Rates & Barrels - Pitching Archetypes & Top Bullpen Rankings

Episode Date: March 20, 2025

Eno, Trevor, and DVR discuss an interesting lawsuit around analytics a potentially lost competitive advantage, the benefits of building a 'brain' -- internal communications system -- of your own, organizational pitching archetypes, and a few different ways to grade the best bullpens in baseball as Opening Day approaches. Rundown 3:54 An Interesting Lawsuit & A 'Lost Competitive Advantage' Further reading from a Matt Gelb story at The Athletic($): https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6216672/2025/03/20/phillies-zelus-analytics-teamworks-lawsuit/ 9:15 Benefits of Building 'The Brain' Internally 26:37 Pros & Cons of Organizational Pitching Archetypes 45:53 How Are You Grading & Ranking Bullpens Entering 2025? Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.social Follow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.social Follow Trevor on Bluesky: @[e-mail] e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris With: Trevor May Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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from Trevor May, all here with you. On this episode, we're going to talk about pitching archetypes, the patron saints in each organization. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? Can it lead organizations astray or is it a blueprint to success? We'll dig into that. We're gonna grade bullpens, try to rank top tens,

much like we did with the rotations last week. So we got that coming up here as well. Show announcement, of course, two live episodes going down one week from today's, the first one, March 27th and March 28th, 430 start times at Bear Bottle Brewing Company in the Bernal Heights location in San Francisco. Get some Kayakers Cove, the beer that Eno helped brew.

Come ask questions, come hang out with us, watch the opening day games, watch some NCAA tournament games. We'll have a great time together. Really looking forward to those live shows. Can't believe it's only a week away. Where did March go? Just evaporated. It's crazy.

It happens every year. It's crazy. I'm excited. I'm excited to be there. Where, where did March go? Just evaporated. It's crazy. Happens every year. It's crazy. I'm excited. I'm excited to be there. Uh, I get to be there this year, so it's going to be, it's going to be awesome. Gonna, gonna take the longest hiatus I've had for my son, uh, since he's been born, like 38 hours or something.

And yeah, the first trip is always kind of interesting when you become a parent. Like I was, I remember doing that this time last year, same, same thing. It was like, Oh man, it's weird being away from the little guy just cause he's there all the time. I remember the mother-in-law was taking care of the, of our first. And we just, in that first, like two weeks where you're like, you don't even, you don't even know what time it is. Like you're just sleeping in like two hour increments.

And like, you know, it's just like, it's like some weird zone. We went to Safeway. Your first little excursion, you just went to just like leaving the house without the child. We're just like, wow, the lights were so bright. And we're like, people were like dressed appropriately. We were just like, sweatpants, unshowered. And that was in the pre-COVID era, right?

I feel like the societal baseline for what people wear to the grocery store has dipped in the last five years. Yeah. You see people like this all the time now, but you've got to go back 12 years and think, oh, that was different back then. Yeah. We felt pretty slovenly. We're just amazed by people walking around and doing things. People continue to function.

It is truly amazing. Some news and notes as we get started. A follow-up in the time between our recording and publishing yesterday, the Department of Defense restored Jackie Robinson's page. So that happened sort of as we expected because backlash was there as anticipated. The story that Craig Calcatera is tracking now

is one we also mentioned yesterday. Major League Baseball scrubbing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives from various webpages. It's been about 24 hours. Now is one we also mentioned yesterday, Major League Baseball scrubbing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives from various webpages. It's been about 24 hours. They still have not responded to Craig's request for a comment. So I'm not going to wait for that response.

I just don't think it's ever going to happen. I think the action sort of speaks very loudly as far as what MLB actually cares about. So, you know, judge for yourself, I guess, in that case. But yeah, the DOD did restore the Jackie Robinson page that we were talking about yesterday. As far as other news goes, a relatively quiet news day on the spring front.

I didn't see any new updates as far as like torn UCLs or labrums or anything like that, which from a typical baseball news day would be a success. But were there any other stories that caught your guys' eye? You know, I think there was one you were telling us about before the show on the analytics side that was pretty interesting. Yeah, there's an outfit called Zealous Analytics that was started by Doug Fearing. He was the R&D head for the Dodgers and he created basically a third party R and D department where

they create models and analytics for teams. Um, they had a rule that, you know, that, that sounds problematic already. You're like, okay, so they're going to do your analytics, but they live somewhere else and they could do it for some other team. So they have this rule where, um, if you got their best analytics, if you paid for their top end, uh, you know, structure, their top end tier, the Titan, if you paid for the Titan, uh, which was like $600,000 a year, then you, you like other teams in your division, couldn't pay for it, couldn't get it.

So only one team for division. So they had six clients basically that were at the top level. Um, and the Phillies were one of them. Now the Phillies used to be run by, um, an individual that left to go work for zealous and then zealous started taking employees away from Phillies R and D. So, uh, the Phillies in particular were like, okay, but you know, we're still a Titan customer. We still like this. Um, and if you want to know why, you know, this is covered by Matt Gellip story, but

a couple of teams have told me like in particular, like, oh, well, we needed to jumpstart R and D department. So we really needed some help like immediately quickly. And so zealous was, was really important for us. And then other teams are like, well, we have, want something to benchmark against. We want to like use our analytics and like benchmark it against theirs and make sure that ours are better than theirs. You know, that was worth $600,000 to us.

Um, and so I would, I would actually guess the Phillies are kind of in that department because they have a pretty robust R and D department and they've been doing pretty good analytics. So, um, any case, um, team works, team works, uh, is a company that, I don't know, how did you describe them as like, what did you say they were? Like, uh, like WhatsApp kind of, it's just, it was a communication and like a communications app for, uh, the whole team. Like if the manager needs to throw out like bus times or, uh, and then you can also get your scouting report for the upcoming series there or

any video that they, and they started rolling out those things. So they, they tried to be like a baseball slack. Yeah. Baseball slack. Yeah. Organize all your, all your stuff and team communication that, that was easy to move people in and out as they like Got down or went to another team or whatever and because team works isn't analytics they are allowed to talk to everybody every team because You know, it's just like a process thing. It's like a it's like a slack, you know slacks slacks not like

You know sharing your secrets of other companies It's just sort of offering a platform with it to discuss with each other. And, and that kind of communication is pretty important. I mean, it's, you want everybody on the same page. You want all your documents in the same place. And in, you know, I, if I was running a team, I'd probably try to develop my own team works, but I could see how that would cut a lot of corners and help me. And so anyway, team works bought Zellis and Zellis was like,

okay, so now we're open for business for everybody. We got an analytics plus, you know, communication software platform. It's all there. Everything is in one place. And we are now non-exclusive. And they went back to all their clients and they went back to the Phillies and they said,

you know, we'd like to renegotiate a, you know, a smaller number for non exclusivity. And the Phillies exercised their option in their contract for an exclusive 2025 season. And then sued Zealous Analytics for sharing competitive advantage, uh, secrets with other teams. So I think that's pretty interesting. It's, I think, you know, if I was a team, I would want to just do this on my own, but it can be expensive. I mean, you're talking about, you know, a hundred plus thousand dollars per analytics person, if either good.

