Rates & Barrels - Project Prospect - Triple-A Stuff+ Numbers

Episode Date: April 12, 2023

DVR, Eno and Welsh dig into some Triple-A stuff+ numbers. The guys look at what these numbers mean and how much more we need, as well as the latest prospect news, call-ups and graduations. Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Welsh on Twitter: @isitthewelsh Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Today's episode of Rates & Barrels is brought to you by ... Factor: Head to factormeals.com/rates50 and use code RATES50 to get 50% off your first box. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Treat yourself to Tim's new Fudge Brownie Lattes, made with freshly ground espresso beans, frothy steamed or ice-chilled milk, and topped with marble chocolate curls. Now that's music to our ears. Av, April 11th, Project Prospect Edition. Derek Van Ryper, Eno Saris, Chris Welsh here with you, easy for me to say. On this episode, we are going to take a look at a few news and notes from around the minor leagues. We've got a couple of prospects getting opportunities. We have some graduations from prospect lists early in the season, so we'll talk about some players maybe that have moved up. We've got a Stuff Plus report for the pitchers at AAA, so we'll talk about some of the surprises, mostly the pleasant surprises, perhaps a few unpleasant surprises there, and we'll see where

the wind carries us. There's a few other things on the show sheet. I don't know how far we're going to get. We're still getting used to the three of us who all kind of talk a lot working together, so we plan what looks like a three-hour show in the end based on the amount of stuff we actually get off of the rundown. So we begin today with some news. We saw Aaron Savalle go on the IL at the big league level with an oblique strain. But it's going to be Peyton Battenfield, at least on the roster for now,

potentially taking over that spot in the rotation. So not Tanner Beebe, not Gavin Williams or one of the other prospects. So Welsh, I'm going to kick this to you first because you've gotten a look at Battenfield before. Should we be excited about him as a possible short-term replacement for Aaron Savalle? Maybe even a mid-range replacement for Savalle, given how long oblique injuries can take. Yeah, I'm not sure I'd be ecstatic about him. It was funny enough, like, you know, the amount of guys I actually were able to catch on the backfield in games. I happened to catch Peyton Battenfield over on the Dodgers side going up against what

was a pretty good Dodgers team, Diego Cartaya. There's a tweet out there if you guys want to check it out. One time Diego did get a hold of him, but Peyton Battenfield struck him out a couple times. Got a really nasty breaking pitch, like a slider he can throw off the corner. Good command pitcher, not a whiff pitcher. He doesn't blow anything by anybody. And there's also a little bit of talk I saw that he might actually be one of these guys that could come in and relief, which would then open up this opportunity. They need to bring up another guy. And there's an account I follow, Guardians Perspective.

They have all the info on the Guardians that is suggesting that another pitching prospect with this team could be coming up. And that would be Logan Allen, one of the many Logan Allens that exist in the world of prospects, and they're all pitchers, apparently. But Logan Allen would be another one of those guys. Two of them are even lefties. Yeah, they're both lefties, and they both pitched for the Guardians at one time. The other Logan Allen is now with the Rockies, by the way. But funny enough, Logan Allen actually also showed up on

this Stuff Plus report because he is up in AAA. He ended up striking out five, went four and two thirds in his first start. I'm kind of jumping the gun because there's no definitive thing that that is necessarily going to happen. But he showed up, you know, he showed up, I believe, on the report and he could be the guy. But Peyton Battenfield, if he were to be thrown into relief, not my thing. Like I said, it's a it's an OK, you know, commandee type of location pitcher more than he has anything else. I'm a little bit surprised he came over Tanner Tanner Bybee. I thought Bybee would be the guy who popped up, I believe, with that 107 stuff. Plus, that's right. It's Bybee. We talked about this last week.

It is just not intuitive to me at all that it's Tanner Bybee. A lot of this, with pitching call-ups, the schedule is also a factor you have to keep in mind too. Sometimes it's convenient because the rotations are in sync between different levels. You bring one guy up instead of the other if it's a short-term injury

and then you go ahead and bring up the longer-term fit once the schedule is actually in place. So that's always something to think about. I want to talk to you about the Stuff Plus metric at AAA. A lot of things we look at, we look at stats. We try to evaluate pitchers from the fan graphs page. It's really difficult to do that with prospects, for me at least,

because each level of competition is so different. Age to level competition, park factors are more extreme. There's all these things that make looking at minor league pitching numbers really difficult. But Stuff Plus, I think, gives us a better apples to apples comparison of where a true talent level is than pretty much anything that's out there. Is that a fair use on my part or am I trying to push too much weight behind the model? my part or am I trying to push too much weight behind the model? I mean, we've long had this weird thing where we're better at predicting hitter success based on their minor league numbers than we are at predicting pitcher success among prospects. And I think that the missing link, you know, in both cases

really are stats that we don't have access to. You know, for pitchers, it's pitch movement and velo in their pitch mix. And for hitters, it's their batted ball stats. And that's why we've talked on this show even about how we're always trying to find batted ball data for hitters. And I'm super excited now that all of AAA is included in the Minor League Stuff Plus report. So it's not just the PCL anymore. And that allows us a better peek into people that are closer to the big leagues.

One thing that we've done differently with this year's Minor League Stuff Plus report is that we've graded it based on the major leagues. graded it based on the major leagues. So if you look at it this year, you'll see that the numbers are lower. That's because it's adjusted for the major leagues. And so you have somebody like Simeon Woods Richardson and Kyle Harrison atop the list with a 130 stuff plus and a 120 stuff plus. We saw guys with bigger numbers last year, but this is adjusted to the big leagues and hopefully gives us a little bit of an insight into that missing link um you know when it comes

to process coming up and and to our conversation here uh tanner bybee was um 12th i believe among starting pitchers uh with Stuff Plus after one start. And who was the other guy? Battenfield. I can't count. No, but Logan Allen was on here. Logan Allen was actually seventh. Yeah, seventh.

Logan Allen was seventh, right behind Grayson Rodriguez, to give you a sense of where he sits on that list. And yeah, Battenfield was way down there with a 96 stuff plus you know i'm curious about something with with this especially when it comes to like triple a you you've mentioned that like the what is it the location plus is kind of like nolan void at this point we just need like oh you need a much bigger sample size do you think it's more important to have not only stuff plus but to also have like pitching plus and location to really evaluate these guys

are you super comfortable like making your evaluations off of just simply stuff plus because i i kind of would these guys want to see the total package more than i would like a major leaguer and focusing on just their ultimate stuff does that make sense i'm trying to say that like is it more important no 100 and i think it's it's it's something that goes beyond prospecting it's something to think about when you're just using this model and one of the things that um that you have to realize is that tom tango did the the research and he found that a stuff plus beat pitching bot uh but b uh he found that stuff. Plus added no predictive quality. That location plus added no predictive quality stuff. Plus so that he's basically saying,

don't look at location. Plus he says, you know, it adds no predictive quality. However, back in the day, I looked at command plus and location plus, and they predicted innings pitch per appearance.

Now you can see if you start looking at the entire population of players and you want to look at predictive quality, then you have a lot of relievers, first of all, right? It's half and half. You have a ton of relievers. And so then Stuff Plus becomes more powerful because it's predicting way, way better for all the relievers and also well for the starters.

And so your overall package, you say stuff plus. However, we're interested in whether or not this guy is going to become a starter. You know, and so I would say 300, 400, 500 pitches in, you start caring about location plus because you can have a guy with a high stuff plus, especially in the minors where they're just blowing guys away, throwing to the middle of the plate, not really concerned with starting to pare down their arsenal. I bet you Carlos Rodon threw more change-ups in the minor leagues

than he does in the major leagues. Because Carlos Rodon can't control his change-up. But in the minor leagues, he probably just threw it more often. People chased it because the hitters are worse, the umpires are worse, everything's worse. So he threw it more. So he would have had a higher stuff plus even than he has in the major leagues, as an example. So you can have guys that can't

control aspects of these arsenals that they won't port over to the major leagues. See, because I look at just curious at how you piece it together. it's so interesting that like peyton battenfield shows up so low on this but when you look and you see lo you know logan allen pops on this he's only the second lefty on this list you know one of those guys you were just

talking about where you're like a guy might get away with more kyle harrison to me is like location and his command really struggles and we've seen i think he's hasn't even gone three innings yet in the minors over that definitely happened in his first start but is that something you've seen in the past yeah your command has been an issue he had huge huge strikeout numbers and that's what I'm a little bit exactly what you just said with Radon I wonder if that kind of carries over with like a guy like Kyle Harrison who can just blow by I saw a little bit of it we'll talk about a little bit later I want to talk about Brandon Fott I watch his entire start and there's even a little bit of that in there but coming, like Logan Allen comes in as the only the

second lefty in like the top 15 of this stuff. Plus, and he has a better stuff plus than Tanner Bybee, but Tanner Bybee blows up that board. If you look at location and pitching plus what's like 109 location plus one 19 pitching plus, and he's a 107 as a 13th guy, but you're saying like, it doesn't matter. So you don't, do you, you don't see that off of this?

This is too short. This is too short right now. We're looking at 70. We're looking at one start 70 pitches. Some guys have two starts. It's too, too little. I'm just curious if there's like a moment where it breaks it,

where it's like, yeah, it's too little, but like for the guy to hit 105 plus on every single one of those in the first start does that get you going at all or just no i don't know it's uh 300 400 pitches so i think we'd want we'd want uh four starts five starts from these guys in the minors before we start looking too much at location plus um but we do have uh some numbers from last year for some of these guys and i think in the case of brandon fought in particular that he has a demonstrated ability to command the ball

and i think i bet you if we had location plus on baby he would it would say tell you the same thing in the past interesting so it is definitely something to think about but in the in the very beginning you got to just look at stuff plus and you know good news for simeon woods richardson good news for taj bradley you know good news for mike soroka who was on this list also might make a guy like kyle harrison who you know he like this huge stuff plus numbers if you look at his numbers though he was one of the more dominant pitchers last year as far as the strikeout pitcher goes he has gone two and two thirds this year he has a 13 era and two starts and he has not gone three innings over these two yet he pops on the stuff plus just throwing it out to dynasty owners that yet his stats were great last year but there are serious command issues that could be fixed and two horrible

results but the stuff plus numbers absolutely in your face. That that might be a little bit of like a comfort. A little bit of it. Because I think there's a lot of focus on the top end pitchers. I mean, there's some question marks there. Well, which one is it more to you? Is it like track record and huge stuff and huge numbers? And you see the stuff plus and it makes you feel good? Or is two starts and this make you want to jump off the train?

I'm not jumping off the train. No. Somebody with this much stuff I'm interested in. But, you know, if you're going to have me rank him against Grayson Rodriguez or, you know, other pitchers, it would come into effect. I would I would, you know, Grayson Rodriguez behind him and stuff. Plus, I would put him ahead of Kyle Harris. And I had him at six. I got him at six on my list. So just, you know, I have five guys ahead of him right now, but I don't think I'm going to make any moves off of those two starts.

And the stuff plus kind of makes me feel good that at least it's still there. The command is not. Yeah. Well, it's, it's early going for everybody. And, you know, people, somebody asked me about the major leagues and said, why are these, why are these established guys blowing up? And, you know, it's never just one thing.

You know, sometimes it's just early, you know, for some of these guys, sometimes it's, you know, spin enforcement is up and spin is down. You know, dealing with the shift has changed how people are pitching and how people are dealing with it. So I'd rather see a little bit more information on Kyle Harrison. Best Western made booking our family beach vacation a breeze. And it felt a little like... 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 membership separate. Terms apply. So I think about Harrison from a redraft perspective because from a keeper and dynasty perspective, no one should be doing anything based on two and two

innings. I think most people listening to the show understand that. If anything, if there's someone in your league panicking in a long-term league, you're swooping in and making a move because you're getting a slight discount right now. But Harrison, in deeper leagues, deeper redraft leagues, where you were stashing maybe one prospect to begin the year,

maybe he's further away. That's maybe the most actionable thing about this is saying, okay, if the location is this poor right now, this isn't going to be a thing where he can come out, have two or three really good starts, and then be the Giants' best option. And the way that team's built, too, sort of builds in some buffer

where they've got those older, more established veterans where they don't have to put Harrison in this position. They're not going to be desperate enough, barring multiple injuries to that group of starters that are currently ahead of him. They've been bringing up, they've been bringing up, um,

they have Sean Hagelli on the team too, as like a stretch starter, you know, fill in guy. Yeah. You almost wonder if they would consider something like that with Kyle Harrison down the road, because, you know, part of that problem is i agree with what you're saying the missed innings

already i mean two two and two third through two starts it is probably at least three starts set back if you really think about the timeline you know i mean like that is a pretty big backtrack because they've got clear command issues going on and he's just not establishing innings that if they were to feel good. I mean, also, we give excuses to other guys in the PCL. We should give a little bit of an excuse to Kyle Harrison on the PCL, but maybe that's something that, you know, it turns Kyle Harrison into more of a, like a Dre Jamison at the start with the Diamondbacks,

where you get him in longer, he's a spot starter. They want to get, you know, some of those innings in, but they might be better suited for shorter outings. A million things you can break down with a guy like him, but I do think it changes the outcome a little bit on redraft where, yeah, go buy on Dynasty for sure. Not worried enough. opportunity uh also for harrison if if his stock is down with his owner and for example i'm in a 20 team uh league called devils rejects i picked up simeon woods richardson just based on this yeah it seemed well it seemed like it's a it's a free it seemed like simeon woods richardson stock really tumbled the last two years since that trade from toronto to minnesota especially kind of a disaster trade for both sides based on health and performance outcomes so far. But hopefully in the long run, it works out better

and everybody can do what they were expected to do. And the idea was he didn't have stuff because he didn't have VLOG. I mean, this outing seems to like his stuff. Yeah, and I thought, originally, I thought he was kind of advanced for his age, maybe more of a command over stuff guy that because of polish was going to move really quickly.

But if the stuff is actually playing up a little bit maybe that ceiling is a bit higher I think it's a great pickup if you're in one of those 20 team keeper dynasty leagues and he's actually sitting out there because being atop this leaderboard does mean something I had one more question for you you know about the possible limitations

and this was maybe inspired by a tweet I saw this morning Sam Dykstra from MILB.com tweeted the league slash lines through the early days from all the minor leagues. And it is amazing. Midwest League, by the way, where it's pretty cold and weather is pretty crappy, has a combined 182-287-256 slash line as a league.

Catch the fever in the Midwest League, right? Like that is horrific. Nice place to be a pitcher. Catch the fever in the Midwest League, right? That is horrific. Nice place to be a pitcher, I guess. At the other end of the scale, and it's not surprising to see this at all, is the Pacific Coast League. PCL, hitter-friendly, always has been. 271, 379, 465.

How in the, I'll say it politely, F, are you supposed to develop pitching in a league where the environments let hitters hit like that? And also, the bigger question for you is, how much do the high altitude parks around the PCL, Reno, which I think is like 4,500 feet, Albuquerque, which is also high, El Paso, those play like Colorado, right right we talk about what happens to rocky's pitchers in the model all the time so don't we have this fighting against us in terms of using this to evaluate some of those pitchers at the minor league level too yeah 100 this is on the list of things to do we want to shape adjust location plus so that we get a better idea of what uh

pitches could go into certain locations, what kind of, what command, how command and stuff interplay. We want to platoon adjust location plus. The platoon splits are not in there in stuff plus. I mean, it's not in there right now and we want to altitude adjust stuff plus. And in the major major league level it doesn't seem as important because there's just one team but it's still important because you want to know what herman marquez might do outside of cores you want to know what carlos estevez could do as a closer you know what his true stuff pluses and so you know it's meaningful there but it's also super meaningful in the PCL as you bring up. And that's one reason why I'm not. Also, there's a little bit of a question of how much time is spent cleaning this data.

When you get numbers out of Savant from the major leagues, that's been cleaned, I think, maybe twice or three times by the end of the day. cleaned, I think, maybe twice or three times by the end of the day. Because what first spits out from the game is raw and unadjusted and has some errors in it. Then at 6 a.m., they kind of clean it up again, you know. And I think that sometimes later in the day, they clean it a second or third time to just remove any mistakes they've seen or, or update the classifications or, that wasn't a sinker, you know, that sort of deal.

They, I don't think they do that with the minor league stuff. So it's a little bit dirtier numbers and it also includes a lot more altitude. So somebody like Brandon fought, if I think he's good and he only has, you know, like a 96 stuff plus, you know, I think he has good locations.

There are definitely pitchers in the major leagues that survive and thrive even with a 96 stuff plus starting pitchers. And then I think on top of that, that the altitude might have dinged him a little bit in stuff plus. I'm not going to take it too far to heart. Fair enough. Putting a bow on this part of our conversation i'll throw this to you first welsh better 2023 redraft stash if you got one spot you can use on a pitcher stuck in the minors right now simeon woods richardson or taj bradley who would you rather have stashed away for this season oh for this season? Man, you know, I think I might. I like Taj Bradley overall,

but I think if we're considering and really focusing on this year, I think it actually might be Simeon Woods Richardson. I've always liked the Arsenal. It's funny about Simeon Woods Richardson. Actually, I went to the Dream Series out here in Phoenix some years ago, and I went to go interview Kumar Rocker when he was a high school, going to be potentially drafted. And Simeon Woods Richardson was also there,

but he was going as a position player. He was taking BP, like this really athletic guy who's just got four pitches he can throw around, but he just didn't find all of that. And it seems to be picking back up. I feel, and I like Taj Bradley, though, for the long term but i just feel like simeon woods richardson has a better opportunity to have actual impact this season where rays are gonna ray like i just i don't know where the that spot would end up falling in like best case scenario taj bradley is a piggyback off of like

an opener right you know it's like maybe coming off of like Jalen Beeks where Simeon Woods Richardson injuries. Also, I think it's fascinating. I think the Minnesota Twins lead the league in strikeouts right now. You know, really, really heavy as far as like what they're doing. If there were to be any injuries, it kind of feels like he would be one of the next guys up, especially with some of the metrics working in his favor. So Simeon Woods Richardson, I think, is a better this year stash

than Taj Bradley at the moment. How about you, Eno? I think that was an excellent point about the opener. You've got in Tampa, Yanni Chirinos, although it doesn't look like he's pitched yet in AAA. You've got Luis Patino, who hasn't pitched yet in triple a you've got luis patino who hasn't pitched yet in triple a uh but uh showed uh was one of the most improved stuff plus in the spring and then you got taj bradley they're all behind josh fleming who is the six but pitching is the five because you got got Tyler Glass now coming back. Yeah. So I think in ahead of Bradley,

you would count glass now Fleming Patino and maybe cheer knows. Whereas over in Minnesota, I think it's Bailey over and Simeon Woods Richardson. And they're pitching in the same place. So Woods Richardson could leapfrog him. And you've also got a rotation of veterans that have been hurt before. Tyler Malley's been hurt. Pablo Lopez has been hurt.

Sonny Gray's been hurt. Kenta Maeda's just coming back. So there's a lot of possibility for injury there, and Woods Richardson is closer. I think that maybe Bradley is better long term but I don't know. I want more stuff numbers. I think my lean would be the same though for shorter

term. It's Simeon Woods Richardson longer term. I still think the ceiling is a little bit higher with Taj Bradley. I think the way the Rays would use him as Welsh said would be my biggest concern if you're trying to map that out for the rest of this season, I did one other positive to throw in real quick was Simeon Woods,

Richardson, not to belabor it, but also on the 40 man. So I just want to throw that out. That's actually a nice little extra benefit. Bradley's not Bradley might be, but not even focused on that was like, if Simeon Woods,

Richardson was not on the 40 and Bailey Ober was there, it might be an excuse. That excuse isn't there because he is not on the 40 and Bailey Ober was there, it might be an excuse. That excuse isn't there because he is listed on the 40-man roster. So that's a positive for Simeon Woods. I believe Taj is as well. I'd have to go swoop over and look. Yeah, I double-checked. Yeah, he is on there.

So that's another key thing to think about, though, when you're looking at which prospects to stash. If there's someone who's similar in skills, someone who's similarly valuable, projected similarly, they might have that edge to get the first call. And you may end up waiting a few extra weeks to get that opportunity. I want to ask you guys, what else is in your early season evaluation toolbox

when we're looking at minor leaguers or guys who are working in the big leagues for maybe the first time or they're still very early in their career? This was something that was thinking about watching the ken waldachuk struggle against the rays back on friday i think that was when he was getting knocked around there but what what else matters to you guys when you're looking at limited samples guys scattered at all different levels different competition or guys trying to make adjustments for the first time. Beyond the Stuff Plus model, what else could make a big difference for you right now?

Among minor leaguers? There's a lot of research into called strikes and swinging strikes that suggest that they're equally valuable. That makes sense to me. And it is sort of a marriage of stuff and location. But swinging strikes become sort of stabilized faster or become meaningful faster. And so swinging strikes are something that I look for in the minor leagues. And I know I'm jumping ahead on this rundown,

but a, I read the rundown and B we never going to get to all of it. So Joe Adele right now has a 28.6% strikeout rate in the minor leagues. He is scalding the ball. I'm not necessarily going to look at that seven 35 ISO because am I looking at you sure Wander Franco's 750 ISO and saying he's going to keep that up and you know

ISO is probably the noisiest stat or the slugging percentage is the noisiest stat that might be in anybody's toolbox so I'm not looking at that I am interested in strikeout rates down but his swing strike rate is not meaningfully different than it was in the past.

And so I do see a higher walk rate, and there's a chance that some of his approach has changed. But we've seen higher walk rates from him in the minor leagues that have not translated to the big leagues in the past. So I'm looking at Joe Adele's line, and I feel about the same about him as I ever did, which is I don't know if he's going to make it with the strikeout race. I'll go one step further. I don't think they play him anywhere. Look at the way the team's built. Hunter Renfro being brought in now as one of their corners.

And hitting homers every day. Yeah, he's mashing right now. Trout and Taylor Ward, they obviously are going to play every day. Your DH spot is covered by Otani, and they finally have better mix-and-match depth guys on this roster. That's one of the things the Angels did a nice job with over the course of the offseason because you look at guys like Jake Lamb and Gio Urshela.

Brandon Drury kind of plays every day, and even Urshela maybe plays most of the time as a shortstop, but they're not as thin as they've been in the past. So the last guy on the roster is going to play less than usual. I think Goodell at this point, we've been talking about this feels like for three years now, his best path to any sort of major league opportunity is not in Anaheim, very clearly. And I think you're right to be looking at the underlying numbers behind the strikeout rate to see if anything's actually changed. If he's still hacking away and doing what he's done, off and on, really, he's shown this ability before. Look at what he did last year at AAA. He only played 40 games there. He had 13

homers. Walked 11% of the time, struck out 31% of the time. He was better than a league average guy. He had a.348 ISO in 40 games at Salt Lake lake city last year so i think this is just more of the same from a guy that is unfortunately for him really stuck in this organization and unless they're going to flip him for bullpen help i don't even know what you're going to get for joe adele in a trade right now i well i don't know if he's a stash for me in redraft leagues at all other than maybe al only leagues i think this is a great opportunity for the angels watching jose suarez pitch last night really should like be a reminder that anything that they have that's valuable in their system they should trade and they should go get pitching because jose suarez was horrific and we're at a point where it's like how much longer can this

team justify all this awesome stuff that happens on offense and put out guys that can't give up less than four and three innings and i like and i'm what i'm saying here is i would take zach netto i would take joe adele's hot start and move anything you can i think you can sell it might be the one i held on to just because shortstop has been an issue i don't disagree but like i also just think take anything. They're progressively moving. They have the youngest hitter in all of the minor leagues going. They're pressing, moving over extended spring training. Edgar Cuero, they're moving. I mean, they are just doing the same thing.

Any guy that shows any success. Call the Marlins and see if you can take Avisel Garcia's contract off their hands and hand them Adele and they'll give you a picture. Yeah, but Adele, this is a prime opportunity for them that I think they should be aggressive because adding to what you were saying. One thing I think it's kind of interesting, though, the numbers don't like pop to you or anything like that. But take it what Joe Adele is doing in the minors with no information of anything changing. with no information of anything changing. And then look at Jared Kelnick, who Jared Kelnick, you know, openly,

we know the whole story, finally letting like, you know, outside people come into his little circle, working more in driveline. Saw an incredible spring and now he's hitting 300. And, you know, he makes a diving catch the other night, stealing bases, hits a huge bomb. But Adele's been a driveline for three years. Yeah, but my point is, is like Joe Adele has done nothing different jared kelnick is doing something different and we're seeing new results you'd think like as a different organization might think yeah and there's to some extent there's just uh no one's given adele a full shot yet like what if you gave him 400 500 plate appearances you know

well look what the cardinals are doing his strikeout rate actually the rate actually be? The Cardinals went to Nolan Gorman this offseason and were like, you can't hit high fastballs. That is your crutch. You need to fix this. And that is what he focused on. Guess what? That's Joe Adele's crutch. I mean, Joe Adele's unfortunately can't hit all of them,

but the high fastball, that has been like a well-known thing for him for quite some time. Josh Lau, is he making some? Or Josh Lowe? He's a Lowe. He's a Lowe. He's a Lowe. Brandon's a Lowe.

But go get Adele somewhere with an organization that can put that type of focus in and make a change. Even if Jared Kellnix isn't going to be super sticky and keep forever, K percentage dropped a tiny bit at silver, 30%. He's making great defensive plays. He's doing something more. There's just nothing outside of like,

he's hitting six straight games that makes us feel good about Joe Ade adele giving that given that context actually what i see in joe adele stats this year is that he's probably just laying off the high fastball that sounds about right because he can't hit him he cannot hit his own you know but that doesn't necessarily mean it's it's going to work any better in the major leagues no and that's why i'm not a buy on him whatsoever you know just adding to what you were saying, DVR, things I look at, I really try to focus on like, obviously, velo sustainability, you know, pitch sustainability, if I'm looking at like pitchers. Also something I'm really fascinated with too, and what I've likened it is with Dre Jamison,

is how catchers were treating them and seeing how that's going to monitor into the year. Like that first Dre Jameson, when he replaced Madison Bumgarner, he was more slider than anything else. And he had Gabriel Moreno at catcher. And then when he came in that next, I don't think it was a spot start, but he came in again, Jose Herrera was his catcher and they went away from the slider. So like pitch usage is something I really want to monitor because Jamison was awesome when he was all slider.

And then Herrera fastball, fastball, fastball. He got banged up a little bit. And then what did he do against the Padres? Nelson Cruz comes in. They have the, they come to the mound,

Dre Jamison, three straight sliders to strike out. Nelson Cruz ends the game. He needs to throw his slider a whole bunch more. So it's like watching the pitch mix and making sure like Velo sustainability is out there. That's the main. That's also the main volatility beyond atmospheric effects. That's the main volatility in stuff plus because Kyle Harrison's number is so high because he didn't make it out of the first inning.

So he was still pumping fast balls and his fastball has this best stuff plus out of all of his pitches now that's still good news for him long term right he has this awesome fastball but his stuff plus is going to be lower if he throws the secondaries more in his next start that's it okay yeah that's it that's a that's a really fascinating point that it like it almost uh manipulated the stuff plus because when he didn't have anything going he goes screw it i gotta go back to the fastball and i just gotta pump it and then obviously that's gonna that's gonna pop a little bit that's interesting whoa what are you listening to this for wait who's talking you know you're driving a 2024

ford escape with available alexa built in so you can change the music. Oh yeah. Alexa change station to 99.2. See purchase a 2024 escape ST line all wheel drive with tech pack at 3.49% APR for 72 months with down payment. That's just two 67 bi-weekly cash value of 40,294 plus eligible Ford owners get a thousand dollar bonus for details. Visit your local Ford store or four.ca. I was just thinking about Kevin Smith. Now that we were talking about Joe Adele because he's another guy that got off to a fast start at AAA this year and now he's up for the A's. I thought Kevin Smith was going to be good last year. In fact, I think I had a bold prediction last year that Kevin Smith was going to lead AL rookies in war or something, which would have put him ahead of Bobby Witt Jr. That was my galaxy brain off the wall.

Spicy hot take. Give me all the hot sauce. Here's the stupidest thing I can say. And if I'm right, I will get to laugh so hard about it. And I look like a moron if anybody remembered that, but I'm just bringing it up because I, you know,

when you, that's the way to take bold predictions are supposed to be, they're supposed to be stupid. You know, someone remembers that, you know, someone's out there just waiting. They got a draft save in their tweets,

like, Kevin Smith, the DVR, this is going to be a great one. Well, I did get at least one tweet. I think it was actually a loyal listener, OJ, sent us a message, and he's like, hey, you and I are probably the only people that care about this because I was really into Kevin Smith last year. Kevin Smith. So it wasn't even trolling me,

but it was like the next level down for Victor Robles. Like there are certain players that a transaction occurs, a play is made, I get a tweet from somewhere. It's like... Like my old Gerald Cotton tweet. Yes. That's similar to like, yeah, Victor Robles. I get notifications.

I don't have to turn notifications on for Victor Robles on any sort of platform. I just get them. They just happen. They just fly right in my window but kevin smith we saw a lower k rate in the seven games so much seven games at triple a were the swing decisions better it was actually five homers four steals as well so really good numbers kind of best walk rate he's had in the minor leagues in numbers that were more similar

to what he did back in 2021 when he had that sort of age 24 rebound breakout with the Blue Jays. And that was accompanied by a swing change. I know that was something that pushed him onto, I want to say it was Keith Law's top 100 going into 2022. So it was weird to see this guy who was kind of stuck in Toronto

popping back up on some prospect list, getting a chance in Oakland. I'm thinking this is perfect. This is a great buy low for the A's and like many things the A's have done at least year one of that experiment didn't go well so is anything different about Kevin Smith now and is he actually a deep league target given that there's power speed and endless opportunity for playing time in Oakland I mean it was a nice beginning but you've got that same thing with Adele, where he's got a large reduction in strikeout rate, but in fact, for him, an increased swing strike rate.

And then he's got a 52% fly ball rate, which makes me nervous. So it's not all good in this minor league line, even though five homers, four stolen bases in seven games. I mean, it's about as hot as you can start a season. Yeah, go back to the PCL stuff. You know, I mean, hitting there like the beginning of the year, you know, Tyler Soderstrom was putting up 113s on the Diamondbacks team.

And, you know, there's a lot of big offense. I think the stolen bases are good. I think the most interesting thing across the board for that is the endless opportunity. That's what makes him intriguing. Kevin Smith is a type of prospect that, you know, prospect, the board for that is the endless opportunity that's what makes him intriguing the kevin smith is a type of prospect that uh you know prospect that i um i would always struggle with because there's barely ever any signs of real life and then they just kind of keep going back to triple

a they do some stuff get opportunity it's like what happened with brandon drury with the reds the other year like opportunity is 26 now. He's starting to get into that. Well, I'm in my peak and I'm getting a chance now. I could get with it with that, but that wouldn't be a big aggressive thing I would have. I just don't think anybody's going to stop him.

So sure. Yeah, I think this is interesting, but I don't think... Why is he ostensibly up? What was the corresponding one? Oh, one of their terrible players who shouldn't be in the big leagues got hurt, I think. It's like create a

player roulette. Just try to pretend and see if you know the name. Jason Peterson? No, actually, Jason Peterson is at least a big leaguer. Oh, Seth Brown. No, Seth Brown. It was actually one of their good players. It was Seth Brown. So it was a large share of playing time that opened up, but he didn't

even need that. Okay, I'm defending Kevin Smith now. Here we go. My Tuesday has gone to absolute pot. Last season, Kevin Smith, 7.8% barrel rate. I'll take that. And it was a pretty bad strikeout to walk ratio. It was like five, almost six times as many Ks than walks. The slash line doesn't meet the content quality here.

A 180, 216, 302 is horrific. You should have zero barrels. 9% barrel rate and nearly 200 plate appearances for his career. There's something there. There's enough there for the A's to say, let's just see what happens for six weeks. And if it's not working out, fine. Send him back to Vegas and let him mash in Vegas some some more that's fine it could be seth brown with speed

and more positional value yeah i mean that would be a great that would be a good fantasy asset but like is kevin what level is kevin smith dvr is he deep league pick him up because maybe it works out and you've talked about kevin smith's a breakout or is it like watch what he does over the next couple days and then pick up we talked about edmundo sosa on yesterday's show getting that opportunity in philly i mean is it is it that different probably not sosa's career strikeout rate in the big league is a little bit lower also doesn't walk but does show a little bit of barrel ability has a a little bit of pop. Has a little bit of speed. It's probably similar to that.

And I think in a 15-team mixed league where you're looking for that last spot on your bench, throwing a buck or two in fab out of 1,000, I think you could waste money on worse players somehow, believe it or not. Even though the slash line last year would say, that's the worst player you've ever picked up. Brutal. Absolutely brutal. Graduated prospects, also a thing that's happening

early in this season. We got into this just a little bit, I think, at the end of last week's show. Corbin Carroll, Gunnar Henderson, Josh Young, Hunter Brown, Spencer Steer, Ken Waldachuk, among maybe even a few others, and more to come, of course. Do you like how quickly players graduate off of course yeah do you like how how quickly players

graduate off of the the lists that you make welsh like does it does it kind of drive you crazy or does it actually get you kind of excited that you get to see some fresh names moving up it gets me excited because you look at the same names forever and there's also this element of like there are guys that you want off i will tell you i wanted spencer steer off this list because it's like how do i do with Spencer Steele? Like, I kind of like him, he's playing, but like, I want some of these guys to go off. And there's kind of the fresh eyes look

when I got to take Gunner and Corbin Carroll off and you start to really like pay attention. Here's your new number one. And oh, this guy just moved up and having the realization that, you know, this guy is now a top 20 player. I think it gives, for me, it gives me like different value perspectives

of when they start to come off. And I think, as I mentioned in the show last week as well, one thing that I think is really fun to start toying with this idea is by the time May comes around, you are going to have players that were in, you know, ranked around low 30s and whatnot that might end up being pseudo top 20 prospects around, you are going to have players that were ranked around low 30s and whatnot that

might end up being pseudo top 20 prospects just by virtue of graduations and people not jumping in and moving a whole lot of players up. So it just kind of gives you some new inherent value. But yeah, when the graduations start to happen, I've got brand new top 100 players. And personally, on my list, some of the guys that jumped into the top 100 are some old faves that have had really good early starts, particularly just throwing out one that I love. And I've really been rooting for is like Khalil Watson, who famously last year had like a 45% strikeout rate for some of the early goings, but you know, so far so good in his first couple

starts in the first couple of games, already got a homer got a stolen base hitting over 400 which is what you want to see and has more walks than strikeouts at high a right now and that to me uh i did talked on my prospect one show earlier in the year that like i didn't have a lot of spring training quantifiable stuff of why i wanted to say that he was going to break out outside of his manager saying he looked like one of the best. And now you're seeing it in game. He's not striking out. All the tools are in play. And that's a guy that jumped back into the top 100. So just kind of throwing that out as guys are graduating, it's more excuse to move some players up and maybe even be a little aggressive early on in ranks. Yeah. I imagine staring for years, sometimes the same names actually gets frustrating. I mean, it it's it's just the nature of

of rank louise arias was a famous one our mutual friend james anderson and i james and i had about an entire off season where we were just like we want him the hell off of this list like what do you do anymore and that just happens with these guys like you know if i were to start you had them high and but they're getting older and every year they get older you should probably drop them if they're still on it and you're battling like proximity versus like the new hot and young and up-and-coming guys and and that's where it's like i would like you to go like if i'm being honest i kind of want francis guavarez to go away i kind of want him off the list because it's like i like the bats going again but he was a little you know stopped oswald peraza is another one of those.

Get off the list, please. Let's just graduate so I don't have to look at it anymore. Because then you're really starting to have this battle of like, what do I value? This guy who can compete this year, who's had some decent major league results, but questionable minor league or whatever, compared to the next big up at Miguel Blaze with the Boston Red Sox or Anthony Gutierrez, who's one of the youngest players. Yeah, that's the ultimate battle for me, is the young floor ceiling versus proximity, always.

Yeah. I think there's a lot of opportunity here in this process, and we've seen it already in the past. Carson Sestouli had a a column on fan graphs what was it called prospects something about prospects but uh fringe five there it is came to my brain right at the same time it came on the screen. Fringe 5. And the whole idea was these are players that are not on list right now, but maybe they're not on list just because of the cyclical nature of lists. We have the big list before the season,

and then we have the mid-season update, and then we have the post-season update. But there's all these ups and downs and graduations going on between. A real list would be fluid, and yet that's impossible to ask of, especially of public prospect workers who, for the most part, are part-time. There's a few full-timers, and then there's a lot of people just doing this for the love of it and doing it as a hobby. So asking them to just, what's your top 100 right now, right now, like, you know, a week after the season starts, I need to know right now.

And so he actually created an opportunity for himself with a major league team where he is sorting through the prospects that are in between these lists and maybe popping up due to performance, but not in front of, not due to scouts you know that sort of said performance prospects is a word i use sometimes that's kind of like the that's like the the robo scout stuff you and i did an episode on a little bit like a von brown would be one of those justin durden those would be the fringe five guys for sure i think jonathan aranda actually might be in that fringe five i think he actually to me is the quintessential one of like you know playing time versus production versus what we've seen before um he might be a bigger name than he's a hard one to put to put down right now too and you might be just itching for him i

want him off he is no he might be number one i just i'm scrolling through my list as we're going and i was like what position does he play what is his opportunity with the rays really we saw vidal brujan go through this already. And like, oh, Brujan's probably still got to be on some list somewhere. No, I think he's exhausted. He graduated. He found his way. It took a lot more time than it should have, but it actually happened.

The French Five originally, I think, was a whiteboard on the wall near my desk because back in the day, Carson Sestouli was working at Rotowire part-time. He crossed paths in Madison, so he was working at Rotowire for a little while, probably 10 years ago now at least. Charlie Blackman was on that board once.

I remember distinctly. Charlie Blackman was on the Fringe 5 board. I don't know if that was his biggest hit ever, but it was among the biggest. Charlie and I have a good relationship just because I pointed out that my homeboy was Carson Sestoulin. He's like, yes, I love Carson. He put me on the map. Yeah, man.

I mean, that map was literally a whiteboard hanging on the wall next to my desk. Mookie Betts. The first time I ever picked up Mookie Betts was because of the fringe fight. Yeah, I think it's kind of a fun exercise. I mean, I know there have been all sorts of systems to try and dig up players like this. And it's like the most fun part of evaluating players. There have been all sorts of systems to try and dig up players like this. It's the most fun part of evaluating players. Casey Schmidt maybe would fit.

A lot of times it's guys who are a little old for the level. They're old for the level because of things that are out of their control, like injury, or maybe they went to a smaller college and didn't have the opportunity to leave early. All these things. There's all these reasons why a player could kind of slip under the radar. Smaller bonus international player that picked up Velo or picked up some tools while working in the lower minors for a while. Lots of ways to make a list like this.

But I always thought that was a really great feature that Carson put together. It's tougher too now too because it's like, you know, what would a current fringe five look like? Would it be comparative? Cause the only people I can be honest with you, I feel like the only major focus on top 100 list is real baseball prospect that has no consideration of fantasy MLB pipeline, baseball,

America, top 100 is a very popular there in the fantasy world. It's not about top 100. It's a top three, four, five hundreds. That's kind of how the prospect fantasy prospect world lives. So like a fringe five that is based off of the top 100 might actually be very relevant still to fantasy ones. But you could still kind of dig in.

And I think it comes back to what we're talking about. It becomes very like auto-generated robo-scouty where it's like guys that have big pop numbers in places, those become the fringe guys and all the guys like we talked about. But a new era of fringe five might have to be a little bit different than a top 100 focus.

Yeah, prospect lists are huge compared to what they were 10 years ago. They are much longer. And deeper. They're now, I've got this prospects live, you know, monstrosity here, you know,

and there's like, this is like one of mine, you know, what five or six of these books right there. Yeah, exactly. I know. I mean,

I, I got two right here. If people can see, I got the prospects live in the baseball America right down there. As I'm sitting here looking at my own top 500 list that I have that goes over a thousand players that I don't even publish. So the prospect game is just so different.

There's so many opinions. There's so much into it that sometimes it actually is a little refreshing to just, you know, get into like some names that no one's talking about and stat wise. But that's like a fun, that's a fun reliving the prize when prospecting was good and clean and pure. Everybody,

the fringe five, I don't want to become the kind of person that harkens back to 10, 15, 20 years ago. It was better back then. Not everything was better back then, but that was a great era for just mining random prospects. You start talking about score

sheets next well you know now you have the opportunity like for example i've got a fringe three off of my stuff plus list today here are here are their names riley thompson jp france i guess i'll throw logan allen in there you know i don't think he's... Where is he in the top 100? He's on a few top 100 lists. He's a fringy top 100 or inside the top 100 guy. He's the biggest name of those guys. Those three guys were in my top 10 by Stuff Plus among starters.

One of the responses I got was from an Astros fan saying, well, I didn't understand why they protected J.P. France, but maybe this is part of why. And it may end up the Josh James route. He also has a 72 location plus in his early going. And if you look at his background, he has a lot of high strikeout rates and high walk rates, so there's probably a command problem there.

But can you tell me anything about Riley Thompson? I only think he's on the 40-man, and people are talking about his team maybe losing him. No, I mean, Riley Thompson, I think I saw pitch once in Cubs camp not too long back. They've actually done a lot of good stuff on the upper tier of a lot of those guys that have been like fringe AAA to major league. Caleb Killian is another one of those guys, but the six strikeout numbers, a big bodied guy as well.

Six strikeouts, four innings, good early run off of last year, though. ERA has been fringy. It was four, four, two and double a.

I think this is like just early good results. Big strikeout rate increased last year off of his single i know i'd like to see the pitch i'd like to see if there's um if there's any addition you know like how i talked about like with bryce miller like bryce tells me oh i'm now doing gyro and and a sweeper i'd love to know because i don't actually lance brosdowski would probably be someone that would be fantastic here as he covers the cubs if there is a pitch mix difference here is riley whoa this is pretty crazy he's throwing six pitches by our model and the change up slider four seam and cutter are all plus the sinker is and the curve is a minus but that's six pitches throw the four good ones i don't know yeah right he could even he could be

even better if he if he didn't throw the zinkering curve this you got to spare yourself the the jeff zimmerman uh flow chart that ends with are you then don't throw all six dvr i wanted to bring this up before since we're getting to the end of the show um this is one i actually spent some time watching last night one of the first comments i saw when you posted this, you know, yesterday was, oh my God, Brandon Fott isn't on this list. He's way down there. He was a 99.8, I believe, on the Stuff Plus, which was like 27th or something. And I was curious at your take on him because I watched,

and this is only off the first start. I watched his second start last night, every single pitch. I went through the whole thing. And what doesn't show up on the stat line was interesting, is he went three and two-thirds no hit. He had a no hitter going in. You mentioned earlier the umps, really bad umps. Oh my God.

He got squeezed on four different calls, which could have been strikeouts, and one which ended up being a homer. He threw a slider on the outside corner that didn't end up going. He was heavy fastball, big slider, command was his problem, but he was pumping it past guys like Mike Ford, Jose Caballero. I mean, like actual major leaguers in here. I was way more impressed. And I think you're going to see a much bigger number in this next start. He ended up giving up about one homer. He walked two and he came out after around 70 pitches.

But again, no hit through three and two-third. And I feel like there is this, like, uptick of chaos that's going on with him. And the stuff plus numbers from the first start, I think, jumped out to people to make them freak out. Are you freaked out at all? Especially that there is a second start to kind of bounce off of. You just don't have the stuff plus numbers yet.

I just, I'm not freaked out like i said that the atmospheric effects uh the quality of the data what i what i what really makes me not know what to say is ryan nelson because the you know the whole thing with stuff plus is that it beats K-BB in small samples and tells us more about their possible future strikeout rates than their current strikeout rates. And yet we've got Ryan Nelson doing it again with a 12.5% strikeout rate and a 10% walk rate and a one Oh six stuff. Plus with four pitches that are well clear of,

uh, of, of average in stuff. Plus if Ryan Nelson is good, then you're waiting on them to DFA Madison Bumgarner, which may still happen, but I don't know how long that runway is. Here's a weird question.

I don't know if either of you guys have the answer to this. How was Ryan Nelson mostly a reliever in college? How is that guy not a starter? That happens a decent... Well, he's still pitching like a reliever. He's still throwing all his fastballs somewhere. And that's a pretty common thing. The Dimebacks actually...

I think they like to do that, by the way. They just drafted Landon Sims, who was a reliever, a really renowned reliever, who then in his last year of college transferred over to being a starting pitcher and then had Tommy John, of course. And then he's coming back and he's like a crazy underrated pitcher.

He was one of the best pitchers in baseball when he converted from being a reliever into a starter. And I think it's, I don't know, I tend to think sometimes that might be good for some of these guys where they get to hone in on like two really dominant pitches on the back end of the rotation, which a lot of starters do anyways. And then they can just kind of stretch them out towards the end and the developmental process with the right team ends up working out. But yeah, I think that is interesting. Ryan Nelson feels like a guy who's always been a starter. I'm just still not impressed.

Like you're saying, like the K numbers aren't there. I'm worried he's going to start just getting hit. And I feel like he doesn't have a lot of like, when he does get hit, there's no redeeming qualities. You know what I mean?

There's no other redeeming qualities. The strikeout numbers are not going to be there. Maybe he's not going to walk quite as much. But I still don't even think, even if it were only Madison Bumgarner that holds me back from wanting to stash Brandon Fott. I think he needs to go deeper into games. That was his big thing last year.

More innings than anybody, more strikeouts than anybody. He hasn't gone five in his first two. The second start was in Tacoma. It was rainy. It was cold, it looked like. And he was dominant with the fastball. But the pitch mix also was a problem that's what i was mentioning earlier he was 73 fastball on that first start where you got the

stuff plus which is interesting you know because you were saying how like kyle harrison got away with it he practically only threw the uh the fastball in that first start we didn't get to see that slider which may have also altered um brandon fought in putting up bigger stuff plus numbers i am dying to see what this next start is going to be and see if it gets any better i've got two starts in here oh you do have two starts now because the one you posted was the was the first right i don't know i think it's got two starts in here it says the slider is a 114 his curve is a 113 i like that two breaking balls plus. The four seam is a 97, which will play in the major leagues.

And it doesn't like his change, but A, he could, with a slider and curve, ignore the change. And B, a 15-pitch sample for change-ups is not enough. And he's got to throw his curveball more. He doesn't throw it quite enough. He's a heavy slider, and that's why

I do see it now updated to the two, so i guess it didn't really push it enough because i i didn't think that first game would have registered enough on the slider uh to pop but yeah still not quite there but big plus numbers i mean i i still think there's a lot here two breaking balls that register that well and a 97 stuff plus fastball is is enough of an arsenal even if the changeup doesn't work out. Buy, buy, buy. Buy some pitchers. Go buy some Kyle Harrison.

Go buy some PCL top prospect pitchers, is what I say. I'd still prefer to hold Brandon Fott to Simeon Woods Richardson and Taj Bradley, too, if that's an option, if you still can choose between the three. Well, because you have, even if you, you can hear how conflicted I'm a Ryan Nelson even if Ryan Nelson stays you have this bum gunner option and thought seems like very obviously next

because Drew Jameson's in a hybrid role now right and Zach Davies hurt right took that oblique injury yeah that's why I drew yeah Dre's gonna start on Friday because he's taking that spot from Davies who's going to be out I think quite a while yeah so probably at least a month but bum gunners numbers going to be out I think quite a while. Probably at least a month.

Baumgartner's numbers continue to be terrible. And there are literally people on Twitter talking about DFA. Also the Diamondbacks can't justify it. They're the number one. They sit atop the NL West right now. They lead the league in the stolen base. You take all that together, you can't put out literally one of the worst pitchers in baseball

and show face. And he hasn't made a single change to his arsenal or approach. Of course not. Like ever. It always worked for him until it didn't. Maybe, maybe there's some tweaks. I mean,

I'm not getting enough credit, but we don't see anything on the outside. There's no like change. There's no new pitch. There's no change in movement. There's just the same idea over and over. If he changed his oil, the car still runs the same.

So I don't know. I think that's a perfect note for us to begin signing off. Just a reminder. As we go, you can get a subscription to the athletic for $1 a month for the first year at the athletic.com slash rates and barrels. You can find Welsh on Twitter at, is it the Welsh?

You can find, you know, at, you know, Sarah, so you can find me at Derek. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Thursday.

Thanks for listening.