Rates & Barrels - Pitching Prospects Promoted for the Stretch Run

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss an unfortunate sequence that led to two Royals players suffering an injury Thursday night, uncertainty regarding the availability of Tyler Glasnow down the stretch, several pitching prospects set to debut this weekend including Rhett Lowder and Caden Dana, and a few other intriguing waiver-wire targets to consider. Rundown 2:44 Vinnie Pasquantino & Lucas Erceg Injured On Same Play 8:36 Tyler Glasnow and Freddie Freeman Updates 15:18 Rhett Lowder Gets the Call From the Reds 20:27 Samuel Aldegheri & Caden Dana Join the Angels 26:30 A Look at Kumar Rocker's Post-Surgery Pitch Mix 29:03 Other Pitchers We're Watching Closely for Potential Stretch Run Opportunities 40:47 Which Team Doesn't Have an Internal Stuff Model? 44:40 Does Ernie Clement Have a Late Breakout Profile? 48:12 Weekend Waiver Preview: Tigers Pitching, José Tena, Miguel Amaya and More Marlins Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Thursdays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Producer: Brian Smith Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does possible sound like for your business? It's having the spend to power your scale with no preset spending limit. Redefine possible with Business Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Friday August 30th, Derek and I, Brino Serres here with you ahead of the long weekend in the States and we are crawling to the end of the week. I think we're both just dragging through these last couple of hours of work for the

week, not because we don't like our jobs, because this week has been very busy. Got kids going back to school. We got all sorts of things going on, just general life stuff. It's the way it works, right? So we'll try to help you through it. Try to get you ready for the waiver wire this weekend with our weekend waiver wire preview. We got some news and notes to get to and some project prospect, along with a few mailbag questions and, you know,

we got our discord fired up, too. So if you're out on the boat this weekend or in the backyard or working or wherever you got to be you can be on the discord getting help with your teams chatting with some good folks about baseball and we've got a new channel for show recommendations like TV shows and movies too so check out the the screens channel I think we all need each other for that to get those those fresh recommendations. We had a really good reaction to our discussion about the top two how good Soto and Judge are and I tweeted about it but it was the thing from the discord that the Yankees are 2 and 10 when neither Soto or Judge get a

hit. 15 and 18 if they have one hit combined but 49 and 13 if they both have a hit 21 and 2 when they when they have four hits and they're averaging 2.5 runs per game when those two are are hitless and 5.1 in all games so you know there were some responses i tweet being like duh like you know these are great players and if they play great players don't hit i'm like i don't know dude like you know i'm i don't have the numbers in front of me But I'm sure that the Arizona Diamondbacks aren't you know under 500 when you know Could tell Marte and jock Peterson don't get a hit right because there's a little bit more there to pick up the slack I think you'd see a distribution

Sort of similar to the one you described when the two best players in the lineup, you know Don't get a hit get one all one, all that breakdown that would exist, I just don't think it would be as extreme as we're seeing. Some of their teams might have a combination like that, a lot of teams don't have a combination that good. That's the whole point. That's how we came up. Yeah, alright, just look at the time backs.

They're definitely different. Somehow scoring the most runs in the big leagues. Still surprised. Jon Peterson, their best hitter. Get on in there though, it's a good time. Let's get to some news. This was a really bad, weird play in the Royals Astros game on Thursday night. So Lucas Ersig tries to field a come backer

with his bare hand, pitching hand. Kind of bobbles it, has to rush the throw. That's one of those things where you're like, your body does it without without it's like instinct and Then like I've done this throwing to the kids in the cage or like they hit one right over my ear and I'm like Oh god, why did I put my hand out? Yeah, so he rushes the throw to first base throws a little offline Turns Vinnie Pascuantino's glove hand into the path of the runner coming through first base

Vinny Pasquantino. Is that how it didn't Rizzo get hurt like that? But a lot of guys they got hurt like that I mean I've seen I've seen a bunch of different injuries at first base though. Actually the worst one I've seen it was a non Professional injury, of course. It was a softball game Where they're a shortstop rush to throw threw it into the first baseman shins and instead of getting hit in the shins stop, rushed a throw, threw it into the first baseman's shins and instead of getting hit in the shins, he lifted his leg, like bend at the knee, lifted his leg up, the foot that was planted by first base but the guy running through first ran through his leg, clipped it, it was real bad. That was a fracture. That was the worst one I've seen. Fortunately

big leaguers have the instincts not to do that. We're softballing dream was we were like kind of trying to set up our team and it was mixed men and women and there was a discussion if I should play third base or first base and this girl was like, I played D1 softball and I was like, yeah, you can play third base. You could stand over there and take the buckets. And I was like, you know what you're doing, I'll just be an idiot out there. You know and she Yeah, got one in the mouth to get sure hopped mm-hmm. No that sucked. Yeah, that's not fun And it was like 20 minutes after we'd had a discussion

I mean she'd wanted to so and she was she was gonna be better than me, but yeah, I would have got you too, so And she was gonna be better than me. Yeah, it would've got you too. So, wrong place, wrong time in that instance. Yeah, and that's the taste with these guys. I mean, it's gonna happen sometimes on the field. It sucks. Vinny's out now. He's been great.

And he's out now six to eight weeks, they announced, which even if it's on the short end, you'd be lucky to come back for any playoffs. That just sucks for the Royals. The Royals look every day like they're, you know, gonna get that wild card spot, but now one of their best hitters, yeah, we haven't heard anything about Ersegg,

so my instinct is that he'll be out a couple days and he'll be all right, but. Yeah, we'll see if we get an update on him, but day to day is the assumption for now, and Vinny Pescuettino was starting to hit even more lately He was the ninth best hitter of the last 30 days in the fan graphs player Raider So we kind of talked about it I think midseason where the further away he got from that shoulder injury the more likely it was that he was gonna start

To hit like the guy he was pre injury. I think that was actually happening. So trying to replace him, you know, it's pre-injury, I think that was actually happening. So trying to replace him, you know, it's probably a mixed bag of, I don't know, like Nick Prado and just kind of finding a way on the bench to kind of scrape together a viable option at first base. I don't know if there's a straight one-for-one replacement that's gonna gather up all that playing time. Can I tell you something I noticed about the Royals

recently, an old friend of ours? MJ Melendez. Oh he's been going crazy. 264.312.529 slugging with an 18% strikeout rate. I love it. That's great though. I mean like especially in a non-Vinny Pascuentino Royals lineup you're going to need MJ Melendez or some of the other guys in that mix who haven't played at a high level to play better. That's just part of how you replace a player like that. Isn't it weird that he's just going to end up about the same place as he did last year

where he's going to have, you know, 18, 19 homers, 230 average and be like, you know, 5% worse than the average with the stick. And it's been so many ups and half, and even the projections across the board have him above a 100 WRC+, the rest of the way. It's strange. It continues to be strange. And I'll need help explaining it forever. Like, I just... Why isn't he better? I just don't know. He's chasing more this year. Yeah, he's chasing... I mean, it seems like a terrible approach. When I watch, I just see the same thing every time where it's just like, he

swings at everything and I guess sometimes he hits the ball hard. I guess he, he makes contact. So, you know, that's not a bad strikeout rate. It's not terrible. It's perplexing to me. I can't put him on any more lists. He's not any more sleeper lists. He's off.