And then like your head is going to be getting more than that. And, um, you need to spend on the data and the tech and everything. So, uh, you know, I think a good analytics department could cost more than a million dollars, you know, and front offices aren't, um, front office, they are expensive actually, because you have like, you know, I don't know how many coaches. I mean, you have coaches upon coaches in the minor leagues. You have all of the player development staff.

You have like, like the frown offices has gotten big, big over the, over the last few years. So, um, I could see how like just paying zealous 600,000 to just sort of figure that out as opposed to, you know, building a new one out for a million and a half or something might be the right choice for some teams. But it also is like, well, then everybody knows my secrets. I mean, then I'm just sharing. I have the same stuff model as those guys over there. So I don't know.

I think I would be like, we need to build this out ourselves. We need to find an advantage. And that advantage can be in communication software, which I would be, I'd say like, we need to build this out ourselves. We need to find an advantage and that advantage can be in communication software, which I would build myself. It can be in like all these things like Ivy, like the Cubs have Ivy. That's a communications plus analytics platform, you know? Um, and the best teams have their own and they have a nickname for it. And my nickname, when I talk to people about it is brain because I don't, I'm not a

team, but that's the brain. And if I was running a team, it would be, I would have a good brain. I would spend a lot of time thinking about the brain. I actually have a lot of kind of experience with asking about how these things are built. Uh, like the interesting one was like the, the A's is called Oasis and they built it in in- house and it was just analytics mostly and not, and they use like WhatsApp or something because there were so many international

players and WhatsApp actually has a lot of things. Like if it's just communications you're trying to do or like send a document once in a while in a text message format, it does work pretty well. Or like you could use Discord or you could use Slack. Like there's a bunch of different ways you could just tailor it to be the way you need it to be. Basic stuff, but if you want like, you know, and embedded video players that play really high quality

video, if you wanna go grab a bunch of, you wanna get all your video off, people are scrubbing like savant because that's available to everybody and that's part of why it exists that way. You can get a lot of the video there if you need it. And the biggest problem is, the hardest part is, not necessarily getting people, the personnel,

getting enough people, it's getting the people who are talented enough to build like a communications platform. It's not just like straightforward. It's like, it's a skill. You're also paying less than, you know, other industries probably. Yeah, yeah.

So like, so if you can do it in-house, teams would love to do it in-house. It sounds like the Phillies were more like, uh, we're going to pay for this so that no one else in their vision can pay for it. And almost as if they were withholding it. And now that's gone away. And they're mad there now, now someone else is going to get, and if even if they were benchmarking and doing all in, in house, I had, I hadn't thought of that. That's a third reason to do it. Yeah. Remove the competitive advantage from like say we don't want the

Marlins to like, that's probably what pissed them off the most. Yeah. Cause now, now this, now they're just undoing that. So the money spent before doesn't matter anymore. Like at all. Right. Um, so that could be really frustrating. Uh, uh, and I think it feels like that's, because they do, like you mentioned,

they do have a big robust analytics department. They got a lot of people working in that thing. They do a lot of their own in-house stuff. And so that seems like maybe it was the straw that broke the camel's back or the chair on top of the Sunday, whatever you wanna call it. The main detail, they're like, eh, our competitive advantage just went away

and we were paying for that manage and that's, we want our money back. That's what we thought. Yeah. That's what he thought was worth. That's why we did it. You also mentioned in that a pretty interesting thing about international players, because in my vision, the brain has everything. And so everybody just have to have a login, right?

And you'd log into the brain and like in my, like, you know, pie in the sky, you log into the brain. It's almost like, uh, just like a, like an email format or something like where you just come in and it's like, Oh, here are your notes for the day. Oh, here's your throwing stuff. And here's this and here's this. And then, you know, I would love to have like you log in and there's a, here's your aura stats and your whoop stats and like your, how you're doing against RP KPIs, you know, your number one goal right now is bat speed and you know, here's your rolling bat speed and you know, like just a, like a, like we have

this at the athletic, the content management system and you log into the CMS, it has all your stories and it has all of the stats and it has them rolling over time and they get to decide what I see, which I think is actually kind of okay because that's how, if that's how you're going to judge me, I need to know how you're going to judge me. Show me how you're going to judge me. I will figure it out and get there, you know? But you mentioned international players and that's a really interesting thing because

Wi-Fi is not something that you can get everywhere in the Dominican. You know, I don't know, you know, I haven't been back to Jamaica in a little bit, but like, you know, I've been to Jamaica, like Wi-Fi, I didn't, you know, there was like the nice hotels had it, you know? And so if you don't have Wi-Fi everywhere, it has to run on cell service. So if you do make the brain the way I'm saying,

it has to somehow also be like really light. the way I'm saying it has to somehow also be like really light. Like you can still log in on mobile, on cell phone service and like still get what you need and that, and the video that you're talking about is, is one of the sticking points too, is because how am I going to get you video showing you a drill that I want you to do in the DR, you know, what's up is like pretty good at that, but like, am I going to create know, what's up is like pretty good at that. Yeah. But like, am I going to create the new what's up? That's like part of my brain, you know, that I can just send you.

We could just use WhatsApp, right? Yeah, I could just use WhatsApp. So it's all about like linking and APIs. I've done a lot of experiments with the stuff. So funny you mentioned the whoops, that's we discussed this because I was tracking everything I did in 2023. That was literally the reason I did that. I wanted to see if you could get a dashboard, build it your own dashboard,

where a bunch of stuff pops up because it's been built in the same way. And there was a time I was working with a, uh, uh, a, a graduate student at Harvard who wanted to, who was interested in this type of thing and he was trying to build it. Now we, I retired and then I got kind of separated and started working on the media stuff and we both kind of had to put it aside. But I think long-term, cause there's lots of places that are doing like drive lines, try to do some, something a little bit around that. Yeah. Cause I got the, they, they bought modus, they bought the sleeve, which they call pulse now. Yeah. Pulse. And they added that to their like,

Dashboard. To their like, Dashboard and their little, which I used it. Not a huge fan of the Dashboard. It was a little bit confused, but again, I actually had a conversation with the rep that got me logged in, he's like, yeah, we're still looking for a UIUX person to like, because it's just a really hard thing to do

to really over-vamp this thing. It's super important, because I need, like, you it's just a really hard thing to do to really over, over super important because I need it. Like, you know, this as an athlete, like you have so many voices in your head. I need to get you like the most simplest version of this. Like I need you to log in and be like, Oh, I have two goals as a player. Here they are at the top of my page. You know, Oh, I should be deeper than that either. They just, they just want you to give them their three bullet points. Yeah.

And so if you can do that, most guys are that way. Sleep well, bat speed. I like the bulls thing and working towards it where like you can get your data from in game data, you can get it from your, from your ball flight stuff in the ball, in the, in the, in the cage and the trajectory. Yes. In training environments. So that has to all go in. Like I would just be like, the brain would be pulling data from everywhere.

