Rates & Barrels - Position Player Walk Years, Disagreements Between Projections & Jackson Merrill Gets a Plane Ticket

Episode Date: March 13, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss Eno's recent story examining the tendencies of position players in their walk year, disagreements across projection systems and how to work through those differences (and when to target players with projection systems agreement). Plus, they discuss Junior Caminero getting sent to Triple-A to begin the season, Jackson Merrill's upcoming flight to Korea, an injury for Taj Bradley, and the growing concerns about Gerrit Cole as the wait for an update on his status lengthens.  Rundown 5:52 What Happens in Position Players' Walk Years? ($ Eno's story: https://theathletic.com/5321626/) 11:13 Gleyber Torres' Path to More Power 16:24 Eno's Most Rostered Player From Story? 23:43 Disagreement Between Projection Systems 31:26 Rookies of Interest v. How the Fantasy Market Treats Rookies 38:17 Jackson Merrill Gets a Seat on the Plane 46:53 Taj Bradley's Pectoral Strain 53:20 Ongoing Uncertainty with Gerrit Cole & Current Rankings Adjustment Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our new livestream episodes w/Trevor May! https://www.youtube.com/c/ratesbarrels Subscribe to The Athletic for just $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Please fill out a quick survey to share your podcast habits with us by going to theathletic.com/survey24. Three lucky entries will win $100 worth of Amazon vouchers! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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or renewing a mortgage, many Canadians are finding it hard to focus with housing costs on their minds. For free tools and resources to help you manage your home finances and clear your head, visit Canada.ca slash it pays to know. A message from the Government of Canada. Welcome to Rates and Barrels.

It is Wednesday, March 13th. Derek VanRiper here with Eno Saris. Thank you again to Mike Gianella from baseball prospectus for filling in on Tuesday while Eno's house just created a mountain of tech problems all at once upon returning from spring training. Never have I ever wanted to do that Abe Simpson meme where he comes in, sees Bart is, you know, at his local bar is like the dormant, his local bar and like turns around, puts his hat back on and goes back out.

Like I was like, can we just go back to spring training? I spent the weekend with the kids at the games, having fun, perfect weather after it was all rainy and cold. You saw me on the pod freezing. Uh, the weekend was beautiful and we had a great time. We come back the fire alarm. We have an external hardwired fire alarm that's attached to the sprinkler system. We have a sprinkler system in our house and the external fire alarm,

which is like a bell, like you see in, in like, you know, old schools, schools and firehouses and stuff like a bell, you know, like a has been going off for 36 hours. All of my neighbors hate my guts. The firemen have just come and left. And, uh, the, there's also a water leak that was kind of related to it, uh, that they had to shut the water off. So we come home first night in the house. We've got no power, no water, uh, and, uh, no internet, which really upset the kids.

Uh, uh, and we had a full Tuesday now. and no internet, which really upset the kids. And we had a full Tuesday now of having to have people out to look at the house, but everything's online. Well, I can't say that the fire alarm is online. That thing has been disabled and we're shoving that problem into the future. We'll deal with that sometime, hopefully before the house burns down. Yeah, right. I mean, that's the goal, right?

You got to, you got to get that fixed before your kids start doing things in the kitchen that have any sort of heating elements involved. I think that's that's sort of your timetable for that, but we're glad you're back. Glad everything is slowly getting back up and running in your house. That sounds like chaos to come home to for sure. And I think that Abe Simpson meme is a perfect call. This court is open. And as I mentioned yesterday, the listener league has dropped

or actually onto listener league too. So make sure you choose that link. We've repost that a couple of times. It's pinned at the top of the listener league channel. If that one fills, we'll make listener league three. We're all playing against each other. It's a salary cap format. Big news here is that it locks on Tuesday, the 19th of March for the season.

There's no in season moves, no in season lineup changes or pickups. So just read all the rules, go through it to two hundred and eight other budget. Salaries are locked in. So if guys get hurt, obviously you're not gonna want to necessarily use those players if that's serious injuries Because it's easier to keep it locked in. It's like a mix of daily fantasy where you've got these prices attached to players and season-long and drafting hold so this You know minimal and you know minimal season long and drafting hold. So there's minimal pull in terms of having to massage

your roster all that season. Right. I like that. Which is good. It's almost like a home run derby, but like a whole team. Like a Roto version. Categories slightly modified as well. So read all the rules, be sure to dig into it, but you can check it out in our Discord.

The link for the Discord is in the show description. And who set that up for us? Shout out to Jeff in the discord, Jeff. Good low Guppy in the discord. Say thank you to Jeff. If, uh, if you're in there, because this is a really fun way for a much larger group of us to play together and I think unbeknownst to, you know, unless he happened to in the chaos of yesterday, listen to the pod I did with Mike.

He doesn't know there's a prize. The prize involves him. The top 10 overall finishers in the listener league this year will get invites to play in a traditional league with us next year. So we have- Nice. Yeah. We had to come up with a prize.

That seemed like the best prize I could come up with that didn't require, you know, American dollars. I love it. I love it. We can do that. Hope people are excited about that. And maybe that league by that time, here's my goal. I will try to find a sponsor for that league. There's no guarantee a sponsor that can do something else for a prize for 2025. We're also behind the scenes working on some merch.

So maybe at some point, you know, one of the prizes can be merch too. Yeah, we're cooking up a lot of things right now. Literal sandwiches. I mean, that's, that's chef Ryan doing the heavy lifting on that. Ooh, the sandwich for the, for the live shows in New York next week. The sandwich I think sounds delicious.

I think it's going to have like 22 ingredients by the time the final recipe is determined because every time we have an exchange about it, one of us chips in something. Ryan, what about some fried shallots? Yes, fried shallots sound great. More is better, always. We're one week away from the first of our two live shows at Other Hat Brewing Domino Park location.

Seven o'clock is the start time for each of those recordings. We'll be there a couple of hours before that. We'll probably be there for a couple of hours after that, I would imagine. So we hope to see many of you out there for at least one of those shows if you can make it next week, Wednesday and Thursday, the 20th and 21st. Let's get to the contents of the show. You wrote a piece looking at what happens in the walk years of position players. And we've talked about some of these things before, but there was one thing that really

jumped off the page to me, right? You had these bullet points right at the top. If there's an effect on performance, it's a positive one. That makes sense. Players do a little extra, prepare differently. often become free agents in their peak years. Yeah, there's a series of things that make that very logical. They tend to stay on the field longer, right? So maybe that's pushing through the minor bumps and bruises.

You know, maybe it's doing a little more preventative maintenance. Any combination of things like that. That's always made sense to me. They chase a little more on pitches outside the zone, right? You're pressing, you're trying to earn the biggest contract of your entire life. So you're going to be a little more aggressive trying to make things happen.

That makes sense to me too. But this one, when I saw it, was very surprising. They tend to steal less often. That's a little bit counterintuitive to me because my brain would say, you're trying to do as many things as you can to show future teams what you're able to do and you didn't find that that's not really the way things go. They tend to steal less often.

I would assume the exact opposite was true. It was, um, you know, like 250, 300 players, cause there's, there are a lot of free agents every year. Um, and, uh, the, I think that the thing is that if like a better, a better study might've found some, like a slightly different effect, which is just that I didn't do projected stone bases. So, you know, really the best, the reason why some studies say, uh, players do better in their contract years and play studies, say they do worse is kind of, it has to do

with the nuts and bolts of how you do it. Do you age adjust? Do you, do you only count people who are in contract years their first time? Or do you also count the ones who were in it when they're 38, you know? And like, uh, do you, do you look at them versus their own projections? And I think the best ones, you sort of limit the scope, look at them versus their projections and find a positive effect, not a huge one, but a small one. And so I think a better study, since I just looked at raw stone bases and found they were

down a little bit, it would be to look at their projected stolen bases and see if maybe they were up a little bit versus their projections. Because if you are free agent at 28, 29, 30, the stolen base aging curve, especially if you ever stole 20 bases before, we've got one from Jeff Zimmerman and Mike Potts or Bob pot horse or a bit fan graphs. It's a little bit old, but it shows that at 25 you peak and then you can start losing as much as two to four to six stolen bases from between there and 30 per season. So it's a pretty steep aging curve for those that steal steal bags, you know, at a, at a, at a big rate. And you can see it really obviously if you look at like Mike Trout.

It's like he's stealing bases. He's down. Now he's not. And I think the now he's not moment is often at 28, 29, 30. You're a good enough player where you're like a slugger. You're a you're a three hitter, whatever it is. We don't want you to get hurt. You're slowing down. You know, there's ways to get hurt. You're breakeven, getting too close to the breakeven point, whatever it is. So it's possible that people steal a little bit more versus their projections,

considering that I found that they were down like one and a half stolen bases. That's a little bit less even than the average aging curve. So it could actually be considered a plus point five. Either way, it's not a big effect. I think what we are seeing a little bit recently is a 2023 effect that's that's screwing with our heads. Cause we just changed the stolen base rule so radically that stolen bases went up 40% year over year, biggest increase ever in the history of baseball.

And so, uh, you know, we're, we kind of tend to think of some people that had, uh, I think some big stone base years in that 2023 environment. Right. And I think teams will generally value speed a bit more now because they're going to utilize it more often. So that could lead players to be more aggressive and how yeah, how you look at it, I think, is kind of an important thing. I think looking relative to projection

makes a lot of sense to me. You just want to see projected for 10, got 15. Projected for five, got three. That, to me, is a better indicator. And I think you do probably want to focus on first time free agents because of the aging curve. Because once you get to your mid-irties, when you're hitting free agency for the second or third time, what kind of speed do you have left at that point?

Right. It's, it's a skill you're just not likely to use. And how much like, how much carrot is there and how much, you know, juice is there like, you know what I mean? Like if you're like 38, it's like, yeah, I want that next contract, but you know, and I'm trying to stay on the field, but geez, my bones won't let me. So, um, I mean, I'm sure Joey Vato wanted to play as much as possible last year, you know, just didn't shake out that way. So, but, uh, yeah, the first time you go through,

you know, we've got someone who didn't make my, my study at all, um, because of just the weight, the type of player he is, is Gleyber Torres. And, you know, I'm kind of fascinated with him because projections say he's a good play at price in almost every league anyway. And, you know, you know, he actually was a little bit more passive. He just didn't show up with the rules of my query, but he was a little bit more passive recently than he was earlier in his career. And he had a little bit more raw power earlier in his career,

you know, in certain ways, at least demonstrated power. Remember that 38 homer, that was 2019, but you even have some ISOs. Last year's 180 ISO was below his career ISO in terms of isolated slugging for Gleyber Torres. So you could like see a slightly more aggressive Gleyber get out there and maybe get to 30 homers. If there is a stolen base effect he's projected for you know 11 but the bat X and the bat say 16 and 14. So what if you give him, you know, 29, 30 homers and 16, 18 stone bases with that 270 average, he's going to be even better than the projections say. And he's already at a good price for projections.