Four time. The sleeper lists. He's off four-time sleeper breakout Burn me four times you're off The player that probably plays a little bit more I guess in all of this I mean you would assume a lot of Sal Perez maybe playing first base and Freddy Fermin catching more but like I said They'll shift a couple guys around and kind of mix and match to offset that lost playing time for Vinny Pasquettino.

Bunch of Dodgers injury news to follow up on, including some vague details about Tyler Glasnow's injury. He's scheduled a throw on Friday to resume throwing. And there is optimism from Dave Roberts that Tyler Glasnow will return this season. But that's not exactly what you wanna hear with a month to go in the season if you were hoping to get even two or three starts

from Tyler Glass now before the season is over. I know you just went through the challenging exercise of re-racking pitcher rankings for the final month and everything kind of comes down to schedule and availability at this point. Like just trying to order names like you could take a guy with top five skills and have to bury him outside the top 30 or top 40 if there's a lot of uncertainty about the number of starts

he's going to make or if the few starts he is going to make happen to be against really difficult opponents. Yeah, I tried to make a little mini tier at around 50. I just thought that after 50, you get into guys where it's really schedule dependent. You know, you're Charlie Morton at Philadelphia. Do you really want to pitch him there? You know, same with like, I know Sean Manaya has been good,

but at Philadelphia, at Atlanta, makes me scared. Brandon Fott against the Dodgers. Those are guys who were in like the 50s, you know? And the guys who were in the 40s, I wanna start almost all the time. I don't really wanna start Seth Lugo at New York, but the guys above 50, I would wanna start them in most of their starts.

And the guys who were ranked better than 50, I wanna start them in most of their starts. The guys who were ranked above 50 and higher, want to start in every other start or so. So that's why I thought, okay, this is a good place to put you, Darvish, Tyler Glass now, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Yamamoto's on a rehab assignment, so we've got a schedule. And he's had a two-inning start, so he could have a three and a four, or a three and then be out. He could have his four in the major leagues, you you know because he's kind of ramping back up his VELO wasn't quite there so you have some performance risk on top of it with glass now i don't think you

have as much performance risk but the starts that they have for him on fan graphs are at atlanta verse colorado at colorado this is assuming he comes back for three starts so that's an okay i for him on fan graphs are at Atlanta versus Colorado at Colorado. This is assuming he comes back for three starts. So that's an okay. I mean at Atlanta, you would normally start glass now versus Colorado. You'd be very happy to at Colorado, especially if it's like one of the last games of the season, they might just put them out there for two innings and be like, okay, your tuneup is done, but you know, stay healthy for the playoffs. So with you Darvish, he's throwing, he's talking about coming back.

He's on the schedule. The schedules, the Giants at home at the Giants Houston, LA, you'd want to start him for like, I think three of those at least, maybe all four, but it's a schedule. It's not like he's in the rotation yet. You know what I mean? So all three of those, I thought were difficult ranks. And so I just kind of threw them together around 50. Totally makes sense. Just given the circumstances with one month ago in the season, be sure to check those rankings out.

If you don't have a subscription, the athletic dot com slash rates and barrels will get you the best available deal on a sub covers everything. Baseball coverage on the stretch. Fantasy football might have a draft coming up this weekend, really next week, everything you want for one low price. The Dodgers are pretty banged up, Freddie Freeman is dealing with a hairline fracture in his finger, he's missed some time this week, they expect him to return on Friday, but that's the sort of injury where even if he's playing, I'm not quite sure he's your typical Freddie Freeman for the final month plus of the season every game that the Dodgers put between them and the Diamondbacks and Padres is a

Another game of buffer that could lead to him not playing as much The problem though is that leads only four over the Diamondbacks and five over the Padres. I mean, play it's close enough now that you want Freddie to play. I think. Yeah. I don't want to go into a five game skid and all of a sudden, you know, the the division's up for grabs. And as much as people talk about, you know, we've had some high profile, you know, teams that have gone on like gone on buys and and gone and, you know, not done well in the second round recently and how people might not prefer the buy. I would have to say that you get a free series with a buy.

You know, like you could have lost in that first round. Yes, you could have I think people completely overlooked that and also think it's relatively new having these first round. Yes, you could have. I think people completely overlooked that. And I also think it's relatively new having these types of buys. So I don't know if we can look at the first few years and have some really great teams. Yeah, the playoff schedule's changed every year.

Give it time before we're sure that this is actually a really bad thing. We know layoffs as far as hitters and timing after what, four or five days, that can start to be a problem. It kind of comes to a new question of what should teams be doing to avoid losing that? What can you do to possibly simulate

the experience of hitting an again? You can't do it one for one. Live batting practice against your fifth starter, or more trajectory stuff, or call up one of your prospects that still has a little bit of few innings in his arm and have him like throw a live, like, you know, try to do full bore, you know, game, game type situation, you know, hope that, uh, you know, he doesn't break one of your hitters arms or

something, but like, I did want to focus on the schedule because these things become important when you're talking about Freddie Freeman, with Bobby Miller on that team, he's still not 100% in terms of his injury. It was really hard to figure out what his schedule will be because Yamamoto's coming back, Glasstown's coming back,

does Miller go down? And then you're watching Bueller and you're like, Bueller doesn't look 100 percent. So like and then you know that the Dodgers go to like six man rotations, you know, a lot. So you're just like you put the Dodgers pitcher's schedules in and you're just like, I have no idea. Another one team that's like that is the Reds. So the Reds called up Rhett Louder, who's exciting.