And then we'd have to have UI people that may simplify it so that you'd see it. And then we'd have to have tech people that make it easy to access for sale. I mean, this is, this is what everyone's building towards. And this is really, really important to player development. And the best teams are good at this, but like, are they perfect at it? I don't know. And it's really hard to do. Do you guys think that we're at the point now where it's the way the information is presented

and studied and basically interpreted that matters much more than the data itself? The edge is in how you use it and how you convey it to people rather than the actual data you collect itself. Where like that frontier has been leveled to the point where anyone in the league, any team in the league can get as much information as they'd ever actually need. So now it comes down to integration like this. I would agree with that. That sounds, the reason I think

that that's true is because of how quickly the league is picking up on things. And so it's okay if you, it's not as big of a deal if you're not first to the thing. For example, pitch design is a great example because now there's like amateur businesses or just amateur people finding this stuff. And people are like seeing a TikTok about it

and like, oh, I can design this pitch. They can get it that way. It's not so proprietary that everyone's trying to get their own, their own foot in the door. So the information is freely flowing a little bit to the point where if you're quick, you can put it into play quickly. So I think that it's about, okay, I understand this. I am a coach or a development person or an analyst person or a for a front office person, I see value here.

Maybe we can deploy, how do we then deploy this? How quickly does it go from me noticing it to someone or to players on my team or putting it into action on the field? That speed is now the, I think the skill that is separating teams from each other. People are understanding, getting understanding quickly is just how you use that.

How quickly do you act on the compass post pointing somewhere? And like the, I think the epiphanies we're having technologically about how baseball works are just getting fewer and far, the big ones, right? The, oh my God, it seems shift to wake. Those things are not gonna be every two months like they've been. Well, eventually we're going to get to a point where we know how the

game's played for the most part. And then it's just about adjusting to what the other side is doing again with that information and who's doing it better, which is exciting. I think that levels of playing field a little bit more. I think we actually, the, the parody in our league has benefited from, from this, from that idea a lot. Uh, I, there's a lot of stuff in there that I think will be relevant to our next topic, but I did want to mention, I wrote a piece called his dad of dead.

And it was about this is about like how teams are leaning into things like empathy and, um, and, and soft skills, uh, in, you know, communica communication abilities and stuff like that in there. I think it was Pat Murphy, like a lot of our stuff from the winter meetings, it's Pat Murphy talking about being humble, that these soft skills are becoming more important as the data stream is homogenizing. And part of what I was talking about in that story was zealous, because there are more and more teams getting the same hooking up to the same data and like stack cast, like, you know, that's like stack cast has 30

clients, you know, you know, among 30 teams. So, um, you know, to some extent data is homogenizing, but when I was at the, uh, analytics conference this weekend, uh, this past weekend, um, someone actually quoted my story and then was like, he's wrong. And he's like, and here's why. And he did a whole thing about neural waves. And it was, it was an interesting presentation. I wish I had the name in front of me.

I'll share it in the discord, but it was an interesting presentation about if you look at the neural waves of a baseball player, you can look at the neural waves of a pro player and look at the neural waves of a college player, look at the neural waves of a men's league player and look at the neural waves of a non-player, and you can actually sort of pick out who's the pro, who's the amateur, and who's the guy who doesn't play at all. And he thought that this, and that's pretty interesting because that means that there's something neurologically going on.

I think that it makes sense. We've talked about chunking and how players create little sort of packages of movements that they can access and as they become a pro player, they don't have to think as hard about every little part of the process anymore because they're like, I've been doing this. I got just access the load, access the, you know, like your brain is just thinking and accessing these, these packages and chunking in ways.

So that I think you might be able to see that neurologically, but actually being able to measure it means that maybe you could train it in a certain way. Maybe you could look for it, scout for it. Um, the for it. The problem with data streams like this, and I mentioned like the Ura and the Whoop, like I find those really fascinating, really important, really interesting because they're biometrics.

They're not biomechanicals, you know, things that are from the outside. These are biometrics that are inside. They're super problematic. It's super problematic because the MLBPA is going to say no. Um, and for good reason. I remember that this basketball player that was supposed to go in the first round and they did a heart test and they said, you have a heart condition. You might die on the court.

You're never allowed. You're not allowed to play in the NBA. And I was just like, wow, like that's crazy. Like, you know, like that, you know, doesn't even give them the decision to be like, no, no, I'm, I'm a risk it or whatever. You know what I mean? Like they're just, Nope, you can't play. Um, and I think that players would be like, Oh, you want my neurological data

so that you can decide that you, maybe you could bring it up in arbitration and be like, well, his neurological data is not really good. Yeah. Or trade me away because, you know, or decide not to favor me. I mean, in player developments, there's the favorites, there's the guys, the big guys, and then the guys who get less attention and you know what I mean? The guys who are at the top of the lineup in AAA and the guys are, you know what I mean?

Like, you know, so, um, there's all these sorts of decisions that, that a player could feel like could be made, you know, and, and the, the aura stuff is like, I would love to just give players a worse so they could start to see this stuff and make their own decisions and start to see it. Because when you, one thing that we've talked about is like, if you look at an aura, you know, that your sleep efficacy after even one beer, you know, goes down the tubes and your, your heart rate is up while you're sleeping. Like if players could see that, you know, they might start making better,

just better decisions for, you know, baseball at least. Um, and you could do that without us, but the team from the team perspective, it, there's still going to be the player being like, I don't want you to have that down. I don't want you to have that down. I don't want you to know about my brain. I don't want you to know about, you know, how many beers I had last night. That's me. Yeah.

So there's definitely, those are some possible data streams and they're really interesting to me, but they require a level of trust between the organization and the player that I don't think exists right now. That's if the organization is the one providing it, but what if there's a third party that doesn't need it? I know that the Reds, the Reds and Kal Bodhi was, uh, was a guy who pushed for this was a lot of mine in the minor leagues. A lot of them wore auras. Uh, when Joe Boyle came over, he's like, uh, I did,

I have an aura ring. Uh, And we went over some of his data, because I was doing all my data collection and he was fascinated by it. And then like a weekend, he was like, yeah, they took the aura back, now I don't get a, or they like, I don't have an account anymore, because of course there's a subscription to see the thing. I don't have an account anymore, but I have the ring.

I was like, okay, well, that sucks. And so they were doing that, but like, I know the PA for definitely wasn't like pumped about it because it's just making their job harder. Now they need to argue things that they don't know. Like they don't know how they're using it. It's an uncharted territory. And that makes sense.

That makes sense. That's exactly how they should. They should be hesitant on your behalf for that stuff. But if I was a team, I'd be like, put stuff in the CBA says you can't use an arbitration. I don't want to use an arbitration. I just want to know this. I want to, I want to have this to have, want to be able to act on it. I want to. It's, it's, it's simple. It comes down to,

unfortunately they don't trust each other at all. For also good reason in my opinion, because I don't know there's not been a lot of good faith in the last 10 years. So it's, it's just, uh, that's what it comes down to. But I think long-term stuff like that, having bio metrics, uh, on yourself is extremely valuable in a vacuum for just the guy, especially if they take an interest in using it. And I am totally not biased because that's exactly what I did. I think the really important part of that though, to keep them from

just being expensive toys, you need people who can help you interpret the information. And that's where the team could come in. I like the idea of like, you know, like creating, yeah, I think that's, that's a really important thing to say. And it's like, you, I think you need to, that's why I would create a portal that you can log into. I'd give you the aura. I create a portal.

