Rates & Barrels - Ozuna to Atlanta & Tatis to the First Round

Episode Date: January 23, 2020

Rundown0:55 Marcell Ozuna in Atlanta5:16 Fernando Tatis Jr. is a Late First-Rounder Now20:44 Couldn't You Be Aggressive in Other Early Rounds?26:37 Is the Need for Speed Excessive?32:11 How to Handle Half-Season Stretches of Dominance Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 63. It is January 23rd, 2020. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we'll discuss Marcelo Zuna's one-year deal with the Braves, the rise of Fernando Tatis Jr. to first-round status, and several other topics, including questions about how to handle half-season splits. We are available on iTunes, Spotify,

pretty much anywhere you want to listen to podcasts. If you're enjoying this show on a platform that allows you to rate and review it, please take the time to do that. We really appreciate it. Tell your friends about the show as well. And if you're listening to the show for the first time and you're not already a subscriber to The Athletic, you can get 40% off a subscription at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. You know, we're going to get right at it. Marcelo Zuna goes to the Braves. And I think one of us or both of us thought that it wasn't going to happen. We thought they were going to maybe go the third base upgrade route.

But one-year deal, $18 million. It kind of looks like Ozuna is doing the Osmani Grandal bet on himself thing. And I think he has the skills to actually pull it off. Yeah, we'll see. This is going to definitely be the best or most hitter-friendly home park that he's played in. And it's not saying that he's going to Coors or anything, but Atlanta is like about 18th when it comes to high drives to right field turning into left field.

He's a righty. Left field turning into home runs. And before he used to be at sort of 28 and 29 and 30. So there's a chance there that he kind of pulls a Mike Moustakis, I think, and has a good year and a good park and then gets basically the three-year, at least the three-year deals he was looking at, if not more, plus the 18 he gets.

So if he's looking at 330, 345, that sort of stuff, maybe he says, I take 18 and I get that same deal or better next year yeah maybe he pushes it up to 18 per year over three more years and that's not on the table right now i can see that playing out that way it is funny that all the parks he's played in are more pitcher friendly and this is the least pitcher friendly environment so far but still kind of closer to the middle of the pack. And he's had a ton of success on the power front. I mean, last year was a low point for him in terms of batting average at 243, but he drew more walks than ever, which I think is a really encouraging sign for the long-term profile. He's one of those guys with big-time power who's never really struck out that much as a big league player outside of

his first full season way back in 2014 even 26.8 by today's standards really isn't that bad but i like him quite a bit and he's right in the same average draft position neighborhood as josh donaldson who was a big topic on our tuesday episode that seemed a little bit low to me i think we're going to see a similar lift on on ozuno where he's probably going 15, 20 picks earlier, maybe even 25 picks earlier as draft season continues to play out. Because I think the general feeling and assessment with the Braves lineup is that it's a really good lineup for him to land in. So those counting stats could look maybe as good as they were in that 2017 peak, where he went over 200 combined runs in RBIs. I think he's capable of doing that again.

I think the batting average comes in close to where all those projections are putting him in that 271 to 276 range between ATC and Steamer. Yeah, the thing that I think that turfed him might have been, there's two things that come up. His defensive numbers look okay when it comes to DRS and UZR and stuff, but OOAA, the OAA, I always mess it up, outs above average, OAA, that one says he's a minus eight, one of the worst outfielders out there, and I think that matches up with kind of the eye test.

If you've watched him, there's a really funny clip that went around the internet of him scaling the wall for a ball that hit like six feet in front of the wall. Yeah, that was one of the GIF highlights of 2019. So, you know, I like him. I like the bat. I like what he does for that lineup. The problem still is the bottom of the lineup. You know, they extended the lineup one more batter,

but when it comes to Riley, Inciarte, Marquecas, that portion of the lineup, it's an NL lineup, I guess I'll say. Yeah, I think it's a good NL lineup, though. Zuni gives them one really dangerous bat, takes the playing time down a little bit, probably for Nick Marquegas, puts

him into a more traditional fourth outfielder role, because I think Ender Enciarte is sneakily one of those guys that's going to play a lot and actually offer cheap speed. We're going to talk a lot about speed as we move through this episode, and he's on that short list of guys that you get outside the top 200 who I think can secure enough playing time and not burn you. You can actually be an asset in some other categories as well if things

fall the right way. But the big topic on my mind this week is Fernando Tatis Jr., who has become a first roundrounder in recent weeks. And I heard Paul Spohr and Dusty Wagner talking about this on the Sleeper in the Bus podcast earlier in the week. They were kind of predicting players who would be first-rounders or would be up significantly in ADP between now and March. And Tatis was among the players they discussed. And then sure enough, yesterday, a 15-team slow draft event starts up.