But they also have Brandon Lebrant, who is the son of Charlie Lebrant. And if you know what the timing is, you know that that means that the son is 30 years old already and he's a minor league journeyman. And the Reds are basically, they have Andrew Abbott hurt, they have Hunter Green hurt and Nicolodolo went down with a finger injury. So they are just scrambling. We get louder. I have his stuff plus profile from AAA. As you can see, he has average ride. That's what that dotted line means.

The gray line is average. He has average ride, but he has plus V-Low, at least, you know, above, above average reload. So sits around 95 with the fastball. His sinker is better than his foreseam, so he's kind of a sinker-slider guy with a good changeup. And so the big question will be, is that foreseam fastball good enough to get lefties out? To keep lefties off the changeup, basically.

Because he's gonna be more sinker-slider against righties, more foreseam change against lefties off the change up basically, you know, cause he's going to be more sink or slider against righties, more forcing change against lefties. So that's, that's going to be the question mark for Red Louder, but, and then on top of that, it's a really tough stadium. So, and then on top of that, when you're trying to, you know, put his schedule together, you're like, I don't know, I don't know what his schedule is.

I don't know what the rest of the rotation looks like. Is Nick Martinez a full starter or is he a three inning guy that's piggybacking with another guy? So that was the hard part of this whole enterprise. And then another thing was, just I wanted to mention Bowden Francis, pitched really well yesterday and he's got a really nice stretch going. And I think we've talked about how the splitter has been a big deal for him and he has good shape on his force team the breaking balls with slow so somehow the splitter really pulls it all together I think. You know I ranked in sixty six.

Which feels low suddenly and the reason why I kind of ranked in sixty six sixty seven is his next two starts were at Boston at Philly. Now he goes out and has such a good start at Boston that I'm not as scared about playing against Philly. And then after that he's Mets, Rangers, Rays and Marlins. So he has all of a sudden one of the best schedules since he got past this Boston thing. So he's gonna make my ranking look bad. But I'm a big fan of his. Zebby Matthews, who I have right next to him, is like the

exact opposite. So I had Matthews ahead of him. I think they're very similar is that they both have pretty good stuff. Widesh enough arsenals, really good command. Matthews goes Blue Jays, Rays, Angels, and then he finishes Guardians, Red Sox, Orioles. And so, you know, I had Matthews ahead one, because I was like, well, in an ideal world, you could have Matthews for the next three starts and then switch to Bowden, but, you know, that's just how things work.

You might not have that luxury. Yeah, now people are asking me, Bowden Francis or Jared Jones? I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm still Jared Jones, dude. I know he didn't have a- Life comes at you fast, wow. Exactly, yeah. I still, I know Jared Jones doesn't have a great start

coming back, but it's still easily Jared Jones for me. Life really is, like holding hands and then looking back at the person that looks an awful lot like the person you're holding hands with, but having an extra that this season has evolved into one of the most exciting and unpredictable of recent times, with an incredible seven different winners from four different teams. It's impossible to predict what will happen in the second half of 2024, but one thing you can be sure of is that the Race F1 podcast will be with you every step of the way, with myself, Ed Straw, and some of the best F1 reporters in the world on the ground at every race to bring you the inside track on the stories that matter.

Just search for the Race F1 Podcast on your podcast app of choice, and join us twice a week every week for your regular F1 Fits. You know that's the sound of another sale on your online Shopify store, but did you know Shopify powers selling in person too? That's right, Shopify is the sound of selling everywhere, online, in store, on social media, and beyond. Shopify POS is your command center for your retail store. From accepting payments to managing inventory,

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Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash the athletic all lowercase. Go to Shopify.com slash the athletic to take your retail business to the next level today. Shopify.com slash the athletic. If you're wondering why rankings are difficult, why every decision you make for your fantasy team this time of year is difficult, it's for all of those reasons. It's because the plans are written in pencil. It's because the injuries are piling up and you have these these new players being added to the mix that could be running up against season innings caps. Like we don't even know like where each team is setting workload guardrails for some of their guys. And louder is not

the only prospect debuting. This weekend's Project Prospect will focus on a few of these other names too. And Lauder's coming up as part of a double header that the Reds have with the Brewers on Friday. But they pulled him up, they didn't make him the 27th man. They didn't make him the 27th man. So it's not an automatic go back down.

If he could shell, he could go back down. So that's kind of weird. It's funny, DL Hall is the 27th man for the Brewers in that double header, so he will go back down. If he could've shelled he could go back down. Yeah. So that's kind of weird. It's funny, DL Hall is the 27th man for the Brewers in that doubleheader, so he will go back down even though Velo looked a little bit better at AAA in his recent outing, so maybe there's still something brewing with DL Hall. But the Angels, of course, are bringing up two. Right after my rankings come out. Two more starting pitchers coming up and Aldegary has like a five eRA and yeah Samuel Aldegary is gonna come up and

he's barely pitched at double a think he's made six total starts at that level a couple in the Phillies organization and the rest in the Angels organization after that trade he's part of the Carlos Estevez deal Aldegary will debut Friday against the Mariners. Soft landing spot if you're in a league with first come first serve pickups. If you're desperate for anyone starting, sure you could try it. This feels more like a rush job to me than Caden Dana who's been great at AA all season. Even though he's younger, he's got a lot more experience at the level.

23 starts this year, 135 in 2 thirds innings, over a strikeout per inning, a 259 ERA. We've been hearing his name for a while. This is like a slow bubble. And 135 innings of a 2-5 ERA, you pay attention to that. I like the strikeout rate. I can't comment on this stuff necessarily, but the 50 fastball and the 70 slider grade from Van Graafs is a decent foundation at least. Yeah, so Dana will go Sunday and I'd be more interested in streaming Dana in the same kind of first come first serve leagues of course. Pretty healthy gap between them, but the thing that's tempering my enthusiasm about Cade and Dana is last year he threw 68 in a third innings.