And if this is possible, technological in a way that makes everyone happy, I'd have a the aura. I create a portal. And if this is possible, technologically in a way that it makes everyone happy, I'd have a buy-in like an opt-in. So you can look at this data and it's just your data organized the way we want to organize it. Yeah. You know, uh, but it's just yours and we don't have it unless you click there. And if you click there, it's an anonymized so that we don't know it's you. And the data gets uploaded into the brain.

I don't know if that works, but that's walking the line. It might work. Now I'm thinking of like, like, especially whoop, because whoop like gives you a map of your entire 24 hours of what your heart rate was. Like if they had live feeds of everyone's heart, They're tracking in game, who is feeling what. It would have to be anonymized. Yeah, it's gotta be anonymized. That's super fast. It'd be super cool to see that.

But also I could totally see the bat. If anyone with batting, especially people who own the team who are trying to not pay as much, that could be extremely valuable in that side of things. Clutch, they might be able to be like, that guy's not clutch. Look at his heart rate. Exactly. Oh, he's at, he's at one 95.

I'm worried about him having a heart attack, not getting the job done here. Feeling like there's actually a lot of hidden downside here. Also want some quiet hours and privacy hours on these. I don't, I don't want to know your heart rates when you're away doing whatever it is you're doing when you're away. It's not in my business. You know, there's a lot of, a lot of slippery slopes, I think, with this. You, you, you hinted at this earlier, you know, there's, um, there's kind of a

connection here, like I think this happens in all facets of life. If an organization or a person has success, they try to replicate it to the best of their ability. And it got us wondering when we were planning for the show yesterday, if organizations largely have these archetypes, these patron saints, these players that they kind of say, all right, we had Corey Kluber, let's make more Corey Klubers. And that's just how you sort of define your general approach to pitching as an organization, right? So do we think this largely exists?

Is this something that's 30 out of 30 teams actually have some sort of roadmap for a specific type of pitcher they're trying to develop? Or do we think it's something that is kind of loosely structured by some teams? You know, they find something like the Yankees with the right on right change ups and they just seek that out

until perhaps the competitive advantage of doing that starts to go away. Yeah, I think that's the difficult part is the timing because we're like Trevor said earlier, things move so fast right now that, you know, what worked last, you know, five years ago may not be relevant anymore. And I think most teams know that, but at the same time, I think there's a real residual

there. Once you have success in a certain way, it really affects the entire organization. And I think the one way I see it is like, I'm in the cereal aisle and it's like, you know, there's only like five or six cereals that my kids want, but now all of them have done all of the different things that they could do. They've gotten many, or they've, they've, uh, added chocolate inside. I mean, it's all the same. Shapes, but they've tried to add this taste from other things.

So everything's has a strawberry version. Everything has a, you know, it's like, but it's like still Cheerios, but like there's ones with little chocolate inside. It's the Coke freestyle concept just applied to cereal and you're not walking to the machine, pushing the buttons. They're deciding at the cereal factory what you're going to get, but yeah, it's every, or

they spin a wheel and it's like, okay, shape, it's been a flavor, color, it's been that. Okay. Now we have blue raspberry mini Cheerios. That's what we have. Exactly. Yeah. So, um, I do think, uh, you know, the, the, the relevant, the

relevance revelation for me has been, you know, Kluber to by B to, I mean, Kluber to a Beaver to by B I think is, um, a tree, you know, like a. This is a thing that worked a guy that didn't have the greatest fastball, but had great command and a great breaking ball. Oh, okay. Uh, let's draft this kid out of UC Santa Barbara that has, you know, doesn't have the greatest fastball velocity, but has a great breaking ball. Uh, by B, uh, wasn't drafted in the 2020 draft.

Um, and, uh, went to work on some weighted balls during the COVID year and stuff and came back, um, came back with more V lo and they were like, Oh, this is, this is Bieber 2.0, you know, so it's like, they, they seem to have followed that, um, to a certain extent, the, the revelation for me was the, the, the Osvaldo Bido is like a, a sleeper for me. Um, we talked about it yesterday. I have like every team has Osvaldo Bido on it this year. Um, and I was very happy to about it yesterday. I have like every team has also would be told on it this year. Um, and I was very happy to find out yesterday. He did make the opening day rotation.

There was a Mitch Spencer is another guy that I think is going to be good, but like, I guess they're, I don't know what they're doing with him. He's not in the, in the first five. So, um, I don't know. I think they're making a mistake there, but, um, in any case, uh, Bidot and Luis L Ortiz have very similar profiles. They both have a fastball, a four-seam fastball, a sinker, a cutter and a slider. And that's, I think like I was trying to figure out who else has this.

And I was looking around, it's a bit of a rare thing to have. Like you don't have a curve ball. You don't have a change up. It's like three fastballs in a slider. Like I would challenge people on the discord, please. Who would I miss that's like this? Who could be the patron saint of three fastballs in a slider? I guess there's, huh?

Lance. I just thought of it. I was just thinking Lance Lynn and the other one is Mitch Keller. And the reason I thought that Mitch Keller mattered is because Mitch Keller, Oswaldo B. Doe and Luis LRTs were all developed by the pirates. Um, and I don't, I can't reach back to the Corey Kluver. I don't know who the original person is for this, but I also noticed that the

pirates, um, are among the league leaders, um, in, in sinkers at, at certain times. And like, you know, uh, they're in, in sinkers at certain times and like, you know, uh, they're not, they're just off this list. This is done by sinkers. But when I see the brewers on here with a lot of cutters and a really balanced mix, I think of both Brandon Woodruff and, um, uh, Corbin Burns as guys that, um, have had a lot of success with the cutter and, um, we're forcing sync or type.

So I feel like, uh, there might be a patron saint there and Corbin burns for the brewers, um, and, uh, Mitch Keller for the pirates and Corey Kluver for the, uh, guardians. But I know there's gotta be more out there. That's a lot. Well, I did want to throw, I wanted to, I know I wanted to throw to you, Trevor, the idea of like, you know, once that someone's had success in the organization, you had this good story about, um, you know, once a, uh, a

player's like a lot of times grips, like once a player was like a grip was given to you when you were coming up in the twins. Big Irv, right? Yeah. Irv and Santana is how I learned my slider as it was towards the end of my career, uh, away from my curve ball. So I just got rid of a slider grip because I wanted something between them bigger. And, uh, and I just tried and we were in a, we were in like a testing phase.

I was just trying some stuff and catch and, uh, getting, and me and Josh Calk were developing more of a rapport. So I was like, Hey man, what do you think of this? And I remember that one being, he's like, that one, that one, that one, that's the one because you throw that now. He actually is like, yeah, you throw that now. And Jeremy Heffner was in, in the analytics department there kind of as the liaison, the bit, he's like, oh, he goes, that's pretty clear.

I'm like, yep, that's pretty clear. We're going to do that. So, uh, and it was just, it was just me messing around with herbs grip and he showed it to me, but that's, I think that's the old school version of this is everyone asking each other for their grips. Like, how do you throw that? How does it come off your fingers? I remember, uh, Adam Ottavino talks about, you know, when he was in all star game with Colorado and everyone was like, dude,

how do you throw that slider? Everyone asked him, everyone wanted to know. Most original sweepers. Yeah, it was, and he was doing it sweeper. And that might be the most original sweepers, yeah. It was, and he was doing it in, it's hilarious that he was doing it in Colorado, which is funny, but it actually didn't move near as much. And then as soon as he went to the Yankees, it was crazy. So it starts with everyone like, hey, what is this guy who's done it before and has success?

What's his thing? And can I do the thing? Now we have so much information on why things happen. So I think that's the difference now. Everyone thinks about it this way. This is a very like traditional baseball way to think of development. But the best teams are the ones, and the Guardians are a great example, who go and see a guy like Kluber and know why he's so good at those things. Not just that he can do them, but why he's good at doing them and looks for those indicators in the guys.

They might be able to do what Kluber does, but if they don't, we are still confident in our ability to then find what their thing is. There's like a plan B. We can fall back on these other good things they do. And it just so happens that they're right, especially with Bieber. And then kind of an offshoot of that was like Bauer and then Clevenger, right? Clevenger kind of just came and just did everything that Bauer did and it just worked. Like he just picked it up because they were similar. I think they had a lot of markers that were similar and then they just,

they were both good together at the same time. And another team I think that does it well that we haven't mentioned is like the Astros because if you think about it this way, they had Justin Verlander and they had Garrett Cole and they're like throw fastballs up, throw your hard slider, you know, let's, let's.

And those guys probably kicked off a baseball together. Yeah, and then the prom was totally different. Yeah, they have these guys, but if you notice, not everyone, let's, and those guys probably baseball together. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They have these guys, but if you notice not everyone, then they had Framber and they're like, Oh, just throw sinkers and curve balls. Then he's completely different than them. But they were like, you, we're not going to try to, we're not going to force this. We're going to, we, we understand why they're good, but we also understand what you're good. And though it might be unorthodox, it's we're getting results. And so now we have two different archetypes picked.

Are you a Framber? Are you this guy? And then they, like Ben Hunter Brown, that's like, you're trying to do the Verlander thing, but you're not quite the same. Maybe a Zinkers the thing. And then they added that, like, oh, and we found something else.

That did take a little bit longer, you know? It did, but again, that was a small, because he is, he's like 92% matched with those guys. He really looks like Verlander. He really does, he even does the pause when he steps back. He did it mechanically, which you can tell, but the ball moves out of his hand a little bit, his arm slots a little bit lower,

he's not as tall of a guy, like all of these things are different, and so he needed to make a slightly, a slight adjustment. Those things take longer, but they got there. And so the Astros are doing a good job with it as well. I would say the Rays do, but usually everyone gets hurt before they can make an adjustment.

So that's the issue over there. A couple of jump-offs there. One is like the downfalls of this approach of like, you know, if you are too focused on what has worked before, how do you deal with someone who's new? I think of Tobias Meyer's going to Cleveland and telling us that, um, you know, in Cleveland, they really want him to place the ball. Whereas in Tampa and Milwaukee, they just wanted him to grip it and rip it to one, to one target. of them to grip it and rip it to one, to one target. And, um, you also think about Cleveland trying to teach a breaking ball to a guy who can't really spin it.

You know, Tobias said, I'm not really good at spinning at him. You know, I'm a pronator. I'm a change up fast before seeing fastball guy. Um, and so I wonder like, what will Joey Cantillo's outcome be like? Will he be more, um, of, will he end up being like a reliever? Wasn't, isn't, uh, Morgan, the guy with the crazy change up with the guardians? Yeah. And maybe they'll just be like, Oh, we can't develop.

He don't, you don't have your gay command and you can't develop a breaking ball for you. Uh, we haven't had success like teaching guys like you breaking balls. So, uh, the guy that you look most like is Eli Morgan, you know? Like, so maybe you're just going to be Eli Morgan out of the pen for us. Um, for the Rays there's the, it's possible're just going to be Eli Morgan out of the pen for us. For the Rays, there's the, it's possible that the patron saint to some degree is Chris Archer. Because I think he was a power slider guy and a lot of their guys throw the power slider and then, you know, find a second breaking ball off of that, as opposed to, you know, Chris Archer was like

looking for a change up in, in previous places most of the time. But I think the, the rays are like, no, just be you just like lean into your best pitches and just be who you are. And, um, there's some similarities there with also simplifying, uh, he might have been the guy before glass now where they simplify the targets, because if you look at Archer's. Not great either.

Yeah. Yeah. He was throwing the box. You're fine. Yeah, just throw it in the box. So, uh, those are the good things, but the bad things are when like you lose Tobias Myers to the Brewers because your, your teaching is too focused

on things that worked for Beaver and Kluver and not for Tobias Myers. And, you know, there's going to be maybe the Hunter Brown thing is an example of it taking a little bit longer because he didn't fit, you know, certain archetypes that before, but I just think it, yeah, it's, it is really easier. I mean, one of longer because he didn't fit, you know, certain archetypes that before, but I just think it, yeah, it's, it is really.

Easier. I mean, one of the things you can say is like, well, Irvin Santana has a great slider. So if Irvin Santana is going to show me his grip, like I'm going to frigging listen. I mean, you had the example of like everybody trying to learn Mo's cutter, you know, and, uh, maybe the only person who pulled it off was.

Kenley Jansen. He's closest. We talked about that last year. He is the closest. Still, but still not really there. Don't know there. He is still a unicorn. And on the player development side, because we were, we, when we were talking

about the player development processes earlier, like on the player development side, this is really important because you have so many players and you want to have individualized plans for each, but you're, it actually works a little bit better if you can kind of put them into buckets to some degree so that you can be like, Oh, we, we, you know, the Yankees, we have two or three buckets. If you're over the top, we want you to look like Louise heel, Luis, have a Reno. We want you to be power over the top power slider. That's what you are for same slider. That's your deal. If you're, you know, at 30 degree arm angle, then you are Michael King, Clark Schmidt. I've

talked about this a lot. I did notice something recently. Hayden was an Ensky is neither over the top, nor is he. So Michael King, Clark Schmidt and Will Warren all basically have a 37 degree arm angle. It's really crazy. They're like the same arm angle. So they had a plan for them and it's slightly divergent. You know, Clark Schmidt has a better curve ball. King has a better exchange out.

