Rates & Barrels - Professional Men of Leisure

Episode Date: March 18, 2020

Rundown6:35 Introducing Project G.O.A.T.28:19 Snake vs. Non-Snake vs. Auction37:31 Who Went to Driveline?43:46 ACES Leaders & Laggards51:02 Who Loses with a Return to a Non-Juiced Baseball? Want to join our contest? E-mail [e-mail], use the subject line "Project GOAT Worksheet" to receive the sheet and written version of the rules. -- and -- Thank Pierre for sharing his awesome idea (@pbecquey on Twitter)! Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Get 40% off a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Raids and Barrels, episode number 78. It's March 17th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. St. Patrick's Day spent inside, which is okay. We're going to be all right. I think Eno's still there. What just happened, Eno? I just moved my mic. That two-file group of papers is

looking at me menacingly. The two-file group shifted. It did. That's all that happened. I guess it was loud. The entire workspace is now in danger. But anyway, there's a lot to talk about in this episode. We have teased this idea before, the idea of using historical stats to play a fantasy game.

We're going to talk about the details of that. We are going to run a contest for people who listen to the show, so we'll talk about that kind of extensively on this episode. We had a few really good mailbag questions that were coming in as well. So we'll talk about some snake versus auction debate type questions. We're going to take a look at a question pertaining to the ACEs metric. Lots of good stuff lined up on this episode. stuff lined up on this episode. I know your situation near San Francisco is quite a bit different than mine currently in the upper Midwest and Madison. How are things going,

being kind of stuck at home now with the family? It's good. I work from home, so I'm not too discombobulated by it. My wife is struggling to find a place where the kids won't bother her. Yeah. The kids know mostly not to come downstairs and bother me, although I think you guys listening have heard Calvin come in a couple times.

But in general, there's definitely some positives here. I had a little bit of a refocus of my values and what was important to me sometimes you can get lost in the just day to day of what's my next story and can I keep doing stories and you know

is this idea good enough and what's my next you know you get you know get a little bit just in self-involved and involved in what you're doing and and not appreciate the people around you and I think sometimes um crisis like this and and just hunkering down together we've I don't know if it's a new appreciation but a re-appreciation of the people who are important in my life and we'll get through this

it'll take a little bit more TV than I want my kids to watch but I can't necessarily tell them not to watch TV when I'm watching the news and we've been stuck inside all day, hoping the weather will But I can't necessarily tell them not to watch TV when I'm watching the news. And we've been stuck inside all day. Hoping the weather will improve soon so that we can at least do some hiking and some walking around and stuff. It's really close here.

So that will help things along. And, you know, just generally, we're locked down here in Northern California. We're supposed to be sheltering in place. And I agree with it because of the incubation period and the asymptomatic people being able to walk around with no symptoms and yet spreading the virus. There's a sort of a two-week thing that happens. If everybody everywhere locked down for two weeks, we would know who had it and who didn't. And we could move on from there. And of course, not everybody's going to do it. So every two weeks becomes a new marker period. So there's going to be a big spike five days from now because there's a gestation period of three to five days and we'll see how

bad that is. And after two weeks, if we've stemmed the tide at all, then we can say, hey, maybe in two weeks we'll start to open things back up again because the good news I read today was it looks like there's going to be some sports in South Korea soon. Maybe we should just do a South Korean fantasy baseball league. A Korean KBO.

Oh, we should. I'm down for that. I'm 100% in for KBO fantasy this year. Oh, we should. I'm down for that. I'm 100% in for KBO fantasy this year. Oh, my goodness. We just had another idea on air. Yeah. I actually, from 2,000 miles away, saw the light bulb go on above your head. I was just sort of dot, dot, dotting until I was like, wait a second.

Let's do this. We have another idea, too, for what we'll do. Because we are professional men of leisure, is what we are. We are here for your leisure. Pleasure. My pleasure in your leisure. Do you know what movie that's from? Monty Python, right?

No. Ewan McGregor is my only hint. I'm embarrassed. I don't know. Train Spotting. Oh, Train Spotting I don't know. Train spotting. Ah, train spotting. I've not seen train spotting. One of their derelict friends gets a job interview and he gets really screwed up and then goes

and has a legendary job interview. Anyway, we try to help you guys distract yourselves somehow. We've got something good on the docket today that we can all take part in as a group. So that's good. And then I'll do some research and contact my old Fangraphs pal and man about town, Sungmon King, who's actually in the front office for the KBO, and see if he can help us along somehow. Yeah, I should probably reach out to Dan Kurtz. He was on the Brewers podcast I

host, Section 422, back in the winter when Josh Lindblom signed with the Brewers. I talked to Dan about Lindblom because he runs MyKBO.net. Mainly, I want to talk to him because I want to find out how do we watch the games. There's got to be a way for us to either purchase or

stream that content. I want baseball. Some English language names with stats next to them? I would... I don't know. Can I challenge myself to learn Korean? Names with stats and real games.

Hey, I can get the Rosetta Stone for Korean. All right, let's all learn Korean as well. That could be a fun group exercise. We could get online, do Google Hangouts, and have lessons. Well, this other idea we have is a lot easier. Yes. If that sounds a little bit too

ambitious, if you have people you're taking care of, and maybe you don't quite have the time to learn a new language for the purpose of watching baseball in another country while holed up at home. The good news is our friend Pierre Bequet from ESPN developed something called Project Goat. It's the game that we talked about on our episode last week. So it's a fantasy contest that uses historical stats. And we're going to run a version of that game for you, our listeners. And you can tell your friends about the show and they can get into. Or you can take this idea and you can run it completely independent of us if you want to.

You don't have to send your results, as you'll find out, to us as we go along. So it's totally up to you. If you want to interact with us, no problem at all. If you've got a dozen friends or five friends or 500 friends who you want to be the leader of that group, you can absolutely take this and do it on your own. So the way it works is you put together a 23-man roster with the traditional 5x5 categories.

You can use any single regular season stats accumulated by an individual player in the last 40 years. And the reason it's 40 years is because fantasy baseball is now 40 years old. It started in 1980. Dan Okrent, Glenn Wagner, the godfathers of fantasy baseball got together at the restaurant, La Rotisserie, and they built this game that we've enjoyed for 40 years now. So you use stats from any season between 1980 and 2019, and there's some selection rules in play.

And these are the keys that we were talking about when Eno brought this up last week. You can't use a player more than once, regardless of the position. Pierre's example is if you use A-Rod as a shortstop, you can't use him as a third baseman or as a DH. So you can only use each player once. No more than one player per franchise. The rules include the Nats and the Expos as the same franchise. So just keep that in mind.

Name changes obviously don't change the franchise. So just keep that in mind. Name changes obviously don't change the franchise. The Rays and the Devil Rays are the same. Miami and Florida, still the Marlins, all the same. I'd like to scrub Devil Rays from history. Yeah. And Angels, you know, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, the Anaheim

Angels, the California Angels, they are all just the Angels. So keep that in mind. You can't use more than one season per year. This is probably the most fun wrinkle of the whole thing, right? Yeah, you can't use more than one person from one year. Right. So the example that Pierre has in his write-up, if you want Pedro Martinez in 1999, that means you can't use Padre Rodriguez from 1999. And if you said, okay, I'll just use 2000 Pedro Martinez, that means you don't get Todd Helton, who had 147 RBIs that year.

The other rule we're going to use, also from Pierre's original design, no more than six seasons per decade. So 23 roster spots. There are four different decades, 80 to 89, 90 to 99, 2000, 2009, and 2010 to 2019. So you have to have a limit of six seasons from each decade. So spread it out over the 40 years that way. As far as position eligibility goes, the player is eligible for all positions he qualified for the completion of the season you're using, using the 20-game preview season and 10-game in-season

eligibility bar. DHs are UT only, but any hitter can be used as a UT. So pretty standard in terms of just how that works. Only one player really found only one manager in this exercise as we did it,

really found an interesting eligibility. Because for the most part, we're talking about stars here, and stars for the most part have one or two positions. You know? Yep. We're not talking about utility guys that have

a lot of positions so um i won't say who it is or when but there was one i don't think that the game hinges on positional eligibility and i think that obviously since it's a two catcher thing you're going to lean towards thinking about your catcher strategy that's where i started uh myself and so i did use pedro rodriguez in 1999 full disclosure i did not do well in this you're going to lean towards thinking about your catcher strategy. That's where I started myself. And so I did use Pudge Rodriguez in 1999. Full disclosure, I did not do well in this exercise. And, you know, you definitely start noticing. One of the things I think was weird out of this was, like,

there are great pitching and hitting years that happen in the same year. And you'd kind of, I kind of assumed, oh, I'll get my pitchers from this decade and my hitters from this one and blah, blah, blah. But, you know, 1999 was a big year. 2000 was a big year. 1987, 1997. And it's not just for pitching and not just for hitting, but also for pitching. So, you know, there's, there's interesting things to think about in terms of how the game was like,

how the game was played on the field, and how that relates to fantasy. Because if you look at all the strikeouts per innings, totals in the 80s, they're way lower. However, the innings totals themselves are way higher. Yeah, that's true. So I had a plan to go with high strikeout per inning pitchers. And so I got a lot of 2000s and 2010 pitchers. And I think it hurt me. I didn't do that well in strikeouts because they didn't have a lot of innings, a lot of my guys. I think it hurt me. I didn't do that well in strikeouts because they didn't have a lot of innings. A lot of my guys.

Um, so there's, uh, you know, one of the difficulties about this too, and there may be, you know, depending on how many people are interested in how we do this,

I think what we're doing is just email us and we'll send you the worksheet to fill out. That'll be the easiest way to do it. And if you have a bunch of friends who are also going to want the worksheet for the sake of just saving some time, you can email ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com.

We'll send back the worksheet and you can also send the worksheet to more people. So I'll write up the full rules that we're talking about now in the email as well. So that way you don't have to say listen to these seven minutes of this podcast that these guys you've never heard of

explain this game and then do this. Like I'll write it all out. So it's very clear. And it's important that you have to do some work for us because if it ends up being a lot of people, we will be swamped by this. But you have to not only put in the players,

but you have to fill in their stats for those years. Right. It's just a simple Excel spreadsheet template that Pierre originally designed. We'll use his, and it works great. You punch in, I think it's like seven or eight stats per player, name, year. Very easy to do. We have extra time on our hands, so I think it'll be easy. There's a team. There's a place for a manager name and a team name. Then we can put you on a leaderboard.

So, you know, the thing that does change about this versus Pierre's version, which I think is really interesting, is we're not putting a maximum number of teams on this. Right. And so, you know, I'm hoping that you guys don't read about the first one or talk to anybody who's done it and get some advice. But even if you do, if there's 30, 40, 50 people playing and there's this one idea of how to win, then maybe 20 people do it. You still have to differentiate yourself somehow to get to the top. Right. I think that's what's going to make it still fun. Hopefully it won't be

a 12-way tie at number one. If there is, then maybe our twist will be, okay, the top 20 advance and now you have to figure out how to beat. Now that you know the targets, that's the other thing that's difficult is you don't know the targets. You don't know how many

strikeouts you need. You don't know what a good ERA is. Everyone's going to look at their ERA and be like, wow, that's amazing. That's a great ERA. Well, is it? Yeah, everything's going to look really good with the best seasons you can find from the last 40 years. A couple other rules I should mention. If a player was traded mid-season, use the team with which he played his first game of the season. So in 1998, when Mike Piazza was traded from the Dodgers to the Marlins, he is a Dodger because that's where he started. So keep that in mind for any players who were traded in a season. I don't think there's a ton of, again, because we're talking about stars, there aren't that

many all-time great seasons in which a player was traded, but in the event that you find one, that's how we handle it. There is no minimum for innings pitched or at bats, so you can try to do whatever you want strategically that way. The biggest rule, I think, of all is that you are not allowed to use algorithms. This isn't an exercise in who can make the best algorithm to comb through all the stats and win that way. It's an honor system thing, but it's obviously just a fun exercise of digging into old stats, thinking about the players we used to watch, and just trying to build the best team possible. So you can use Play Index.

You can use Fangraphs, Leaderboards. I mean, you can make your own spreadsheets to organize things, but you can't run algorithms. So that's pretty much it, right? I mean, all we want is an email. If you're interested in this, email us, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com. Just let us know that you're interested

in playing this run of Project Goat. I'll send back a spreadsheet and I'll send the full rules all written out. And what we're going to do is we're going to run this game through April 1st. The deadline to turn in your team is going to be noon Eastern on Wednesday, April 1st. That'll give me and you know, some time to run through and kind of tabulate everything, make sure everything checks out. And we'll talk about who won probably on the Tuesday, April 7th episode, just so there's enough time to turn everything around. And as I mentioned before, you can take the sheet and the rules and you can just go play

with your friends and you don't have to send it back. That's totally fine if you want to do that. But it's the kind of thing where only you and your best friend want to do it, then be a part of our group. And I think having more people in it, you know, is, is a key because I was there for the presentation. So I saw what worked when the cat, when it was capped,

but I don't think that's necessarily a strategy that will work with more teams in it. It's true. Yeah. Even if you do think you've, you've heard something about how to work it, like, you know,

once we get past 20 or 30 teams, I think, uh, you, you might have to have a second twist up your sleeves in order to win this one. One strategy that's a strategy that's not telling you how to win that was very interesting in the presentation was that someone made multiple teams.

I thought that was a really smart idea because it shows you different totals you can have. And basically, if you have 10 fake teams, you would kind of have an idea of what a league would look like and why one of those teams did better than the others. So that'll probably spur loose some winners, but then you have to imagine, well, it's not just 10 teams.

It might be 30 or 40, depending on how interested people are. And it's exact. Oh, and then there's this. You're going to hate this project at some point. I didn't finish. I didn't finish. I didn't finish. I threw my laptop.

Because you're like, oh, you know, like, oh, I'm almost done. I just don't like this last player. Okay, what if I use this other player and said, oh, that's great. Oh, crap, my year changed. Okay, well, then I just have to take

this other picture and change the year. Oh, crap, now I have to do the same. Oh, oh, God I just have to take this other picture and change the year. Oh, crap. Now I have to do this. Oh, God. You will get frustrated. You will want to take breaks, even with the downtime that we all have right now. But two weeks should be a lot of fun. If you emailed us about it already expressing interest, I've got your email already. So I'll send you back the rules and the sheet so you can get started

hopefully by tomorrow another fun thing was just uh one player alone was just a cornucopia of delight um and just you just know you're gonna have on your team and i think you probably already know who i'm talking about but you know you're gonna have on team but what year is it gonna be and just i just want to take a second and talk about Barry Bonds. Because in 1990, Barry Bonds hit 33 homers and stole 52 bases and hit 301. And that's just one of the years. Dude, in 1993, this is the year I took, he hit.336 with 46 homers and 29 stolen bases.

But then the craziest year, and too bad this isn't an OBP league, because in 2004, he had a.609 OBP with an.812 slugging, and he walked 38% of the time against 7% strikeouts. It's insane. What? If we did run this as an OBP league in the future,

you'd have to use that 2004 season, I think. I don't know how you... As an OBP league, for sure. There's no way you could pass on that. Oh, my God. 609 OBP. I guess your wrinkles could be. 38% walk rate against 7% strikeout rate.

I am doing the crazy dance. His 2002 was almost the same, though. 370, 582, 799. So I guess as a pivot, you could go that route. But we're not doing the OBP this time. It's a standard 5x5 hitting categories, and I'll make that clear in the rules. But Barry Bonds' peak and the beginning of his career.

Two completely different players, but two amazing players. It says a lot to look at a player who won his first MVP award in 1990 the way he did it, and then he won his last one in 2004. My God. The other one is a little bit like it, but

just doesn't have that greatest of all time. That's the name of the game, right? Greatest of all time. four my god you know the other one that's a little bit like it but just doesn't have that that that you know greatest of all time and that's the name of the game right greatest all time uh was a rod because you could do young a rod and there's a year he hit 310 with 42 homers and 46 stolen bases uh which is pretty sweet but i didn't end up using that one. Or maybe I did. Let's see, which one did I do? I got it right here. Alex Rodriguez, Mariners, 1998. That's the one I used.

That's the one I used. But you could be tempted to use some of the Yankees' years. And the Yankees' years actually established themselves less with the home runs and stolen bases and more with the runs and RBIs. So in 2007, A-Rod hit 314 with 54 homers and 24 stolen bases. Sure. 143 runs and 156 RBI. Bananas.

That is bananas. I don't even think about, like honestly, I don't even think about runs on RBI most of the time when I play yearly fantasy because there's so much noise in them and you can't predict how a whole team is going to do, let alone a player, you know?

But this is a little different because you already have the totals and you can see them. And I think I undervalued, because of my personal biases in the regular game, I undervalued runs in rbi in this in this process as well there's so many ways to go about the prep for this too i mean you could go year by year you could go position by position you could look for individual stats it's all up to you yeah i don't

think that i did a really good job but one thing that i did do was just go and I actually used war for some sorting because you have to sort somehow. I use war for sorting and that brought an NWRC plus and or OPS. I did a lot of that sort of sorting and then looked for stolen base and stuff. But what I did was I wrote out I wrote out names for each position. So I wrote out like a couple of names for each position. So I wrote out like a couple names for each position in each decade, just so I could say, okay, the best of the best in each of these decades, I've got them all here. Now I have to pick from those. You have to have some sort of winnowing out period. Yeah. I think you have to have some kind of system for managing the project.

However you like to work, have a system. I think that will help. That's about it, though, for advice. Anything else that we should tell people? Well, we don't want to tell them too much because we kind of want you guys to fly blind a little bit. I want you guys to fly blind a little bit. My one gem that I thought was amazing that I will give you because I didn't win and it probably won't help you win either is... So why am I saying these words? Juan Samuel in 1984.

I just want us to appreciate Juan Samuel because I don't think anybody else will. to appreciate Juan Samuel because I don't think anybody else will. But in 1984, Juan Samuel hit.272 with 15 homers and 72 stolen bases. And that doesn't even sound anything like the Barry

and A-Rod numbers we're talking about. However, it's 1984. So you're going to find that you're going to come to some point where you're like, I need someone from 1984 to 1986 that was on the Pirates, Brewers, or Phillies. That's what the end game is going to look like. There are some totally dreadful runs for some franchises, too,

that you probably have forgotten about that you will quickly recall as you look through old stats yeah yeah maybe as a tiebreaker uh well yeah as a tiebreaker should we have a tiebreaker sure let's have a tiebreaker tiebreaker uh just uh i guess uh we have to do three uh Rank the three teams that will have, just name three teams that you think will have the fewest players in this being picked by people. Because I didn't end up using, there's six teams I didn't end up using.

Because you only have 24 players, right? Everyone's going to leave six teams out there. And you will find that it's the same six teams or just sort of six to eight teams. So, uh, guess the three that basically guess the three that you think, like we rank the three that you think will have the least,

uh, players. And the person who gets the closest can, that'll be the tiebreaker. All right. So email us rates and barrels at the athletic.com. Use the subject line Project Goat Worksheet, and we'll send you back the worksheet with all the written rules,

and you can get started. And again, the deadline will be Wednesday, April 1st at noon Eastern to get your best possible team submitted back to us for this run of the game. I think we've got already about five people on board. So welcome and recruit your friends and let's make this, let's make this big, but not too big. Just because we don't have an automated way to score it.

It'll be work for us. If, if our bosses at the athletic would give us the help of someone on the tech side to build the game for us, then we could make this huge. And obviously, shoot Pierre a note on Twitter because this is a great idea. Thank him for it. We're going to have a lot of fun. We've cleared it with him, right? Yeah.

I reached out to him to say, hey, we really like your idea. Is it cool if we do this with our listeners. And yes, he's on board. Pierre is a great guy. And not quite on the level of like, you know, all-time Hall of Famer was there when fantasy was started, like Daniel Crant, but like a foundational member of the fantasy community and a reason why ESPN Fantasy exists.

Yes, 100% agree with all of that. Very influential person in the industry who maybe isn't as well known as he probably should be for the impact that he's had so far. Top performers in business and sports often attribute their success to their morning routine, whether it's waking up early, setting their goals for the day, exercise, or meditation. But not everyone has the time to do it all. With Hydrant, you can jumpstart your mornings. Hydrant creates flavored electrolyte packets you mix directly into your water to make hydrating your body easy and

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And for 25% off your first order, go to drinkhydrant.com and enter the promo code RATES at checkout. That's drinkhydrant.com and enter promo code RATES for 25% off your first order. Drinkhydrant.com and enter the promo code RATES. Let's go to a mailbag question. First one today comes from Adam. He includes a compliment about the pod. Thank you, Adam. He's got a question about a debate regarding snake versus non-snake drafts. His league is a 12-team head-to-head 5x5 league,

but the debate is that they've used a snake draft for years. This year, his league voted 8-4 in favor of changing to a non-snake. For a few people in the league. It's been a bit of a problem because they like to make deals for draft picks. So he'd just like to know how we feel about the difference between snake leagues and non-snake leagues, which in this case would mean an auction format. Do you have a case for snake leagues at this point, Eno, or do you just strongly prefer auctions? You know, well, I think you were talking about snake versus non-snake as in sort of

one two three four you know through 12 and then started over again one three through 12 right i i think no i i really thought it was i thought we got i thought we got a question where they were not talking they weren't talking about necessarily going to auction, but they were talking about... Yeah, you're right. This one's about straight drafting. Yeah. So, I mean, just generally versus snake versus auction, I don't want to be wishy-washy. I see a place for both. I love auctioning. I love being in the auction, but I wouldn't want 12 auction leagues just because the auctions take a long time and they're exhausting. And it's not sustainable for my living situation, like having a wife, I feel like. But just generally, like it's it can be it can be pretty exhausting.

generally, like it's, it can be, it can be pretty exhausting. So, uh, but if that, if like, if I was single and had all the time in the world, like I would probably do 75% auctions, but snake is kind of cool because you have this, uh, sort of fixed, what's it called? Like a, um, like an ebb and flow. Like there's a, you're, you can't just take any player. You can't just change your strategy and be like, I'm going to do this or do that. You have like, you're locked into a position and you have to react to what's happening around you. And there is no such thing as only picking value the whole draft because value kind of changes with supply. Right? And so if supply, if you just spent 15 to 20 picks watching people take starting pitchers, that just changed the supply of starting pitchers radically before your turn. And so you have the choice now of either joining in with the fray and getting a

starting pitcher before it gets really bad, or you say, oh, you know what? I think that I can wait. So there's that sort of decision. And don't poo-poo that. That's a different kind of brilliance. And there are plenty of people who are brilliant at snakes. So that's one thing. But I think the question here is something we struggled with in my dynasty, my home dynasty that I've had forever. And we have a minor league restocking draft,

and we have a major league restocking draft. And what we ended up doing was splitting the two. So the minor league restocking draft is not snake. And the reason we do that is because it sort of mirrors what the major leagues does, which is if you're bad, you float towards the top, you get better picks at every round all the way through. It helps those teams get better. And so therefore you get better young talent and blah, blah, blah. On the major league restocking side, it doesn't actually end up mattering a lot because it's three rounds and there's not a lot of players. And we wanted to reward some teams that were getting better and they're veterans, right? So if you ended up being like in sixth place and you have this non-stake, you have the snake sort of veteran draft, you can say, Oh,

I'm going to get two good veterans in the first two rounds because my, my picks will work out. And, you know, so we thought it made sense to split them. So we are you know, we are schizophrenic on this issue. But I would say that I understand both sides of it. And if you do do non-snake, you're going to have to want to think about some anti-tanking measures as well. Because if you do non-snake, which is 1 through 12, 1 through 12, 1 through 12, then there's a huge incentive to tank. And so what we've done is we, we actually changed it so that the first pick went to the winner of the

consolation tourney. I've seen a lot of leagues do something like that. Yeah. So the winner of the second half or whatever. Yeah. I do it for, I do have a straight draft that I use for the reserves following an auction that I do. I do the same thing in that league.

It's the first team that doesn't finish in the money. They end up with the first pick. There you go. Then it counts down all the way to the bottom, and then it goes 4-3-2-1. That league has four spots that pay out. It's like a 16-team league, right? So the order is 5th place, 6th place, all the way down to 16th place, and then 4-3-2-1 at the back of the order,

and then each round, that's the order. And you can still trade your picks away. You can trade with teams knowing, okay, that team's bad, so they're going to be kind of like bottom half of the round. So you kind of get a feel late in the year, especially like where those picks are going to go. It incentivizes teams in the middle, especially to keep making moves, to keep setting a lineup, just to keep that league as fresh and active as it can be for the sake of everybody trying to be competitive.

I like that. The other thing that I can think of is pay incentives. That mirrors this. So in your situation, the 16th person really wants to get out of 16th, right? Because that's a terrible pick. I mean, if you're rebuilding, yeah, you're sitting there with like the 12th pick, I think it would be, in the order, which the prospects people really want are going to be gone in the first handful of picks anyway. You want to get those turnaround players. Yeah, it incentivizes you to make your team better as

opposed to tanking. I like that. Another one that I've done in a league that just closed its doors recently, RIP, I was in this league with a bunch of political operatives, and what we did was 16 pays, the 14th team plays that pays

the first team the most and the 13th team pays you know what i'm saying so like first wins like you know 500 bucks second place wins 200 bucks third place wins 100 bucks and like in the middle you don't pay or or gain right right so it's a break even in the middle yeah there's a break even in the middle and in the bottom uh as they start paying in last place might pay as much as 200 for being in last place um that gives you a sort of fairly frantic hustle to get out of the bottom yeah that would that would do the trick for a lot of people i think the key there is just gotta know everybody in the league really well and know everyone's actually good for putting up the money.

Will they, yeah. You could collect it all up front and then pay it back at the end. Maybe grade it so it's not very severe, you know, where it's not as severe as that. But just to sort of a gentle grading. So it'd be like, hey, if you're going to tank, you're going to pay more money. So a lot of different things that are going on in play when you, when you're talking

about the payout structures and snakes and non-snaking, uh, but just know that if you go to non-snaking, you, you are incentivizing people to tank. So you may want to think about implementing an anti-tanking measure as well. Yeah. I think if, yeah, I would say the straight draft, the non-snake works with anti-tanking measures. It doesn't work as well. Yeah, I think if, yeah, I would say the straight draft, the non-snake works with anti-tanking measures. It doesn't work as well without them. So thanks a lot for the question, Adam. The Black Tux believes every groom deserves a better experience when it comes to finding formal wear, whether it's a suit or a tuxedo for their big day. Did you know the Black Tux was actually started by two guys who had one of the worst tuxedo fittings you could imagine?

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It seems like they might be a good place to find some sleepers. I half wonder if Yussi Kikuchi went since his heater is way up. So we'll take this part of the question first. Any other players you can think of that were linked to driveline over the course of the offseason? think of that were linked to driveline over the course of the off season oh man you you've uh i should have i should have uh bothered see one of the things is i've i've got kyle bode you know i can text him but he's he's now a reds guy so he'll tell me about how awesome nick lodolo is or whatever so um it's not that he's like totally out of touch with with people in this thing but um um i would say that uh you know and then there's also sort of privacy issues of just

you know you can't you can't trumpet everybody uh from the get-go i would say that it is probably good news for all those guys kikuchi i know uh did not actually go to driveline but he did go to driveline, but you did go to, uh, gas camp there, their version of it, um, the Mariners version of it. And so I would say that like, this is another version of the, should I give certain organizations pitchers credit for going to the right places and getting the right coaching. Um, and I would say more or less. Yes. I think you can depend on the Indians to get the most out of Aaron Savali and Zach, please.

Zach, I think in another organization, they would be relievers. That's fair. Uh, I think that you can depend on the Dodgers to, uh, I think that you can depend on the Dodgers to create north-south pitchers that will throw high-spin heaters high in the zone and breaking balls low in the zone.

And that Tony Gonsolin was going to happen. It was an inevitability. Tony Gonsolin was an inevitability for that team. I think you can depend on the Mariners to have command first guys that'll be better than they seem. And so Logan Gilbert is up in velocity. He went to their gas camp. He was sitting 94 before they shut down. And if he sits 94 and shapes his

pitches better, um, you can have something there too. So, um, I don't know. I do have a piece that will someday come out that looks at velocity, spring painting velocity and its importance. spring penalty velocity and its importance. And A, it is important. It does carry over to the regular season. And if you saw a pitcher sitting more than a mile and a half above their sitting velocity last year, it's meaningful and it'll hold into the season, most likely. So let me see if I can sort this one i i kind of mothballed the the piece

because like i mean obvious reasons yeah but i might bring it back out again but some of the pieces some of the people like tyler beattie was up 2.7 but then he got hurt uh butariq Scubal was up. Yusei Kikuchi was up. Alex Wood was up. I actually highlighted him. Jose Barrios was up. Highlighted him as well. Trevor Rosenthal. So basically what I would say is, the end around is,

if you can't get into driveline and see who's in there, you can just look at the velocities. I'm just imagining a world in which fantasy baseball people like ourselves are trying to use context clues to figure out who's going to driveline. Or fly to Seattle and actually peek around doors. You're posted up at the coffee shop that's closest to the drive line, and you're just kind of like sitting on the porch looking out at the road

trying to ID players driving by. Oh, Daniel Norris, check. It's like, is that Daniel Norris or is that just a guy who's going to go hiking? We can't really tell. Daniel Norris question mark?

You verify it with the velocities at spring training later on. But another thing that's sort of philosophical about this is that I don't think that you can change maximum velocity that much. And so what you're seeing is basically some pitchers learning that they can throw closer to their maximum. And Joe Musgrove was doing that. And he was sitting 94 this spring. And then his shoulder hurt. Yeah, he started that at the end of last year too where the velo was up a little bit, right? Yeah.

So I'm excited about Joe Musgrove when we get started again but the closer you do pitch to your maximum, the more stressful it is on your arm. So there are sort of give and takes with this, but Tony Gonsolin, 95. Yeah, Tony, I mean, just needs an opportunity, though, in that

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a flyer on Corbin Burns and my boy Jonathan Loisiga. It also makes me feel better about a Carrasco bounce back and a Zach Gallen breakout than I already did. So I'll put the question to you another way. Who kind of catches your eye, good or bad, with what you've seen in the Aces metric? I've worked with Aaron Sauceda on this. He's Rotopope on Twitter. I think he's done a great job with this. He's rotopope on Twitter. I think he's done a great job with this. And I've helped him include command plus type numbers in his metric, which he thinks I think he agreed that

it helped to take a leap forward. And some of it's based on some of my previous work. So there's actually not that many surprises for me. Even a guy like Lucas Sims, who's in his top, you know, doesn't surprise me too much because, you know, he has good stuff. Lucas Sims has good stuff. And he's even had good strikeout rates. And there's a little bit of an opportunity situation there. But, you know, I wonder if there's something about command or deception that he hasn't been good in terms of managing contact.

So I think it's really interesting to have something like aces and then think about the work that Alex Chamberlain is doing where he's kind of he said so publicly, I'm doubling down on ex-Woba. I'm doubling down on the idea that pitchers can manage their contact to some extent. I'm doubling down on the idea that pitchers can manage their contact to some extent. Then you put that within the context of all of fantasy baseball or all of sort of baseball thought about pitching and think about Boris McCracken and his dips theory, which is that pitchers do not have control over balls in play. So we're at a bit of a breaking point now, I think, where someone's going to be right and someone's going to be wrong on some of these things. And so I'm kind of leaning back and waiting to see because

I favor dips and I favor aces type metrics. I favor stuff over contact management because I feel like stuff is more about whiffs, is about, you know, large sample things that have worked. Whereas contact management, I feel like sometimes we're talking about millimeters it's a hit if it if it's a millimeter high on the bat or lower on the bat it's a hit it's a knot you know what i mean um it's kind of like in terms of physics the the margins are so thin when it comes to contact management um but you know in terms of players that i like the off of aces that show up on my stuff and command metrics that were interesting, Freddy Peralta was there, Lucas Simms was there. Andrew Kittredge also showed up on mine,

but it started a conversation between me and the analyst at Driveline that created the stuff metric where he thought that sinker pitchers were overvalued by aces and stuff. And he wasn't sure how or why or how to correct for that, but he thought that there was something there. So Andrew Kittredge was in particular a player that we talked about that we did not believe in his aces or stuff metric. But he still shows up high up there.

And so you have to think about that a little bit with regards to some pitchers or stuff metric. But he still shows up high up there. And so you have to think about that a little bit with regards to some pitchers like Dustin May, who's a sinker first guy, or Jose Ureña, who's a sinker first guy, all top 15% when it comes to aces. So I would downgrade those guys a little bit. And I think that takes away some of the, oh, what the heck is that guy doing there?

But, you know, another thing that just sort of occurred to me, like Michael Pineda is in the bottom when it comes to stuff. And he doesn't even have great, necessarily, command plus, but he does have pretty good control. And one thing that Michael Pineda does that's really important is he throws all of his high his fastballs high in the zone you know yeah um so there's like strategy components that like all the reds are going to be a little bit better than some of their parts because they throw their fastballs high in the zone um and sonny gray is at the top of the list sonny gray is at the top of the list. Sonny Gray is at the top of the stuff list, yeah. It's weird.

Because he has a great curveball, and he throws a sinker, dude. But it's just weird because of how much people seem to not like him. Some people, that is. I would say it's a great curveball, and he's overvalued by the sinker. So I would say Garrett Cole should be number one in stuff, and Garrett Cole showed up number one in stuff. and Garrett Cole showed up number one in stuff. Maybe Tyler Glasnow was number one in the driveline stuff, but it was Garrett Cole number two.

So Garrett Cole is why we do this research. Yeah, but then you see the names like Burns and Loycega and Sims and Stratton, some of the random names that get sprinkled in, and it gets you excited about pitchers that in some of those cases you would ordinarily maybe not even think twice about. Yeah, so use that sinker thing. So if you're looking at someone and you're like, I don't get this, then look at how much they use a sinker and how good their sinker is.

I think that might be part of the Stratton thing. But then there are pitchers that, like Corbin Burns has really good stuff, I think. I was willing to bet on him this year. I couldn't get, for some reason, I wasn't getting a lot of shares because he had this, like, weird secret helium, you know? He was having a good spring. Yeah. And there's definitely a chance

that he wins the fifth starter job eventually, too. I mean, Eric Lauer... And he doesn't have the same problems as, like, a Jonathan Loizaga, where you're like, you know, give like, give me 20 innings in a season, bro. Right. Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, Loizaga's been hurt so many times. Man, I keep looking at the Corbin Burns 2019,

17 home runs in 49 innings. I've never seen a home run rate do that before. Yeah. That is unbelievable. That should not happen to a guy whose stuff is that good. And you've looked at his fastball heat maps, right? Oh, yeah. It's like middle-middle.

What are you doing, dude? You've got to get it above that or below that. Corbin Burns' phone number is 555-5555. Yeah. And I definitely use this. ACES is the type of analysis that you'll hear on these airwaves and in my pieces. So we are brothers from another mother, if you will. Indeed.

Well, that's a great question, though, from Mike. Two great questions. So thanks for sending those in, even though he couldn't shed a lot of light on the driveline situation uh in particular geez well it's it's like there i i kind of understand like if if either one of us were in kyle's position you're not going to just send a list of why here's everybody who worked with me like because yes i don't i don't think the world should work quite like that. Hurts my credibility a little bit to sort of ask somebody that too, I think. Yeah, probably would. Dude, can you just send me a list of everybody you worked with?

I want to write a sleeper column about it. Yeah. Yeah. That's why that list isn't going to happen. We got one more question from Jesse. He writes, has there been any analysis on specific players who you think would lose the most home runs and thus lose value if the

ball wasn't as juiced this year? I assume it wouldn't necessarily be evenly distributed as your mashers like Gallo and Judge who hit long bombs probably wouldn't be as affected as guys who are barely clearing the fence on innocent looking fly balls. Is their data like average home run distance by player?

Thanks, Jesse. This was a big topic back at First Pitch Arizona. It's been a topic that's kind of carried on through all of draft season, and now we have a little extra time to explore it. And I think the last time you and I talked about it, you know, the working theory you had at the time was that maybe the players who hit mostly opposite field home runs would be more impacted than others. Has anything changed as more research has come to light and as more time has passed? Yeah, I don't think anything's really changed, but all opposite field home runs are not created equal. So Aaron Judge had 14 opposite field home runs last year,

and Kyle Schwarber had 14. I think those are probably going to go out still. But DJ LeMayhew had 13. He does have some help from the porch in New York, but that seems like a lot. I look at someone like Christian Yelich, who like had a big home run explosion, you know, around this time, I feel like he could lose some home runs, just because he doesn't necessarily launch it quite like an Aaron Judge. Jesse Winker. Jesse Winker was on my list of

people who would enjoy the juice ball. So I think he can go back on the list as someone who wouldn't enjoy de-juicing the ball. Eric Hosmer had eight, but Josh Bell had eight opposite field home runs. Christian Walker, guys who have okay power, who go to the opposite field, but don't have light tower power. Glyber Torres had eight. Those are the kinds I think that would hurt the most. And unfortunately, the average home run distance by player, I think we'd have to figure out a way to drill that down. We'd have to rerun something to parse that out, right?

To get the average opposite field home run distance i don't think that's available at least any sort of public facing database i was trying to make stack cast do this for us but it wasn't working i will try again i promise i will try again it seems like something i should be able to do so every once in a while stack cast the savant page i just i it makes me feel like an idiot. It makes me feel like an old man. I don't know what it is. There's something about the way that you have to put things in that you click go and you're like, that's not right.

It's an awesome site. It is not the most user-friendly site when it comes to the search page. It would have to take me some while to actually be able to say why, but yeah. I would say incomplete on that answer, but definitely some of those names that I said were interesting, I think. And if you want to create the full list,

that one, that magic is pretty straightforward. Go to the splits leaderboard at Fangraphs. You can hit the splits tab, go to batted balls, click the opposite field, and then you can just look at the standard tab and hit home runs and that'll pull up everybody on that list. Oh, and another fun thing that you can do is actually switch over to the batted balls tab and look at home runs per fly ball to the opposite field. And then I think you kind of almost drill a little bit down further into it, into the fact that Jesse Winker, 31% of his opposite field fly balls were homers. That seems kind of weird.

That seems like over the top. David Freese had so many just-enoughs. He had 27% home run for fly ball to that side. Domingo Santana. DJ LeMayhew, right on the top there, Mitch Moreland. John Birdie had a 16% home run to fly ball on the opposite field.

I think he'll be hurt if they don't de-juice the ball. Man, John Birdie was one of those guys when draft season started, he was kind of creeping up as a possible top 200 guy because it looked like he was going to play a lot and he had some speed. He's a great story. Spring was not kind to him.

It wasn't. I don't see it happening at all for him. I know if you double up the stats from last year in 73 games, he's a 34 steal guy. I don't think he gets the playing time to do it, though. That's what all the reports were out of there. Without some of the best power he's ever shown in his career which was also below average

uh he only put together a 104 wrc plus at age 30 on a team that youth is everything i think he's basically just their guy who hangs around as a utility guy until they get a better one. Yeah, I would agree with that. If you look back at Birdie, kudos to him for hanging on and grinding it out as long as he did. I mean, it's amazing. But it wasn't like he...

He had 15 plate appearances in 2018, and that was it. And he didn't tear up the minors while he was stuck there. His 2018 at AA was really good, but he was old for... In 2017, AA was really good, but he was old. In 2017, he hit.205 in Blue Jays AAA. Right, and he just kept going,

which I think there was a story about it when he got called up that we had on The Athletic. But he's just one of those guys that I didn't see. I didn't see anything there that was going to repeat unless the playing time was there, and the Marlins have young players to play over him. He's exactly the kind of player that was my

what does war matter piece is about because he's projected by most people to be less than a half win player and there's just no reason for the Marlins to keep a younger player out of the lineup in favor of a player

who's going to be worth 0.5 wins at the end of the season. Exactly. So if you're listening to this show on a platform that allows you to rate and review it, please take a moment to do that. We'd greatly appreciate it. Tell your friends if you think they might enjoy the pod. If you're looking for a subscription to The Athletic and you want 40% off, go to theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. No sports for a while, but still lots of great pieces coming out. Still going to do a lot of podcasts as well. To that end, you can reach us at ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com. Let us know if you want the Project GOAT worksheet or if you've got questions for a future episode. We're happy to take those as well. Just be sure to spell out the word and

in ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com. If you go the email route on Twitter, he's at, you know, Saris, I'm at Derek van Riper. That's going to wrap things up for this episode of rates and barrels. We are back with you Thursday. Stay safe out there. Thanks for listening. Thank you.