And if he's at 135 and two thirds right now, I don't know what the Angels limit is for him, but if he gets into the 150, 160 range, there'd be no restrictions next year. So we could be nearing the point where they're planning on shutting him down anyway and giving him a taste of the big leagues for a handful of starts might just be the way to cap off the season. I could see that, yeah. I could see it being to start, like, get him to 150 so that next year he can do whatever he wants basically innings-wise and then that's it. So that's like-

That's 15 more innings. That's the problem I think looming here if you're interested in this group. So I think out of like, Lauder, Aldegary, and Dana. Even though Dana on paper might be the most interesting, Lauder might be the sweet spot of team needs him. He is pretty close to big league ready. I remember reading a scouting report from Eric Lungenhagen earlier this summer suggesting that Lauder could have been the best starter in the Reds rotation upon arrival, which was before the step forward from Hunter

Green this year and Nicolodolo's looked really good when healthy. But it just gives you an idea that this isn't just a quality back end arm that moved quickly out of Wake Forest. Lowder could be an impact starter for a team that might end up with three of them in short order if he does in fact stay up. You know I had him in a little mini-tier with Jack Leiter who I thought might stay up but once optioned back down and Joe Boyle was last in the mini tier and this is another mini tier that is designed to make me look bad because Joe Boyle is now a reliever. Yeah I saw the the Boyle

start on Saturday I think it was Saturday he pitched against the Brewers I was watching that start with my dad and I said okay watch my dad's never seen Joe boil before I'm like look electric stuff no idea where it's going like that's gonna be everything you see. It's sad 100 for you guys right? Yep oh yeah he did all the Joe Boyle things. Like every box Joe Boyle can tick, he ticked them all. It made me look very smart. Yeah, and Leiter looked good.

He's looking really good stuff-wise. I mean, everything's there stuff-wise, but it's the same package as Boyle, which is why I have them near each other. His location plus did not improve much. Right now, his location plus on 149 fastballs, which is a decent sample, is 95.5, and that is barely doable.

The thing that's interesting about lighter, we talked about this last week when Ryan Bloomfield joined me, is just that the result of AAA have taken off in recent weeks. Like if you go back and look at his last five outings there, it's a 36 to nine strikeout to walk ratio in 23 innings. The reason I think he got sent back down

is because the Rangers and White Sox played a double header and he was designated as the 27th man, but they've got enough injuries in that Texas rotation where I wouldn't look at the fact that he was the automatic demotion and say he's not getting more of a look. I think they want to see what he brings to the table and try to get a read on where he's at at this point with his stuff to see if he can be in their rotation to begin 2025.

One thing that Ryan Pepeo told me that I think is relevant for Jack Leiter is that when he first came up, he struggled with the walk rate, but he did well enough. And that was important was he did well enough to have the confidence to say, Hey, my stuff actually plays in the zone. And there is that interplay of command and confidence where it's like, Hey, you know, Jack Leiter, you know, going for against the White Sox, getting out to with four strikeouts and two walks that might just be good enough for him to say,

hey, you know what? Like when I threw it in the zone and didn't walk the lineup, it worked well. You know, so I'm actually, you know, next time I get up there, I'm just gonna throw all my crap in, you know, kind of towards middle middle and let the, you know, the movement take it away from middle middle

and just simplify things. So Jack Leiter still has a chance. I don't know, Joe Boyle's chances are running out. Yeah, Boyle increasingly looks like a reliever that still needs to improve his command to even be the best possible version of himself in that role, but you could see high leverage stuff when you watch him, even when he's all over the place.

That's always been the case with Boyle. Now, it's interesting that with lighter pitching better, we also have Kumar Rocker healthy again at AAA. And because they were teammates in college, very high profile guys at Vandy. Bunkers K-BB for Rocker right now. Just absurd. It seems like they're always just kind of linked together. It looks great coming off Tommy John though. A 39 to 3 strikeout to walk ratio in 24 and 2 thirds innings that includes his first start at triple-a five innings one hit 10 K's at Round Rock on Wednesday so

things are beginning to really kind of turn around for both of these guys especially now that rocker is healthy again I'm curious if you had to make a decision today if you only have one in a keeper dynasty league and they're Available in some places depending on the number of keepers. I'm taking Kumar Rocker. You're taking Kumar Rocker. What's the big difference? I just think that the command is better, you know, like I'm looking at his minor league. If you're looking on YouTube right now You're looking at his minor league Kumar Rocker's minor league location numbers They're all above a hundred except for the change up. And I know that some people have described his slider as a sweeper but I was looking at his raw movement

numbers on the slider and it doesn't look like a sweeper to me. Which is important because if it's a bullet slider and it's got a 124 stuff plus then it's a really good hard bullet slider that he can work against lefties and righties and then he's just gonna be Slightly better against righties because he can do more sinker slider action on them He has the same thing as Rhett louder where his IVB his vertical movement is not great But his below is even better than louders. He sits 98 So it's a V lo driven thing with his foreseam But he's gonna just have to hope that his fore seam is just good enough, you know, that lefties don't kind of lean over the plate, you

know, because against righties he's gonna be able to sink or slide under the death. So it's a similar package to Rhett Louders, it's just he's got more extension than Rhett Louders and he's got more VELO than Rhett Louders. Rhett Louders actually cuts the ball off and doesn't have great extension, so neither of these guys, despite their numbers and despite some of the hyperbole and some of the, you know, some of the stuff we've heard, neither one of these guys would be like a Jackson Job to me. You know, they're like really exciting young guys that could make it. But, you know, I'm not like this is the next de Grom. Like when I watched Jackson

Job, I'm just like, this is the next de Grom. When I watch Jackson Jobe, I'm just like, this is pretty amazing. So we've had this underlying question we've been trying to answer for the last couple of weeks, breaking it up into parts. Players that we're looking at, watching closely either for a late season debut or guys that could emerge to have a lot of value early in 2025, right?

So we did, I think, infielders a few weeks ago. We'll get some outfielders probably next week. Since we're talking about lighter and rocker, and they kind of fit into this conversation, and now we're seeing some weekend debuts for those Angels starters and for Red Louder, who else are we trying to watch closely in the upper levels, the minors down the stretch, trying to see if we get a sneak peek at someone that could make a pretty big impact? I think the Pirates have a couple of starters in Bubba Chandler and Braxton Ashcraft

that could be knocking on the door, if not for a call up at the end of the season, at least for an opportunity to compete for rotation spots going into 2025. Yeah, Bubba Chandler has a 139 stuff plus on this 97 mile an hour fore seam with plus vertical override. Whew, that's pretty sick.

I know I'm not looking at movement numbers right now, but if you want someone who looks like Jared Jones, it's in the numbers and the stuff in location numbers, it's Bubba Chandler. So that's really exciting. And I think in some ways, I almost like him better than the other two because He has a great force team. I mean, I I know that this league is kind of doing other things and there's more people kind of You know doing sinker stuff and you know, I want people to have multiple fastballs and all that, you know I'm just gonna bet on the guy who has a better force team because

Especially if they're a righty because they have to do something against the lefties. Now Braxton Ashcraft on the other hand has a 92 stuff plus on the fore seam. He has some good breaking balls, but this is more of a breaking ball first approach and obviously there are many pitchers in the big leagues where their breaking balls are better than their fore seam, their fast balls. But I just I'm a little bit more inclined to reach for the guy with a good fastball. I just think it's easier to see them put together things and become an ace.