You know what I mean? So like, uh, he's kind of, uh, one of my favorites for this. I should have just found a way to, you know, honorable mention. Sometimes you get like, you do acquire and you're like, well, these are the most, you know, this is the, this is my top 10. I got to pick some players off the top 10. That's kind of how I write a lot of pieces. Uh, in this case, Gleyber didn't show up in, in either of my ways. I looked at people who could be more aggressive and benefit from it, and I looked at people who haven't been on the field a lot and could benefit from being on the field more.

And Gleyber was just kind of not a top 10 guy in either of those ways. But you know, he's had some seasons where he's 500, 570 played appearances. Give him 650 played appearances this year. Give him a shot at 30 homers, give him a shot at 20 stolen bases. There's like a peak season platform year in him and the Carrot's pretty strong because you know he's going to be a full free agent for the first time at 27 years old is a good time to be a free agent and he's going to be coming off a very, um, he's going to be on a team that's going to have a lot of attention, you know? And so maybe the Yankees will have to feel a lot of pressure to resign him.

Um, and, uh, and then he can also, uh, foment some interest in the, in the open market. So I think Gleyra Torres is a really good pick this year, but we've talked about him a fair amount. He is a well liked on this show for for 2024 fantasy baseball purposes, just because there's a ton of core skills that look really solid. And there's the reasons you outlined where it could be even a little better for this year. The interesting thing for him too, being a free agent after the season is that he's a second baseman. There aren't that many younger second basemen who are clearly everyday second basemen that you would want to commit a massive long-term contract to, but he might be an outlier in that regard because I

think his skills to me are the kinds of skills to play that age really well. So if you're not really worried about him being terrible defensively in year five, year six of a longer term deal, I think you can be looking at something like that for his contract that runs a lot longer than you'd expect. And the age is a factor, but also it's, it's the type of player he is, but he's very unique in that way. Yeah. You, you know, second base is kind of where you just put people, um, you know, even organizationally it's,

it's where you put former short stops and things like that. So, um, you know, even organizationally it's, it's where you put former short stops and things like that. So, um, you know, I'm just looking over at, uh, I always want to call it sport rack, but it's spot rack. Spot track. Spot track. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just going to, I'm moving on from mispronouncing, uh, player names to

mispronouncing site names. It's going to be really exciting. Um, but you've got, uh, Gleyber Torres, Brandon Drury, who will be 33. Whit Merrifield, who has a club option. Haseong Kim will be a free agent, but I think he'll be coming off as a shortstop. Jorge Polanco has a club option. I think he's going back. Adam Frazier will be 33 and, uh, not at all in the same class. So, uh, and then Brandon Lau has a random low Lau raise Lau. Brandon Lau has a club option. I don't think he'll be on the free edge of market. So basically it's Gleyber

Torres or Brandon Drury and David Bodie. Yeah. Right. Yeah, right. Inspiring group. Yeah. So so he will be all alone at the top of a list for anybody who wants to improve their second base situation. All right. And I think it'd be a good middle of the order run producer for a really long time. So I think there's a very good chance he can add to what he's going to

get as a free agent with what he does this year. Let's get to a couple other players that were featured here. I'm gonna frame the question this way. Of the five players you featured in the story, who have you drafted the most on your teams so far? I know you you got into a very odd situation with Yohan Mankata where you were just like waiting and waiting at third base, but I don't think you have him in multiple places. I don't have him circled, yeah. I think it's Tyler O'Neal. I traded for Tyler O'Neal in a dynasty league. I have him in a couple of places as like my third and fourth outfielder. And, you know, for Tyler O'Neill, I think one thing that I would like for him is a fresh voice when it comes to hitting coaching.

When I last talked to him, he was talking about letting the ball travel. That is not the St. Louis way, for sure. But he does have such prodigious raw power that maybe that is the best way to avoid striking out 35% of the time and make the best use of his skills. In any case, just a different home offensive environment could help him. He's going from one of the biggest, most picture friendly parks in baseball to one of the smallest, most hitter friendly parks in baseball with a big old green monster over there. That's going to inflate his babbip.

Last time he had a babbip over 300, he hit 286, 34 homers and 15 stolen bases. So there's, you know, there's like a park factor component. And then he's just had a really hard time staying on the field. And I think when you get traded, it's like this double whammy where you get you get traded. So you know, oh, like maybe the teams don't value me the same way I did. Like one team just said goodbye to me. Right. So it's a little bit of wake up call.

And then you have your contract, you're coming. So I feel like he spent all offseason training with the idea of I'm going to stay on the field this year. Like Juan Soto was really upfront about this. Juan Soto was like, I want to play every day. I want to play maximum possible. And why does he want to do that? Because he wants the maximum possible deal when he's coming out soon.

And I think Tyler O'Neill is right at the crux of like a lot of things changing in the positive for him now we did talk on the Boston preview about some of the Problems maybe with the with projecting the Boston outfield and That if Sedona Raffaella makes the team and he looks increasingly likely to make the team he's playing centerfield almost every time you see the a lineup out there and But if Sedona Rafaela makes the team and he looks increasingly likely to make the team, he's playing center field almost every time you see the A lineup out there. And Duran is playing left field. I've seen left and right, I think.

So you know, if you've got Rafael and Duran in there, like, I guess, will you or Bray, you could go back to the miners. Or they just, you know, they have four competent outfielders and Yoshida at DH. So really five competent outfielders for four positions. There is some risk, but Tyler O'Neill is a right-hander and I just don't think he's going to go to the small side of the platoon. You know what I mean? Like if he was a left-hander, I'd actually be more worried about his playing time.

You know what I mean? Like if he was a left-hander, I'd actually be more worried about his playing time. Um, we, we had an exchange about the Detroit Tigers in one of our group chats where, um, the Detroit Tigers have basically said out loud that they're going to be San Francisco, you know, in Detroit. And that everybody that there's 13 major league hitters on this team and they're all going to hit and then they're all going to get time. Um, and the way we read that was, uh, one of Colt Keith and Parker Meadows is going to sit against lefties every time

they're that's that's that's given the situation. So, uh, that's a lefty situation. Tyler Neal is a righty and he's too good to, and they, they acquired him. They wanted him. So I think he's too good to be like, oh, we just want you to hit against lefties. That's not why Tyler Neal is there. So I think his playing time is fairly safe. I think it's Abreu who's maybe getting sent down

because he's got options and. You know, they've got other things they can do. They can put Rob Refsnyder out there just to. To back you guys up, you know, they have to be that small side platoon player. I guess the question will come down to how much Tyler O'Neill gets back to what he did in 2021 against same handed pitching. You know, 137 WRC plus that year did it with almost a 32% K rate in that split. The last two seasons he's been closer to like 10% below league average. 91

and 87 are the last two seasons for him against righties. So maybe it's sort of a prove it opportunity. They opened the year with him playing every day. If he's not doing enough against righties, then someone like Abreu starts to take a little bit of that playing time away, at least against tough righties. There's a way to make the pieces fit. I think more hinges on O'Neill's health than on his skills at this point. If he's healthy, I think you're right. He's generally going to play a lot. A little bit of a spring training update.

It's not a lot of plate appearances, but this is really, really interesting to me. 58% pull percentage. I'm not predicting that Tyler O'Neill will have a 58% pull percentage in the, in the, in the league. But I will say that I think he should pull the ball and guess what the Boston has in the minor leagues. It's kind of, or in spring training. Oh, they've got the replica. Yeah, they got the baby green monster out there. So.

You should theoretically have that, right? Shouldn't all of the spring training parks try to mimic the home? Some of them are shared. So you can't, you know, Camelback Ranch can't be but to a cellular field and Dodger Stadium. But wouldn't you want the environment to visually and physically feel the same as much as it possibly can? I mean, the atmospheric conditions are obviously different, but as far as how the dimensions are, getting used to the walls and just the foul territory

and all that stuff, that seems important. I believe I remember correctly that Milwaukee, in Maryvale, the spring training, the actual field may not be exactly like Milwaukee, but they have training fields that are. So there's some teams that if you you have if you have a shared environment you could probably have a like sort of a nice field in the back that has the same dimensions you know that's pretty easy to do. But you know one thing i know from coaching is that external queuing is is. Superior to internal so you know if you want someone to pull the ball to the left field you don't say you know open up step in the bucket or you know whatever you don't say any of those things you say.

Hit the ball over there and what does the green monster represent but one big huge external queue. Whap whap hit it here hit it here. Whap, whap, hit it here, hit it here. Very good point. And yeah, I think it's really cool that the spring park in Florida for the Red Sox has the baby monster. Be sure to check out Eno's piece, theathletic.com slash rates and barrels gets you a subscription. If you don't have one already, I'll give you the best available offer that we have should be $2 a month on that for a new new subscribers.

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Nah, it's like Coca-Cola with a refreshing burst of raspberry and spiced flavors. Yeah, try new Coca-Cola spiced today. Let's move on to a couple of topics. You said you had this interesting sheet you put together where projections that are highlighted where they disagree the most by WRC+. And I'm very curious if there's a player type or any specific players that you find are type or any specific players that you find are the most interesting because of just how wide the range is on what the systems are spitting out. Yeah, so what I did was I took the bat, steamer and zips and I took their projected WRC plus and and then I did a standard deviation of those three. So basically, what's the spread in the group?

And if you set a minimum of 400 plate appearances, let's do that. Number one is Wyatt Langford. The bat has him at 94, steamer has him at 121, and zips has him at 118. So that's the biggest standard deviation. Next is Michael Bush. and zips has a met a hundred eighteen so that's that's the biggest standard deviation next is michael bush. I'm and you're gonna sense a theme here the bad has 88 steamer ninety eight and zips a hundred and twelve who next is show you tony and i think this is just maybe this is a little bit outlier in the group but I think this is just about spread because they've got 160 for the bat, the bat X with Shoyo Tani because he just hits the ball so dang hard.

144 and 138 for the other two. Next one that we've got is Tristan Casas, another young player, but not quite a rookie. Junior Caminiero and Nick Senzel represent a big split. And then you've got James Altman and Mike Ecomanzardo as having big splits. So I think the general trend, just regresses them the hardest. And I think this is reflective of certain choices you can make in a projection system, is how do you regress a player?

Do you regress all rookies to some sort of all-rookie baseline? Or do you group all rookies and say, hey, let's just look at people who have better Ks than BBs or better BBs than Ks and put them in their own group and regress that group? You know, how fine do you get? The nice thing about putting players into groups that are comps is that you can be more fine. What happens though is if you cut those comps up too much, you start having smaller samples you're comparing them to. Like, what if I take that all the way and say,

I wanna compare Wyatt Langford only to people that have good strikeout rates, great walk rates, high power and run well, you know? Like, yes, that's a good way to compare them. Yeah, so I think that's why Steamer says, yeah, I did that and I got 120 WRC plus because I basically compared them with a bunch of top five prospects, right?

And the bat may do that, but may have a heavier regression. I don't, like, we won't get all the way led into that level with the projection systems. They're still their babies of their, of their creators and they won't, they won't tell them, tell us all of that. But I think what's interesting is that we as consumers of these products, or these projections can make decisions where, you know, do we run the auction calculator separately and throw steamer in there and take a glance at it for rookies? Especially since we know when we're in a draft that the rookie is going to get drafted on his upside.

You know, and that we have to spend, we have to have some idea what the right cost is. If you take the bat as your gospel, you will never draft one of these rookies. Right. That's reflected in Derek Cardy's Twitter feed. Clearly part of, anti-LE, you know, don't, don't draft rookies. I mean, that's, that's his, that's part of the ethos there. And it makes sense.

But if you want to take those calculated risks, I think what makes sense is, you know, aggregating like ATC is a good projection system for taking these different projections and putting together and weighing them differently. And then, or just running a separate one and taking a look at it for young players so that you have an idea of what's an okay cost to spend on Junior Kamen Arrow? What's a good price on Michael Bush? Not what's the lowest price. What is a number I can actually spend on him?

So few things to unpack there. I think comparing a player like Kamenero to a player like Bush, even though they both have very small amounts of big league experience, it's still like comparing an apple to a star fruit. Because Michael Bush has been around for a while. Like Michael Bush is 26 years old. That's true. Right? So there are totally different places on the aging curve, even though they have Michael Bush has been around for a while. Like Michael Bush is 26 years old. That's true.

Right? So there are totally different places on the aging curve, even though they have similarly limited big league experience. And then I think there's also something that's changing in the game is just how aggressively guys are getting promoted for their debuts. We don't have enough high quality, we don't have enough high quality, high volume when it comes to players debuting young. So if you were to only compare junior cam and arrow to guys that debuted before 21, you, you did the same thing you described earlier.

We're like, this isn't, it's not that many guys to compare them to. These were many of those players turned into elite players because it was so rare to debut before age 21 for so long. I think we have uncovered some part of the secret sauce here. I got something that you just, you just stepped on a landmine there. Look, that was really interesting. So you're talking about age, basically age at level and age, right?

Michael Bush, the bat 88, WRC plus steamer 98 zips 112 okay junior caminero the bat 111 steamer 115 zips 95 so we just know from that comparison I'm pretty sure that the way they treat age is different. That's so strange though, not in the sense of like what they're doing, but thinking about how Derek has positioned himself pertaining to Ellie De La Cruz. But his projection for Ellie's not that bad. It's pretty much the same as everybody else's.

It's at the playing time. And then playing time is the last key to this, which I which we sort of glossed over. I mean, Kevin Garrow's due to start in the minor leagues. Right. We just learned he got option to triple A. The bigger question is just how long does he stay there? Is it a few weeks? And does Bush get this Bush carve out like a part time role?

Like there's still Patrick Wisdom. There's still like, you know what I mean? Like there's still other pieces on that team and it's a pretty veteran team. I mean, you know, yes, the Rays could bring up Ken Yaro to do a part time thing too. But I think the Rays are kind of looking for a star a little bit more than the Cubs are with Bush.

You know what I mean? Yeah. And kind of at the crossroads of these ideas too, I just saw Keith Law had his Rookies of Interest piece go up on the athletic. It's not, like the way he ordered them is not the way you would order them by ADP. It's very different because some of that is floor. Some of that's saying these are the guys

that are actually gonna have a role and keep it all year. And that's a totally different sort of question or exercise than what we're trying to do where it's how can I catch lightning in a bottle at a discounted price? Like I want, I want lightning in a bottle, but I don't want to pay top dollar for it. Does he have like a, like a, a functional, you know, fifth starter, like a, a good Kyle Harrison's number one. Yeah.

Todd Harrison's number one. All right. There you go. Look at how the fantasy market treats Kyle Harrison. Yeah. Evan Carter was probably a good streamer, you know? Well, Evan Carter is, is both things though. Yeah.

But Michael Bush was third. And I thought, right, because he's probably going to get the job and, you know, but he may not hit for a great average. He may hit for that 88 WRC, WRC plus that the bat has waiting for him. So yeah, he becomes a part-time guy pretty quickly if that's what he's doing over a couple of months. I think with Bush, I'm pretty intrigued because he did something that a lot of hitters did at AAA.

He got a lot better in terms of Ks and walks, but we had automated balls and strikes. So given his age, given those changes, how much stock can we put into the improved plate skills there? Because the projections don't really seem to be buying it. And I don't know if that's because he had a high K rate when he came up for the brief time.

He was with the Dodgers last year or why exactly that is, but the projections tell a story that make a little more sense in that particular area. But the disagreement in terms of just how good he's going to be also probably speaks to teams modeling things differently and having different views and opinions on age to level and whether or not someone like Bush actually has a bright big league future, whereas with Dodgers, look at him and say, yeah, we've got depth and we need some roster flexibility. He's still had options left, so they didn't have to trade him. They just decided to trade him.

It was more about the 40 man. But when you look at Michael Bush, you could say, I'm a glass half full sort of person. I think he just needs an opportunity. Or you could say, ah, the flaws we saw in the minor leagues are too much for him to overcome. You can actually still look at his spring stats and play that same game. Cause you're like, Whoa, 11% walk rate, 21% strikeout rate. Here we go. Two homers, two stolen bases, you know, sleeper with a capital S.

I'm looking at 15.6% swinging strike rate. That's the, that's the number that's in the biggest sample. You know what I mean? That's a, that's like a per pitch thing and that's bigger than it ever was. Or yeah, that's bigger than it ever was. So, uh, you know, I like Bush. It's fine. Um, but I'd like to, if I like Bush, I want to run, you know, steamer and zips and zips and look at a reasonable cost and not push him too high the nice thing is I don't think he's.

I say they go to high drafts but if you want caminero and you can you can stash him and you can afford to wait. You know it's also worth sort of shopping around the one thing that we this is a sort of regular. Discord group chat kind of discussion is the idea of sort of shopping projections and sort of like hopping around from projection to projection. And we do it on the show. We talk about, Oh, well, I'll buy the bat on this one or I'll buy zips on this one. One thing I like about it is that it keeps, it kind of reigns you in no matter how excited you are, you have to pick one, you have to at least pick a projection that says what you're saying.

You know what I mean? Like, I'm going to take this projection here, at least it's a projection and not just like, I think Laborator is going to go 30, 30 this year. I love Michael Bush, he's going to hit 30 home runs. Like, okay. A realistic good outcome is still the most optimistic of the projection at 22 homers. Like that's a really good year if that's what Michael Bush does.

You can get in trouble though, I think, because then you're kind of hopping around, you might be hopping around for different run environments. Yep. That's definitely true. They're not, they're not all equalized that way. You might just be only buying ceiling because you're buying like the highest projection for each player, you know, I like, like there was a joke about me during the team previews, I was like, everything was too cold, you know, I'm

excited about this team, everything's too cold, you know, I'm excited about this player, you know, I'm always taking the highest projection. So, um, you know, a very disciplined player might just have his projections and only by that's sort of the Larry Schecter approach is, you know, have your value, have your number, don't deviate from it always by the player at that number. And, uh, you know, discipline can lead to generally positive outcomes. I'm not sure that it always leads to superlative outcomes.

You know, I'm a little bit more, um, I'm looking at the projections, but sometimes I'm taking calculated risks and, you know, I've got the labor record because I took a few calculated risks and they went in the right direction and that went on top of my normal like third place finish. You know, like I was disciplined, I was disciplined third place, third place, you know, fourth place, you know, whatever. And then, you know, the year that I was like, nah, man, I'm going to blow 80% of my free agency auction budget on Anthony Rizzo.

You know, it was the year I won. So I think the idea is to to hue close to projections and then to use maybe outlier projections for those calculated risks that you're taking. You know, be like, I really like Michael Bush. I'm going to buy him at the 115 WRC plus price. I'm going to buy him at Zips price. I'm going to run the calculator Zips and see what number I get there. And I'm going to spend that on Michael Bush. I mean, I think a lot of it is just being closer to right on a greater

number of the players that the projection sets disagree about. Because those are going to be the swing. Many of them are going to be the swing players. Some of them are available pretty late. And you find this kind of value after pick 200, especially Junior Kim and Arrow, even before this news came down and you could you could reasonably anticipate he wasn't going to make the opening day roster. So I don't think there's a radical price drop coming. I think, you know, pick 250, pick 275 was kind of a normal range for him.

For most, the winner. OK, so if he drops the pick 300, not that much has changed. You're still shopping in that bin looking for a player that will be extraordinarily valuable and he could still be that player. This this news doesn't actually change a whole lot. This episode is brought to you by Taco Bell. Hey, Canada, want to do something fun? Want to go to Taco Bell? You're going to love Taco Bell's new cravings value menu.

For a limited time only, you can choose from seven tasty items for just $3.50 or less, including the brand new Loaded Fries Pocket and Double Stacked Taco. Discover the new cravings value menu only at Taco Bell. Order now at TacoBell.ca or your closest store. So I first came to Edward Jones with a great deal of trepidation. When I first met with my advisor and I really was feeling vulnerable about what I would have to share, I was of course pleasantly surprised to find that there was absolutely no judgment and a lot of support.

And when it was time to get serious, he really took my hand and helped me to do that. I think it's tricky going the other direction when it's someone like Jackson Merrill, where there was a possibility throughout the spring that he was going to make the opening day roster, but now we're starting to get the the announcements, right? He's going to be there in Korea for the opening series and probably will be on the actual opening day roster a week after the weird games that managers play with words. They're trying to be clever sometimes, and I think it works against them.

I think it's silly. So Mike Schilt said he's earned a spot on the plane. Okay. Yeah, right. Yes, that was the way he said it. Flying to Korea, but you won't give him starting center field yet. That's what he doesn't want to give him that. Nope, he can fly on the plane though.

He can fly on the plane. So I don't know, reading between the lines, what he said, and then just looking at what he's been doing. I'm trying not to look at the results. The results are great. I'm trying not to look at the results so much as every time there's an A lineup, he's in centerfield. Right. And that's what I see. So Jackson Merrill, 38 played appearances playing centerfield almost exclusively, uh, since the very beginning. Like, I mean, there was a couple left fields in the beginning

of camp and then since then centerfield and like the component, like the process stats that I like 8% strikeout rate, 8% with rate, like that's something I can get with, you know, 55% ground ball rate. I do think You know betting on him for power is not a great idea but I also think that this is a there's a possibility that he's Jung-ho Lee in Lee Ian. Oh At a discounted price for now that's gonna change a Meryl Meryl's gonna jump in price a lot We're starting to see it right? Would you rather let's's say, you know he's the center fielder,

Jung-Ho Lee or Jackson Merrill? This year only, probably still Lee. Yeah. Yeah, closer to his peak. Because now you're going to close the gap between them in cost. So now you're going to have to assume something closer to even price on Jung-Ho Lee versus Jackson Merrill. I think Jackson Merrill is gonna be great long-term.

I love the decay rates nice and low. Yeah, I like that. I think that's what gives me the Lee comparisons. I also don't know the power is gonna be great. I think possibly the stolen base upside for Merrill is greater than even for Lee. Lee's nickname is the grandson of the wind because his father was super fast

and was called the son of the wind or something, or his grandfather was. I forget exactly the lineage there. But the projection for Jackson Marill's eight stolen bases, but last year at 15 stolen bases, but you know, last year at 15 stolen bases and 511. And then how many of those were at the same, had the same rules? Cause one of like 300 of those played princesses were a ball.

I don't think they have the same, uh, stolen base rules. It'd be amazing. A professional baseball could just use the same rules at every level. No, they have to test them all out. It's great. But so could he do something like 10 homers, 20 stone bases with like a 280 average? Yes, I think he can do that. Right. And I think just given how young he is, the power could easily be on the way. It's just going to take a little time for him to unlock it.

The only kind of skills flaw this spring, I would say is probably the ground ball rate being in that 55% range, but he's done that before too. He's run some higher ground ball rates at a few of his stops. Um, did show improvement at double A though. Yeah. Yeah. You're seeing the rumblings of a very young player with a very high ceiling, putting the pieces all together and from projection standpoint, there's

a lot of agreement here. This is kind of weird. Like a very narrow range. The range I think is 86 from zipped to 90 from the bad X. That's a tight range. And the projections are all kind of air quotes, bad, right? Two fifties for the average, right around 300, a tick lower for the OBP. How do you project a defensive value for a prospect?

Uh, for us, especially for a prospect learning a new position. Shortstop playing center. That's a, that I would say that column is almost irrelevant. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm just looking at that. I'm saying I would, I'll take the irrelevant. Yeah, yeah. So I'm just looking at that, I'm saying, I'll take the over on that projection

because if they trust him enough to play him, then there's gotta be some internal belief that he can top it and what he's done, age to level, which is priced in. It's all in some capacity, projections are accounting for that minor league production, but it seems a tick light to me, even if I would take Zheng-ho Lee ahead of him.

There's also something that's a little bit more fancy friendly than real life friendly from those projections. If he's a 90 WRC plus and plays a good center field, the Padres will probably leave him. Yeah, the threshold if you're a good defender at a position of need, that is right around there. They're comparing him to Grisham,

who had similar WRC pluses. So, and you think about how much better he can get facing top level pitching. Like that's going to have a lot of long-term value as well. It's, it's funny that we do have a guy with agreement. I just want to throw in the, uh, the other side, the, the place that had the lowest standard deviation. And this one's amazing. Alex Verdugo, 106, 106, 106.

They know what Alex Verdugo is. Anthony Redone, second on the boring list. Jake Cronenworth, Josh Young, Edward, Edward Hullian, Gleyber Torres, Matt McClain, all 107s. So that's interesting to me. I want players like that who are not old. This is a good list. This is a good list of players you should like.

I definitely think you should have like, I think like two thirds of your roster should be more like this. Guys that the projection sets with each of their unique approaches still came to all agree on. And they're not like 35. You know what I mean? They're all. If they're old, then it's whatever. It's just cause they, they look at that type of player too similarly. Yeah. Yeah. Like Alex Bregman is on this list and that's fine. I mean,

he's okay. But you know, Jonathan India is also, you know, within one point standard deviation. Davis Schneider's projected to be a 110 across the board. That's, see, that's really interesting. If I'm looking for, see, now if I'm taking chances and I'm taking chances with all the projection system, agree it's a good chance, that's kind of fun too. But I wouldn't rule out white Langford because

the bat has him at 85 or whatever, you know, in 95, like there's, you know, both sides of these lists are useful. I just, you know, you can get a little bit more from the agreement side and then pepper in some of these, uh, more long shots, the Tristan Casas, 109 from the bat and 130 from steamer. Geez. That's a bigger gap than I would have expected for him. I know he's a young player, but we've seen it for basically a full season. Now in the big leagues, I wonder if there's a park factor difference there.

No, it could be a really interesting stuff though. I do like looking at the differences in the projections and I think the similarities, especially give you some really good core players to target. And again, with the age modifier on there, especially like the under 30 type players that have that agreement across all the systems. ATC has like a stat for this, right? Yeah. Arielle made it.

It's a leaderboard. SKU. Yes. It's inter. There's two of them blanking on which one's which at the moment. You can look it up, just look up Ariel Cohen, ATC and the word skew and he'll describe all the different sort of substats that he's created because he brings all these projection systems together,

he can actually have a stat that's like, the agreement between the projection systems. And so that's kind of a fun thing to track as you're going is like, you know, mostly agreement, mostly agreement. Ooh, I'm going to, this guy's falling and there's a big disagreement. I like that. You know, now I'm going to take a guy at the bottom of this thing, but I could get, you know, one of the better outcomes. Let's hustle through a few news items real quick before we go. Taj Bradley shut down

at least two weeks with a peck strain. Oh man, aching hard, dude. It's the kind of injury that he's shut down for two. It's going to take him time to build up. It might be late April, May before he's ready to pitch again, which leaves the door open for a very uninspiring group, at least on the surface to possibly step in. Mark Topkin had a list of names, Jacob Lopez,

Nayiki Usawa, who's had a really rough spring, Jacob Weggispaak, remember that name? That's an Al Melky or all-time favorite name. He loves saying Jacob Weggispaak. Tyler Alexander and Chris Devenski. I'm gonna assume he's saying it right. I think he is, I think he made sure. I don't necessarily have, I don't think any numbers on these guys from a stuff perspective.

I'm gonna check Lopez real quick, but I will just say just scanning their different minor league stats, Lopez stands out. Yeah, Lopez was the one that was most interesting to me. Slider, 84, stuff, stuff plus sinker 72. Oh man, stuff plus hates him. The slider is an 84. I was reading the scouting report though. The top raised prospects right up from Eric Lungenhagen for maybe a year or so ago.

And he described Lopez as slider is having plenty of wipe, which I assume is a lot of horizontal movement. And maybe it's just a funky slider for some reason. I don't know. Oh, I am seeing a 90.9 fastball velocity. Well, there you go. That could be part of the problem, but really good results, some big time K rates for him

as he moved through the minors. But had the opposite thing going on at AAA that Michael Bush had, right? K rate came down, walk rate went up. How much of that was ABS? How much of that was something else? Yeah. Yeah. Good point. And then an ABS might be, if he, if it is a sweeper,

ABS might, might be a tough one because sweepers are hard to command, you know, and maybe he can get more called strikes when a, when a, when a guy's framing him, but he is having a hard time with the walks this spring and hasn't been striking guys out. I think generally what Tampa is doing is what a few other teams like the Rangers are doing, which is can we fake it till the horses come?

Because they've got Boz, Bradley, Springs and Rasmussen all coming back this year. Like what if Tyler Alexander was just their, their fifth starter? They could get by with that. You might be super boring. Yeah. Maybe they put Lopez and Alexander on the roster, you know, and they just, they just fudge it through that fifth spot until guys are healthy.

I don't think I think Uwe Sal is a little bit more of a maybe a long-term play like I think they would rather you know put him in the minor leagues and and work with him for a while. I don't think he's going to gonna be the answer. No I don't think so either. We had a question from Ethan in Discord. What's the outlook on Rasmussen since he had internal brace rather than another Tommy John? So it's supposed to be a more of a six month situation right and he had it in last year. So.

I, you know, supposedly he could be throwing by now, but I don't think we have updates like that from him. You know, we have here, we don't have a we don't even have a like he's throwing on flat ground yet. They put him on the 60 day IEL in February, so he's, you know, he's not coming back until June at the earliest. And that even seems pretty aggressive because he's had multiple Tommy Johns before this. It's not. Yeah, yeah, that's why it's more complicated for sure.

And some of the guys who've come back with the six months off the internal brace have been hitters. So, um, I, I think I'd still sort of bake in like 12, 12 months. Like it, it'll be like, maybe it's eight months and then they kind of slow walk them back. But it's not like G Lito is gonna be back this year. We've learned that he's also having internal brace and I just don't see him coming back this year. Not timing is huge on that given that he just had that.

But that is the confirmation now as of yesterday we didn't know but his internal brace for G.Ledo as opposed to a second Tommy John. The thing I would put in just in general out here is coming off of any elbow surgery, other than maybe the first Tommy John, but if you're having an updated elbow surgery, I don't think you assume the ceiling's the same

when you get back. I think you need to see what's happening when guys are actually throwing again. Once you start to get a read on, on stuff numbers, command, especially, you worry, you always worry about that coming off of these injuries. So just keep that in mind. I don't expect to be the same guy right away. Once he comes back and, uh, either one of Rasmussen or G Alito, it's a story you

root for these guys every time because it's a long road back and he's had to do it so many times before Yeah If there's anybody that's more in that likes like oh man. I really want to see it before you know you know I've really invested in him as Drew Rasmussen just because it's a really tough long Road for him in terms of surgeries like two surgeries in college college, two Tommy Johns in college. Like that's, that's kind of crazy. And I want to see him back out there.

Luis heal got on the mound this week and this is post Tommy John and he's throwing bullets. He was, he struck out a bunch of guys, was throwing a hundred and sitting 97 96 98. Like I like that. Like a little bit difference, like three mile an hour difference between sitting and Max. I like that 89 mile an hour gyro slider. So like Luis Heal is a guy to remember maybe for next year. He might get a shot to step in for Cole.

That there's a there's a possibility they have a need right now. And just because they traded so much of that depth away, we talked about that, I think, with Will Warren, like they a bunch of the up and down guys. Warren and Healer are all gone. Beter are like the those are the next guys up. Like they're not like, oh, those are prospects. They can play their way in.

No, those are that's like the six, seven, eight. Yeah. However you order them. I would say that Heal's maybe a little bit ahead of Beater right now. Yeah, I mean, Heal's got a little bit of experience too. He's made seven career starts. So a little bit of a forgotten guy that could start popping as a nice reserve pick

as a result of the uncertainty for now with Garrett Cole. We're still waiting on a further update on his status, but opening day sounds like it's not gonna happen. IL stint, probably, but we just don't know if it's a long, long-term IL situation. How far do you drop him in your ranks? Yeah, how far does he have to fall before I take him? I guess is the other way to think about the question, right?

It's like, where do I feel like with uncertainty? I could get a good report and be in an OK spot. I mean, how about Garrett Cole versus Tyler Glass now? Glass now. OK, how about Garrett Cole versus Blake Snell? Oh, Snell. Garrett Cole against Justin Steele. Now we're finding a spot where I how much of a discount do I need about that much?

Oh, cause we're done. Ahead of calls were done. I'd take Cole ahead of road for now. Justin Verlander. Maybe that's that's probably the line for me. All right. So he's dropping to around 30 because this feels ominous. This feels terrible right now.

This is, I said it yesterday with Mike. I don't think this is like the Acuna situation. I think this is more of a, Oh, it's never good when you're going for an MRI. We're going, yeah, we're going for, we're trying to get more reads, more opinions. Just doesn't, doesn't feel right right now with Garrett Cole. So big concern for me at this point. We are going to go. We got another show coming out tomorrow and we're going to get to some mailbag questions.

I got a few other big topics to dig into as well. As I mentioned earlier, you can get a subscription, theathletic.com, slash rates and barrels, $2 a month for the first year. You can find Eno on Twitter, at EnoSarris, find me, at Derek Von Reiper, find the pod, at rates and barrels. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started.

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