho Li with a bad one over the weekend.

We're getting more details on just how bad that is. We'll talk about the fallout from that. We're also going to have Project Prospect digging into some news and notes on the prospect side, as well as some generally underwhelming performances across the landscape of pitching prospects. We'll try to talk about some names you should be interested in if you're looking for future pitching.

It's not easy to find right now. And we'll have our weekend waiver wire preview before we sign off for the day as well. If you haven't joined already, jump into the Discord. Lots of good times happening there. It's about as much fun as you can have in an online chat, at least, you know, like in a baseball adjacent sort of way. Oh yeah, definitely a lot of fun there. I love the like screaming into the void and the different channels we've got there. Lot of great channels.

But we begin today with Ronel Blanco. Here's somebody who wants to scream into the void right now. Yeah, he is the player who was on the receiving end of a 10 game suspension for a sticky stuff violation that led to an ejection in his most recent outing. And I saw you tweeting about when it happened, he wasn't gaining absurd amounts of spin, right? This is kind of a bizarro situation.

He's a change up guy. I mean, that doesn't mean that he couldn't use it on his breaking ball. In fact, sometimes change up guys benefit the most by having a little sticky stuff for their breaking ball, and we've heard before from people in the game that, you know, that you can use it for one pitch. And so that's plausible, but you would normally see a 150 to 200 point rise in spin rate, I think,

unless he's just been using it all the time. I think we're just left in this weird spot where he didn't appeal it, but I don't think he did it. And I just think that he just realized there's nothing in this appeal process, there's nothing I can say. There's nothing I can go to court basically and say that will be admissible or matter.

I can't go there and tell them I didn't do it. That doesn't matter. It might be nice to say like, hey, could people get it mitigated down to five or two or some lower number if there's no accompanying spin rate? Because we know from the rulebook from the way umpires are paid and the way that the agreement with the umpires and baseball is that enforcement has to come from on the field. So we can't say, oh, his spin rate is up. Therefore knock him. You can't do that way, but could you do it in the appeals process?

Where the player comes and says, okay, I get it. You're going to suspend me. I got in trouble, you know, whatever, but there's no evidence in the spin rate numbers that I was doing this. And it's because of that that I would like this reduced. Is that possible? You know then it might and it might make people like just do it their entire careers so that they have a different baseline but at the very least gives the player some power in the situation. As it is now Blanco just had to be like okay I guess that's it. This is to me the had to be like, okay, I guess that's it. This is to me the real life equivalent

of getting a speeding ticket. And they have with radar a number and it says, Eno was driving 77 miles per hour in a 65. And you say, yeah, I was driving 77 in a 65. And you can go to court and try to take points away and waste the time on it. But the officer who doesn't wanna be there either will be there to say,

yes, I radared Mr. Saris going 77 miles per hour in a 65 mile an hour zone. There's a big difference. Here's the one difference. What's the difference? It's super subjective. With the radar, it's like 77 or 65, okay. But this one, it's like, really, it was a little too sticky.

Will you come and be like, well, here it is, judge, can you touch it yourself? Is it too sticky? And the come and be like, well, here it is, judge, can you touch it yourself? Is it too sticky? And the judge goes, hmm, I don't know. It doesn't feel that sticky. It's like, well, it's been two days, judge. So maybe it's not as sticky as it was then. It was sticky then.

It's so absurd. You're right about the subjectivity. That is a key difference. But in terms of the process, you're just gonna show up. Yes, there's nothing you can say. There's no real clear defense. I may have mentioned the podcast at one point, I got a speeding ticket when I was probably 19 years old

and thought that I could go into court and argue using the cosine defense that the angle at which I was radar'd would have made the radar fail to work properly. And I was advised by my father who's not a lawyer to not do that, to just go in, apologize, get the points taken off and then walk out of the room. That's what I was told to do. So that's what I did. Well, really sad. It's not here.

It's not for here, but maybe in the discord, if you ask me about red light camera, I'll tell you a story sometime. All right. There's your reason to join the discord. If you didn't have already, as far as Blanco goes, It's kind of more of the same in terms of the overall skills that we saw during his brief time in the big leagues last year Right. I mean the the Sierra is better the Sierra is in the low fours instead of the high fours But as far as the strikeout rates still in the 23% range the walk rates that shade better from 12.4% last year down to 11.1% this year. The biggest difference has been home runs are down. He's cut his home run rate by more than half and that's a big part of how he's had so

much success this year. Also a pretty big drop in BABIP. He had a 280 last year down to a 203 right now. So good fortune on balls and play but mainly just getting the home run rate to not be ridiculous has been a huge part of his success to this point. It has but the home run rate has been ridiculous in minor league stops. It's never been really that good. And a small home run rate is the easiest way to ride noise into better results than maybe

you deserve is how I guess I'll put it. Another way of saying it is I don't I don't really trust him going forward. The command is still not great. The package is still about the same it's ever been. I don't think there is something I can hang my hat on that he's really changed. And I expect there to be more home runs, especially as the weather improves, because I know that home runs have been down and there's some evidence that the bat, the ball is maybe a little bit deader than it's been in the past but it also was a slightly unseasonably cold April and so as the weather

warms I could see this being a bigger deal. For a future episode we're going to talk about the 2024 run environment and the ball because yes we must talk about the ball that is the requirement of the job but yeah no appeal for Renal Blanco so this couple turns in the ball, that is the requirement of the job. But yeah, no appeal for Ronaldo Blanco, so missed a couple turns in the rotation. Astros going to a six-man rotation temporarily and welcoming back an old friend in Jose Urquide, perhaps by around this time next week. So good news for the Astros there.

Let's talk about Austin Reilly for a moment. He had an MRI earlier this week on his side. They are currently holding out of the lineup. He's missed three consecutive games with what they're calling side inflammation. So on the one hand, no structural damage from the MRI. On the other hand, Riley's still not really playing this week and he just hasn't been himself at least up to this point in the season. Down at a 245, 319, 388 line, three homers through 163 plate appearances. Some of the underlying numbers are still pretty good, right? He's still hitting the ball hard.

He's got an 80th percentile barrel rate. So I think the raw power is still there, but among the players in this Atlanta lineup, which is still producing at a high level as a group who just hasn't really found that 2022 and 2023 level yet here in the first month and a half of the season. Yeah, the thing that I would point to is probably that pull rate. It's not down a lot, you know, career 41%, 37% right now. But what that is evidence of for me is just trying to find his contact point, trying to find his timing. And that's something that I think in the past, I've sort of just rolled my eyes at when I hear it from a player as, you know, you know, what the reason that they're doing so well, you know, is they they're just found their timing or whatever. It's it just seems sort of like a nebulous, like, you know,

I don't want to answer your questions, go away kind of answer. But the more that we study this, this bat speed stuff and more that we study the swing, the more that I hear between the lines when people talk about certain things in their practice and certain things in their swings that we're talking about contact point. In fact, Lars Newpar, when I asked him recently, okay, you train for bat speed, you're trying to pull the ball in the air more now. What do you track?

What do you think about when you're doing this? He said contact point. And I think that that is really the missing part of these bat speed metrics that we've got. There's a good piece by Robert Orrup on baseball perspective. So just about how you have to normalize for contact point because all of these metrics, I think we talked about this,

all of these metrics are measured at contact. And so you'll have a longer swing if you pull the ball more. You'll have more bat speed if you pull the ball more because you're measuring it at a different point. So I would love to have contact point as a metric going forward. I just think that Riley is a guy that sometimes struggles with this. And even he told me that at the fall league once that, you know,

he kind of finds himself in between fastballs and sliders sometimes. And that's why I think he gets white hot. You know, I think he finds that little point in space and then he just obliterates the ball for two months. And I don't see anything in this line right now other than the injury, which isn't maybe an injury, that suggests to me that he can't find that form and blast, you know, 15 homers in two months basically. This is an area where I think the rolling averages are your friends. You can look

back at the slugging percentage over like a 15 game interval go back over the last couple of seasons These valleys are valleys we've seen before from Austin Riley So this is not uncharted territory as long as this injury proves to be minor and seeing him get some time off Even without an IELTS then at least up till now is actually encouraging I mean Atlanta is one of those teams they ride the starters as aggressively as any team in the league right now. So if you have something bothering you, you need a little time off. And this may be fine by the weekend. Who knows? We'll see Austin Riley

maybe in the lineup again here in the next couple of days. It's like Zach Short playing, I think, right now in his place. So not a lot of excitement in the replacement, but that's probably part of the reason why Atlanta pushes that group of starters as hard as it does. Let's talk about Jung-ho Lee and the Giants injury situations for a moment. We did learn beyond the shoulder dislocation there's also structural damage in the shoulder for Jung-ho Lee. Luis Matos is up. He made a spectacular catch on Wednesday night.

And I thought he injured himself. It looked like he injured himself three different ways. It looked like he may have smashed his ribs on the top of the wall, making the catch. Twisted his ankle. His ankle and his knee, and even his arm, maybe a fourth way too, the way he landed on one of his arms, all of it looked bad.

And you saw the trainer out there and you thought, wow, okay, that was a spectacular catch that just cost the guy his season. Fortunately, he stayed in the game and looks like he's okay. But this is a Giants team that's had it really kind of piling on at some key spots. Patrick Bailey had to go back on the concussion IL. He came back from it and then was dealing with an illness, but then went back on the concussion IL, cuz it's apparently related.

Jorge Saler was on the field taking BP. He's on the IL right now. He followed the ball off his own head, off the net, which is, it's the Daniel Bricma from Rookie of the Year style. Everyone was putting the Daniel Stern playing Bricma, the hitting coach from that movie. Yeah, so.

Yeah. I'm glad he's okay because you could concuss yourself that way. And then, you know, Blake Snell has been down because you could concuss yourself that way and then you know Blake Snell has been down to the good news of all of this is Blake Snell only has maybe one more rehab start at Sacramento before he's back. So there's injury like if he's swinging again, like it wasn't that bad They there's some optimism around the team that it's not that big a deal and he'll be back soon Yeah, you gave Elliott Ramos a mention

I think last week on this Thursday episode as we were sort of looking for some deep league waiver targets. So he's playing a bit more right now as well. But Matos being back in the equation, I think we sort of landed on Matos last year when we saw him debut as maybe another Stephen Kwan sort of player if it all works out. Right. Matos has been very young for the level everywhere he's played. He's put up some pretty good numbers at times. Last year 32 games at AAA, impressive slash line with a 7.2% K rate which is just absurd. It was a 145 WRC plus with in game power, with speed. What we've seen so far from him as a big leaguer in very limited time. 81 games now is a 1.9% barrel rate, a 31.9% hard hit rate. So maybe a little more power down the road,

but limited power I think is fair to say for him. What kind of runway do you think he has with this Lee injury? I mean, is Matos the guy, the main guy in center field for the Giants given that Lee is gonna be down for a lengthy period of time, if he's even able to return this season at all. Well, unfortunately, you know, I think the buzz is that he's

not a center fielder defensively, but that may not matter with this Giants team. The only other real option that would play a good centerfield and I don't think it's Slater. I don't think it's Jastremski anymore. I don't think Wade Meckler is that great of a player. The only player that's really on the big league team that could play center field other than Matos

is Tyler Fitzgerald. I think that having Tyler Fitzgerald and Elliott Ramos in the same lineup is a little bit much for the strikeout side of the ledger. Tyler Fitzgerald is striking out 36% of the time now and is projected to strike out 30% of the time. And Ramos, for as much as I liked some aspects of his swing in terms of speed, some power there,

he's striking out 37% of the time and is projected to strike out 28% of the time. That just seems like a lot of strikeouts to have sitting next to each other in the outfield. Maybe, maybe, you know, with with Matos playing elsewhere, it'll work. But it's not like Tyler Fitzgerald has played a ton of centerfield. He's played some infield to these kind of like a jack of all trades. Those are your options.

And I think offensively, the guy who replaces what Lee did the closest is Matos. So I think you may just see Mat replaces what Lee did the closest is Matos. So I think you may just see Matos out there while Lee's gone. And what's fun about Matos compared to like a Kwan type is that he hit a ball 110.8 this year in AAA and has generally had better max EV. So he has more raw power than Kwan. So there is some fruitier universe. In the multiverse, there is one universe where Luis Matos turns into a star. I think that's possible. Because you've got a guy who's going to strike out 10 or 11% of the time, who's hit the ball 111 miles

an hour. Is there anybody else who's done that? I'm going to look real quickly over at StacCast, but... Yeah, usually the K rates that are that low don't come with anything like that sort of top end power. No, Pascantino maybe? Yeah, maybe a little more swing and miss, but yeah, that's probably a fair... And people are super excited about Pascantino. So I guess, you know, younger Bogarts did stuff like this, but you know, Bogarts had more swing and miss even. So I don't know.

I think that's what's going on with him. That's why Matos' numbers in AAA this year haven't been that great. And that's why I think we're gonna have like prospect fatigue with him and people are gonna be like, oh, no, not this guy. If they aren't already this time, even the next time they're going to do it. And I think there's still a good breakout opportunity here where he puts that

strikeout rate together with a good pull rate, gets to that power more, puts in the ball in the air and more. There's no there's no part here where he's like, oh, but he he hits the ground ball 60 percent of the time. No, he doesn't. He doesn't hit too many ground balls. Oh, well, he doesn't have the good raw power. Well, actually, he has OK, raw power. You know, he should be able to hit at least 15 homers,

you know, maybe 20 homers with that kind of raw power. Maybe there's one one level of there of extra there for him defensively that keeps him on the field, and then he gets the chance to show us something. So anyway, long story short, I would say that between Ramos Fitzgerald and Matos, Matos is the guy with the most upside. So anybody who is just looking for a flyer should really be looking there, I think. Yeah. And I think Giants fans should be excited about Matos. There's a lot of ways it can go right. I think he's got a contact floor like Tyler Freeman, but he doesn't hit the ball to the ground as much as Tyler Freeman did

when Freeman was showing similar things at a similar age at Triple A. This is kind of like a twenty twenty player over a partial season, stretched over two years. He's a little bit slower than you expect, which is why the defense a little bit worse than you expect. But 10 stolen bases, 2010 with a good batting average like that's that's definitely possible. And prospect fatigue is real.

I think people had that with Luis Garcia in Washington a little bit to always young for level. He's finally put it all together. Geez, the barrel rates up right now. K-Rate still really good. He's always been great at limiting strikeouts. And he's running a little bit to seven for seven as a base dealer now in 37 games this year. So it doesn't always happen immediately. but I think in Matos's case, there's enough there to like where you can probably take that flyer,

at least in 15 team leagues where you've got five outfielders. I don't know if he's a 12 team guy right away. That probably is a little bit of a stretch, but he should be on the radar for weekend pickups. If a few more weekend pick up ideas coming up here later in the show. Let's talk about the Cubs bullpen for a moment. Edward Alzolai previously. Well, Alzolai had previously lost the closer role

and ends up on the aisle this week with a forearm strain. So maybe that helps explain why things were just so bad for him to this point in the season. I think we dabbled in this a little bit when he lost the job. Who makes sense to take over the role? They brought in Hector Nerys as a veteran this off season. He hasn't really looked like the Hector Neris of old just yet, he looks more like old Hector Neris

instead of the Hector Neris of old. And that's a bit of a problem for them. We talked about Mark Lighter Jr. as someone who's a bit interesting, but I think your solution to this problem is more fun by a pretty healthy margin. I mean if you just look at it this way that I've and it's up on on YouTube but if you just looked at this graph I put together that has a table that has only the healthy guys

because I thought Yancy Almonte looked interesting for a while but he's not healthy. I thought Julian Merriweather had a shot but he's not healthy. I thought Alzaleh would shot, but he's not healthy. I thought Alzaleh would be okay, but he's not healthy. So I've put together a table that has healthy guys that have one hold at least this year. And I put their ERA saves, holds, strikeout, walk, and stuff on there. And I color coded strikeout, walk, and stuff. And there is only one player that is green across the board and his name is Ben Brown.

And I think that it's the best solution for a couple of reasons. They are playing maybe with found money. I mean, their record is good despite what I think is a poor pen. The other option is of course to like trade. So you could, I don't know, we kicked this around and listen, if you love Jordan Wicks then you're gonna hate this idea, but like maybe something like a Jordan Wicks for Michael Kopeck, I know, I know.

Oh, Jordan Wicks is great. I don't think he's that great, but like maybe he turns out to be good. What fits better for this Cubs team is, we keep Ben Brown as a starter, we send Jordan Wicks and we get Michael Kopek, we have a couple of years of him, he looks better as a reliever

and he looks like he can be a closer. He would have better stuff than anybody else in our pen. We could get a closer that way. Well, the nice thing about Ben Brown is you get to keep Jordan Wicks, you get to keep maybe the option of having Ben Brown as a starter next year because I did the math, if you have Ben Brown go on a

reliever the rest of the way, he gets to about 85 innings. If he's got 85 innings this year and you transition him back to starting in the spring, I think you could still get 110, 120 maybe from him next year. And so you get to basically have your cake and eat it too, where I think Ben Brown is pretty obviously, uh, could be an amazing closer. Of course you try to make them a starter as long as possible, but Hey, your, your team is 25, it has 25 wins.

You know, like, Hey, maybe this is like, we just try it and, and Ben Brown would immediately be the best option for closing, I think. Okay, so you like Ben Brown out of the longer term options especially, and then they did add Tyson Miller. So part of what happened recently is that Richard Lovelady got DFA'd.

They added Tyson Miller in a small trade from the Mariners. I think that is an actual upgrade. No, I left him on my thing, so he was DFA'd. You got DFA'd, but I think Tyson. That makes the graph even worse. Tyson Miller's more interesting, so that's probably the Mariners. I think that is an actual upgrade. No, I left him on my thing, so he was DFA'd. You got DFA'd, but I think Tyson. That makes the graph even worse. Tyson Miller's more interesting, so that's probably the right move.

Hayden was Neske's kind of in between roles right now because of all the injuries, and I could see a world where it's maybe lighter in the short term instead of Naris, and then Ben Brown like a month from now, which is tough if you're trying to play the redraft angle because stashing Ben Brown until he gets the opportunity, if you need the save isn't necessarily feasible

in a lot of places. It's more of a fit for longer term leagues or NL only leagues where a depth player like that can pay off more than a month down the road. Yeah, I would just say that like, maybe stuff plus has its flaws when it comes to starters, but it's been pretty powerful when it comes to relievers. I don't really know how Leiter is getting to these numbers

with a 91 mile an hour fastball that doesn't really stand out and one pitch that's above average by Stuff Plus and not even great locations. So I don't really get Mark Leiter Jr. And he would immediately be the closer with the worst fastball velocity in the league. And we know that sometimes as you know, I know this for example, in the eighth inning, batter swing less than they do in this.

I mean, the ninth inning batter swing less than they do in this. I mean, the ninth inning batter swing less than they do in the eighth. So if you get to the eighth inning and they don't swing and you're throwing your slop for and you're trying to get strikes and you don't get them and then you get into a count where you kind of have to throw a fastball and they know you have to throw a fastball and you throw a 91 mile an hour fastball. I don't know. This seems like I hate to say like it's not the the mentality. It's more like, I don't think he has the stuff to close. I just don't think he has the stuff to close. And it may not be,

and it's always worth, I think, buying, like having Ben Brown on your roster for a week or two so that you don't have to spend the $200 when Ben Brown gets an annoyance at the closer and everyone realizes that like, you know, he has the stuff to remain closer. You know what I mean? So if you can stash them ahead of time, I would do it. I think it makes sense for them to go to Brown.

I think what you see with lighter is a splitter that's just ridiculous, but splitters really, really good. And I think that's how he'd get away with it. I think what it would look like from a statistical profile perspective, easy for me to say, would be like late career Jose Valverde. When Papa Grande would come in, like 2011 Papa Grande. Throw a splitter, splitter, splitter,

surprise you with a fastball, splitter, splitter, splitter. Yeah, right, he's not gonna get up homers. He might walk a few more guys because they're going to just try to sit on it. And occasionally that's going to be the way to get a runner against them. Not going to be a crazy good strikeout rate, but sometimes guys like that keep jobs longer than we think. That would be how he'd get away with it. That'd be how he'd do it.

