Rates & Barrels - Project Prospect - McLain Joins Rookie Shortstop Class

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

DVR, Eno and Welsh breakdown Matt McLain's Reds debut and his value rest of season. We're also talking Dynasty strategies, how to approach prospect pitchers and more. Rundown 0:52 Matt McLain 10:11 Souring on Tovar 12:17 Elly De La Cruz 14:25 More prospects coming for the future 18:58 What happened to Brandon Williamson 20:53 Eury Pérez 25:31 Eury Pérez's Curveball 28:34 Today's run environment 32:26 Pitching prospects in dynasty 38:02 Investment in pitching prospects 41:12 Lodem or Ledom? 43:10 Jake Eder 47:40 Listener dynasty questions Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Welsh on Twitter: @isitthewelsh Subscribe to The Athletic at $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Look at the rates and barrels. It is Tuesday, May 16th, Project Prospect Edition. Derek Rybert, Eno Saris, Chris Welsh, all here with you. On this episode, we discuss the recently promoted shortstop in Cincinnati, Matt McClain, making his big league debut this week. So another addition to this class of rookie shortstops. We'll take a quick look at the latest stat cast feats of one Casey Schmidt, who is so much better than I estimated looking at his fan graphs page. So humble pie for me. We'll talk about the Yuri Perez debut and another Marlon starter that could be on the way later this summer. We got a few mailbag questions as well. So let's get to it. Let's begin with Matt McClain. Yet another rookie shortstop comes up. Really impressive numbers at AAA. And really, when you look at what he's done so far, level by level in the minor leagues, it was the most successful of his stops in the minor leagues. Just count high A, double A, and triple A. Strikeout rate down compared to where it was last

year. Matt McClain has walked everywhere he's played. He showed speed and a little bit of power everywhere he's played, showing a lot of power this year with 12 homers and just 173 plate appearances. What do we make of this performance? Is Matt McClain supposed to put up gross numbers like this, Welsh? This seems like a really great start for him that helped him earn this promotion, and the fact that the Reds have a ton of other prospects means they should be a little more aggressive taking looks at some of these guys when they think they're ready because they have to figure out how all these pieces are going

to fit in the next couple of years. Yeah. I mean, is he supposed to, I don't know, but he is. And that's the craziest part about it. Like the AFL was kind of the start of this because there's this big hole in

his swing and he was just swinging through a lot of stuff. And I actually would have loved to have talked to him to see like what clicked through there because he had like a really early rough start in the AFL. Then it started to turn. I've got some video out there of him, you know, just turning on some balls. But the thing I continuously saw were, were pitchers attacking him low in the zone. Like you see a lot of guys and it was like off-speed pitches, but when you made a mistake, he was just murdering them. And this year you're seeing all of that come into play. Double digit homers and stolen bases in the minors.

He cut his K percentage, which was like the biggest thing that I want to give him the extra benefit of the doubt, because I will tell you, I haven't been the biggest in on Matt McLean for a while because I know he can hit and I know he can run some, but I really question how much contact he's going to make and what type of slumps he's going to get into.

But man, dropping that K percentage was absolutely huge. And the mistake he made in his, uh, or he took advantage of in his debut was like a high slider. You know, that was the thing. He was able to take advantage of a slider that was over the plate, crushed it to center, showed off his legs. I think this is like a 15-15 type of guy, or maybe it turns into, best case is like a 20-10 type of guy. So I'm a little bit apprehensive about what he's done in the minors,

but it's checked specific boxes. It's checked the K percentage box. It's been consistent, and he's already made it up. He made it up before CES, which was shocking to me. So I think this is a great buy. They also trusted him to hit two and that might be telling a new story about the type of quality of contact he's making that they already threw him up at two on this team, which we usually don't see with these types of rookies. So he's a big buy right now. And I think he's got a lockdown position because in the minors, Ellie had been playing third base.

You've got CES, who is probably going to play first, could DH for this team, and I think at some point in this offseason, or this season, maybe into the summer, we are going to see Ellie at third, Matt McClain at short, Indy at second, and CES Manning first base. I think we are going to

see that sometime in the next couple months here, and that's how they're going to bring up all these guys, because this team does have flexibility to move guys like Nick Senzel back to the outfield, and they've got Henry Ramos at DH right now. And the weird thing is, Nick Senzel belongs on the dirt. He's not bad in the outfield, but he's better on the dirt, and they're probably not going to keep him there because they have so many other young players coming up to the system. You know, how do you stack up McLean to some of the other rookie shortstops? We saw Casey Schmidt get promoted last week.

We had a bunch of rookie shortstops on opening day rosters going back to Volpe and Tovar. We've, of course, seen other prospects promoted in between, like Zach Netto. Where does McLean sort of fit into the conversation for you? I think he belongs somewhere around Netto. I think Volpe is probably still the cream of the crop in terms of the names you've mentioned, unless I'm forgetting somebody. Just in terms of, I think his speed is the most elite tool, fantasy tool of the group that you've mentioned.

And Netto and McLean seem like guys who can be fundamentally sound they're gonna walk they're gonna play good defense they're gonna play they're gonna play high in the lineup because of those walks they're gonna play every day because of that defense um and so i do see a little bit of a a bit of a comp there. What's interesting about what Chris just said about the different players, the different facets of McLean's arsenal is that he just had a 362 ISO down in the minor leagues this year.

You mentioned the 12 homers and 173 plate appearances i think it would be uh you know i think there's some that might feel like oh what are you talking about 20 homers like this is a guy who can hit way more than that same time he had a 109 max ev down there and it seems like he accomplished those homers by hitting a lot of fly balls. This year at the 49% fly ball rate, which always makes me nervous. You know, once you, once you have an extreme fly ball or ground ball rate,

it seems to me like you have somewhere I can pitch you in the zone. You're an extreme ground ball guy. I feel like I can pitch you high in the zone. If you're a stream fly ball guy, I can pitch you low in the zone. So Chris saying that he has a whole low in the zone. He has his 49 stream fly ball guy I can put you low in the zone so Chris saying that he has a whole low in the zone he has his 49% fly ball rate he has a below average max EV yeah I see that there's still some down there's still some pressure on his strikeout rate there's still some pressure

on his batting average I can see why some projection systems say 230 for his batting average. I can see why some projection systems say two 30 for his batting average. And some say two 50. I can see why some projections say one 60 for his ISO and others say one 80, you know? So there is a range here and we need to, what we will figure out in the next few months is how much power he has and how much contact he's going to make. But I do think the baseline walk rate,

the baseline defense, the baseline speed, he's going to be a valuable uh fancy player uh i'd say probably a step below vulpe but him and netto are probably the next two uh in that grouping and then there's just a caveat yo his home park is awesome yeah you know what i mean it's like i didn't like tovar but if mclean came up as a rocky i'd say he's number one you know what i mean so uh maybe you know that even if he hits those fly balls a little bit softer than you'd like if he hits 49 fly balls maybe he's actually gonna have 25 30 homers it's it's funny you mentioned that i have this video i was trying to find it

and i can't find it on my twitter uh from the afL of this homer that Matt McClain hit that I was right there. And what you can see is he does have this always trying. It's almost a purposeful lift in his swing. And in this specific swing, he almost gets tippy-toed. His whole body is moving up. And the homer, he hits it and he he pulls it but it gets tippy-toed because there's an active attempt and trying to get the ball up and and you said a lot of the stuff why like i've got reservations on matt mclean versus what he's done because what he's

done on paper he looks like the elite he looks the elite of elite prospects right now sub 20 percent k percentage 17 percent walk right crazy numbers crazy numbers but like i've seen the bad in matt mclean so i'm apprehensive but the things is the ability to cut the strikeouts the more stolen bases and like you said the ballpark factor those are things where it's like i'll kind of push some of those aside and say hey let's just go let's just go and i think i agree like i was gonna say like tovar versus McLean I think it's kind of easy McLean right now you just buy in you go with it and he's probably the guy only Volpe uh is ahead of yeah the big difference for me is when you look at McLean's profile walking helps a lot right you can be a batting average liability in fantasy but

if you have some power and you have good speed you can overcome that pretty easily I think the problem we're seeing with Ezekiel Tovar, he's not getting on base enough to use the speed that he has, so you're not getting much of a contribution there. So far for Tovar, this season has been an extension of that very brief nine-game sample we got from him at the end of last year. The slash line so far is almost identical. 213, 257, 338. To the Rockies' credit, they have been patient, but we're closing in on one-third of a season's worth of big league plate appearances for Tovar, where he has been a bad player offensively.

Yeah, I think he's going to end up getting sent down to AAA. And keep in mind, this is a guy that only played 66 games at AA last year and had a five-game stop at AAA before going to the big leagues. So they moved him fast. I generally like this. I don't think it means much for his long-term development. I think it's part of the range of outcomes if you move aggressively is having to backtrack on that and give a player some more time in the minor leagues. I think the question would be for dynasty leagues and for keeper leagues, are you trying to get Tovar right now? Because if you see him on a

roster where everything else is sort of built to play for the immediate future, you might have someone willing to part with him in a trade in a long-term league. And we're talking about a guy that's 21 years old, who defensively should stick at the position, and does still have that benefit once he comes back someday. We're already assuming the demotion, but once he's up for good, he has that home park to fall back on to prop up those numbers. So have you soured on Tovar Welsh to the point where you're not necessarily as interested in him long term? I know, you know, you were a little bit skeptical back during draft season.

But is this a good move in keeper and dynasty leagues with a guy like Tovar struggling this much? I mean, it's like the old adage, like, you know, the process is not linear, you know, like this developmental process for these guys. So I think it's always like a good idea to buy in when people have completely washed their hands of a super young prospects that have shown elements of dominating, but I'm not a big Ezekiel Tovar guy. I think the stolen bases could be bigger than the power. The home ballpark is something that like, are we going to get into a split situation with him down the line when he

really learns to hit? And at the same time, like a lot of these guys, there's plenty of, uh, as many, you know, Fernando Tatis prospects as there are,

there's Jose Iglesias is, you know, guys that play great defense and steal a handful of bases and a handful of homers and never bring it out. I just don't know if, um, Ezekiel Tovar is that right now, where you could probably trade Tovar for Matt McClain,

and that might seem very short-sighted and very now-sighted to it, but I don't know. I'd probably rather take the risk because I think the counting stats are bigger. But we say all this, and Tovar had a monster minor league season, and it just hasn't clicked. Maybe he takes longer. We saw him struggle at the AFL, and he might just be one of these guys

that takes a year or two to really get baseball under his belt, and then he can go and put up, unfortunately, I'd still say, maybe like 80% of what Matt McClain theoretically could do. So Matt McClain might be a better fantasy option. Tovar might be a regular,

better actual real-life player. You know, a question I was going to ask you guys on the Matt McClain thing real quick is do you have any worry, because I have a little bit of this, if McClain struggles at all, that the team maybe just ripcords it and wants to bring Elie De La Cruz up? And if you get back to that Nixon-Zell thing,

if Nixon-Zell is better on the dirt and the team has to make tough decisions, Matt McClain, I think, really has to hit and really has to dominate. If LA daily cruise is going to come up and if they're not willing to move Nick Senzel, because if you haven't followed LA daily cruise dropped his strikeout percentage to under 20% in the month of May, six homers,

four stolen bases. He's a monster. He had that crazy game harder than any major leaguer, rather than like, uh, O'neill cruz and aaron judge this year he had one game where he registered three 116 mile per hour hits two of them were homers which is absurd so like ellie is in triple a he's knocking on the door what what would this team want from him they'd want to see the strikeouts drop well they have and he's done

that in may to like an aggressive degree so offensively ellie de la cruz is justified to come up but we've got to look and be like all right so what does this roster look like who will it be at the expense of and if matt mclean struggles that could be one of the downfalls that they've got a guy that they might want ellie to be the shortstop i don't know noel v is a third baseman so down the the line, you can't have Ellie and Noel V both play third base. Noel V can't play another position unless they move him to first,

which they have CES. Who can play corner outfield? So that might be the thing. Maybe Noel V as a third baseman could play corner outfield. That might be something. I don't know if they're willing to move off of Ellie for that.

So there's a little part of me and all this Matt McLean stuff that sits and goes, well, when you get your best players out there, is Matt going to turn into a super util if Ellie is the future at shortstop? So just throwing that out there because Ellie is moving up, man. Yeah, he is off to a fantastic start this year. I think the NL Central is such a disaster right now. The Cardinals look like they're kind of becoming the Cardinals again. They're seven and three in their last 10. Nolan Aranato's fixed.

He looked pretty broken for a while. Where the pitching is going to come from is still a big question. That's a Lodum win, by the way. It's not a Lodum win. That's a Lodum win. There's no evidence. That is a guy who's on track to go to the Hall of Fame going into a one-month funk,

and usually those guys come back. I put him in a buy low article, and I was like, I got no numbers for you, man. There's nothing here that i can be like well his barrel rate is still good i'm like no it all looks terrible this is how bad he looked i put a gif in when i was like this is how bad he looks and yet still bye so here's the thing though with with the reds and this is this is why i think ellie de la cruz becomes an intriguing redraft stash in these next couple of weeks is they're five games back of the Brewers. This division's wide open. Oh my God, do you think they could do it?

Why can't they? Anyone can win that division right now, especially if they have internal talent that can make them better. They just win four or five games in a row. This whole division, if you look at every one of these rosters, if you have upper-level guys

that you think could help you, you should consider promoting them. I know I'm Mr. Aggressive, promote everyone. Well, nervous is up. But I think we could see the Brewers get to the point where Jackson Churio, if he's playing really well, and double A and triple A, we could see Churio by the end of the season.

No way. I argued it for the Pirates. I thought Henry Davis should be up. Isn't Churio like 10 years old? Yeah, pretty close. Pretty much, yeah. But I'm not saying, okay. But he does have, okay, now he has 160 played appearances. I'll clarify.

I'm saying this group of teams, all five teams in this division, should be a lot more open-minded about who can help them because of what it takes to get to the playoffs in this division. It's a lower bar right now than it is elsewhere. And for the Reds, with prospects on prospects on prospects, there's no reason to hold anything back right now. If you think they're ready, give them a shot. With the Reds specifically, outside of the Brewers, because take the Reds situation,

we're out of manipulating roster-y type of stuff. If guys come up, they're not going to accrue a full season, so you'll have that into next year. So you have to ask yourself, who are the guys that are coming up this year? Maybe Churio doesn't, but Ellie will. Christian Encarnacion-Strand will. Those guys are coming up this year.

They're not going to be served by being down there. And these teams have to look at themselves in the face and be like, do we really want Henry Ramos as our DH? And do we want Stuart Fairchild in the face and be like, do we really want Henry Ramos as our DH? And do we want Stuart Fairchild in the outfield? And do we want Jose Barrero manning our shortstop? Or do we want excitement when this division is still within reach? And do we want these guys to develop here? Because what are you losing? You're not losing the extra year or anything like that. So that's what I've been pretty steadfast about Christian Encarnacion and Strand coming up. But with Matt McClain up,

it's only a matter of time. If we're in June and Ellie, McClain, CES, and Andrew Abbott are not all up, I will be surprised. They actually just called up Brandon Williamson, who's going to get a start. Used to be with the Mariners. I'm surprised that wasn't Andrew Abbott. We just don't know the mindset of these teams.

And I think some are more aggressive than others. But I think Ellie and CES are great redraft stashes right now I did it both in NFBC leagues uh the week before was CES this week was Ellie De La Cruz those are guys that I'm stashing because I think they're coming just like Matt McClain is ironically I kind of just think Matt McClain might be the least safe of those three guys even though he's put up insane numbers. Yeah, there's something about bringing him up first that says like, well, we're going to give you a shot. It's going to be about two weeks long. Yeah, we want to see what we got

before we go make the commitment. I mean, it really might be. It might be like they might need to see what they have before they start making these adjustments, whether it's Sinzel moving off or, hell, maybe Ellie does. Can you play some center field? Yeah, maybe Ellie.

Maybe they put Ellie in the corner infielder. That guy be a monster of a well he's big right yeah he's huge six foot six six foot seven somewhere in there and he's also and where does steer go it's like it's so weird and steer is the tough one that that's another one of those tough ones and how they're going to completely manage their roster that's why they've got difficult decisions but there has to be a point where it's like, what is served having these? There's nothing in Christian and Carnation Strand, in my mind, is really getting down in the minors that wouldn't be improved by going to the majors.

Same thing with Ellie. I think both of those guys' problems are strikeout rates, which let's not have them focus 1,000% in the minors. Let's get them to the majors, and let's really get down to brass tacks and fix that strikeout rate here against the pitching that you will be seeing not that triple a pitching so i wish they would just just do it just get pull the band-aid off get all these guys up and not have this little trickle effect of all of them because matt is the is the first of many for them

and if you have this ongoing competition on the roster you're going to send some of these guys down at some point it's inevitable like one or roster, you're going to send some of these guys down at some point. It's inevitable. One or two of them are going to do it by performance. One might get squeezed because there's not enough room to play. They're going to pull the Jordan Walkers. You've got to play every day, so we're sending you back down. All those things are still in play for the Reds once they bring this group up. It's ugly.

Looking at the bullpen in the back of the rotation, but at the NL Central, it is up for grabs. We should talk about... Hold on real quick, though. What did they do to Brandon Williamson? They broke him. Oh, my God. You know what they did to him?

They took him away from one of the best pitching development teams in baseball in the Mariners. I didn't want to say it, but that's exactly what they did. With Seattle, he had like a 38% strikeout rate in there in his time in Seattle. And this year in AAA for Cincinnati has a 16% strikeout rate. He has a 91 stuff plus change up a 75 stuff plus curve, a 71 stuff plus fastball. 75 stuff plus curve a 71 stuff plus fastball and i don't even have to tell you all those things you can see that he's got a 7k9 and a 6era like why is he up and what did they do to him and why is it not andrew abbott why why is it what again there might be a little part of this like do you know

what you said maybe there's a little bit of like they know their future you ever heard that term be like i know what i got like they know what future. You ever heard that term? They're like, I know what I got. Like they know what they've got, but it's, let's see what these other pieces that maybe they don't know. I'm not saying that that is McLean, but there is something to like McLean and Williamson coming up before guys like Ellie and Andrew Abbott,

who are the future that maybe they just want to fully understand at the major league level, what these guys are going to be all about before they make their other big commitments, sorting hat, like sorting through. And also there there is some element of politics uh within a an organization of like well you know these guys were ahead these guys are older these guys should get the first shot or whatever yeah and you don't always want to like rush a 17 year old past the like 22-year-old that feels like he's getting skipped by. Yeah, it's tricky to navigate having that much talent

that can play on the left side of the infield coming up all at once. I haven't seen a lot of teams under that problem quite to the level the Reds are running into it right now. Let's go to the Uri Perez debut. Seems like it was a lifetime ago. That was only Friday. Baseball is so weird like that. I thought he looked really good.

I thought he was getting squeezed. Everything kind of looked as advertised. If you haven't seen Uri Perez pitch before, maybe you saw the pitching ninja gif going around of the overlay of Perez and Sandy Alcantara. It is remarkably similar in terms of the delivery. Power change. 91 mile an hour

power change. The second half finish was almost identical to Sandy too. The beginning isn't, but once they get to that middle point, it is almost a mirror to mirror that Pitching Ninja put out there. It's pretty crazy. Best Western made booking our family beach vacation a breeze. And it felt a little like... life's a trip make the most of it at best western this episode is brought to you by peloton forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day

one just start moving with the peloton bike, Bike Plus, Tread, Row, Guide, or App. There are thousands of classes and over 50 Peloton instructors ready to support you from the beginning. Remember, doing something is everything. Rent the Peloton Bike or Bike Plus today at onepeloton.ca slash bike slash rentals. All access memberships separate. Terms apply. Yeah, I didn't realize they were that similar until I saw

that. Four-seamer, slider, curve, the occasional change-up, all in the debut. Again, I thought he got squeezed a couple of times, but one of those instances led to a home run. Outing could have been a little better. Is he really up for good? We talked about it on the Friday show as another

big spend in fab just three days after on this very show last week, we were talking about the possibility of being a little more careful with our fab dollars with rookie pitchers. I get the sense that anything can happen because he's a young pitcher, but for some reason, I have this belief that the Marlins are going to stretch him and keep him up as long as they possibly can even though they are going to give him a very clear kid gloves treatment over the course of the season right skipping the starts when the schedule allows it being careful with them around the all-star break if they fall to contention of course shutting him down early any and all of those things are on the table but he looks major league ready to me. I agree. And I also think that like, I'm taking this new approach of trying to not examine a bigger,

too big of, even though I did all of that with a raise, I'm trying to like, understand, like, I just don't know what anybody's doing with rookies anymore. So the best thing to do is just to base everything off of the performance of what you're seeing. If they'll bring a guy up and they can perform well, let's assume they have enough trust that they're willing to go the full throttle thing. Unless it's like one dude got hurt and it's a spot start and it's clearly a spot start. This situation isn't quite as clear, even though Rodgers and Cueto both on the IL. I just have to assume that they would, even though the Rays pulled it out from Bradley.

But not everybody's the same. So it's like we just don't know the path of how everybody wants to treat these rookies. In my mind, get your best players out there, get the players that get fans excited, that get butts in seats, that sell jerseys. And as long as you're not hurting development, which you're clearly not, he gets to be there with his mentor in Sandy Alcantara. I think it was that he stayed with Sandy during spring training and the off season. he was living with him and training with him. You've got a, you've got a great teacher in there. Learn at the major league level. He clearly has the stuff because, you know, if you look at his, uh, his own chart too, it's pretty fascinating. This is like, it's like pro

pitcher stuff. You know, he eats you up inside on righties with that fastball, which I thought that he could ride that fastball and really tight. He can hit the corner with the slider. The changeup is a little bit of a wild card and the curve ball also kind of the swing and miss wild card pitch. I mean, it looked good. He looked good.

Seven strikeouts, a little bit squeezed, solid command. I don't know why I wouldn't bet on this guy. It would only be as if it was like a race situation and they're just like okay awesome two starts now let's change it all and go down in six day five day rotate like that wild crazy stuff that's those are things we can't control and we like don't know about so i'm with you dvr i would bet on it yuri looked phenomenal and might be uh one of these top rookie pitchers even though we've had the bybies and stuff i think this is the top guy, and I'd make the bet.

He looked so calm, too, for his debut. You see guys, there's a wide range of outcomes. There's the way that Uri Perez looked during his debut, down to, geez, was it Logan Gilbert, who you could just see was just jittery out there. Brandon Fott was sweating like a pig. His face was all red. He was just like, oh, it's another homer. Everything, the balls

are whizzing by him at 110 like he was like he did is this cool and calm as the team says he is it was stressful watching him yuri prez is just out there slanging it's very very impressive i don't i don't blame it's wild the fab money that was spent on this weekend i don't know if you guys paid attention to it around 300 to three 50, but think about that based off of what money has gone off of fab. So that's not just 30 to 35%, probably closer to 50% was spent on Yuri. So there's a huge capital investment in big money leagues on Yuri Perez

because he looks elite and he can be elite. Yeah. The only caveat that I have is the curveball. I'm not sure it's good. It gets 11 inches less drop than the average curveball, 6 inches less fade. It's going to have a lot of blue on it, on Savant, when it comes online.

And at 80.5, I can't blame it all on the Velo. I can't say, well, this is a power curve, so it doesn't move as much. Power curves are 82, 83, 84. So I'm not sure the curveball is a great pitch, but I do know that the fastball is a great pitch. Somehow, even though he throws at 97, he gets two inches more ride than average. And he spun it faster than anybody other than Emmanuel Classe,

who's a reliever, by the way. And so, you know, you've already got some aspects of his pitches that are really standout. An 86-mile-an-hour slider, it doesn't matter how it moves. It's 86 miles an hour. So I see at least three pitches that are plus. I don't know if I like the curveball, but that's a really little nit to pick. And then the last thing I'll say is I don't know if I like the curveball but that's a really little nit to pick and then the last thing I'll say is I don't think that the command uh looked there was any problem with the

command even though he might have gotten squeezed a little um and I do think that there is a teammate on his team that is having a serious issue with command and so if you look at some team dynamics as you were talking about it's possible that Edward Cabrera gets sent down before Yuri Perez. I mean, an 18% walk rate is just not viable in the major leagues. And it's something that Edward Cabrera has been working on for a long time. say work on it somewhere else for a little bit you know like we don't want to pull the plug and make you a reliever just yet so you know let's see if we can get you down to triple a and have you you know throw up an eight percent walk rate he's thrown some of those up uh in the past um and maybe give him a single target and and make him work like tyler glass now off a single target or or eliminate some pitch out of his repertoire that he can't command.

Something needs to change for Edouard Cabrera. And I think that the longer they pitch side by side, the more likely it is that Cabrera is the one that's set down. Totally makes sense to give Cabrera that time. We had someone either tweet or email, and I'm sorry, I don't remember the name, but they said that there were two good examples, Hall of Fame examples of pitchers

that were bad with the walk rates as bad as Yuri or not Yuri Perez as bad as Edward Cabrera has been Sandy Koufax and Nolan Ryan. And we just didn't go back far enough on the leaderboard. You know, I think when you pulled up that leaderboard, we said 2000 was the cutoff, but you go back. Wow. I mean, he got a lot better as his career progressed, but yes, Nolan Ryan, uh, 17, 13, 14 at those. I mean, he got a lot better as his career progressed. But yes, Nolan Ryan, 17, 13, 14, yeah. Yeah, Sandy Koufax, for the first six years that he spent time in the big leagues,

had a walk rate of 11% or higher. I will point out, though, there is something fundamentally different about now versus then. Lots of different things. Just a few. Here's a major one. The run environment you know what i mean i think you can get away with more walks in a lower run environment you know what i mean like right now we've got one of the you know that the run environment now is

almost comparable to 2019 oh good we're back to that yeah yeah we're we're happy fun ball cool so between the shift and the the clock and the and the uh and the and the new ball possibly what we're getting is is a happy fun ball and i just don't think you can play in happy fun ball and give up five walks you know what's so funny about that they mlb had this commercial um this this past week it might have been old or whatever but it was one of those commercials and it was like i don I don't, I've got to have been the Brian Cranston, one of those. And it was like,

baseball is back. Runs are up. You know, everybody's scoring. It's amazing. And I was thinking, God, there,

there's like a group of executives that are sitting there and they're like, we did it, you know, screw those pitchers. We're getting runs. Like the rest of us playing fancy baseball being like, how can I put this pitching staff together?

It's so hard right now. It's like so blatant in our face that like the moves that they have made is to just score more. I mean, we all knew this, but it's just like baseball in this ad was just like, ha ha. We did it, guys. We're scoring all the runs. Screw those pitchers. They suck. We got them.

And they did everything they could outside of injecting steroids or putting in the happy fun ball. They're doing everything else they can. I finally got my labor ERA under five. That might be a winning ERA. Middle of the pack for AL only league? Yeah, it's middle of the pack. Six points in the standings off that. I'm at like four, six, five

and I think I have six or seven points. Low four is going to be the target now for everybody. That's going to win you your league. It's awful. Yeah, it's pretty rough. I was in my 12 team, right? And I was just looking through the wire for teams. It's a 12 team dynasty.

So the first five names that are rostered, I can't have, right? They're protected on somebody else's minor league list, right? So then I was like, okay, the first five guys are all hot young rookies I can't have that I'm mad that I can't have. And then there were like three veterans before it started to be all relievers.

I had a choice between Ross Stripling and... This is a 12-teamer. I had a choice between Ross Stripling. I picked up Seth Lugo and somebody else, and I dropped Ross Stripling. And I was just like, this is my choice? And it's because, and we were joking about this on Rates and Barrels yesterday, ranking pitchers right now, it's almost just like who's healthy.

Who were we trying to put somewhere? Mitch Keller. We were trying to put Mitch Keller on the rankings and try to re-rank him. Like 13. And I was looking through my rankings that came out two weeks ago. My rankings came out two weeks ago, and I was like, oh, well, hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt. It's like that game on The Price is Right, cliffhangers, where the ugly man goes up the cliff, you keep booming above the ramp, and ramp and they get hurt and they fall off the end and someone else goes up the mountain that's that's how it works right so i was like i guess he's top 30 i mean because everybody else that was like 30

through 40 is hurt so i mean i think he's true talent like top 40 ish but everyone's hurt so he's top 30 you know it's funny you say that we're i was just talking about this with uh with scott bogman that it's like could you even even trade your Mitch Keller? Would you even want to trade your Mitch Keller right now to get a guy like Alec Manoa in a redraft league? That's where we were. That's almost exactly what we were talking about. That seems like the biggest no-brainer in the sneaky moves that you do to buy back in on players, but I don't think I would want to right now. moves that you do to buy back in on players but i don't i don't think i would want to right now no why are we yeah why are we giving up so much someone was asking about this on twitter again this morning and i guess they probably didn't hear of yesterday's episode we talked about it a bit yesterday it's so strange to me that we could take 51 big league starts from the last two years

and just say nope doesn't matter anymore. We've seen nine starts this year. He's not that guy anymore. It goes back to the, is it fixable? And I think it's like, if you're in a 10 team league, Manoa is probably a drop or you're at least being very careful with the

matchups. That's kind of the line for there. If you're at a 12, okay, who are you going to pick up? Maybe in a 15, it's like a forced hold because there's no pitching available. In a keeper league, you look at the overall body of work and you say,

wait a minute, he's a 25-year-old who's had a ton of success in the big leagues. He's had... You can't sell him. I mean, again, 51... But could you buy him? Projections never liked him. Models didn't like him. This is the time.

Long-term, short term short term doesn't matter if you believe that he can turn it around or if you don't think this is that broken you absolutely can can buy i'm wondering right now if there is a kind of reverse effect what we see in redraft leagues we're pitching super inflated you want to trade for pitching to help you right now it's going to cost you as much as ever. In long-term leagues, unless we're talking about the pitchers on the cusp of getting to the big leagues, you know, Uri Perez before he got promoted, or I guess Kyle Harrison, Ricky Tiedemann, guys like that that haven't debuted yet, they'd be in this group. They're close, so we're still really into them. Are the pitching prospects far away from the big leagues

getting just squashed value-wise? Because no one wants to wait for pitching. Everyone's afraid pitching is going to break. So I just wonder if the long-term market on pitching is just a complete cluster in a different way than the current in-season redraft market is trying to trade for pitchers. Or if you're trying to buy now, if you want to buy a top 10 pitcher in a keeper league right now, you're going to pay a lot in terms of value. I found that in my deeper keeper leagues that, yes, that pitching that's further away is easy to pick up. You can just pick it up.

You don't have to trade for it. So like, you know, Alvin Rodriguez is in triple a, but he's not on the 40 man. And I was able just to pick them up as a picker, as a, just a,

just a, just a pick up off the wire in devil's rejects which is 20 teams 28 keepers you know own anyone you know so you know i do think that uh you know blocked pitching that's not on the 40 man pitching that especially if it's in high a like i can't even imagine i don't imagine that if you came to me in a trade and offered me a pitcher in high a that that would move the needle at all in the trade i had so i just did an update on my uh my prospect list over on the in this league patreon and one of the top questions that popped up as soon as i did it was someone was like i'm surprised at how many pitchers are inside that top 50. And I was like, well, you know, the, the high end guys were higher, maybe the normal inside

the top 30, but then there was this big gap. And then as you look at a list, the gap keeps getting bigger. I ended up only having like 14 pitchers in my top 50 of pitching prospects of all prospects overall, 14 of 50 were pitching prospects but if you expanded it to the top 100 there's maybe 20 pitchers in there i mean so that's where the gap starts to go and then there's kind of another gap of players that haven't quite built up their value so you're right like people don't want to pay up for any pitching that is not uh the elite elite guys. And those elite guys tend to be AA or higher. Everything else is very acquirable.

It doesn't push the needle, even though the value, like you said, like when they are up and performing in Dynasty, they're actually more difficult to trade for than anything else. I've noticed that over the last five years. Higher in trustable pitching is one of the most difficult assets

to purchase in Dynasty leagues. Especially not older. I mean, you know, Charlie Morton gets and Justin Verlander gets traded around. Yeah, yeah, not those guys. I think the other challenge, though, is if you are not playing for this year and you have good pitching and you don't know if you're going to contend next year, you probably have to trade those older guys because they could break. That's always been a concern, but it seems like they're more likely to break now than ever before. So the risk is even higher. We're seventh out of 20 and have Justin Verlander.

Right. So if you're not good enough to win this year, you should trade Justin Verlander right now or after a run of two or three good starts and be happy that there's going to still be a market for Verlander because there's always a market for pitching in those leagues. The other part of this, I like that over at Rotowire on the player pages, they've got the historical prospect rankings. So you could see where our friend James Anderson had players at various points in time. Think about how pitching

just explodes when it gets into a system, how development occurs where guys who were not even first and second round picks end up becoming organizations, best pitchers in such short order. Brandon fought, who I think is James's number one ranked pitcher. Now, after all the promotions and things that have happened since the season started this time a year ago,

he was ranked like two 90 on his top 400. Yeah. And that's how fast it can change. Look at Bryce Miller. Oh,'s how fast it can change. Look at Bryce Miller. Oh, it's got a Bryce Miller. Where do you think he was? 400.

Like, is he even in his top 400? Yeah, this time last year, Bryce Miller, 323. Yeah. And you go a year into the future. Now imagine trying to trade for Bryce Miller. He'd be impossible to trade for in a long-term league. And think about what just happened in Fab. This is what's happening with pitching right now. You've always wanted to be part of something bigger than yourself.

You live for experience and lead by example. You want the most out of life and realize what you're looking for is already in you this is for you the canadian armed forces a message from the government of canada this is actually development is so fast This actually been one of my biggest things I've been talking about. Me and James have talked about this for years is I don't covet higher pitchers in dynasty as far as prospects go because of this movement. Guys that are at one 50 can pop up and be a top 25 pitching prospect with just a few small changes instantly. I think there is exponential value

in later pitching investment than there is anything paying up for premium prices. Another prime example, and this is not a big name, but look at what's going on with the Braves right now. AJ Smith Sover, if I'm saying his last name correctly, might already be the number one pitching prospect in that system.

And most people probably don't even know who the hell he is. It's not Jared Schuster. It's not Dylan Dodd. That system is kind of stunk. But through five starts in AA, A.J. Smith-Sover has a zero ERA. He has 32 strikeouts over 21 innings. And this is coming off of an A-ball season. With zero ERA.

Yeah, exactly. And he's moved from high a to double a this year and he's got equal starts on it and this is a guy that was a nothing burger last year even into the early points of this season so you're on did something very smart in that the and i don't even think i process it like that. I've always just seen it as like, I love the later value in pitching prospects because there's such a big return. But you're right. The jump that happens with pitching prospects and how their value can change almost overnight

is bigger than anything else, I think, in fantasy baseball as far as prospects go. Hitters, it takes time. Churio took time. A pitcher, it's like a quarter of that time the closest thing i think i can say is if you have a stud high a guy and he repeats it at double a his value explodes yeah that's sort of the the marker of hey this is going to be a dude because like look at churio he's got a 94 wr a 94 WRC+. If he right now had 135 WRC+, I would not have laughed at all

at your suggestion that he might be in the major leagues this year. But he's like a six-week stretch of being the guy we saw last year at that level from getting right on the radar because they know their current window is closing before they have to figure out how they're going to get through full seasons with a strong rotation again.

And keeper leagues and dynasty leagues are similar in that regard. You have to have the timing right. I feel like there's one league where Ryan Bloomfield and I traded for Brandon Fott. We're not going to win this year. Fott was one of the best young players to get back in one of our trades. So we got Fott. And I kind of already regret it. Not because of Fott's performance, but because we're not playing for this year. Fott was one of the best young players to get back in one of our trades. We got Fott. I kind of already regret it. Not because of Fott's performance, but

because we're not playing for this year. Brandon Fott should be good next year, but I'd rather have multiple bites at the apple with different players. I'd rather have two players back instead of Fott, as opposed to the consolidation. Oh no, you're talking like an MLB GM.

Well, yeah, but... I would like to have five players back. Five back players. I want my five Lodums. I want my five Lodums instead of my one great. Someone asked us if it should be Lettums instead of Lodums. It should. I've been thinking about it, by the way.

I've been thinking about it. I totally screwed it up when I said it, but I will say it's more aesthetically pleasing to say Lodum than it is Ledom, but we can do it if we want for proper turning of the letters. Lidum is the acronym for the Dominican Winter League, though, too. So I think it's better for it to be Lodum. Also, Lodum sounds like a low model.

It does. It does. That's why it came out naturally. But then I knew I'm like, oh, the E and the O, I messed up. I didn't even notice it at the time. I was thinking about it after the episode. I'm like, yeah, the E and the O I messed up, but I didn't even notice it at the time. And I was thinking about it like after the episode, I'm like, yeah,

I think, I think those vowels may have been flipped. There'd definitely be a person be like, well guys, let me tell you, actually it should be. Oh man. No,

there's, there's, there's one on every crowd. This was just the, it was a, this was a polite, I think it might be that instead. I took a film class in college and one of the kids in my class made made one of the best films I've ever seen someone in a college class make.

I mean, it was clearly better than what the rest of us all did, but it took shooting on two separate days. So there was a shot where he had to cut it together, and it was raining in one shot, and then it wasn't raining in the next shot. And after the thing was over, we're all applauding because this was really good. And we had that one kid in the class who who just had to out loud he could have just kept it to himself he goes there was a continuity error there it was sunny right after it was raining in that same same scene in the coffee shop and we all just looked at him like get out of here leave right now like shut up like you just saw a short film from someone who might actually go work in Hollywood someday and the first thing you said

was nitpicking the thing that he obviously knows was wrong. He just had to go get the shot again. You're in college. You're not going to be able to recreate that. Lodum commentary right there. That guy, the guy that made that comment is just ripping

people apart on the internet right now writing terrible yelp reviews etc he's still out there just tearing people apart we got a few other topics to get to there was another marlins pitcher i wanted to bring up real quick jake eater who's coming back from a foot injury that he suffered on the heels of coming back from tommy john surgery is about a month away. He already pitched at AA before he got hurt. I think he's one of those guys that's sort of forgotten about in some keeper leagues. He's on the radar, of course, in keeper and dynasty.

I'm not saying he's never been rostered. Was it Tommy John? He missed all of it last year with Tommy John. And I think because of Max Meyer and some of the bigger names, Uri Perez, he's always been like the next guy. But I think he's good too. So I just wanted to bring him up. They have a bingo.

It says Prospects TLDR. And it says, Nearly back from TJ, Eater might be the lefty Spencer Strider. Oh, that's a reason to be excited. There's a little tiny... I agree. I actually think he might be one of the best values

because Prospects stuff, it's so out of sight, out of mind. I've actually been telling people one thing you should do is if you pay attention to like rookie level guys, it's a great time to go buy them right now because they're not doing anything. So people forget like Oswe De La Paula or Ethan Salas. No one's like the value doesn't make sense in people's brains where when they start performing, if they perform high again, those guys specifically will go up. Same thing happens here based off of an injury. And no one has really been talking about Eder because he's been out of the game theoretically for so long. But it's big fastball, big slider.

There's a great change up in there, but he's going to predominantly sit on the fastball and slider. And there's some high VLOs or some good spin on the slider. He is a really, really intriguing guy that I don't know coming off of injury if they'll push him i could see them more like get some starts in maybe go pitch in the afl and then he's a guy for next year but i think eater is a great great buy right now if especially since we're kind of focusing on try to stash him in auto new like put a year elvin rodriguez bid out there where you just put a dollar on each and if somebody else wants to pay you know two dollars then then they can take one of them but you get the one that

you get for a dollar and you stash them for next year i do think that's a very sneaky one i like that maneuver throw them both out there at once knowing you really only i mean you're happy to get them both for a dollar it's a definite thing you can do in auto new to two or three bids at the same time. And you, you, you're the dollar guy. So, you know, if you just want one of them for a dollar, you just throw them all out for a dollar and you know, somebody will pick one or two off of them for you. Get any ideas there DVR we're in the same auto new league together.

It's going to be a race to auto new during the show to see who can get those bids in first i'll say and you know what it has paid off one of the best things that might have happened that auto league that we're playing in dvr was uh you know hot tip to myself but in the first week i put bryce miller out for a dollar and i got bryce miller uncontested completely so nice people are a little bit more active on it i know that's what we're wanting here so you know getting those type of guys out getting ahead of the curve when they're not performing at the biggest level is one of the best times to like reap extra value out of these guys and eater's totally one of those

here's a guy that can easily jump into the top 100 just as soon as he starts getting going again he actually could be a top 15 pitching prospect if all things have returned there's just obviously big questions about um you know how he's going to be. I love low command grade on him. Did you see that? I love low command grades. God, give me the low command grades all day long. Load them up.

Load them up. That's right. Load them up on my roster. I'll take all your bad command grades. If it comes with your high stuff grades, then I'll do it. Exactly. Some of that might be part of the the strider thing too though it's like this is big it's a power fastball power slider type of guy um that i don't recall if strider was given really

big high command grades early on in his career so i think that's why you might have some of the same comps that they see that the command can be built but yeah it's not heavy great stuff but also like who is he who is he still that same guy from 2021 right we haven't even seen the stuff return yet yeah exactly there might be a whole new um approach to command that he's uh taken over the last two years we really need to see him getting out there i mean that's that's part of the risk for sure but you take that risk on when he's when it's cheap uh rather than having to pay full price when he's put away all those concerns. Because the distance from the big leagues

is close enough where it's going to cost you a lot more if you don't do it now. That's why Jake Eater is part of the conversation today. We had a few Keeper and Dynasty questions that came in from one of our listeners, Rob. Rob has a scenario where he's a rebuilding Keeper team with a max six-year contract, has a lot of high in-depth at shortstop, so he's trying to shop

O'Neal Cruz for talent that will be on his next great team. How do you think of player value if you're looking to get a handful of lesser players for Cruz? This is kind of what I was just talking about. O'Neal Cruz is going to be on your next great team. If you're loaded a shortstop, though, in a 12-team league, it's possible. I feel pretty comfortable assessing

a trade closer for like for like, but if contracts are similar, like say Corbin Carroll would be, let's say the foundation of the trade coming back my way was Gavin Stone, Bobby Miller, and Brett Beatty. Is that enough? I don't think so.

Even ignoring how I don't trade for prospect pitching, how might I try to size up a fair return? This is true. If you have a young position player, it's the Fott thing from earlier, I could trade Brandon Fott right now and feel pretty good about it. It'd be really hard for me to trade O'Neal Cruz right now

and feel like I'm getting enough value back because you hit the certain point where a player breaks into the big leagues, shows off star tools, even with flaws, most people are going to say, well, that's what you were waiting for. You kind of got what you were waiting for, so what are you going to do, trade for two or three guys and hope that each of them does the same thing

that you just got from the guy you were waiting on? The only thing is it's a positional play, so the only thing I would say is if you want to do that, I do like some of the things Beatty does. He hits the ball hard he barrels the ball and makes good contact has good patience um i think he's going to grow you know into this and he's going to be better as he goes along and he's already around league average so i think that you know he's a he's a good pickup but i think you would need three bread baby types

in this deal yeah i was gonna say i'm the worst about this because 95 of what any of you guys show me for three for ones i will hate it because it's i always hate it because it's lesser of players if i'm trading an elite this is an elite dynasty option screw the injury this is an elite dynasty option at best has been sitting top 30 maybe if you want to put injury in there let's call them a top 50 dynasty prospect and that's not even being super generous about that so what does that get back it should get at minimum two high end pieces back i don't even know if baity is one of those high pieces but like i mean it's fair yuri perez what about yuri perez and baity for a second what do you think about that?

I still feel like it's not quite enough. I agree. And Uri Perez is the lead of a league. Yeah, I agree with that. So I think you've got to focus on getting a top 10 to 15 prospect. What if it's a total positional play? You've got CES, Beatty, and what's another third baseman? Oh, all the... Like all position players? what's another third baseman? All position

players? Or a young second baseman? Like a prospect or like a young guy? Or like a young player in the major leagues because he's giving up a player. There's already a prospect on there. I already don't like it. I don't even know what the other is. I already don't like it. CES, it's still

not enough even though he's been really interesting. I think if you're moving a player like O'Neal Cruz, a young player that could be a superstar. Jung, CES, and Beatty for Cruz. You get three bites of the apple at third base. That's interesting. You know what? I was sitting on Ellie De La Cruz.

I was thinking, yeah, just go for one. O'Neal for Ellie. How about Ellie and Fott? How about Ellie and Fott for o'neill cruz i'd probably do that yeah i think that's but i think that's like what you need to be looking at but you're basically just buying cruz before cruz i maybe but i think ellie de la cruz is better than o'neill cruz though i kind of hope i'm not i hope i hope i'm not doing the shiny new toy thing, but I'm trying to think about how I felt about Cruz before he debuted. I think you are.

I think O'Neal Cruz cut his strikeout rate this early season. But that's why I don't want to do a one-for-one. I'm not going to let someone sell me on O'Neal Cruz. O'Neal Cruz's strikeout rates were lower than O'Neal Cruz's, and O'Neal Cruz hits the ball as hard as O'Neal Cruz. He hits the ball as hard as elia cruz he's a ball as hard as anybody but that's why if you're going to do that move you should be focusing on an ellie and then you should get more it might have to be more than five that's why the one for

one doesn't work for me and this is what makes trades so difficult about it because people want to trade anytime you see that's the thing i would point out you see that type of trade where it's like well i could get the guy will let me have bobby Gavin Stone and Brett Beatty it's like of course he will of course he will because none of the things are worth much yeah it is quality the only thing that hurts him at all that but that's why I struggle in some of those bigger leagues because I know in the 20 plus team leagues that it is a little bit more quantity over quality at times but my focus is always quality I want the best and I want it. You should both feel uncomfortable in a trade and O'Neill Cruz is such a good dynasty asset. It's a really good point

about feeling uncomfortable in a trade. That's how you know it's fair value. If you have that feeling of, oh, that actually kind of hurts, but then you can see what comes back. Yeah, but I'm excited about this. If that's mutual on both sides, that actually feels more like a win-win or at least a fair trade from the perspective of everyone having an equal shot and having it work out. Back when I used to work in radio, people would like, I'd get asked this question. They'd be like, you know, Hey, can I say this on air? And I would be like, well, if you're asking me, if you could say this, you probably can't. And that's usually a safe assumption. So the same thing would apply here where if like, you already don't feel comfortable at a trade and you're like could

i do this you probably already know that you can't and you know it's not enough like you with a with an asset like cruise it should be a holy crap can i not do this trade that's probably the better place especially for someone like him yeah Yeah, and I think in a multiplayer return, I want at least three players back, at least two of them to be hitters, and one of them has to be elite elite. I'm not doubting whether or not this player is going to be a good impact player.

It's like, oh, I got the... Because you might not doubt it, and it might still not work out. So you have to add that little bit to the calculus. Yeah, the biggest, the most hidden thing, the smartest thing that was said in this, I think you both said it, was like, you are hoping to get players that can be the guy that you're trading away.

And it's like, is it really worth two or three shots to pray that one of these guys can even be 80% of the player you're trading away? You already got that guy. O'Neal Cruz is a player to build around. Yeah, and I think the other thing you got to keep in mind too, if you have three shortstops right now

and one of them's hurt, so it doesn't matter, they all fit on your roster, someone could move positions out of that group, depending on who else is in that group. And we've had that conversation with Cruz already,

where he might be the guy that actually moves. Mookie Betts is playing shortstop and he's an outfielder. I think if you're really rebuilding, wouldn't the best move be to put even a hurt shortstop, hurt Cruz in the lineup and trade one of your healthy one totally also that also that yeah yeah i think there's a few ways to do it uh the other question that came in with this

how many years of say mookie bets are equivalent to five years of o'neill cruise right there's some leagues that have contracts and different things like that you know i can keep this guy for five years, but I can flip him for a superstar right now that I can only have for two or three. So how do you guys rectify the difference in duration that you can keep a player when there's a pretty significant difference

with what they offer right now? I would say two years. So you're saying you're giving me two years of Mookie for five years of O'Neal Cruz. I'll take the two years of Mookie. Okay, you think two years of Mookie for five years of O'Neal Cruz. I'll take the two years of Mookie. Okay. You think two years of Mookie is enough. So a rental, I would agree with you, is not enough.

One year is not enough. Well, I think the way I try to calculate it, it's kind of like rough back of the napkin math, right? O'Neal Cruz being hurt right now, you almost assume not much this year. Five, ten bucks of value later on this season. Right. Next year, easily kind of a of value later on the season. Right. Next year, easily kind of a 15 to $20 player. And you're expecting that.

And Mookie will drop, I think, a little bit because he'll be 31 and he's not stealing anymore. So like, I think Mookie will be like a $20 play next year. Right. And you should be conservative with the young players and like how fast you project them to go up. So let's just say with Cruz for five years. 15 for next year.

And then he's 20 in his third year. Right. 15 to 20, another 20. That's the year he passes Mookie, because Mookie might be 15 in year three. So you're talking about $55 worth of value the next three years, and then Mookie maybe gives you 55

between this year and next year before he's gone. You get a little more from Cruz later. That's pretty close to fair. Well, I'd say actually he'd be under 55, but there's the present value of money, right? It's 50 in the hand versus 55 over five years. You know what I mean? A lot can happen.

Players get hurt, stuff changes. You can also replace Mookie. There's some sort of replacement value for Mookie in the next three years. You're going to have somebody else in that roster slot for three years. Yeah, you can take a chance on somebody, either drafting someone

or making another trade or a prospect that you promoted. That's kind of how I do it anyway. Just looking and projecting out those next few years, conservative dollar numbers, adding it all up and seeing if it comes within range to make sure I'm getting enough back. That one's also unique because

it's the team context as well like i think you could trade if you're in a rebuild you could trade three years of mookie for five years of onyell even if the value gets one for one or a little bit sides because if you're not taking advantage and winning in the first two years because you're in a rebuild then you can almost kind of negate some of those dollars so i think you can expand on that a little bit. Right, you want those years three, four, and five. Exactly, those are more meaningful years

when O'Neal Cruz would mean a lot more. That's why this analysis is so hard, is it changed so much if you're a buyer. Totally. Yeah, and I think it's so interesting to think about just for overall ranks on players right now. O'Neal Cruz, if he's healthy right now, is he a top 50, top 75 player today,

like roughly somewhere in that range? Well, two or three years from now, we're hoping he's going to be a top 20 or top 30 player. Even that jump is pretty significant in terms of what it's worth. And it doesn't necessarily matter this year and next year that he's not a top 30 player yet. Yeah, is he like more Javi Baez

or is he somebody that puts it all together and is you know who's who's who's like him 30 30 type who's like i mean no one's like i mean from a hitting perspective i was thinking of like old school stanton you know stanton hits the ball so hard and you wanted the average to kind of tick up but but O'Neal still has 30 bases. Judges peak season at shortstop. That's possible for Cruz. And then add 30 stolen bases. Well, I mean, that's the peak season. He had 16 or whatever.

Yeah, I guess so. It's like a little bit more. God, he's tough. He's really tough. Because it can go either way. We've seen really bad swing and miss with O'Neal Cruz, and we've seen that be a massive problem. I think the floor for Cruz, I'm looking at a floor of Javi Baez. I think it's a better offensive floor, I think. Better offensive floor than Javi Baez?

The offensive floor feels like at least 2010, but I guess Javi Baez could really tank on that. Are you talking as far as good Baez? I'm saying Baez's really tank on that. Are you talking about Suarez-Good Baez? I'm saying Baez's floor when he was a prospect. Remember when Baez came into the league, he was a huge batting average liability, struck out a ton in that first partial season. The floor seemed crazy low early on with Baez.

I think even what we saw in the debut from Cruz, well, the extended debut last year from Cruz, was slightly better that's what I'm saying I think it's less likely that the bottom falls out on Cruz than it was on Baez I'm saying like you know I think a good floor for Cruz for the next

four years is what Baez did from 16 to 19 which is average basically like a 275 average with like 28 homers and like 12 to 15 steals. Let's try to come up with another player going back a little further. Alfonso Soriano as a hitter when he broke into the league.

Is that what Odell Cruz is like? Remember how much pop? I wish we could have had the exit velocities on Alfonso Soriano. Even the, Cruz walks more than Soriano. Would we have in? This is kind of a fun exercise. Soriano struck out less.

So, yeah, so Soriano had less swing and miss, but he was less patient, especially at the beginning of his career. He started to walk a little bit more, I don't know, kind of mid-career, I guess you could say. But I agree with you in the sort of counting stats. Like Soriano was hitting, was like averaging 35 homers and 40 steals for a little bit. And in that era,

we had guys getting to 40 home runs a little more often for, you know, reasons. But it's that power. Which we might do it again with the Happy Fun Ball. That's pretty, yeah, bring back the early 2000s. That's, uh, what a wild ride. Start injecting the balls. Maybe that's the way we do it. We'll just start

putting some in there. Let's just shoot them up. The last thing I just want to throw at you guys, would you look at Alfonso Soriano in the beginning of his career and you think about how we analyze hitters now,

what would the conversation have been like around Soriano? we have had the same sorts of conversations with like 2001 alfonso soriano would have been similar to what we used to say about alberto mondesi before all the injuries like how would the fantasy community of today how would we have reacted to the beginning of alfonso soriano's career i'm guessing we would have been way off on how good things turned out for him because the walk rate was low. The WRC plus was below 100.

Think about Bobby Witt, right? We're all stressing about this 300 OBP. Alfonso Soriano had 700 plate appearances, basically, of a below 300 OBP. And yes, OBP wasn't his strongest suit, but then he did have some awesome, awesome years in the middle. And those were between ages 23 and 25 for Soriano. Bobby Witt Jr. is 22.

He'll turn 23 in June. So, I don't know. Maybe that's the sort of player we would have thought Alfonso Soriano was. It's kind of funny to think about. sort of player we would have thought alfonso soriano was interesting it's kind of funny i wonder if whit could be alfonso soriano could be only if he gets traded only if he gets traded for like trout the best player and one of the biggest players in baseball that's the only way well well yeah he got traded for a rod right yeah yeah that's yeah that's pretty nuts when you go back and think about that trade all right we get

it stop we can't go down the rabbit hole anymore. We're already over an hour. We got to like four things on the rundown. This is absolute chaos as it is every Tuesday. That's why I keep making the rundown shorter, and I still can't find the correct rundown. It tests my anxiety too because I want to contribute to whatever I can, but I'm like DVR.

I've learned over the last couple of weeks, DVR keeps making these really good sheets, and I'm like, we're going to follow it, but we do not complete it. So I'm not even worried about it anymore. It's like, just prepare for the first three items. Yeah, exactly. I should just post the sheet. Those old pickleball dads have their podcast outlines that started going viral a couple of months ago. The old dads that would meet at the bar, the one dad would print off a list of topics. And we all looked at it and were like,

that's a podcast rundown. It was just five list items. It was like Bud versus Bud Light. The most work I did for the podcast today was researching a player we didn't even talk about. We didn't even talk about him whatsoever. Who? It was the Sean Hundley.

When we were doing the Sean Hundley question, we didn't even get to that. Oh, by the way, because we had another question about Hundley, I think. Yeah, tell us a little bit about his arsenal real quick. Oh, yeah, yeah, real quick. So I was looking at some old scouting reports, watching some video,

and what I found interesting was back in college, looked like one of his big things was he was heavy, heavy fastball. Like it was like 90 percentile, 80, 90 percent. He was a big fastball guy. Obviously, the Rays have got their mitts on him now. But my problem with him, it's like a low 90s fastball. He's got a average-ish slider, but he's got good command. And I think he just, he can pinpoint.

He's eaten up in those lower levels. He's got some really sick numbers, obviously. You can all pay attention to. But like, I'm not big on to him because I don't think... I saw him throw the backdoor slider and a front slide, and it's okay. It doesn't look like he has a lot of break. Fastball doesn't

look magnificent. It does have some nice horizontal movement on it, but at the same time, I just think he's a heavy fastball guy that's getting away with a lot of stuff at the lower levels. But that's me. I don't know enough about him.

That was just rewatching and checking out some scouting reports. Pretty much the opposite of Alvin Rodriguez, who's on the same level or nearly the same level. Probably they're going to choose, if they're in a pinch, they're going to choose one of these guys to put on the 40-man. And Alvin Rodriguez is the guy who has a big fastball a big slider and i think given you know their excitement about bradley and other guys i think they'll reach for elvin rodriguez first yeah yeah i think the other name that i discovered digging into the rays a bit more after yesterday's show is jacob lopez it doesn't really pop up on any prospect lists or anything but he's a lefty out of the 40 man man. Pretty big strikeout numbers. So really want to see what that arsenal does. And I think we all know

whoever the Rays pick out of that group will exceed expectations. We don't know. What we don't know is just where the baseline will be. The one guy that's supposed to be okay, that's good or good, you know, like whatever. And the problem is they don't have enough guys outside of AAA or in AAA.

The one guy just keep holding onto if they were to make a bump is watch Mason Montgomery with the raise. I think he is one of the best of the guys from AA to AAA. That's out there. Not saying he will get it, but he said it'd been a little bit of a bump this year, but he had a big move in the last year and a half. So I think Mason Montgomery would be the best of the actual prospects,

but God knows what they'll do. God knows what they'll do and who will get hurt next. It's probably a trade. It's probably going to be someone they don't need from the big league roster for two crappy pitchers on someone else's team will become good. It'll be a short stop. They'll convert into a pitcher. Manny Margot for a reliever.

They turn into a starter. That's the gift that keeps on giving in Tampa Bay. But that's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. If you've got a question for a future episode, send that our way. Ratesandbarrels at gmail.com is the best email address to use. You can also drop us a comment underneath this video on YouTube. Be sure to hit the Like button. Subscribe to this channel if you haven't already done so.

On Twitter, you can find Eno at EnoSaras. You can find Welsh at IsItTheWelsh. You can find me at DerekVanRiper. We're back with you tomorrow. Thanks for listening.