You know, you can be Seth Lugo if you have a bunch of if you have a great feel for spin, you can be Sonny Gray if you're great for spin. I don't think you become Garrett Cole without a great fastball. You know what I'm saying? Like you can be one of these guys pretty good, you know? But like, if you're looking for a Garrett Cole, that's Jackson Jobe. That's Bubba Chandler's closer, you know? That's why you look at these guys, Taj Bradley, you know, Jared Jones. You look at guys with great four seamers.

Yeah, I think it gives you a lot of margin for error when you have a great four seamer, because the other stuff can be a little slow to follow, but you've got something you can throw often that's at least good enough to maybe get you through the lineup twice. Yeah, you have to get through opposite hands. You have to have a fastball you can throw at opposite hands. What are you going to do against lefties if your best pitch is a sinker? Your best hard pitch is a sinker. Yeah, I think that totally makes sense as far as just the basic foundational thing you're

looking for. If you can only choose one, that would be it. So is there anybody else that's going to jumping off the page to you that hasn't debuted yet pitching well in the upper levels of the minors? I mean, I think the White Sox even have a couple of guys. Hiro Iriarte is kind of interesting. He's had a good year so far. I think he's worked entirely at double A sub four ERA almost a strike out per inning. Still like to see there are some improvements in terms of the walk rate or a slightly higher K rate from him but opportunity is going to be wide open for the White Sox during

this rebuild. So the threshold for getting a chance there is a little bit lower than it is in a lot of these other situations right now. Yeah they also like I think it's one of those things where you kind of need to show your work a little bit. Like you have to have some success, you know, when you're on the white socks and be like, oh, but we at least determine that this guy is part of our future. So, you know, I think that's actually a little bit of what's happening in Anaheim, you know, gets the extension. We go on the on the pod saying like, oh, he's already he's still on the hot seat. I don't know, you got an extension, he's still on the hot seat. But I also said to be fair to him, to Perry and to the Angels that if they all of a sudden prove that they have

some like hot young pitching prospects that, you prospects that could pitch next year in the major leagues in the rotation that they could turn things around fairly quickly. So that's what they're trying to do there. I think the White Sox, anybody could come up and be pretty exciting quickly. So I agree with you on that one. I think one of the other more exciting names

I've been waiting on in autumn new for the whole season, I thought maybe there's a chance we'd see a 2024 debut but now it looks much more like 2025 is Tink Hentz in the Cardinals organization an injury cost him some time from like late June until late July so he missed a pretty critical month but Hentz has really good stuff the k-rates jumped up this year too at AA he's always been young for the level so given that the injury didn't cost him that much time, I think there's a really good chance he could be in this rotation early in 2025. And it might bring some much needed swing and miss, right? We've talked for a long time about the Cardinals

lacking pitching prospects that can miss bats or being unable to find guys that are high quality starters within that organization. I think they might be on the verge of a graduating one with hints. I'm scouting the stat line here and, oh, that's interesting. Ryan Webb pops when you look in the Guardians,

you know, it's like, oh, there's a guy with great K-BV in the minor leagues for the Guardians. You know, you could need some starting pitches. I go over to Stuff Plus, he's been in A and he has a 66 stuff plus on the fore seam with a 90 mile an hour average velocity. So I don't know that I'd like to retract that name. Okay, gonna have that one back. Gunnar Hoagland.

I'm just looking at strikeout minus walk rates in double A with teams that could could use the pitcher. Gunnar Hoagland has a 57 stuff plus on his four seems so this is why I think you know it's a little bit hard for me when I'm looking at double A guys to be to get excited because I think there's all sorts of different ways to get to a good K minus BB for example you could have a small BB. Yes, you could. And when you do that in the minor leagues, I think that sometimes that can be filling up the zone against inferior hitters.

Then you get into the major leagues and you fill up the zone against superior hitters and get knocked around. How about Brandon Sprote? He's had a pretty interesting season. Started at high A, spent most of the summer at double A, had a 33.2% K rate, 6.5% walk rate, tons of swinging strikes, gets the bump to triple A, has only thrown 17 in the third inning zero over four starts, but has just had a miserable time with everything. Not striking guys out, has a home run per 9 above 3, has grotesque ratios, an 883 ERA and a 162 WIP. There's a lot here to work with.

So I think I'm really hesitant right now to look at what's happening to pitchers at AAA and draw much of a meaningful conclusion about it. Even somebody in the waiver preview, Ty Madden, had pretty good numbers up through AA, got the AAA and the ratios have just been awful. I don't think it's necessarily the function of the stuff not working. I think it just might be the weirdness of AAA with ABS right now. Well you know, particularly the top of the zone and what you have here is a guy who has a 92 stuff plus in the fore seam. What if he was really happy living particularly the top of the zone and what you hear what you have here is a guy who has a 92 Stuff plus in the four seam What if he was really happy living at the top of the zone in double a then he gets to triple a and those are now

Balls, right? That means him maybe has to come down a little bit further into the zone And if he doesn't have a plus plus four seam right now, it's getting knocked around on top of that You don't know what the, you know, organizational philosophy is for, you know, what pitches should he be throwing right now. If he was being showcased for a trade, he would throw his slider a lot more. Right now, he's throwing his slider 12% of the time with a 129 stuff plus, easily his best pitch. You know, if he was being showcased for a trade, bump that up to 40%, be a two-pitch guy

and trade him out of there. But right now it looks like the philosophy is, try to develop all your pitches. Throw your slider 12% of the time, throw your cutter 18% of the time, throw your change up 12% of the time, curve 7% of the time. So he's throwing all his pitches,

though his slider is clearly his best pitch. We may see him as a major league reliever That's sort of 50-50 fastball slider that way you get that stuff lost on the fore seam up by getting more Velo in it You know, that's something that I could see in his future But the other part of that the Mets are betting on is one of those secondary pitches jumps a little bit Gets a little bit better somehow Somehow he mixes them a little bit better. He reacts, he figures out how to pitch to the zone and he becomes more of a back end starter. I don't know if he's a front end starter either way.

