Rates & Barrels - Project Prospect Season Finale

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

Eno and Welsh talk about what made this new Cole Ragans, who's next, Jasson Dominguez, Mason Miller and more on the season finale of Project Prospect. Rundown Success of under 6-foot pitchers - 4:42 Ohtani to hit and pitch in the future - 10:52 Julio Urias suspension - 17:30 How "THIS" Cole Ragans came to be - 22:16 Minor League development lacking - 29:08 Who is the next Cole Ragans? - 39:07 Mason Miller - 47:04 Dynasty: Ragans or M. Miller - 49:37 Royce Lewis and Jordan Walker - 51:05 Jasson Domginez - 54:08 Top Prospect Update - 58:10 Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Welsh on Twitter: @isitthewelsh Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Subscribe to The Athletic for just $1/mo for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello friends and welcome in to Rates and Barrels. It is Project Prospect. I am Chris Welsh. There is no DVR. I am joined by Eno. And today is the Prospect, Project Prospect, of course I would screw it up, I've always screwed it up the entire year, the Project Prospect season finale. This is it. This is the last Project Prospect focused episode we're doing of this season, or at least for-

We may have, yeah, we may have some, uh, project prospect, uh, bits and pieces, you know, because we're going to slim down,

uh, the number of rates and barrels we'll hear in a given week, uh, starting next week. And, uh, so therefore, you know,

I think Mondays will be project prospect slash news. We can't not talk about the news of the weekend. And then Fridays will be some waiver wire action. But as the season ends and we're just looking at the worst waiver wires of all time, then there's some news, the week's news to be done. So we'll be more of a Monday to to friday from here on out uh after tomorrow's episode in today's episode uh and uh so there'll be project prospect uh what are they called uh what is it called when you do like a segment oh yeah segments we'll do segments but this will be the last one that's mostly most of the show now the the good thing for me hopefully

good thing for you guys, is that doesn't mean I'm gone because we are without DVR for a little bit as he is being a dad, taking care of that at the back end of the year. So I will be filling in in replacement for the next month. So even though this is the last project, quote, prospect dedicated episode, I will be back again tomorrow with Eno, and then I will be doing the Mondays through October where we will throw in some

anecdotal note things that are going on which ironically are going to lead into the Arizona Fall League into October. So that's a little bit of housekeeping for you guys. And I'm coming. Are you officially? Because I think there was a question if it was going to happen. No, we answered that question.

Oh, beautiful beautiful so then we get to we get to rate and barrel it up in person and we get to my one of my favorite things we should do one we we can do one we can absolutely do one uh one of my favorite things on the planet and i've said this for a long way before you know in dvr were nice enough to have me on or anything like that but the time i get to spend with with Eno, because you're always a busy guy. Our relationship has definitely grown by doing a show every single week or whatnot. But I didn't want to bug you a whole bunch.

And sometimes we might go a full year without talking. But when Eno comes out to first pitch, Eno is a superstar, just to point out to you guys. Everybody wants his attention. He's the bell of the ball. He is as nice as you could imagine, like listening to him. They just want me for the, the, the, the, the, the bag of beer that I always tell. And he maybe brings in a big old Tony pack.

Eno is better in person than he is even on the podcast. So that would be one reason to come out. So I always get excited about the weird, unique situations. You and I have always caught ourselves. And for whatever reason, like I said, we wouldn't talk for a year. And then all of a sudden, you're driving in my car and we're doing a podcast on the freeway for 40 minutes. One of the first times we were hanging out, I'm pretty sure you were listening in on an interview that I did with Clint Jackson Frazier, I believe. And I was talking to him about uh strikeouts and uh he

said from he said famously i just let it eat i just let it you know one of my actually you know my two favorite uh memories i i kind of vaguely remember that one one of them was talking to you after you had just talked to brett phillips and brett phillips told you he was just like yeah I just want to be like a number seven on a team and you're like what I think he said nine hitter and I was like dude you're like you're in the national league they still had they didn't have the ages at the time that was one of my favorites and then uh also sitting in on talking when you did an interview with Michael Chavis and I was kind of sitting in there. And that's always been the thing. I kind of float around.

You and I would talk. We've, you know, it's a bunch of cool stuff. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Catch up on the field, do interviews, talk about players, talk through them. That's a fun thing. And now we're doing the podcast together. So I have had a great time doing Project Prospect with you as somebody who I get to kind of do an in-person project prospect with when you are out here in Arizona for a first pitch. We had another spirited,

we had a spirited debate about JB Bukowskis, I think. Yeah, that was the other one. I was going to tell you actually one of my favorite things. This is like a digging prospect one. It was you, myself and James Anderson.

We went away. This was at the Scottsdale stadium. And if you've ever been there, they've got this big like porch out in right field. And that's where the first pitch party was and people getting their drinks and stuff. And you, James and myself, we kind of made our way over to sitting behind home plate and we were watching JB Bukowskis. And what I was asking you, and the question still holds was, I was like, what type of data have we seen on sub six foot pitchers being successful in the major league

because that was the thing about bukowskis was a huge prospect at the time with the astros but it was like yes you have a great slider guess you got a good fastball at that time but what was the success rate of these rather shorter pitchers and you were kind of espousing about that has anything changed are we still in kind of a you're under six foot? You're going to have a really tough time being a starting pitcher, right? Well, I don't know. I found when I looked at major leaguers, I found no relationship between height and outcomes. But that's not quite the question you asked. You know what I'm saying?

Like there are short pitchers that make it to the big leagues and are successful. You know, like Marcus Stroman is a shorter pitcher and he's successful. Yes, one. are successful you know like Marcus Stroman is a shorter pitcher and he's successful yes one but and so that screws up that screws up any sort of correlations you're trying to do right you're like oh you know is there a correlation between height and success height and I did height and success height and like a career war height and fastball velo height and strikeouts height and strikeout rate I found no correlations, right, between those things. But that has a real big portion of survivor bias to it.

It's like, you know, those are the ones who succeeded. How about all the people who didn't succeed? And there is a piece of evidence that there is a sort of, not minimum height, but that height helps you perhaps become a big leaguer in that major league pitchers are like average six two i think well that was kind of my point i was about to say it's like they they average over six feet and that's not the general population average is under six feet so like there is something there where like you know the major

league pitchers are taller i mean but and that's kind of my point is like you can point to marcus stroman but how many other pitchers can you point to that are under six feet tall that are starting pitchers it's a dumb thing by the way because it falls in line along the lines you would think of like the same thing where you look at a guy like jose altuve and you're like well that guy's five foot four or whatever you know like he can't he can't play but they can but in baseball there is some weird correlation that kind of floats around of how many are those? I remember we talked about that with Davey Garcia, who used to be a Yankees prospect who's now with the white socks. And it's like whatever that weird thing is about the holdup,

maybe it's zone, whatever it is. You, you just, I can't think of sub six foot starting pitchers, not relief pitchers, starting pitchers in Major League Baseball. As you said, I think the average male is 5'8". If the average height of a starting pitcher is 6'1 or 6'2", there's a discrepancy there. So I don't know what that is. It's a debate we can continue. Maybe we can have it again at first pitch.

Maybe that could be a panel. I would love to have a panel on that. I want to find out about it. But was what you james and i were talking about and and guess what jb mccaskill is a journeyman reliever at this point he's not a starting pitcher so it it did kind of self-answer itself you look like you're in d you're you're trying to find some some heightism things for me are you finding some heightism for pitchers i just i just doing a a quick baseball reference search for uh people under 511 okay while you're doing that i'll set up here so in this final one we actually do have um it's kind of be similar to what we're going to

be doing in the other episodes we're going to be talking from the news how old how high how tall is fromber how high is fromber that is a good question uh sunny gray okay 510 okay sunny gray is should one that's a good one the obvious one tim linscombe is was a short guy pedro martinez was a short guy yeah but uh if you want pitchers under six feet i don't know there's some criteria here that in terms of qualified pitchers maybe it's qualified pitchers or something but uh it's only showing fromber and sunny gray for like the last three years so i mean i just want to point out like there's a correlation that's two guys yeah that's not good that's not good and kind of different guys i i would say as well. I wouldn't say like if you could find sub six foot with like big fastballs or something like that,

but I wouldn't put that on Frambois, maybe more on Sonny Gray. But there is still some correlation there. But it also would be probably about finding who those pitchers are in the minor leagues to even have that conversation about. At that time, it was Bukowskis. Davey Garcia came up,

but we don't have a whole bunch of those. But those are the weird things that end up happening when you get a whole bunch of baseball people together. We ask, I tend to ask weird questions and then we get, you know, weird, crazy analysis. And then it ends later at the night with drinking some beers at Eno Brat. That's what's so great about first pitch

and hanging out with you. So on the episode, we actually have a couple bigger Major League pieces of news, some not-so-prospect prospect news, one of which is a fantastic article that Eno has got on The Athletic right now about Cole Reagans, which I want to talk about, some prospects in the majors, some top prospects that are going big, and that's kind of if we get to it. Also very interested in how the MLB draft prospects have been producing because there's been high level production that these guys have moved up.

So we've got a smorgasbord of prospect things to talk about here. And maybe we'll have some more heightism and how high how high is pitcher? Hard hitting analysis like that. The two big baseball pieces, I just wanted to point out, one of which I thought was really interesting. Shohei Otani's agent came out and said that they 100% plan for Otani

to still be a two-way player. And I believe he's also going for some testing today as we're recording this. So that, you know, I wonder if that testing has anything to do with them also waiving six of their major leaguers and what is he out here playing for. The other little piece, they did note that at some point, Otani is going to have some type of procedure. That's what they said.

So at some point, there's some type of procedure. This is really great news. I'm just curious if there has been any more chatter into your world about this idea, especially if Otani is committed to being two-way, whether it is from teams or players or scout or whatever it is. I'm just curious, really, your thoughts on him continuing to be a two-way player as we're getting word. One of the revelations from the agent was that this tear is in a completely different place.

It's not in the place that was repaired last time, and it is closer to the elbow. I don't know why that's good, but he seemed to think that was good. And I guess it's good that it wasn't the graft itself, so that's holding. But now I'm reading between the lines now I'm speculating where what I'm speculating on is the fact that he continues to play and talks about

being ready for the bell in 2024 that's something his agent said so that's something those are facts that he continues to play and that his agent thinks he can be ready for the beginning of next season the only procedure that i can think of that may line up with these two things is an internal brace and that uh is something that sometimes has like a six month uh time time timetable in case in which case he would not be necessarily pitching to begin 2024 but uh he could

rehab fairly quickly from that and be hitting uh to begin 2024 did you believe when he said that they were implying that he would be ready to pitch next year or you just no no i'm just i'm trying to connect the dots because you know agents are gonna it's kind of double-speaky. He's going to be ready for the bell in 2024. As a pitcher or as a hitter? He's going to be a two-way player. Yeah, but to begin 2024 or later? He kind of skirted along.

So my understanding of this is he will pitch – he may not pitch at all next season. It may be a full Tommy John. But the way he was talking about those tears and stuff, I'm speculating that there might be a room for an internal brace, which has a shorter recovery period and may allow him to hit while he's recovering. we could talk about maybe a half season or two thirds of a season pitching next year, because if he got it October 1, November, December, January, February, he starts hitting four months in, I think four months into a six month process, you're hitting, if he's they're saying he can hit now without affecting it, I think he can hit four months in. So then you start hitting March, April, and then you start your sort of pitching rehab process,

which is he going to do that on the side or is it going to go back down? It's going to depend on his new organization, but maybe two months into the season he's pitching again if it's an internal brace. And how are they going to use him? Is the new team going to say, we want you more bulkish, we want you more of this, we want you more bulkish? We want you more this. We want you more that.

The new team is going to have some say in all this. And maybe that's part of the process, too, is wanting to get to the postseason and start talking to teams about what they want them to do. Yeah, I'm smirking. If you're going to give me $500 million, then, yeah, you guys can tell us what surgery you want us to take. I'm also smirking at the implication that you just affirmatively have said, like, new team, new team. Because one of the things that I... Well, with the injury, I kind of was loudly saying, like, hey, listen, this was the one scenario where I thought Otani could return to the Angels because of this injury and what might happen with the market. And people kind of playing like, oh, the pitching thing's not going to change he'll get his money and it's like well you

know what teams might still be apprehensive of a half a billion dollars on a player what if he does a one-year pillow contract that was a question to the agent uh which he did not like yeah well that's what i thought could happen or like you know he gets a answer but he gets a big contract from the angels and then there's an out after two years or whatever so he has time to blah blah but then with the team team out like then maybe there's like team like maybe there's certain vesting situations yeah that was something i thought but then when they like waived all the player the team's embarrassing and then they publicly said like we told otani he should get checked and they said no like those are all bad things that ended up happening.

There also is a side implication that he could also not do anything like with this recovery. He could do slow recovery. He cannot have any surgery even into this offseason. Sign his contract when he's with a new team. We're committed to hit. And then let's see where this goes into the next offseason. And then he has one of the, the you know so there's also the potential that they could kick this can down the road if um if they so choose and they you know have him kind of be a hitter with a pitcher into the future but something to watch and yeah on the 3-0 show

brit uh had talked to uh people who know these sort of things and they said that the uh location the arm that this is on and the fact that he hits left-handed uh does fall into the equation that he uh he is probably not uh risking his further tear in the elbow you know because of the way the back elbow moves he's a back elbow there's a front elbow he's hitting left-handed it says front elbow the way the front elbow moves in a swing uh does not put him at further risk you know so he's he's not risking anything further by by hitting but if they do do these testing and he does do what you are saying if he were to have that surgery now in the beginning of september you could actually probably

start hitting into january sometime in january right right you could start hitting it seems like yeah there's some angels home run records that his agent was asked about there's uh you know some proof of concept like i'm one of the best hitters you know i i wouldn't be surprised if he comes out of this testing today and he's done for the season yeah i wouldn't i mean it could happen any moment and then you could be good to go for the season um other piece of news, it's nasty news. And it's also maybe about a pitcher that won't pitch in 2014 or maybe ever again. Julio Urias was arrested on a felony domestic violence charge. And this is his second charge of this.

And it doesn't look good. It does not look good. I also don't, I haven't seen a whole lot of details on it. You know, you and I were kind of looking, the previous one was not a great situation. He was suspended for 20 games. This one is going to hold much bigger weight though.

We just don't really have details on it. And this is probably minimally, if you want to really get like down to it, this could minimally half a year, maybe normalize a full year, and a bigger thing which is being talked loudly about is maybe ever again. So I don't know if you have any thoughts,

but we're not going to see Julio Urias for significance of 2024, most likely, after this latest charge. Yeah, this is really disconcerting. Also, you know, some of the particulars are not great at all because when he got in trouble in 2019, he suspended 20 games for something that was according to witnesses. The pitcher shoved his girlfriend to the ground

in a shopping mall parking lot and his his statement at the time and this is a quote that he released through the MLBPA even in this instance where there was no injury or history of violence I understand and agree that MLB players should be held to a higher standard now Now we have a history of violence, and the longest suspensions under this policy so far, Trevor Bauer for 194, Sam Dyson for 162, Jose Torres for 100, Carlos Martinez, 85, Odibel Herrera, 85, Hector Oliveira, 82,

Domingo German, 81, and Jimmy Cordero, 76. So I think he's going to slot in there somewhere. Well, this is also the second instance. I think Herman, wasn't Herman's like the first instance of like a felony domestic violence charge, and it was 80 games? You have a history of it now. I can't imagine this is less than a year, but also I'm done with the Dodgers. I mean, the Dodgers or any team would be, outside of the Yankees, I hate to say it,

like what teams have stuck by these players in these instances? I can't imagine. They didn't do it with Bauer. It'd be a bad precedent to do it with Urias. It's through free agency, and that's been part of it too. Even for the Yankees, it's been like, well, he's still for the yankees it's been like well you know he's still under contract he says he's going to get better obviously there were some other issues there with the drinking so um you know maybe there was some stuff that we haven't seen where they're

trying to help him get sober or this or that you know like trying trying to actually help the player um that's still with the organization in this, you've got this free agency situation for Urias that's just going to leave him out there, in which case he's a little bit more like Trevor Bauer, who all the teams declined to sign as a free agent. And so I think you may have that same thing for Urias. I don't necessarily want to speculate or comment on who is more likely to be able to come back from that.

But I would assume that the precedent is here that Urias is going to be over 85 games. I would also assume. At the very least. I don't know if he gets all the way to Sam Dyson's 162. At the very least. Yeah, I would. I don't know if he gets all the way to Sam Dyson's 162.

There was like for Sam Dyson, I guess there was sort of some documentation that had been going on for a while. In this case, though, you still kind of have that documentation, right? You have like, you know, two incidents over a certain period of time i don't know if you can assume that it's been going on the whole time throughout but um any case i would think it's somewhere between 100 and 162 i know that's a pretty wide gap but that that does take them out of this year it takes them out of i would say most of next year and it leaves them as a free agent in the middle of a suspension so um it's not good news no and as more things come to light it'll probably speak to the severity of um you know if there's not other document it it will speak to the bigger source of where this is going to go and it doesn't look good no matter what let's turn it over we're turning it over to the Project Prospect side of this in our finale.

And this guy came into the season as a prospect. This is not necessarily so much a prospect-eligible player now, but I want to talk about it because this is the not-so-prospect prospect. You put this article together, and this is going to be one of the most talked-about players in this offseason. I'm fine with however much we want to cover on this. I got other stuff, but we can kind of plow through it.

You know, Cole Regan's has been the talk of fantasy baseball league winner. I picked him up. This is amazing. I picked him up freely in a dynasty league earlier this year, 16 teams just floating out there. I did pick them up in devil's rejects and I'm going to be walking into next year with him.

Cole Reagan's most recent start six innings, one hit seven K's even more amazing 22 swinging whiffs. And I went and calculate two hard hit balls, both under a hundred. So no ball hit over a hundred in this most recent start. And you have pinned or typed, however you want to say it, an article over on The Athletic, which you guys can check out. You should right now about Cole Reagans and how he became the flamethrower that he is. So there's a couple of things in this. There's the, where this is going to lead to,

but I'd love to hear your conversation with Reagans and what led to this. And let's get a breakdown from this article on Cole Regan's, this new, the new Cole Regan's that we're seeing. Well, it's a really fun article because I got led into the process on both sides. And it's a unique opportunity because in,

if it was his pitching coach for the Rangers or for the, the Royals that had done most of the heavy lifting, I don't know. They would have told me everything they did. But the real thing that Cole Reagans did was he went to Tread, which is Tread Athletics is one of these shops like a driveline where they do player development for pitchers outside of the regular sort of team structure. And he went to Tread and he started working with Tyler Zombrow.

And Tyler Zombrow is a really interesting character who is still trying to pitch in the big leagues, but is also coaching, and knows what it's like to overcome injury and persevere, because he was hit in the face by a 98 98 mile an hour hit and had there's a great story by Bridger Oli about his own story coming back and so Cole Reagans's story starts with the fact that he had Tommy John and then he tore it on the last rehab start you know coming back from the Tommy John he had to have a second Tommy John so he never made it back. And, you know, I don't want to give away the whole

piece, but one of the real interesting things for me was that Tyler said that the fact that he rehabbed for so long, and it was like two straight years of rehabbing, actually led to some problems. And if you think about it, that's not surprising because what do they do in rehab from Tommy John? One of the things is they tell you, uh, stop throwing your heartbreaking ball. Well, that's something that you do to, to strike batters out. So how long are you going to like,

what if you took two years off of throwing a slider? You know, you might not come back with a slider. That's what happened with Cole Riggins. Uh, another thing that they do in rehab is like, don't go all out. We don't want you to throw like competitive.

We're not at a competitive stage yet. We want you to kind of, you know, throw free and easy or whatever that is well there's a difference in your mechanics when you throw 98 than when you throw 88 or whatever right and so if you start if you rehab for two years you're kind of building your body to throw 88 throw change ups and you know not stress the body or whatever you know what i? And so he rehabbed for so long that it affected his top-end velo. It affected his heartbreaking ball. And the process coming back had to do with these little exercises kind of called plyometrics,

which are just ways to activate small muscles in your body. So he did a bunch of that. ways to activate small muscles uh in your body uh so he did a bunch of that uh and we talked about uh the specifics of that with with tyler and with cole um and then he went on a weighted ball program for the first time in his life and uh he's a devotee to that now devotee to that now he throws uh weighted balls every day uh and then the last bit uh that was uh was really interesting was that uh he noticed that when he even when so he comes to camp with texas and he's already throwing uh 98 99 in spring and everyone's like whoa that's new um but he's not throwing the slider and uh he gets traded to uh to the royals possibly because he's already had two Tommy Johns.

So there's some aspect of like, well, he's throwing 99 now, and he's already had two Tommy Johns. I don't want to be there when it breaks again. So that might have been the rationale behind the Texas trading for a role as Chapman. But his first start in Omaha, I think he had one or two starts in Omaha and he just lefties were were going nuts on him and he was like I'm a lefty you know why are lefties going nuts on me and he realized I'm throwing a cutter to lefties and all they're doing is it's not enough separation off the fastball all they're doing is sort of shooting it the other way you know like micro adjusting he said they're micro adjusting their barrel and just, you know, making contact with it. And so he went back to Tyler and he they like they looked at stuff plus they looked at a stuff plus map and we're like, you know, where's the best slider for me? And he was like, oh, it's here.

88 mile an hour gyro slider that pulls the whole package together. And that's now 88 mile an hour gyro slider, 83 mile an hour curve ball, you know, mid eighties change up that, that got good while he was rehabbing. And now a fastball that in his last start, he was sitting 97 plus.

And, and this is sitting, you know, this is crazy because he was sitting 92-1 last year and that's just a huge increase. One of the things, a couple things, on that slider, by the way, he's now throwing it almost 10% of the time. If we round up, he has got a five-pitch mix

that is being used 10% of the time. That's a wild mix. Also, it is the highest width percentage of any of the time. That's a wild mix. Also, it is the highest width percentage of any of his pitches. 46.7% width percentage right now. Every single one of his pitches, by the way, have a 20 or higher width percentage. And the lowest batting average against

or expected batting average against is that slider right now. So that's been a game changer. I asked you this off air and I'm going to just bring it here again. What I can't understand, because we're going to ask the big question that has been alluded to online. We're going to do that here in a second, but what I can't understand and I was trying to figure out,

and when someone smarter can tell me, but when you told me that Cole Reagans had never done a weighted ball program before, I just was like, why? I don't understand why minor league systems have so much of a hands-off approach in so many ways to prospects that it will blow your mind, you listening, and it blows my mind sometimes. Because we think of these organizations and we think of baseball in general and we look at major leagues and we look at analytics and you hear Eno talk and you hear the smartness that comes from baseball. But then when you dig down to it, the amount of hands off that happens with prospects at sometimes every level is astonishing to me. And the wasted talent and the missed opportunities of wasted talent shine in this thing right here.

How, if there's a proven track record, maybe it's just so new, teams haven't adjusted to it, that a thing like weighted ball... Weighted balls aren't that new anymore. But that's my thing. If you know that this can unlock stuff, how do you get to a point where this guy had never done it in his life, hits the majors, and then major leagues are like, okay, now let's kind of take a look at this and let's do this i just don't see why teams don't implement more of the things they do at the major league level to the minor league

level and i can't personally understand or listen to resources as being a reason behind it you i don't know no no it's not it's not resources but is it bad it's complicated like is is it complicated i mean the giants here locally have made a strategy out of getting guys that have never done weighted balls so alex wood alex cobb and sean mania all picked up weighted balls the offseason they signed with, either the offseason they signed with or just before they signed with the Giants. So I think the Giants have identified this as a possible source of upside on the free agent market with veterans even. But with veterans, I almost understand it more because even though it's not new, weighted balls weren't necessarily around when they were coming up.

A guy like Alex Cobb, it's not super surprising to me that he hadn't done weighted balls because when he was a kid, they weren't as much of a thing. That doesn't surprise me. But Cole Reagans is more of a kid. He's a guy who's come up through the weighted ball era you know and you would have suspected that somebody had offered to him and the other thing i can say is there the player has some agency in this the player has some autonomy and so i don't think that uh you know you don't like especially with something like weighted balls there are some people out there who thinks it leads to injury there are some studies i think they're poor poorly done studies but there are some studies that sort of point to that. And that's what I was

leading to. I was curious is, was there some injury thing that would, I mean, I guess, so I think as an organization, you don't necessarily want to be like, you know, Hey, let's all do this thing that some people think leads to injury. Right. And then, and you definitely don't want to do that without giving the player some choice then. Right. So then you'll have some players who will be at an organization that you know most of people are throwing weighted balls but this player says no i think that leads to injury i'm not going to do that and you as a player development machine have to have to leave room for that you have to be like cool like that's this is all choice you know like we think it's a good idea but cool and cole himself said that in the process

in this process someone had turned him on he said somebody in minnesota i don't know who it is um i should have asked him but he said somebody in minnesota his friend of his in minnesota had been working at tread and and he said he got on a phone call with tread and 15 minutes later he was like yeah i'm all in and part of that was weighted balls. So, you know, to some extent, there is a failure of maybe communication with Cole's like, you know, maybe somebody in the Texas organization sort of sat down with Cole and been like, here, here's a plan that I think could really work, you know, including weighted balls. And this is why these things are going to work for you. And it seems like nobody really convinced Cole of that before.

I will tell you, it seems like there are more stories of players improving themselves outside of organizations than there are of players finding themselves in organizations. Maybe it's recency. Maybe I'm thinking of it. I feel like the raise, you actually hear of a lot of internal stuff, but the amount of times I hear you or you hear a player talk about

driveline or, you know, Lars doing the weighted, you know, the, the weighted vests and the, the way about it. Yeah.

Yeah. Like it's astonishing to me that teams are okay with these players finding themselves outside of their own organization and not looking at themselves. They're okay with free player development. Sure. But, but, but to me,

I would be like, there's gotta be something internally wrong with how we are approaching our system that we can't do these with players that we cannot identify these things. And I think that's a failure in the system, but it's kind of beside the point. I think it may have something to do with media to some extent. So you heard me say that, you know,

I got this ability to, you know, look inside the training process because he worked at Tread, right? Yeah. So, you know, I'm more likely to write about this if I get full access to the coach and what their methods are and get to like, you know, show some of that and show video. Like I had a video in there of, of him doing these exercises.

You know what I mean? Like, I don't think that if he did all this with the Rangers, I'd be like, here's video of him doing the exercise we did to improve him. Cause there was like this like cloak and dagger. Like we don't want everybody to know what we're doing. You know? Whereas the outside organization is like, yeah, we want everybody to know what we're doing because there's going to be some pitcher who reads this who says i'm

going to sign up with tread you know like it's like free advertising for them so there is a something about how the media interacts with uh teams and how they interact with these uh shops like driveline and and um and tread that that may lead to that sort of idea i would i would think that there's lots of successes i think of uh things like the astros pitching staff um the way the dodgers keep just turning out young pitchers and trading them away and turning out new ones um you know even the way that you're right even the way that like um you know i think that the marlins are really good at turning out starting pitching, you know, and they've they they all throw this crazy hard change up and, you know, they all have interesting fastballs. And, you know, there's something in common.

And they're not all high draft picks. You know, some were traded, some were picked, some were signed internationally, and they do a good job with all of them. So, you know, there are definitely successes inside teams and ironically right also that like you know i think teams should be a little bit more systematic uh about player development and and should um you know at least have a weighted ball station at every uh at every so they don't even these players a lot of times have to buy their own weighted balls it's the weirdest thing i was just i was just there i saw a player be like hey my new balls are in and then it was like oh let me touch your balls and like you know there was like this whole like thing but uh uh you know that guy had to buy his own and uh that's a little weird i think if i was running an

organization i'd be much more likely to be like that's the way to ball station you know like you guys have no money i'm not gonna make you pay for your own way to balls like we've got the way to ball station over there with the wall, the plyo wall and all the stuff you need to do. Like, and we have, we have internal programs that you can access for weighted balls. And if you ask us, we will help you with the arm care thing with weighted balls and,

or, or we'll even suggest it to you because it's right over there. And we, it's part of the system. And I don't think that every team is like that. I would treat it like a gym. Like why not have every piece of equipment?. I would treat it like a gym. Like, why not have every piece of equipment available to everybody? Yeah, exactly. Be like, well, if you want to do dumbbells, you're going to have to bring your own dumbbells in.

But we do have a bench press. Like, what? Like, what are you talking about? I'm crazy with that. Yeah, that's how I would be. I bought my own dumbbells. We have a treadmill, but we don't have an elliptical. Also, what's so funny about that organization, those two organizations, by the way, the Royals and Rangers, they've built apartment complexes right outside their spring training

complex that i live next to they they invested like they invest money really good things that's a really good thing it's an amazing thing that they have housing for the and it's like high facilities high class facilities that are just right outside it's actually look overlooks the rangers backfield and it's two big buildings next to each other. There's security. They do awesome stuff. And it's like, but why not just have all of the things out there? All right. So all that aside,

I kind of pontificating about that. Here's the biggest question. And this is what everybody has already asked. And we already know the articles are coming. How do you identify the next Cole Reagans? And you and I were kind of trying to figure that out. That's going to be an article probably written a lot of times in the off season by a lot of different voices. identify the next cole reagan's and you and i were kind of trying to figure that out that's going to be an article probably written a lot of times in the offseason by a lot of different voices

i think it's impossible it's impossible i mean one of the one aspect that's really impossible is knowing who out there hasn't done weighted balls and and has like just waiting is just waiting for you know an increase in v like we were joking like if dane dunning came back next year and was throwing 93 i would like him a lot more you know so i want to ask him is he doing a weighted ball program again he's a ranger so now i just have to do like a survey where i just go through hey wait a ball nope hey wait a while nope wait a ball i think i wonder how quickly uh a team would would try to shut me down from doing that or tell their players not to not to answer me or something we should find out if i was that systematic if i just went into the clubhouse i was like hey

i just need to know yes or no waiter balls waiter ball you should bring one in and be like do you know what this is do you know what this is yeah i i would wager that like it would i might not even finish that media session without like a pr guy being like what are you doing that's so weird that's so weird so you and i were toying around a little bit so like that's the hard part is if you want to take cole reagan's one of the biggest pieces is the way to ball stuff how do we know that so how are we going to know that? But then what I throw out to you is like, is the idea of the next Cole Reagans just looking for big velo up? Is it as simple as trying to identify guys that have had big fastball velocity, which is kind of such a

simplistic thing we look at? Maybe it is, but also part of the slider conversation we had earlier, we have seen a lot of success with added sliders so do you think those are the two i mean the added slider i think is a little bit easier to look for i mean one of the things that i did that was just really simple was put up a fan graphs leaderboard starting pitchers this year have thrown at least 10 innings and then i sorted by slider pitch type value um and that's just an easy way to be like who doesn't have a slider who's pitched this year and there's you know there's people that i'm not like jose quintana like okay whatever um you know james paxton has a cutter that's basically a slider so i'm not i'm not really that they're not none of those guys who

the next cole reagans, obviously. And I think that the cutter slider thing is interesting. But one name that's, I think, a little bit more of a shot in the dark, but I was joking around. My kid is a Padres fan now, the eldest. And I was telling him that next year the Padres under contract, and there are some weird contracts that could be extended or options picked out, but really like lock solid under contract, they only have Joe Musgrove and possibly an injured Hugh Darvish.

And my kid said, well, they have Pedro Vila. And I said, yes, they have Pedro Vila. Pedro Vila does not throw a slider. And finding a slider for him, I think, would be pretty good. Just a hard pitch because he, like Cole Reagans, throws a curveball and a changeup. So having a hard pitch that looks like his fastball could be good. A pitcher that I like better that doesn't throw a slider

and does throw a cutter is Taj Bradley. And there's no surety that this cutter is the cutter that is going to make everything work. He's talked about how he wants to throw that thing harder. Part of the reason he was sent down to the minor leagues before was to throw the cutter that is going to make everything work. He's talked about how he wants to throw that thing harder. Part of the reason he was sent down to the minor leagues before was to throw the cutter harder. And once he threw the cutter harder, he was back up.

So he's obviously, you know, fiddling around with that. So maybe there's something that doesn't go 89, but has more depth that, that would work for him. You know, he's just a work in progress where he's got a great fastball.

Maybe it reminds me a little bit of a young Ty Walker, Tywon Walker, because he's got the great fastball and he's just trying to figure out some secondary stuff that goes with it. And maybe that would be a slider. But at this point, everyone knows it's a slider league and most people come to the major leagues with a good slider. Yeah, and we were also looking at potential relief pitchers that maybe could. I mean, it's a really tough thing because the thing about Cole Reagans was

he was just put into one, two-inning outings pretty much his entire Ranger time this year, and then he was unleashed with the Royals. outings pretty much his entire ranger time this year and then he was unleashed with the royals so then it's like do you go and look at relief pitchers that maybe could get stretched out if a team wanted to you know the two that jumped out to me we were doing it but i don't know if if either one can get out of it but when we were looking at the 30-day marker for um for four seam velo i don't know car know. Carlos Hernandez just jumped out to me. He's throwing 99-6. That was the fastball, and that's a guy who had been a

starter in the past with the Royals, but they've also traded away, and he most likely is probably just the closer in the future, but he kind of stood out to me, and then you can't help it, but you want to talk about a guy that used to be a top-pitching prospect as a starter who's putting up big Velo at at least in the majors, is just Nate Pearson.

But my problem with Nate Pearson, as I told you, I remember talking to Nate Pearson in the AFL in 2018, and he was like, I just went to driveline. So that guy's probably done everything. He's already been out there, so I don't know what would change. There's definitely no velo increase, and he's definitely had his pitches shaped it's more just for him about staying healthy and that may lead to uh to being just in the bullpen but yeah so the identifier for you in the off season is going to be uh fastball additional sliders and then maybe as you had said to me as well maybe tracking fastball increases in spring training is more important than it's been before because that might be the starter kit of um of identifying these guys

that could break out when when we actually get velo numbers is going to be in spring training yeah so yeah i tend to think like i think one reason why when we study uh fastball increases in spring training and we, we find, uh, that it's pretty noisy is that we have these things where, you know, uh, we have pitchers who are starting pitchers who throw one inning their first

time out and like, Oh my gosh, their VLOs up, but it's not because they just threw one inning. You know what I mean? Yeah. And then we're also reporting all these increases of like, Oh,

this guy's up 0.7. And you're like, Hmm. Okay. Yay. And you're like, hmm, okay, yay. So I tend to think that maybe if we did a study where we looked just at large increases in velo and large decreases, we would find more signal. And you would have found that with Cole Reagans cause he came in maxing at 99 and before he'd maxed at 95. So something like that should, should turn our heads for sure. Another thing that I think you could say, uh, and this wasn't a hundred percent the

case with Cole Reagans, but, um, we have to read between the lines a little bit. And so I would think that, that um hearing that a player was like or seeing that a player is switching organizations you know like a young player um you know that another team had been like hey there's a reason we're picking this guy up you know what i mean we're trading for this guy like i think a little bit of like taking oviedo uh from the um from the cardinals right you take oviedo from the cardinals cardinals? You take Oviedo from the Cardinals. Cardinals don't have a huge, like a great reputation

for developing strikeout pitchers in particular or pitchers in general recently. And you take him from St. Louis where he's averaging 94.9 and in Pittsburgh he's averaging 96 plus. And maybe he was put on a weighted ball program. You know what I'm saying? And maybe this was the first time he'd ever done it

because he didn't do it with St. Louis, who not necessarily that kind of a program in terms of weighted balls, data, and tech. So, you know, I think changing, so just generally, these are things that we've heard before and they're not satisfying because it's not like a magic bullet for Cole Reagans,

but changing organizations, adding a slider, adding Vue though. Yeah, it's not satisfying because for most people, they can't go to like Baseball Savant and look at a couple of stats and be like, oh, that's the guy. You know, that's why it's probably less satisfying.

I can't sort for, hasn't done weighted balls or like needs a slider badly. Sort for breakout incoming. So you just can't quite do that. I guess you could look for people with weird reverse splits. You could look, you could look for weird reverse splits. Cause that's what,

that's what Cole led Cole to get the slider. Oh, okay. That isn't, yeah, that that's actually kind of a sneaky one you could do so yeah take a look at that um some other prospect stuff that very good go check out the article by the way if you haven't i think it's a buck a month right now um athletic.com slash rates and barrels you can sign up you can get access to that article you can read through all of it which i highly suggest you do and then the offseason you know is always going to have great stuff. I had a few other

not-so-prospect prospects anymore. Just wanted to get your take on a few of these players and then we'll see what we can get you through the rest. Our boy, Mason Miller. Mason Miller, I wanted to get your take, has been back since August 16th. He's had five appearances. His most recent, he

went to three, which is tied for the most. He has been pretty phenomenal since he's come back. He's had one game where he got hit up. He has not given up a hit in his last two starts. And as a matter of fact, of the five, he's only given up hits in two of the last five. Velo is up, but the innings are just not there. Strikeouts, phenomenal. I mean, he just looks like that big power pitcher that's out there,

but he is still rehabbing and still not going deep. So any thoughts on Mason Miller through the end of this year and kind of stepping into next year? I'm trying to do something here real quickly. 103, 145. So he's faced 145 batters in the minor leagues, and he has 69 strikeouts. Wait, what is that?

This is just bonkers, dude. That's like a 48% strikeout rate, dude. Wow, yeah, you're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's ridiculous. 48, dude. wow yeah you're right yeah yeah that's ridiculous 48 dude right now in triple a it's 55 uh i mean there's all it's all tiny samples so it's kind of ridiculous but if you add it all up you get 48 that is amazing i mean he's he's nate pearson west maybe is mason miller the next cole reggins he's mason miller the next n Reagans? Is Mason Miller the next Nate Pearson? I mean, I don't think it counts, no, because he already had the VLO.

He's just the next. Is there a guy that was often injured in the minors and then just kind of made it work? Hunter Green had a big, huge fastball, implemented the slider later. He was injured for the first two years. And then when he came to the majors and he threw that 30% slider last year, he looked like a completely new pitcher. So Kopech, I mean, I'm also thinking of high VLO pitchers

is what I'm thinking of. Those two are kind of similar. But I mean, you know, Walker Bueller had- It's a major black mark on on like even cole reagan's like in terms of like dynasty value cole reagan's and mason miller they're exciting but the the health is a major mark on them i mean who would you rather have reagan's or miller dynasty reagan's put up more bulk man i mean we're gonna get through all the season being excited about mason miller and right now he has 39 innings on the season that's not good it's nothing yeah it's not so you go reagan's over what could you i think so i mean when could i expect when's the

next time i could expect 150 innings from mason miller will it ever happen yeah no i agree with you on this i agree with you like i i couldn't get over like that he had 30 minor league innings and then he was coming up to the majors and everyone's like mason miller's like the number one guy and it's like i don't know and then he got hurt and they're still not stretched out predictable i just don't know what this is i don't know what he is and um cole reagan's is a short sample size but it's elite it's it's an elite he's gonna put together more innings this year than uh mason miller's ever put together in pro ball yeah like he's gonna throw more innings this year than mason miller has thrown in pro ball is mason miller going to be a closer at some point or is he going to stick as a

starting pitcher in your mind i mean that's the one nice thing is that, you know, if Reagans gets injured and he comes back and he's not throwing as hard, is he necessarily a closer or, you know, the backup plan for Reagans is probably not as, the floor is probably lower because I do think that the worst case scenario for Mason Miller is he's the lights out closer. Wouldn't you be a great one? That's the kind of stuff he has.

Yeah. worst case scenario for mason miller is he's the lights out closer wouldn't you be great that's the kind of stuff he has yeah a couple hitters and you can uh pick a who'd you rather for dynasty royce lewis two straight three hit games three grand slams and eight games he has been on an absolute freaking tear this is a not so prospect prospect but he's healthy right now pushing my main event into possibly the money he's been so good yeah okay and then pairing with him jordan walker obviously highly touted prospect coming into this year really kind of fell off in a lot of people's minds but as of recent he has six straight games with a hit three home runs in that span and uh his current as i'm trying to load this currently 2744 average, 14 homers, six stolen bases in just under 100 games.

Going into next year or for Dynasty, who would you rather have, Jordan Walker or Royce Lewis? You know, they're actually fairly similar in terms of walk, strikeout rate, max EV, barrel rate. I'm going to take Jordan Walker for the youth and, the, uh, more intact ligaments.

Um, I, I just have a feeling that he's going to outsteal, uh, Royce Lewis, uh, going forward. I'm a little surprised that Royce even has four this year.

Um, but, um, you know, in terms of power, I think Jordan Walker is going to be right there. I think Jordan Walker has more power upside even than Royce Lewis.

Um, and because of walk and strikeout rate, I think that they're, you know, batting average is going to be pretty similar. So I'm taking Jordan Walker. Uh, but Royce Lewis has really opened my eyes. Uh, you know, you're supposed to be worse be worse after acl surgery and now he's had two uh but uh he's showing the doubters wrong on that one you know i'm actually surprised that you said that but in a good way because i think the recency of what royce is doing is going to really rocket his i think royce is going to go quite a bit higher than jordan walker in redraft leagues next

year but i also think that jordan walk Walker is a really good off season by right now, because you know, under a hundred games, if you were, if you didn't have this whole story of like him coming up and then getting sent down and then some struggles and whatever. And you were just like,

if you were to get, let's say 15 homers and, and eight stolen bases and like 110 games, like you wouldn't, you wouldn't call call that a huge failure for a prospect. It's just the value of who he is coming into the year. He hits the ball really high, lower strikeout rate than Royce, better walk percentage than Royce, and I think he's coming into it. The shape of his season will also mean that some people

will have missed the good months. Some people will have not really checked into him because you don't always, if he's not on your team or, or your team was bad and you stopped paying attention at some point, like there are people who will have missed that. He even had a season this good. They'll have put in their head. Jordan Walker was a bus last year or whatever.

And those are the people that also check out early and you can take advantage of. So that would be someone I would buy as far as current prospects go wanted to throw throw this your way uh jason dominguez over the weekend two homers he has hits in all three games that he has played 63 hard hit rate 18 barrel he's at 102 on max ev i've been very he's a 110 in triple a so yeah and yeah we've seen the big hard hit I've been espousing him for quite some time, and when he got called up, I said, listen, if you're in a 12-team-5 outfielder

and 100% picking him up, I think he hit three this weekend. Jason Dominguez, thoughts on this kind of early. It's obvious he's very early. One of the things I said, you know, I'd actually be curious what you have to say about this, is that, you know, obviously he's improved his walk rate.

The strikeouts are attempting to get better. I thought he could succeed extra here because I don't think there's enough time in the season where you're going to have massive adjustments, pitchers doing, you know, we see that massive, what's that big adjustment period, like the three week,

the four week mark of a prospect being up where there's a lot more of a sample size on these guys. And I think that adjustment period is just not going to really happen and and obviously i just think his tools are through the roof so i think he had a chance to succeed pretty well in this short period of time but um any takeaways from this you know just a few games that jason's played you know i i just remember ian k saying, you know, this guy's it. And Ian Kahn made some pretty aggressive moves in terms of trading really established names in dynasty leagues for Jason Dominguez. And I thought, you're crazy, dude.

I mean, this is happening in like early 2022 where you're talking about an A-ball kid who's 19 years old or whatever. And I'm like, like, there's a million guys like this, you know? But I think he, you know, there's something he was that he, he likes you know, stuff that I can't see as well, which is a sort of demeanor and some of the psychological aspect of, of how a player plays on the field. And he just saw someone who was dominant and, you know, took over when he played on the field.

And that's something I really appreciate about Corbin Carroll, actually, is that I feel like he's trying to be the best player on the field every time he's out there. And that's why I thought his series against Ronald Acuna Jr., including that game where it was 20-18 or whatever it was, was so compelling to watch because both those guys wanted to do everything. They wanted to get on base. They wanted to steal base. They wanted to hit homers. And they wanted to be better than the other guy. And I think there's some aspect to that that is important. I don't know that.

I think there were probably guys who flame out that wanted to be the best guy on the field too, you know? Um, but, uh, there's something about the drive. There's something there, uh, that I don't always fully appreciate. And I think Jason Dominguez, I think he has it with the capital I, you know what I mean? Like, I think he's, uh, you know, I think he might be better than his minor league numbers in some ways. I mean, he's going to a park that augments offense. Um, and he's shown like, you know, plus plate discipline, uh, in the past. So I'm not super worried about the chase

rate yet. Um, and, uh, he hits the ball super hard and can run real fast. So, I mean, this is a guy who also everybody in New York is kind of looking to, and that might be a great combination of a guy who wanted to be the guy and New York is looking to him right now to be, you know, rescue our future, you know, and he could just be the starting center fielder next year and hit, what, 250, 260 with 20, 25 homers and 30, 35 steals next year? Like, that's within the range of possibilities.

It'll be fascinating to see where his draft stock is and what it looks like next year. And who's higher, Royce Lewis or Jason Dominguez or Jordan Walker, you know, between all those guys, where it's going to go. But I agree, he is up for the task. And he's a cool character, man. He's not phased by a lot, even in the bad results. he's a cool character, man.

He's not phased by a lot, even in the bad results, and it points in the minors, and it was able to push through it. Lastly, I just want to throw, speaking of, some top prospects that are going out big to end the year. Don't know at this point if we're going to see them. There's always a possibility as the AA down season ends around the 15th, so these guys could be moved up because A ends at the end of the year. But three guys to just be paying attention to.

Jackson Holiday is actually going up to triple A. He did not get the move up to the majors. To me, kind of also says that he might be an AFL guy because he's going to triple A, not going to the majors. Though at the same point, they might just say like- Push the plate appearance. He's going to be, I bet you he's going gonna be the afl because we're talking even now we're talking about four and eleven four hundred and eleven plate appearances they want them in the big leagues next year for 600 so they're one of that's what the afl is often about is just pushing that plate appearance number

tiring them out you know mike trout was tired bryce harper was tired uh buster posey was tired and it's supposed to be to tire them out out to make them feel what like a 600 plate appearance season feels like. The guys in the final week, they want to leave. I've asked them. I remember asking Parker Meadows and he was just like, I'm ready to go. I'm ready to go. They're out of here. But like going to AAA, this going to the end of September, and if you were to do AFL, that's going to push 500 easy over on the plate appearances.

So that looks like that's where that's going. But hitting.333 with a.451 OBP across all three levels so far this year is Jackson Holiday. I wish I had some batted ball data. I just want to know. You're going to get some. I want to know what's underneath. Yeah, AAA and AFL has some batted ball data.

I just want to know what's underneath that. You know, the 174 ISO in IA and 169 in AA could go either way. That could be all legs. You know, if it's all legs, then I like him a little bit less. But he's, I mean, otherwise he's number one prospect. He's a freak. Also in AAA, Jordan Lawler, 349 in in AAA two homers in August in Reno and that's like around 40 at bats and he has seven hits over his first two games in September this is another

one of those guys that you know I was surprised that Embex didn't call it before he has been hot as can be going up to AAA PCL but you might potentially he's not going to go to the AFL because he played last year we We might get a short run. I think you could see him in the major leagues. I mean, yeah, that's right now. Yeah.

The D backs, uh, are three games out or two games out of, uh, three games out of, of the wild card race. Um, uh,

what, what do you, I guess this is the use case. The D backs do well against the Cubs this weekend. Yeah. Because if they do poorly, then they kind of fall out, and they're like, well, do we really want to start a problem? That's why I think Lawler could come up.

I mean, you're only under 100 at-bats. I think under 50 at-bats so far in AAA, but offensively, you could use it. And I really think you should pay attention to him if you're looking for it um you know looking for a little bit of a boost at the back half of the year but i'm gonna redrafts yeah he can be a guy to yeah like if you yeah he's coming up he's gonna play and he probably just takes shortstop i don't think he's breaking cap next year and then finally just want to throw this out he's in in double-A. I think this is another AFL candidate. Junior Caminero, since August 1st, has 12 homers. He's in double-A right now. And my friend Chris Clegg tweeted about this. This was a couple days ago, so this might be the fifth most BBEs, including the majors. Only Acuna, Otani,

Vlad, and Stanton had more. So this is a minor leaguer in AA with an absurd amount of 110-plus hits this year, and a couple of those homers over the last couple days were of the 110-plus variety. So Junior Caminero

is going to be a hot name to pay attention to, and has the opportunity to break camp with the team next year and we might see him in the arizona fall league which a lot of us will be able to get some hopefully more of that batted ball data that's it yeah he's super exciting i i wish he could play shortstop um this year they have played him a shortstop 20 games. They might have an opening. They might have an opening. 53 games at third base for Tampa. So the fan graphs fielding is 30-50. That's not normally what you see on a possible shortstop.

But with Taylor Walls and Basabe, he could be a guy that plays some shortstop and seeds the way to Basabe or Walls defensively later in games or something. So he also is the kind of guy that I think will just hit his way onto the roster sooner rather than later. I don't know if he'll break camp with the team because the team loves to have, like, this Luke Raley guy hanging around um you know they always like have some older guy they're like we

really want to make room for him on this team and hey the the proof of the process is good luke raley's been good this year he's been he's in the running for the rookie of the year at like 28 uh but um you know i do think he will play what like 400 played appearances in the big leagues next year or something like that yeah and one thing I would look for is if he does go to the AFL where do they play him positionally you know do they play him a lot of third base or does he exclusively play shortstop try to put him shortstop for the whole AFL just to be like does this work yeah let's see if it works that's that's kind of what that place is for. So there you go. That is the season finale of the project prospect going a little bit over an hour, uh, you know, and myself again, we will have nuggets of prospects into every episode.

We will be back again tomorrow, but starting next week, it'll go to two episodes. So make sure you guys are locked into that and get yourself an athletic subscription, go to athletic.com slash rates and barrels. And just thanks everybody for hanging out for Project Prospect all year long. It's the reason I got to be here

and do the show was because these guys wanted to talk prospects and you guys listened. So I really appreciate that. Find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris or X, whatever. Find me at Is It The Welsh

and we'll be back tomorrow for your regularly scheduled Rates and Barrels. For Eno. I'm Welsh. Goodbye for now, friends. Thanks for listening.