You know, they're not all the same, but was an NTSC is actually 45 50 ish. And it's not quite past 50 or kind of over the top. So, um, I wonder if they put them in the wrong bucket. That's possible. Uh, the Tobias Meyers thing is a great example. And, and a one little nuance, I think people kind of get lost in is. You have people developing and talking to these guys, right? So like there's pitching coaches or there's,

there's a pitching coordinator or something. Sometimes timing is the issue, right? Whereas someone else is struggling, which they know is in one of the buckets and they're spending other time with them. And then they, someone else just gets, just doesn't get as much attention like Tobias Meyers. And they just like, we can't,

we don't have the ability to get this guy to where he is cause he doesn't fit in one of our buckets. And that we, there's lot of work to be put so we don't have to figure it out somebody else You know an easy plan and we don't have we can't we can't come up with one right now Or someone gets to stay in the big leagues because our team isn't very good and they get to figure this thing out because there's No other options as opposed to Someone just not getting the shot to make the adjustment and they have to do it, they end up somewhere else. That happens all the time and it's just how quickly can, how quickly, like I said, how quickly can you notice

the thing and get, and then get it deployed and get that person bought in so that then now their work is them working on it and you don't have to focus on them so much. I think that's, I think that's what people are looking for and their players a lot. Like if they get that idea that I tell you something and we are working on it,

I don't have to worry about you after that point. Everyone wants as many of those guys as possible. Just because, you know, just because obviously that's they're gonna take control of their careers, but like you're dealing with 20, 20 year olds, 19 year olds, 21 year olds, like not everyone's in different places in their life, maturity wise, and they don't know what to do.

So that happens ton. That's like the biggest, I think the biggest thing is just getting lost Not everyone's in different places in their life maturity wise and they don't know what to do. So That that happens ton. That's like the biggest I think the biggest thing is just getting lost in the shuffle sometimes when there's something there and that's why we're seeing teams Like the Rays go get a guy who's just been like Six there and a six there and 12 innings and not getting shots and then suddenly they throw a 1-4, right? Like that's the extreme version of that, but that's why they were so good. And that's what teams are doing. But everyone's now getting there to where now guys are getting, they, a lot of times they know, like I know it would make you better.

We just can't get you there yet. We can't, we don't have time to get you there because we have to make a roster move or there's a crunch or spring trainings ending, or you're a rule five guy and we have to send, you know, like there's a lot of that where they just like, I think we could get you there if we had another month, but we don't, we got to send you back. And then they figure it out there and you're like,

dang it. Like that's the, that's the, you heard Mark Elias talk about a lot. He's just like, I just don't want to lose these guys and then have them become, it's like, it's based on there as a DM, which is not good. It's really hard to get, get rid of anybody. You kind of turn into a player hoarder at that point, which is what they kind of have a little bit. Yeah, that's what they do. But when I look at, if I'm looking at a healthy organization,

I look at different ways to produce major leaguers. And I think the Rays are like that because when I look at the Rays, you know, Zach Littell on that roster is like completely different from everybody else. And even Taj Bradley at this point is pretty completely different from the rest the crew the rest the crew. Is all power like multiple power sliders you know like we got three or four different breaking ball shapes there all power you know. I've been a big big on ride in the past you know like who's the sinker ball around on the race i don. I don't really, it doesn't come to mind right away, but Littell is like. This a softer fast ball and a lot of splitters and all about command.

And, you know, they gave him a shot and it really worked out for them. And he doesn't really fit the mold. When I look at, um, the Seattle, what I like is when I talk to them, you know, Logan Gilbert and, um, and Bryce Miller feed off each other because they have similar arm slots and they can teach each other grips and they can show each other things that work. Um, and I was talking to Brian Wu and he's like, yeah, I mean, I know those guys geek out all the time and I'm friends with them and we hang out, but

like, I can't really talk to them about pitching cause I'm here and they're there and like, we don't speak the same language. So, you know, I go bug Luis Castillo for his change of grip. They're similar. They're more similar. Yeah. It's like, you know, I, I, we, I talked to Castillo about how to keep our fastball separate and, you know, uh, and our, and our change of grips and stuff like that. So, yeah, there you can have two patron saints too, you know. I think it goes back to having multiple plans.

If this doesn't work, then we could try this. And it's saying we have four to five different templates that we like to work in. If these things aren't working, if you don't fit any of those, then you're going to get traded. You're going to get DFA or something's going to happen. But or you might have to figure it out on your own at the driveline or treasure or whatever. Right. But trying to fit everybody into one mold or even two might not be flexible enough

given how different pitchers are across the board right now. And yeah, I keep thinking about the Taj Bradley stuff we've talked about over the past year to can he find something else that just gets him out of that primary velocity band, because I think that would unlock everything. And it's like if we're talking about it, I'm sure the Rays have talked about it and tried it, and there's some reason why it just hasn't quite clicked yet. But he just turned 24 today. So happy birthday, Taj. I'm sure you're listening to the pod on your birthday.

But I still have that little glimmer of hope that something will actually click for him given how young he is. What if he'd come up in an organization that had Kevin Gossman, you know, in the, in the major league rotation, like, I wonder if it would have helped him at all. Yeah. You know, these are the kinds of conversations that really help people. Um, bum Garner was like, I remember when CC came to town, bum Garner wanted to see his cutter grip ran across, ran across the field to talk to him about cutters. So these conversations matter, but, uh hard to kind of do the mapping.

I bet you there's somebody we haven't even thought of that sort of has affected an organization that someone's like sort of shouting about right now into the radio. Let us know in discord. If, uh, if you're the one shouting right now. We're happy to hear from you. We're gonna go through an exercise similar to what we did last week. We're gonna try and grade the top 10 bullpens, and I'll start with an open question

because we each went about this in our own ways. How are you grading a bullpen entering this 2025 season? Trevor, what were the criteria that you cared about? So my three categories, which I feel like is a nice number to approach anything like this with, it gives you something. I kind of thought of it as bucketed out the roles that are traditionally in a bullpen,

but then thought about versatility in those roles. So this is with the assumption that your bullpen, the people who are out there and in it right now, are in it, all right? And adding something or people getting better or whatever is not being factored in. So I have the closer. Yeah, impossible to factor in.

Well, but even like guys coming up, just like if it happened right now and this is the list, how could you fill in these three categories and one's closer, so your quality of your closer, if you have one that like Emmanuel Closet, for example, and vice versa, say he's throwing all the time, your offense, of course, two runs every game, you're up two to one all the time and you need someone else to pitch,

even though I'm pretty sure he would just pitch every time because everyone in that bullpen throws 80 times a year. Who else could you throw in that role and who has experience and who has done the job well? All this stuff's factored in. And then the setup, like what are your options for the sixth, seventh, and eighth to get to you to the closers? And then how can those things move around and still be quality options in the most situations. And then the bridge for me is like, guys say the starter blows up and you need to cover innings. Do you have a long guy or a couple guys

who can throw multiple innings? And then those guys also, some of those guys also have the option to like throw one inning and the sixth inning too. The Dodgers have been throwing their bullpen together like this a lot as of as of late and that in my mind is like one of the best ways to to do to do this so it's like covering innings same way the bullpens were or the the starting rotations were and then getting to the closers and then how consistently can you say this game is

over going into the night inning and just going from there. That's how I did it. You've got the Dodgers as the best bullpen in the game right now by that criteria, guardians, twins, tigers and Yankees rounding out your top five and then Brewers, Orioles, Royals, Padres and Braves going six through 10. I mean, the Dodgers, it's, Dodgers, it's a function of adding Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates probably to the equation, right? The quality of what they added versus the quality of what was lost,

guys like Brazier and Hudson, that's a big swing, right? If the Dodgers were the fifth or seventh or eighth best bullpen, whatever they actually were coming out of last season. That's a pretty big boost. So I imagine that's kind of how they jumped ahead of historically dominant Guardians pen for you. Yeah. Well, if you think about it this way in terms of the number of bullpen guys in that bullpen who have like 20 ish saves in the last 162 games, they have five.

So like I hope that makes it clear. You know, we got Evan Phillips, who has closed a lot of games, Trinen has closed a lot of games. Then we have, they added two closers, and Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates, you mentioned, who both saved a bunch of games last year. And then you add Michael Koepke to that mix. And then you have Bessie, who just closed a game in Tokyo,

and he's not even in the five I just mentioned. And then, you know, Anthony Banda through really, really well. He's going to be throwing him and Bruce are gradually throwing in the third inning sometimes in the eighth inning. Sometimes like the whole bullpen from one to eight can be with the exception of maybe one or two guys won't get a save this year. And that is crazy. That's insane.

That is depth, depth on top of depth on top of the depth with and, and in contrast, the guardians, they have a bunch of options, but they are much more rigid. I think it's, it's a, it's more of the fifth 2015 Royals. The game is where at this point, this is the score you're going to see these four guys and here they come. Tim Heron, uh,, and then Hunter Gaddis, and then Manuel Closset. You're going to see them all the time.

What concerns me about them and why they're not number one because they last year were the best is just because they all threw 75 plus times and that's just too many. It's just too many. I think, I hope they predict them a little bit more or give more guys options or their starting pitcher goes a little bit deeper.

But that's kind of the difference between those two in my opinion. You know, you use some different methodology and I was very surprised to see the Giants clock in at number one on your list. I'm gonna put your full card up because you've got even more criteria you were using. What factored in, how did you come to the conclusion

that the Giants are the best bullpen in baseball right now? I wanted to use location plus and stuff plus as my basis, but I thought why not use a more robust way of including stuff plus and location plus and use the oopsie ERA and K minus BB. And the reason I use both is that K on speed is more predictive for relievers. Um, it's one of the most powerful things and it doesn't have like a park effect to it. So ERA does have a park effect to it. And I wanted to have one that was not park affected. Um, but the ERA and came on as BB I've listed are oopsie ones.

So that's stuff and location based. Um, so, you know, that's driven a lot by stuff. When you see something like the Dodgers, uh, came on as BB being so good, the twins came on as BB being so good. That's partially because of their stuff plus and their location plus. The third thing I wanted to put in was there, the same deviation of the arm angle, which is from our last conversation about like how to, you know, think of a pen as a full pen and how to, how to look at, um, the diversity of arm angles coming out of the pen. And that actually hurt the twins quite a bit.

I think the twins would have been number one, except that they have, uh, bottom five, uh, divergence or variability of arm angle in, in their pen. Like they seem to have a type they like in the pen and they, and they go with that. They don't, they don't have any, uh, submariners or anything like that. So their arm angle, and this is from the top six pitchers, the top six relievers. I did the, uh, for every team and it's, it's weighted by how many batters they've faced. So it's not like, you know, um, somebody's dominating this, these stats. So the twins I have is very excellent.

Despite that, the reason why the giants get to the top is probably a little bit of a park effect on the ERA because their K-Bb is not as good as the rest of these, but also just that old idea of the raise bullpen. I'm, I'm probably going to do a bold prediction that the giants, um, will have the best bullpen in baseball because I can go take the arm angles from Statcast and overlay them. And you'll see that it's not just Tyler Rogers. They just have, they have Ryan Walker, who's halfway, you know, they have, they have Camilo Duval, who's over the top. They have Randy Rodriguez, who people need to know who he is. He is nasty, nasty. So they have a lot of nastiness and funk and different arm angles.

I'm fairly comfortable with this. I mean, I understand it's the outlier. You guys don't have the Giants ranked at all, I don't think. And I don't think many people think of the Giants as a top bullpen, but if you think about it in terms of different slots coming after you, different stuff, different, and to DVRs, to Trevor's idea about the, the, the, um, the roles that they have. Like, I think that the stuff they have to some extent really fits their roles. So like Tyler Rogers has got to be one of the best guys to come on with a guy on base. You know, I just feel like you're just going to get a little squibber double play.

Boom. And, um, you know, he's up there with, uh, the Orioles who also, uh, uh, factor in highest on my list, um, with, you know, they can go to Yenny or Cano when they need that kind of arm slot and that kind of stuff, they can go to Felix Bautista to close, they have different arm angles. They have different, uh, kind of arm slot and that kind of stuff, they can go to Felix Bautista to close. They have different arm angles. They have different, uh, kind of funk to them too. So I, uh, you know, as a, as a full unit, I think that I can stand behind this. I know when you pick it apart, you're like, well, you know, Doval is just like a,

you know, a third tier class a, so why not have the guardians hire? You know, but Walker is basically Jake Arietta, Ryan Walker is Jake Arietta out of the pen. You know, and Deval is actually, I think closer to class A than people want to admit and you have people you guys don't even know, Randy Rodriguez and nobody else has a Tyler Rogers. So that's kind of the reasoning I have. That when I saw this result, I was like, should I put my finger on my model and change it just because this seems weird? And then I thought, no, what I'm just going to go

with the stats I used and, and put them in order of the stats I used. And there you are giants at the top. All right. So I had to take a completely different approach from each of you. I looked back at, we talked about a couple of weeks ago on the show, shutdowns and meltdowns. So shutdowns are appearances by relievers that increase win probability by a certain threshold. Meltdowns are the opposite, decrease win probability by a certain threshold. And what I wanted to look at was, of all of those appearances,

how many more shutdowns did you have than meltdowns? Combine them together, take the number of shutdowns that you have than meltdowns? Combine them together. Take the number of shutdowns, divide by the total and you get a percentage and say, OK, the Guardians shut down percentage, like a shut down percentage of your impactful relief outing. Seventy three point five percent for the Guardians, easily the best in the league last year. The Brewers came in at number two, seventy two point eight percent. There was a bit of a cliff before you got to the Rays, the Braves, the Phillies, and Cardinals,

all at or above 65%, a bunch of teams near there. So that was the first thing I looked at. Because I'm like, okay, how impactful are these relievers? And I wanted to put that alongside innings pitched. Some bullpens get more opportunities. You want to make sure the ones that are more heavily used aren't just getting a lot of extra weight from being out there all the time time because there is downside to that.

As Trevor mentioned, I think if you have a concern about the guardians, it's the carryover effect of how heavily they were worked in the regular season. And then of course, having the postseason innings on top of that, do they all have the same stuff? Do they come back this year and pitch exactly as well as they did a year ago? I honestly liked the top two, but I don't, I don't know how deep it goes. Yeah. I don't know. I think like the top two, but I don't I don't know how deep it goes. Yeah, I don't know. I think one thing I noticed more we've talked about Gaddis and some guys like that.

Yeah, I mean, I think Klaus and Kate Smith and Gaddis like they're really, really good. That's a great A bullpen. I think one thing I noticed about the Guardians losing Nick Sandlin, he ended up in the Jays bullpen. That's kind of an important shift when you start looking at some of the things that were happening last year, like that fourth, fifth, sixth reliever. They do matter a lot when you lean as heavily on that group as the Guardians do. So I do think that was one little doubt, like, OK, like a natural regression, like being that good is hard to sustain, plus a little bit of loss that people aren't factoring in

because it wasn't their first, second, or third best reliever, but it was someone that was very important overall. So I think you do have to account for that. Eli Morgan's gone, Scott Barlow's gone. They added Seawall, they added Junis. Like generally it's the same bullpen in terms of quality and depth. I think you have to maybe give them the benefit of the doubt for now using a method like this.

And the only reason I didn't just keep the Brewers up there at number two, they lost Devin Williams and they pitched half of last season without him. But Devin Williams pops in the shutdowns versus meltdowns. We talked about that a couple of weeks ago. He's one of the most dominant relievers during his span of time in the big leagues. So you kind of look at his loss as one that will have a significant impact on them. Cause it's one fewer elite reliever, even though I think part of this exercise is putting guys in the right spot to not have a meltdown matching up correctly, taking your, your Jared Koenig

or your Brian Hudson and using them in the right spots. I think that's part of this too. That's where I think the diversity of arm angle can come in, you know, because there's certain arm angles that fit certain hitters and you just know it. And the better teams are modeling it. You know, it's like, this guy cannot see side armors. This guy cannot, you know, this guy can actually hit those guys. Hey, I think I can eyeball it. I think eyeballing it.

Hey, I think I can eyeball it. I think eyeballing it, our consensus rank is Dodgers, Guardians, Twins, maybe Yankees. Yeah, because both of you guys are quite a bit lower on the Braves than I am. So Braves would probably make sixth or seventh on the combined list. Yeah. We each have an outlier, which is not a surprise. I had to raise pretty high up here. And some of that's just organizational trust.

They always do this. Oh, but Hunter Biggie and Mason Montgomery, like they've got guys coming, you know, and I didn't even mention the guys are doing the eighth and ninth probably. Yeah. So I felt like they definitely belonged in this group and they did just shut down to meltdown ratio. They did really well in that metric last year and that was not the typical A plus raised bullpen that we're used to either.

So I kind of see that as an organization that has an up arrow in this facet too. The Phillies were a tough rank because losing Jeff Hoffman especially is big. Losing Carlos Estevez even though they had him for part of the season, is also big. I don't think Jordan Romano is Jordan Romano. Yeah, he's not Pete Jordan Romano. And even still, you lost two good relievers, you maybe added one. Joe Ross is fine, a little more of a glue guy than high leverage guy.

So I thought the Phillies were a team that actually lost quite a bit. And then of the teams that were just awful last year by shutdown to meltdown, the Blue Jays, not surprisingly, they were awful by war too. I think they had a minus two and a half war as a group. They added Hoffman, added Ymi Garcia, they got Sandlin. They brought in Richard Love Lady for depth. So that's like a completely different group of guys there. They could go from one of

the worst bullpens in the league to at least league average. But if I had to make a bold prediction, I'd say maybe the Blue Jays have a top 10 bullpen this year. I didn't put them in my top 10, but it's a pretty big overhaul and a clear space that needed to be overhauled. Yeah, they can make a huge adjustment. I real quick comment on the Braves too. I think losing Joe Jimenez hurt him quite a bit. And I real quick comment on the Braves too. I think losing Joe Jimenez heard him. Part of it and Minter losing Minter and free agency. Yeah. Because those were like this, those were the seven eight.

So now we're like, what now we're asking. And Iglesias is another year older. I mean, he's, he's, he's a veteran guy. He might be able to hold onto it, but not, but I don't usually hold on to their velocity. Maybe Craig Crimber will close games. He's back in Atlanta. He'll just be part of the bridge.

Getting to Iglesias too is like, you know, they're good. Like they do a good job, but like it's not, there's going to be nothing like crazy special and like the stuff and overall just general. Like the like, like the same thing with the Phillies, like yeah, they still have a big lefty throws 102 and they have. Yeah, Alvarado and Kirk Ring.

It's still good. They good stuff, but it's like Kirk Ring hasn't really been dominant in the way that he probably should yet, which I think he will eventually, but he hasn't yet. I'm not gonna count on it. And then, you know, we don't know who's closing the games. So it's like, guys, your closer is gone.

Like, I can't give you more when we don't know who's, how you're going to end the game. Like that's kind of important. By projected K minus BB it's Minnesota, Dodgers, Atlanta, Cleveland, Baltimore. So, yeah, I mean, I think Pierce Johnson, Bummer, Naris, they're all, they're all solid. And we haven't even talked about the Mets. The Mets are pretty good.

Mets are pretty good too. With Mentor and Diaz. Diaz is there with the talked about the Mets. The Mets are pretty good. Mets are pretty good too. With Mentor and Diaz. Diaz is there with the top of the closers. Butoh is I think, you know, not necessarily thought of as a top setup guy, but he's there. You know, I really like Daniel Nunez. So I think that they have something going.

I do too. I'm a big fan. Like he's got, everything he did looked good. Like he, there's not a lot of like, it doesn't seem like a flash in the pan. It seems like sustainable stuff, health permitting and him command permitting, obviously, but if he, if he throws the ball where he wants to, he's tough to hit. They were right on that threshold. Like had some, had a few holdovers that if they lean on those guys more and they

take a step forward, you could see them pretty easily make their way to the top 10. Yeah. He's a pretty good pop big time last year. Yeah. So tough exercise, but another fun one and all different ways to go about it. And, you know, choose, choose your own adventure, I think, as far as how exactly you want to grade them, but those were the different criteria we tried to use to put those lists together.

I was surprised the Cardinals bullpen graded out the way it did last year because in my mind they were not a top six top Seven sort of bullpen they were just kind of average But they actually looked pretty good upon closer looks and the one that was really bad that I thought was good Maybe actually is good because of a lot of trades they made last year for the Royals You know the Royals and even the D backs adding Puck. Those are two that did not grade well as units. That should be better. YD-7th and K-BB. Still?

Projecting K-BB, yeah. Even with all the changes? Yeah. That's kind of surprising. Yeah. The Dbacks jump for you on that at all or no? K-BB 15th, so right in the middle. Yeah.

But interesting arm angles and they were in my top 10. OK, well, AJ Puck, I think one of the more underrated relievers in baseball right now. Just Martinez. Yeah, Martinez is nasty. If that control gets even a little better too, there's still another gear I think that he can find. Let us know how you feel about our bullpen rankings, among other things in our Discord. You can join with the link in the show description again Be sure to check out those live shows if you're in the area next week March 27th March 28th at Bare Bottle

Bernal Heights in San Francisco you can find Eno on blue sky EnoSaris.biscout.social Trevor is I am Trevor May.biscout.social IMDbR.biscout.social That is gonna do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening.