Rates & Barrels - Popularity vs. production, finding fits for Trevor Bauer, Masahiro Tanaka and Tomoyuki Sugano, and weighing options for the Blue Jays

Episode Date: December 16, 2020

Eno and DVR discuss player popularity against production in hopes of finding undervalued players, and look at potential fits for Trevor Bauer, Masahiro Tanaka and Tomoyuki Sugano, before considering the Blue Jays' offseason options -- including a potential trade for Nolan Arenado -- as they aim for a deep October run.  Rundown 1:28 Fresh Concerns About 2021 Season Length 8:08 An Examination of Popularity vs. Production  15:51 Seeking Young Overlooked Players 20:04 ‘Boring’ = Value? 26:55 Where is Trevor Bauer Going & For How Long? 36:14 Finding a Fit for Masahiro Tanaka 44:29 Could the Angels Pursue Two FA Starters? 46:36 What Will the Jays Do in Free Agency? 52:33 Sending Nolan Arenado to Toronto?  Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one. Just start moving with the Peloton Bike, Bike Plus, Tread, Row, Guide, or App. There are thousands of classes and over 50 Peloton instructors ready to support you from the beginning. Remember, doing something is everything. Rent the Peloton Bike or Bike Plus today at onepeloton.ca slash bike slash rentals. All access memberships separate. Terms apply. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Wednesday, December 16th. At least it probably is by the time you're listening to this podcast.

We are recording a little bit earlier than that, recording midday on Tuesday the 15th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. As we expected by recording shows on consecutive days, the always slow MLB offseason offered us nothing new in terms of interesting topics that are based on signings and trades and activity. But fortunately, we're adept at entertaining ourselves. Eno's got a great piece coming up later this week. We'll talk about some of the process behind that. He's looking at page views on fan graphs against production, trying to find some insights into the minds of the common fantasy owner. It's one way I'm looking at

this anyway. I think it's a pretty fascinating piece, really cool idea, and some awesome visualizations in that piece as well. Going to get to a few more free agents, try to predict where they're going to go. We started that up on our last episode. So if you listen to this one and say, why did you talk about George Springer? Well, we talked about him on the last one, so you can go back and listen to that. Edo, how's it going for you on this Tuesday? It's going good. The reason we're doing this early is the worst of all possible reasons.

It's called Housemageddon, and what it is, is the dogs are getting snipped. That's happening too? You described your problem yesterday as two children in the house also on Zoom with you and your wife, and that's chaos

in and of itself, but the animals are getting fixed. That's how you get to full Housemageddon. And I don't think we have not yet done a good job of explaining to the children that the dogs will have cones and will not really want to hang out, and the

kids are very hands-on with these pups, so they're not going to be super excited about that. And I've got them, because my wife is going to take the dogs to do the deed. So your prayers in this time of need. Otherwise, there's also bad news. The one piece of news that I did see this morning was bad news,

The one piece of news that I did see this morning was bad news, which is that the owners were sort of arguing for fewer games, perhaps to cut their losses to some extent. And the players were asking for more games, and that has repeated. players are out there um sort of not maybe not as a monolith but are generally saying let's have a full season we've proved that we can play with um you know different protocols in place and we should start the season uh with or without fans and welcome the fans in when uh that becomes feasible i think that's a defensible stance, especially since they're the ones risking anything when it comes to, you know, they're the most at risk in terms of they're the ones in the clubhouse, which seems like the riskiest situation in baseball. And, you know, they want to play. So it's a bob nightingale report um it may just be a couple

people he's talking to so he may not anytime you do a report like that you who knows if he has the the pulse of everybody but he talked to a few owners and he talked to a few players and that seems to be what um that's probably also heating – it's impeding a chance for us to know if there's a DH in the league and what the roster sizes will be and stuff that fantasy fans want to know about. Right, and I think if the owners still want to try and play a slightly reduced or significantly reduced season, that would probably mean in some cases the season length determines a team's interest in a particular player. So that's holding up free agency, holding up trade movement. Get out of your own way, MLB.

There's more things to be optimistic about and pessimistic about in general, right? things to be optimistic about and pessimistic about in general, right? Vaccines have been rolled out this week. We're starting to see the first people being treated with those, and that's a step in the right direction, a huge step in the right direction, and it's only December 15th, so to sit here today and pretend like the season couldn't possibly start on time when the players just played without the vaccine and learned all the new protocols. And you could still use a lot of those protocols, carry them over, right? Keep people as safe as possible.

I think the owners are going to end up looking very bad in this if they try to shorten the upcoming season based on where things stand right now. And it's the last thing the game needs, another fight over something that is, frankly, just gross. It's in baseball's best interest with regards to other sports, too, because we're seeing that basketball is going to start. And since basketball is starting late,

it's going to run into the beginning of baseball season. And if they manage to have a representative normal season where baseball is dragging its heels with another labor dispute you know in there is there is a pantheon of sport like there is choice when it comes to sports like i have largely gotten rid of football in my life. I used to pretty much watch football on Sundays. I don't care anymore. And I don't know. There's a lot of reasons for that.

And we don't need to get into that. But that's what happens when a sport, when certain things come out about a sport or there's certain choices that are made or even labor choices or, you know, there's all sorts of reasons. Maybe, maybe you decide that there's too many three-pointers in basketball and you can't watch it anymore. You know, like there's, there's all these things that make people decide and they do decide. And we saw that when there was labor strife in 1994, viewership was down. And I think to some extent, Bud Selig looked the other way on the steroid era in order to allow that to curry more fandom and like bring baseball back um and so that becomes like this weird uh chickens coming home to roost sort of situation later but later, but hey, Bud Seelig's not complaining. He's in the Hall of Fame. Yes, he is. It's a strange relationship as a Brewers fan with Bud Seelig because he's

often credited with keeping professional baseball in Milwaukee. If a different owner had picked up the Brewers prior to the construction of Miller Park, that team may have been relocated. Small enough media market, teams were moving in that era, easily could have seen the Brewers on the road in the late 90s. So I have to look at Bud Selig,

guy who owned the Brewers a little bit differently than Bud Selig, the guy who ended the All-Star game in a tie, or Bud Selig, all the other commission. You can go on and on and on, but we don't have to make this an anti-Selig sort of pod. It's going even darker than we need to. The concerns about the season length are valid. So that's why.

Yeah, right. It feels like the walls are closing in because in some ways they are for you. But you gave me some insight into the piece that you are going to have coming out later this week. And I want to start with that on this episode because you're taking a look at player popularity. And by that, it's Fangraph's page views. And you're looking at that against projected war. So you're going to see some players who are very good based on war

and highly searched. But you're also going to see some players who are very good based on war and who are not highly searched. And you have the whole gamut there within the chart, but I'm just going to step back for a second. What led you to take a look at this? Because it's a really interesting data set to break down. Twitter, man. Twitter, you know, people ask me what i do when there's no baseball season on i stare at twitter seems healthy no it's definitely not healthy uh but i and i wish that i could tell you who did the tweet but somebody looked at basketball players against a basketball reference hits and made some sort of analysis i didn't even read the analysis. I just said, oh, that's intriguing.

I'd like to do that for baseball. And so I got an insight into the hits on a player's page over the last calendar year. And it's kind of fun, for example, to see that Mike Trout had twice the hits of the second place player in baseball, which was Mookie Betts. And also is projected for two and a half more wins than Mookie Betts and projected for the most wins in baseball. But if you just look at projected wins above replacement and you put that up against their hits, you can actually predict popularity. You can predict almost half of the variance in popularity. So that's pretty good. Like you only have one thing and it's projected quality.

But already you can say like, well, why not? Like what would change, you know, why would somebody be more or less popular than how good they are? You think like this is a meritocracy, right? Well, let's look at this. The fourth best production in terms of projected war by Steamer is by Alex Bregman next year. And the two players around him got twice the hits.

So Jake DeGrom, Alex Bregman, Juan Soto, that's the group. And DeGrom and Soto got twice the hits each, as Bregman did. So, you know, I think that has to do with things that are just more complicated and not going to show up on a graph. You know, the Astros are not popular right now. You know, people are not excited about the Astros nationally. Bregman seems to be at the kind of one of the main people in the cheating scandal. But there are other players that don't fit that as well. Sometimes it's market size.

Matt Chapman is projected to be the 15th best player in baseball next year by Steamer. And ahead of him is Garrett Cole, who gets nearly twice the hits. You got the sort of Yankees versus A's thing right there on display. Then, like, I don't know what to do with this one. This is kind of interesting. Rafael Devers is the 22nd best player tied with Hugh Darvish in terms of projected war.

Hugh Darvish got more than twice the hits he got devers is a good young player uh there's some oscillation as talent so you might want to go to look at his page to see if he's you know what devers are going to get next year but maybe the red sox nation is just so you know like not excited right now i don't know maybe they feel like not ready for this rebuild uh maybe you're just not getting a lot of the fan base on fangraphs right now because they're they feel like this might be a long rebuild but as i've said you know just on the last show i'm not sure that this is going to be a long rebuild so that one kind of um sticks out and um you know there's a lot of different ways that we could we could

look at it i just i found it pretty interesting um to look at it i think for fantasy it's uh those players become um possible values right so i think one thing that could drive up players searches or page views however you want to describe it if i say hits people are going to think i mean like hits on the field yeah would be being kind of a global star right like you see you darvish you see shohei otani and you see hingenryu getting a lot more page views than other players who are similarly productive and i just wonder if that kind of shed some light on just how global their reach is yeah i think that's uh that's a good point um also um you know otani's right there like otani was one of the most popular ones and uh he's projected for a win and a half

um so he really sticks out uh he has five times uh the views of rowdy telez who's projected for 1.6 wins um but uh instructive is also that kyle lewis is right behind shohei tani and projected steamer outcome uh but almost has the same amount of hits. So there is something also about like youth and excitement and untested nature and sort of I'm going to go on this page and decide if I think Kyle Lewis can repeat, you know, what his production is a rookie of the year candidate. And so I found it kind of interesting to go look at the prospects that made this list is I had the top 500 prospects by hits. And the prospects that I've got here are in order. So this is a kind of a consensus prospects list. I mean, all the I mean, it's probably skewed by people who read the Fangrass

prospect list, but they don't like it doesn't line up with you know what you might expect the fangrass prospect list list to look like but there are like people who were traded on it and um you know just sort of interesting players um that maybe some debuts on here so like uh number one is wonder franco okay you're good you got a good list so far uh two is dylan carlson three is joe adele so there you've got the like debuted and now and i want to see how bad it was and see if there's a heel for the future then next comes mackenzie gore jeter downs so maybe red sox nation is just you know already on the board of this rebuild and they're just looking at jeter downs and alex verdugo and tristan cases pages right so jeter downs is there, ahead of Nick Magical. Then there's Nate Pearson. And then Jared Kelenich and Julio Rodriguez come in, 8-9. Andrew Vaughn rounds it

out at 10. I put a top 20 in there. Taylor Trammell's on there. He got traded. Drew Waters is in there. He was rumored to be traded. So I thought it was an interesting way to look at prospects too. Although to me, Kelenich and Rodriguez are probably the two most exciting prospects, not named Wander Franco. And to see them at nine and 10 was, or eight and nine, I didn't quite know what to make of that. Maybe they're not moving teams and they're close enough that it's, you know, you just,

you've made a decision on them. You don't need to go to their fan graphs page. You're like, I like them. I don't know. Yeah. Now we're two off seasons removed from the Kalamazoo trade that, you know,

sent him to Seattle. So interest has been quieted a little bit on that front. I think the most interesting group of players so far, at least as I've started digging into the chart that you put together, are the young players who come in well under expectations for how often they're searched or pulled up.

And an example would be Alec Boehm. He comes in as a really well-projected player people don't seem to be that interested in. And Cabrian Hayes is the other guy that's kind of in a similar part of the chart. With Hayes, I'm actually surprised more people aren't looking for him. I realize he's a pirate, and pirates are not popular,

and that would obviously be a negative weight on any player. Be a pirate, and you'll come in a lot lower than you probably should. I would expect that this winter, there's been a ton of people digging into Cabrian Hayes and just trying to figure out what to do with a guy that only had 95 plate appearances, but tore the cover off the ball for those 95 plate appearances. I mean, Cabrian Hayes hit 376 with a 442 OBP, hit five home runs.

We knew all along as a prospect he was going to be a plus defender at third base. That was always going to pave his way to the big leagues, and how much power he developed on top of an above-average hit tool was going to shape just how much we liked him from a fantasy perspective. I wonder if those are buying opportunities in long-term leagues relative to the quality of those players. Not that people are going to give you Cabrian Hayes for less than they should, but perhaps that they're not valuing him correctly and they would be more willing to move him than they ought to be

in a fair trade. Yeah, I have to wonder if the market is part of that. And it does make you think of like Laura Michaels, rest in peace. He always had a ton of A's on his team. He got to see them. He kind of scouted them. But also in terms of market, the A's were just not driving the same kind of interest. And there was often sort of like a utility dude, Chad Pinder type that in an AL only was just super useful that he could get for a dollar or two. And that was kind of like the lower Michael special when it came to AL labor.

or Michael Special when it came to AL Labor. But, you know, it also, at the top of the list, there are established players that are uninteresting to people for some reason. And that's Alex Bregman, but also, but he has more of like sort of an Astros-based explanation. There are some other guys that I think maybe market-based like Cabrian Hayes were, you know, like, okay, for example, Anthony Rendon, to Brian Hayes were, you know, like, okay, for example, Anthony Rendon, almost a third of the hits of Mookie Betts and projected for only 0.2 wins less. Yeah. An old boring star. Yes. That's why I think the list I'm about to make is I'm just scanning here for, for differences here.

He has Monty Grandal, Devers is on this list. Xander Bogarts is on this list Trey Turner is underperforming his what you'd expect Steven Strasburg you know Paul DeJong

there's the Alex Baum thing let me see if I got any real negative ones here um nick magical that's just weird i think some of the prospects may have had two pages uh so there's so the debuts might have been affected by that but let me find some ones that were under the curve i've made a a best fit line and you can kind of see some that were under the curve. One thing that showed that that messed with my best fit line was like Babe Ruth, who is like 120 years, 125 years old, if you were still alive. So the age thing, I had to cut off the age thing for him uh and like

babe ruth barry bonds ken griffey jr they're still top 500 and hits even though they're not going to give you any value next year but um you know there's definitely a list of boring uh guys that don't do as well as you'd expect. Patrick Corbin is on that list. Yeah, so I don't know. I think that there's always an opportunity especially

I think of Paul DeJong. That guy's going to be good. He's going to be fine. He's going to be useful. Useful in most leagues. He could be like a, you know, I'm not going to bid on all these shortstop strategy where you end up getting a ton of great players and you get Paul DeJong in the final rounds and just slot him in.

You know, that type of player. They definitely stick out in this analysis. I put this out as a tweet maybe a week or so ago because i was really surprised i think it was really more about the the first player of the two but i had player a since the start of 2019 these guys are both short stops player a slash 258 293 481 37 homers 14 steals uh over 100 runs, over 100 RBIs. ADP in early drafts is around pick 75. This is since the start of 2019.

Player B, 237, 319, 424, but 33 home runs. It's almost the same number, four less. 10 steals, four less. 114 runs, only two less than the other player, and 103 RBIs, so only six less than the other player. And the early ADP on player B is just outside the top 200. I mean, you're talking about 20 points in batting average and pretty much nothing else separating those players. It doesn't seem like if there aren't job security concerns with the cheaper player,

that player B looks a little undervalued, right? Yeah. It's Paul DeYoung. Even if there's stolen bases or certain things that can explain some of it on the field, the gap is not as large as that ADP suggests it should be. Right. So maybe player B is almost appropriately priced,

but player A at pick 75 does not seem like a good value. Who do you think player A is? Well, I know who it is. No, you know who it is. You saw the tweet. Yeah. All right. So player A is Javi Baez, which I just,

it made me ill because I saw this after I put Javi Baez on my Keeper League team. I picked him up in the XFL auction last weekend, dug in a little more and said, oh, Paul DeYoung for $15 less in the auction might have been the way to go on that one and spend the extra money somewhere else for an upgrade. So again, it doesn't necessarily mean that DeYoung is way underpriced. It could mean that Baez is overpriced. But I do think you don't necessarily in your mind think of DeYoung as a reasonable comp for Baez. That's the broader point here.

And sometimes that is. It's perception, right? Paul DeYoung does kind of have a boring player vibe to him. I don't know why. That's the way our minds can sort of destroy us sometimes in the analysis. And I think that does happen with perceptions of certain teams. Oh, the Pirates can't score runs. So Ryan Hayes is going to lag in runs and RBIs. Well, maybe you're overestimating how much he's going to lag. Maybe he's going to lag a little, but

he's priced as though he's going to lag a lot in those categories. but he's priced as though he's going to lag a lot in those categories. I should have tried batting average in there. I did try some components, home runs, move the needle the most outside of war. Innings pitched was the big one for pitchers. I just think that means that you're more likely to visit a player page that's healthy in pitching. I don't know. But I have some more boarding names for you.

German Marquez, Salvador Perez, Christian Vasquez, Aaron Hicks, Nathan Eovaldi, Justin Turner, Jorge Polanco, Heimer Candelario. A little bit surprising. Kyle Gibson. There's definitely a boring player type that you can take advantage of in in fang in uh in fantasy i'm surprised edelberto mondesi isn't at least on the line he's below the line he's right around a three win player and he's below some market some market uh factors there could be yeah Yeah. Tiny market, I think, is probably the most likely explanation there

because we know the fantasy community is all over Ed Alberto Mondesi's fan graphs page. Yeah. And Sean Murphy, I think, is my pick to click for catcher next year. I mean, I had him as my AL labor catcher last year, and I think he's really underrated, AL labor catcher last year and um I think he's really underrated and he gets he got 2,000 fewer views uh than at Alberto Mondesi so um there could be sort of a market factor there but uh yeah I had some fun with it uh there's a little bit more coming um you know comparing it to jersey sales

uh comparing hitters to pitchers which uh position was uh how about this uh could you guess which position was uh the least popular i would guess first base and you would be wrong catcher nope it's not first base or catcher? No. Catcher is second worst. Relievers? That's not broken out. I just have pitcher. Okay. But it is the outfield.

That's odd. Can't think of a real reason for that. Older, boring players? Yeah, I can see it. Shortstop is number one, right? That makes sense. Yeah. Shortstop is number one. That's why you put your most athletic young guy you know it's

shortstop's most exciting position um second is third base then comes first base so those are sluggers but you know you have sluggers in the outfield you know what they're i don't understand it um maybe i don't understand it maybe there's there's three of them so you know you don't latch on but like some of the biggest names in baseball are outfielders and they should be giving them hits there so just the thing that happened yeah that one doesn't make any sense to me but yeah some of these stuff you're just like but you know popularity is kind of funny like that. It's just like, you know, you can try to kind of get at it a certain way. And there's always going to be someone you're like, but why is Nick Castellanos super popular?

Couldn't tell you. Could not give you a good reason why he would be a popular player. But yeah, cool thing that's coming out. Definitely check out the piece once it is available. 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, where now meets next. Let's talk about some more free agents. That was a big theme on yesterday's show. And we leaned a little more toward the top hitters yesterday. We'll have both hitters and pitchers, of course, on today's show and we leaned a little more toward the top hitters yesterday we'll have both hitters and pitchers of course on today's show and we talked about trevor bauer sort of briefly we'll kind of close the book on him if you're making the final call and where bauer ends up today where is he signing i still stick with the angels man i think they got the biggest need they're gonna they're gonna come up with the number i man. I think they've got the biggest need. They're going to come up with a number. I kind of am going away from the one-year thing, though.

I had one year and $36.5 million. And you know why? Because it would top Garrett Cole. Yeah. It's crazy, isn't it? And the only thing that would be more Bauer if it was like 36.69420. No matter what the final main dollar amount is, it's ending in 0.69420. It'd be impossible for it not to. That has been the plan all along, regardless of how long the deal is. I think you're probably right, though. I think it's just going to be harder in this environment to get a team to pony up that AAV.

with the Red Sox yesterday. They don't want to get anywhere near the luxury tax threshold. A lot of other teams that could be interested in Bauer are going to get really close to that number if they end up piling all the money into a big one-year deal. Yeah, and that would be their one acquisition

for a lot of teams. That's just not appealing. They want to look like they're doing a lot of work. Also, you think about this. Most teams now are speaking there was a there was a comment that um i think andy martino made in um that was like put on tv and people lampooned it and he said something about you know it's not about winning the the world series this year it's about creating good process and having a team that could win in any given year and stuff like that. It was lampooned because people say, well, if it's not about winning the World Series, what is it about?

I understand that perspective, but you also, from the perspective of a front office person, understand that you'd rather have a team that sort of is in it every year and you can kind of just keep that train plugging along and you plug in guys and plug out guys. And because there's a fair amount of noise, I think, in any given postseason. It's not obvious noise where like, oh, my God, that play could have gone either way. It's like, oh, look what happened to the Padres this year. In one universe, the Padres could have won it all this year.

In the universe where Clevenger comes over and is super healthy and dominates, and Denilson LeMet is healthy and dominates, that team with those two players, that could have made a difference. So I think injury is the big source of chaos and noise. And so you build a team that could compete if they don't get any injuries. And if they get the bad injuries, you sell around the edges and you come back and do it again the next year. That's, I think, what the process is. And from having grown up in Atlanta, I can't fault it that much because it was fun to be in the postseason every year. And yes, as it started to

kind of grate on you that they hadn't won at all, they finally did win at all. And I think it was more of a ride to kind of have a good team every year than it would be to be a fan of the Marlins. And obviously fandom reflects that. Consistent winning gets people in the seats. So I think consistent winning makes sense. And this is why it's a long preamble to why it matters for Trevor Bauer. I don't think teams really want to sign a guy for one year.

I mean, they will if they think it's Marcelo Zuna and if he's good, great. If he's mediocre, fine. I'm not tagged in for the whole thing. But they'd rather have somebody like Bauer locked in, I think, for five years so they can say, this is now part of our window. He's going to make us better for five years well they

could meet in the middle by offering an opt-out after two years or after three years right if bauer wants that flexibility to go out and make more money and if he's unhappy with the team he chooses because they don't put enough competitive pieces around him he wants to bail out that's fine like that's becoming more common i think that's the happy medium the happy medium. The other thing you have to consider, I know this is not always important to the individual players themselves, but how does this decision, if Bauer goes and takes

one year 36.6942 from the Yankees or whoever, how does that impact other free agents? The Players Association can't be thrilled with a player taking a one-year max AAV deal when that player,

what would you project his contract to be? If Trevor Bauer weren't Trevor Bauer, if he were the same guy with those numbers at this stage of his career, if he didn't have his personality, just put a, I'll do whatever I'm told personality in the Trevor Bauer robot,

what contract does he sign? Yeah, I mean, he's projected for about four wins, but the problem with using that sort of thing as gospel is that pitcher projections are always much worse than hitter projections. And he's kind of showing us what he could do in a given season, and that's going to get more, I think, than if he just took wins. Like if he took wins and you were saying like a five-year contract, you start him at four, maybe give him two years of four, that's eight,

then you start giving him 3.5 and three and 2.5 you know like maybe you can like give him 18 wins over four years uh people are trying not to pay a full freight uh which would be 8 million or whatever that's like 150 million five years 150 million yeah 140 million it's not outlandish because i think he's a more durable zach wheeler in terms of year over year expectations and track record and wheeler got five for 118 last winter yeah so i mean i don't know if he's actually gonna go five years or if you do five with the opt-out like I described. I really don't know. I don't see how you push him above Cole.

Maybe on the one-year thing is the only way. I don't see him. Even if he did a three-year with an opt-out after one year, I don't think that anyone's given him $150 million, $160 million for three years with an opt-out? I know a lot of what he's about is betting on himself and doing things his own way. I get that. There are other people and other players

that have varying degrees of doing that also. But at a certain point, it is foolish and it is damaging to other players if you compromise too much and really just buckle down for that one year. I know that's what he said he was going to do in the past, but times have changed, right? I mean, pre-pandemic, maybe betting on yourself year to year, okay, there's a little more uncertainty in the world now. Maybe this uncertainty was there all the time, but you realize the magnitude of the uncertainty after the year we've all just gone

through. Yeah yeah and it's just like who has the budgets i i wonder what his conversations are like who has the budgets i know what some lower level free agent conversations are like and they're just saying we don't have budgets that might be you know we have a budget for bauer but we we don't know what we have beyond that or whatever but still like i'm sorry i did the i did the math and on 36 36.5 no 36 i didn't do this right 36.69420 uh times three 110 million say is that in the random possibility 110 for three with an opt-out an opt-out after the second year because if you're going to make that commitment you probably want to know

you've got him for two years. I think so, too. That's what I'm saying. You want to know him for a little bit. Unless you intend to pitch him every four days. If you're going to pitch him every fourth day. If you don't want the opt-out, then you want the one year. Right.

Do you think he's the kind of guy that would take a slightly customized contract? If he gets what he wants and pitches every fourth day and he breaks, would he give the team an out? Yeah, I could see that. That would piss off the Players Association. Cancel the opt-out. Customized contract. If he gets what he wants and pitches every fourth day and he breaks, would he give the team an out? Yeah, I could see that. That would piss off the Players Association. Cancel the opt-out or something. Right.

You can terminate it. It becomes a team option if my arm blows up. I could see that. I could see that. And I could also see him taking a five-year $125 million contract and then just making a big deal about getting shot in the nuts and like making it a big you know watch momentum maybe we made too much of his his requests the team giving you the hundred plus million dollars usually gets a lot of say in how you're used and

what happens after yeah i haven't received any nine-figure payments but i imagine the person giving you a nine-figure payment dictates a lot of the terms of how things will go from that point forward. That is seemingly how those sorts of arrangements work. Again, no first-hand experience for me. Getting away from Bauer and moving over to

Masahiro Tanaka. I agree with what you said yesterday, kind of in passing. I don't see him in Boston. That would be weird, seeing Tanaka pitching for the Red Sox. So it's not only that. It is their luxury tax issues. It is kind of where they are. I don't think they're hopeless by any stretch.

I think they could put it back together relatively quickly. But I actually think Tanaka makes a lot of sense for a team like the Twins. I think he'd be a good fit in Minnesota. I think I trust that organization to help him continue to age gracefully. And I think relative to the expectations he had when he first came over and signed that, at the time, big deal with the Yankees, this is a little bit like a pitching equivalent of Jose Abreu, where it turned out pretty good, right? I mean, the Yankees got good return on that massive contract, and that was with Tanaka having a couple of injuries along the way. Yeah.

Yeah, I think Tanaka makes sense for sort of win-nowish teams that could use somebody that they want to pencil in. I think of the Padres. You've got all the young guys, but just penciling in Tanaka feels like, okay, now we only need one or two of the young guys to really hit their marks rather than two or three. I like him on the Padres. The Angels just have to get a mention

any time a pitcher is mentioned. I could see Tanaka going there. LA has a vibrant community for Tanaka to join. It's a shorter trip to Japan. I think these things matter. He could say, okay, you know what, fine, I'll take 3-30 as opposed to the 3-45 we were looking for because I get to go to L.A. or San Diego or Toronto, possibly. It's a pretty international city. I think people kind of don't realize that. So those are my teams for Tanaka. In terms of park, I think almost all of them represent a slight upgrade

in terms of home runs allowed, which have been a big deal for him. Right. As a right-handed pitcher giving up the platoon advantage to lefties who mash at Yankee Stadium, it's easy for righties to get there too. His biggest flaw is amplified by that park. So I just think his ratios could stabilize quite a bit with a move out of Yankee Stadium. I was going to ask you over under on a 426 ERA and a 126 whip for Masahiro Tanaka.

I think a 426 ERA would be his third worst of his career. And a 126 whip would be the highest of his career if the steamer projections come true. highest of his career if the steamer projections come true i'm really surprised to find that his homer rate away from home is virtually identical to his home rate at home uh homer way away from yeah so uh that's not what i would have expected there was there was a thing that mitchell lichman always said is that um mgl he always said that um park factors were kind of overrated and that fly ball pitchers weren't necessarily going to give up more homers in certain parks than other parks like homer parks it's not something i ever really understood but over under on the 426 is that what you're saying over under on the 426. Is that what you're saying? Over, under on the 426. Over, but still a credible pitcher.

Over 426. Under 126, though? Because the whip is always pretty good. Yeah. I would say sort of a 4-4, 1-2-0 type. A little bit like his 2019. He's got to get a lot of innings to make that work. But if he goes to the National League and there's no DH.

And if he goes National League Marine layer's no dh if he goes national league marine layer even better i think so i i know what mgl said but i'm just gonna say like if the over under on his home runs next year is 169 that's what he gave up this year 169 for nine i'm taking the under in almost any other park so i'd love i'd be fascinated for me to sort of watch that happen this is only a partially developed thought. So this could unravel very quickly, but trying to understand what Mitchell Lichtman said, I'm wondering if the argument would be that you have just bad pitches that are home runs anywhere.

Like if that's part of the argument, the type of home runs, a guy like Tanaka gives up, there's no doubters, right? It's not like it's an extreme. It's kind of like we talk about pitchers who are good at avoiding hard contact. If you are a certain type of pitcher and your misses are more likely to be crushed, barreled, you'd have a problem with home runs regardless of ballpark. Again, a partially formed thought.

Does that seem like that might sort of connect the dots a little bit? Yeah, I think so. I just lost the, here we go. Let me see what he got. Fly ball pitchers were not at more of a risk than other pitchers when they ventured inside a hitter's park. It's just not something I understand. I think that uh part of it might be okay one thing i can see when i look at his research where he took pitchers and he grabbed grouped into flyball pitchers and ground

ball pitchers and looked at them in hitters and pitchers parks he's just he's looking at overall run scored and i think that when you when we think about park factors we often think about park factors just home run park factors but there are strikeout walk park factors there are singles doubles and triples and there's some things that's as obvious as cores where they kind of moved the fences out for fewer homers and created more singles and doubles so So I could see that that sort of machination means that the pitcher overall does about the same. So they give up a couple of homers when they would have given up doubles or triples. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I was thinking about Great American Ballpark as a good visual. It's a park that boosts home runs, but because the outfield is so small,

you're going to lose doubles and triples into the gaps, right? Those balls are going to be outs because the outfielders can cover a lot more ground for balls and play. So runs overall don't get boosted at all. And home runs get boosted because the fences are close and it's a small park. Runs get boosted because the fences are close and it's a small park. Yeah. And then look at Sonny Gray's homer rate. You know, it wasn't the biggest part of why he was terrible in Yankee Stadium.

He had larger home run rates with the athletics, which supposedly is super. So I think it's about mistakes. I think it's a little bit. I think there's more study to be done here, honestly, because this is something that in the fantasy community we take for granted that a fly ball pitcher is going to go to a home run park and give up a bunch of homers. Sonny Gray just had the second best home run rate of his career in Cincinnati. He's improved his home run rate every year since 2016.

Yeah, it's very strange. I yeah i don't know there's not a lot of accounting for like velocity and stuff and um just splitting pitchers into ground ball fly ball right now is interesting uh this was done in 2012 and the league has changed a lot since then i don't know if that makes it any less or more viable, but just the definition of what makes a ground ball pitcher might have changed since then because we have fewer and fewer ground ball pitchers. But maybe this sort of analysis was part of why teams started being like, hey, we can have fly ball pitchers.

More work to be done, as you said. Still a lot to unearth. But if the field, if people in your league assume things to be true that are not true and you push back, you can gain leverage on the field. You can have opportunities to get players that are overlooked and undervalued because of fears that are unfounded. That's why this is important. That's why this sort of research is highly valued. Thinking about the Angels and hypotheticals and pitchers, if they were to miss on Bauer,

like I think that's where you want him to go or think he's going to go, someone else swoops in. They get Bauer. The Angels need two starters. They could use the money they're going to give to Bauer and get two. They could get Tanaka, and they could get one more. And I wonder if Tomoyuki Sugano might be kind of part of their plan B. If the Bauer chip falls somewhere else, Tanaka plus Sugano could become an actual script the Angels could follow.

And with Otani in place like it it it's cool you know like it has like like a marketing aspect you know um and uh imagine if that team wins a championship with three japanese guys on you know as in like super prominent roles and one of them is a dh slash sp you know that i think that would be kind of one for the books. And then, you know, otherwise, Sugano represents something like the median outcome for Sugano might be near Tanaka because their numbers in Japan were very similar.

But that's just the median outcome. I think the range around that median outcome is higher for Sugano. So slightly more interesting to a team just the median outcome. I think the range around that median outcome is higher for Sugano. So slightly more interesting to a team that would like to roll the dice and could handle him being a 4-5 starter

for the chance that he's a 2-starter. I don't know. I think that does not actually represent the Yankees that well. I think the Yankees would like to have somebody foundational behind Cole. They have Davey Garcia and Jordan Montgomery and Clark Schmidt. They have some guys that could pop and be better than they expected to be. I think they want innings to not have to depend on Davey Garcia and Clark Schmidt,

Jordan Montgomery. But the Blue Jays, I think, could use that sort of variance, and then the Angels would love it, because they would have a chance of getting an ace out of it, really. That's a good point. I do think the Blue Jays, they come up a lot in conversations, almost as a second option. They're going to do something to make that roster better.

I know that's a Captain Obvious sort of statement, but I think it's going to be at least a significant second-tier free agent is going to end up in Toronto because they have a nice young core in place, and they're at the point, they have some money to spend, they have clear needs, and they have free agents available who actually address those needs. So it's sort of a game of connect the dots, like which ones are actually going to get there.

But I think they could be in for maybe two. I think Liam Hendricks could be a guy that ends up in Toronto. I think they need bullpen help. They need someone to stabilize the back end and take some of the pressure off a lot of the young guys out there. I mean, Raphael Delis was a nice story last year, but I don't think you want to expect him to run it back this year. I think Jordan Romano's name comes up a lot as a possible deep league source of saves

for early drafts. But I think about that bullpen being one where it looks a lot better with a guy like Liam Hendricks serving as the primary ninth-inning guy because it just moves everybody else down a seat. Yeah, no, and I got yelled at in my piece because I didn't connect them with Springer or Real Muto and stuff. I just didn't understand it because we talked about this in the last episode. The Blue Jays are top three when it comes to the catcher position by steamer projections. we talked about this in the last episode, blue Jays, the blue Jays are top three when it comes to the catcher position by steamer projections.

Um, you know, now looking at their outfield, this is an interesting thing. They're none of their three outfield spots is projected to be average or better. They're very close. They're very close.

They're really right-handed in their outfield. Yeah. That too. Yeah. So, I mean, I guess, uh,

an outfield addition could make sense, but their needs right now are just so clearly in the pitching department. You know, if they add a major league average starting pitcher, they vault past two teams, four teams. You know, they become basically equal with the White Sox by steamer projections. That's one major league average starting pitcher. And if they added a reliever of Hendricks' type, they would do something similar

because Hendricks is projected to be the best reliever in baseball next year. So it's just I look at the needs. I think you could do. And then also people were talking about their salary. And they're like, well, they used to run payrolls of 150. Well, that was a while back. And Rodgers made money when a lot of places didn't. So maybe they could lean in and go back to the 150.

But I just wasn't assuming they'd go all the way back to the 150. I was assuming they'd kind of go back to around 120 or 110, which means they have about $30 million to spend. And if you have $30 million to spend, that sounds like that could be easily like Sugano, Hendricks, and Jock Peterson call it a day. That would solve some problems because you'd get left-handed power to mix into the corner outfield spots.

You'd stabilize the rotation and get a big upgrade in the bullpen. Really ticks all the boxes. It's not splashy, but it's impactful. You'd leapfrog a lot of teams. I think you would be up there with the Twins and Padres in the top five. Which, if they weren't in the same division as the Yankees and Rays, would make you feel really good. But if you're a Jays fan, you'd still be excited because they'd have a puncher's chance in that division with those upgrades.

And to put it in terms of divisional situation, they're basically tied with the Rays right now. And of course, the Rays are going to make some moves. But if the Blue Jays made those three moves, they would put some air between themselves in the race and put themselves as wildcard favorites. And I know that doesn't sound exciting, but wildcard favorites and wait for, you know, Yankees to implode somehow. I mean, what are you going to do? You can't stop trying just because the Yankees are in a division.

No, you can't. They're not realigning. They're going to be there for a long time. So find your way to do it. And I think their best path is with that core really in pre-arb status as a group. Eventually, that core is going to get expensive, and they're going to go through something that looks like maybe what the Cubs are going through right now, where the young core that got them back to the postseason, they're going to have to get paid.

So reckon with that in four or five years. Don't worry about that right now. Push some chips in right now while you can, and you might kind of exceed expectations now. And on our plan, the Sugano-Hendricks-Peterson plan, the Peterson money drops out after one year. I don't, I mean, I think Sugano, the Sugano and the contract projections is hilarious

because there's a bunch of projections that have put him down to like two years and 30 million or something. I just... I don't understand that. With the way the posting system works, the leverage you have over him, the situation you're in,

I think it's more likely to be... I don't think it's going to be Maeda-esque because that was just a weird ass contract, but I also don't think he's going to get the Tanaka money. So I was thinking more like five and 60, five and 70, you know, like good pitcher prices where you're happy if he pops into the two one, but you can't pay him to like, like a one or two in the major leagues because he hasn't pitched in the major leagues yet. There's that risk. But even then, I don't think it would be a team crippling type of contract.

It would be maybe he's not as good as you thought, but then he's like a $10 million fourth starter or something. Not that big a deal. And Hendricks, reliever contract, they're three-year deals. If it doesn't work out, you'll be out of it in no time. I think that's a sweet spot for the Jays if they

can't land one of the biggest free agents. I'm in your camp. I don't think they're necessarily going to get one of the elite of the elite guys, but I think they're going to be active nonetheless. One thing I do want to mention real quick. This is a weird idea. Trade for Nolan Arenado.

Let's make a Nolan Arenado trade. What would it take for you? Congratulations, you're the Rockies' new GM. It's the third time you've been hired as the Rockies' GM on this pod. What would you want from the Blue Jays to trade Nolan Arenado? to trade Nolan Arenado? Well, the one thing the Blue Jays have is depth in the starting pitching prospect area. And I would, as the Rockies,

I would always be looking for pitching. And since it's all like how much money you're taking on, right? But somebody like Simeon Woods Richardson could be the centerpiece for that. He could be good, but I did have one source that said that when Toronto got them, what they heard was that they got them to flip him. them, what they heard was that they got him to flip him. So you could then build some depth around that. Julian Merriweather throws nearly 100, might be a reliever, might not. You know, Hatch has become interesting. You know, Anthony Kaye is not that interesting to me, but he could be interesting to the rockies you have

to kind of figure out what the rockies like too but like a big pitching uh package plus maybe um you know just a lower uh hitting prospect that's far away boom i think that's i don't think that arenado headlines you know what he brings back is a top 10 prospect in baseball. It's just too big a contract. Right. But if the Jays are willing to take on all that money, then they can swing a deal and not give up any of the top guys in their system, not give up an Austin Martin, not give up Jordan Groshans,

not give up Pearson, right? Yeah. Maybe Or Elvis Martinez has to be included in that deal. I think he's – in top 100 guy, really interesting young guy. I mean, 19 years old, long-term shortstop.

You're like, okay, we're cool with Boba Shett for a while. And then, you know, we'll figure out where Austin Martin plays. And would you try to get Alejandro Kirk in that deal too? Knowing the Jays are fairly well set with Jansen and Reese McGuire.

Can I tell you something weird, man? Steamer projects Alejandro Kirk to be the best catcher in baseball next year. Yeah, Steamer might have had a few hazies before working on that number. It's amazing, dude. I love it. Sort by Woba, Alejandro Kirk. I just picture E.T ET wobbling around drunk.

Anyway, I think that Kirk is super popular. And, of course, they would rather trade Danny Jansen or Reese McGuire, but they're just coming off a terrible season. So who knows? I don't hate that from the Rockies' perspective. It's Danny Jansen as the third or fourth player. I mean, if the Jays want to go all-in with Kirk instead... There's lots of bet on with Jansen.

Yeah, Jansen, I think, at the least, is going to be a competent defensive guy that holds his own at the plate, but there's some potential growth, and you put him in Colorado, and maybe you get a bit of a boost, of course. But Or Elvis Martinez is the guy that I really want. If I'm in the GM chair or the AGM chair in Colorado, that's what I want.

And throw the names at it so that it's Danny Jansen and Aurelvis Martinez and Julian Merriweather and one more pitcher. And you sound like, we got a package of five. They're all exciting. This guy throws 100. Woo! And nobody's like, what'd you get? Don't get pirated in this deal.

Don't get Garrett cold in the Arenado deal. But I think because of the contract, the money that you'd be unloading, ownership's going to be happy with you either way. And if you can hit on a couple of the guys, you get back in that bundle. The bundle might make sense when you're dumping a contract. Yeah, I think so.

At a minimum, you already saved money, and now you can go get something else later. And dumping a contract, Nolan Renato's worth every dollar of that deal. This isn't about that. Thinking about how bad the Rockies are, I mean, it's amazing. If you look at the depth charts,

they have a thing called totals where you can just look at all the teams on the depth charts. And the Rockies, they come in as the third worst team in baseball. But they have zeros or negatives at every offensive position except for the ones manned by Storian Arnaud. They need everybody except for Story and Arnon. Start over. Just start over. Take the cartridge out.

Blow in the cartridge. Fire Burditch. You have to. I hate calling for stuff like that, but you got to move on. You're the owner of the Colorado Rockies. Dick Monfort. How can you be below replacement? And not even just like a little bit.

They are more than a win below replacement at three spots, offensive spots. It's crazy. The team that we pick on the most now, now that the Mets are beginning to straighten it all out, it is hands down the Colorado Rockies. Sorry, Rockies fans. Based on Eno's chart from earlier, there's not a lot of you out there. But we're not picking on you. We think you deserve better. hockey's fans based on, you know, his chart from earlier, you know, there's not a lot of you out there, but you know, we're not picking on you.

We think you deserve better. We think you deserve a more forward thinking front office that puts an actually good team on the field as challenging as it might be in that environment. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of rates and barrels. You can hit us up via email rates and barrelsbarrelsattheathletic.com. On Twitter, he's at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper.

We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening.