Rates & Barrels - Pitcher Wars w/Nick Pollack & Alex Fast of Pitcher List

Episode Date: March 16, 2021

It's a Rates & Barrels -- Pitcher List mash-up! The heated battle in the Baseball Pods tournament Championship Game was ruined by bots, so we collaborated for a podcast episode! Eno and DVR are joined by Nick Pollack and Alex Fast of Pitcher List to discuss the pitchers we disagree about the most this draft season. Rundown 3:57 Finally, Dissent About Brandon Woodruff 9:20 Is the League-Wide Innings Concern Overblown? 14:33 Does José Berríos Have One More Level? 22:43 Concerns About Julio Urías 30:25 Jose Urquidy and Pitch Type Whiff Rate vs. Overall Whiff Rates 38:47 A 100% Happiness Guarantee on Aaron Civale 47:26 Are the Strikeouts Coming From Sandy Alcantara? 51:38 Josh Lindblom’s Second Year in Milwaukee 59:13 Max Fried vs. Hyun-Jin Ryu 63:03 Ian Anderson vs. Chris Paddack 70:50 Sixto Sánchez vs. Patrick Corbin Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Nick on Twitter: @PitcherList Follow Alex on Twitter: @AlexFast8 e-mail: [e-mail] Please fill out our listener survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/athleticaudiosurvey Subscribe to The Athletic for just $3.99/month: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one. Just start moving with the Peloton Bike, Bike Plus, Tread, Row, Guide, or App. There are thousands of classes and over 50 Peloton instructors ready to support you from the beginning. Remember, doing something is everything. Rent the Peloton Bike or Bike Plus today at onepeloton.ca slash bike slash rentals. All access membership separate. Terms apply. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Monday, March 15th, 2021. This is a mashup with our friends at The Pitcher List, Nick Pollock and Alex Fast, joining Eno and I on this episode.

We promised this when the Baseball Pods Bracket Championship was infiltrated by bots last week. So we decided we would settle our disagreements with arguments about pitching, and that would be for the greater good. And a super pod, pod, pod, pod. We'll put the echo in in post. This is why I like working with Eno. We don't have to put the echo in in post because he just does it for me. All the sound tricks I can't do, Eno just does them. Old-timey radio voice,

echoes, all covered. I am the soundboard. Yeah, his favorite movie was Police Academy growing up. That's right. I love that guy. I love that guy.

I can't remember his name now, but I loved him. Oh, man. So this will be a lot of fun. And these are two of our best friends in the industry. And it feels like I've known Nick and Alex a lot longer than I actually have. Nick, I think I met you for the first time the year that Tout Wars was at the Staten Island Yankee Stadium, which was only 2016, 2017.

It wasn't that long ago. You were kind enough to throw me some bp in the indoor cage that was fun oh man i saw the video of me doing that and it's painful like i was trying to hold back and it's just all lower half and it's the worst mechanics ever and i'm so excited i got to throw bb to you and tristan kakaroff let's go oh my god this is incredible and i'm like i have this video forever and now i never want to look at it. It's really bad mechanics. But that was a ton of fun. The lesson is, never hold back.

You should have blown it by them. I did the spore and like, you know, I should have done it to you too. And Alex, I think we met for the first time at first pitch in 2019. The last time there was a first pitch Arizona, I think, was the first time I met you. The last time we all got on the road, really, which is amazing. It's been that long already. Yes, that's when we got to know each other.

The first time I think I ever had the pleasure of meeting you, I saw you in the corner at Foley's. And the only thing you might remember from it is just a very wet handshake because I was so nervous. So it was just like, that's probably the only thing you remember. It's just like, who was that wet, wet man? And why did he shake my hand right now? But you were very kind and you were very gracious. And then, yes, the first time we actually had a conversation one night where we got to know one another was the first pitch. And it was awesome.

And yeah, I mean, we are thrilled and honored to be here. This is a dream for us. This is amazing. There's a solid chance that anything that happens at Foley's after 10 o'clock is impossible to remember during a Tout Wars weekend, and we'll be sure to pour one out to Foley's the next time we get together.

It's going to be strange eventually going back to Tout Wars and not having Foley's as our gathering place. Yeah, that really is going to stink. We're just going to have to find a new place to get stark raving drunk, I suppose. And have burgers named after us. It's going to be wonderful. Yeah, I don't know that there'll be another bar that'll do that for us.

No. You don't think there'll be a bar in New York City that'll dedicate itself to fantasy baseball? That was kind of a crazy unicorn situation, I think. Yeah, I think we got pretty lucky that Foley was there for us as long as Foley's was. Let's dive into it. Let's just get to talking about pitching. That's what people are here for, and we want to deliver on that.

So we kind of took a look at all of our different rankings and found players that we disagree about. I want to start with Brandon Woodruff. Eno and I both like him. I thought I liked him more than anybody in the world, in part because I'm a Brewers fan, but Eno came out, ranked him even higher than I did. Alex, I think you've got him 14th overall on your pitcher rankings. So I believe out of the four of us,

you are the low ranker on Brandon Woodruff. So I'll start with you. What are your concerns with him? Yeah, I mean, first of all, before we get into it, there is nothing as nerve-wracking as trying to, you know, when you see that you and Eno have a guy ranked high and then you see him ranked low and yours, you're like, well, I guess I'll just die. But when I actually think about how I actually feel about Brandon Woodruff, while I agree that 14 might be baking in too much of his floor, which I think my rankings did overall, the one thing that had me drop him a little bit is, A, we've never seen him exceed 120 innings, right? in the past year, which would put him at 170, right? When it comes to the skill set, there's no argument there. I mean, obviously, he has that fantastic fastball-sinker combination that I think can be really elite for him and continue to be elite for him. But when you're this high in the

rankings, I think it's really important to be a little bit more nitpicky, right? Because all these guys are going to be good for you. So as a result, when I see guys like Luis Castillo, or I see guys like even Zach Gallin, who I think is going to be on an innings limit, but is still probably going to get more innings overall than Woodruff, in my opinion. Even a guy like Kershaw, a guy like Maeda, a guy like Nola, a guy like Giolito, all of those guys to me, it would not really surprise me at the end of the year if their peripherals looked similar to Brandon Woodruff's, and they got you 20 to 30 more innings. So for me personally, that's why I ranked him a little bit higher. What about you, Nick?

I mean, it's kind of funny. I think actually I have him at 15 at the moment. I am updating my rankings this week and I might be putting him at least one spot higher as I am going to lower Gallen because of the recent news about they are going to limit him more so than I think we expected. And I'm starting to expect like 150, 160 from Gallant as opposed to 170, 180. And with Woodruff, we're probably going to see like 175 and change. This is the hardest part, of course, of this preseason. You all know this, of course, like volume. What are we actually getting from these guys? We don't really know. But I do think it is a safer bet that Woodruff at this point

is going to have more innings. And it is really shocking that, you know, when you think of Brandon Woodruff, you think of that four seamer, right? That had a 17% swing strike rate last year. His sinker is also really good. Sub 70 WRC plus in both of the last two seasons, 2019 and 20 for Woodruff.

And also it was really nice to see his slider. Barely just barely by 0.1% have a higher swing strike rate than his four seamers. Like, Hey, all right. I know that my fastball is not supposed to be the whiff. It's fine. I'll make it the slider by 0.1%.

So that's a good thing to see. Cause we've kind of considered Woodruff as having a slider that you can get for strikes constantly. And, you know, you've pointed out before the value of that, of getting sliders for strikes, not necessarily just with whiffs. It does make me like Woodruff. I just have a hard time really pushing him past, say, like 13 or so, because he really does have that hard cap, I feel,

as opposed to someone like Flaherty that theoretically could go past 180. I think Maeda theoretically could go past there and so on. And I don't think that Woodruff is so much better that we should be ignoring that. Yeah, I think we're all trying to feel around in the dark on the innings. And for me, that means a little bit more of throwing my hands up about it. When I tried to think about innings, I had that third column of injury list percentile rank, and I kind of

tried to use that and then youth and six-man rotations. So, like, extreme youth. I don't see Bran Woodruff as an extreme youth. I don't see him as a guy that they have to protect anymore. I think he's kind of more among the

mid-career studs. Gallen, I guess, we're finding out is a little bit closer to kid gloves and being careful with his innings. I guess I just took a slightly different approach. I didn't see much injury risk

with Woodruff. I didn't see a risk of going six-man because they barely can get five together in Milwaukee. And yeah, and I think that's practical. I think that's also a practical concern is like, if you are going to limit the innings, how are you going to do it? Is it going to be a lot of Drew Rasmussen starts or and if that is the case, and it's really close in the division, maybe you say, maybe Woodruff can do 175 this year, you know, and I also think the case and it's really close in the division, maybe you say, maybe Woodruff can do 175 this year. And I also think the over-under on 200 innings is 1.5. We may have one person who has more than 200 innings,

so I think 180 is the new 200. And to me, Woodruff is like 170, 175. So yeah, innings maybe. I ended up picking Buehler over him and knocking Woodruff down to five in my next update. But I wouldn't take Castillo over Woodruff as a pitcher. So I don't know if I really want the five innings. I don't know. I hear your concerns.

It makes sense now. It's not about his quality as a pitcher. It's more about the innings is what I'm hearing. Right. Well, I'm curious what you guys think about workload concerns in general. I mean, Nick, do you think the league as a whole is going to be as careful as our industry is suggesting to this point in draft season? Or do you think it's actually going to look more like a normal year than people think? I would say the latter if I had to choose the two because somebody needs to be throwing these innings.

And a lot of these teams are going to be competitive where they're not going to be comfortable just throwing a bullpen game or some random guy from AAA. Although I like Durasmus. Right, yeah, yeah. That's how we always feel. It's always that guy's like like guys like oh wait but there is something good about him so let's not ignore that yeah right there's a reason why all these guys are

major leaguers and it's really fun to focus in on that but but yeah i i i get this idea that um you know i i i've heard some people being really low on walker bueller because they don't think that he's gonna get you know anywhere above 150 or so or 140 and in my view is just well let's hold off a little on this because and we look before last year really we never even said the six-man rotation would last they never last right we start the season in a six-man and by like the second week something happens and now it's a five-man right and we're going to see those situations again this year they're going to try really hard as an organization to keep the six man Seattle gonna keep it right I imagine the Dodgers are going to try something uh the Angels

probably going to keep it but outside of that I mean teams are going to try it and likely fail and someone of quality needs to get it like if justin dunn doesn't take a step forward and chris i mean chris flexon's a bit of a wild card so like if i if both of those guys are in their sort of 20th percentile outcomes then i don't know then you have to call up gilbert and kirby and then you maybe don't want to do that yet. They will, though, right? Yeah. Then I think Mathers was saying, like, he would call up Gilbert by the start of May or so.

I mean, look, they started Margo Vicious, like, all last year. So they're okay with that. Yeah, that's what we're getting at. Right. They're like, it's fine. We're just going to do that. And they signed Paxton, which then, I mean, we don't know how much we're going to get out of him,

but still, I think they're going to push it as much as they can. I keep waiting for the Royals to announce they'll do it, but I don't know if they are. I kind of love their rotation. I think they're good. Yeah, it would make sense for the Royals to do it. I mean, I'm curious to see when Daniel Lynch actually becomes a part of that equation.

They're obviously going to want to keep, you know, they're going to want to relax with Chris Bubich. They're going to want to relax with Brady Singer. And then that leaves you kind of Mike Miner and Danny Duffy as the guys that are like, oh, your arm fell off. Well, we can just glue it. Brad Keller. So, you know, yeah, Brad Keller. And then also, I mean, I do think for what it's worth, you know, we talk about, you know, you brought up Drew Rasmussen. I still, you know, I see Jake Junis with the cutter and I get a little intrigued. I get a little intrigued because I think he's another guy that's going to be on the fringes right there as a sixth man who kind of

comes in more frequently than we realize because he's going to be spelling some of these other starters to try and keep their innings. I think the other thing that's important to remember too is like we don't have expanded playoffs this year, right? So there's not going to be as many teams halfway through the season trying to think, oh, well, actually, maybe we might be able to have a little bit of a run at this. So you see guys who, you know, they're going to be teams like the Pirates, like the Tigers that are just going to be completely out of it. And I think we're going to see, you know, as a result, those six man rotations stick a little bit more, especially the Tigers. Yeah, but there is this there is this funny thing that we're talking about around that. It's really interesting competitiveness versus uh the future

like then and now right like yeah and if you look at it the best the best pitchers for the most part are on good teams right yeah it's almost like good pitching makes teams good right exactly exactly so yeah like dean kramer will have his innings limited this year. Why don't you just relax? We're not 20 minutes into this thing and you got to take shots? It's ridiculous. But you should be excited fast. It's key.

Aiken is pretty cool, honestly. And then John Means is showcasing his higher velocity in spring training still. There's some good things to talk about with the Orioles. We'll see how that Mikel Franco signing goes. I'm rooting for you, man. Maybe it's not a 0% playoff chance after all. When you hear front office execs talk about limiting innings or innings plans, like Julian Merriweather, I heard,

is on a 100-inning plan, right? And what that means to me is something, and Alex Reyes supposedly on a 100-inning plan. I think they think of these things in more block terms than like, we think of, they think of things really finely and they, oh, this guy can get 162 this year or whatever. I think they're more like, this guy's a 100-inning guy, this guy's a 150-inning guy, this guy's a 200-inning guy, right?

And so that's kind of how I kind kind of group people even though i don't think it's necessarily 200 i think it's 180 you know and i think there's a 180 grouping i think there's like sort of a 160 grouping and then there's a bunch of like 100 and 120s so that's why i have bueller four all right well here's what I've got for you guys for our next fight. I think we, as a group, disagree about Jose Barrios. I think both Eno and I think he's more like a top 20

sort of guy. I think both you and Fast have him down in that 30-35 range. Innings are key here, but I think it's more than that for me. It's not just the safety of expecting close to a max workload. It's not just the safety of expecting close to a max workload. It's not just trusting Minnesota as an organization that can get as much as it possibly can out of its pitching. It's looking at Barrio, seeing the increase in velocity in

the shortened season up more than a tick on both the fastballs. It's a true four-pitch mix, and I think Eno's described it this way before. It's kind of a hinge and reuse sort of approach where it's not just like 50 to 60% fastball usage and then 15% on each of the other pitches. It's actually like well balanced. So I think I'm looking at all these factors, mushing them all together and saying, you know what? This is going to be a year for Jose Barrios. to be a year for Jose Barrios, even if the Ks are still lighter than we would like them to be, I think because of the volume,

he can offset some of the skills deficiencies if what we've seen in the past is what we're going to get here in 2021. This is kind of nice because Fast and I, we disagreed before. We actually went toe-to-toe doing the fancy pros thing. And you had to defend Jose Barrios.

So I want you to go first here. I want to see you now go first here i want to i want to see you now go against burrios and be on the same team with me no i'm gonna i'm gonna pull a pivot and i'm actually i'm i'm with you i'm with them on burrios here i'm i'm with our two dads on on burrios here i i uh i dare you made it i'm sorry i think he made a legitimate change last year i mean i i think i've talked about this with nick a bunch before he moved further to the third base side than ever before and i think the impact that it had on his curveball and what the shape of his curveball looked like is beneficial for him um and i think last year you know what we saw in a kind of smaller

sample size with his four seamer isn't something that's going to stick it had a 463 wobah that was his highest since his rookie year had had a 209 WRC plus compared to a career 123 WRC plus. The BABIP was over 400. So I think if we see the swinging strike rate maintain on that curveball and not if some people might go look at the swing strike rate in the curveball and they might see overall and it's not that impressive. But actually, when you look at when he made that change, when he actually moved all the

way to the third baseline, which he maintained, by the way, in his spring training start. So I have good reason to believe he's going to keep doing it for this upcoming season. I think when you look at the swing strike right there, which was really good for him, it just allows him to get back to where he was with that fastball. I mean, I think he's still kind of trying to figure out what he's doing with the fastball. He was kind of putting it at the bottom or the heart of the zone last year, which leads me to believe that he didn't command it really well. The spin on it is pretty poor, but the efficiency is really, really good. And then I think there's one thing that we don't

necessarily talk about enough. And, you know, you could take it or leave it. Wes Johnson is a very good pitching coach. Like he is he has worked wonders with a lot of guys before. And I still don't think that it's out of the question that Barrios can take that next step. So I think when you add all those things to the fact that he's likely going to be a guy who's getting a bulk of those innings at the end of the year in a weaker division, I'm with you. I still have him as a top 30, dude. All right.

Okay, fast. Okay, fine. Fine. Make me do all the work. It's okay. Sorry. All right. I mean, the story of Barrios doesn't really change.

Okay. Sorry. All right. I mean, the story of Brios doesn't really change. Yes, I'm excited by the increased velocity over full tick, which is really good. But then you wonder, well, he did that, but then had a 1.3 whip and an E-ray of four. And it's kind of confusing. And you're talking about changing to where he's on the rubber close to the third base. So that would suggest to me, oh, he's improving as the season goes on. Then you realize that his final four games, none of them eclipsed an overall swing strike rate of 11%. Well, beforehand, he had 18%, 14%, 13%, et cetera. And this is the story of Barrios is that he just goes in and out. It's really about his curveball. Sometimes his curveball is the filthiest thing ever. And he does this for a month and his curveball is performing well. His high CSW rates, everything. And then it goes away

for a month. And it's just a heartache, especially as a fantasy manager. Anyone that has rostered Barrios for a full season knows this. This is the story of Barrios. He has a month-long streak where he feels in rhythm with his curveball and then he gets out of it. That's just what he does. And we've been having this conversation for like four years about Barrios. I remember in First Mitch, Arizona, I sat on the panel for Sleeper in the Bust, and they were all like, oh, Barrios, amazing. Number 20 and stuff. I'm like, guys, he's like 30 or so because he's always going to do this. And I don't know. It's just the same deja vu to me. do this. And I don't know. It's just the same deja vu to me. I've yet to see a full year where Barrios actually puts it together consistently. The woes of that curveball just are gone. And I'm okay with the result at the end. I'm not saying that he won't help your fantasy team. I

think he will. But I don't believe he can make that jump to be a definitive top 20 starter like all of the guys ahead of him that I have in the twenties, they all have that ceiling that is, Oh yeah, I'm Zach Wheeler and my fastball is really good, but Oh, I'm so close with that slider. And just to the previous two years,

I also had a 23 to 25% strikeout rate, but now I just showed the ERA ceiling and I have got that whip next. You know, he has that ceiling of being that guy. Barrios is just, we're waiting still and I don't want to pay for that. So I'm sorry. He's not in my top 30. Yeah.

I take one issue is that definitively in the top 20 for a guy, we have 19. I don't think he's definitively. Yeah, that's fair. Like the difference between actually the difference between 20 and 30, I think, is not that far. I think there is a grouping there of other players that have upside and have some deficiencies. I think that the last time I feel really certain about a pitcher is maybe 15 with Gallin.

And even there, we were talking about innings. So for me, Ber various is buying floor. It is funny how he gets there. But he, before last year had been a metronome. He has a great command numbers. And usually, so I expect that walk rate to,

to come back to earth. I expect him to throw a lot of innings. He showed really nicely in the innings, the injury list percentile that we had, sort of 27th percentile for injury risk. Not a lot of arm troubles. He doesn't sit down for arm troubles and things like that. So yeah, I think I'd be buying floor with him.

Like if I went cheap on pitching and my ace was somebody I was excited about but wasn't sure about innings, who's that? Scherzer maybe? Or Kershaw? Glasnow. Glasnow? If you paired Berrios with him as a second,

I feel like that would be a good pairing. But if you had a different pitcher in the first one, then you could pick someone from around 20 that had a different profile, like Glasnow's right there. Like Glasnow and Berrios, you know, they're flawed guys. I think you're asking for either of them to do something they haven't quite done before. Right.

And so, but they could also really glue together with a different first and second pick. I hear what you're saying. I hear what you're saying. I think it's mean to call him a Toby, though. I think he's better than the Toby. I never. Okay.

I think he is, too. Tobys don't have a 25% strikeout rate. So I'm not calling him a Toby. I came on a Twitter thread and said Toby. And I was like, what's a Toby? And you know, what is a Toby? Not that you know. Feeling like a dad.

It's Toby from The Office. Yeah. Yeah, he gets the work done, but you don't really like that he's there. Yeah. Oh, man. I love that as a description for most pitchers. I don't feel like Jose Barrios has earned the Toby label just yet. Let's be down again this year. Maybe he enters the Toby conversation in 2022.

One guy that I think most of us like, but Nick, you're lower on him than most from what I can tell, Julio Urias. I've got him 25th. I mean, I think once you get into that 25 to 30 range, things open up a ton. You could argue guys in the 40 to 50 range against a lot of those pitchers, and I think you can make compelling arguments on both sides. What are your biggest concerns with Urias? I mean, innings, I think, is the main thing people worry about. But even though he made 10 starts during the regular season last year, we didn't see a great strikeout rate from julio urias so is there a skills concern in addition to the injuries that are lurking kind of in the background it's kind of a like an amalgamation just a lot of things that just

make me go ah you know um i was one of the things that made me so happy this time last year and i was like unbelievably touched that dvr you mentioned hipster on the podcast uh which is headache inducing starting pitchers that stifled the entire roster um and it's this idea that you don't want to draft guys that in season are driving you nuts that like i don't know if they're going to be starting i don't know how long they're going to go for and when you're drafting a top 40 guy, starter, pitching, starting pitcher, you want to know, hey, every single week, I'm going to put him on my lineup. It's going to be great. And if he's hurt, then fine. He's hurt, then okay. Then

he's on my IL spot, but he's not taking up a roster spot on my team where I'm having all this indecision. I would say Herman Marquez would be another one of those. Am I starting him this week? He's in cores, but it's against the Diamondbacks. Like, what do I do, right? And Urias, to me, especially with Dodgeraitis, which is essentially like we don't know the, say for like Bueller, Kershaw, and Bauer, we really do not know how they're going to use. Even David Price, who said,

hey, I'll sit some out for the other guys. David, no, you're supposed to start. We need you to start like all the time. That's what we want you to do. The young guys will get their chance. So Arias is part of that curve for me. I mean, he closed the World Series like they're showcasing that they're willing to use them in different opportunities already. And then, yeah, there is a little bit on the skill side. I mean, all of his pitches, change up slider curveball really aren't or weren't the major whiff pitch last year. Change up took a step back.

Slider certainly took a step back, about 12% swing strike rate or so. And I'm a little concerned that he doesn't have that big breaker that really puts guys away. It's nice seeing fastball changeup. You generally don't see that kind of high upside guy with just fastball changeup. Typically, there is a breaker involved there too. I guess I'll say this. If Julio Urias was getting the same treatment as all the other studs we're talking about as far as workload and we expect him to go every five days or six days or whatever, then I would have Urias probably around 25 or 30. So I think the skill set is good enough.

I will mention that he's not a finished product in my head yet. And there are other guys that are. And I have to bake in a little bit more risk as well just for the fact that he hasn't been that complete pitcher quite yet for a long, long season. So all that in mind, it was just like, you know what? I'll just deal with other things that I feel like I'll have an easier understanding of where they're at in the first couple of weeks of the year. And Arias gets pushed back towards about 49 or 50. I mean, I won't push back on the,

on the skills, the innings. I don't, I don't know, but yeah, I think he's, I think the changeup is his best pitch or his, or his best secondary.

But I think you've written your writeup, something about the breaking balls, not being what you expected or wanted from him. But I think you wrote in your write-up something about the breaking balls not being what you expected or wanted from him. And I don't know, for his career, and this is, you know, the samples now are on the 800 level by pitch type. He has below a 100 ISO on the change in the slider. And the four seam has a 116, which amazing for a force yeah so that's three really legit pitches i don't know about the curve um but i think as a show me uh it's fine and uh that gives

him four pitches to go to it's a really nice mix if the command is there i tend to think like if you have three really good pitches and a fourth and you have really good command, you're going to be good. So I think he's going to be good. You could also make an argument that if you include the postseason numbers last year, his strikeout rate looks better. I know that he was in the pen, so it's hard to – it's not necessarily apples to apples. But I think his strikeout rate was just a small sample thing.

I think he's going to go back to the strikeout rates he had before. And he's proven effectiveness. The innings thing does give me heartburn. And that honestly is why I didn't push him harder. It's hard. I mean, about the slider is really the biggest question for me. We haven't really seen that be a definitive, like real big offering.

Yes, it had a 46% strikeout rate in 2019 and a 15% swing strike rate, but an O-swing of only 31% zone rate of just under 30% on it. And I wanted to see like, oh, really amazing changeup. Like I love Arias' changeup and the fastball is fantastic. And that pairing is really, really nice. I wanted to see that one extra offering that made me think, okay, there you go. That's now three pitches. That's all you need done. I love the curveball as a show me, get me some strikes, strikes definitely but that slider hasn't quite turned into that third like amazing offering there's

a whiff right on that to me is holding me back to see was uh average last year 14.1 that's pretty much right on average the only thing that i want to add about that i mean i think there's some interesting things that kind of uh fit into the narrative uh nick that you have about that breaking ball and that he does seem to be messing with it a little bit. I think the breaking ball actually jumped up four ticks in velocity last year in the regular season. And then also, if you go to his, I believe it's his Brooks page, there's something really wonky happening with his slider in the last months of the season where there's a bunch of things changing. And I couldn't tell if it was just a sample size where maybe the Hawkeye data was a little bit funky.

Or if this was a legitimate change that he was actually trying to work on. Do you see it? Yeah, it looks like the breaking ball has converged. Yeah, exactly. So it looks like he was trying to mess. I mean, this was something that I was taking a look at with Michael Aheado. And we couldn't really get definitively to the bottom of, okay, there really wasn't a lot thrown here. So maybe it was a misread.

Maybe it was a calibration issue. But it kind of worked. But if it is. I mean, he got a 16% whiff rate on the slider, on that new slider. So maybe he's only a three-pitch pitcher and he's already turfed the curve. Yeah, that's sort of what I'm thinking of. But if he does figure out, you know, whatever he was kind of trying to mess with, if only he had a guy in that rotation who had a good slider he could talk to you know what i mean

oh man if only there was someone there oh god uh yeah so i i'm intrigued and and it's something to keep track of moving forward but yeah i mean i know it's such a cop out but like i i just i'm so risk averse like i i can't even walk out the door without having a panic attack. So I can't own Julio Arias. Yeah. I mean, it's good to see that he's changing it. I mean, that, that makes me happy. Like addressing the fact that, okay, I'm doing something to hopefully get this better. No, it is.

You know, it's interesting. And I think this could be a segue because I'm feeling attacked enough as is. Let's just keep the attacks going. I know if I only, I know you guys love me. I love you guys. So it's all good. But I am feeling attacked. Oh, no.

I hate that. Absolutely not. Are you kidding me? Oh, my God. No, let's really jump into it. Jose Urquidy. No, so with Urquidy, and this is interesting because because Urias and Okiti change up first, right? So when I looked, I looked at the relationship between,

and it's almost like a really dumb thing to do, but I looked at the relationship between a pitch-type whiff rate and the overall whiff rate, if that makes sense. between a pitch type whiff rate and the overall whiff rate, if that makes sense. Just correlated individual pitch type whiff rates to overall whiff rates. And the worst correlation was change-ups. So the thought process I had after that was

change-ups are sometimes used for, um, uh, for soft contact, uh, change-ups may rely on the fastball more. And so therefore in an O2 count, a change-up when it is being anticipated may not have the same effect, uh, sort of whiff effect, may not lead to strikeouts as often. And so you'll find guys that are changeup first that are better than their projections and better than their FIP. And I think there's some soft contact effect there, but they also don't have great strikeout rates. You know, that reminds me of Jeremy Helgson.

That's all I can think of when I think of a bad fastball to change up. Yeah, okay. But, you know, another modern guys. Modern guys are like Lizardo, Urquidy, Urias. John Means in his all-star year, he wasn't getting whiffs on the fastball. He was just getting weak contact on that changeup all the time. But, you know, you say that we're riding you, too. Like, you're like, you looked up all this stuff.

I'm like, one time I Googled baseball savant, and I found some. You know, you have the real data here. No, no, no. Like, I discovered on air that Urias turfed his curveball. I love it. No, no. I discovered on air that Urias turfed his curveball. I love it.

Do you guys share Ito's love for Jose Urquidy, which I think is a shared love on our pod? I believe in him because I saw what he did upon arrival in 2019. I think that's more in line with the strikeout rate. We're going to get 24%. I think he can be a sub-4 ERA guy with a good whip. Maybe the strikeout rate doesn't have another level above that. But I do think, despite the changeup being his best offering, because he's got four pitches in the arsenal, I think, and good command,

that gives him a lot of margin for error. Clearly, there's a huge need for him in the Houston rotation, too. The price is creeping up. So, A, do you guys like him? We can start with you, Alex. And B, are you willing to pay the rising price on him? Because it seems like some other people really like him, too. ADP, since March 1st, is now inside the top 200, right around pick 185 overall.

Yeah, you know, I fully admit that I could just be a guy who, like, when it comes to Frambois Valdez, Jose Urquidy, Christian Javier, I could just be a guy who doesn't quite see it. And, like, listen, that organization is better at outputting pitchers than one would ever believe, right? When you have that kind of pitching coach, then they're going to output good stuff. But for me, when it comes to Urquidy, we can start with the fact that he hasn't thrown more than 150 innings pitched over the course of a season ever. So I would really be surprised to see him come close to that considering he put up

under 30 in 2020, just under 30. It's funny because 14th in whiff rate in that time, 24th in exit velocity, 6% in K rate in 22nd and expected ERA. I worry a little bit about that fastball. It has potential, and we've seen some really nice swinging strike on the pitch. It's not great. I think it's still sub eight, but it's not bad. I think the sometimes he can he can leave it at the top of the zone and guys just can absolutely punish it and and when you're doing that in a stadium like minute made where you know it's like one of the best offensive you know fields in all of baseball that that scares me a lot 51 hard hit rate uh just doesn't really sound all that exciting to me when it comes to that four seamer um so yeah i think sometimes the

command can be a little bit of an issue too. So while I understand, while people take him, he's just never been the guy that I'm kind of obsessed with. How about you, Nick? I mean, I think I'm going to be raising him. I have him, I think, 57 right now. I probably will put him inside my top 50. I loved seeing you so high in Arcadia. I thought that was really cool. Because I mean, 2020, Arcadia had COVID and never got into any sort of rhythm. And he had like 30 innings or so. That was just such a lost season. His curveball and slider were both easy double digit swing strike rate pitches in 2019. Actually, I think hinting at 20. And there were both sub 10% this past year. I mean, I don't believe this for a second. I think it's such a small sample we've

seen of Arcady in 2020. And it was very small in 2019 as well. But we got a better representation of who he is. And he's some with four quality pitches. Even if you want to say like his fastball isn't quite as good as others, fine fine then three really good secondary pitches that have different uh movement profiles and that's really cool uh i mean you know i think you were talking about it like his movement profiles but being so drastically different but if you could if you could if you could if you could like just write down in pitch fx the perfect pitcher it would like the only thing i would change is the velo number on the foreseeing right yeah and and and it's it's funny like when you look at the other like houston

guys you know christian javier i don't think has nearly the same polish as uh he's got command issues yeah and and also stamina too with her with javier which is kind of crazy like he starts the game at 93 then goes down to 91 and or Urquidy, I think, is much more... I keep finding myself saying finished product a lot. He's thick. But, yeah. But I mean, more of just his actual ability. But yes, sure, he's not Tristan McKenzie out there, you know?

No, I just think he's got some innings in those thighs, is all I'm saying. Right, and Dusty Baker will use them, you know? I think he's got some innings in those thighs. That's all I'm saying. Right. And Dusty Baker will use them. So then over under 140 for each of you, for all three of you. Slightly above. I'm going over. Slightly above.

Yeah, over. Where do you have it? Like 150 plus. Yeah. And I think at that range, you're not really expecting much more than 150 from pitchers you're drafting near the back of the top 200 because a lot of guys are just getting called up or they're going through it for the first time i mean even i like tristan mckenzie a lot i think they're gonna have to be

a little bit careful with him just because he had that lat injury that cost him a good chunk of 2019 yeah the years are all sticking together now so i'm at like 150 plus on her kitty i don't think they have to baby him but I think he'd be in the group of pitchers that when you get to the all-star break when you get to a certain spot in the schedule where you got maybe an extra off day maybe they manipulate the schedule to keep him from getting up into that 180 190 range because they don't want him to go too far over his previous max I will say he's never thrown over 150 in his career even with the minor leagues he's got to do at some point and they need people to do it i mean lance mccullers we hope can do over 152

um and i mean specifically 152 not 153 but i it's we i mean there are other questions around that rotation especially with uh not only framber but, but also Forrest out. And I feel like Dusty's going to let him go. The other question I have is he gets the athletics twice to start the year. Like, I think I'm okay starting Urquidy for both. But you got to think, I mean, if you are in a fantasy league and you wouldn't, then I would pass on Urquidy. You know, if you're going to draft a guy and not start him in his first two starts. I would have no hesitation. I would start him too.

I would almost circle that date. I think he'll strike out a bunch of A's. Well, then I love it. There you go, Rikidi. I'm in. Yeah, it's not quite Alec Mills' early season schedule. Brewers and Pirates, baby, let's go, Mills! Alec Mills, 20 strikeouts in his first two starts.

Seems like it's already written at this point. 100% happiness guarantees? I'm thinking about that right now. We've got to put that on somebody. We've got to put that on somebody. We got to put that on, hmm, who can we put that on? Aaron Savali? Yes. Does anybody want to put that on Aaron Savali?

A 100% happiness guarantee? Who wants to make that claim right now? Nick, I think you want to go first. Okay. I mean, this is fast boy. I'm not going to take any of this away from him.

I can't do that. No, but please start. No, you're smarter than me. Absolutely not. Okay. I'm going to give quick, quick, new arm circles, exciting. start. No, you're smarter than me. Absolutely not. Okay, I'm going to give quick, quick. New arm circle is exciting.

Four seamers getting better, actually. They're going to start incorporating that this year. Really nice cutter that he throws for strikes. Curveball that gets whiffs. I think it's all here with Savali and the fact that you have Terry Francona chewing on his toothpick instead of taking him out of the game. That's great for me. That's great for fantasy managers going six innings a start or so for Savali.

Yeah, they really do. Over the last three years, they had the second most innings from their starters. Yep. So I think Savali as a whole is, and if you take away the last start of the year, he's a sub for ERA. If you want to even look at that small sample of 2020. I think he's made some changes fast. Can probably tell you more about those changes, but I think the best of Savali is yet to come. Yeah, definitely. I agree. I mean, there's a few things that come to mind. I mean, you know, one, I mean, you know, I've heard you bring it up plenty. The Indians are the best at game prep in the league probably. Right. And

that's a great place to start, but when it comes to, and that's definitely a bonus, but it comes to Cefali overall, I think we're just looking at a foundation that's so there, and he has so many weapons that are going to allow him to take the next step. I'm a coward, but the one thing that I did that was kind of bold was put him over Zach Pleszak in my overall rankings, because I really do believe at the end of the year, it wouldn't surprise me if he finished higher. His sinker, if we start with that, it's a CSW machine, and he really is just fantastic with it. He had a 30% CSW on his curveball, his changeup, and his sinker with a near 30% CSW on that cutter. The fact that he's going to be able to attack the zone like that with so many different pitches just means that, like we said, he has that really high floor that he can build upon. All he has to do, well,

he actually, there's a few things that he can do, right? He seems to have shown a reticence to be able to throw that curveball in two strike counts. And I think he wouldn't really have any problems if he just went back to back curveball on one strike and two strike counts. He could have a lot of success there. The other big thing is he has this new splitter. This new splitter could absolutely be huge for him, right? So when you take the fact that he has the width getting pitch in the curveball, and

he's got this new changeup splitter combination that has shown to be effective in these new spring training starts, it shows that he can command the zone with it. I just think the sky is really the limit for him, right? I mean, we're talking about a dude. It's kind of like a dream scenario. You already have his ability to command the zone. This isn't a guy that we're really going to have to worry about command over the course of a season, right? So if either that curveball or

that splitter or the cutter or the foreseam, which he may be increasing this year, shows the ability to be that action pitch for him, the sky's really the limit for him. And one thing I really want to add there is I remember freaking out when he was against the White Sox and throwing cutters instead of fastballs. Like his first like 40 pitches, he threw one sinker. And the ability to be able to use that cutter effectively inside the zone and then save the sinker for what I think should be in general, obviously it's a very broad stroke of the brush, but I love sinkers when they're thrown like 10 to 15% of the time

as a surprise pitch, changing it. You know, you can come inside to a lefty and surprise in the inside corner or maybe get a ground ball all of a sudden and Savali is able to save that two seamer and now actually have a good looking four seamer too that gets a lot of ride uh that whole combination I think can really work out in 2021 for Savali yeah I mean I just you said the sky's limit for me uh I'm a little bit worried that the fastball is bad um the primary fastball is bad. Um, the primary fastball is bad. I think,

and I, and I, I've fallen, I've fallen in love with so many people with bad fastballs that I just feel burned sometimes. Who's that guy? Uh, Whitley chase,

chase, chase, chase, chase, chase, chase, chase, man.

Chase. Oh, his secondaries were so good. His fastball was so bad. Um, and so I, I see the sinker and like a three percent whiff rate um i see for lifetime a 151 iso on the sinker 419 slugging um like i saw that same that same sequence with the

cutter and was like oh well now i have to re rebalance what i think of him because maybe the cutter is his fastball. And so I like how you talk about action versus command pitches and stuff. And so I think that for some people, the cutter is an action pitch. And for some people, the cutter is like a command pitch. And if they're both for him, that's fine. But if I have to recalibrate, if the cutter is going to be his foundational fastball and maybe it is and then the sinker becomes more of a kind of

situational pitch that he gets called strikes with when they're not swinging um and so he gets some swinging with the cutter uh he gets some swinging and missing with the curve and but you know i don't know that the change is such a big deal that he would add a changeup that's good. He had a 15% whiff rate on the changeup last year. So, I mean, if he's adding a splitter, is he going to have two changeups? Or is he going to replace that old changeup,

which seemed like it was decent anyway? Yeah, so it all comes back to the fastball for me. If that, he's a sinker first guy where I don't love the sinker. So if not, it doesn't have good movement. I'm curious even for sinkers. Right. I mean, the fact that he pulled it back last year and it's already changed his arm circle into focus on a four-seamer.

But he started at a low place because I was like, here's a bad fastball guy. But Corey Cooper is a bad fastball guy. Right, you know, Corey Cooper is a bad fastball guy. Right, right, right. Carrasco, I mean, it's what Cleveland does. Plesak doesn't have a great one either. But I remember actually bonding with you about this in First Beach, Arizona, where we weren't in on Savali at that point.

That was like October 2019. But, yeah, the fact that Savali pulled away from that sinker to focus on the cutter and from what we've seen so far this year we were talking to him that he's focusing on four seamers now with that shorter arm circle and feeling better in that timing I think that is a step in the right direction and from what we saw last year I mean I'm pretty much cutting out that that horrible like eight earned run start at the end that was still a serviceable pitcher like he was very helpful for most of the year and I think now we're going to get a step forward from that so that's why i'm in favor here his last thing real quick his first five starts 2.91 era with a 2.72 fip and a 3.62 sierra and then i i think the way that

he started to utilize that cutter which was more up in the zone where it almost kind of looked like a mistake but that seemed to be the way that he wanted to utilize it that leads me to believe that it isn't necessarily going to be that action pitch for him. It seems like it's able to, yeah, it's a command pitch for him, which is really exciting for me to see. And it's also like almost an easy out pitch for him. He can kind of use that paired with the sinker. But I think overall, like when we're having this conversation about a guy who has all these weapons that he can lean into, and he's kind of this scrappy dude who's going to fight, you know what I mean? He doesn't have one pitch that he's just, you know,

he's not a McCullers where he's like, all right, I'm just going to go getting out with this pitch right now. I'm a sucker. I'm a sucker for those dudes, those, like, kind of scrappy fighters. Like, you're describing Spencer Turnbull to me, man. Like, I see a bunch of pitches. I see command. Maybe he's not in the right place for it, you know,

but his park at least helps him a little bit, and his division's not bad. But I see a lot of pitches. I see command. I see a lot of pitches, and I see the opportunity to maybe tweak one of those and go further. So I have them ranked similarly, and I see them as guys who the floor is actually okay. The floor is good, and there is ceiling. So they're good, but they haven't established anything.

Like, you know, to get into the 40s for me, you have to have established something. And I'm not sure that I've seen enough from either of those two guys to say, like, they've established a certain baseline. either of those two guys to say they've established a certain baseline. One thing I really like about this argument, though, is that you guys are bringing more than my simple, I believe in Cleveland's ability to develop pitching, therefore I will round up on Aaron Savalle. You're seeing things that – That's reasonable.

But you're seeing the proof of it already. Yes, but Adam Plutko does exist. Josh Tomlin does exist. I'm not saying, those are actually, they probably were good outcomes for their stuff, but I'm just saying,

good outcomes could still mean meh, fantasy, you know? Right. I wonder if that actually describes Sandy Alcantara. And Nick, I think you're the highest of all of us on him.

I don't think anyone on this pod would be in a position to say, I don't believe in Sandy Alcantara. I think we're all reasonably close. But Nick, I think you had him the highest at 33 on your rankings. Totally possible I'm crossing up one set of rankings with another at this point. I've got a million tabs open, but hey, we're trying to walk and chew gum and podcast at the same time.

You're killing it. I have him at 33. You got it right on. Boom. 33. So you're the high man on Sandy Alcantara. The big problem for many people is that we haven't seen the strikeouts yet. When you watch him pitch, the stuff's good.

Sure. It sure seems like there are some more strikeouts to come there. So what is it that gives you confidence that Sandy Alcantara could take that leap this year? Oh, man. Okay. So I want to establish a couple things. One, I mean, I think I was saying this pretty much earlier, and I just want to reinforce it.

Innings are a huge part of my rankings. And I think that Sandy Alcantara is someone that the Marlins are going to say, okay, we need you to be the rock while we develop Sixto Sanchez and Eliezer Hernandez. And they're probably going to be looking at Pablo Lopez a bit for this as well. But I think Alcantara, the guy who went 197 innings in 2019, is going to be that foundation for that rotation, which means that he gets a boost inherently if he has ratios that I trust. And for Alcantara, I do. I think he has such a good sinker.

It's one of the rare sinkers I actually like because he does such a good job of keeping an arm side and then falling off of the plate. And it's at 96, 97. I mean, this is one of the better sinkers you'll see out there. And you pair that with a slider and change up that I haven't really seen both of them be dominant at the same time, but in every start, one of them is working. And that's all he really needs to do. Just get one of those going. He had a 23% strikeout rate last year. I think he can have a 25% over the course of season as he continues to develop each of those pitches. And when you add it all up, I mean, the way that I go about my rankings as well on top of

the innings is like in a 12-teer, and that's what these ranks are essentially, 12 teamer head to head in Roto, really, you're trying to find four guys that you trust, that you're not going to drop, that these are the four guys you're starting every single time out. And then the other four, you are likely going to be dropping during the year. In a 12 team, you have 23 rounds. Look back at previous drafts and you're going to realize, huh, after the 14th round, I only kept like 25% of those guys. And you have to put yourself in a position where, I said it before with the hipster and stuff, I want to make the decision in April if I'm going to be going after, say like on the waiver wire was Lucas Giolito and

Lance Lynn and Mike Soroka and Brandon Woodruff and Zach Allen. That's all from 2019, all in the waiver wire during that season. So Alcantara, to me, is part of that crew. But right, I get Alcantara. I'm holding on to him for the rest of the year. So I push him up into the 30s. I feel more secure with him than some of the guys in the 40s. So that's why I have him a little bit higher up. But I think the initial foundation of the fastball and the idea that his slider and

shade can also continue to grow is why i'm this confident in him can you believe they told him to throw the force anymore like what yeah i mean it's it's such a it's like the exception with the sinker it's just that good of one that normally i would say throw the force anymore but i just love that pitch it's so good yeah but they watch him all the time. This should have been really obvious really quickly. Yeah, I agree with most of that. I just see – I see sure things ahead of him too in terms – I guess maybe not in terms of innings, not all of them.

I'm looking at Tyler Molle now with your words in my ear, and I'm like, yeah, he should be ahead of tyler molly i really like tyler molly i like the fact that the slider was all of a sudden going down last year and for seymour command is amazing yeah but yeah he hasn't gotten like a lot of innings before and i don't know how much cincinnati is going to let him go this year i hope it's like 180 if any of those home run issues show up again in that ballpark it's gonna be terrifying yeah i like molly as well but that that scares me let's talk about someone i know that alex likes josh linbloom buried in my rankings right now ticking up a little bit because i think he's pretty safely in that rotation to begin the season but what is it

that gives you confidence that linbloom can do better things in year two in Milwaukee? I mean, the whip wasn't bad last year. It was just the ERA that was the problem. The ERA was up over five, temporarily moved to the bullpen, moved back in. We saw plenty of strikeouts. So how does he consolidate everything and turn in a good year for us, kind of in the back of the top 100 among pitchers? Yeah, I mean, I just think there's a lot like there's, I think last year was a big transition year for him, right? I mean, I just think there's a lot like there's, I think last year was

a big transition year for him, right? I mean, not only necessarily because the pandemic because coming over from the KBO and really having to adjust to what is a different style of baseball in the MLB. I think what gets me excited about him is like, he's just like a grande you Darvish when it comes to how many pitches he has, you know what I mean? Like, you have to like scroll down a page to see how many different grips that he has. And that's actually really exciting to me because if something isn't working when he's warming up, there are other things that he can rely on. There's definitely plenty of floor when it comes to Josh Lindblom. I've been burned before by one Matthew Boyd, and I understand that floor is a real thing. But when it comes to Josh Lindblom,

what gets me excited about some of the changes that he made in this offseason is he said, hey, I'm going to prioritize spin efficiency on my four-seamer, right? And if there's one thing that I've learned talking with pitchers this past year is that they get very excited in the offseason. And when spring training comes around, they definitely fall in love with the narratives that they're trying to push. And that's great. They should. They need that confidence. Linboom backed it up with actual results. I've watched every spring training start that he's had so far. And the spin efficiency that increased on that four-seamer has allowed him to locate more on top of the zone with that

four-seamer, which has made that curveball that he has really, really nice. When he pairs those pitches, which he's gone back-to-back with a few times now, it increases how many swings and misses he's, or it has the ability to increase how many swings and misses he's going to get on that curveball. Eno can correct me if I'm wrong, but when it comes to movement profile on a bunch of his pitches, there's some really dirty stuff there. I mean, between the splitter that he has, between that curveball that we already talked about, he's got the ability to do it. I think if I'm taking a step back, the fastball still scares me. This isn't a guy who's going to be able to rely on velocity, right? It's never going to be a guy who's going to be able to rear back and do it.

I think there were some issues where he couldn't throw certain pitches like that slider for strikes. And I think that would really benefit him to be able to have that command. But I think at the end of the day, at the back end of a draft where he is going right now, he's ultimately a guy that you can get for free. He's going to give you that nice K upside. He's also going to give you probably a good amount of innings, right? This isn't one of those guys that I think they're really going to rest, right? I think along with, it really would not surprise me if at the end of

the year, Josh Lindblom had more innings than Brandon Woodruff. It just wouldn't surprise me. It just seems like Woodruff's a guy who's going into his second year of arbitration, right? I think they're going to be a little more precious with him than they are with Josh Lindblom. So yeah, I think that's some real nice sneaky upside to get to the back end of a draft. No, I don't want to step on fast at all. I will note that Lindblom didn't go six innings once last year. And it was essentially like five or four innings in those starts. So I hope that he can have the IPS that the innings per start that Woodruff has. That's the one concern I do have with him. That comes with a command, I think.

If he can find the command, which it looks like he's been able to do, I think we'll see that bump up a little bit more. I thought you were about to say something about IPAs. Yeah. Never, never. I don't like hops. Get out of here.

But a couple of things come to mind when I look at his profile. Yeah, he had a below average command plus, so I am worried about that to some extent. But he didn't have a reliever level Command Plus. And that's actually how I think of Command Plus a lot, is in shelves. Because if you have a below 90, then maybe you're Josh James. And we were all super excited about how great Josh James' stuff was, but he had a below 90 Command Plus.

And when you get below 90, it's all relievers. It's all relievers and Denilson, Lumet and Tyler glass now, and like 95% relievers. So he's above that. So I think, I think the command,

yeah, it could, it could fluctuate a little bit. It could be good. When I look at his pitches, sometimes I think of that old adage um if you have three quarterbacks you have no quarterbacks um i'm just wondering what the out pitch is like and the slider does get good whiffs um and that and the four seam were the ones that that stood

out with right we're freight wise right um because the four-seam has a good ride. It has a really good ride. So if he's going to add more ride to it, then I think he has two legit pitches. But all the rest of the pitches underperformed what I kind of expect. You know, like less than 10% whiff rate on the changeup. 10% whiff rate on the curve. 10% whiff rate on the cutter.

It is exciting that he has so many. And there could be a little tweak that could go a really long distance for him, I think. I definitely am hoping that the increased efficiency on that four-seamer is going to benefit all of those pitches. You know what I mean? That's definitely the hope. And at the end of the day, that's a hope. You know what I mean? That's the gamble that I'm taking. I will say, too, when you look at that walk rate in the past, even a couple years ago,

it was barely above five ever in the KBO. And that's a different league, of course. And I'm not saying, well, of course, it's going to be great when it comes to the MLB. But it's also a league where those guys are going to wait you out, and they've got good eyes, and they can also make contact with everything. So to me, that speaks more to a reticence to pitch to the way that he was going to pitch in the MLB. I would be surprised if that continued this year. But once again, these are all the asterisks that fantasy owners are going to have to make their own decisions.

It's a really good play on one of the most basic and powerful stats there is, which is strikeouts minus walks. I mean, like 27 and 8, like that's really good. So yeah, I think that alone had me pushing him up. I've got him now. It's sort of about 110. And I think he's he's super interesting. Also, you know, you just mentioned it. And I found evidence of a gaijin strike zone in Japan that foreigners got a different strike zone.

And I actually think that to some extent that helps pitchers that go there to come back with better command. Wow. Yeah. They just have to be finer. So finer so are they okay so is it tighter for a foreigner interesting yeah they yeah i think they yeah and i'm not trying to point fingers at japan be like like we have the same problem i don't know if you guys have looked into what

umpire biases are but like there's a lot of them There's a bias. There's a racial bias in umpiring. There's a star bias. Yeah, a veteran bias. These are human beings. I'm not trying to point fingers, but I'm saying that we've seen a fair amount of players go over there. Merrill Kelly came back with improved command.

Michaelis. Michaelis came back with improved command. I think that's why I did the research was for Michaelis. Probably Colby Lewis too even before that. Yeah, yeah. Let's see how Flexin does. Yeah, good point. Man, Flexin is buried in my rankings.

I mean, he is free. He's going to be a week one fab pickup at the current rate. We'll see if anything changes between now and opening day. All right, let's get to some ADP toss-ups. We call it Would You Rather when we usually do this. Would you rather? See, I told you guys. I don't have to ever do sound effects. It's the best editing job in the world.

Never having to put a drop in. He just does them on cue. It's incredible. We'll look at March ADPs in the NFBC. Throw out some pictures with similar prices, and get a feel for where we as a group stand on these particular pitchers. We'll stay outside the top 20 at this point, since there's more fun to be had, I think, once you get past that group.

Let's go to the back part of the top 30. Max Freed versus Hin Jin Ryu. And I will start with you, Nick. who do you prefer between freed and ryu i probably take ryu because he's safer i i do recognize there's a higher ceiling likely with freed just because the blue jays got ryu knowing hey we want you for 150 innings in 2020 like they expected him to get hurt and they wanted to take care of him. And I feel that that will probably carry over into 2021 to some degree. While Freed is probably loose to go. I haven't quite seen the fastball and curveball command I want. Slider is good, but it's still a little, I need a little bit more development time with freed i think like

2022 freed is going to be better than ryu but i think ryu is a little bit safer at this moment how about you alex you know i i agree i actually think it is ryu but for a contrarian point of view for freed i'll say free just for fun uh because i'm a little bit worried about ryu uh in dunedin and i'm a little bit worried about when it comes up to buffalo a little bit worried about that both of those parks. Not that he's all of a sudden going to extremely regress, but when I think you take those concerns, you add in the injury concerns, those

kind of pile up to me to give in this contrarian view Freed the advantage. He doesn't mean it, guys. He doesn't mean it! I mean, I can see it. This is one of those rare veterans where I don't think innings is a positive part of his package. You know what I mean?

Like, you're not, like, going to pick Ryu for innings. I don't think. Especially not in this comparison. Like, if you, like, just innings, who? Freed, right? Freed. Freed, yeah. Definitely definitely because of the multiple arm injuries from ryu in the past i mean that's pretty scary it's just his i used to his groin ripped clean

off the bone you love that one you always go for that one that's insane it's like a piece of chicken like it's insane to me why why would you okay i don't know i mean you know he he got her blinking to get the catcher sign once you know um that's what i that's why i joke with ryu i will i mean look they got with 150 entering 2019 right uh or entering 2020 they probably will push it a little bit more but i mean it is kind of close but i still give it to freed yeah yeah well i share i share i share the concerns about the command i had freed just a couple ahead of Ryu, and I'll take him. I had Ryu in an injury tier. Ryu, Glasnow, and Carrasco were all 80th percentile or higher in my injury list.

Carlos Carrasco has shown that I've got to push him down some more. But, yeah. So I would take Freed. I think I'm the dummy that wants Ryu because I don't trust the control for Max Freed. I think that's still a possible trouble spot. I think the whip could be a little bit bumpy. You're going to get Ks.

You're going to get wins. I'm not worried about the innings, but slight preference for me with Ryu because I think the ratios come out a bit better. It will be interesting to see what happens with the Jays in their home park, though. If they ever get back to Toronto, that seemingly would be better than ending up in Buffalo for the second half or most of the second half of the season. How about this one? Just outside the top 100

overall, Chris Paddock, who everybody loved this time last year, versus Ian Anderson. We'll go around the other direction. We'll start with you first on this one, Eno. It's kind of interesting when you look at it through the lens of stuff in command. I've got Ian Anderson in 109 stuff in 93 command, and I've got Chris Paddock in 96 stuff in 113 command. And I think it tells a picture of, you know, Anderson, I don't think that people have looked at his minor league numbers very hard.

Because there is definitely some risk with Ian Anderson. Yes, it might have something to do with the low spin curveball, I don't know. Might have something to do with the changeup outperforming its movement profile too. But it's more his walk rates and home run rates in the minor leagues.

Like, he has a command issue. And if there is some wobble in there and he's going to go out, then, you know, But it's more his walk rates and home run rates in the minor leagues. He has a command issue. And if there is some wobble in there and he's going to go out, then it could look bad for a little bit. Maybe he gets it back and then by the end of the year he's fine. But after I said all that, I have Ian Anderson higher. I'd take Ian Anderson. What I want to know is what the rise is on Paddock's fastball right now. Yes.

Oh, no idea. Why don't we have track man for every spring train stadium? Cause we can have nice things. No, it's a, I'll tell you off air. You're a real boys club.

No, I, you know, none of the, none of this electronic stuff is is actually that that easy when you start talking about how many freaking parks there are i mean if you're talking about the 30 parks yeah we we got that we put it in and they did a good job but then you start talking about minor leagues and spring training facilities and you know it's not surprising that not all of them have it but i would like it you know can we get camera angles too that are not you know, it's not surprising that not all of them have it, but I would like it. Yeah. Can we get camera angles too? That are not, you know, acting like the shortstop. That would, that would be wonderful.

You know, Pittsburgh's figured this out. I love those ones. On both their minor league. When the pitcher is over here and the hitter's over here. And you're just like, is this how people perceive baseball? That's the bases loaded 2 from NES camera shot. It drives me crazy. I don't know why they used that camera view in that game,

but, I mean, it was 1990, so what else were they supposed to do? Which game had an angle like that? Bases Loaded 2 had that angle. Yeah. It was terrible. The game was fun, but the view was terrible. Where do you stand on anderson versus paddock alex anderson is just super like unique i i really spent a lot of time diving into him because he's

really fascinating to me he's got this really unique profile curveball has like this 12-6 shape to it but it doesn't get the movement of a 12-6 curveball um the change up is i think what he calls like a three finger change up that doesn't get anywhere near the movement that you would expect that kind of changeup to get with that sort of efficiency. The fastball changeup release points are just identical. The extension is elite, especially on that curveball. And those kind of north-south mechanics don't personally have me as concerned then when it comes to the command.

I think with him, I'm maybe a little bit more worried about what the Braves are going to do with him in terms of innings this year. When it comes to Paddock, I really think that last year, some of the difficulty that he had with that four-seamer was because of the curveball that he was working on, right? I think it just really changed. I was having a great conversation with Michael Aheadle about this, about what that did with his hand and what that did with his wrist. And I think it caused it to get a little bit more ride, correct me if I'm wrong, Nick, on that fastball there, which isn't necessarily what you want to see from Chris Paddock. So I love to see him when he was like, you know, oh, I was in

the bathroom and I found this book by Bill James. You guys got to read this. I love that that was essentially what his offseason was. So I think overall for me, I buy back on the Chris Paddock bounce back but with that said I think even if he gets that fastball back I still need to see he's kind of where he was last year where I still need to see him take a step forward with the breaking pitch so I think I'm going to choose Anderson here as well wow I'm it's Paddock for me I and the funniest thing is I was going to give praise to Ianan anderson i i love his mechanics i love the fact that he's so north south that he rocks back and forth and generally what you see i with guys especially like once i have some walk issues at first which

ian anderson does i mean i think that's more of a case of like approach and he's not giving in when it comes to change ups and he's relying on guys chasing and stuff. But it's not erratic. It's not like he has that high walk rate, but it's not because he's throwing crossbody. It's not like he doesn't know where the strike zone is. And I think over time that he will develop a much better walk rate than what you're seeing right now, which is like 10%. I think in the postseason it was like 13% for Ian Anderson, something like that. That will get better. And I actually think his minor league numbers too kind of aren't a great

walk rate either that back and forth you see that and you should be thinking oh it's a lot easy to adjust um on your delivery of gain the ball where you want it to so i think over time i'm in on ian anderson but i think i don't know i think we're kind of looking at Chris Paddock's 2020 and thinking aha we were all so wrong this is you know we jumped too soon on 140 innings from Paddock when his fastball was elite then it was really really amazing he messed up with the spin axis I think you're totally right fast about the this him trying to work on the shape of the curveball Aheado's really smart and like I love him and him thinking that kind of stuff that you listen um when Michael Aheado talks about that stuff so i i do like the fact as you mentioned too that paddock all of a sudden hated analytics and now he's like oh wait something about my spin access that can actually fix me

i'm listening now great i mean i'm not gonna like say anything about that i'm just happy he embraces it you know last year like i was shouting about it all year. It's like, where's the ride on this fastball? Can someone tell Paddock? He has like a dad who's super involved too. Like I, and, and, and follows on Twitter and name searches.

I just figured the dad would have found me yelling about his ride. Well, like, you know, you have success for ages. You never care about that stuff. It's just me. And you know,

I totally understand that mentality. And I think you need to have a full year of that and time to think that he can actually say okay maybe they have an answer for me you know he developed to some extent in an organization that i think at the time he was there is probably the worst uh organization for player development in baseball oh interesting uh fascinating so i don't think they are anymore but i think they were when he was there bat paddock has to be fixing this in some way i mean it is as you mentioned command was there i i wonder if the stuff metrics are just for 2020 or is it just for today or including 2020 so i actually think that stuff number could change i mean you could yeah because he used to

have ride and if he gets the ride that'll change the stuff number, yeah, because he used to have ride. And if he gets the ride, that'll change the stuff numbers. So yeah, that command is still there. So for me, I'm leading paddock here. I'm on paddock too. The command's really good. Look what he accomplished.

Come on by DVR. Let's go. Look what he accomplished with flaws in 2019. I think we're, we're blowing up Anderson's limited sample in 2020 and probably rounding up too much just as we're rounding down on Paddock. So for me, it's Paddock by not a lot, but by a healthy enough margin where I'm not.

Well, I just changed Paddock rankings. Not taking the full minute to make that pick. There you go. Good job, guys. You make a great point. Paddock was good. It wasn't terrible in 2020. It is still a 120 and change whip,

and he had some strikeouts. It wasn't you know patrick corbin's 2020 where that was really like oh no what's going on paddock was still actually somewhat serviceable and we think he should be much better so that's a great point we didn't have corbin low enough dude just just saying i knew i knew you guys want to talk about corbin somehow somehow i knew so one last toss up oh Corbin. Somehow I knew. So one last toss-up before we go. Oh, he's in there. All right.

The last one, Sixto Sanchez versus Patrick Corbin, which is totally just a young on the rise versus old and possibly declining. That's 60. I don't even have to think twice. I would leap out of my chair and mash the button so hard for Sixto Sanchez. You couldn't stop me. You couldn't be in between me and my computer. That's actually a great notion.

Like, the one way to draft isn't who clicks the button first, but how many times the person clicks the button. You got to get a mechanical keyboard. Those red switches, the actuation point. All right, no. Really quickly on Sixto versus Corbin. Okay? Very quick. Alright, no. Really quickly on 6-0 versus Corbin. Okay? Very quick. I don't think the Marlins are going to push 6-0 a ton.

I think his sinker isn't that great and he should be throwing more four-seamers and his sinker is much easier to hit. I think Z-contact was like 94% last year on the sinker while four-seamer was under 80%. Like 74% or something crazy like that. I'm sorry. I can't hear you over the 98%. Yeah, there it is. Well, it was still hittable. If he crazy like that. I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the 98.

Yeah, there it is. Well, it was still hittable, but he's throwing, right. If he just throws a four seamer at 98, then like I'm much more in. I don't think he actually has really good slider command. Change-up's good, but sliders, the good ones I saw were mistakes that actually landed at the angles of lefties.

And he wasn't actually trying to do that. On the other side, Corbin, yeah, he had a bad 2020. I get it, his velocity was low at the ankles of lefties and he wasn't actually trying to do that on the other side Corbin yeah he had a bad 2020 I get his velocity was low at the beginning he wasn't able to get it inside to lefty or sorry to righties like he used to uh he got better as it went on with that velocity so far this spring his boss is already up a full tick from last year uh this was someone who we considered top 15 into entering 2019 and 20 mean, 2018 and 2019 were like 200 innings of dominance from Patrick Corbin. His slider fell back

on what's with rate last year, about 10 points because of the fastball. He needs a fastball to make the slider work and I'm willing to kind of throw it away. I don't think he had. I think 2020 lost his fastball. It's 2021 now. He also, I mean, he also lost his fastball in 2019

and then came back and said, yeah, I lost my fastball. And then he got it again. And then he dominated. And he was great. He went off on this, yeah, this absolutely disgusting stretch. He's also got a new cutter that he's working on in spring training that, you know, I'm trying to do my best to temper all expectations about every time I hear a new pitch.

So, like, Aaron Nola also has a new cutter. But he could really use a new pitch. Yes. Yeah. Well, he needs a strike hear a new pitch. So like Aaron Nola also has a new cutter. But he could really use a new pitch. Yes. Yeah. Well, he needs a strike-getting pitch. He needs something else to throw that gets him a strike. Like Adovino has actually a similar-ish repertoire, right? Just from the right.

And Adovino needed that cutter to kind of just land in between the other two pitches. Kind of 0-0. But there's this one piece of data that's interesting that actually makes the case for both of these guys in a weird way. On the fastball, from 90 to 94, there's actually not that much difference between each mile per hour. So if you look at home run rates and whiff rates on fastballs just by velocity, between 90 and 94, they're fairly stagnant.

There's a little bit of a gain for each of them. From 94 plus, it goes out the roof. And it just goes up, up, up, up. So Sixto, I would expect to whiff more people just based on the VLO alone. Because he sits above 94. So he's like... Oh, yeah. Dude, the lefty hasn't sniffed 94 in a few years.

So if he's living in the 90 to 94 range, as long as he's not throwing 88s and 89s up there, As long as he's not throwing 88s and 89s up there, then theoretically there shouldn't be that much of a difference between Patrick Corbin at 92 versus 91.5 versus whatever. So it's just about limiting the 88s and 89s. So if he can sit 91, he might be fine. Yeah. Go ahead, Nick. I mean, I'm hoping for it. It's a mix of like i look i'll say this i am

going to push down corbin when i put it out on wednesday i still will be above six really um yeah six though i mean look it's the innings uh and the fact that i mean look he didn't go out and strike everyone out last year that's true you know And he had one game of 10 strikeouts and then not another one above six. I mean, I think he's also a change-up. He's not a finished product to me. He's like a change-up sinker guy, right? Yeah, and I don't like his sinker. Look, we've seen it from like Dustin May.

Just because you throw hard doesn't mean necessarily that it's good, especially if it's a sinker. I mean, it'll limit the homers. Sure. It's probably pretty hard to turn that one around. necessarily that's good especially if it's a sinker i mean it'll limit the homers but sure i but probably pretty hard you don't want that from six so i don't i don't want a 21 22 strikeout rate from six so i want him to like push 25 to 30 you know and if that's what i'm getting from six though then like uh this it's just just not quite done yet so i think he's got more secondary so i think he's yeah well yeah i'm with you

there yeah yeah oh yeah here's i mean i had such a sick burn planned when hino was like i can't hear you over the 98 i was like well why don't you turn up that 20 k rate it's uh it's totally it's totally it's totally past now no you're being kind now it's past that point i think there's a bunch of other secondary i'm actually with i'm past that point. I think there's a bunch of other secondary. I'm actually with Nick on this. I think there's some other secondary factors too. And also to harken back to another argument that was made earlier, you know, a guy can't be that, you know,

you said a guy can't be in the top 40 unless you've seen that he's done that before. But it's kind of that argument with Sanchez too, where I really want to see him do it over a prolonged period of time. And then other smaller secondary factors, a little bit more sure of Patrick Corbin getting wins than I am Sixto Sanchez, a little more sure of Patrick Corbin getting those innings pitched than I am Sixto Sanchez. It scares me a little bit when you're already saying, hey, why did the Marlins tell Sandion Quintana to get away from that sinker and go to that four-seamer instead? That scares me a little

bit more as well. So I think at the end of the day, I buy more Patrick Corbin bounce back than I do a Sixto Sanchez repeating. I think it is definitely close. And I think I can do the cop-out that it comes down to team construction. That if you've got a few guys who are going to throw a lot of innings, you've loaded up on your Lance Lins or whatever, and you want that kind of fun upside that's a fun play but if you've done the opposite and you i think it's actually okay to go with patrick corbin i think he's going to be okay this year i'm six to over corbin i have to move corbin up i am 46 among starters that's too low inside that top 40 yes but i do think fast probably has kind of the sweet spot. Like if you already have a young group of starters with some ceiling already

and you need that stability, Corbin probably makes more sense. Yeah, innings might be the priority there. If you're chasing wins a little bit, Nats versus Marlins win probabilities on Corbin should be a lot higher because they're not going to baby him. If Sixto's getting babied, he's leaving games earlier and he's on a weaker team with a worse bullpen somehow i think the marlins actually have a worse bullpen than that so that could be a problem as well i'm looking at this i'm gonna have six

stone corbin like two picks apart probably it's it's it's super close sorry just want to add that in there because yeah i'm moving up-0 from 39 likely to like 36, 35? I'm going the opposite. I'm tanking 6-0 now just to be as quick. I still have some air between them, but I moved 6-0 down a little bit

because of you guys and Corbin up and now I've got them 10 apart, 12 apart. It's still a mash button for me. Give me that player. Well, the good news is we're all still friends after all of this. We're still laughing, still having a good time. I could do this for another three hours, man.

I know, right? This is the best. It'd be the longest edit ever, but it'd be the most fun. There's pros and cons, but mostly pros, I think, right? This is the best. It'd be the longest edit ever, but it'd be the most fun. So, I mean, there's pros and cons, but mostly pros, I think, in this case. Nick, before we go, let everybody know

where they can follow you on Twitter and what they can expect from both the Pitcherless pod and actually from the site here in these next few weeks. Oh, man. I wrote out my content schedule on this whiteboard.

It's like 10 articles over the next three weeks. So definitely check that out. Updating the pitcher ranks. My entire thing is called the ultimate draft guide for 2021 comes out next week, which is really fun. But yeah, follow me at pitcher list. Bother me all the time.

Please do. And yeah, check out Nick Pollock and friends. You know, was on there. And hopefully, Derek, I can get you on there as well at some point but yeah lots of fun stuff and give Alex a follow wherever that is I don't know where it is fast I guess that's my segue I like that yeah so you can follow me on Twitter at Alex fast date and I would definitely be remiss to say a quick you know I'm very glad that I bought those bots so we could come on here and

have this conversation with you. But in all, to be 100% earnest, you guys rightfully won that tournament. And it's because you guys are the best in the biz. And we look up to both of you so much. And I can't tell you just how giddy Nick and I were to be able to have this opportunity to do this with you guys. You guys, we, we, we really think of the world. We look up to you so much. So this has been such a blast for us. So thanks so much for having us. It's been great.

You guys would have deserved to win too. Like you won, you won last year. That's only because somehow, only because somehow sleeper beat you. No, no, absolutely not, man.

You guys are really like you're the, the torch bears for the rest of us, you know? And this was, this was unbelievable. Really guys are really like you're the torchbearers for the rest of us, you know? And this was unbelievable. Really, we cannot thank you enough for this. Well, we appreciate you guys joining us and for sharing the crown with us in the baseball pods bracket. And we'll see what happens next year if the bots just destroy it in the first round or if we actually make it all the way through. But it was a lot of fun being a part of it.

No, no, no. We really can't. But follow him on Twitter at AlexFast8, at PitcherList, Eno, of course, is at Eno Saris. I'm at Derek Van Ryper. You can drop us an email, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com. And of course, we appreciate it

if you take a moment to leave us a nice rating and review. And I would be a fool if I didn't mention that with March Madness starting this week, starting Tuesday, March 16th, we have Daily Ding, the Ding U, presented by BetMGM. Check it

out on YouTube, 1 p.m. Eastern if you want to watch it live or listen to the Daily Ding podcast. Get everything you need to be caught up for March Madness. Best time of year because we've got opening day in a few weeks, but we also have some college basketball to help bridge the gap through the final weeks of spring training.

For Alex Fast and Nick Pollock and Eno Saris, I'm Derek Van Ryper. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Wednesday. Thanks for listening..