The other name just number scouting that caught my eye is Quinn Matthews looking a little more into what he has done this year. He's picked up a little extra velocity. He's a lefty also in the Cardinal system. So nice to see maybe two starting pitchers possibly making enough progress to join that St. Louis rotation. Nice strikeout rates. Yeah. Yeah I mean it's geez 33.8% at AA. Real nice with good walk rate doesn't seem to have a major home run problem at least to this point either so another name to sort of file away probably for draft and hold season at the very least,

because they're gonna be looking for some answers in that St. Louis rotation. And you know he has innings. That's why I remember Quinn Matthews name. Everybody remembers Quinn Matthews name now? Oh yeah, Stan, right, yes. The heavy, heavy workload. 140 pitches or something, you know.

He has come, as advertised, with innings. He already has 73, 75 advertised with innings. He already has 73 75 125 innings this year, so he's gonna get to 130 innings. You definitely want him I think in draft and hold next year He will be he will give like if he has 150 innings and he's a in him next year 160 innings in the next year and he's a double a you know, you know I feel like you can pencil at 70 of those in the major leagues at least, even if he's not even if they're not talking about him for a rotation spot, he'll be the seventh eighth guy, you know,

he'll come up in pitch. Yeah, I think that's a good way to frame it. And there's room for him to be a bigger part of the plan if he's able to earn that in spring training. We've got a few mailbag questions to get to here. One not on the screen. First first one was from Stoonads525. I never know where to put the emphasis on a Discord handle. Is it Stunads525?

Is it Stoonads? I don't know. Stoonads is what I'm guessing. I mean, I never wanna guess. Yeah. Because this person could have an amazing advertising business called stun ads And yes, so I don't want to I don't want to damage that But the question was the other day on the pod you mentioned that one MLB team doesn't have its own stuff plus model

Internally as a lifelong Cardinals fan and longtime listener of the pod. I have to ask are we that team? No, it's the Rockies. Somebody reached out to somebody I was talking to and asked them to build them a stuff model and they were like, why don't you just do that internally? Like, you don't have any analysts? Yeah, I was like- You should probably build a special one in Colorado.

Or you could just watch the Nick Wan presentation. Yeah, you should actually, I think it's actually super important for them to build a stuff model, you know? And they should actually probably build two stuff models, one that is altitude adjusted and one that isn't, because they would learn a lot from like, oh, these types of pitches actually, you know, do perform better and like, you know, if there's any team that should have like a huge analytics department that they listen to and invest in it should Be the Rockies. I think since the first time we've ever talked about the Rockies like in 2019 year one in the pod We said what's it gonna take to win in Colorado and that was I think still the Jeff British area

We've been adamant on this show that they should have more tech more data data, more information, more everything, more gadgets than any organization in baseball. They should have debuted the opener. They should have debuted bullpen games. They should have been on the front end of a lot of those things. Yeah, 100% agree. So thank you for that question, StunAds525. As to the Cardinals, the evidence, I don't actually have direct evidence that they have one, but my evidence that they should have one is that Mozilla came out and said, we need to concentrate more on swing and miss stuff.

Using the word stuff now is like a little bit loaded. I got Craig Breslow to talk for 15 minutes at winter meetings about stuff plus basically and use that in the Red Sox article that I used. So like, I think now stuff is almost an encoded sort of, yes, we have a Stuff Plus model. That's sort of how I read it. Maybe I'm, you know, got Stuff Plus on the brain, but that's, I mean, what is he saying?

He's like, we need more swing in this stuff. We need to study this. We need to promote it. We need to create it. Like, how do you do that? I think Stuff Plus is obviously something I use for evaluation, but I think it's actually most powerful in development. Because if you say, I want you to have a better curveball, and the pitcher says, fine, I want to have a better curveball, then the next question is, what is a better curveball? And Stuff Plus is the answer.

ball. Then the next question is, what is a better curve ball? And stuff plus is the answer. You know, like when you when I just showed those here on YouTube, when we were showing those interactions between velocity and ride that create the stuff plus for force aimers, like you can redo those interactions and you can be like, here's horizontal versus vertical. Oh, wow. If you made your forcing more horizontal, which we've been chasing vertical all this time What if you made you a two plane? Foreseen that actually worked too and maybe that's more attainable for you So that's the work of a pitching coach and it's aided by stuff plus in ways that I guess are not happening in Colorado Sure seems like it could help but you know, just my opinion from thousand miles away

Next question comes in from ponchoed, which I assume is an ode to Poncho's. Ernie Clement may be an interesting late breakout profile. Heavy pulled fly ball approach has outproduced his raw power, he's only striking out at a 9% clip. Seems like he's going to make a ton of contact on balls that have a good chance to find their way out of the ballpark and the average will hold up with the low K% regardless of his babbit profile. So what do you make of Ernie Clement,

an unusual sub 10% K rate guy who's actually getting some pretty good run right now for the Jays as part of the sort of lost second half? I don't know, there's one part of Ernie Clement's profile that just leaves me entirely cold. And you know which part it is. It's gotta be the chase. No, it's the entire, you should see my dashboard.

It's the entire right hand of my dashboard. It's chase, max EV, barrel and hard hit. Yeah, but it's a low, very, the extreme low K percentage profiles usually come with suboptimal power. Decent amount of chase, because they can, and suboptimal bad ball stats, right? That's generally how it goes.

If you get that low of a K rate, then that's what you're giving up. And he's got 10 homers and 352 plate appearances. He's finding a way to hit the ball at the ballpark. Yeah, it's probably a little bit more viable with the shift restrictions. I guess we should have seen some of this coming because the Blue Jays kept running him out there and kept playing him over

You know other other names and other other younger, you know, we thought more prospecting names. I Do like sub 10% k-rates. That's that's fun. Okay, the best I can do for you is Draft and hold back up infielder. Yeah, I think he's the utility guy I think he's a after round 45 sort of pick if he's still there. I really don't think you want to the best Yeah, does enough things well to play like that's that's the way I would look at it And that's still that's a good outcome like good for him I wouldn't be sad to have him on like as one of my final keepers in my 20 team keeper league because He would be like the backup at like five positions

Thanks a lot for that question poncho my 20 team keeper league because he would be like the backup at like five positions. Thanks a lot for that question, Poncho. You got to look though at a sub 10% K rate when it comes in over 350 plate appearances the way it has for Ernie. You know, it could work in 15 teamers like NFPC style where, you know, you want to have one guy on your bench in the beginning of the season that could cover you in a lot of different places. And maybe he just ends up on your, on your bench all season long,

where he just covers you for that Friday. Like, oh, there's a surprise injury. Like it is, those guys are useful in those leagues too, where you just like have a lot of eligibility on your bench, you know, but, you know, I want to make sure I'm saying all these eligibility things. What are his eligibility? He's going to not have second base. He should have third and short though. Third and short is good because that's third, short, and CI and MI.

Yeah, that's pretty good. Might be just good enough to hang around on that Blue Jays roster, we'll have to see. But yeah, I would not do anything as far as an early, early pick on him at all. It's a roster in flux too, what if they sign guys and he's no longer even really having that heavy of a role on their team next year. He's 28 It's not like they're circling him and making him part of the core right

I don't think he's kind of like part of the Horowitz Addison barger Arovis Martinez like they care more about those prospecting. Yeah. Yeah, all of those guys are bigger priorities to their long-term future Let's take a look at the other other names that are interesting for the weekend waiver preview a lot of places we could start I mean the Tigers pitching getting turned around I saw Brant Herter has a two-step this week that might intrigue some people at San Diego at Oakland Those are not layup matchups, especially Oakland the A's have actually been a good enough lineup to beat up on some kind of average or below average pitching

at the very least lately. But Herter's been chewing up some innings pretty effectively for the Tigers. I think we're at the point in the year where anybody with a two step at least gets a look if you need innings. So what do you make of Herter and the success he's had in some limited opportunities with the Tigers?

Where are the locations of those places? Of those? They're both away. Hmm. I'd prefer him if he was home. He's OK. I mean, he's got a good slider, below average below average stuff. Decent command. The command is backed up by really good walk rates in the minors. One thing that you will notice in the miners are high BABIPs. And yes, that is often due to minor league defenses, minor league parks, all sorts of things. It's not something I would normally look at, especially for a pitcher.

But when I see a low stuff number and a high BABIP in the miners, that's, you know, one thing that we found with Stuff Plus in the projections was that it moved the needle on home runs per nine and Bbip in the projections a lot You know, so he's not a guy that I would consider very likely to he has a 222 babbip right now I might project him for like a 320 babbip going forward if you do that You get a mid-4z RA. Won't be a two-step for Ty Madden But he's gonna make another start this weekend Sunday against the Red Sox. Not necessarily one I would go pick him up and use him in for for daily leagues.

But if Madden sticks around, even though he was a guy that had brutal ratios at AAA, we just talked about Brandon Sprout a few minutes ago, I think I'm kind of intrigued by Madden as a matchups-based play in September. We've seen the ability to miss bats 102 Ks in 79 innings at AAA this year, 146 Ks in 118 innings a year ago at AA. It'd be more in the situation of I want strikeouts, my ratios are already just a mess and maybe I could steal seven or eight strikeouts in the right kind of matchup from someone like Madden even though home runs have been a major problem for him, especially this year in the international league.

Yeah, I'm sorry for those that are looking at Fangraphs. The model hasn't quite loaded for last night, so we're working on that. I think there's just been a little bit of an interaction between us and Fangraphs that's been a little bumpy at times this year. But you can tell by Stuffbot on Fangraphs right now that his cutter is his best pitch and Stuffplus agrees with that.

But he doesn't throw, he didn't, he hasn't throw it as often as you'd expect. And he throws the slider more often. So I don't know if he's being optimized, but that could give you some hope that he starts throwing the cutter more and starts maybe accessing some of those whiffs that have been missing in the major leagues from, I mean, he needs to go from 15% whiffs in AAA to 6.9%

in his first start, pretty rapid decline for Madden. But I'm not that into either these guys All right We'll see if Madden ends up in the bullpen down the road because I think that could be a really nice Sleeper for some saves in the future if starting doesn't work out for him He shortened up that arsenal add a little V lo and it all could come together for him in that role Look at Jose Tena for a moment getting a lot of opportunities with the Nats, basically their regular third baseman.

He's having a pretty good year at AAA Columbus. He was acquired in that Lane Thomas trade from the Guardians, has some power, has some speed, only about 15% rostered right now in the Road to Wire Online Championship. Those are 12-team NFBC leagues. He's up to 60% in the main event, but I would imagine that number creeps up even more this weekend given how much Taina is playing on this Nats team. There aren't that many red flags for me. I would say that his much higher swing strike rate

in the minor league suggests that there may be a little bit more swing and miss coming soon. He had a 14.4% swing strike rate, Taina did in AAA, and he has a 7.3 in the majors. That's a little incongruous for me. But otherwise, he's a guy who makes just enough hard contact, doesn't chase too much, hasn't had real bad strikeout rates in the minor leagues.

I don't think this is a Grant McCray situation. I think he's probably a true talent, like 26, 25, 26% strikeout rate. He's not gonna help you getting on base, and that may limit his long-term value to the team and his lineup placement long-term. I mean, just think about the batters that the Nationals have.

He's not gonna be a top three hitter for them. And projection-wise, they still have him being well below average. So it's not even super clear. Just think about how he was acquired too. It's not super clear to me that he's part of their long-term future. But in the short term, the red flags aren't too red and he's gotten he's got the the playing time and I'm intrigued. I think I'd love to see what he does before I say anything about how I'm drafting him next year But in the short term, depending on the schedule and depending on your needs, he's a pickup Yeah, probably more of a 15 team league sort of pickup But in a desperation sense for a 12 you could probably even do a little bit worse than Tana and we've seen the Guardians make some curious

trades before I mean like the Nolan Jones trade with the Rockies look pretty brutal right I mean that was that was the kind of thing that you look back at now and say how'd they come up with that? Was it Brito? It was Juan Brito I think was the player they got back in that trade. 110 WRC plus as a 22 year old in double in AAA right now 16% strikeout rate 179 ISO so also maybe more positional value? Yeah well that could easily work out in the long run for them but it just it seemed like they gave up on Nolan Jones pretty quickly for what they needed given what he did a season ago so yeah I'm keeping a close eye on Tana in leagues where I need some help on the corner, especially those deeper formats.

I also noticed Miguel Amaya is playing really well. I kind of just split the season looking back since July 1st. Miguel Amaya is hitting 337 with a 381 OVP and a 561 slug for the last two months. Five homers, 13% K-rate. He's rostered in 36% of online championship leagues. So, you know, still out there in a lot of pretty important two catcher spots. I think he's a slightly more rostered player in the main event at this point. Yeah, 77%, quite a bit higher actually. But I'm actually a little surprised given

the need for catching that people haven't been a little more aggressive with the Maya. I guess the one drawback is that despite playing a lot better, he's still stuck in that number nine spot for the Cubs most days. Yeah, a typical catcher. I mean, he's not, I don't know that he exhibits many skills that would elevate him from the sort of blob of middle catchers, the guys who can hit 250,

but given a full season might hit you 18 homers. Like I feel like that describes 15 catchers. The one thing that he's doing right now that would make him intriguing going forward is sporting an 18% strikeout rate. So Miguel Amaya keeps an 18% strikeout rate going forward. He does, he has it the ball 111. There's still like a chance to kind of put together even more than what he's done full season when it comes to next year.

So I think he's a fairly decent second catcher, cheap second catcher next year in 15 team leagues. I feel like he's in the same class that I put like Joey Barton. I picked up Joey Barton a bunch of leagues in the last month or so. And I think there's a chance Bart plays a lot in Pittsburgh. I think Amaya's pat the playing time with the Cubs

is a little less cloudy because with the Pirates, you have the long-term questions about Henry Davis plus you have the eventual return of Andy Rodriguez. Yeah, so there's a little bit more organizational crowding in Pittsburgh. So I think that's one thing that does work well for Miguel Amaya right now. I think you were mentioning a few Marlins

before we started recording that you're looking at Kyle Stowers Playing a lot right now. Well Stowers Norby and Hill are playing a lot They were better pickups last week when they were going into Coors Then they are necessarily this week Stowers doesn't they're just playing a lot. I like Norby the best Stowers doesn't really have anything that I would bring to you as like this is why you should pick him up other than he's playing in deep enough leagues that matters. I mean he can barrel the ball but right now 36% strikeout rate is not working. Derek Hill is power and speed. I was happy I picked him up last week.

He did some good things for me but a 31% strikeout rate right now with a 3% walk rate is a tough tough combo And so I'd be pretty scheduled dependent with him, you know going forward there was another a couple players Addison barger is playing again and It was weird because he stopped playing for a little bit and now he's playing again He's pretty much looks like he's in the lineup every day It's just a question of where so some third base some outfield But the last four games in a row he's been in the fifth spot in the order and played third base So I wonder if there's a little bit of like, hey, the season doesn't

matter anymore. Could Addison Barger just be our everyday third baseman next year? My answer to that question is maybe. You know, I think the strikeout rate will come down a little bit for Barger. I think the walk rate will come up a little bit. He's capitalizing on really good raw power right now. He needs to continue to capitalize on that raw power It needs to continue to push that bail rate up if he pushes that bail rate up to 10% by the end of the year He's got a 10% bail rate 25 26% strikeout rate 8% walk rate That should work as a starter It may not be an amazing one that you need in your fantasy leagues, but it would be somebody that might be interesting,

might have some eligibility depending on your league. 22 games at third base and 22 games in the right field. So getting someone who could be CIOF third baseman, you know, again, sort of somewhere between draft and hold and bench in a 15 team league. Right now, you're just picking him up because you're hoping he'll hit some dogs for you. Yeah, I think I'm thinking about 2025. I'm more interested in taking a shot on

Barger than I am on Ernie Clement from earlier, even though someone's got that really low K rate and I think he's younger and power trip like third baseman. Yeah, he fits like a regular profile, you know. Yes, I think you could at least talk yourself into that. The thing I would say, maybe this is a trap I'm going to fall into a lot. But thinking about how difficult it's been for hitters to make adjustments to big league pitching last couple of seasons. Now we're almost 50 games in to the big league career of barger.

The initial adjustment phase hopefully is over. I think these next 20 games down the stretch, this last month, will give us a much better indication of the types of adjustments he's capable of making than his first 50 or so games have told us. Yes, that's information that matters, but I just wanna see if you can adapt to what has been happening,

because the underlying numbers aren't bad, all right? A near 40% hard hit rate, K-rate's not off the charts at 27.1%, there's an okay foundation here if you can start to make those adjustments. He fits, I don't know, this is really not scientific, but we're developing a little bit of a test here for the young hitter, he fits the heat map, the two spots on the heat map. He has two blobs on the heat map, low and in and high and in.

I'm going to count those two because he's able to hit low and high. He hasn't done a lot out over the plate except for sort of middle away. But high away and low away as just little corner holes for him, I think that's doable in the big leagues. You know, that's, if you have a zone, if you have a hole all the way across the zone high, that's a lot where the pitcher can miss, but just miss high, right? But if it's high in a way, and they kind of go for that,

and they throw some pitch that leaks high middle, and he slugs it, that's a better situation. Like his holes are smaller. And high in a way and low in a way, those are traditional holes across the league. If you just do a heat map of exit velocities, high in a way and low in a way

is the lowest exit velocities. Makes sense, it's very intuitive, right? I mean mean to drive a ball that's away is a lot harder, especially if it's down or up. That's why I want to see a little bit more eye from him. Like if I want to see that walk rate climb a little bit because that means they're trying to pick him away and he's like, he's not whiffing on those pitches away that are outside the zone. That's kind of the adjustment I see for him. I think it's easy to tell yourself a story with barger given the walk rates He's shown throughout his time in the minors that he has that ability though That's that's part of where that enthusiasm comes from

I think I was a little more excited about connecting the heat map than Trevor was when we put that out there We were willing to make the leap and he was a little more like yeah I don't think you could just fill those gaps in for every hitter. I don't think that's always going to be the case, but We are gonna go we hope everybody has a great long weekend Especially to get the extra day in the States You get a subscription as I mentioned earlier at the athletic comm slash rates and barrels check out You know is updated ranks the rest of season do well in your fantasy football drafts if you are partaking. Be safe out there.

Enjoy the time off. Though I don't care about football. Yeah, you're just, you don't have to worry about it at all. Must be great. It's great. There's a whole opening up in my schedule. I'm like, ooh, I get to binge watch some shows and stuff. There's actually gonna be some time for me

to do something other than baseball when everyone else is doing football. Light at the end of the tunnel. So you can find Eno on Twitter at EnoSarris, time for me to do something other than baseball when everyone else is doing football. Light at the end of the tunnel. So you can find Eno on Twitter at EnoSarris, find me at Derrick van Rijper, find the pod at Rates and Barrels. Thanks to Brian Smith for producing this episode. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels.

We're back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening. I like you. I like you a lot.