Jeff Erickson, in the seat next next to me pops Tatis at 12 overall. I've been lower than the field on Tatis for all of draft season. Part of it's the injury concern with his back, although he seems to be fully on track for a normal start to spring training, and everything seems to be fine on that front right now. There is a lot of swing and miss in his profile. I think it gets better over time because he's so young. There's reason to believe he can improve. And then I just look at the stolen bases, and I wonder if we're kind of wish-casting

a higher ceiling in that category. The projection systems love him, and it's really hard to project young players. It's something we've talked about a lot on this show. But ATC is right up there with Steamer in terms of how much it, again, likes Tatis. 274 for the average, 29 homers, 24 steals. Steamer had 265, 31 homers, 23 steals. I mean, you're splitting hairs in terms of the power and speed and and the differences between those two systems where are you at on tatis like i understand the

appeal he's tooled up he's young he could be on a trajectory not totally unlike what ronald acuna jr just did last year but i just don't think i want to pay that price a late first round pick to find out yeah i mean i think this hangs on an old school stat that we used to talk about all the time that we kind of talk about a little bit less these days which is babbitt you know and a batting average on balls in play 1.0 the analysis was, you know, that all balls in play across baseball trend towards 300. And basically every year, the league batting average on balls in play is 300. So 30% of balls in play turned into hits. And that's been true even as balls in play have gone down. And it fluctuates a little bit, but it's like 295, 294, 301. You know, that's basically, it's it fluctuates a little bit but it's like 295 294 301 you know that's basically it's

always right in there and so when you look at tatis last year and you say wow he had a 410 babbitt you know that's that's you know the people who've had a full season with a 400 babbitt there's like three of them and babe ruth is one of them you know um so you're kind of like oh well that's probably not going to happen and plus plus it was 372 plate appearances so, you know? So you're kind of like, oh, well, that's probably not going to happen. And plus, plus it was 372 plate appearances. So that, you know, probably is not, you know, even a full season for Tatis last year, you know, but then, so now you go towards projecting it. And now, you know, BABIP 2.0 and 3.0 is how hard does he hit the ball? How fast is he? What angles does he hit the ball? Can we he what angles does he hit the ball can we kind of predict babbitt as much as we can through the component stats uh and get to a point so atc

is really interesting because atc is a consolidator uh basically it kind of looks at a lot of uh projection systems and weights them based on certain things that have been proven to work for each projection system. It's almost like an aggregator, you know what I mean? Like a projection system aggregator. So, you know, I can't speak to why exactly it says, you know, there's gonna be 346 BABIP unless Ariel has done some stuff under the hood, maybe some StatCast stuff. Steamer is probably closer to where I would project him BABIP-wise. A 326 BABIP is pretty good. Last year, you know, a 326 BABIP would have been in the top 50, and people like him would have been Jorge Polanco, Austin Meadows, Chris Bryant, Ozzy Albies.

You know, good players that hit the ball pretty hard and had pretty good batting averages. But of course, then you add in the strikeout rate, and he's probably going to have a worse batting average than all those guys. ATC says he's going to have a.346 Babbitt, which would be top 15 in the league, and right there with Javier Baez, Domingo Santana, Trey Turner, which you can see. I mean, if you're kind of just using your eye test, you say, okay, this guy's fast,

and he hits the ball hard, and he runs. He could have that sort of a BABIP. So, possible. But if you kind of zoom out to three years and look at BABIPitt you don't really get that many 346 suddenly becomes a top six or seven type babbitt you know and now he's up there with jd martinez and christian yelich right so you know yes javier bias 346 babbitt over the last three years tatis shares a lot of things with Javier Baez.

Love that. But when I poke under the hood, there's also these weird things that Tatis does where I think he's unrefined as a hitter. And I could see him not having necessarily the year that everyone's sort of buying the upside on. Because, you know, I looked at his exit velocity on fly balls minus his exit velocity on ground balls. And he has a top 15 number there. So he hits fly balls really hard and ground balls really soft. And that's led to a good BABIP. Because if you hit your ground balls really soft, you have a chance to outrun the fielder. If you hit your fly balls really hard, they're going to turn into hits and power.

So in some ways ways that's good. But is that like a skill that you believe in? Do you think that a hitter can say, oh, this is a fly ball. I'm going to hit it hard. Oh, this is a ground ball. I'm going to hit it soft. And the players around him I think represent

the sort of boom or bust situation that can happen with a player like this. So Joey Gallo is number one in the difference between the two. Great. He's a really hard hitter. Victor Robles is number two. Ryan Cordell, Delano DeShields, Will Myers, Luke Maia, Robinson Chirinos, Harrison Bader, Carlos Gomez. Oh, Juan Soto. Good. Matt Carpenter. Okay.

Michael Conforto. Okay. Tatis. So it's a really weird mix of groups of hitters. And there's a fair amount of like poor hitters in there and mistake hitters. So what I'm saying, long story short, that was a bit of a soapbox moment. But what I'm saying is there are refinements that need to happen in Tatis' game. He's, you know, I can just zoom out and say he's 21 years old. To put him in Javier Baez's shoes right away, I think, is buying his upside and not his most likely outcomes. Yeah, I mean, I'm looking at the XBA from last year, 259. He actually hit 317 he's the kind

of guy that's gonna beat his xba because he runs so well like i can i can but they're including that now they're including that now i mean foot speed is more in it now i don't know if it's necessarily an xba but i know it's an xwoba so i would assume it's an xba yeah so you look at the difference between xwoba and woba that's a 53 point difference where his actual Woba was a lot higher than his expected Woba. So there was a ton of good fortune. And what can happen is he can improve. He can lower the K rate. He can add more power. He could do the things that offset what would be a normal sort of regression. That can happen. Skills can change and it just masks it, right? That can happen. I understand that.

I think what I came back to were two things where I think there are other players that go in that range that have much higher floors, many of whom are not going to steal many, if any, bases. So part of this might just be the obsession we're having with stolen bases as well. Now, a lot of the drafts that are happening right now, they are high-stakes leagues. They are NFBC-type leagues where there's an overall prize component, and you want to do that big thing, find that league-winning player

that goes off and carries you to a title. Again, I think the hope for people who are taking him at the back of the first round is that he is this year's Acuna. He's a guy that's going 1-1 in some rooms or at least top three in some rooms next season. I think he has the tools to eventually be that player, but it doesn't always happen overnight. So I ran a leaderboard real quick over at Fangraphs, and I ran through the last 20 seasons.

I split up all the rookie seasons, sorted by WRC+, set the minimum to 300 plate appearances. And what Tatis did last year in terms of WRC plus. He had a 150 WRC plus. That's the ninth highest for any rookie with at least 300 plate appearances in the last 20 years. It's a great rookie season. The guys ahead of him, short list, right? Jordan Alvarez, number one, Aaron Judge, Jose Abreu, Mike Trout, Yasiel Puig, Albert Pujols, Ryan Braun, Shohei Otani. It's a really good list of players. Only Judge struck out more than Tatis, and no one, no one had a BABIP over 400. The next highest BABIP on that list was 383. That was Trout. So you just start to kind of put it together and say, okay, yeah, this guy is in good company, but limitless tools and best player in baseball upside,

that was something that people were saying about Yasiel Puig after his debut. There's a good example of a place where it went a little bit wrong even though it wasn't a total disaster for those first couple of seasons after that rookie campaign. It doesn't always happen

where it's all good, all progress going forward year after year upon debut. It's true. It's true. I mean, I've watched the kid play, and I'm actually not as worried about the injury component necessarily. From what I've read, that injury basically uh more common these days because people specialize earlier and so they're doing repetitive stress injuries it's like a repetitive stress specialization injury where you're like I play baseball year round and I'm 18 and still growing you know um so I think I think it's a thing that he got right.

It is a little bit concerning that he then added a hamstring injury on top of that. Right? Yeah, he had a bad thumb injury in the minors in 2018. I think he tore up his thumb sliding into second base while stealing a base. It's bad luck, though. To some extent, there might be a little bit of like the high flyer syndrome where like he, he does crazy things and sometimes those lead to injury, but I'm not ready to put an injury prone tag on him.

I do think he's really exciting. He had, but you know, it's funny that sometimes we overrate his tools. Let me do a real, you know, people talk about how fast he is. Uh, and he is fast. Uh, but I remember looking at his sprint speed and being like, Oh, he's not, he's not like

the fastest in the league. He's 95th percentile. So he's, he's up there, but he's not like 33rd. And it's funny. Look, who's as fast as him. Ryan Cordell. Now that is weird. What just happened? Teams are funny like that, aren't they? When you put them in isolation and you see things like that, you're like, hmm. Yeah, like Randy Arizarena is not supposed to be a center fielder, and he's the 28th fastest guy in the big leagues.

I know that don't yell through your your computer at me i know i know that just being fast is not all it takes to be a centerfielder but anyway uh so anyway he's fast uh he hits the ball hard uh you know i'm doing a piece for friday uh about barrels uh he's not in it but his 13.3% barrel rate or 13% per batted ball event, 8% per PA is almost double the league-wide rate. So he hits the ball hard. He hits the ball hard in the air. He's fast. But there are problems in his game.

And maybe he gets rid of those because the tools are so great. And someone like Javier Baez kind of blew through all these questions too. But there are other players that didn't quite figure out the, the plate discipline component, right? And if you don't quite figure out the plate discipline component, you know, I just feel like you can be figured out. And if you told me that he would have an 8% walk rate and a 30% strikeout rate the rest of his career, I would say at best case scenario,

he's going to burn bright for five or six years and then he's going to fall off. Not everyone ends up having the same career as Javier Baez. Not everyone that looks like Javier Baez ends up having a career like Javier Baez. But obviously, another Javier Baez with maybe even a little bit more speed is super exciting. And if I was in a dynasty league, he's probably a top 10 type player in a dynasty league. But when it comes to this year and what's going to happen this year, for a 21-year-old who struck out 30% of the time last year

and hit his ground balls like 80 miles an hour, I don't know. There's a little bit of... I'm going to take the steamer batting average, 265. And I might give him 28 homers and 20 steals, And I might give him 28 homers and 20 steals, which is going to make him a different kind of value. I'm probably not a first-rounder. If you look at Steamer for Byron Buxton, 262, 20 homers, 23 steals, it's not that far off the numbers you just put out there for Tatis. And I think Buxton actually represents the the side like the the buxton is the what could

happen too so there's javier bias could happen or buxton it could happen you know and they're both very recent examples that show you what you know poor plate discipline but great tools uh how they can figure how they can turn out you know um steamer says uh with a 265 average and 30 homers and 23 stolen bases that um tatis is basically the same as javier baez wow amazing um and uh they're both 18 19 players, which would make them basically top 30 players. Top 30 hitters. Yeah. Top 30 hitters.

Again, I think Tatis is a really good player. I just don't like him enough compared to most of everybody else in the room, it seems. That's all I'm saying is like, well, I'm going to miss out on this guy. I don't feel compelled to push him up even higher because I'm not so confident that it all comes together for him right now that I have to have him in the back part of round one. But I think you can take shots like that. I think you can even do it in the early rounds. But if you're going to try and take a chance on a growth stock, a player that still could be a lot better in 2020 and beyond, you could do that in the fourth round. You could push Victor Robles up from an ADP around

70 and take him at 55 if you really want to. He's not going to be back there in a snake, right? If you're at the 3-4 turn, so end of three, beginning of 4, like that pick 40-50 range, coming back through in the fourth round, that's your shot at Robles. He's probably not going to be there in the late part of round 5. And if you look at Robles' projection versus Tatis, it stacks up pretty favorably. It's a power-speed combo, a young guy that can get a lot better. I mean, if you're going to take that shot, would you rather take that shot at the end of round one

or in the early part of round four? Yeah, I mean, with Steamer, Robles is a $10 player. But I get your general point. And there's other players that fit the same place. Right, right. You could apply this to Luis Robert or whoever you want. And if you want to change the math so it favors you better, so do you want to take that shot in the first?

Do you want to take that shot in the seventh with Jonathan Villar, right? Or do you want to take it later with Dee Gordon? One of my favorites, actually actually is Bo Bichette. I feel, I don't know what the industry hype is on him, but Bo Bichette is a $15 player that I think will go around $15 players. And so there's a player that's going to steal some bases that's, you know, projected by Steamer to have uh the same value in stolen bases uh not necessarily in the rest of it but in stolen bases alone um and he's probably

going to go around where his projection is so uh now you're talking about a guy who's going to go in the top 50 batter so you're talking about maybe top 80 top 100 type pick. Love that. I think there's questions about Bobachet, but they're similar to Fernando Tatis. Does he have a lot of pull power, or is he just a spray guy? There's some questions there. Bobachet makes contact,

has a better contact rate. He's got power and speed, and he's projected to be like a 20-20 type guy, and you can get him many, many rounds later. Right. Better hit tool, pretty clearly. A 20-20 projection based on what Steamer has out there, 22-18 in the ATC system, two 70s in the batting average department,

75 and 77 to be exact. I mean, you can kind of go through those early rounds and find your upside guy. I just think this, I don't think upside is reason enough to draft a player in the first round. I like being aggressive. I like trying to do things that are outside the box, and yet I still am finding

myself odd man out with Tatis. Think about why Trout is always a first-rounder. Trout is always a first-rounder because of his floor. He's not necessarily a first-rounder because of his ceiling, because he's getting older, and his ceiling's not the same as it was, and we've probably already seen his ceiling. because he's getting older, and his ceiling's not the same as it was, and we've probably already seen his ceiling, right? But he's still a first, and he's not even the first, the best fantasy baseball player when we sum it all up at the end. But when you sum up every year, he's the best, you know? And you know, you're either, you know that you're buying somewhere, someone who's going to be like a top 10 batter, right? So there's always risk, but with him, there's less risk.

And that's why you buy him in the first round. And so I think the first round is where you take less risk. You take a high floor. You take a high floor with the high ceiling, but you need the high floor part because there's a lot of high ceiling guys that you can take, you know, later on. We're all trying to find the sleepers.

You know, Oscar Mercado could do something crazy next year. He could. He could join. He has certain amounts because I don't think he's necessarily going to do it. But with the steals and the power, if he hit 25 homers next year and sold 30 bases or something, we'd all of a sudden be like, whoa, Oscar Mercado, first rounder. But there's people with the upside. Robert.

I'm going to call him robert because somebody told me somebody from cuba told me it's robert i'm sorry i'm going to go with robert it just makes more sense it should be robert i just i i just do what the pa people do that's right they're they know more than me i'll call him luis uh like there's only one luis in baseball uh anyway there's there's upside later on. You're buying floor in the first round to some extent, and I don't think Tatis' floor belongs in the first round. And that's why, for me, it's like a no-brainer

to take Nolan Arenado over Tatis in the back of round one. What is Nolan Arenado's floor? It's like 290-35. Yeah, he's hit 37 or more home runs in five straight seasons. He's driven in at least 110 runs in each of those five seasons and he scored at least 97 runs. The lowest his batting average has been in the last five years

is 287. The only thing that's causing him to fall and pushing Tatis up, I think, is that Arnauto doesn't run. Tatis doesn't. Tatis does and then, yeah, the trade rumors. Are we going to sit here and assume and we talked about this a little bit on tuesday we're going to assume that nolan arenado going into a different park is going to just fall apart like he he's so stable in terms of his skills and it's not just the park the park is what bumps him up from being a perennial mid-second rounder to a mid-to-late first rounder.

So even if he does get traded, if you're getting him in the late part of round one, you're not going to lose that much value. There's so much more downside with a player like Tatis in that spot. I'm glad you mentioned Jonathan Villar kind of in passing there just a minute ago. He's part of that speed obsession we're seeing in early drafts. passing there's the minute ago he's part of that speed obsession we're seeing in early drafts ADP is 34.5 in a 15 team league that means he's an early third round pick and there's going to be some situations maybe where someone squeezes him into the second round because they're worried or maybe because they went with Arenado or someone who doesn't run much in the first they want to make sure they lock in those bags but VR is the guy that was still sitting there when my fourth round pick just came up in the slow draft i took victor robles instead adp whatever like throw it out the window in this

case i'm looking at these two guys and thinking i think the floor is actually similar for what they are as hitters right now and there is a scenario in which jonathan var falls into a super utility role and doesn't hit the high-end stolen base expectations we have. I think there's still people dreaming on the crazy 62-steal season he had in 2016. I know he just had 40 last year with the Orioles, but he played in every single game, Eno. He had 714 plate appearances. And that doesn't happen year to year. Doesn't happen year to year.

And especially with him. He had 900 combined two seasons before. AL to NL too. I mean, that's just... Oh yeah, more ways to take a player out of the game. Right. I think Jonathan Villar is a good player, but I don't feel like I have to chase speed

quite as much as everybody else is. I will find speed in the early middle rounds before you get to the tremendous downside type players. We've talked about, I feel bad for Malik Smith. He's always our example of the guy you don't want to rely on. How about Dee Gordon? Dee Gordon is actually projected for a negative fantasy value. Right. Yeah, you don't want to be in a situation

where he's your primary source of steals. Even Colton Wong. I mean, he had 24 steals last year. You don't want to rely on him as your main source of steals. There's enough ways it can go wrong. I understand that. But you want to look for the Ahmed Rosarios,

even the Elvis Andrews type players, where you're getting that high volume of playing time and the skills are stable enough, especially in the case of Andrews, where you're just not really that worried about it. With Malik Smith, there's batting average downside, there's playing time downside, there's run score downside. He could be a negative in every category except for steals and also underperform the steals that you desperately need. So I understand why you need to get the steals early. I just think people are getting them earlier than necessary, and it's hurting them in the sense of missing out on safer, high-floor elite players.

Okay, so here's $3 in value, plus $3 in value in stolen base, and $1 or more overall fantasy value. All right, this is a list of attainable players that have less than $10. These are attainable guys that you could get late round for steals. Oscar Mercado, $7 overall value, almost $6 stolen base value. Elvis Andrews, $8. Ahmed Rosario, $6. Ahmed Rosario, $6.

Danny Santana, $5. However, I have to put a big asterisk on Danny Santana. Just wrote a piece about what war is good for when it comes to fantasy, and he's got a really bad war projection. It's gotten a little better, I think, since they put him in center field, but it's weird to me. They were playing, he was playing first base last year. He, he, I don't think he's their center fielder. And I think that he has a really low ceiling, really low floor, like not playing low floor. I mean, just look at his career.

So he's not my favorite, but some guys I do like, like Kevin Newman, not super exciting, worth only a dollar. Don't buy at last year's level. But in some leagues, he's not. I tried to sell him in Devil's Rejects. I did eventually sell him for Lorenzo Cain. I did eventually sell him for Lorenzo Cain and that's a 33 year old outfielder which does not have much trade value otherwise I had a best offer was a second round pick so that's where I think Kevin Newman's real life value is because he debuted at like 26 and that means he's already at his ceiling but in a lot of redraft leagues he's going to be a nobody

to most people. And you could take him late and get sort of like a 15-20 type middle infielder. Nick Senzel, I think, is one I really like, actually. And Colton Wong is a secret person on this list. So there are players that, and like other than Danny Santana, most of these players are going to play all year.

They have decent floors. Maybe they don't have the same ceiling as Tatis, but if you just want 20 stolen bases, those guys will do it for you. If you get a few of those guys, you don't necessarily have to chase someone who could get you 35 or 40

if everything goes right. I think you want to make sure you've really gone through the process of figuring out where you can get steals if you want to go ahead and take advantage of what looks like a falling early adp on a nolan arenado and players like him the year over year the metronomes as you called them when we were talking about Anthony Rendon. You want guys like that. They are the safest players in the pool, and you can find your speed elsewhere. We do have a good mailbag question I wanted to throw at you. This comes from Mike, and he wants to know what we expect from you, Darvish, and Jack Flaherty this year. He's in an NL-only Roto auction auction and he's been burned by creating a dependency on

pitchers based on a half year performance he cited zach wheeler from 2018 i think as an example i mean darvish's second half last year from june on when he stopped walking dudes that was pretty weird right so how do you handle pitchers and any player, really, that get into this new level over a half season? Is it noise? Do you have to look under the hood and see what kinds of changes may have been made to enable that to happen? What do you do? Is this just the nature of pitching where it's just variance in some cases? I think Trevor Bauer is a good person to talk about here so trevor bauer had the amazing year in 2017 18 18 18 he had the amazing year in 2018 and uh and then

he sort of regressed to mostly his league norms last year where he you know he gave up his his career norms where he gave up more homers and and and walked more people and had like a mid-4 ZRA. And there's people out there saying he was unusable and not going to have any shares. And Alex Chamberlain's out there making a good point, which is that his expected stats, his ex-WOBA and stuff in 2018 were great. But they were out of line with his career.

And then the next year, the expected stats were more in line with his career. So that's why you kind of talk about having earned something like he earned that 2018. But it doesn't necessarily mean it's sustainable. That's the same. That's the same. That's the concept we're trying to get at. Right. doesn't necessarily mean it's sustainable.

That's the concept we're trying to get at, right? And Chamberlain said, when someone asked him, how do you tell the difference? How do you tell the difference of if it was earned and sustainable or just earned and unsustainable? And he gave the answer, which I think is why pitching is where it's worth listening to humans. Projections are bad. Trying to find this earned and sustainable type player

is difficult. And the answer that Chamberlain gave was you have to look at changes in pitch mix, mechanics, velocity, that sort of deal. You have to look for an explanation an explanation that makes sense well the thing with that i might disagree with other people on is that bauer did have something new um in 2018 which is a new slider that he built and um you know i knew i know he threw something called a slider in 2015 uh but in 2018 the slider had different shape

um and uh he used a lot and it used to great success so what happened then in 2019 my answer is a little bit different than others he was injured um there was a back injury uh and uh and a hamstring that he was dealing with all year. Now, it's not obvious because he pitched 213 innings and did his best, but I think that sort of thing can affect command. Now, I look at next year and I've got a command number for him that's in the top 40. Not a command number, a stuff number for Bauer that puts him in the top 40 and a command number that puts him basically with you Darvish and Chris Archer. So below average. But if you could have a younger you Darvish, you'd be really into it. And I think command is really where things go in and out. You know, you know, just you Darvish himself, he found a

like a slightly different release point. And that really brought all this pitches together, slightly different release point, slightly that really brought all of his pitches together. Slightly different release point, slightly different pitch mix, and that was it. Do I think these things are sustainable? I mean, you can be a projections person and just hang on to those and just say, add it all up, see what he's done and see what he could do, and this is the projection. But I guess I'm rambling, dude. It's not easy, but if you have an explanation

and you believe in the explanation, then go for it. I think when I look at Darvish, this is how I see it. Him getting the control to that elite elite level like that's great i don't think that holds up over a full season i don't i don't think so either but i think the fact that he got back to full season levels that were in line with his pre-2018 numbers you know that that to me is where i'm excited right it's a sub 4 era it's probably a sub 120 whip. The projections bear that out. Tons of strikeouts. You know what you're going to get. Like Darvish to me, like NL

only leagues, I'm looking at him as probably a low 20s pitcher, like 20 to 22 bucks. Not much more. I don't think there's such an amazingly safe floor with him that you want to go any higher than that, but low 20ss no problem at all 20 to 22 would be the numbers that i'd be looking at jack flaherty uh had kind of a tale of two seasons as well and he was coming off a really impressive 2018 so for a little while it looked like he was one of the big disappointments of 2019 and then the script flipped and his 2019 ended up being even better than his 2018. I see him probably as a top five pitcher in an NL-only league.

He's going to cost probably $25 to $27 in an auction. So depending on how aggressive the room is, you may have to pay even more than that to get him. You may have to pay close to $30. The question for you, Eno, is should you? Do you think Flaherty has done enough to merit the extra couple of dollars when you're trying to lock in that ace in an NL-only auction? I do. And to go back to you, Darvish, and Trevor Bauer, I'm really tempted to put an equal sign there. Really?

Hmm. Yeah. You're going to get Bauer cheaper. Bauer is going to be 16 to 18, I would guess, in most NL auctions. Yeah. And here's what I've got. So I told people I've got the driveline stuff numbers. Driveline stuff number on Bauer is 110. His command number is 92.

You, Darvish. I feel like we're talking about blood pressure. 110, 92. 112 and 92. Yeah, that's where that equal sign is coming from. Look, I'll put Yu Darvish one or two ahead of Bauer, but wherever I have Bauer, I'm putting Yu Darvish. And I would say that I like a new pitch better than a slight change in command.

I will say that. So if you're trying to sort of sort through what makes more sense to me, like if a guy debuted a new pitch and threw it 10% of the time, it's been proven that just throwing a new pitch 10% of the time helps your third time through the order penalty, right? Without even knowing how good that pitch is. So if a guy debuts a new pitch and it looks good, then I'm like two thumbs up.

If a guy tweaked his release point like a half inch, what does that mean, dude? You know? Like, what? I'm like, then couldn't he just lose that half inch tomorrow? Right. And with Darvish in particular, the only thing that would make me just a little bit hesitant to think, okay, he's found it and he's good, is what we saw, I think it was 2018, when he was dealing with the arm pain and he was constantly tinkering with his mechanics. And in bullpen sessions, he was changing arm slots all the time, changing release points. And his arm would feel okay if he got to a certain point, but it would feel bad if he wasn't there.

And it just, it was a house of cards. Like that's how I kind of saw it from a health standpoint with Yu Darvish two years ago. So I think that's what's kind of holding him into that low 20s range. I think that's what's kind of holding him into that low 20s range. With Bauer, I do see a lot of similarities to Archer when it comes to the statistical output over the years. Archer just did it where he was really good at the beginning for even a couple of seasons, and then everyone kept hoping he'd get back down to that level.

But we've seen four consecutive seasons with an ERA of four or higher. It topped out at 519 last season uh we saw the whip just kind of keep rising and the strikeouts were there the innings were there in 16 and 17 but he just never quite got down to what the the fip was pointing to and i think there could be a little bit of that with bauer as well where the the innings volume in the case offset some of that ratios damage, but he's always going to leave us wanting more because of how good that 2018 season was with the ERA and WIP. Yeah, and Hugh Darvish's early career,

we still remember all the Ks and the nice ERAs, but to me, both are high threes ERA guys with lots of strikeouts and a fair amount of home run risk. Oh, they're both amazing pitchers if the ball gets de-juiced. I would say both of these guys are at the forefront of pitchers that would benefit.

That's pretty interesting. How long, by the way, do you think it's going to be into the season before we can comfortably say the ball has changed back or changed in some significant sort of way is it a few weeks i mean it didn't take long for for that to pop up in 2019 like when do you think we can comfortably say that things are back to normal potentially yeah i mean rob arthur um

was able to do stuff when it came to the uh the postseason? So, you know, I think that, you know, two, three weeks, I think in the first month, well, let's expect a Rob Arthur piece. I mean, he's got this figured out where, you know, there's hundreds of pitches every night. So if you've got, you know, a week's worth of pitches, you've got thousands of pitches. And what he's looking at is the difference in velocity out of the hand and at the plate.

So that's a very directly measurable thing. And what it might lead to is some buying opportunities if some of these guys that would stand to gain from a ball change end up getting off to slow starts just kind of randomly, but the ball is changed back, it might be great opportunities to sweep in with an early trade. One thing I will point out, this season is going to be very interesting from a stats perspective.

We are going to enter a lot of chaos. Knowing what Texas Rangers are doing is going to be almost impossible because they weren't able to have Trackman and Hawkeye on at the same time in their new stadium. So Hawkeye is going to pump out some weird looking stats, I bet, for Texas Rangers. And in terms of stadium to stadium calibration, we're going to be at back at two 2015 for stack cast. We're gonna be back at ground zero, um, in terms of,

um, uh, just knowing exactly, even if, if Rob does this, you know, I think he's going to have to admit that like, you know,

he's also testing the, the, the, the statistical system too, right. He's testing the system as much as he's also testing the statistical system too. He's testing the system as much as he's testing the ball. So I think there's going to be a lot of doubt about numbers early next year because we're moving over to Hawkeye, and every time when PitchFX, the first year it came out,

was not good at all at deciding what pitch was what pitch type. I like the ominous ending. Yeah. it all at deciding what pitch was what pitch type i like uh i like the ominous ending yeah so uh yeah this is gonna be really hard for me personally which i know everyone cares about but every you know anybody who's trying to like work quickly next year there's gonna have to be a fair amount of of smell tests you know and um i don't know if one nice thing is andrew perpetua right now is not employed by a team so hopefully uh he'll be out in the forefront of washing some of the data and telling us where he's he used to have x stats maybe x stats will come back online um and if x stats comes back online uh maybe we'll know a little bit more about what the wash data looks like,

what the problems are. Maybe he'll show up in some of my pieces. So anyway, it'll be an interesting beginning of the season for sure. Yeah, I'm excited already, and we're still more than two months away, just a little over two months away. As always, you can reach our show via email, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com. On Twitter, he's at

Inoceris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. Lots of other great pods to check out here at The Athletic. Check out Starkville with Jason Stark and Doug Glanville. We've got college hoops pods including Bracket Madness as well. That's going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening.