Rates & Barrels - Pitching Puzzles & Pull Rate Considerations

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

Eno and DVR discuss Vinnie Pasquantino's season-ending shoulder injury, several starting pitchers whose results don't line up with the quality of their arsenals, and the potential drawbacks of becoming too pull-happy at the plate.  Rundown 1:12 Vinnie Pasquantino's Shoulder Injury; Long-Term Outlook 9:58 Samad Taylor and Dairon Blanco Get a Look in KC 11:27 Sandy Alcantara's 2023 Struggles 21:39 Yu Darvish: Is Anything Wrong? 25:59 Kyle Bradish: What is His Ceiling With Current Fastball Limitations? 34:25 Nestor Cortes: Post-IL Expectations 37:46 Pull%: Is Their a Goldilocks Range? 48:51 Ozzie Albies' 2023: Categorical Surprises 52:49 Zach Eflin's Adjustments in Tampa Bay 56:50 TJ Friedl: How Does He Fit as Reds' Roster Improves? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Check out these offers from our ad partners.... Head to factormeals.com/rates50 and use code rates50 to get 50% off your first box Right now, you can try LinkedIn Sales Navigator and get a sixty-day free trial at linkedin.com/rates23 Right now, Nuts.com is offering new customers a free gift with purchase and free shipping on orders of $29 or more at Nuts.com/rates Go to zbiotics.com/rates to get 15% off your first order when you use RATES at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So let's be clear. When it comes to shipping internationally, can I provide trade documents electronically? Mm-hmm. The answer is FedEx. Okay. But what about estimating duties and taxes on my shipments? How do I find all the... Also FedEx. Impressive. Is there a regulatory specialist I can ask about? FedEx. Oh. But let's say that... FedEx.

What? FedEx. Thanks. No more questions. Always your answer for international shipping. FedEx. What? FedEx. Thanks. No more questions. Always your answer for international shipping. FedEx, where now meets next. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Wednesday, June 21st. Derek Van Ryper, Eno Saris here with you on this episode. We discuss the long-term outlook for Vinny Pasquintino as we learned that he recently had shoulder surgery, which ended his 2023 season. We'll talk about a problem that I'm referring to as the Sandy Alcantara problem, which is really just a group of pitchers whose results seem worse than they should be

given what they bring to the table as pitchers. Sandy, of course, on the mound as we record this with another bumpy outing in a tough spot against the Blue Jays. Got a few other pitchers that are in similar groups. Yeah, it's not good. And then we've got a question about pull percentages that I thought was kind of interesting because we were talking about Nolan Gorman and a few other players that have this skill. Isak Paredes especially kind of does good things when he pulls it,

and then there's a lot of questions about what he does when he doesn't pull it. So I figured we could dig into that question for a bit as well. So we'll start with Vinny Pasquantino. The long-term outlook for him following surgery on his right shoulder, left-handed hitter, right shoulder means lead shoulder. He did some digging and apparently that is the more problematic of the two shoulders to recover from for a hitter, you know? Well, and by digging, I just texted a major league hitting coach. You're not supposed to reveal how the sausage is made. it took me a really long time

to bang out that text and get a response but the guess was that the front shoulder would be a more difficult shoulder because of the front shoulder maybe bearing a little bit more of the force of impact and then definitely follow through. So, more of a guess when it comes to impact, but, you know, the follow through is

definitely going to be painful. And I think, you know, yes, that is after you impact the ball and, you know, it's the end of your swing, but you as a human being want to avoid pain. And so if there is still any pain, you're not going to maybe quite let it fly the same way. If you know that when you get to that follow through part, it hurts. So, you know, the good news, I guess, quote unquote, good news, this is not going to come off as good news to Kansas City fans but the good news is the Royals are bad sorry that was the good news

this makes sense they're not going to rush it back oh okay sure yes cheer up Royals fans your team is so bad that they can take their time with one of the players you enjoy watching every day while you hate watching the rest i know it's terrible it's not uh not what you want to hear uh but uh i mean the royals are beating are are fighting the a's for

worst record in baseball right now and uh i i know that randy jesuieri uh retweeted i forgot who he was retweeting but uh the person he was retweeting was saying, you know, and the Royals are trying. Right. Big difference in effort in this case. Yeah, I talked to Keith Law about it on the Olympic Baseball Show last Friday. It's a long road ahead for J.J. Piccolo

as they try to figure out what's going wrong in Kansas City this season. What were the best prospects that Keith was talking about? That was kind of the problem is that they don't really have a wave of young talent ready to join the guys that they've just been bringing up the last couple of years. This is that young core with Benny Pasquantino and Bobby Witt Jr. and M.J. Melendez. Those guys, they hit the ball hard. Pasquantino hits the ball hard and makes good contact. Those three could be a core. It's just that you have to come up with the pitching fast enough while you still have them.

That's going to be turning the round to tanker pretty fast because the pitching hasn't been good there. In terms of Pasquantino, there is an example out there playing right now who's doing pretty well and demonstrates that if you are going to have an injury like this, sometimes it's better to have it young. And his name is Josh Young. So Josh Young is out there. I think he had the same problem to the lead shoulder. I think he had the same problem to the lead shoulder,

and he missed about the same amount of time. And yeah, it's not without bumps. He isn't exactly who we thought he was before he was hurt, but this is also year one. So if this is year one for Josh Young, I feel like Vinny Pascantino can come back fine next year. I do wonder how much of a discount I want to put on him in year one coming back from this in drafts and stuff.

I think I'll be a little bit cautious. I think when you look at the numbers before the injury, the hard hit rate was down from where it was when Vinny debuted last year, down to 40.1%. Barrel rate, not surprisingly, came down a little bit from 8.8% to 7.4 with it he was chasing more outside the zone 35.9 percent oh swing percentage this year compared to 28.9 as a rookie so walking a little less max ev came down almost three miles per hour

when vinnie pasquantino was a player we were excited about prior to his debut about a year or so ago was he playing hurt at all though like was was this like oh his shoulder isn't bothering him oh we get an mri or like was there an impact event yeah you you do you wonder i i don't recall offhand if there was a i don't think it was an impact thing we'll take a look at that momentarily but i was thinking about this more from the perspective of what kind of player was he proving himself to be like over his first calendar year reoccurring shoulder injury yeah so that so that could have been affected the max ev and the barrel rate a little bit i think so even if you just smash last season

and this season together you're talking about a guy that hit 272 with a 35355 OBP and hit 19 homers and 550 plate appearances. It's a good player. One who doesn't strike out. One that draws walks. And I think the guy that he reminded me of when he came up as far as his minor league production was Nathaniel Lowe. And it took Lowe a little bit of time to get to that power. So I think we're still on an arc like that where if that's your most likely outcome for Vinny Pasquantino, you're not disappointed. He could still have a season.

