Rates & Barrels - Paul Skenes' Dominance, Mailbag Questions & Weekend Waiver Preview

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss Paul Skenes' latest dominant performance -- seven no-hit innings against the Brewers on Thursday -- and the balance of preserving his workload to make him available if the Pirates remain in playoff contention through September. Plus, a setback for Jordan Lawlar, charges filed against Wander Franco in the Dominican Republic, mailbag questions about Gerrit Cole and Luis Castillo, and a few players to consider this weekend in weekly formats.  Rundown 1:01 Paul Skenes Carries A No-Hitter Through Seven 10:01 A Setback for Jordan Lawlar 17:14 Steven Kwan & The 'Lucky' Power Hitter Eno's Story ($) https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5632162 21:56 Wander Franco Charged in Dominican Republic 23:50 Thoughts on Gerrit Cole Through Four 2024 Starts? 31:14 Buying Into Big Second Half for Josh Lowe? 36:56 What Is Going On With Luis Castillo's Slider? 41:59 Curating Your Own "What Happened?" Data 50:55 Project Prospect: 50+ FV, 2024 MLB ETAs, Yet to Debut 55:47 Weekend Waiver Preview: Matt Wallner & Rece Hinds Bring Power  1:05:32 Pitchers to Consider: Luis L. Ortiz, Keider Montero, Justin Wrobleski, Yilber Diaz Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Thursdays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Host: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. it is Friday July 12th, Derek the Rapper, you know, Saris here with you doing the Thursday episode on Friday this week and for I think most weeks going forward because we figured hey why not move the stream up a day, move the fantasy content back a day, might be the best of all worlds. On this episode we will take a look at the recent dominance of Paul Skeens, who carried a no hitter into the seventh through the seventh inning in his start against the Brewers on Thursday.

We've got some mailbag questions wondering about where Garrett Cole stands after his first few turns off the I.L. The struggles of Josh Lowe, Luis Castillo's slider. We've got some project prospect stuff today and we've got some weekend waiver preview pickups to discuss as well. So we begin today, you know, with Paul Skeens lifted after seven no hit innings against the Brewers. Pitch count was just in that triple digit range where everyone starts to be nervous

and given the way the Pirates have handled Paul skeins up to this point, I was not surprised that he was taken out of this game. He had an interview on MLB Network afterwards, didn't seem to have any overwhelming problem with it. Just given given the situation, it was a one hunting game and they could use their two best relievers and Colin Holderman and our oldest Chapman to finish it off And other than some, you know traffic that Colin Holderman had to deal with The Pirates did get the win. So at the end of the day

I think everybody was happy except for people who wanted to see Paul skeins make a run at the no-no and Given that we're up against the all-star break I think there was a case to be made for letting him go a little bit longer if they wanted to do it. But I don't think it was necessarily a missed opportunity that we should skewer them for either. Yeah, the pirates owe nobody anything. Like their main goal is to win and to get into October. Um, and there's probably a fair amount of, uh, angst about that, you know, given their timeline and, and we're, you know, how long this, this, this team has been

run by the people has been run by, you know, so like, you know, I think that they want to get as far as they can this year, they want to get into playoffs this year, they know that they only have a certain amount of innings penciled in for Paul Skeen's this year. So maybe those two innings become even more precious later. Maybe those two innings mean another start, you know? And I'm sorry. If you had gave me a choice between, Oh, we got Paul Skeen's no hitter this year,

or we get another start from Paul skeens in September or October. Yeah, dude, I'm taking that. And then lastly, you know, there's two other things that I think are important. One is the concept of a coup to chronic. We talked about a lot, which is you have to build up to a certain level in order to get to a certain level. Like you, you, you don't go out there and throw 100 if you threw 10 pitches in your last outing. I mean that's obvious. I mean in the sort of extreme it's obvious. He was basically right at where he normally stops pitching. He was at 99 pitches,

I believe, and the most he's thrown this year is 107. You get thrown back out there for the next inning, but then you're going to probably he's going to probably throw the most he's thrown all year, you know? And then lastly, you know, people say, oh, we shouldn't be looking at things like innings or pitches. We should be thinking about how stressful the pitches are. We should be looking for indications that they're flagging. Well, how about this? Paul Skeen's averaged 99 in the first inning on his fastball and 97

in the last two innings on his fastball. Is that enough? I don't know. Like, he definitely wasn't. And by the way, he was not throwing his fastball anymore. So he was already, I would, if you got him, honestly, I'd say he would say he was a little bit tired. So yeah, there's probably a little bit of that. That's probably why he wasn't that mad on the radio. What he's done so far this year is just unbelievable, right?

We made the Strasburg comps in terms of expectations, hype, just overall productivity coming out of college and then dominance through a brief time in the minor leagues and the anticipation around the debut. All of those things, I think made that a fair comp. And he's delivered on all of that. It's an ERA of 190 through 11 starts, 89 Ks against 13 walks.

That second number, 13 walks that second number 13 walks that's the bigger surprise for me. I knew we were gonna get a boatload of K's we're getting it with an elite walk rate as well and it seems like the only way to really get them is to Pair the occasional walk with the mistake that gets taken out of the park for a home run That seems to be the only little wart against Paul Skeens right now. He's pitching like an ace right from the jump. And I think all of those sort of ceiling 2025 expectations that we suggested where maybe he's a top five starting pitcher in drafts going into next season, all the groundwork has been laid for that to happen. The literal only thing that would hold him back from that would be some kind of massive innings cap that comes into play sooner than expected or an injury.

That's about it. There's no other real way I could see him tanking his way out of there because the performance has been that good. Yeah, it's a little bit like the LeBron James is almost my comp, you know? Right. It's like the hype was there And then he just delivered on it. You know? One thing that is interesting is that we talked about unideal shapes. I hope, the way I remember it is that I said,

don't fixate too much on his stuff plus numbers in the minors or don't fixate too much on his shape. He's throwing 100, like he's probably pretty good. I hope that's, if somebody wants to check the record, maybe, maybe I said something different, but that's how I remember it. Um, and I think what we've seen so far is the fastball is surprisingly hittable for 99 mile an hour fastball. It's, it's obvious, like it's still, it has a 400 and 402 slugging.

You know, like it's given up four has a 400 and 402 slugging, you know, like it's given up four homers and three doubles and 15 singles. It's the easily the, the pitch of his that has given up the most hits by far, um, and the most slugging. So, um, you know, I, I, I think that part was true, but you also have to give room for somebody who throws that hard and has an aptitude for pitching the room to, oh, I don't know, add a splinker. You know, that is immediately one of the most valuable off-speed pitches in baseball, you know, and that people are hitting 157 and slugging 193 off of. So what you saw in that last inning that was that was so remarkable was he threw one fastball.

And so, you know, he he has the he has the ability to pitch backwards. He has enough command. He has enough like enough good off speed pitches to offset a little bit of that shape problem. Oh, and it's still 99. Yeah, it's the fastball getting hit a little bit. It's not unlike what we saw with Hunter Green in the first two seasons of Hunter Green's career. It's been a lot better this year.

Part of the reason Hunter Green's all star in this year is just that he's been able to do more with that fastball. And a little bit better. Yeah. And I think that's the other thing is being more fine with command, even if Paul Skiens didn't have any sort of command problem per se, like locating it exactly where he wants to and not making mistakes with it will ultimately make it even more effective in the long run. But just blown away by how good he has been up to this point. Every time you turn him on, he's really been must see TV through his first 11 big league

starts. And I just thought like, how many, how many, how many pitchers could you even rank ahead of him right now? You're going through that exercise. Like what, where does he fall now? He's somehow going to be even higher than he was the last time you went through the rankings exercise. Yeah. The only thing that's ever held him back is just innings by projections.

He is a top two pitcher. Tyler glass now has a 2.91 ERA projection and He has Paul skeins has a 3.1. ERA projection using stuff plus And then there's a little group around 3.3 to 3.5 like Corbin burns Terrick scoobal So he's obviously top two, but it's it's interesting that the top two guys both have you know quantity concerns? And that's the only thing that's kept me from ranking them one and two all season. And last season, of course, between LSU and the brief time he was with the Pirate, Skeens got up to 129 in the third innings this year,

combining what he did at AAA with what he's done with the Pirate so far. He's at 93 and two thirds. So there's still some room in these final two and a half months for him to continue pushing that work. And I had heard the number would be around 130, but if he's made 130 before, I believe that's a conservative estimate. That might be a going into the season estimate. The better the team is, the more, the further they get, the more likely he gets to 150.

But you're right. If there are, I think you could push to 160. If there are two or three starts like this one where he's really good and they could push him further ending it too and choose not to, you do that a handful of times that does create that extra room at the back of the schedule to just let him keep going when your whole season could potentially be on the line, depending on what happens between now and then for the pirates. So other news, Jordan Lawler had a setback. He was actually starting up a rehab assignment in the Arizona Complex League.

He's going to miss six to eight more weeks after aggravating the hamstring yet again. I just think he's kind of interesting because if you're in a league where maybe you're in a play for next year or sometime down the road, Lawler is a top 10 prospect, I think, by just about anybody's rankings. And we've barely seen him this year. And I think that makes it easier to trade for him because you'll find people saying, OK, he's not going to help me this year the way I thought. I'm trying to go all in right now.

And he's the best young player I can trade that I'm getting nothing out of right now. That's usually the sweet spot for the best available prospect that you can trade for in a lot of leagues. I think Lawler ticks those boxes. Yeah, I mean, it's why I traded away Drew Jones earlier this year. And I don't know that I'm super, super sad about trading major Jones because he's still striking out nearly 30% of the time.

But this is the best stretch of baseball. Drew Jones has ever played. And I'm just using him as an example for, you know, maybe you could follow that process of Lawler, same guy, same team, and just get on the other side of some injuries. It is a little bit weird that he's had now like two or three kind of fairly catastrophic injuries. This isn't the first, you know, he had the big shoulder injury. I mean, a six to eight weeks hamstring injury is a big injury.

So this is, I don't know, two, maybe three big injuries on the on the on the roster for Lawler. Again, we're on this podcast, not going to call someone injury prone too early. So I think mostly in on on buying him. Yeah. Yeah. The other injury he had back in the spring was a thumb injury. He suffered that while trying to just scoop a ball off the ground with his throwing hand during a minor league game.

That's it. So yeah, that's pretty random. suffered that while trying to just scoop a ball off the ground with his throwing hand during a minor league game. That's it. So yeah, that's pretty random. The hamstring coming back. I mean, yeah, you start to worry about a soft tissue problem like that, that comes back being a little more chronic in nature, but we'll just have to see if he can make some kind of adjustments, right? Is he a long strider?

Like we've talked about that a little bit, I think with Trevor on the Thursday show, maybe there's something in the way Lawler is running right now that can be tweaked slightly that will hopefully reduce those injury chances in the future. Also comes up a little bit with pitchers. Like I wonder if you just get these lost seasons with players because think about it with a pitcher. Uh, how many times have you heard or I was just talking to Michael Conforto, even it can be a hitter.

He's got the best max CV of his of his of his like last four years. Right. Since his shoulder surgery. Right. And I was like, oh, so you're fully healthy. And he said, well, one thing is I can finally now, you know, follow through with one hand because I had been rehabbing off of the shoulder surgery before. And during that rehab process, we went with a two hand finish because you don't, you don't trust it. You don't want to re injure it. You know what it's like to injure it. You don't want to do it again.

And so there's like that fully trust, but then there's also, you know, without the full normal off season, you'll see this, like somebody will rehab something and come back. Like, we'll talk about Garry Cole later, but you know, they'll rehab something and come back. They didn't have a normal spring. So we don't know where Cole is right now. And in terms of if it like is he in the middle of March? You know, like, you know, we don't know where he is in terms of like how a normal offseason would progress.

So I wonder if Jordan Lawler gets hurt and he's not doing the normal sort of, this is how my season goes, right? You know, my hamstrings, you know, get stronger and warmer as the season goes on. And then maybe he like hurt himself, tried to come back, you know, you know, he's coming off a thumb so he's not thinking about the legs or whatever, not doing the same progressions or, or doing way

more legs because he can't do anything with the hands, you know? And then he comes back and hurts his legs, you know? So I wonder if there's these things that kind of steamroll because you're, cause they're players are kind of creatures of habit and they have all these things mapped out for them. Let's say you put an injury in the middle of it. It changes the whole timeline. You know, it changes the whole way that they prepare.

You will definitely hear from hitters like the year after my injury was way better because I had just a normal offseason, you know, and so, you know, what we want from Lawler is not so much that he's going to come back and dominate. We want him to come back, be fine. And then next year be fine all the way through spring and see what we can do with like a normal year. Right. And I think that will probably be an opportunity for the Diamondbacks to clear

up their infield a little bit. I think when Loller is ready, he's going to play and someone's going to get pushed out anyway, it's just a question of who that is and how much time Lawler has to yield to a veteran. If it were Eugenio Suarez, for example, we talked about the struggles of Suarez a few weeks ago and he's been better since. Like you mentioned it maybe last week or two weeks ago, he's actually started to look more like Eugenio Suarez, maybe about to go on one of his patented midsummer tears. And Blaze didn't take his job. Blaze Alexander didn't do it. So I think we're probably looking at Lawler.

Yeah. More for 2025. Maybe we'll get a late season run in September from him where he's part of the picture for the diamond backs. But Pridomo is also also kind of looking, uh, he's become an even more extreme version of himself where he has zero homers and one stolen base. version of himself where he has zero homers and one stolen base. It's one of the emptier lines in baseball in terms of fantasy. But it is interesting in terms of real life because he's probably headed to kind of league average status, you know, by the end of the year. It's kind of when you have somebody like that, who's not expensive and he's, you know know he's on the minimum and he's with you for a long time and he's you know he's league average it's kind of hard to be

like okay now you need to go away so maybe they'll just choose which has the better arm between Perdomo and Lawler and and move that guy to third. Am I right about Brian Roquio being this year's Perdomo it's kind of an ugly slash line, 213-309-306, but 19% K rate, 10% walk rate, cheap seven steals, plays a lot because of his gloves, only popped three homers. It just seems like better fortune on balls and play and suddenly I'm right.

So maybe I just, I'm just unlucky in that call. By process I feel good. Yeah. Is Rokio your new Perdomo? Yeah. Rokio is my new Perdomo, the guy that nobody wanted, who would play a lot and probably in deep, deep leagues be OK. Mixed leagues, it's not really working out. It's one of those reasons to to to care about defense. You know, there are players that are that are that are

that stay on the field longer for their defense Yeah, even in that organization. I wonder though as as they continue to tweak other hitters that they can't get more to rookie off they'll eventually move on in Cleveland I did have a story today about Stephen Kwan and The Guardians new approach anybody's been listening to the podcast knows a lot about We've been talking about how the guardians are pulling the ball more. And I just like tried to find the luckiest power hitters this year and I went through a couple different kind of ways to process it.

Some people didn't like the excuse me of trying to find an answer, but, um, I really was just trying to let people in on my process, which is often like make a list, think about the list, interrogate the list. Is it the list you want to put? And instead of just putting the final, the final list up, I kind of put up the different lists. Like I showed people how I work. And some people just felt like I was trying to get to an answer, which, you know, to some extent, I was because the first list had Shohei Ohtani on it as a lucky powerhead. And I was like, it's just not right. You don't want to put your name on that one.

Yeah, like this is not the right list. I'm sorry. You could you could say I'm just looking for the right list. But like, I mean, I am I just shouldn't it just shouldn't have show your tiny Bobby Witton Gunnar Henderson on it as lucky power hitters. I'm sorry, that's the wrong list. But the further I went, Stephen Kwan stayed on the list. He stayed on the list. I was like, Oh, well, Stephen Kwan makes a lot of contact. Let's try just try one that, you know, that adjusts for contact for contact rate, you know, barrels over plate appearances instead of barrels over over batted balls.

And then I found a spray. I found an X wobble with spray angle from Matan Kay. That's on the Google Doc for anybody who's listening. And Stephen Kwan was still one of the luckiest players. In fact, the luckiest power hitters were Luis Renjifo. Who else was on it? Luis Reno Steven Kwan, I mean it was it was such a letdown in the end actually Because it wasn't good power hitters Luis Renifo's got a 2.8 percent barrel rate behind those six. Oh, so I wasn't necessarily looking at him and saying this is real

percent barrel rate behind those six homers. So I wasn't necessarily looking at him and saying, this is real. Right. It didn't, it didn't, uh, it didn't like open up, uh, anybody that was really surprised to see, and it didn't open up anybody that, um, you would count on for power. I mean, I think even the biggest Stephen Kwan supporters would be like, yeah, like maybe he won't hit another nine homers in the second half. Um, yeah, the list was Luis Renjufo, Isaiah

Caenor-Falefa, Josh Smith, Stephen Kwan and Saddam Rafaela. It's like, OK, did anybody anybody have those guys down to equal their power in the second half? I don't know. So anyway, the power pulled flyball was part of that process. And I don't think that Rokio has really unlocked that yet. No, not yet. Josh Smith has been just great in this first half. We talked about that as kind of a counterpoint

to the Josh Young absence. He's basically done what you'd hope Josh Young would have done with a step forward. But it's very hard to rely on it the way Josh Smith has done it. I didn't have in my latest hitter rankings update because I thought the playing time was going to completely dry up. And that was prior to young having a setback and another month's

worth of quality plate appearances have been tacked on to the ledger for, for Josh Smith. I just, I was two years early on Josh Smith. I know that I had gone on my anti-comp rant, but, uh, sometimes, uh, um, sometimes it's just, uh, it's fun to put a positive one on it. And somebody gave me this comp so I'm just passing along. Somebody in that organization called him a Tommy Listello with glove. Okay, well that's good because the Tommy Listello that was definitely a shortcoming in his skill

set. But the idea is high walk rate, low strikeout rate, decent power, if not great power. So, you know, maybe kind of a 260-1010 guy or a 260-1510 guy. I wonder, would it be a smoldering hot take if I said Josh Smith will steal more bases than he will hit home runs the rest of the way this season? Eight homers against four steals so far. But like, if he flipped that. Really supported by barrel or EVs, really.

Yeah. So he's got 61st percentile sprint speed. And if he's on base all the time, maybe that's the way he's able to add a little extra value if he's not hitting homers. Yeah. But just saying when Evan Carter comes back, this team becomes pretty fast. I mean, Carter Lang Langford, Smith, like you've got some guys with wheels. I don't know if that's gonna change their team philosophy in terms of stealing bases,

but they still have power hitters, but. Yeah, they have been pretty quiet on the base paths overall. One more baseball news item to get to. We have another update in the Wander Franco case. Franco has been charged with sexual exploitation of a minor and human trafficking. The latter charge was kind of the added thing that we didn't see coming necessarily. Carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. That's just for the human trafficking. The first preliminary hearing for the case is next month,

August 14th. We'll probably have some more information once that happens, but things are moving very slowly in the Wander case Yeah, I think you just Legally, you don't like to bring cases unless you win them in terms of prosecutors. So You do wait until you have everything in line and then you and then you drop the hammer and they also Indicted the mother of the daughter. So, you know, there's some blame to be spread around. Some people that helped him do what he did and it looks like he did. And I don't I don't expect him to come back.

Some people were surprised to learn that he'd been being paid because he was on administrative leave. He's now unrestricted on a strict restricted list and not getting paid. I think it's hard. Administrative leave is something where you're telling them to stay away. And so if you're telling someone to stay away, you kind of have to pay them because you're telling them to stay away. And that's that's something where like charges are pending or we need to figure out what's going on. That was that's administrative leave.

That's how it works. Restricted leave. Restricted list is he can't, he can't be here. Like he, he like physically can't be here cause he's, you know, he can't get a visa. He's, you know, charged. So now he's not getting paid anymore. Um, and, uh, so that's a, that's a technical matter, but that's, that's really what's what's happening. It's a really, it's a really sad story all around. Sad story and it keeps getting worse the more details that we get coming out of the Dominican Republic about Juan De Franco.

Moving on to some mailbag questions. We had a nice group of those come through our Discord. If you'd like to join the Discord, you can do that with the link in the show description. This first one comes from Peels25. Our thoughts on Garrett Cole after his first four starts. Hasn't been an impressive run for him so far. So where are you on Garrett Cole since you've got a Pitcher Rankings update

coming up here in the near future? Yeah, I do have a working ranks that I updated a little bit. I put a date on it, the eighth. And I'm going to update it again. When I do a working ranks, it's just like a view into my process. I'm refreshing it, trying to get rid of injured guys. Also leaving it, I've opened it up to the discord and told people on the discord, argue

somebody up or down, you know, tell me me what you think and I'll look at it. I think there was already an argument up for Luis LRT's after what we talked about with the cutter and the change up, he's at 113, maybe he'll go up, I hear you on that one, whoever reached out to me on that, on him. Right now I have cold 25

The projection is still good. It's for a three four nine e ra The stuff plus despite going down is is good. It's a 111 stuff plus. It's that's on par with You know a 109 111 actually 109 on my sheet is it 109 here anyway. It's still good Yeah, 109 109 is just below a frumber of Aldez. It's tied with Cole Reagan's you know I mean like it's it's a good number You know tenor how kids are 109 so I think he can succeed with the stuff he has But I the reason he's 25 and not top 10 is because the the strikeout minus walk rate is not there. Right now, he's got a fort he's got an average strikeout minus walk rate. The locations aren't there. He's got a 10% walk rate. And the worst location

plus of his career, the first time it's ever been below average. And then the last thing that's that's just it just makes me nervous as all heck is he's not throwing a slider. It's kind of cut the usage of that in half. And he's replaced it with a cutter. And I do not like this for very many reasons. One is, uh, Garry Cole himself has said, I, I, I'm a little bit worried about throwing the cutter too much because it might affect the shape of my side, my fast ball, you know, the other reason that I'm worried about this is when you come back from TJ, they tell you not to throw your slider.

We always wonder if the pitch changes that come off of an injury, whether it's TJ or not, this is not a TJ situation for Cole, but is it because something doesn't feel good? Cause it hurts. Cause it hurts. Right. Or is it part of building up and just trying to get everything else right before going back to it, maybe he'll come back to it later. It's a, it's not encouraging to see that usage basically cut in half through four

starts, the, the thing that I think is trending in the right direction on a start by start level is the four seam velocity. That's at least ticking back up, right? I think he started at 95, got to 95.4, 95.9, and now 96.3 his last time out. So if he's pushing that back up to his previous norms, the four seam was a really important pitch for Garrett Cole. Look at the run value on that year over year. He's just phenomenal at that. So if he's going to throw the slider less, which is also a really important pitch for him, the four seamer has to sort of come all the way back. If that happens, then you probably split the difference between where he was top two, top three, where you're saying he probably is now

in that top 25 range, and he can probably push himself back towards the top 10, which is still very good. Most top 10 pitchers, even most top 25 pitchers, they're in your lineup all the time. You're rarely taking someone like that out, but it comes back to what would you do in trade? Like if you're trying to get an ace, maybe you're not trading for Garrett Cole in redraft leagues because there are 24 other pitchers that are going to come out likely ahead of him on that next set of ranks. Yeah, but the interesting thing about the mindset of other people, what they have,

you know, like, is it really attainable? Can you go get Tarek Scoobel in one of your leagues? No, I tried trading Tarek Scoobel at a keeper league. You did. You asked for everything. Well, I was trying to get Jackson Churio in the keeper league in return and. I was close, but it didn't happen. Shelley V Shelley V shot the deal down. Shelley V's got a chance to win the keeper league we're playing in.

And I don't think I have a chance to win it. So I tried to make a Godfather offer with Jackson Churio. That's another thing that I've been in that mindset where I'm winning. And I'm like, right now, everyone wants Mark, Mark, Mark, Vientos in one of my auto new leagues. And I've got him cheap. And I'm like, could I win with him? Vientos, I might be a little more tempted to say

this is a pretty nice time to cash out. It doesn't mean he's going to come crashing back to Earth. But I started I think it was maybe it was probably just about three or four weeks ago, right before the June that Jackson Churio put together happened. It was kind of in the middle of it. That's when I got that offer out there. And it was like every day, I felt like every day Shelley was thinking about it. Churio was going like two for four, stealing a base, doing all the things,

like completely validating the, I don't think I want to trade him vibes that probably like for the first reaction, I'm just saying like Garrett Cole seems attainable. Uh, if it's a keeper league, maybe I wouldn't pay prices like, oh, he's going to be a top five keeper starter because this does feel like maybe he's going to be injured next year or, you know, maybe it's like I mentioned the cow bradish where he's going to come back for a while and then it's not going to work. You know, um, that's, that's still a possibility I think for him. So, um,

I would treat him as a little bit of a depressed asset when it comes to keepers, but if I just wanted to go for it this year, I think he's probably one of the most attainable guys in the top 25 I mean you could maybe get Garrett crochet, but like who's gonna throw more innings Going forward Garrett crochet or or or Garrett Cole. I think I probably take Garrett Cole classic battle of the Garrett's Yeah I mean who else could you like you could maybe get Pablo Lopez Pablo Lopez.

Pablo Lopez might be on the same level in terms of. Ease of trading for and it's all it's relative, it's hard to trade for an ace. Most people can't part with one, so unless they are extremely frustrated or maybe just doing really well with pitching overall and need to make up ground on hitting now're at the point in the season with the all-star break coming up after the weekend where people will make trades like that. They'll trade a 25 or 30 dollar hitter for a 25 or 30 dollar pitcher. Those types of trades are a lot less likely to happen for most of the first half of the season. Yeah, because they'll see some sort of imbalance on their team and think, this is actually something I need to do. Yeah, now correcting for it's something of imbalance on their team and think this is actually something

I need to do. Yeah, now correcting for it's something that more teams are comfortable trying to do with two and a half months left to play. Thanks a lot for that question, Peele's. Let's go to this one from Len. What is going on with Josh Lowe? I'm trying to figure out why Lowe has been so much worse than last year, although the batted ball quality has been almost the same, if not better in some places.

The only significant difference I could find in his profile is that he's going Oppo a lot more. Could that mean his timing is off? That's weird. I don't actually keep center and Oppo in my dashboard. I just keep pull. I mean, you run out of space after a while, you know? Well, you got to get a bigger monitor. Yeah. Why don't you have like a 40 inch monitor? Like, yeah, I do, but you watch baseball.

You kind of run out of space on Fangra. Yeah. I think eventually the. Starts going off the grid. The grid's not happy. Yeah, exactly. Um, the, uh, that does suggest something. And I, and, and for me, um, I like, I, I'm, this is a theory I'm developing. Um, it has to do with me.

I've been talking about talking to hitters about contact points and stuff. I think I'd like it when the only thing that is different about a hitter and they're struggling is if their polar or oppo rates. I think I'd like it because I think that's something that can turn on a dime. Right. I do think it's timing as Len suggested in the question. I think that's often the explanation.

Now I'm trying to think of an outlier explanation. Could teams be pitching someone differently and that's caused them to go the other way more because they are seeing a heavier dose of stuff that's outside compared to previous years where maybe they were pitched inside more often. Like, sure, that's possible. I don't know if that much of a shift would happen just from how teams are game planning against a hitter.

I mean, he's seeing a lot more sliders shift would happen just from how teams are game planning against the hitter? I mean, he's seeing a lot more sliders and a lot fewer for seamers. Cause I think his initial problem speaks more to timing. Yeah. Cause you're not going to fill up a lefty away with sliders. No, unless he's faced Tanner Hauk. Unless it's lefty, lefty sliders, but you know, if it's a righty, yeah, Tanner Hauk might, but you know, if it's a righty, yeah tenor Hawk might but you know Like normally the righty approach to a lefty and he plays faces more righties and even face that many lefties

So the normal righty approach to a lefty is to back foot that thing, right? So he's not going oppo on a back foot slider So I don't think it's about how he's being pitched But I did notice when Josh Lowe came into the league the first time we analyzed them, we said, hey, he's struggling with fastballs and he closed that last year. A big part of the breakout last year was that he improved against fastballs. Josh Lowe and now hit 11 homers, slugged 549 on fastballs last year. He only slugged 398 on fastballs in 2022.

And this year he's back down, at least for now. The difference is, if you look at the with percentage, which I know is a little bit how they calculate on stack has not always the same way up on sliders. It's it's up a little unbreaking. It's the same as last year, almost on fastballs. He was twenty eight point four percent by the stack has with percentage of fastballs last year. He's twenty nine.4. Now

when he broke in in 22 and get that extended run, it was at 36.8%. So seeing that the the with rate on fastballs hasn't gone back to that 2022 level, that would be another small indicator I'd look at and say, okay, yeah, this, this could be more of a timing thing than anything else or a correctable sort of thing. Matt Olson said that once he got really good at fastballs, it opened up the bottom of the zone for sliders. And if you saw Matt Olson, that one year where his strikeout rate went down, that was the year he made the adjustment

to hit 14 fastballs. And so his strikeout rate went down. So it is an interesting debate. I'm just going back to the Sabre Magician talking about how, you know, we care too much about these things that have decimal points or whatever. But one, one thing that's interesting is maybe he's a true talent,

30% strikeout rate guy. Like we tell ourselves these stories about why he improved his strikeout rate and all he got better against fastballs and he covered up. Well, Matt Olson said, well, I, I covered the forcing fastball and it opened up the bottom zone for sliders. And so they just started filling up the bottom of the zone with sliders because they knew I was targeting the fastball at the top of the zone. And what did we see with Matt Olson's strikeout rate?

It normalized his career rates the next year. So I think the one thing that is true now that we know about Josh Lowe that's not necessarily positive is he's probably a true talent 28 to 30 percent strikeout rate guy. That's where I would peg him. So I don't think it necessarily a strikeout rate is gonna get a lot better. I think his Babbitt will get better. That's a little low. I think his in-game power will get better and I think he's probably a true talent 230 to 240 hitter. Maybe 310 to 320 OBP. still a guy who can go, uh, 20, 30, like he did last year. Um, just, I don't think he's going to hit two 90 and have a three, three 30,

four, three 40 OVP going forward. So I think that's generally a by indicator grade from, you know, like short term and long term, because it seems like when healthy Josh Lowe has the. What are the coveted everyday spots in the raise lineup, as opposed to the from, you know, like short term and long term, because it seems like when healthy, Josh Lowe has the, one of the coveted everyday spots in the Rays lineup, as opposed to the shared spots, which are always a source of frustration for us on this show.

Got a question here from Spider, Spider 3909 to be exact. What is going on with- Cleveland, Spider? No, I don't think so. What's going on with... Leave unspidered? No, I don't think so. What's going on with Luis Castillo's slider? Year over year, the stuff plus numbers on that, it was a 109 back in 22, a 117 a year ago, and a 77 at the time Spider sent this question for 2024. StackHasSpider thinks the slider looks less consistent also.

So, is something wrong with that pitch this year for Luis Castillo. I don't know what's going on in July, dude, but he's averaging 83 on it. It's the worst he's averaged on the pitch since 2018, which was when it wasn't a very good pitch for him, he was just learning it and that was only the first half of 2018 since then he's been 86 on that slider ever since. So that's not good in terms of vertical movement. He was also losing a ton of vertical movement over the course of this year. So even though, you know, even before he lost all that below in July,

he was losing drop on the pitch. These are the kind of the wise in terms of why is the stuff plus down? You know, you know, it doesn't tell us why. Why is he losing drop on the slider? You know, why is he losing Velo on the slider? I don't have an answer for that. You know, possible ones are injury. I would I would almost say it is some sort of injury. The question is just how big is

it like a little thing that's nagging him and he's trying to adjust to it. And that's why he lost a slider. Or is it a big thing that we're going to find out soon? I mean, isn't that like what's another reason why you would just lose it? I would wish I wish Trevor was here. What's another reason you would just lose a bunch of drop on your slider? I losing drop on the sliders and seem like a flukey thing. Seems more like a something's causing this kind of problem. It could be mechanics, I guess.

One thing that is interesting about Luis Castillo is that he was a natural sink or change guy. Right. Kind of added four seam slider. So maybe, maybe he's just, he's reverting somehow and he's got to fight, fight reverting back and he's got to, you know, bear down on that slider a little bit.

I generally think he's a good pitcher, yeah. He's still good by results. K is down, K rates down a little bit. I generally think he's a good pitcher. Yeah, he's still good by results. K is down. K rates down a little bit, like 24% now. So maybe we're drifting into the Luis Castillo is a nice SP three or Luis Castillo is about to hit the Jose Berrios button at some random point. Oh, and just have like a really bad year. Maybe he's in that range where the downside of him when he's healthy is

lower than it used to be. He seems like one of the highest floor pitchers in baseball though still. I think the park goes a long way to help that even with the stuff declining in the slider, the four seamer and the slider are great by results. They don't, they don't get punished, low average against. I mean, the four seamer gives up the occasional home run, but it's the old stuff, the sinker and the change. I've said this before, Luis Castillo's change up

for a long time was one of my favorite pitches, just to watch, because guys, when he broke in, that change up was his main go-to pitch. It was nasty. This is five years ago now, when it it was great and it was even pretty good. I don't know. It was recently as 2021 kind of started to fall off a little bit after that. And now, yeah, the sinker and the change just don't work the way they used to for him.

It's really kind of a bizarre transformation, but it's good for him that he found the other two pitches necessary to keep pitching at a high level. You know, as the VELO has dropped, the movement has increased. That's that's normal, you know, and there's a lot more horizontal and drop on it now in July. But it's become more like a curveball, right? Because it's it's 82, 83. I was for a second I was like is he experimenting with a sweeper but it doesn't I don't think it I don't think that's it I don't

I don't think it's on purpose I don't think you would do this on purpose I think most people around the league know throw your slider as hard as possible all right maybe we'll bug Trevor about this at some point in the near future and see if he can find a reason why that would be that way for Luis Castillo. Yeah, we have two questions for him, like the coal cutter question too, like why would you not touch a slider coming back? Yeah, just piling them up. One more question here for us to answer from the mailbag.

It's like Friday, it's like our natural internal clock is just like, where's Trevor? I'm looking at the middle of the screen. What do you think, Trevor? Yeah. What do you think? Right. And he's like, Oh crap. It's Friday.

He's not here Thursday now. Dang it. Uh, this one came from strong bell in discord strong bell wants to know, would it be worthwhile for teams to curate their own version of what happened? Data examples would be getting rung up on a 3-2 pitch that might have been three inches outside like you could record it as something that should have been a walk in your database even though it was a strikeout because it was called incorrectly you know a fielder botches a play but it scored a hit you can think about how that impacts ratios for someone

and then hit a home run off a position player during a blowout like basically adding more context to some of the things that happen. Would it be worthwhile to do that and have your own version, your own database of that internally? Yeah. I think, you know, the way this works is simulations. And, you know, we I just spoke of Matan Kay's, you know, ex-wobble with spray angle earlier when I was talking about you know this this expected Wobba has push and pull in it which makes I think superior picture list I think has push and pull in and there's two. The way he does it is he simulates it a bunch of times and he kind of gives you the mean as a result.

of times and he kind of gives you the mean as a result. I think it would be really useful for teams to basically have like an outside the park and OTP simulation of their season, you know, kind of going alongside. And maybe it's like actually the mean simulation out of out of 50,000. I was gonna say, you could run a few thousand maybe for the upcoming week, the next couple series and just see. But also retroactively, you know, just to get a sense. I think that would be a really good way to nail down

the true talent of your players, you know, because you could look at the differences between what's happening in your simulation and what's happening in real. It would give you a better sense of the true talent of your team. You know, you're headed towards the deadline, your three, three games under 500. The simulation is six games over 500. Right. Maybe you maybe you stick in a little bit longer. Maybe you don't sell, you know, I think it's super.

I think it would be super useful. I bet you I bet you some teams are doing this. And and for us, whether it also came up when we were talking about the future of Statcast and we will do we'll do simulations of alternate realities, you know, for for broadcast. I mean, that's so that's, you know, broadcast people are thinking about this. And so I think teams are as well. Yeah. I think I think you're absolutely right. One of the questions that came in with this one from Strongbell,

do teams consider the strength of pitchers faced? And we see that metric a lot of times on the player pages that baseball reference in the spring when you're trying to contextualize spring stats. length of pitchers faced? We see that metric a lot of times on the player pages at baseball reference in the spring when you're trying to contextualize spring stats. Do you feel like it tends to vanish in the regular season or doesn't get talked about as much? We talked about it, jeez, was that back in May looking at the Blue Jays? I think the Blue Jays at the time had faced the best stuff plus in the first month of the season. We were working backwards off of the Red Sox,

having an easy schedule and that may be propping up their pictures. But then we asked the kind of inverse question, which pit, which hitters have seen the toughest pitchers so far? For what it's worth. Vlad has done better since. Yeah. Yeah. It's been, been fun.

I've got Vlad a few places. Got a few teams that were bottom third of the league that have made their way into the, they're no longer in the underbelly. They're just in the belly. So I think it's useful. I just think it's really, really hard to do because you have to think about how often we on this show talk about how good a player actually is, and we're just talking about how good the player himself is when you're talking about

strength of competition. Now you have to talk about how good is the player you're looking at good the player himself is when you're talking about strength of competition now You have to talk about how good is the player you're looking at and the player they're facing so you're just doubling your work, you know, and so if you have like if you Like people do this with teams or they're like, you know, they're gonna face teams with the X record Again, it's not the simulated record. It's not the mean record out of all the simulations. It's the actual record could just be an unlucky team. It could be,

are you facing the Yankees now? Right. Or are you facing the Yankees, you know, two months ago? So, um, you know, uh, I think that it's, and it's something that we as fancy people are thinking about all the time. Cause we were like, you know, should I start Jordan Hicks at home? Yesterday I had the choice of Jordan Hicks at home against Toronto Blue Jays and Shane Buz at home against the Yankees. Did you a boss?

I went Hicks. How do you feel about your decision? It was wrong. It was all new points. But do you feel Hicks gave up two homers and was a minus 17. Oh yeah. I haven't played out of new points yet.

But yeah minus 17 seems pretty bad. The you kind of want 20 to 30 points out of a starter. So it's really pretty bad. But do you look at that and say right process unlucky result or do you question your that and say, right process, unlucky result, or do you question your process because you

were on the fence about it? I do question my process a little bit in how much should I weight recent stuff plus, you know what I mean? Because we know that there's a little bit of predictive action to changes in stuff plus, and we know that Jordan Hicks is one of the biggest stuff plus losers over the course of the season. So, um, but I don't necessarily know how much I messed up process wise in gauging the opposition.

Right. I mean, I think you, you still saw. Blue Jays look terrible at times and then they, they looked fine against the Giants for a couple of games. Yeah, I was gonna say I saw the, basically when they started hitting, hitting Logan Webb, and then as I tweeted, every time I watched the giant shun jelly pitches, just every time, and he's been pretty good this year, but he got hit. Like it was, I think they put up nine runs in a two or three inning window. They just went off and I was like, Oh, maybe the blue Jays are starting to wake up a little bit. And San Francisco has been a little bit warmer than usual and the Hicks was a day

game. I mean, there's so many different things we can think about. Yeah. And boss wasn't great either. He was fine. Boss basically did what you would expect if the Yankees were playing the way the Yankees should play with their true talent level. Yeah, I didn't think he looked, uh, so the eye test and the stuff plus test are a little bit off for me. Um, because again, the stuff plus looks great, but I don't, I don't think he looked really crisp.

And one thing I will note is that, um, the slider and curve ball stuff plus are much closer to average than you'd expect. He's kind of is the fastball is the one that's carrying him right now. He's a 110 stuff lost on the slider, 100 on the curve and average for the sliders, like 105. And for the curve is like 100, 101. So it's like he's kind of got two average breaking balls and it didn't look very crisp. So I don't know. Buz is definitively a matchups guy and I guess I didn't use him

against the Yankees. But I do think Hicks is a matchups guy too. So now, yeah, that's, that's where he's been lately. Home most of the time, though, I think you're probably using Jordan Hicks. That's, that's, but maybe not home day. Yeah. Day. I do, I do lose that sometimes with the Padres too.

Yes. Those two parks play because temperature is a big source of why those parks play picture friendly sometimes, or most of the time. And the temperature is different during the day. Newsflash. And the temperatures fluctuate faster in those places. Like some places. Oh my gosh. The heat lingers more into the evening, but yeah, it, you don't like the weather

in a particular day in the Bay area, blink, and it might be different. I mean, it can change so fast. But also just over the course of the day, even in Palo Alto, we can get up to 80 or 90 during the day, but it almost always gets cool at night. It always goes above, whatever the high temperature is, is a lie. It goes above that every day for a little while and it comes back down and then it gets even a little cooler than you expect it to without fail. You got to always have a jacket on you in the Bay Area.

You do. You do. It's a. Or hoodie. Sorry. Hoodie. It's definitely a hoodie place. But you say you use it less now than you used to because, you know, things things are changing. By the way, it's hot everywhere, which means Summer League is back, which means the NBA, the athletic NBA show, no dunks.

They're actually at the Summer League. Lots of great content there, breaking down all the big stories. Be sure to check out both of those shows wherever you get your podcasts. They're doing prospects. We're going to do prospects. That's right. We got a project prospect here.

You know, did some digging. You were looking for players who had twenty twenty four ETAs from fan graphs with a 50 future value. And this has to be players that have not debuted above average prospects that have not debuted Above average prospects that have not debuted and are healthy And so basically here's your stash list warning. It's a little ugly Kevin Alcantara who has like a 115 stuff plus stuff plus 115 WRC plus, uh, in the minors.

Uh, but. You know, could be on the list at some point. I kind of doubt he's coming up. Uh, Emmanuel Rodriguez is playing. Okay. He's the twin center fielder with a lot of power. Um, but he doesn't seem to be on the list yet. You know, like where does Julian figure in and is Julian before him? And you know what I mean?

Like, uh, I guess maybe with a Buxton injury, you could see in Emmanuel Rodriguez, call up will Warren, um, so it's okay stuff plus numbers in the minors for the Yankees, uh, but not good results. And, um, I think they'll trade for an arm before, uh, they promote will Warren, uh, unless of course there's an injury. So he could come up. I just don't think he's necessarily an amazing stash. Drew Gilbert has been hurt.

He's an outfielder for the Mets. He also hasn't played well. Then there's Hiro Iriarte, who went to the White Sox in the in the Dillon Seasteel. He's doing OK in double A. I suppose he could come up, but I don't know how excited I am to stash him. Mick Abel is not pitching well for the Phillies,

and they're a great team. I think they would trade before calling him up. And then Diego Cartaya, who's a catcher for the Dodgers, who strikes out 30% of the time, and they've got a pretty good catcher. So Will Smith's pretty good. Yeah. That list. So I list that to me is all guys with the exception of maybe Eriarte who need a

trade to actually get an opportunity. But they could be traded. I don't think the Cubs are buyers, but the twins. I mean, I think it would be a Pablo Lopez type deal if they were going to give up a money over. Yeah, I don't get the sense they want to do that. He's actually just working his way back from a thumb injury. So he's been playing in the Florida Complex League recently,

got hurt in June, sliding into second base. Geez, man, his slash line is bonkers. I just want to see what he does over a larger sample. in June sliding into second base. Jeez, man, his slash line is bonkers. I just want to see what he does over a larger sample. Who runs a 479 OBP at double A? Yeah, but he does have strong in-zone swing and miss problems. Even though his swing strike rate so far this year has been really good. So if he's closing any holes holes then he becomes even more exciting

because he has Top top shelf power, you know backed up by any sort of you know, bat of balls velocities and stuff that have leaked through You know, who's probably going to the fall league? Emmanuel Rodriguez, he's probably Kevin Alcantara went last year. So I don't know if he's going to go again. Kevin Alcantara, I feel bad because the look we got wasn't a good look. And every time I get a bad look in the fall league, I need to develop the ability to just

care less about that. It's okay. It's like my toe, my toe bar look. It happens. It's late in the year. This guy's been playing for a few extra months by the time we get there. And also like you can just look at a guy for a couple of days and you're not really getting the full picture of what they can do.

Right. He also, but I think he was, it was the home run Derby too. Just even in that setting didn't look great. And I think that, that was also kind of weighing on me all season But yeah, I'm curious to see like what they do with Alcontra It's a really high ground ball right for Kevin Alcontra to and it has been it's only only one stop where it's been below 50 really so

I'm a little pessimistic about him Do you get him as more of like a throw in the keeper dynasty league though? Because if it clicks, I get it. I understand why the raw tools are great. He's 22 and has only been above average at AA. Yeah. Like even with the struggles, air quotes, he's still been good above average everywhere. He's played other than a brief stint in rookie ball when he was 16.

Yeah. So I think there's still a ton to like, even though it's not necessarily jumping off the page yet with Kevin El Contra. Let's get to our weekend waiver preview. Oh, and by the way, if you like prospect talk, Melissa Lockard is going to join the show on Monday. We'll talk a lot about the players drafted on day one of the MLB draft, which gets underway on Sunday.

We can waver preview though. Is it going to be different this time for Matt Walner? Can you tell me that the second time around will be everything we'd hoped for from the beginning for Matt Walner? I mean, he has plus bat speed and and he showed it with, I think, the second hardest hit ball by the twins this year in his in his call up. I just for me, I just don't know. I don't know about the playing time.

I mean, like the corresponding move was Austin Martin. Yeah. Martin got hurt, right? And Austin Martin wasn't playing, you know, so it's like, if he's, if it's just a one for one thing, then I don't know. But, um, since he's come up, he's, uh, played in left field for, for four, game one. Yeah. He started in right field to the other one. He's still in left field for four for four game. But one he started in right field. The other one he's still every game he's played all four since

it came up over the weekend last weekend and had to do homers. Who is he taking time from them? Larnac a little bit. Larnac has played left field and DH so Larnac still playing a little bit. Larnac lost one start and yeah, I meanarnac still playing a little bit. Larnac lost one start and. Yeah, I mean, Martin was playing a little

because of his defense and center. Is Miranda playing at third because Miranda's playing more Miranda the last four games as DH played third base, played first base and actually gave him a day off last Sunday. But usually he's in the plane Brooks Lee has been playing Mostly third and he got one day off on my use of DH on Wednesday It's part of the doubleheader the first game of the doubleheader

You know who does this pretty well as roster resource you can kind of see everybody's these last four or five games Yeah, so Kepler got a day off randomly. It's kind of been just a little bit of everybody so far. How's it Miranda got a day off randomly? Carlos Santana got a day off randomly because they've all faced righties.

It's hard to see who's in the strict platoon, but I would guess that one of Kepler or Larnock is just not playing against the lefties. Yeah, I guess the soft spot of all those players would be Trevor Larnac again, right? Because they do similar things. They have similar limitations. And Larnac has been fine, but not necessarily great. And especially recently, this is always the what have you done for me lately sort of great. And especially recently, this is always the, what have you done for me lately sort of question.

And Larnac's been in a slump. So I think that's probably where the playing time comes from from Matt Wallner, just making Larnac play a lot less than chipping away at the playing time of a few of the other veterans there. I think I do like Wallner better than Larnac. There's obviously a lot more swing and miss, and it may be untenable,

but there is primo primo bat speed here for one out on her. If you take off the if you take off the filters on the bat speed things, number two, that's a ton of that speed. I imagine Reese Hines has a lot of bat speed just based on the raw power that he is showing so far. We talked about a little bit on Thursday. What types of leagues are you interested in Reese Hines? I think I'm only trying to catch lightning in a bottle. I'm not trying to spend a ton. I don't think I want to drop like $100 out of my thousand on him. It's a really bad strikeout rate. And then what's the team context for you?

I know they had Fraley. Fraley was on the bereavement list, if I remember correctly. And let's see, there was an injury to Stewart Fairchild. I think that was part of why they had to make a move. Yeah. So Fairchild's on the IL. Friedel's still on the IL. Nick Martini went on the IL.

Outfield is Fraley, Hines and. Benson? Steer. Fraley, Hines Heinz steer and Benson really Heinz steer and Benson's four people. And then they also have Austin Slater on the bench who plays against lefties. Well, they've done the same thing with Heinz. The twins have done with Walner since coming up. He's started all four games, two against righties,

two against lefties, played right field every single time. So they've been consistent in terms of. They're trying to catch lightning in a bottle. I think they I think there could be a chance that he takes a job because Will Benson is Will Benson's Stuart Fairchild and Austin Slater seem to me like role role players. So if they're all role players and resign says, no, I'm an everyday starter. There's there's a place for him, I think.

Right. And when you look at the way they've performed, Benson's got an 82 WRC plus, and they've given him a good run. Two hundred and eighty four played appearances this year. You've basically given him a half season to see what he does. Stuart Fairchild, to to me is more glove, fit outfielder, like sure, bring him off the bench. You know, Martini also being hurt was mostly a DH, 74 WRC plus, you don't have to play him anymore.

And even Fraley, where did Jake Fraley's power go? He's got one homer in 65 games this year and a 92 WRC plus. You've got enough weakness. And when the cradle comes back, he's, he's the center fielder because of the, of his defense. Yeah. But I think Reese, I think it could be the right fielder. It could be, yeah, if everyone's healthy and you're trying to field your best offensive lineup with good defenders, it's steer Friedel Heinz. Yeah.

And Friedel's a lefty, right? Yes. And they added Austin Slater to be a platoon option in the outfield with some of those lefties because Slater's a righty. So Reese could end up in a large, well, he could end up in a small side of the platoon, but I don't doubt they'd keep him the big leagues for that. I don't know. The other thing about Reese Hines I noticed when we started talking about him yesterday too is like, he's not young and he's old enough where you're gonna want to see what he is and decide if it's going to work if he's going to make adjustments enough he's going to be 24 in September. He's over 800 played appearances this year in AAA. It was actually 76 WRC+. And of course it's all about the K rate.

And the projected K rate is 39%. So that's why I, okay the team context is good, power, lightning in a bottle, power and speed, it's all there, you can go for it. But I just wouldn't do 100 hundred. I wouldn't do ten percent I wouldn't do fifteen percent because of that k-rate I mean the projections are for 210 208 average from the bad X, you know So you this is the kind of thing where I might throw thirty dollars out of a thousand You know or twenty six dollars out of thousand has really desperate for power

But like I'm not I'm not going over 100. If somebody wants to go all in on somebody like that, then then go for it. Another name to throw out there if you're looking for someone who's been playing a ton on Hill Martinez for the Guardians has started eight consecutive games. He's the latest to join the Tyler Freeman, Daniel Schneeman on the I Play Everywhere Club. He's played in center field, started games at center field, five in center, one at second, one at third and one in left. So plays an important position and plays other positions. And he's been hitting second.

Such a guardian. He doesn't strike out, doesn't hit the ball hard. What am I supposed to do with this? Ah, he even, you know, pulls some fly balls. God, I hate this. Switch hitter, good OPP. It's the ball doesn't doesn't have like a terrible hard hit rate, but also doesn't have a great hard hit rate, just kind of in the hmm.

Yeah, probably more of a 15 team league and deeper player, maybe keeper in dynasty or auto and throw him out there for a buck and just see what happens. A guy in that class, I think, is one Yepes. Yeah, he's playing a little bit, too. He's played every game in the last five against righties and lefties.

Looks like he's the starting first baseman in Washington. And Yepes is a bit of of a hit tool over power guy, if I remember correctly, from his Cardinals days. Right now, the swing strike rate suggests the strikeout rate's going up, but he's walking well now. Barrel looks good now, 38% hard hit rate. I know it's a small sample, but also that Park is a little bit more forgiving than St.

Louis. So if his rookie year is what he is, 250 hitter with 20 homerun power, that might play a little bit higher in Washington. So this might actually be my favorite of the guys so far. I'm not saying put a hundred bucks on them I'm just saying maybe you put 20 bucks on all these guys and you win one yet Pez and you're happy about it. Yeah, I'm saying the cheap Waterfall bid comes through the contingency the backup plan

So we talked about a few of the arms that are available like Gilbert Diaz We saw his debut earlier this week Luis Ortiz came a little bit earlier in the show. We kind of like what he's been doing, getting an opportunity with the Pirates right now. I think there are two relatively new names to the pitching pool people are wondering about. One with the Dodgers and Justin Robleski and then the other Keeter Montero,

who's getting a spot in the Tigers rotation lately. And they just put Kenta Maeda in the bullpen. So I actually, I kind of think Montero. I kind of missed that. Montero is interesting, man. Like I was, I was looking at the pitch mix and it's, it's decent. There's not a lot of ride on his fastball. So that's probably going to be one thing that models don't love about him,

but pretty good Velo. I actually saw a little bit of maybe like, I don't know, like an approach that works against minor leaguers that won't work against big leaguers where he was throwing his fastball. He was throwing a lot of low four seamers. He threw it at 97, but I don't think that's going to work for a long time. So I think part of my intrigue with Keeter Montero is trusting that tigers will get him to throw his fast ball higher in the zone and that he can do it. Like if he's able to do that, he's got a good slider, got a curve and a change up.

So it's four pitches. It's a nice home park. I think he could be one of those relative out of nowhere guys that comes up and is actually useful in deeper leagues. Yeah, I would, uh, target him for at home starts against, you know, the royals and white Sox and, you know, be conservative at first, but there's a lot to learn here about him in the next few days because the slider looks legit. The curveball looks like a, a positive in terms of, you know, his third, his third pitch.

Um, and, um, uh, you know, he even throws a change up, which rates sort of average ish, um, you know, right now and the command looks okay. So, you know, it's not, does not yell to me like this could be, um, like an ACE. No, no, no, but I think a functional mid-rotation ceiling is possible and it might be. I don't know. We've talked about a lot of guys like Davis, Daniel, and some guys that were getting chances in other organizations that have been a lot less interesting. I think there's, there's a little bit here to work with. Yeah.

Robo Lesky, I think he may just be keeping the seat warm a little bit for. For. I think he may just be keeping the seat warm a little bit for, uh, for, um, I think it's river Ryan. Yeah. I it's maybe not immediately, but I think it's soon after the second half begins. I think we're going to see river Ryan get that shot. I like land and knack more than Robleski Paxton versus Robleski becomes more of just a matter of what do you get from James Paxton? It packs if Paxton struggles enough, he can pitch his way out of that rotation. That's absolutely possible.

But after the really early ugly underlying numbers, things have occasionally looked a bit better from him. Yeah. I think he's out of the rotation before September. I just don't know if he's going to hold onto it for the next six weeks and, and kind of frustrate. Oh, James Paxton you're saying? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I think he's out of the rotation before September. I just don't know if he's going to hold on to it for the next six weeks and and kind of.

Oh, James Paxton, you're saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I. Yeah, I don't I don't get it. You know, in the last last time I talked to Paxton was like last week. You know, he's telling me he doesn't care about, you know, pitch movement numbers or any of that. And that he can see what a good pitch is.

But I don't know if I trust his eye because he threw that cutter at 85 miles an hour for three years. When it wasn't a good pitch. And he claims he can see what a good pitch is with his eyes, but he was throwing a bad pitch over and over again With the curveball as a secondary pitch we can see that his whiff rates are down his K-minus BB is terrible and stuff Plus is terrible. I think he's been lucky to have a 4-2 area. Yeah, I I Think he's losing the job eventually. I just don't know how long they're going to go before they finally make that move. Robleski is not, I don't know, he's not bad.

He's he's got some stuff to work with also, but even if you're taking one shot between Robleski and Keter Montero, is it Montero because of the current situation with Roll or do you shoot for Robleski because the team situation is better? Montero. I like the park. The Dodgers are playing 500 baseball. Yeah, it's been rough stretch for them.

Gilbert Diaz is, uh, on the forefront of a bunch of people's, uh, minds because he's up with the D backs. He always had really bad command metrics and command grades. If I remember correctly, let me see if I have that right. I got to see some of that debut. He looked pretty good. 30, 40, 30 present, 40 future command from fan graphs on Yilberdias and walk rates that until this year were consistently 12 to 14%. This year there's been a little step forward and with the ABS. So that command looks interesting.

So that command looks interesting. I thought it looked OK, but there's an interesting thing out here. Let me see if I can find it. David Girth, G-E-R-T-H, has a Pitcher Similarity tool where you can input some key metrics for a pitcher's pitch and then then find who who he's most like. And I put Yilberdias's fastball in and it spit out Logan Gillespie, Adam Mazer, Hayden Burnsong, Roanze Contreras as the most similar fastballs. And so I'm fairly certain that Stuff Plus has him nailed when it comes to poor fastball. It's a fastball with like around average movement, but it comes from a release point where you'd expect that average movement.

You know what I mean? So there's nothing deceptive about it. It is 96, so that's good, but there's nothing else that's good about it. And then the curve ball that people have asked about that Stuff Plus says is terrible, 23% curve ball, 23 Stuff Plus curve ball for you over Diaz well he

threw seven of them it's possible that that's not enough but it also I don't know it's a 78 mile an hour curveball like it's that gonna change is that like let's say that's a hundred instead of that. It's still not a great arsenal for me. I think the command will be exposed at some point. 83 mile an hour slider. You want your sliders over 85. So there's, there's the only thing he really has going for him, analytically, process wise, in the pitch movements and shapes,

is the V-L lo and the fastball Everything else looks pretty bad. It just looks like a profile that will struggle against lefties to me as currently That too. I mean they'll have to throw that curve ball a lot more against lefties and want to see we'll see how that does We are gonna go on our way out the door reminder to get a subscription athletic for just two dollars a month at athletic.com way out the door. A reminder to get a subscription to the Athletic for just $2 a month at the athletic.com slash rates and barrels. Find Eno on Twitter at EnoSaris. Find me at Derek from Rhyper. Find the pod at rates and barrels. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. Back with you on Monday. Thanks for watching!