If it's going to happen for Mark Leiter Jr. I mean, one other thing that I would say in my defense also is that like, he's been pitching this well for three years now or for two years in this year and he has seven saves. Huh? And they still haven't done it. Yeah, they haven't given him that chance. So they see it too, I think. You know what I mean? Like there was how many years that I want the Luke Gregerson to be closer before they, you know, one team gave him one chance and they were like, no, that's too many sliders, dude. Yeah, that's true.

New manager is the only other thing that's different. It's not David Ross anymore. Let's move on to the Rays for a moment. Pete Fairbanks worked a scoreless eighth inning on Wednesday against the Red Sox. I think that was just leverage because of the situation. Like, look at the batters he faced. It was Devers, Tyler O'Neill, and Dominic Smith. It was Kevin Kelly getting the save, but it was Garrett Cooper, David Hamilton,

and Saddam Rafael on the night. Isn't this just Kevin Cash playing the best army has in the highest leverage spot in the eighth inning? Yeah. I mean, the stuff is all back for Fairbanks in his last three outings, 130 stuff plus. Of course, Adam looks great in that way too, but I think when they're both healthy, the team has shown that they prefer Fairbanks. So I think it's all systems go for Fairbanks still. Yeah, nothing to worry about there.

Don't go pick up Kevin Kelly based on what happened on Wednesday night. Just felt that was worth a quick mention. By the way, Greg Jewett has a new reliever breakdown up on the athletic today, so be sure to check that out. Always great stuff. Lots of good information from Greg. Let's move on to the project prospect section of the show. I saw Junior Caminero getting a look at second base at Durham, and it seems like he's the guy that we're now waiting on for his first 2024 opportunity. Sure, Jackson Holiday is still permanently on Recall Watch

as well, but we keep wondering every weekend as we look at Junior Caminero stashed on some rosters, is this finally going to be the week? Is this long-term hold actually going to pay off? Do you think we're finally at that point now that we're looking at Caminero with another stretch of really good production at Triple A? He's hitting 316 with a 385 OBPs, popped seven homers. What more do the Rays need to see, or is it more about finding the fit on the big league roster? Yeah, I think it might be more, again,

about pulling the plug on somebody on the big league roster. I mean, I think Jose Siri doesn't have options left. He's kind of falling out of the playing time a little bit there. But like, you know, are you going to lose an option like that defensively in center field? And if you do, who is the backup centerfield? That's why we've thought it was so interesting that DeLuca has been playing centerfield because

the more options they have in centerfield, the more Jose Ciri becomes, you know, an option for DFA. I mean, it's not how they got him. It's either a DFA and then a trade. Yeah, it wasn't a big transaction when they got Jose Ciri. I think it was a DFA and then a trade. And then Harold Ramirez has no options. We've talked about him ad nauseam. Yeah. You know, so those are just the two places that if I was looking in the lineup, I would I would be trying to upgrade the Lucas already, you know, he's played in the last week, right field centerfield, DH and left

field. But every time he plays centerfield, I circle the lineup card a little bit because I think Cabralero looks fine at short. Isaac Paredes is a steady producer at third. He's playing. Yandy Diaz is not going to lose his job. Randy Rose Arena is not going to lose his job. So Brandon Lau, I was a little bit worried that the injury was going to take him out further than people thought.

There was some talk about, you know, seeing a specialist, but Mark Topkin reports yesterday that he will resume swinging the bat and head out on a minor league rehab stint pretty soon. So when Brandon Laos on that team, Rosario's a super sub. It is a little crowded right now, unless you look at Siri and how Ramirez's roster spots. If they like those guys more than everybody else does or want those guys on the roster, then the only other toggle is to make a trade, right? Trade from the middle of the roster to get an upgrade, consolidate that way.

If you think the bottom of the roster is really good, you think there's still some gross potential in a guy like Siri, if you think what Ramirez brings in a part-time role, clubhouse leadership, whatever, if you value that, you got to do something else to make the pieces actually fit. I think the next few days leading into Sunday's waiver wire run will be particularly helpful because we saw Jonathan Aranda come off the IL and play second base, hit cleanup against the righty, which is great, he's playing second base, which is a pleasant surprise. DeLuca was the one that sat. That would have been a righty-righty matchup for him

on Wednesday night. So they had Syrian center batting ninth, and then they had Richie Palacios back out there in right with Josh Lowe DH-ing. It's just the constant source of frustration. So if I said pick a date. The 26-man roster right now has seven outfielders on it Yeah, it's a little different Richie plays the infield to yeah, he played second base on Tuesday and Monday

I think that's why he's He's fine. Like he's staying, you know, like infield outfield is really valuable Ahmed Rosario could probably play second for you. Who's the backup shortstop? Is it Ahmed Rosario? Yeah he's been the guy when it's not Caballero playing short it's Ben Rosario. Anyway that means his roster is spot safe. Josh Lowe can play center right? Can. But I don't see what your trade is for the for in the middle of this. I don't like who are you suggesting like Yandi? they signed him, right? Yeah, they extended Yandi.

They like what they're getting out of Paredes. I think if you were trading someone, you would trade Josh Lowe. No. And that's even the middle of your roster. That's like upper third of your roster. I think that he is one of the few people that has like star potential.

Yeah, but then you'd get a lot more back in a trade if you traded him. I think a DFA for Syria Ramirez is what's gonna happen. You're going the DFA around That's what I hope they do not because I want to see people get DFA'd But because I want to see other players play and those guys can go play somewhere else Hopefully they get new opportunities with another club But there is room for another infielder you just play you would just play Palacios and Rosario more in the outfield if you released

Ramirez or Ciri. Plenty of depth there and Curtis Mead still doing his thing back at AAA right now, right? So lots of options in Tampa Bay. Speaking of lots of options, what's going on with the Orioles? We thought the usage of Heston Kirstad was strange. He's finally been sent back to AAA, which if you're not going to play him I guess that's probably the better place to put him. I don't even have a clear right answer on this one.

I think at a certain point if you think a player's got nothing left to prove then make him a part-time guy in the big leagues and just let it be an ongoing competition, but they weren't even playing him enough for that to be an explanation of usage during his time in the big leagues. So it's Kyle Stowers back up on the roster with Kerstad going back down. If you're in a keeper or dynasty situation, he's probably a guy you're trading for right now in anticipation of either injuries or the trade deadline shaking things up and clearing a path. You might be looking more at 2025 even if you're making a move like this. And then the bigger question if you pull back is, is Hestan Kirstad still projecting for you

as enough of an impact player to justify looking at him as a longterm ad and keeper in dynasty leagues? Well, I think that the pain point for the O'rhylls, I mean, I say that carefully because they are 27 and 14 and look like a pretty really good good team and also just offensively The place where maybe the vultures are circling is one of my guys Cedric Mullins I do think that a 198 babbip suggests that he's been unlucky in terms of

You know barreling and strikeouts and walks, like it is all a little bit worse than before, but the projections still say he's an above average bat. And I think the eye test and the defensive numbers agree that I think he's the best option in center field. So that's why Kirstad doesn't solve that problem. I'm unfamiliar with Stowers' abilities in center. I know that he's played 13 games in center field this year, which is more than he's played

in left or right. And so I think that left or right separately, but together it's left and right more than center if that makes sense. So he's just played every single outfield spot. I know that they've tried Colton Couser in center. I still think Mullens is the superior defender. So I don't really know. I don't really know what the answer is here.

Austin Hayes comes back and plays one game and his manager talks about him still feeling the calf injury. So anyway, my point is this, the outfield is in flux. And if Kirstad can't play center, I don't think he can be part of the solution because the real issue is who plays centerfield. Yeah, with Mullins, the value has taken a bit of a hit in the last couple of weeks, even since the last rankings update. I'm with you on the low BAB app, the underlying skills quality-wise, contact quality-wise, still being pretty good to where you could see some rebound.

But if you look at what he's done since April 15th, 85 played appearances, three homers and four steals, good. But at 138, 176, 263, that's a 24 WRC plus. He's fallen to the bottom third of the lineup. I mean, he hit ninth against the Blue Jays on Wednesday night like this is and this is wrong games I I don't know exactly what the schedule looks like but there's too many gaps here I don't know if they played on the 14th But there's also between the fourth and seventh there's two or three games missing there

So there's some games missing that that that bothers me as much as and then on the 11th, just one plate appearance. So that suggests he's a pinch hitter on the second. He was a pinch hitter. So it's he needs to start getting some hits. He's he's filling it right now. You know who I've underrated done this Orioles team, not a prospect, but a guy that they brought in last year who played really well, Ryan O'Hern. I have completely missed on Ryan O'Hern and some of the limitations for how he's utilized

in fantasy come from the strict platoon usage, but he has cut his strikeout rate again. Through 30 games, he's down to a 9.4% strikeout rate. A 12.3% walk rate. He's swinging at pitches outside the zone less than ever. Big, big change there and still doing a lot of damage. This is a really interesting late 20s, now early 30s player who I don't know if he'll ever get a chance to be an everyday guy for the Orioles,

but he's clearly valuable to them because he's in the heart of the order when they face righties. Yeah, interesting that he's got plus bad speed and a short swing length. Of course, he doesn't pull the ball as much as other people, so that swing length may be equal to some other power hitters. But this seems to be the best way for him to make contact is to not focus on pulling 45% of the time and getting everything in the air,

but using the whole field, that's the best way to at least, for his contact rate and for his strikeout rate, obviously. And it does seem like he has enough power to push it out to, you know, Oppo as well. So he's a pretty good player. You know, you can see why Kansas City might have thought that he was a slugger that couldn't hit for average. I mean, you know, while he was there,

he was hitting 220, he had a couple under 200. And I wonder if that was kind of focusing on pulling the ball and making the most out of his power. His max EVs, for example, were higher in Kansas City than they have been in Baltimore. So he's not, you example, were higher in Kansas City than they have been in Baltimore. So he's not reaching the same raw power levels, but it's more functional game power now. So I think there's a lot of different player profile types that could be coached incorrectly

or put into the wrong box. It's not even being coached incorrectly. It's just believing that the ceiling for a player like Ryan O'Huron, this big lefty first baseman is 30 plus homers, pull everything, get to that pull power. So he had people in his ear probably before he was even in pro baseball trying to get him to pull the ball for power. And someone along the way maybe realized, no, you actually have a good enough hit tool.

You don't have to completely sell out and go down that path. The best version of you is a more balanced sort of approach. It's sort of like speedsters being told to hit the ball on the ground years ago, right? Hit the ball on the ground, use your legs. Well, that's not necessarily the best thing the speedster can do because this person can actually hit line drives. And that's way better than hitting the ball on the ground, no matter how fast you run. So I just wonder if that's another bucket that gets less attention because of the body type and the extreme

Pressure we put on players like that to just hit for a massive amount of power. Otherwise we deem them to be Useless or not valuable at all and that's kind of strange like that's just another Another angle to think about I guess as you're looking for some players that could fit into your roster a bit better Than their their previous track records would lead you to believe Yeah I also wonder if one thing that they noticed was that a swing strike rate wasn't really commensurate with With his strikeout rate, you know in a similar way that Mullins right now has a 10% swing strike rate and 26% Strikeout rate. That is weird. But Nolan Jones has a 9.9%

swing strike rate 35.9% strikeout rate. I think that's that's out of whack. You know, I think you could probably find some players like this, you know, that where you're just like, hey, if we change the approach just a little bit, you know, even Julian in Minnesota, it's a weird combination. Maybe he's a little bit overly patient because he's got 11% swing strike rate

and a 33% strikeout rate. Oh man, Jake Bowers is just leaping up the rundown already. Ever since we besmirched him and questioned the Brewers decision to send Tyler Black down and keep Jake Bowers on the roster, he's done nothing but make us look like fools, including hitting a grand slam off of a lefty. Oh my god. And now his overall, I was looking at his overall numbers for the year and now they look fine.

And you're just like, man, sometimes a week can just do that for you. Yeah. 123 WRC plus despite a 36.5% K rate, but I was having a conversation in our Discord with one of our listeners and their suggestion was that because he doesn't have this overly aggressive approach on a swing level, that the K rate's probably a little bit high. And I looked at some other guys that strike out more than we'd like that also have a similar approach. I learned that I'm like Buxton and Kelnick as guys that I've always liked that I wanted

to get better but haven't yet as like reasons to temper my enthusiasm about Bowers. But if you look at what Bowers has done himself in the big leagues before, if you want to say he owns those skills of putting together a season in which he had a sub 25% K rate just three years ago. Well, that should give you more reason for optimism than anything else. I mean, there's at least something in there that says, Hey, you know, he at least understands the strike zone really well. So maybe maybe there are some better days ahead with that K rate, even if it's only slightly better, it might be good enough for him to keep his job, which I had previously been pretty dismissive of.

Yeah. And he's still running. He's always had a little more speed than your typical first baseman. So just an interesting package overall. And just a couple more names off this leaderboard that just popped for me. Jorge Polanco, 11% string strike rate, 31% strikeout rate. You'd expect that to go in a different direction. And the last one, Mike Istremski 11.4 swing strike rate 31.9 strikeout rate. And that is like way out of

whack with what he's done before. The bat speed distributions show that Mike Istremski only has an A swing. And so what I'm putting forth is that maybe he should have a B swing. Yeah, like that's sort of like the next part of some of the swing stuff we've talked about saying, like marrying that information with things that are currently surprising. I mean, if you watch players closely on a day to day basis, you might pick up on these things, too. But if you don't watch the entire league frequently, we try our best to watch as much as we can.

You can't pick up on approaches that easily unless you watch a team day after day after day. Also, just Dremski, if he's taking his A-swing every time and he has four homers, you could watch him every day and not really know it's the A-swing every time. Right, yeah, you're not getting it by result, but yeah, it would explain why that K-rate's as high as it is with an approach that seemingly wouldn't lead to a strikeout rate like that.

That again is one of the main things I thought would be interesting about that new bat tracking information we're getting from Statcast. What are the project prospect topic today? Kind of an open question for you. Have you noticed that the pitching performances among many top prospects right now have been underwhelming through the first month and a half of the season. Doesn't mean these guys aren't actually good.

Doesn't mean that they won't be good very soon, but you see really high walk rates. You see some bad ratios. Some of it's the weather. Some of it's guys moving up a level. Some of it's the new level having ABS not having an impact on them. There's a whole bunch of different reasons for it, but I came away looking at the RotoWire Top Prospects list for pitchers, which has stats at every level next to it,

kind of scratching my head and saying, what would I do if I were trying to find future pitching right now in this pool where you find small pitfall after small pitfall with many, many pitchers. One underlying thing, and we talked about this on the last Rates and Barrels, is just the pitching injury has created a situation where we're just chewing through arms quicker than we can make them. That's what it seems like to me. Triple A right now, the stuff plus is 86. You know, the average stuff plus of every pitch is 86. And last year was 95.

You know, you could argue that's a calibration issue, but I don't know because when you look at who's in triple A and who's coming up, like, it's not that exciting. We've already, we've told you the big name to circle. It's David Festa and there's not really another one. All the people that are in the top, actually all the people that were in that had above average stuff plus and were you know in the were pitching as I'm calling a bulk pitchers. People said that's that's not the right word because that makes people think of followers and stuff. Okay well high volume,

high volume. Or starters, You can call them starters. I just hesitate to call them starters because some of them have 50 pitches per appearance. But all the people with 100 stuff plus or better are in the major leagues or hurt other than or like not really prospects and have some weird like performance. Like Dom Hammell with the Mets, I think has a terrible walk rate. Everybody else is either up or is named Cade Horton or David Festa.

There's not really anything left at AAA. And in fact, it gets even worse. I took the board from Fangraphs that has the top 100 prospects on it. And I just looked through all of the top 100 prospects on fan graphs. And I was asking, is there somebody on this list who is A, not in the big leagues already, B, not hurt, C, like ready enough, like had, has been pitching at AA for some little bit. And then D like has been pitching well and it's amazing.

There's nobody on this list. I mean Jackson Jobe is hurt. Cade Horton, the VELO is down. The locations are bad in AAA. Like he's close to ready. He has like he clicks like a lot of the boxes but not necessarily all of them. You know Rhettett Lauder is fun, but he just hit double A. I think Rhett Lauder might be one of the few names that we can bring up, but Jacob Mizorowski is like, you know, walking 18% of the people he's seen. Tiedemann doesn't seem to even be pitching. Painter hurt. Job hurt. You know, just, I just just you go through it and there are very few names

Noel Meyer even is striking is a ball and he's striking out 18% of the people We saw we saw so just like I think there's two names Other than David Festa that jump off this list and we're not even sure they're they're totally ready. So Noah Schultz list and we're not even sure they're they're totally ready. So Noah Schultz. Yeah. Yeah. Noah Schultz is more of a long term. If you are playing for the future and he happens to be available in your league, you might say, hey, he could jump over a lot of the guys that are struggling at the levels above him because he is excellent stuff.

He just hasn't had a chance to prove it over a high volume of innings yet. So that's sort of the what could go right name that you're looking at. He's likely more than a year away because the White Sox and their rebuild aren't going to rush them to the big leagues and say, just go out there and pitch every day. But ceiling is about as high as anyone you're going to find on most pitching prospect list. Yeah. And like for people a little bit more sort of win now,

we I think Max Meyer is just working on stuff in the minors I think he'll be back He's still a good name and then you know the only other name in the top 100 that really sticks out for me is Tink Hentz You know we're talking about a guy that the only real negative thing that you can find on Descriptions of him are that he's small. And you know, six foot one, 195 is not, you know, when on the paper does not read that small. But I was looking at Gavin Stone at the park the other day and thought, man, this guy looks small.

Gavin Stone is listed at 61 175. And Dean Kramer is listed at I think 62 200. And I was looking at him and thinking he just looks small. So I wonder if like just our frame of reference a little bit off that these guys are just looking bigger and bigger. You know, we used to make a big deal if someone wasn't six foot, are we going to make a big deal when they're not six foot two now? And so take hence the the production seems there he's in double A for a second time,

15% string string strike rate, 27% strike out rate, 8% walk rate. He is on a team that needs him. The Cardinals, uh, he would be a win for organization for, for Mozilla act that's kind of under fire right now. It seems like a Tink Hens could be someone you could stash. Um, and then we also, I also spotted Adam Mazer. I was on the radio in San Diego this morning and we were talking about how it hasn't quite worked out

the way we thought at the back end of the rotation with Vazquez and Brito. Adam Mazer was just sent to AAA where he has a 24% strikeout rate, 8% walk rate. Before in AA he had a 27% strikeout rate, 4% walk rate before in double A, he had a 27% strikeout rate, 4% walk rate. Seems like he has pretty good command. He's a little bit of an unknown right now, and maybe he doesn't have the pathway if they're just going to continue with, with Vasquez.

Uh, but he fits a lot of the box. He's not in the top 100. So he doesn't click that box, but he is ready pitching well and close to the big leagues. It's not great out there. There's a few names kind of caught in between. You might be wondering what's going on with those Atlanta pitching prospects. You know, we saw A.J. Smith Schaver in the big leagues last year. He's having a pretty uneven season at Triple A right now.

Still very young for the level. So this is not the referendum on what his long term outlook is going to look like. It's just more of the oh, he's maybe not quite as ready as we thought when they pushed him last year, so it's gonna take some more time for him. Hurston Waldrop is pitching better at AA than he was after a really rough start to begin the year. Eight innings last time out with eight strikeouts too,

so hey, who says pitching prospects don't pitch deep into games anymore? You got eight innings for Hurston Waldrop this week. Yeah, Waldrop is probably, should be on our list. Pitching well, close. I don't know, you know, what's the corresponding move right now because Reynaldo Lopez looks great. You know, I guess Bryce Elder's spot is always in question.

Poor Bryce. But, you know, he's credible. Would you rather have Bryce Elder or Randy Vazquez if you were a big league team? Probably Vazquez, but does Vazquez, is Vazquez his best, change it probably as his best pitch, right? Is that the best pitch that either one of them has?

Maybe take the guy that has the best pitch. Maybe, but Elder's command is much better than Vazquez's, so. Yeah, huh. That's a good Woodsy rather. Yeah. Well, I mean, then, you know, I think Waldrop's a better prospect than Mazer. So if you wanted to put him on the list ahead of Mazer, Festa has more opportunity than any of them. If you don't like Simeon Woods-Richerson. See, Woods-Richerson and Elder, some of these guys,

I mean, Woods-Richerson at least was one time a more highly regarded prospect than Bryce Elder ever was. Some of these guys that get to the big leagues and just have success despite the fact that they have maybe slightly below average big league stuff get put into this bucket where we're always trying to take their job away. But if they're getting results,

even if it takes a half season, we saw with Bryce Elder last year, it might take 15 starts before the league figures it out. And then maybe you get to late July, August, then they're making a change. Then the twins are looking at David Festa is better than Woods Richardson. But it's hard to look at a guy that goes through five starts, has a 23 to 6 K to VV, keeps the ball in the yard and say, yeah, we wanna make a change. You know, it's just, you gotta wait it out. So there is not on this list, especially not in 12 teams,

even in 15 teams, is there a name on here that you would stash in 15 teams that we've dimensioned? I don't think so. I don't think there is right now. I think the bigger pitching stashes right now seem to be more from, you know, the rehabbing group, like instead of prospects, it's looking kind of at some of the waiver wire stuff for this weekend. You're not stashing Jeffrey Springs yet, but you're certainly thinking about the

day, probably a month or so from now, which will be about maybe two weeks before his return, where you would maybe think about adding him. And if you're in first place. Yeah. Maybe you want to be a week ahead of other people. Right, because I assume in most leagues, Garrett Cole was either held the entire time for the injury

or you got IL spots. Like he's also increasing activity in bullpen sessions, but Springs pitching in a complex league game After the weekend, so he's probably about a month or so, but even the little injury Supposedly might be short. So if somebody drops him, you know, you could try to hop on that really quickly Yeah, and I was looking at some players available in my 12 team leagues. Garrett Whitlock had a great rehab start on wednesday There's a chance he was dropped in some more shallow leagues like it's more guys like that on Wednesday, there's a chance he was dropped in some more shallow leagues. It's more guys like that that I'm trying to snap up

when I can as opposed to prospects right now, which is a little bit different. Usually we have, at least in a lot of past years, you have some pitching prospects you were sure were just around the corner. And I think we get this combination of a lot of recent promotions this year plus last year, injuries, maybe a post 2020 gap in terms of some talent as well.

Like maybe the impact of that is being felt in some long-term leagues still, because a lot of guys that would be in the minor leagues right now at age 21 would have been 17 when 2020 got nixed. So just some maybe like big development hiccups as a result of that lost season are also Playing out right now

Yeah I guess you could if you were really leading the pack and you thought you had an extra spot you could Kind of go against the grain a little bit with Horton and job. Yeah, I think job's got a hamstring injury. So that's a pretty minor injury He's a double ash one of the top guys and just be like I have one of the top guys They'll make room for him. Like sometimes when you're a top guy, it doesn't matter what's going on in the rotation they're just like Ben Brown to the bullpen and Kate Horton up, you know, I think Kate Horton

It's more of a let's just watch and see what the velocity does being down for one start doesn't really mean a lot if it's Down for three or four starts then then, you know, maybe you tick the ceiling down a little, but he still could be their third or fourth best starter. That's well within range for Kate Horton. So I think of the prospects we mentioned, he'd be the one that I still think is closest, despite a little bump in the road here early on at AAA. Yeah, it is an interesting year just in general where I don't think we'll want to like,

I, we just put forth all the reasons why maybe not to stash Caminero. Yes, I think we did. There's not like even a hitting prospect that, uh, that I would necessarily stash right now. So it's just a, it's a weird part in the year where I'm not, it's not obvious to me what the stashes are. I think, uh, you might want to look what the stashes are. I think you might want to look at major leaguers that could just create more playing time for themselves. On the rundown we've got Dominic Kenzone. If you have daily lineups or you just want

to have an extra guy on your list that you could move in when he sees a bunch of righties or, you know, like, you know, like there's sometimes we, we, uh, on most of my leagues, I have a guy who's a left-hander that plays, that is only a platoon, but I can spot points in the schedule where I'm like, ah, three right-handers in a row. He's in my lineup, you know, that's for streaming as well as Ken's own should be someone you think about, you know, Jonathan Aranda, you know, in terms of guys that are in between what you would want to start and streaming, you know, somebody that you could have on your bench sometimes has a middle infield eligibility.

So those are the types of players that are kind of young players that are in the big leagues that could play themselves into full-time playing time as well. Yeah. Yeah. I think those two coming off the IL recently are still pretty widely available. A lot of uncertainty about role for both, but Aranda, as we've said time and time again, nothing left to prove against AAA pitching. At some point, you need to see what he does against regular opportunities in the big leagues and see if he's good enough to be a part of your core or not. And based on where they're hitting him coming off the IL, I think they at least wanna explore that for a brief time.

I would say you could make a similar case for Joey Ortiz as another guy who's been in the big leagues. The Brewers have been shuffling things around their roster. I think Oliver Dunn just got optioned down. He seems to be kind of solid at third, right? Really nice defender, kind of good defender, at like three spots and gives them cover along with Bryce Terang. he's not trying every day

He's playing like 80% of the time right now He's played eight of the last ten or started eight of the last ten And I think the way things are happening with that team he could inch that up even further But the bats slowly waking up Joey Ortiz wasn't hitting a lot to begin the season And I think that's always tough when you're not playing every day But now he's already pushed that line up to what? 277 384 5, 511, not chasing, drawn walks. I mean, that's a. Four homers I think.

That's a pretty good looking combination of skills in a limited sample right now. I was looking at him in my 12 teamer. I think, you know, in 12 teamers, he's the kind of guy who's on your wire. And I think he's actually worth picking up because he'll have multi-eligibility. You know what he does really well is if you're in head to head in a 12 teamer,

he's a guy that you would love to have to sort of plug in to get extra played appearances when someone's not playing or like you know just you have to use as like your one or two bench bats. I trust the way that the Joy Ortiz gets there. I trust him a lot more than Jake Bowers as far as like which semi-regular or near everyday guy for the Brewers is gonna be better in the long run. A lot more trust in Ortiz, a little bit younger. Just a much better play approach. More defensive value.

Yeah, and Bowers has defensive value, but he has it at positions where you don't worry as much about it. It's nice to have it, but eventually if the bat's not what you want, you move on. A couple of catchers actually that were kind of interesting to me, Connor Wong, still kind of sitting below 50% rostered in CBS leagues. I almost wonder if he's pushing his way into some one catcher leagues because of how well

he's played for the Red Sox. And if you're looking in the two catcher bucket, maybe Corey Lee. I wish they'd play him more. He's still sharing a lot of time with Martin Maldonado. But I looked at Lee last week as sort of a backup if you were chasing Ivan Herrera or just trying to find a catcher. I ended up getting him in one league.

He's got a pretty high Mabip, like close to 400 right now that's been propping him up. He's got a career 8.7% barrel rate. And you can look back at his old Fangraphs graduation. His too long didn't read Lee has a 70 arm and plus power likely a 30 grade hitter. Maybe still enough to catch every day I think that's exactly what he is and how long are you really gonna play Martin Maldonado if you're the White Sox It's nice to have him as a backup

But just see what Lee does with the added playing time you could even do a two young catcher tandem there with Karo. Yeah, eventually you could do that. And that would be just fine. So Corey Lee had a 25 homer, 12 steal season at AAA as a 23 year old back in 2022 in Houston. Like this guy deserves an opportunity on a team that's rebuilding the way the White Sox are. So those were a couple of catchers that sort of caught my eye

just digging around, looking for any bit of hope in that corner of the player pool. If you're looking for pitching the name that stuck out from the names you put on the list, obviously Gasser is interesting for the start Miami. We've talked about him a little bit. And then the other name that really stuck out was Jose Soriano. Yeah, he's still under-rostered in just about every format. I mean, we talked about him at first when he got the opportunity to start as a two-Tommy-John guy where you're worried about him physically not holding up,

but his stuff is really good for a widely available pitcher. He's sitting 99 basically, it's pretty intense. He doesn't have good command and he doesn't, I mean the big problem is if a lot of times when you're streaming or chasing wins and you know, he has 5.1, 5 1 3rd, 4 2 3rd, 6, 1 2 3rd, 6, 5, like it's gonna be barely there. Like if he gets you a win, you're kind of hoping that the angels score some runs in

the first five innings, which is actually also a part of why it's difficult for him to get wins. But just in terms of the quality of pitchers around him, I'd go Gasser Soriano. Gasser, he might be a little bit more schedule dependent than people realize. I mean, I like his stuff. He throws a lot of change ups. He only got two strikeouts in the last start. His best fastball is a sinker.

I like him, but I don't know, don't really know how he got to 30% strikeout rate in the minors. Yeah, I'm really interested to see what happens as he gets tested more. I mean, he's faced two below average lineups on the season to this point. Debuted against the Cardinals. They're in 90 WRC plus so far. Just faced the Pirates.

24.4% K-rate as a team. 86 WRC plus. He didn't carve them up even though he was good against them. And Miami, the second worst lineup in the league by WRC plus is his next start. So at least it's been a very soft landing spot for him to begin the year. But he's actually still among the more interesting pitchers out

there because it's so thin in so many places. I think Alec Mills is interesting, man. I forget if we talked about him at the very beginning of the season before his IL stint or if I just sent you a text and it seemed like he made a slight adjustment to his pitch mix and it's been paying off so far. We're not looking at a guy that's going to be good in the sense of being 10 and 12 team league, every start viable, but his division helps being in the AL Central. Yeah, we like that group of teams better than we have in past years. It's still an easier place to pitch than most other divisions. So that's a plus.

I think there's actually more to come strikeout rate wise. It could be more of like a seven and a half Ks per nine, 20% strikeout rate guy, as opposed to like the high teens we've seen to this point. Well, I'm a little bit interested in Alec Marsh as a relatively overlooked guy in that Royals rotation. You're right about the pitch mix change, but I wouldn't necessarily call it a minor one.

He's tripled the usage of his slider. No, that was Alec Mills. What has he changed? Oh, more sinkers. Stuff Plus says that Marsh's best pitch is, best fastball is a sinker. So he's throwing more sinkers against righties, and that's working for him. The one nice thing about Marsh is that he's throwing more sinkers against righties and that's working for him.

The one nice thing about Marsh is that he he's in that I needed to have a name for this, you know, like picture this I'm jealous of him. He always has like these names like Toby and all this stuff like there has to be a word for like the kitchen sink guy that in any given year could totally be fine. It's kind of the reason why I was bullish on Dean Kramer this year, you know? It's the guy who has a bunch of pitches who looks like he has okay command and could maybe figure it out and have a good year. That doesn't roll off your tongue.

Kitchensink guy, a plumber. Yeah, yeah, kitchensink. Plumber? Plumber, he's a plumber. Yeah, all right, Alec Marsh is the plumber, I like it. You need plumbers. You need plumbers a plumber. Yeah, all right. Alec Marsh is the plumber, I like it. You need plumbers. You need plumbers in this world.

You need plumbers. Highly, highly respected group of people. Just you got kids like mine. I don't know what it is. They stop up toilets everywhere. I mean, they stopped up the Little League toilet. They stopped up the toilet, they stopped the toilet at my family member's house.

I'm like, what are you guys doing? I don't, I had a friend throw an Apple Corps into my toilet in college and it was just, I walked in there and it was just floating in there. I said, hey, what are you doing? He's like, it'll go down. I said, look at the pipe connected to this toilet.

Tell me how that's going to fit through. He's like, you gotta fish that out of there, bud. You can't just throw apple cores down the toilet. Well, good thing you got Alec Marsh for you. Another nice thing about it is that the schedule will favor him. I think he's the kind of guy you can keep on your team. There'll be some weeks you don't want to start him.

Yeah, that's gonna happen. A lot of weeks where you're happy to start him. In a pitching world where you're not stashing prospects and you just need to survive and find quality ratios, I actually think Alec Marsh can deliver on that. I think that's something he's capable of doing. A little bit lowdom because it's below average stuff plus, below average strikeout rate. There's, you know, Sierra's 4.01. But you know what?

A 4.01 Sierra is actually better than the average. Right. And I think it's also the team that we think is on the rise too. So your win probability is up a little bit relative to normal as well. Because he's efficient, he can get to the fifth enough times to actually be win eligible on a pretty regular basis. So yeah, it's probably a 375 ERA

and a 118, 120 whip here on out. If things are going well, that's good. That's better than what you're gonna find from a lot of pitchers out there. So that's where the appeal comes from. And you may beat people to him on the wire if they're using projections only because the bat has a 5-3-3 for him.

Yeah, projections don't like him. So there's definitely a low of quality with Alec Marsh. I can't believe I called him Alec Mills because I did the same thing. I pulled up the page, I'm like, what happened? Wait, did he get cut? Why would they cut him? He's good. It's like, oh, no, just pre-coffee. He threw a slider I pulled up the page. I'm like, what happened? Wait, why would they cut him? He's good. Oh, no, just

pre coffee. 30% of the time. Oh, that's that's the wrong page. Pre coffee addition to the rundown. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels on our way out the door. A couple reminders. Get a subscription at the website dot com slash rates and barrels. Find Eno on Twitter at EnoSaris. Find me at Derek and Ryper. Find the podcast at Rates and Barrels. We are back with you at one o'clock Eastern on our YouTube page on Friday. Thanks for listening.