Rates & Barrels - Paul Skenes vs. Jacob Misiorowski and Paths to Becoming an Ace

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

Eno, Trevor, and DVR discuss a highly-anticipated matchup between Paul Skenes and Brewers rookie Jacob Misiorowski, and the different approaches the two pitchers bring to the table. Plus, they discuss the foundation necessary for a pitcher to become an eventual Cy Young Award contender or future ace, before a collaborative draft of the 2025 rookie starting pitchers.Rundown0:51 Jacob Misiorowski v. Paul Skenes4:54 Skenes' Early Career Adjustments, Planning Ahead for Future Velocity Decline?10:05 Misiorowski's Long-Term Ceiling14:45 Tarik Skubal and the Multi-Year Path to Elite Levels22:08 Eno's Criteria for Eventual Aces32:38 A Collaborative Rookie Starting Pitcher Draft43:29 Beyond Our Top-Five57:06 Recapping the Top-15Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.socialFollow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.socialFollow Trevor on Bluesky: @iamtrevormay.bsky.sociale-mail: [e-mail] our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFeSubscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrelsHosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno SarrisWith: Trevor MayProducer: Brian SmithExecutive Producer: Derek VanRiper Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Melt into its plush top cover. Stay comfortable with cooling gel foam and let supportive coils cradle you to sleep. Try Logan & Cove at home risk-free for 365 nights. And if you're a listener in Canada, we have an exclusive offer for you. Get a free bedding bundle when you buy now at loganandcove.ca slash podcast. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Thursday, June 26th, Derek Van Ryper, Inosaris, Trevor May here with you on this episode. We discuss a highly anticipated matchup that mostly delivered on Wednesday.

Jacob Mizaraski vs. Paul Skeens happened on a nice Wednesday afternoon in Milwaukee. Two aces doing it different ways as Inosaris will explain here in just a few minutes. We're going to take a look at some big picture questions like what do you need foundationally to become an ace, to become the type of pitcher that competes for and maybe wins a Cy Young award and we will have a rookie starting pitchers draft later on in the show so a lot of pitching talk today and it was a great day on Wednesday watching that matchup between Mizorowski and Skeens you know elite stuff electric and kind of funny to think that only a year

and a month after Paul Skeens makes his big league debut, another really hype starter comes up and they're running this lower graphic of 100 plus mile per hour pitches and Skeens isn't winning in that category, which if someone a year ago had told you something like that was going to happen, you're like, what, really? Skeens is going to get out V-Load by somebody new a year from now? It would have been a little surprising at least so I was surprised watching this that They do have very different styles. You know you wrote about this start for the athletic on Thursday morning and

Where they were locating in particular is very different because of the way their arsenals work Yeah, we talked sometimes about the dead zone on here. And the dead zone is average movement, but average movement on your fastball with regards to your slot. And I think batters have a sort of internal machine computer that sort of sees the arm slot and anticipates a certain kind of movement from it.

And what we see from Zyrowski is he gets three inches of ride on top of that dead zone. And so he gets surprising hop. What we see from Skeens is he gets two inches less vertical movement on his foreseam than you would see from that. They actually have similar arm slots. So if you have Skeens on the left here, if you have a pitch that has less vertical movement than people expect, then you might live in the bottom zone. He lives east to west.

He has a sweeper and a changeup. He has very sideways pitches. So he lived at the bottom of the zone and he lived east to west. If you're Jacob Mierzyorowski and you have surprising hop, you live at the top of the zone and you have a much more north-south game. As much as we've said that Mizorowski has poor command, that was a decent game for him. If you look at it, a lot of it's over the plate and yes he yanks it glove side sometimes as you can see by those sliders and fastballs in on lefties.

But that's just him trying to stay in on lefties, I think. And sometimes he yanks a little bit far. But this is a north-south pitcher versus an east-west pitcher. I think maybe some of this was overstated. In the future, I think Skeens didn't have it at the top of the zone in that game. You saw him casting some sweepers. You can actually see it in this. You see those few sweepers that are super high, one that looks like it's almost going to hit the righty batter in the face. So he was having a little trouble

commanding high in the zone. So maybe there are other days when his foreseen plays better at the top of the zone, he uses it more at the top of the zone. But from watching Schienz, I generally believe he lives low in the zone. He's kind of basically a sinker. He's a sinker baller. Now he has a foreseen, but he's a sinker baller. Mizorowski is the kind of Blake Snell type where you have a high foreseen and you drop your breaking ball off of that.

Both of them are really excellent. I think there's some really interesting implications there that I didn't get into in the piece about the future. For one, I have to say at Health, Mizorowski throws a 96 mile an hour slider. I just have a feeling that the comp for Mizorowski is almost 100% Jacob deGrom. He has the Jacob deGrom fastball, he has the 94 mile an hour slider, he looks like a young Jacob deGrom without the command. And so, you know, what I see from that is possible health issues going forward. He hasn't really manifested those

yet, but that's just something that I worry about. With skeins, I worry about what happens when the VELO drops. I think he'll actually be pretty healthy, but as the VELO drops, then he becomes be pretty healthy, but as the Velo drops, then he becomes a sinker baller with, you know, 94 mile an hour fastball, 95 mile an hour fastball. I think he'll always be pretty good. I think the floor is high for him the rest of the whole of his career, but if he's winning Cy Young's, I'm saying he wins it early in his career and later in his career, he's a more just a mellow, you know, pretty good starter. Do you agree with that as sort of the long-term arc for Skeens? Because Trevor, when I look at the arsenal

and how wide it is already for Paul Skeens, he seems like a guy that's already laying the groundwork to have a more complete arsenal when the velocity dips as it does for everybody. Like I see a guy that's already like down the path of trying to become an A student in the craft of being a truly great pitcher beyond having the phenomenal stuff.

Yeah, I think we've seen, there's one interesting thing, it's almost like based on what his comments were like in spring when he came in and everyone's like asking, why do you learn the two seam in the cutter, coming into spring, why do you in two pitches, you were nasty last year and the cutter, you know, coming into, why did you end two pitches? You were nasty last year. And he, based on his tone, he was like, yeah, I was like too dominant,

and I wasn't able to go as deep into games as I wanted to get into. It's almost like he doesn't want to get like a 12 or 13 strikeout per nine, because then he's not gonna throw as many innings. And innings are definitely the most important thing to him right now, because he wants to take over games, because that's the only way the Pirates win.

So he's giving me shades of like like Zach Wheeler. Wheeler's really got great stuff and early in his career it was stuff stuff stuff stuff but he just couldn't put it all together and now he's become this complete pitcher with still good stuff but he's definitely not up there just like getting you out with stuff. Now on the other side, Mizorowski reminds me a lot more of like a, he had more of a strider approach. Like, I'm just gonna bully you. Like, and Skeens doesn't seem interested in that

because I don't think long-term he knows. I think he's aware that that only will last for a little bit and then you're gonna have to, you're gonna be in trouble if that's how you've pitched for a long time and he's just kind of getting ahead of it, which also speaks to like his pitching IQ. What's interesting to see, I want to see out of Skeens is does he have that like, does he do the verland or can he just

like turn that on for a couple innings if guys are starting to get on him or he like go super competitive turn into scubal for example. I think he even has better stuff than his like swing and miss and his whiff rates and stuff are showing He does have that kind of mid fastball movement profile and he's had it since he came up and I was I said that last year Too I was like it's still a dead zone movement fastball that at 94 is a bad fastball probably and he's gonna have to use other pitches But that's my point. Yeah, that's what I'm worried about and the velocity is what is making it's good So if that goes away what happens But I also think that at that point would he have be able to just pick up eight pitches and figure out how to do It and become one of those guys absolutely

But would the dominance factor kind of go away a little bit if the fastball isn't one of the one of the big weapons Probably so I would say Mizrowski maybe has the higher like pure dominant Mizorowski maybe has the higher like pure dominant ceiling with the obvious caveat of probably there is some injury risk there. I mean, he's like what a hundred and a buck buck ten soaking wet at six seven like he's got he's got stuff going on But he's got the extension that skis have had I just I I think of them kind of in those two different buckets the strider de graham complete dominant side or the Zach wheeler, I know we all don't try to throw 200 innings anymore, but I'm going to still try to do that. Yeah, I could see that.

You know, an interesting side story for him is that I was talking to Gio Leto about, you know, who throws the straight change anymore. And we were trying to go through some names and turns out Paul Skeens throws a straight change. And he's actually been mixing the straight change and the splinker to the point where he throws them at about equal degrees. And that does show the kind of touch I think that Derek is talking about where, you know,

he had the splinker, everyone's talking about how great the splinker is. And then without, you know, as much fanfare, he's actually throwing a straight change just as much and he's playing them off each other. When they expect the splinker, they get the straight change, which is like three or four miles an hour slower and has more movement profile like a sinker. So the fact that he's already throwing, what is it, a sweeper, a regular slider, a curve

ball, a splinker, a straight change, a sinker, and a fore seam, speaks to what DVR is talking about. I get that, but there's only so much you can run away from a bad fastball if it actually turns into a bad fastball. So the Mizorowski ceiling seems like it's as high as any pitcher in the league right now. I think our collective concern is we don't know if the command is going to be consistently

there. You talked about some of the pitches we've seen him kind of yank over to that left handed batter's box. Even the fastballs, everyone's fascinated by the hundred plus mile per hour fastball. He's thrown 62 of them already. He's thrown just 241 total pitches in three big league starts, but he has non-competitive misses even with that pitch. Like 10 of those 62 fastballs that are 100 plus are in the chase or waste zone. And like that to me is like, okay, even if the overall numbers, the

location plus number actually is good right now, it's at 98, good relative to expectations. I think it was an 88 going into Wednesday's start. But it's 79 on the fastball. It's 79 on the fastball, which then is going to put a lot more pressure on the rest of his arsenal, isn't it? The pitch that seems really important to me when I watch Jacob Mizorowski is the change-up that he's not throwing a lot of like when I watched that pitch and it's relatively new I think he changed the grip on it for like or a triple a this year Like he finally got comfortable with it if he gets more comfortable with that pitch

That's gonna go a long way towards taking some of the pressure off of that fastball command and that fastball usage Or not yanking the slider, right? like if he can if he can put the slider in the zone when he wants to, then that's something that Joe Boyle tried was to basically use the slider for called strikes when he really needed it so that he didn't have to throw the fastball when he needed to throw the fastball. So I think that there is some risk that hitters

stop sitting fastball. That they basically sit slider and don't even try to hit the fastball. Because they say, you can't put that in the zone. But then you watch that game and you give Mizorowski three fastballs in a row, he's gonna get at least one strike. And I would say most likely two strikes

because he was near the black. I don't know if it's just a one game thing, but he got squeezed. You know, there were calls he didn't get. I didn't think he looked that un-competitive. Yes, there were some waste pitches. Sometimes those waste pitches, I feel like he's O2 or something. He's just trying to, you know, throw the best fastball of his life. Right. Overthrowing it. throw the best fastball of his life. Right, overthrowing it. So I think maybe some confidence in how this is going can lead to some better command for him. I mean, he could take some off,

but it's still gonna be 98. Right, that's the next thing. That's what skein's like, okay, I threw a bunch over 100, like I don't need to. The whole, like, there's another guy who comes into the league every year and throws the most 100 mile an hour pitches.

It's probably gonna keep happening because you're excited and you wanna show what you got. And the guy who was there is like, why do I gotta hold the record? There's always gonna be another guy coming, trying to throw as hard as he can with all the adrenaline and their family at every game. Like it is what it is and now everyone throws a hundred.

Every top five, every first round pitcher throws a hundred now. So it's like, there's gonna be another guy. Yeah, Chase Burns was sitting 97 plus in the minors and came up and his first inning was all hundreds, you know, all 99s and hundreds. Just how it's gonna be now. This is the way it is. Great day for pitching around the league, by the way.

Jacob deGrom had a no hitter into the eighth on Wednesday. I saw there were 12 starters that went five or more innings without allowing an earned run across the league. So yeah, you like pitching. There was plenty of it. This is like a day after we declared, you know, it's a, it's perfect season for homers. I think a bunch of the aces came up though.

It just was the way the schedule kind of worked out. What I think is interesting though, is that Paul Skeens has been as advertised or better from day one, right? Came into the league May 11th of last year. He's tied for second in F-war during that span with Sale, only Scubals higher. First at ERA out of the 45 qualified pitchers during that span. He's put up a 2-0-3. Tied for first in WIP with a 0.93. Scubal and Brian Wu, the other two pitchers, tied in whip during that span, he's fourth in K minus BB percentage. That's sort of the Strasburg,

you're here and you're an ace immediately, you're one of the best pitchers in baseball. That's not always how it works. And I think I said something in passing maybe last week, we were talking about Tarek Schubel, and going back in time in 2021, and none of us at that point would have said, Tarek Scoobel is going to be the best pitcher in baseball someday. That level of statement would have just been very

aggressive at the time. A lot of homers I think was the main issue that Tarek Scoobel had and you probably could have had a different sort of conversation at that point. You could have said yeah maybe maybe he's not gonna be the best pitcher in baseball someday but he can still get a lot better. There were characteristics then that probably jumped off the page if you were looking closely enough, and maybe would have told you this was going to happen. Trevor put together a video back before the season looking at the, he called it the Cy Young equation.

So this is a bit of a spin-off off of that. And you start looking at a guy like Mizorowski, to me it's like by eye test, he would certainly tick the boxes you need to tick to become an ace. Looks like maybe he's more of the is just an ace already sort of guy. More in that Strider, de Grom sort of vein though,

in terms of just overpowering everybody right now. But I wanted to ask you both, what foundation does a pitcher actually need to have, even if the results aren't eye popping right away, that makes you believe they can become an ace and follow maybe more of that Tarek Skubal sort of trajectory? I mean, what was your criteria that you broke down, Trevor?

A lot of it is kind of common sense, I think, but I think you first gotta look at the old floor ceiling idea just based on stuff. Like, what do they naturally have because the young guys come up? Usually they're pretty close on what their stuff is. That's like the only thing that might be even, you know, the farthest developed when guys get up.

Like with Scubal, for example, I believe I saw his like second or third start in the big leagues. He was throwing 98, 99, left-handed, big dude. Like, you're like, first of all, those boxes, you don't check those boxes often. That's a big deal. And then you go look at why they're not doing as well.

So one thing with Scobble, for example, is he didn't have the change-up that he has, so he didn't found that change in the grip to make it a little bit better, but also, if I went and looked at his savant page too, like everything in a vacuum, which is kinda how I thought then, nothing jumps off the page to you then,

so then you look at how does everything interact with each other or whatever, but stuff, it's pretty, pretty apparent that his stuff is really good. So if you're looking at Mizorowski, for example, you're like, his stuff is phenomenal. I think that the, like we have the extension that makes his 100 look like 103. That is good. We have his lower arm slot, but his high ride fast ball.

That's like a, there's a mental distance happening in hitters that make it even harder to hit because they're swinging underneath a pitch that looks harder. So like these things are not really teach, they are teachable now but like we don't have to worry about him learning them, he already does them.

So then you go, does he throw the ball where he wants to throw the ball when he wants to throw it there? And so in Scoobel's case, you could look at his career over time and see based on, I'm using true media statistics here, but like paint, which is edge or whatever you want to call it, edge of the zone, his ability to be within that edge of the zone got closer and closer and closer to the edge, which more often, which is awesome.

He led the league in competitive location last year throwing competitive pitches, but he also had the highest whiff rate. So if you combine, he's not, people aren't chasing like crazy and he's throwing tons in the zone and they're still missing, that's another huge green flag for me and that happened more and more and more through his career as well. So that I just get granular with the command and I look at how dominant those pitches

are still performing. Are you still getting the whiff and the poor contact, all of that stuff as you start to get better and as you keep pitching and if the answer is yes, there might be a Cy Young in your future. I believe of the major and I'm trying to, it was five months ago I made this thing so I'm trying to think of the exact criteria, but I went and looked like the top five in a lot of the major command-based stats. It was like, you know, Jameson Tyon, Myles Michaelis,

like guys who are like just touching the edges and then Tarek Scoobel, like right above them. And I'm like, you got one guy who is a power pitcher and everyone else is the thumber. So if he's in that group and he has the ability to take over games like he does with, because these people are just missing stuff, that could turn into a Cy Young.

And if you looked at it over time, basically every single year, how those numbers, those same numbers were just slowly, he was moving his way up that list. Ever since he came off Tommy John, I was like, if I would have saw that beforehand, I'd be like, this guy's kind of inevitable if he stays healthy again, doesn't need another one.

And that's the type of thing that I'm trying to establish. So I think that with Mizorowski, it's just the command. It's like, how is that changing over time? How is the competitive location? That's one big thing I look at, because there's mental components to that. Like some guys just throw throw miss like crazy, because they really don't want to give up

a hit in certain situations. So they just force themselves not to. Competitive location is really important for young guys, for me. I think it's something that people don't look at, honestly, because I don't think it's even on anything but true media. That's probably why. It's probably a different version.

But if you're throwing misses that are just everyone in the stadium is like, well, that was a pointless pitch. If you're doing version. But if you're throwing misses that are just, everyone in the stadium's like, well that was a pointless pitch. If you're doing that a lot, if you're doing that like 20% of the time, then you're just simply not gonna have the success that you could have. And that's where I started to build off of that.

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Join for free at rakuten.ca or download the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N rakuten.ca or download the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N Rakuten.ca. Slip into a deep restful sleep on a luxurious feeling mattress you can afford. Logan & Cove is named Canada's best luxury hybrid mattress. Designed and handcrafted in Canada, it starts at just $7.99. Melt into its plush top cover. Stay comfortable with cooling gel foam. And let supportive coils cradle you to sleep. Try Logan & Cove at Home risk-free for 365 nights. And if you're a listener in Canada, we have an exclusive offer for you. Get a free bedding bundle when you buy now at loganandcove.ca slash podcast.

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Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Edge percentage is funny though, just to say like the leaderboard for that as a command metric, it's like the location plus leaderboard you go through like this year, Tyler Malley, 49%, Eduardo Rodriguez, 48.6, Patek, Jeffrey Springs, Patrick Corbin, Zach Wheeler, there you go, there's one of your first

truly very good pitchers, Zach Lattell, oh there's Paul Skeens, then there's Zach Efflin, and Meryl Kelly. It's a lot of those clear command first guys, but when you find a stuff guy, a wide arsenal guy that actually has some Velo and they pop on that list, that usually leads you to a pretty special talent.

If you put it in stuff and location terms, when Scoobl debuted in 2020, he had a 114 stuff. This year he has a 117 stuff. As much as he has improved his foreseam and improved some of his mechanics by being a little bit less crossfire and added the sinker and done some things and improved the change up, the stuff was always there. He had a location plus of 97 when he first

started and he has 107 this year. So that speaks to the sort of growth you're saying. I tend to think of things like, I want to say, hey, do you have a fastball for each hand? You know, like, do you have a fastball that works against lefties and a fastball that works against righties? And do you have a secondary pitch that works against lefties and a secondary pitch that works against righties? I want to like, you know, bigger arsenal guys there for.

I want to have fastball, sinker, slider change, slider curve, slider splitter. You know, I want you to have a slider. You know, I think it's a slider league. I really want you to have a slider, especially if you're right-handed. So that's where I wanna start. But then I looked at the list of Cy Young Award winners

and here are the guys that don't fit my rubric. Blake Snell, Jake Arrieta, he won. Blake Snell won in each league. Dallas Keichel won it. I had more examples. Rick Porcello? Robbie Ray, Rick Porcello. There are these two-pitch guys even that win it.

And Clayton Kershaw is largely a two--pitch guy and it's fastball slider from the left side. So I think maybe you're right to think about the location aspect of it because that's where Kershaw really signs. And that's the difference between de Grom and Mizorowski as we've put it forward is there's so many similarities between them except that ability to put it where you want it. So the difficult thing is that you can come up like Scoobble and do everything but that location thing and you can

grow into it or you stay Snell. You can still win the Cy Young as Snell when you have the good commandeers and then you slide back when you have the bad commandeers. I think somewhere between de Grom and Snell is Mizorowski's future. I'm not sure that I see a guy that's just going to scubal it. Like, I just, I don't know. There's something about, another way that people can actually look it up is waste percentage. If they don't have true media, you can go on Savant. And Derek's cited how many waste pitches he has.

I think that's a waste pitch is that, a pitch that doesn't do anything for you. So I guess I would amend it this way. It's like, you know, the Strider thing is, oh, I do have a fastball for both sides. It's my fastball. And I do have a secondary pitch for both sides. It's my slider.

So if you have a dominant enough pairing of pitches, then you can have that like sort of star shining bright kind of way or even a you know I guess a Kershawian way of winning. But I will say that currently my bias is a little bit more towards wider arsenals. I want I like you guys are two fastballs and two secondary pitches and stuff on all of them. That's would be my like future Siyoung think. Well, and I think that makes a lot of sense when you think about the quality of hitters

in the league right now and the tools that they have, right? I mean, I think Jed's mentioned a couple of times the trajectory machine and how much of a difference maker that is in preparing and a trajectory machine, trying to prepare for a five-pitch guy, still helpful, but probably not gonna make as much of an impact as trying to prepare for a five pitch guy, still helpful, but probably not going to make as much of an impact as trying to prepare for a two pitch guy or someone that depends very heavily on those two pitches at least.

I think they're also just swing planes. You know, you think about the tilt guys, you have a high tilt guy and you have a low tilt guy. Well, the low tilt guy is going to be able to hit the fore seam well, but he might struggle on the two seam. The big tilt guy, the guy who has the big uppercut, he can hit the two seam, but he might struggle on the fore seam. So you know, you not only have a pitch that works to each hand, you have a pitch that kind of could work to different

bat paths, you know, so that you can kind of play. And that also another way of saying it is you can pitch to all different quadrants of the zone if you have two fastballs What we saw I think in the game from skeins the other day was he didn't really have his good foreseam and He does have a better forcing than he did that day since he didn't have that foreseam He didn't pitch high in the zone and what we saw all the hits were low in the zone So what did they do they say? Oh, he's only throwing low in the zone He's only throwing east to us and on the zone. So what did they do? They say, oh, he's only throwing low in the zone. He's only throwing East to West low in the zone. They singled and doubled him to death. Like there wasn't any hard hits, you know, but it was, it was like, okay, he's mostly sinker-ish down the zone. Let's put our

sinker swings on it. When Skeens has got his four seam, he's a better pitcher. So I still like that. Now there, when you get into this rookie draft, like they're going to be some guys like Mizorowski that Maybe they're just the dominant strider types, but I'm gonna have a bias that I've stated here is I like the multiple fastballs I I think chase burns should have come to the big leagues with multiple fastballs and I think Kumar rocker should have come to the big leagues with multiple fastballs. And when I list the organizations that I think are the best at pitching development, which are the Phillies, the Mets, the Yankees, and the Dodgers, most of these guys come up

with two fastballs, at least. I was trying to think of the common thread for Rocker and for Burns. Like, is there anything about them, both Vandy guys, right? Like that's Part of it, but Vandy maybe I'm wrong But I I think a Vandy is one of the best places you can go as a pitcher in terms of the resources and things that They have available right like they're they're something up behind the hitters They're facing are just not the love this level

So I think you can it's more likely you can do the Strider plan in college because you're like, hey dude, I throw 98. Like if you're Chase Burns in college, what are you doing? What are college hitters doing against Chase Burns? 98 with a 90 mile an hour slider that he can command. Like he is Strider in college. That doesn't mean he's going to be Strider in the big leagues. It takes, that's another level. And I think sometimes you have to get smashed in the mouth, or you have to have an organization that's like, hey, before you get smashed in the mouth,

let's see what kind of other fastballs you can throw. Oh, that's a fair point. And I did actually pull together a graphic real quick if you want to look back at 2021, Tarek Scoobel. I mean, this is just what I'm getting at as far as you could look at a player, a snapshot of a player right now and see something that looks like this and easily like write off the possibilities for the future.

And you shouldn't because look at the outcome. And if we did a year by year, if we did the five versions of this card, the blue popsicles that you see on Savant would start flipping and it'd be pretty much the dominant nearly all red sort of page that you see today. But that's what it looked like on paper for Tarek Scoobel just four years ago. I mean, there was still some good stuff in there.

There is a few good things to point out. For some reason, you were where my brain was just at when you were showing me that. I was like, when? It would be super cool if someone could animate it changing from year to year. Like you see them fill up or whatever when you go to the next one. I'm like, man, that'd be a great thing to see on a broadcast.

You know, he already has two fastballs. He obviously, with a 23%, even without knowing the quality of the slider, uses the 23% of the time that he has a slider. So, you know, you've got two fastballs, a slider, and then, you know, in terms of the split or the change, you're like, okay, you're hoping for some growth there. And then you got the growth and the change up,

and that was a big part of the next step for him. Just thinking about some of the stuff people have been saying about lefties being harder to hit right now. I wonder if lefties are also throwing harder and historically they are their velocity on average is lagged behind righties. So that might just be another simple thing that's happening across the board. That's making lefties play up even more right now. Yeah, I did see that like we're at an eight year low for pitches from lefties.

There's definitely something to the rarity thing. No loogies. They're gone. They used to be, we used to throw, there used to be a lefty pitch in every game no matter what and now they don't do that as much. It's a guarantee. I feel like that was over the top. I've watched a few old games where the pitching changes

as a result of all the specialists, it was out of control. It was awesome watching Oli Perez throw like 37 and a third innings in 75 appearances. You missed that? He didn't throw many innings, but he warmed up a lot. That is for sure. He warmed up every day. The split, by the way, I just checked it,

is as healthy as ever. I'm pretty amazed by this. League is right-handed, average force team is 94-7. Yeah, I saw that too. Rough! That was my average my last year. I got out, I got out in time. I would have been average. That would have been really hard to handle. I'm not kidding. I would've been looking at it every day like, I gotta get to set for it. 4.8 because I cannot be average. 93.1 for lefties.

That's even bigger than the split spin in the past. It used to be one mile an hour was the easy rubric. I don't know if that, maybe that's for starters, but. That's not as much of an uptick as I would've thought looking back at the number that was on that Scooblky. I don't know if that's a good thing. I don't know if that's a good thing. I don't know if that's a good thing. I don't know if that's a good thing. I don't know if that's a good thing. I don't know if that, maybe that's for starters, but. That's not as much of an uptick as I would have thought

looking back at the number that was on that Scoobl card because back in 2021, it was 92.7 for lefties on the average four-seam VELO. Yeah, it's still even for starters, it's 1.4 mile an hour difference. Righty starters have a 94.4. Yikes. Good luck. Good luck.

Good luck. Well, we're gonna have a starting pitchers draft, a rookie starting pitchers draft. If you're watching us on YouTube, you can probably see the screen, most of the screen anyway. At some point, we're gonna invent a way to have a more dynamic draft board on the screen.

Until then, we will use Google Sheets and conditional formatting because, well, that's what I do, that's where I'm comfortable, that's where I live. There's two ways we could do this. We could do it like our last draft, our bad ratios draft, which we all just played against each other, or we could be collaborative

in the spirit of the MLB draft coming up here in just a few weeks. We could work together and try to figure out our board and how we'd like to order these guys. So play together or play against each other? What's the preference? What is the outcome that we're looking for? If we're looking for careers, then we might as well play together because we're, you know, they're not gonna remember. Yeah. I thought that's what we're

going for. Best long-term outcomes. Whose future are you most optimistic about? All right, well I'm gonna put forth that we should put Jacob Mizarowski at the top of our board. He's just too dominant to ignore. 90 mile an hour curve ball, 96 mile an hour slider, baby de Grom, like what else do I gotta say? I think we're putting Mizorowski one. All right, we're putting Mizorowski one. I feel like there's a clear top five

which I'm really interested in ordering between. I may disagree with you guys on number two. So who's number two for you? I'll be honest, I did not see Didier Fuentes throw when he made his debut, but I've heard good things. I really like Mick Abel, but I don't think he's two. Ah, that's my two. It's really, I think he's just, that kid can pitch already

and he's got a lot of good, and everything's positive. Yeah, I'll say Mick Abel's two a lot of good, and everything's positive, yeah, I'd say the Cables too. I think I would take Chase Burns too, but I understand the conversation with Abel for sure. I mean, I think for me, the belief is, but Slider is already phenomenal. The location's better than we probably expected for Burns and that he has two breaking balls gives me faith

that the feel for spin is good enough that he can make the adjustment and find Another fastball if that foreseer doesn't get better the other part I guess the related question of this is are we throwing out home park for all these guys just to Talk about all-around talent as opposed to oh, well, he's in great American ballpark. So homers are gonna bite him Something like war or eerie eerie my yeah none of those guys pitch in very friendly parks Do they except for maybe Fuentes? Yeah, he's no Launching pad south a little bit a little bit you guys two votes for Abel one for burns So I think that that gives it to Abel like we'll make this very simple and democratic. It's not like we hate Burns.

We can put Burns third. You know, Burns is going to be in my top five no matter what. When you have an elite pitch, you have to take notice. It's just, I don't know that just because he can spin the ball, he can throw a sinker or a cutter. I mean, I guess you would assume he could throw a cutter, but you know, for some guys, they can throw a slider,

but they can't throw a slider and a cutter. Right, that's been a reason, why doesn't he throw a cutter? Because then he makes the slider worse, and then it doesn't have the intended effect because the best pitch is no longer the best pitch, right? So that would be a fear, but I'm going below the fold for a minute

just to bring up the other names, because I don't want to forget someone who's currently buried. We're sorted by stuff plus, so there's going to be a heavy stuff bias if we don't start going to the bottom of the list and all the way down almost at the very bottom, Roki Sasaki who we talked about maybe a month or so ago right around the time that he went on the IL. Slow slow progress for him.

I think he's playing catch right now. Reason for optimism for him Is that one green box which is you know a pretty important one to have a plus splitter? You know does mean that he has he has I would say more upside than anybody South of you know 15 on this list you know I would take him Right now who's on the screen from Jacob Lopez, Brandon Young, Sean Burke, Adam Mazur, Sagan, Burroughs, McGreevy. I'm taking Roki Sasaki over all these guys easily.

And it's based on one pitch and it's the one pitch that's better than all of their pitches by Stuff+. It's a really good pitch. If you look at Kodai Senga through the lens of Stuff+, you start to say, oh wow, he doesn't have a great fastball, the cutter's not that wow, he doesn't have a great fastball, the cutter's not that great, he doesn't really spin it that well, oh, he has the ghost fork.

So like Kodai Senga is still a possible outcome for Roki Sasaki. Adding a cutter like Kodai has would be great, being healthy, maybe doing some shape stuff on the fastball. I think fastball shape is very hard to change. So I would just be like, can you throw a cutter that is good enough? What I see is you spam your area of weakness. You know, that's what I've been talking about Andrew Haney throwing a slow curve, a curve and a sweeper. None of them are good, but he throws three of them. So Roki Sasaki, if you can do fastball sinker cutter, you're gonna leap past

this and I think would be in my top 10. I don't know if I'm putting him out of top five. Anybody here want to argue for him in the top five? He might be able to push up top 10. I think he has a high ceiling, but again, I agree with you. I'll be honest, his fastball and slider are a lot worse than I even thought they were when he came over. I was like, oh, I thought these were better pitches. We were fooled a little bit by, the WBC when you see these guys and we even had stuff numbers there. First of all, he was the worst, like one of the worst high hyped guys in terms of stuff plus the WBC.

He was like 10th in stuff plus of the WBC. He was behind Sonny Gray, who kept popping up because Sonny Gray pitched in one of the stadiums or something it was like he maybe he pitched like a qualifier I don't know what it was it was some weird thing where I was like ah get Sonny Gray out here he was 10th on that list and that was in three innings so when he when we saw him he was throwing a 90 mile an hour slider you know and it's kind of hard to throw a bad 90 mile an hour slider now it's 87 and it's it is actually bad it's 86 and it is actually bad.

It's 86 or something. It was low 80s at times. It was like 82, 83 sometimes. Not good, not breaking enough for that below. What about Kasparius though? I mean, yeah, Kasparius is the- He gotta be top five. Yeah, and then what I did for this board

is I only did innings as a starter on the filter so that's why it says six and two-thirds innings because he's been following Otani and working a lot out of the bullpen. And so some of these stuff numbers may come down for him you know you what you do see actually from Kasparis was a harder time he has a hard time with command in the starter role so his really good K-BB comes a little bit more from games he didn't start. In games that he started, the last game he started,

two strikeouts and two walks in four innings. You know, the one before that, he did well against the Cubs, that was two and two thirds. So we just don't know when he gets to length exactly what the strikeout to walk ratio would look like or even necessarily what the stuff will look like. But what I've seen, you know, what you can see in the last two starts, the fastball stuff plus dip below 90, the

breaking balls are all still there and the cutter is still there. So, you know, even if he's not a great foreseam when he's a starter, you know, he's got multiple breaking balls and multiple fastballs. So I would make an argument for top five. I do wonder if he should be four. Four, I might put forward somebody like Will Warren who has a fairly high floor and has a wide arsenal and decent command.

I think that he could be a four for us. Then there's Jackson Jobe and Jack Leiter, who I think have really high upsides. Maybe even Didier Frontes have high upsides. Fairly harsh question marks. So we have a choice here to go ceiling or floor at four, I think. Shop with Rakuten and you'll get it.

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at loganandcove.ca slash podcast. I think if you are considering sealing, Roky actually is still part of this conversation. I think one of the reasons he hasn't looked great is because we knew there was some kind of underlying problem a year ago. He's had a lot of injuries in Japan. He's still really young too. Even in a group of rookies.

I think we're talking about a guy that has a lot of professional and big stage experience who's what 23? And I guess the hard thing for me to completely abandon is for the scouting community that has to try and project this. They miss sometimes. The job is incredibly difficult, but I keep thinking about the tagline at FanGraphs, right, from Eric Langenhagen, the TLDR. Peak Sasaki has talent on par

with the best overall prospects in baseball. Seems likely to shine through in a profound way at some point during his MLB tenure, but Sasaki's injury history and 2024 downtick in stuff are notable. Is there a world in which we just feel better about Sasaki after some kind of absence because he's healthy again. Hopefully it's not a major surgery,

but is there a world in which he comes back for the final six, eight weeks of this season and actually looks like the guy we all thought he was going to be upon arrival? You know, that's part of the Tarek Skubal story, right? Like he was hurt. Like he came, he did some stuff, and then he was hurt, and in the process of getting better from being hurt,

he actually changed the mechanics and got better. He came out of being hurt better. And so I wonder, all the things you're saying about Roki Sasaki, that's my argument for Jackson Job at four. Sure, Jackson Job should be firmly part of that conversation too, for assuming a positive, post-general account. No matter where we put Sasaki, we have to put Jobe ahead,

I think, because Jobe has just shown better stuff for us in the major leagues. All right, so can we make Jobe four and Sasaki five? Are we on board with that? Yeah. I don't know. All right, Rokey five, yeah, that's good. In terms of ceiling, Will Warren's ceiling might be here.

Right, that's what, like the question was, In terms of ceiling, Will Warren's ceiling might be here. Right. That's what, like the question was, whose future do you feel the best about? Like we're aiming for ceiling and trying to avoid the complete breakout. If we're putting Sasaki five, then I wanna put Kasperius six, cause I think I love the multiple breaking balls.

I just love the way he can spin it. So you're Kasperius over Will Warren. We're leaning towards ceiling a little bit. Do you agree with that Trevor? Ben Kasperius higher ceiling than Will Warren? It's close. I'll concede that. Will Warren's best breaking ball as a righty is a sweeper. I like sweepers but I don't want to bet on it. I'd rather bet on the nice hard breaking balls of Kasperius throws. Alright so we've

got a top seven a working top seven so far I'm gonna go to this middle part of the page to make sure there's not somebody tucked in here I mean Kate Horton only a 98 stuff plus. We have not given Kate Horton enough love I think he needs to be in the top ten. Should he be just a slider alone? Higher than where we're gonna, eight would be behind Warren, behind Kasperius. Again, kind of going back to what people thought of all these guys as prospects. If things change fast, if they can change fast,

if Jacob Mizorowski can show up in the big leagues and be a top 25 starting pitcher or better from day one, then you can also quickly fall. Like if one is true, I think the other has to be true. I think Horton at eight is actually OK for me. Horton's fastball stuff plus and then the demonstrated strikeout rate, like even Scoob will came in with a better strikeout rate to start, you know. So I think maybe Warren has slightly more upside than than Horton.

But, you know, Horton has the better breaking ball. So I think he's in that conversation with Kasparis and Warren. I think we got to go back up now because Díaz-Fuentes has two really good breaking balls and one good fastball, and it's really small sample. And he's been really rocketing, but I want him in the top 10. And I think I would argue for Tidwell to round it out because as much as I like Jack Leiter stuff, like I think we have seen a lot of this bad command.

So it's kind of funny that Tidwell is next to Leiter, given the low location number so far on Tidwell. And Tidwell also had a 93 location plus in the minor, so it could be a problem for him too. But I mean, Leiter's almost seems like sort of legendarily bad command. It's so disappointing because I think when he was drafted the expectation was Leiter would be quick to the big leagues had a lot of polish you know it was gonna be pretty smooth sailing and it's been the exact opposite of that up to this point but Didier Fuentes I mean

this is another challenging rank for something like this like trying to figure out how much of his ascent was need-driven and how much of it was just I mean, this is another challenging rank for something like this, like trying to figure out how much of his ascent was need driven and how much of it was just he's too good to be at high A and double A. Like there's a balance there. I could see this being one of these exercises where we look back in a month and we're like, nope, should have been top five or, yeah, we were a little too aggressive on Fuentes maybe someday But he's probably more of like a fringy top 15 guy in this group Like I can see both of those things being possible just because of how fast he cruised that system

When you're looking at someone where one of their starts is the debut Then you have to be careful with what you think their velocity was he was 96 to in the in the first one, he's 95.6 in the second, which doesn't seem like that big a deal, but you know his four seamer was a 117 stuff plus in his debut, 101 in the second one. So there's a little bit of a difference between those guys because in terms of pitch type he's 60% fastball. So if he's a 60 percent one on one stuff less fastball, then he has a different ceiling than if he's 117 because he is a little bit smaller arsenal, at least as as he's done in the big leagues so far, it's been mostly it's like 60 fastball 30 slider 10 curve so far, you know, that can

work. I'm not saying it can't work. But like we said earlier, it puts a lot of pressure on each of those pitches being dominant. Looking at this below the fold group as I keep calling and the guys that don't pop when you sort by stuff you know there's a good nice group of pitchers that get good results maybe somewhat unexpected. I would look for some piece of green like we did with a rookie I would look for some piece of green and when I look for some piece of green. And when I look for some piece of green, one guy is Logan Henderson, that fastball, it's actually sort of relatively green, 98,

because fastball's average around 96. There's that fastball, and the change up, I think probably is better than a stuff grade. I mean, it's got really good scouting grades. And you have that nice location. So if I'm gonna make an argument for anybody down there it's like Logan Henderson or Logan Evans who has the you know the really nice breaking balls. Yeah just get rid of that fore seam and you're cooking Logan Evans. Yeah horrible.

He could just do sink or cutter you know. Would you give the edge to Henderson over Evans if you're trying to choose future ceiling based on what you've seen so far Oh, yeah, I guess so I mean that's demonstrated results But you know in my heart a little bit more towards Evans because I like breaking balls from righties I don't like change-ups from righties. What do you think Trevor? Sorry Trevor? I Think changes for both are great Last two years it's been kind of a major

difference maker if everyone's learning new ones. I just feel like the longevity, like breaking balls are never gonna go out of style, right? They're never going, if you have a good breaking ball, it's always going to have value if it's still moving and you still have good stuff on it. The thing that makes it bad is it actually falling apart. I did have this idea while I was watching Skeen's

that I wanted to, if anybody missed that one, I just wanted to try it out here and see what Trevor thinks of this, is that one idea I had for the future of baseball is that pitchers are gonna have multiple change-ups like they have multiple breaking balls. And so, we're basically, you know, Paul Skeen's learning a kick change

away from a guy having four change-ups. And that would sound crazy, or three change-ups at least, that would sound crazy to us, you know, even on the breaking ball side, if you go 10 years back, three breaking balls would be like, really, three breaking balls, you know? But now it's super commonplace to have, you know, three breaking balls would be like, really? Three breaking balls? But now it's super commonplace to have three breaking balls. And so I wonder if we're going to have to put names on these because if you're the catcher

and you want him to throw the kick change or the straight change or the splitter, you got to have different signs for that. If you're the analyst, you got to be able to analyze those differently. So as annoying as it might be to people, I think we might get more pitch classifications and have people throwing multiple changeups. I think skeins might actually be the model for that for some people.

So I should still get in investing in pitch comm, because it's going to be essential in the future. And they're going to have to get bigger and bigger. Larger pitch comms. The whole chest protector is actually a pitch comp. The whole chest protector is just all buttons under there. But no one, it changes every game a little bit, so no one could figure out which buttons

you're actually pressing. Leiter's gotta make our top 15 just in case he irons it out. So because of the stuff being so high, I mean, rockers kind of buried down here too. He's making some adjustments. Yeah, I think rockers got to make our top 15 because he's got the death ball and he's been throwing the cutter recently and that has really taken some pressure off of that sinkerish foreseam that he's got. So I would I'd like to have rocker in the top 15 to rocker or lighter.

Whose future are you more optimistic about? I'm still higher on lighter. You're still higher on lighter. I just, he's just, the stuff speaks for, like, I just think that guys can, can figure out their command and will, and it is very much a click situation, where like one day, oh. Yeah, listen, I'm the guy who believed in Edward Cabrera and it looks like maybe my shares are finally coming in. Stuff is king. I mean, I think you know that. Like command can be learned and sometimes it's like one mechanical adjustment, one targeting adjustment.

Or pitch mix adjustment. Or pitch mix adjustment. Stop throwing that pitch you can't command. Stop throwing that pitch that you don't even know you're not confident in, but you're not. Yeah. And then suddenly you start throwing something, you stop throwing it, you're like, oh, I feel this relief. I didn't... Yeah, it's because every time you throw it,

you're like, ugh, just don't throw it anymore. Sometimes that happens. You go, you look at your outing, you're like, man, I need to do this thing, and then you go out there and you do the same shit you keep doing. And it's really hard to make those adjustments way harder because it's like a comfort thing.

You don't want to go out of your comfort zone in the middle of a big league outing. And sometimes that leap is the difference. And I look at guys who don't have that issue, like just changing stuff, and that tells me that they have the best probability to completely reinvent themselves if they need to, which gives me hope for their future.

And there's a few guys in here, like for example, I watch like Hunter Dobbins' pitch. I think Hunter Dobbins is gonna be able to find ways to be successful, even if he's not the most. Like nothing really jumps off the page. He has a pretty good understanding of how to pitch. And how to change. Multiple breaking balls. And multiple breaking balls.

Wide arsenal. Really need to do it. Not terrible command. I'd be okay with a Dobbins 15. What is his current injury? Elbow strain. Yikes. But you know, another guy I would put in the mix for 15 would be AJ Smith-Schauber.

I like that splitter a lot. I love that splitter, he's one of my favorites. He's currently hurt too. Are we just saying no Doe Lander? Cause he's just Colorado, so. That was like, I was hoping to sort of dodge that as a reason not to take him. I mean, I know that he actually-

I mean, he's got two pitches with 120 plus stuff. Which just, it almost is enough to make him be like, hey man, I'm sorry, sorry, this is what you gotta do. We could throw him 15, I mean, there've been some pitchers, Ubaldo Jimenez was all right. Let's sort by our rank now, because I wanna see how far off we are. Yeah, let's have a look here.

Can I sort it that way, click in there? I use Excel all the time and yet here we are choking. Google Sheets. Just collect. Yeah, select all. That's my lousy way of always doing it. And then we'll go, we gotta go ascending. Nice. And now those are the best available is kind of below this group. One that sticks out for me that we in our rankings that might be too low might be Jack lighter actually I mean we have Jack lighter behind the Logan's we have him behind blade Tidwell Who's pitched seven innings the big I think lighter over Tidwell

I could I could actually flip the numbers on both of those guys and just say lighters 10 and Tidwell's 13 and I'd be More than okay with that. That makes sense for me. Because that 86 location plus is not great. It is also one star, but it is backed up by minor league problems in that arena. Yeah, and then you like Tidwell over Kumar Rocker? And Doe Lander? Yeah, Rocker's got some pretty fundamental shape issues. Yeah, there's something about him.

It looks like he's holding onto he's holding on to his shapes with dear life at any time. He could just go away. I don't know why I feel that way. Maybe it's because there's been a lot of movement with him. Like a lot of things changing. Yeah, here's something he told me. So, you know, what's interesting about his breaking ball

is, you know, he has that slot where you'd expect slurve, but he actually gets vertical. Like he gets more like a knuckle curve. And I was like, do you knuckle it? And he's like, no. But he did say, I have to throw it hard to get the shape I want. So when I throw it hard, it's like a 12.6.

If it's 87 plus, it's a 12.6, or 86 plus, it's 12.6. If it's not, it starts getting slururvy and I was like, oh man, so maybe if you lose Velo as everyone sort of does over time like you're gonna get crappier shapes that would that would be sad. That would be sad. All right so our top our top five ends up being Mizorowski, Abel, Chase Burns, Jackson Job and Roki Sasaki. I feel like there's a little bit of a tear break after Roki in terms of ceiling. You get to Ben Casperius, Will Warren. It's harder to say that about Kate Horton and Didier Fuentes, especially Fuentes being so young.

His ceiling is much harder to sort out right now. Jack Leiter rounds out the top 10. The two Logans, Henderson and Evans at 11 and 12. Blade Tidwell at 13, Kumar Rocker at 14, and Chase Doleander, we're really, really sorry. You ended up in Colorado. I mean, it's beautiful there, so enjoy your time there. It's a pretty interesting list.

I mean, you have to, we're balancing floor and ceiling and thinking of health and thinking of the wideness of their arsenals. I think it's really hard to anoint somebody a great future player with like two primary pitches, like Didier, like as much as Stuff Plus loves him, like you're like, you know. A lot needs to happen, yeah.

A lot needs to happen to take the next step, yeah. But youngest guy on the list maybe has more time to still change. I mean, what was working for him to start the year at high A, that was just part of the development. There could be more in the works in the future for him. I only throw one pitch that I threw when I was 20.

So my fourth seed. There you go. So that's just the game. That is, he is a unique, even on this list, he is uniquely hard to predict because he like, we don't even know if he's like really tried a good change up yet because he hasn't needed it and he's 20.

So, you know, we'll see if there's like a kick change. I mean, I know he throws a splitter, but he only threw one. So maybe it is better and we just need to see more. I also wanna throw out- Yeah, we're trying to analyze on based on one splitter. I also just wanna throw out 16 on the list for me, just because of his name alone is obviously Dick Fitz.

Dick Fitz is number 16. Oh yeah, to get your Richard Fitz in there? Yes. Not Dickie Love Lady? Dickie Love. He hated that, by the way. He hated it when I said that. Really?

And now he said, he came out saying that he wanted to be a Dickie. Oh, does he? Okay. He's familiar. Like, we go, we go Dickie Love, and he'd be like, he wanted to be a Dickie. Oh, does he? Okay. He's familiar. Like we go, we go Dickie love. And he'd be like, he's like, it's Richard. He would do that like, I don't know if he's kidding,

but he just really didn't like it. And now he's leaning to do it. Good for him. Good for him. He's familiar. Maybe he's just trying to hang now. I like it. Maybe he's just trolling the writers, dude.

Maybe. I mean, that was two years ago. People change. Well, there you have it. Our 2025 collaborative big board starting pitchers rookie draft. We'll see how this one ages. We'll have to check in like a year from now and see how much differently we would rank all these guys just based on all the information we gather in the next hopefully like 20 plus starts for a lot of them. And some of these guys will end up all the information we gather in the next hopefully like 20 plus starts for a lot of them and some of these guys will end up with a bullpen unfortunately some of them are gonna end up hurt so that's gonna shuffle things up over time as well we need to go on our way out the

door a reminder you can find us on blue sky Trevor's I am Trevor May you know Zeno Saris I am DVR thanks to our producer Brian Smith for putting this episode together it's gonna do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels we're back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening. Francesca Olveraz makes great lasagna. Slip into a deep restful sleep on a luxurious feeling mattress you can afford. Logan & Cove is named Canada's best luxury hybrid mattress.

Designed and handcrafted in Canada, it starts at just $7.99. Melt into its plush top cover. Stay comfortable with cooling gel foam. And let supportive coils cradle you to sleep. Try Logan & Cove at home risk-free for 365 nights. And if you're a listener in Canada, we have an exclusive offer for you. Get a free bedding bundle when you buy now at loganandcove.ca slash podcast. Shop with Rakuten and you'll get it. What's it?

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