If you're talking about keeper leagues and stuff, this might be a good time to buy. He could still have a season where he hits 300 with 30 homers. I mean, that's the type of skills he has. Yeah, right. There's room for more, but the meaty part of the curve still gives you a pretty good player once he comes out of this.

And the longer-term outcomes for surgery like this have actually improved quite a bit too compared to where they were 10-plus years ago. So as bleak as things seem for Royals fans right now, I think the good news is there are a lot of signs that they're still pointing in the right direction with Vinny Pasquantino. And knowing that this was something

that he was maybe playing through for a little while, especially, it also gives you an idea of why the follow-up wasn't quite as good as what we saw during that debut a year ago i also think that it's easier to and this is a little bit philosophical and uh less grounded in and like research or numbers that i've necessarily seen but from what i know and what i've seen among teams, I think it's easier to turn around pitching development than it is hitting development. So the fact that they, despite having a pitcher's park

as their major league park, have been able to develop some hitters, not across the board. They still have the sort of Nicky Lopez types that they like where they don't hit the ball hard Nicky Lopez types that they like where, you know, they don't hit the ball hard or do anything, especially that well offensively,

but, uh, they have developed in, in wit and Pascantino and Melendez. I think three players that hit the ball well, and are look like young, young players that can hit the ball for a while. Um,

if you're asking, yeah, Melendez might have a two 11 average right now or whatever, but he hits the ball for a while um if you're asking yeah melendez might have a 211 average right now or whatever but he hits the ball really hard so i i believe in him so you know maybe this task is less sissifian as it seems you know i mean you've got a you've got a nice pitcher's park as your home base like if you can just you know produce slightly better pitchers, it could take off fairly quickly. It could.

I think it's kind of easy to wonder what's going wrong for Witt. From a fantasy perspective, only batting average? From a fantasy perspective, you're happy. He's on pace to go 25 homers with 45-plus steals. That's great. You're not mad about that at all, even if it comes with a 246 average the rest of the way, and there's a chance that he gets better and you get better numbers across the board. With Melendez, seeing the K rate up over 30% is a little bit of a surprise. Only six homers so far this year.

I expected if he was going to be a low average guy like this, that he'd be getting to power a lot more consistently. Oh my God, he's hitting 211. That that's hilarious i wasn't looking at his page you had that exactly right but the quality of contact is good with him and i do think you can get it back down to like 26 or something like i think this is he's like a free swing a little bit more of a free swinger go and get it you know uh pull hitter with power like it might take a second to sort of figure out when to take those shots and when to have a two-strike approach or whatever but there's a really good hitter in melinda still they've got a few other guys that they've traded for over the past year or so and samad taylor is one of them he's up right now it's

sort of like well who who won in playing time as a result of pasquantino's unfortunate injury nick prado just plays first base now instead of playing in the outfield and they've got samad taylor up he was a somewhat popular pickup over the weekend for some cheap speed and then darren blanco also getting an opportunity i think it was funny i was i was looking at blanco's profile and i was like, that kind of reminds me of John Birdie. I opened up Twitter, and I see a bunch of people in our industry saying,

hey, maybe it's John Birdie. This is Samad Taylor you're talking about? For Blanco, because he's a little older. Samad Taylor, he's only 24. He'll be 25 next month. It's not like a high-end prospect, but at least he's a different type of player compared to the mashers with a different type of player compared to the the

mashers with a little bit of swing and miss downside taylor could provide some balance he keeps that k rate down the way he did at triple a this year and even going back to last season if he draws walks he could actually find a spot as a table setter yeah and just you know given his age and power output like he's definitely more exciting for a team that's looking to the future than Blanco. I think Taylor's my pickup of the group. Yeah, I think he's the easy player to at least roll the dice on and see what happens. He was pretty blocked in Toronto anyway. This is at least a clear path for him to take over some time.

He can play a couple spots too, so I don't think think the royals are gonna have any problem fitting him into their plans if they like what they see from samad taylor at the plate this episode is brought to you by peloton forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one just start moving with the peloton bike bike plus tread row guide or app there are thousands of classes and over 50 Peloton instructors ready to support you from the beginning. Remember, doing something is everything. Rent the Peloton Bike or Bike Plus today at onepeloton.ca slash bike slash rentals. All access memberships separate. Terms apply.

Best Western made booking our family beach vacation a breeze. And it felt a little like... Come on kids, back to the hotel room. Goodnight kids. Goodnight mama. Life's a trip make the most of it at best western let's move on to some other big topics though let's get to that sandy alcantara problem the pitchers who are worse than they should be results wise based on their their arsenals and you, when I look at the pitch mix for Sandy Alcantara, the velocity, the way he's trying to attack hitters, it all looks pretty similar to what he was doing a year ago when he won the NL Cy Young Award. I can't quickly explain why the ratios are so bad.

And the bigger question with Sandy has always been for a guy that has electric velo and three pitches like this, he doesn't get as many strikeouts as you'd expect him to. He gets a decent number of swinging strikes, but a strikeout rate that lags a little bit behind that has always kind of been part of the package, and he's just made up for it with volume. We're talking about a guy that by results has been excellent throughout his big league career now and is in a pretty rough stretch here through the first half of the season. So is there anything you see in terms of pitch mix, location strategy, anything underneath that explains why he has not looked like the guy that he was a season ago?

Like, you know, top line takeaway? Not really. You know, like I... Looking at his, you know, the movement on his pitches, if I, looking at his, you know, the movement on his pitches, if that's changed, no,

not really. Looking at his usage, there's some stuff here where, with this four seam and his sinker, especially the lefties, where it looks like he becomes a little predictable with the four seam, as an out pitch, with runners on, especially. There is, there's an out pitch with runners on especially there is there's got to be something

with runners on and predictability you know I'm only now sort of jumping off of the pitch usage which there are some some differences in pitch usage with runners on but the fact that his strand rate is 60 this year versus uh 79 last year and projected to be 73 i mean that's letting a lot of runners get on base uh and score and that's a problem for someone whose strikeout rate is down he has he's gonna have runners on base they're gonna you know put balls in play and so there's something going on there could be along the lines of pitch tipping by biomechanics or it could be along the lines of pitch tipping by pitch usage becoming more predictable but in any case it's uh something to do with lefties and it has something to do with this fastball mix his four seam is two seam and he's just become more hittable this year, especially against lefties.

His numbers, the sinker is giving up, this is before today, his sinker is giving up 490 slugging and his four seam is giving up a 377 slugging. So I think he's sort of stuck trying to find a hard pitch that works against lefties and neither of them is working right now. And so you've seen that his four

seam usage is going down over time over the course of this month and that means more sinkers to lefties and they he has a 490 slugging on those so i think he's struggling with the pitch mix he's struggling with with what to do with players on base but in terms of the shape and movement of his pitches i don't really see a difference and so i tend to think that this is something where you just need to figure out some sort of plan of attack that works better you know what i mean yeah i think with sandy it really wasn't difficult going into this season to say sure the 228 era and the 0.98 whip last season were great high watermarks that's not where, yeah. Aaron Nola had a season like that a while back.

No one expected him to repeat it. If you expected a full repeat of that, I don't know why you expected that. You sort of deserve to be a little disappointed. You didn't deserve to be this disappointed. Projections the rest of the season, not counting today's start, they'll probably get a tick worse after today's outing.

The bats got him at a.374 ERA and a 119 whip. Steamer, 375 with a 124. I actually think Sandy's more likely to be a tick better than that. Closer to his career numbers is probably what I'd expect from him. More of like a mid-threes ERA and a sub-120 whip would actually make a lot of sense to me here at Forward. But what I was thinking about yesterday, it was a Yuri Perez start day on Tuesday and watching Yuri Perez. If you told me they were going to throw the same number of innings, I would take Yuri Perez over Sandy Alcantara right now. I think it's a better arsenal that's designed to just get swings and misses and consistently put hitters away. That changeup is one of my favorite pitches in the game.

The innings pitch, you said they had the same amount of innings. Yeah, if you knew they were going to pitch the same number of innings, I would take Uri today. I think he's already showing a ceiling that is just absolutely absurd. It's a little bit like when we saw Shane McClanahan debut at the Rays a few years ago. You watch it for even a handful of starts, and you're like, this guy is top level.

He's that good. Now we just have to deal with all the careful management throughout this season and even next year, too, because we had a Twitter question about this rookie class of pitchers. And it was asking us more or less who's going to be a full time starting pitcher next year in terms of workload start to finish. And I would say Perez, he'll be a starter all year. I have no doubt about that. It's just how they use him how they skip him around off days all-star break all that kind of stuff you still have to worry about that for one more year whereas some of the other pitchers in the question guys

like tanner bybee they're going to be at a point where they're basically like veteran starters in terms of how they can be used that's the that's the only downside yeah i guess yuri's on the on the the close i mean he's not Mason Miller. Mason Miller is the most exaggerated version of this. And then I guess Uri is there in terms of workload. But I tend to think that most of the guys that are up this year will be pretty close to full-time starters next year. Because they're all going to,

all the guys that are up other than Mason Miller that are up this year are going to push 120, 130 innings this year. And if you do that, then next year they're 150, 160. And the average sort of projection for a starting pitcher is, you know, 160-ish these days. It's just a fact. So, you know, I think that most of those guys will be there. You know, it's also interesting to put into context that rest of season projection by the bat. The bat has been most aggressive in changing the run environment to reflect what's out there right now. And so a 3-7-4 may not sound great, but it's the 14th best rest of season projection for a starting pitcher. So it's still good.

And, you know know when we were we were talking about like is there a comp for sandy alcantara like is there another guy out there uh like him and so what i just did was um you know 2021 through 2023 on fan graphs their pitch type values so just you know you know who has a good, who's a righty with a really good change. So I sorted by change up, uh, change up pitch type values. And so, you know, top of the list are Rich Hill and Shane McClanahan, Rich Hill. Uh, that's, he'd like throws five of them and they, you know, whatever, that's not it. But Shane McClanahan is up there. Um, then there's Sandy Alcantara, Logan Webb, Merrill Kelly, Brandon Woodruff, Zach Gallin. Now, um, you know, I don't think he looks like Max Freed.

Uh, I, I, so I don't, I don't think it's a Max Freed situation, but I, and, and Shane McClanahan obviously lefty, but on that list are Logan Webb and Brandon Woodruff and Merrill Kelly is a soft tosser. So I don't, you know, I don't really think that he's in the same. I mean, Sandy Alcantara sits 97. Let us not forget that. And so Logan Webb, I think, is on the lower end. And Brandon Woodruff is not a bad comp because Brandon Woodruff has a pretty good four seam. His two seam is a little bit better,

has a pretty good slider, has a really good change. Brandon Woodruff is not a bad comp to Sandy Alcantara. And so I think within Brandon Woodruff, Logan Webb comp to Sandy Alcantara and so I think within Brandon Woodruff Logan Webb and Sandy Alcantara you have some some good comps where you can say no that's that's who he is writ large right like that is what what kind of a player he is and in terms of projections rest of season Brandon Woodruff 11th best rest of season ERA logan wedd 17th best rest of season era projection so like as bad as sandy alcantara's been i still think he's somewhere between the 12th and 17th best pitcher out there sure and it's only a little bit off of you know where he was going back during draft

season and the other part of this is that he's been extremely durable. So he's been able to make up for a lower K rate by racking up so many innings. The volume simply offsets it. Back-to-back seasons over 200 days. And there's no indication that he's hurt. Like there's no velo loss, no movement changes, no release point changes.

Like there's no indication he's hurt. Jeez, he was at five and a third when we started recording. He ended up going through seven innings today, despite giving up those five runs. They just left him in the game. You know, Tyler Glass now had the same thing.

He gave up five in the first, and then he still made it through five without giving up any more or something. Yeah. Work through it, young man, right? Yeah, I saw Corbin Burns do it, too too the diamondbacks got him for six runs in the first inning on monday not my finest hour no i was not i was not happy about that but um i uh i continue to believe in sanio contra i don't you know i think maybe i i might have even had him in the top five going into the season just because I was so enamored by that volume.

But I think he strikes me as someone who belongs where Logan Webb goes, which is sort of a high-end number two. Fair enough. I mean, not a massive drop, but just a very slight drop. We've seen enough. We know who he is. It would be silly to expect a big bump in K's at this point. If it was going to happen, it probably would have happened already.

They would have made that adjustment by now, or at least if the current staff was going to make that adjustment, it would have happened by now. Other pitchers that fit into this bucket of looking pretty good as far as everything being normal with pitch mixes and things, a little more complicated with Yu Darvish because he throws so many pitches, but is there anything wrong with Yu Darvish right now? 474 ERA, 120 whip, over a strikeout per inning.

Home runs are up just a tick from last year, but not at the higher end of the ranges we've seen from him during his career. What would you advise anyone to do if they were worried about Darvish? Either trading to get more pitching or possibly moving him away and trading him for less than what you would have got back on draft day? I think I'd wait, but there has been a really large decline in how often he uses his slider. And I wonder if that's just, again, him trying not to be as predictable. I mean, it is weird to think that a guy with this many pitches might become predictable.

But he does throw his slider a lot. And then, you know, I wonder if he's not a little bit of a casualty of the sweeper craze. And it doesn't show on Brooks, but I do believe that Udarvish is throwing a sweeper this year. Does it show on Savant? 21% usage. Yeah, it's his most used pitch.

Yeah. And, I mean, he's a guy that is a right hander that is throws a ton of breaking balls cutters sliders other you know like did he really need a pitch to get righties out he throws it to righties and lefties and he shouldn't and he shouldn't so um but i think the other thing is like well if you've got that many pitches, it can't be that hard to pitch mix your way out of this one. It's not like Clark Schmidt where you're like, well, if I don't throw my sweeper, what do I throw?

It's like, you can throw a bunch of other pitches. I think just generally I wouldn't sell low. I'm not saying that if you're in a keeper league, he's 36 and you're not in it. I would just say, just wait a few more starts. I know that sounds silly. Do you think you'll get a lot more? I do think.

I think he'll get that ERA closer to four and you'll be able to sell him a lot easier after a few good starts. In a redraft league, I'm also just keeping because he's a guy who strikes a lot of guys out, and I think he's going to play to his 3.8, 3.9 projection going forward, has a lot of pitches, can get past the sweeper problem for sure. Yeah, I don't see him. Velo's not really down

at an alarming rate or anything. He has so many ways to get guys out. Once he throws three more curveballs this year, he'll have thrown seven different pitches at least 100 times already this season. Yeah, for sure. And if you look at his outcomes, like the slider

this year has a 283 ISO, 303 batting average. And that's a 407 batting average and a 333 ISO to lefties. I mean, he didn't read my piece. Are you hurt? He was following me for a while. I don't know if he is anymore. I'm trying to get him to sit down to do a grips piece.

That would be cool. Wouldn't it? I mean, there's pitches he doesn't even throw anymore. We could get up to 12. He had a pitch called the Supreme he was throwing in Chicago for a while. You named it after a pizza? Why did you call it the Supreme? It was like a pizza.

You'd name it after a pizza? Why did you call it the Supreme? It was like a pizza. It was like a split finger sinker hybrid that went 94 miles an hour. Why didn't they bring out the Supreme again? They'll probably get lefties out. You Darvish, 10 years from now, will still be pitching somewhere. It might be banana ball.

It might be back in Japan. He's going to be pitching somewhere. He'll go back to Japan and be dominant. Yeah, it'll be fun. Let's talk about Kyle Bradish for a few minutes here. He had an interesting outing against the Rays, pitched really well on Tuesday, and month by month is getting away from his fastballs. Getting away from his fastballs. So my question for you is, what is the ceiling for Kyle Bradish as a guy that doesn't seem to have a fastball that he trusts at all right now? Are the secondary is good enough where he can keep doing things similar to the way he did Tuesday night? Or will this catch up to him eventually? And then there's a longer term question is, can you fix this fastball given his age and where he's at in his career you know i tried to look at this a couple of different ways um one of which was just to look

at who's throwing their fastball the least this year and so i just combined uh forcing fastballs and sinkers one of the problems is that uh pitch info calls Kyle Braddish's four seam a cutter. I don't know if I believe that because it's the exact same velocity as a sinker. I know it has cut, but it's more of a cut ride four seam. It might be semantics, but it has the same VLO as a sinker. So I think it's a fastball. And Savant calls it a fastball. But using the pitch info things, adding him up,

he's only at 17% because he uses sinker 17%. But if you add that cutter back in and you get to 40%, there are so many pitchers that throw their fastball 40%. Dylan Cease has a dominant fastball. He throws his fastballs 41% of the time. Sonny Gray throws it 41%. Eovaldi throws pretty hard. Otani throws his fastball 38% of the time.

And he throws really hard. Shane McClanahan, 42% of the time. So in terms of percentage thrown, as long as you call that cutter a fastball, he's not that weird. If you don't call that cutter a fastball, then he throws his fastball the least in baseball i don't know if that's fair but uh uh i i think that cutter that cutter is a is a fastball um in terms of uh you know stuff plus because you know you're saying

that you know he's got this bad fastball. I kind of looked at other pitchers with bad fastballs, and right around where he is in terms of fastballs and mixes, you've got Nathan Eovaldi, Christian Javier, Aaron Nola, Julio Urias, Justin Verlander, you know, even if you like focus on the sinker, which has an 85, you know, in terms of like a primary fastball, 85 stuff plus, here are some other guys. Luis Castillo, Charlie Morton, Chris Bassett, Eduardo Rodriguez. So, you know, Alex Cobb. So there's lots of different ways it can go from here. I mean, because, yes, there are differences between Alex Cobb and Justin Verlander.

I'm not trying to put them on the same list. But I do think that there's definitely a way forward for him. And, you know, we can't lose sight of the fact that he has an elite slider. And so I think the process for him has been putting the pieces around it in a way where like, you know, I've got this elite pitch, you're aware of this elite pitch. And, you know, that process has something similar to what Michael Walker is doing, right? Michael Walker has one elite pitch. It's a change-up. If he can make you always think about the change-up

while he's throwing other pitches, it can work. You know, if he never lets you, he never gets key hold. So Bradish is, you know, throwing, trying to throw all his pitches all the time, and I continue to believe in him. I think that some of the stumbles and starts in terms of striking guys out and some of the bad starts and stuff have just been him trying to figure out how to best make use of that elite slider.

Yeah, I think what's sort of troubling to me is I just did a stat cast search and I was looking at bad fastballs as a group, just basically slugging percentage allowed on fastballs. And Bradish is at 576 so far this season. This four-seamer in particular is even worse. And I'm scrolling the list. Was that the sinker?

I didn't split them all out. I just lumped them all together. Oh, okay. I should probably split them. No, that's fine. But the bad fastball club, I'm scrolling the names of guys ahead of them. I'm like, who's good that's ahead of them that's not a reliever? Sometimes you get some relievers in there that can just slider their way to,

ooh, Luis Severino's high on this list. That could be a problem. Hayden Wisniewski, Luke Luke Weaver, Chris Flexen, Brady Singer. It's just a lot of starters that I'm not really into. But you can't just say, oh, he's on this list, so he's not good. That's not at all what I'm saying. It's more like, who's had to work through this problem or who else has this problem and what happens to them? If you throw a last month's you know split on

that does it change i mean that's that's the one problem i i know that we talk we i today have have mentioned pitch splits in terms of results but you know that does become problematic because uh you know if i mentioned you this you know the slugging percentage on a pitcher who'd two starts, that's like the equivalent sometimes if I'm telling you what his slugging percentage is on slider or something, you know what I mean? Yeah. Not as bad for this month. If you look at June only a 485 slug on all fastballs for Bradish. That's still not great. But better.

So are we saying like top 30, top 40 starter? Where does he top out if this is how he has to work for the foreseeable future? Consistent SP3, SP4, someone you occasionally move away from for the toughest of tough matchups? Because this is a pretty good find if you took Braddish either as a late dart or picked him up as an early season addition. He's been really good overall. an early season addition he's been it's been really good overall i think actually looking at his results you could have avoided some of these situations uh playing the you know careful game right the start and don't start them i mean uh if i i'm just gonna list his worst starts and uh i think you would have not like if you're just a little bit careful with him you wouldn't have started him for a lot of them so home boston uh at detroit now that's obviously

one you would just wear because you would have you would have pitched him at atlanta at new york yankees um and that's it maybe at san francisco giants so two of those are you know you would have started him probably at the Giants and at Detroit, but you would have avoided the two worst starts of the year if you didn't have him pitch against Boston at Atlanta. Yeah, that Boston start back in April would have been probably borderline for a lot of leagues.

I think you would have said, not sure I trust this guy yet. I don't know, but Baltimore's adjustment to the park last year might have been enough to say, that's a home start in a deep enough league, 15-team league. I'm in. He might have been your last pitcher in for that. So that one's like the most borderline.

At Atlanta, I think people would have avoided, and maybe at the Yankees with Judge Healthy back in late May, that would have been one you probably could have sidestepped. But yeah, he would have been active most of these starts so far. And there are starts that he did well that might have been one you probably could have sidestepped but yeah he would have been active most of these starts so far and there are starts that he did well that might have been borderline Texas at home Toronto at home but he you know

and then there's the ones where you definitely wanted to start him Pittsburgh you know he's done well in a lot of those starts so Pittsburgh at home like you know he did what he was supposed to do so at washington he did what he's supposed to do so yeah i think you can just you could be careful with him and maybe you'll avoid a blow up or two and uh definitely what

uh paul spore calls a team streamer in 15 team leagues where i'm just i can't drop him but that doesn't mean that he's necessarily my best starter every week. You know, he's, he's in my lineup every week. All right, let's move on to one guy who's currently on the IL, Nestor Cortez. And I think he's kind of interesting because much like Sandy Alcantara, when I take a look at Nestor Cortez and the basic things we look at with a pitcher, I don't see anything that's a lot different than last year. I mean, this is the guy that was really effective a season ago. I didn't expect a mid-two ZRA and a sub-one whip again, but I expected a lot more than a 516 and a 130 so far. Still getting a strikeout per inning.

once we get Cortez back from the IL? Is there any reason to believe he can't at least split the difference between what he did last season and what he's been doing this year with the bloated ratios? Yeah, there's something going on with the slider a little bit. It definitely has more depth than it used to, and that's not always good, especially given the fact that he throws it 77 miles an hour. Maybe it's secretly a curve.

So there's some year-to-year difference in the way that his breaking balls are performing. I don't know. His breaking balls are below average by Stuff Plus this year, and I think they were above average last year. So there's a slight difference in the movement patterns on his pitches and a tiny degradation in V velo at least off his peak uh when he was performing at his best last year he's over 92 this year he's under 90 under 92

um but again i think this is a little bit where you know he wasn't as good as he was last year but he's not as bad as he's been this year and uh you know so that So that's a fairly easy one to sort of parse for me where it's like, yeah, sure, I'll pick him up if he got dropped. Yeah, probably a high 3s, low 4s ERA and like a 120, 122 whip the rest of the way would be... That's what the bats got on him. I think that's maybe a tick high, but not way off based on how he did it a year ago.

Home run rate being up this year, not a big surprise. He's not overpowering. I mean, that ballpark, it boosts power for lefties and righties. So, yeah, it's better to be a lefty as a pitcher at Yankee Stadium than a righty given the way the park plays. But still, it's not an easy place to pitch. Yeah, it's true. But he has a lower home run rate at home.

And as a lefty, at least he's suppressing lefties from getting to that short porch and right. So in some ways, lefties are better suited for that ballpark, and he strikes out 10 per 9 per career against lefties with a lower home run rate. He's the guy. I like him. I don't like shoulder injuries. There's one aspect of maybe he's the guy that I pick up

but leave on the bench for the first start just to see where the velo's at, just to see what's going on. Yeah, that's probably a good way to play it, just to make sure everything is back to where it's supposed to be once Cortez is back. You've always wanted to be part of something bigger than yourself. You live for experience and lead by example. You want the most out of life and realize what you're looking for is already in you. This is for you.

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Let's get into some pull rate conversation this is a question that came in from jack and jack was trying to dig into what was going on with some slumping players and started looking at rolling pull rates on fan graphs jack wrote i know batters tend to hit harder when they pull the ball but is there a goldilocks zone for pull rate how much pull is too much and would pulling more or less be an effective fix for some slumping players when is it better to hit the ball the opposite way that is a huge philosophical question uh big debate i've been having on twitter uh ever since i wrote that piece about hitting a couple weeks ago. I would say that once you start approaching 50%, I get worried.

It's a little bit like the 50% fly ball thing where I just feel like when you get up to 50% pull, you're predictable. It's like a pitcher. Once they do get over 50% in any split with a pitch, the hitter's going to sit on that pitch, right? That's why I even mentioned that Sandy Alcantara's, you know,

doing some weird stuff with four-seamers with batters on base because it was approaching 50%. And if you get to 50%, you'd be like, I'm sitting four-seam here, you know? And so what happens when you look at a hitter that's over 50% pull? Like, this dude is looking inner half. You know? This dude is trying to get the ball out in front. You know?

I'm going to fill him up with sliders. I'm going to fill him up, you know, outer half, low down. You know? And, you know, very top of the pull percentage is also a guy who hits 50 fly ball so max muncie 50 55 pull percentage 51 fly balls guess what his babbitt is it's bad it's 180 i got that leaderboard open too and it's bad it's a really bad combination because you're going to end up even though you do damage a lot of these guys are gonna be good barrelers um with with the muncie combo kyle

schwarber's here too pulling it that much and lifting it that much well you're gonna fly out to your pull side a lot of lazy fly balls i think it also leads to sort of rolling over. And then fly balls don't have great Babibs themselves. And pop-ups on these guys, the pop-up on Muncie, Paredes. If you look at IFFB, it's better if you multiply it by fly ball rate. But a lot of these guys are fly ball guys. They're pull fly ball guys.

So if you look at pop-up rates, there's a lot of high pop-up rates at the top of the pull percentage. Look at that. You got Max Muncie at 16, P, Perez at 20%, Schwarber at 17. I think league average is 10 or something. Dalton Varshow at 21%. Jose Ramirez even, 15.

Buxton, 19. So these are all the go-get-it, pull-fly-ball, do-this-for-power guys as a group. The piece that I wrote, I don't think I'm necessarily advocating that. The sort of approach that I like best are guys who are flat through the zone and sometimes catch the ball out in front, but aren't necessarily optimizing to always catch the ball out in front, but aren't necessarily optimizing to always catch the ball out in front. And one thing that I can sort of point to is, I think one of my sort of North Stars on this is Justin Turner. He's the first guy who told me, I want to get the ball out in front of the plate. And Justin Turner, his pull percentage is 40% this year,

and that's higher than his career high. He's always been at sort of 35% to 40%. And in terms of fly ball rates, he's always been around 40%. So, you know, he's a guy who has real natural feel for hit, a guy with a good hit tool, always had good strikeout rates and batting averages, who just tweaked his approach a little bit to go get the ball out in front a little bit more. And it was good for him. But for people that sort of go all in on this, Cal Raleigh, Byron Buxton, why does Dalton Varshow have a bad batting

average all of a sudden? Kyle Schwarber, Maxcy you know you know the names on this list you know there there are guys that that uh strike out pop up and don't have great batting averages so you know there's some young players who are are close to this and you know you i guess it's it's kind of interesting to think about spencer torkelson through this viewpoint right now he is barreling the ball better and he's hitting the ball harder, and those are good things. And he is a guy that has some decent ability to make contact, decent eye to play, but right now he's got a 48% pull rate

and a 44% fly ball rate and a 15% pop-up rate. You know, Tristan Casas, you know 47 percent uh a pull rate 43 percent fly ball rate 13 percent uh pop-up rate oh no that's i'm looking the wrong place 10 pop-up rate so he's not popping things up he's a good hit tool maybe it'll work for him but those are two young players where i'm like it's a little close to the danger zone you know. I think at the opposite end of the scale, you look at guys that go the other way a lot. Among qualified hitters, Bo Bichette's number one by a healthy margin,

41.4% opposite field rate. If you've watched Bo Bichette, he fits into the good hit tool and as a result is a good bad ball hitter. There's some bad that comes with that, even though Bo Bichette does this exceptionally well. He doesn't walk because when you can hit everything, you don't have to walk.

You can just find a pitch you like and slap it somewhere, and you're on base. And you might even slap it down the line for a double going the opposite way. He has more power than anybody else around him on the list, though. Right. He's on pace to probably hit 30 home runs for the first time in his career,

which is pretty unusual because most of the guys on the list, Myles Straw, no power. K'Brien Hayes, been looking for the power forever. Christian Yelich used to have power, goes the opposite way a lot now. Paul Goldschmidt, okay, he's still got power. Bryson Stott, not a lot of power.

Joey Manessis, not as much power as you'd expect. Boehm, we've been waiting on it for him. Luis Urias. Urias, Asturi Ruiz is on this list. There's a few players that have power sprinkled in. Adley Rutschman, Nathaniel Lowe's got some. Manny Machado's top 15 right now in opposite

field percentage. But it's not his best year either. Right. So it's just so interesting that you can... It really depends on other factors. The Goldilocks range for a hitter probably depends on other things that you can't define. How much natural power they have. How much natural hit tool. Like I said with Justin Turner, here's a guy with hit tool who went and got the ball more.

Hey, Cabrian Hayes, maybe actually try out a 35 percent pull rate for a little bit i know that's not something you say to a hitter you know i know you don't say that in the hitting try out this number yeah right exactly like it's a pair of pegs right but like i would love statistically to see what cabrian hayes would do with like a 35 to 40 percent pull rate and a 40% fly ball rate. Just because he starts with such a great hit tool. You know, he started in such a great spot.

In fact, like, like Paul Goldschmidt is, is, is a good example of this. Yes. He goes Apple a lot, but he used to go Apple more.

And when I asked him at the all-star game one year, like, like, how did you really break out? He said, by learning to pull the ball sometimes. So he's a pretty good example. Here's a guy who, you know, does have a natural integration to go oppo,

but also has added pull to become more of a power hitter. So could that work for Stott? You know, could that work for Lowe? Like, I thought last year's breakout for Lowe was a little bit of that, but not really. I guess it turns out. I was wondering, too, if you look at just

exit VLOs on fastballs, if you can sort of reverse engineer how much bat speed a player has. But the problem you run into is some of the guys that can hit fastballs hard are letting it travel, right? And they're going the opposite way. And that's where Brian Hayes popped up on that leaderboard.

DJ LeMayhew popped up on that leaderboard as guys that they didn't quite fit that mold of someone that I would have thought of as a great fastball hitter when thinking about power. But it's because they're taking those fastballs and driving them the opposite way and sacrificing power. And often at low launch angles because because of the the geometry of the swing if you're letting it travel a lot of times you're hitting that more on the downward trajectory from of your swing and so

that's why i think sometimes barrels are you know barrels do perform better than hard hit rate overall um and barrels are more predictive. I think that's what you're getting at as part of it. You had a Cabrian-Hayes spray chart against 95-mile-an-hour fastballs, and it's kind of exactly what you're thinking. Almost all to the right side. It's some up the middle, a lot to the right side, and two balls hit to the left side that were probably rolled over.

None of those are barrels. Those are hard hit balls but they're not launched no yeah no the two to the left side were like right where the short stop would be yeah right so uh so you know i think um i mean are we i don't know if we're answering this satisfactorily. Of course, in our style, a little bit wishy-washy. Well, no, no. I think there is a range, but I think it's unique to a hitter's skill set. And you can bucket different hitters together. Yeah. You're going to find that there are certain guys that should not pull. Bo Bichette shouldn't try to pull the ball as much as Max Muncy does.

That wouldn't be a good adjustment for him. Would you agree with that? That's a fair statement, isn't it? Yeah, no, it totally is. But I do wonder how much do you use it to ding a young Jeremy Pena, Spencer Torkelson, or Tristan Casas? That's where really the pedal hits the metal, right?

It's a little bit easier to be like, okay, this is working for Paredes because he has that good hit tool and he's making the most of uh of his balls in play you know he's just gonna he's just because he has a good hit tool like this this is a good way for him to be it's fair to be like well maybe Schwarber and Muncie are just not going to be any different than this. Maybe this is just who they are. They're just leaning in. But it also is fair to say, going forward, I will ding Jose Ramirez, Byron Buxton, Kyle Schwarber, Max Muncy. I will not expect a good batting average for them.

And maybe Ozzie Albies. I'm going to sit in there second at pull percentage. Albies is having a year that I think we can safely describe as unusual, but not necessarily bad at all because 17 homers, 268, 320, 504. Yeah, that sounds great. He's got a few steals now. But he's like Byron Bucks the thing, where he's not stealing bases anymore, and he's becoming a pull power hitter.

Right. He's on pace for 35 homers and six steals. It's fine. It's a net value, positive player where I drafted him. It's like, well, that's just not quite the way I thought the categories were going to work. Yeah. I mean, you hit 259, 30, and went 30, 20 two years ago. Right. and I believed

in him in part because we saw those back-to-back seasons even though one was the shortened season of 9% barrel rates. Some spray hitting, good, like good.

Yeah, okay rates. Yeah. And all that's still there and maybe he'll run more this point forward and get to 12 or 15 steals and it won't be that different and it's all said and done.

He's trying to do the Jose Ramirez. Okay, is that a good idea? Do you think he can? Do you think he should? steals and it won't be that different and it's all said and done. He's trying to do the Jose Ramirez. Okay. Is that a good idea? Do you think he can? Do you think he should? It's not a bad thing to try to be if you have the tools to be that player, but do you think Albies has shown

us enough to do that? The reason I'm hesitating is because of Albies not being as good from the left side. Yeah. Which is still true, right? 213 versus righties this year with 85 WRC+. Still true.

7-18 slugging against lefties. Oh, Ozzy Albies, I'll never understand you. I love watching him, though. He's fun to watch. He is fun to watch. The other player on that poll percentage leaderboard comes up in my timeline a lot because, well, for you tweets are still a thing.

Please make them go away. The poll percentage of Willie Adames is really high. And I would say when you see a player who's struggling and you see a big shift in batted ball types like this, it leads you down. If you could ask if I were in the clubhouse, what's going on? You're pulling the ball a lot

this year. Maybe you wouldn't want to talk about it. The approach he had the last two seasons seemingly worked a lot better. I don't know if this is... I've seen someone on Twitter speculate that he's trying to kind of put the offense on his back and hit a three run homer every time he swings the back his way out of the out of a slump too yeah and it's it's just kind of the the results so far

a poor approach or a broken approach that needs to be adjusted to get him back on track yeah because otherwise you would say, I look at the barrel rate, I look at the walk and strikeout rates, and they're all in line with the past. Other than pull percentage, you're like, this guy's fine. Right. Probably a little bit of work to be done there to get Willie Adames back on track. Projections say he will figure it out and get back back but that's the one thing that's really different about him so far that that gives me a little bit of pause about just assuming it's going to happen i guess the goalie locks range is like it's a little bit like fly ball right

we're like once you get to 50 you have gotten my full attention and once you're under i think about 35 i consider you more of a slap spray hitter where it's going to affect your power. And it's largely true for the guys on this list. The only real standouts start to come when you get closer to 35%. Goldschmidt at 33%. Gleyber Torres at 33%.

William Contreras at 33%. Sander Bogarts at 34%. Brandon Marsh at 35%. is at 33. William Contreras at 33. Sander Bogart's at 34. Brandon Marsh at 35. I mean, already now you're starting to get to 35 where I'm like, yeah, you could be fine there. Those are the only power hitters on this list. Thanks a lot for that question, Jack. We've got a question about Zach Eflin. And Zach Eflin is having a pretty unusual season because he doesn't look like he's overpowering anyone. That was never really expected.

You take a look at the pitch mix. More cutters and curves seem like the changes with the movement profile of his pitches looks pretty different as well. has been able to do with him to this point that enabled Zach Eflin to string together a half season with really the best ratios of his career by a pretty healthy margin. He's an interesting guy because due to the Tampa Bay home park factor and other results type stuff, his projections were pretty good despite not having a pitch that stuff plus rates as above average i i sort of think of chris bassett when i i think when i look at zach efflin now he's a guy with a ton of pitches kitchen sink uh trying to uh you know never really be predictable um and in terms of what they've done

uh for him um i think a fair amount of it had to do with the curveball, you know, and increasing, you know, a little bit the velo and the vertical movement. He's got a lot more drop on the curveball this year. And I think that just leads to more separation. Theball uh last year in terms of uh difference in drop from the cutter was around you know nine to ten inches and it's it's it's more than that now um and the the cutter the curve in general like he sometimes throws a slider it's very the curve is very different from the slider now um and in terms of horizontal movement the curveball just has more more movement you know so i think it's just become a better pitch for him. And if you look at the horizontal movement in particular,

the foreseam is different this year. The slider is different this year. The curve is different this year. So they've spread his pitches out. I think of the sort of banana peel effect where, you know, if you look at Brooks, they have like, you know, you can have the movement patterns and you can see, you know, how tight the pitches are, you know. And I like it a lot of times when there's like a wide band of vertical and horizontal movement between the pitches. So when pitches sort of diverge from each other, I like that. Yeah, it just seems like the pitches are more compatible with each other.

There's a more carefully crafted game plan for how they work compared to what we saw in the past. The changeup this year has just added three inches of drop. Is he actually throwing it though? He's thrown 969 of them. This is interesting. This might be the biggest

change on the board. Right now, the changeup is getting four inches more dropped than it did last year. It's pretty good. Yeah. And in terms of what it's doing outcomes-wise, let's see. In the last two months,

let me just do the last two months because it's only been this way for the last two months let me just do the last two months because it's only been this way for the last two months change up in the last two months 182 batting average against 0 ISO I mean this is there is an archetype here which is that I like

I'm always going to push pitchers with lots of pitches up a little bit in my ranks. More ways to adjust and keep hitters off balance and find Ks and find new levels of success. It doesn't always work. Ross Stripling has a lot of pitches and it hasn't been a good season for him. But it's the Hunjin Ryu is the archetype of this group. Thanks a lot for that question. For some reason, I don't know who sent that question, even though I know it was a mailbag question.

So we'll say it was anonymous, even though there was a name on it. One more to get to. A hitter question about TJ Friedel boils down to, how exactly is he doing this? Entering play on Wednesday, TJ Friedel has a 322, 379, 492 line. That's a 129 WRC plus. Not a ton of power for homers so far. Eight for nine is a base dealer, but a pretty nice player for an endgame guy that has kind of carved out not quite an everyday role, but a pretty significant role on an improving Reds team.

Yeah, I was going to say home home road splits but uh yeah the power 617 slugging at home 385 away so definitely home park is helping there but he has a 371 babbitt at home 390 away and the one thing that really sticks out for me is batting average on balls in play a guy who had a 251 last year has a 381 this year i think that's the largest source of uh differential there and unfortunately uh i just i think it's mostly luck i know there was um an interesting uh tweet today that Casper at Casper Stats was writing about

you know a batter being able to sort of place the ball and if Luis Arias has the ability to kind of place the ball and what that could mean but until I know a little bit more I'm not going to say that i don't believe in

it but i don't think just sort of generally i'm not sure how much ability uh batters have to place the ball yes i do believe they can generally go pull a rappo we just had this conversation uh but in terms of like pull here so you're saying there a little harder to have a consistent nine iron that you're going to hit where you're just yeah lifting it over the infield but dropping it in front of the outfielder consistent and arise that seems to have that this year it's the magic wandu it's the 200 foot hit he's got the 200 foot hit down this year where they just keep landing in front of the outfielders right um but uh i also mean like let's say let's say a hitter does have the ability to go oppo uh ground ball right okay that seems possible mechanically how how good would it have to be

at that to like go oppo ground ball where the second baseman wasn't right as a righty that'd be very hard to do to shoot those gaps yes because you have to also hit it hard enough to hit it through those gaps yeah and the ball's moving and your bat's moving and um i i have immense respect for athletes and i believe they can do all sorts of things and a lot of times they just baffle me with the things they say they can do. But this one, I'm not sure that that batters really have that ability. So I would I would guess that, you know, his XBA is 250. Even if you give him a little credit for being able to place the ball, I would say, you know, his batting average going forward is going to be more like 260. And if you revise the whole line around it to a 260 batting average, you get a lot of the same guy you would have got last year.

And if you paste out the guy who you had last year to a full season, 250-15-15. So I would take half of that going forward. 250-15-15. I mean, that might be good enough to keep. The large share of a platoon in that outfield. If he's their. If he's their worst outfielder.

I don't know. I look at a guy like Will Benson. And I just think. There's so many more ways for Will Benson. To hurt you long term. As a big league player. Than there is for TJ Friedel. And if you had to bet on one of them. I would bet on Will Benson.

Even though Friedel has been. the preferred option for the Reds up to this point. Yeah, Benson's getting hot too. And he's just got the more traditional high walk rate, decent contact, good batted ball quality. He's an easily projectable guy. You're not sort of relying on any uh magic wandu um and so uh i believe that but i also believe that this outfield is under attack yep and it's under attack by the infield

and nick senzel is gonna join the outfield uh or if he hasn't already and christian encarnacion strand uh i do believe he has uh taken an outfielder's glove let me confirm that he has started to play out there a bit in the mind he has the assault on the outfield he has is just begun and there are going to be jobs lost in the sound field. Yeah, it's a profile. TJ Friedel has a profile. Will Benson has a different set of flaws. Both of them could fail for completely different reasons,

or they could each succeed for wildly different reasons. They're just very different players. They are going to have a difficult time. Both players are going to have a difficult time holding onto long-term spots as they get more talented players onto this roster. That is going to be the uphill battle. Their window might be from now until the trade deadline, depending on how aggressive the Reds want to be. Otherwise, it's probably now until the end of the season before things really start to get crowded in 2024. I mean, the Reds are in first, amazingly.

And if you've got CES coming up, Cristiano Encarnacion-Strand, and he looks like he's ready, he's hitting the ball, cover off the ball, you don't bring him up to play part-time. So you're testing him in left and right, and I'm guessing he's going to pass that test. Worst-case scenario, he doesn't pass that test, and he DHs, but that also means that anybody who's DH, he becomes kind of a full-time DH or full-time first baseman,

in which case Spencer Steer is just hanging out. And Spencer Steer has been tried in the outfield. So that's part of this sort of attack on the outfield that I'm talking about. So Senzel, Steer, and CES are headed towards DH and outfield. That's three guys that are pretty good. So that basically pushes Benson and Friedel and Fraley into one outfield position and backup outfield position. And they're a team that could use pitching.

So, yeah, there seems to be an outfielder trade happening. I mean, they'd probably get more if they traded an infielder, but McClain looks great at short. Elie De La Cruz is the future. Votto, he wants to win. He wants to stay and win. I don't think he has trade value. Three weeks ago, this was a team that was going to have

to trade Joey Votto because they weren't good this year and they had nowhere to play him. Now he wants to stay and eat the chili and and win a title three weeks i i you know i don't know what they're willing to part with but like maybe uh friedel and maybe benson is is the guy that gets them a pitcher in which case friedel wins and stays and fraley is the backup center fielder to senzel i guess i don't even know if will benson gets you a whole. That was a pretty small trade that

brought him to Cincinnati in the first place. I don't think that's going to get you the... He's probably a secondary piece or an extra player you put in a trade. I don't see Steer, McLean, CES, Elie de la Cruz. Unless they trade like Noel V. Marte.

That could happen. That part's interesting, but I think generally, you better play well if you're Red's outfielder. I'm looking at the projections as a better guide for what Friedel's likely to do the rest of the way. They've got him as a below-average player by WRC+. I think the Babbitt you pointed out, it's a huge part of why he's been able to prop up a slash line

that's just way better than expected this point. I think he's a nice fourth outfielder. And I think as that team gets better, that's the role he's most likely to end up in. Thanks a lot for that question, Mason. If you've got a question for a future episode, you can send those our way at rates and barrels at gmail.com is the easiest

way to get those to us at, you know, Sarah's on Twitter at Derek and Riper. If you want to look for us there, you can also follow the pod at rates and barrels for watching us on YouTube be sure to hit the like

button on this video if you made it all the way to the end congratulations that's got to be some kind of record 65 minutes on a YouTube video that's unbelievable unless

you're doing the white noise thing or background music while you work so putting your babies to sleep wouldn't wouldn't know much about that but but again if you got questions for a future episode we're always. But again, if you've got questions

for a future episode, we're always happy to take those. And we've got another episode coming up on Friday. So that's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening. Thank you.