Rates & Barrels - Project Prospect - Walking the Rookie Workload Tightrope

Episode Date: August 15, 2023

DVR, Eno and Welsh are taking a deep dive into prospect pitcher workloads, recent call-ups and more. Rundown Wade Meckler - 0:58 Luis Matos - 3:35 Osleivis Basabe - 11:24 Colton Cowser - 17:04 Line Drive Rate and Vaughn Grissom - 20:32 Logan Allen - 32:45 Pfaadt vs Allen - 38:55 Taj Bradley - 41:58 Reese Olson - 50:15 6-Man rotation vs Piggy backing - 56:07 Innings Cap Alarm - 1:02:54 Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Welsh on Twitter: @isitthewelsh Subscribe to The Athletic for just $2/mo for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Check out these offers from our ad partners... HelloFresh: Go to hellofresh.com/50rates and use code 50rates for 50% off plus free shipping! LinkedIn: Right now, you can try LinkedIn Sales Navigator and get a sixty-day free trial at LinkedIn.com/rates23 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it is Tuesday, August 15th. Happy Tuesday, it is Project Prospect. On this episode, we dig into recent promotions and motions, and then we're going to take a deep dive into the rookie class of pitchers. We had a great question from Monday's show about a few rookie pitchers and their expected workloads this season. There's still a lot of other pitchers we should talk about in that same light, so we'll set some expectations for the rest of that group

and maybe even dig into a possible future closer or two looking at this group of rookie relievers again time permitting so gang's all here Derek Van Ryper, Eno Saris, Chris Welsh let's get started with a promotion the Giants have decided to swap Luis Matos off the roster and put Wade Meckler on the roster Welsh should we care about wade meckler in the short term from a fantasy perspective oh this is very casey schmidt should we care if we have you know depth needs for big leagues sure i will say the thing that was positive is i believe in the debut they were hitting him too which is nice you'd love to see these guys hitting higher in the lineup that opens up opportunities which is nice.

You'd love to see these guys hitting higher in the lineup. That opens up opportunities. But I think he's in a similar mold. And the Giants, they've got kind of a theme of players that they have in their system. Obviously, Marco Luciano is a little bit different. But I was going to say at the top is like, Wade Meckler is kind of like Luis Matos from just an overall offensive standpoint.

There's more power in Matos' game. There's more stolen bases, but we're talking high walk percentages, low K percentages. They drafted a bunch of these guys like three or four years ago, and Matos is one of those, and Casey Schmidt was one of those.

I think Meckler's probably closer to Casey Schmidt, maybe hitting two. There's going to be some run in RBI opportunities, but we're looking at a guy that has six career homers. He's got eight career stolen bases. Now that is this year and last year. So it's over two minor league seasons, but there's not a ton of power in the game.

There's a lot of on base. This is an OBP guy, maybe down the line. This is like a Nimmo ish type of player, but I would say from like-term rest of season, I would probably have little to no interest. I would bet you there's a lot better prospects that you could, not even just prospects, but overall players in redraft

that you could be going towards. Though it is fun, it's a new name. Maybe he gets on base a little bit, but I'm a pass on Meckler. Yeah, I agree. It's amazing to me, though though that he's projected to have a 25 strikeout rate meckler i mean uh we're talking about a guy who's running 15s and 16s in the minors so let's say you give him more of an 18 strikeout rate i do think he can hit you know 250 260 but you know one of, one of the more controversial things

that I believe is that quality of contact is meaningful for every type of player, you know, from the guys who have the least amount to the guys who have the most amount, and that it describes your upside. And so, you know, I was a little bit excited about Matos until I saw that he really, he hasn't even hit a ball 108 this year. So he has minus raw power, minus game power that he's not getting to. And I think Matos is the guy I'm still more excited about long-term

because he has put up higher ISOs at least. So I'm hoping there's a 109 or a 110 in there that we can't see. And he also has stolen more bases than Meckler. So long-term, I'm still more into Matos. If you can sort of hold on to him, I might hold on to him. But I'm not that excited about either. I just took a peek at the season season stat grid um over on fan graphs that shows like you know taking a big leap in barrel rate i wanted to see what kind of players

added barrel rate in 2022 and how many of them held on to it of the top 10 guys who added barrel rate uh and you know the average of that is around three percent% to their barrel rate. Eight of them lost barrel rate the next year. So the only people that added barrel rate in 2022 and added it again this year are Ryan McMahon and Aaron Judge in that sort of top 10 to 12. And if you're talking about one of the biggest increases of barrel rate from one year to the next is 3%, right? That means Luis Matos could add 3% next year and still have a below average barrel rate next year. And he'd be one of the top 10 increasers in barrel rate. It's definitely a concern. I mean, I think he's listed at 511, 160. You've seen him in person. Is he actually bigger than that? Is he going to get bigger and stronger?

I think that's part of the conversation for the long-term projection. But better real-life player than fantasy player might be part of the tagline on Luis Matos. That could be part of the concern. And he was running really cold at the plate. Even though he's not striking out a lot, he's walking a little bit. A 32.4% hard hit rate underneath that barrel rate doesn't point to a lot of potential improvement, right? If you add that 3%, like you said, 5% is just okay. It's still a bottom third of the order here. Without powers, it's actually not that useful. I mean, it can look like this. They can

knock the stick out of your hand. I mean, how many weak rounders do you want? No, I think when you're building in the type of player you want to bet on, I know what you're saying when you were saying the quality of contact, but this is, you were also alluding to, this is a guy that I think there's a lot of the pieces to work through and find improvement. I was thinking about when you were saying it, I was kind of thinking maybe in the actual year-to-year improved barrel rate, maybe we would hear like Nupar. If you were to hear like Luis Matos was

out working in similar ways with places like Driveline or taking that quality of contact that he's showing or his pitch recognition, maybe is a better way to put it because this is like really low K percentages, which I love. So I mean, he's going to find ways to make contact. It's just, what is that contact going to look like? You hope it can be optimized and it doesn't become like Ahmed Rosario. And then he can actually optimize it and get in the way of like a Lars Neupahr. He can run more. He can hit, you know, more homers, 10 homers last year.

He also was one of the most improved players in the AFL last year, turning on fastballs, getting inside breaking pitches, really felt comfortable. And I think this is also one of those guys that once they find that comfort at a specific level is going to be able to turn it back on. Before 2022, before he hit high A, he had been hitting 300 at every single stop. And then that developmental high A is a big push. Like when you jump from a ball to high A, I think that might be arguably, I think that could be the biggest jump even from high A to double A. Well, he completely crashed his average, but then he boosted back up. Yeah. Matos. We're talking about Matos.

But then from high A to double A, he was able to completely rebound went went from 211 to 304 while cutting his strikeout percentage. So I think he's a very smart baseball player that takes time for adjustment. This might be a post-hype sleeper type of prospect. And I think he can actually be way more useful than we're even talking about right now. But this is all kind of under the crux of like, is Wade Meckler better? No, I think this is dip your toe time for a lot of teams.

We're getting prospects that are being held back for September, and then we're going to get a lot of teams. Look at the Diamondbacks you're doing. I know I did it. Sorry, I talked about them. But they're just like, everybody's garbage, and they're just sitting them all down, and they're bringing up everybody.

Here's Bryce Jarvis. Anybody we can to try to get some work, this is what a lot of teams are going to do. Or try to catch lightning in a bottle. Yeah, who do we have? We've got this 23. hitting 400. So it's like, yeah,

if we get a guy who's hitting 350 in the major leagues, we could use that even if he has no power. Yeah, and he might not be for the Arizona Fall League. You know, the Arizona Fall League is a place for teams to take. Sometimes he's 23, 24. How does this guy fit into the organization? Do we want to protect them from Rule 5? Yeah, close to the majors.

Sometimes it might be the next year they're going to make a big jump. You know, you get a high-A guy that's going to go all the way through. I mean, you know, Matt Mervis last year started at high-A and got all the way up to AFL and then the majors. That it's just kind of like let's learn about the players that have some type of either pop up from their production or might be on a roster bubble, even from 40 man that teams are looking at. And maybe the Giants decided in this respect, let's see what it's at the majors. We've kind of seen what we need at this moment with Matos.

And I think we can read a little bit too much into it sometimes when the guys get called up like, oh, my gosh, 23 year old, two years in the system. Let's go. It's like, well, they might want to see, you know, what role can this guy play? Similar into Casey Schmidt, better real life player. I think Meckler could be the better real life player than fantasy. I think Matos has a potential to match, but it just might take a little bit of time. One piece of optimism might be that if you look in the top 30 for 2022 barrel rate increases and then you look for blue across the line so somebody who added barrel rate slowly over time you get some interesting names Rymel Tapia, Elvis Andrews, and Jose Altuve are all guys that made decent contact,

had enough defense to stay on the field, and added power slowly over time. Good K percentages. Well, I want to say Tapia did not. Was Andrus good in K percentages? Andrus is okay, too. I mean, they're all at least average-ish type of strikeouts. I mean, Matos would have the lowest strikeout rate of that group,

but maybe he could fit into that group where he's just adding a little bit of power over time, peaks at 18, 21 or something, but gives us some nice 10 to 15s. I mean, I just don't see him as going past that in power. I think I'll put a bow on this by saying i think the longer term outlook for for matos would be that you know defensively can play center field playing time could be there throughout 2024 could just be solid for counting stats as a result of

volume but then if you try to project the long-term ceiling i don't think a 10 to 12 home run season at the big league level is out of bounds based on what he was doing age to level. I mean, look more at double A than triple A, just given the differences between those those leagues. He was so young for the level, even at double A this year. That's probably where the core skills that you want to project from really are at. Maybe it's 10 to 12 homers, 25 steals in his best years. Good batting average, solid OBP. If that gets him to the top of the lineup over time, then it's a nice fantasy profile.

Seems like a very good number two hitter for a Giants team in the future. Yep. Yeah. Just kind of playing the long game and knowing that if you're in a more shallow format, especially he's going to be a very difficult player to roster until all of those things fall into place. I wonder if the profile is actually similar for Oslavis Basabe. He's getting some run at shortstop for the Rays right now with Wander Franco on the

restricted list. It looks like speed and the hit tool are going to have to really kind of carry Basabe. And part of this is that Taylor Walls is hurt right now. I think Taylor Walls is pretty clearly the Rays' preferred backup shortstop, but he's down with an oblique injury. So Basabe got promoted on Sunday. He's going to play at least throughout this week, probably a bit longer. What do you see in this profile? Is this still short-term more of a monoligue player and just kind of a watch list sort of guy in more shallow formats? I mean, what do you see from him, you know?

I mean, this is, yeah, it's exactly along those lines, except that you don't have the really upper end or really elite level strikeout rates from Basave that you did from Matos. I think you have maybe even less demonstrated power. I do see a 1095 from Basave in AAA this year in 426 plate appearances. So the raw power, that's a number that we haven't seen yet from Matos. So could be a little bit more raw power in there. And I do know that the Rays, as an institution, value hitting the ball hard very highly. I mean, you can see it in all their acquisitions.

They lead the league always in hitting the ball hard, not always in barrels or lifting the ball, but hitting the ball hard is something they care about. And they've got, you know, Basabe up to a 40% hard hit rate in, in, in 2023.

That's Fangraph's hard hit, which is StatCast's hard hit. I don't know. The Rotowire one is, I think slightly on a different scale somehow. But maybe this is a guy who hits the ball hard just on the ground a ton, in which case I would probably take his batting average over Matos in the short run, even if I take Matos' upside in the long run.

But if he was going to play the rest of the year, what do you think Matos, what do you think Basabe would do? I think he would hit maybe like 260 275 with almost zero power uh maybe one or two or three homers and maybe you get five or six stolen bases out of him this is kind of an upside projection for basabe but he i mean i'm reading the tea leaves here he may be he may be the shortstop the rest of the way i mean walls they may prefer walls as a backup shortstop the rest of the way. They may prefer Walls as a backup shortstop, but that might also mean they prefer him as a backup.

I think this comes back into dipping your toes into seeing what do we have here? What do we have full on? I worry this is a ground ball guy. I actually saw him back in 2019. He was a Ranger. I think it was that Rangers team that anyone cares, but they won the Complex League Championship and it had like Edward Perez. I think it was that Rangers team that anyone cares, but they won like, you know, the complex league championship.

And it had like Edward, not Edward Perez, Herberto Hernandez, Herberto Hernandez was there. Big hard hit numbers to the raise also acquired. And quite a few players. I think maybe even Leone Tavares was on it, but either way,

my, my problem with him is been ground ball. He doesn't pull. He's kind of an all-fields hitter. He's a big ground ball hitter. He's had almost a 55-plus ground ball rate. He had a 62 in April. Yeah, it's been over 50%.

It's actually been over 53% at every level since 2001. He has one level had a 50 percent pull rate that you can add one more or one i guess two more into the 40 so it's like low pull it's um bad power in general and i'm just not a i'm not a basabi guy i don't i think um the profile that came to mind is luis garcia when the nationals you know because luis garcia has had better max evs like has better raw power and i think that's my point yeah you just you just said that uh we've seen basabi with a 109s i've seen i've watched bp sessions where um where luis garcia is mashing balls but then what happens when he gets into game? Hits across his body, ground ball, all fields approach

that can't tap into the power. And that's kind of what I see. He's a little bit more of a stolen base option, but this is not like, again, this is not a profile that I lock into unless they start to lock into something else. And you said it like, I think they value the max EVs, but I think bigger EVs,

unless they start to make sure that this guy can lift the ball, I think what they're doing is they're maximizing somebody that hits the ball on the ground a bunch. And if you have big, hard hit, you have the potential for errors. You have the potential to shoot them in and the gaps and stuff like that. I just don't know. Are they training this guy to try to become more of a power hitter or is this just maximizing his ground ball

approach and i don't want a ground ball approach guy yeah i don't know if you feel any different in here so if you're taking a peek at taylor walls and like taylor walls is like the exact opposite of basabe like he's not hitting the ball hard uh but when he does he does lift it a lot better well we've seen some off we've seen some like good offensive output from taylor walls before i think taylor walls is the guy i think i mean i think it's kind of clear that the situation of let's get a look at basabi but also it's pretty clear like why he's here i'm not sure it's to be like a big future away says kevin cash on taylor walls on eight nine yeah okay yeah looks like it is Basabe's job

for the foreseeable future in Tampa Bay. Let's talk about Colton Couser. We were excited about Couser when he got promoted. He's been optioned to AAA. It was a corresponding move for the return of Aaron Hicks. Similar contact quality issues to Matos as far as the lack of barrels goes, but we did see a nice hard hit rate, 42.5%.

Very different approach than Matos, with a K rate just under 30%, and a really nice walk rate up over 16%. Welsh, I think if I remember correctly, you were pretty optimistic about Kouser. This is probably a great long-term window to trade for him if you're in a league where you can hold him, but is anything changing

based on your first look at kouser at the big league level i'm pretty um i try not to be insanely reactive to first runs because we can go back to all the little tropey ones like mike trout was blah blah blah on his first whatever so i don't like to get like insanely reactive i will say if I were to pick like the most worrisome thing in that early debut was the barrel percentage was two and a half percent for Colton Couser, which is like, you could obviously lock that up to like readjusting to major league

pitching and trying to find your bat. And he had a better expected batting average, but he hit one 11, you know, so it's pretty hard to have, you know, any worse. So it was expected 205.

That has me worried a little. I've always liked his approach, though. I think he's got real power. He might be a little bit better from the real life perspective than fantasy, but I don't think it was out of mind to say that this could have been a 15-15 guy. So I think from a long-term perspective, I actually would be very cool if I'm out of it trying to make a trade, maybe in the offseason try to get him for dirt nothing because it was a really horrid debut. But

even in that awful barrel percentage, you saw right around a 108 max EV. He was still a hard hit percentage was over 40%. I mean, there's a few things I suppose to be encouraged about. This team has also done a great job of readjusting these prospects. And we saw Gunnar Henderson make some real serious changes throughout an entire season that Colton Couser didn't get to fully see. So I don't think we should be done with him,

but I definitely think maybe my optimism was a little too extreme. I had to lower him in my prospect ranks because the trend is going in a really bad direction. But the difference between how I lower someone, I think some other people will lower them is probably quite different. You could see Colton Couser's debut and be like, okie dokie, we were top 25 prospect.

Now we're outside the top 100 where I go, all right, we were top 15. Now let's move you outside the top 25 and let's kind of readjust into there. But I think there's still a very good future for Colton Couser with the Orioles. Yeah, I think this is the challenge of breaking in on a crowded depth chart on a team that is playing for a first-round buy. Yeah, you don't produce, you got to go. Yeah, you're going to have smaller windows to prove that you can contribute right now. It doesn't necessarily mean the long-term outlook has changed a whole lot.

I think that sort of adjustment on the prospect list makes a lot of sense. Let's keep it rolling. Let's get to Von Grissom. You know, we have Ozzy Albies on the aisle as the corresponding move. Projections are still solid for Von Grissom, albeit with limited power. AAA numbers are pretty good. Do you think he's still capable of unlocking more power? I mean, we're talking about a guy who's still really young for the level. Scouting grades suggest he'll eventually get to some sort of like league average sort of pop.

You success stories, of course, in Atlanta, players getting a lot better over time in the big leagues there. So where do you fall on Grissom? Because we know that the defensive limitations might be something that bump him in and out of the lineup and he's only playing right now because all of these is hurt but is he going to hit enough to play somewhere else on this team you know this is not something we think we talk about very often but I'm just going to mention it because Grissom and Cowes are both relevant to the discussion line drive rate and the reason we don't talk about it i think is because as an industry we've said well that's one of the noisiest stats out there

you know it's uh often done by stringers and if it's done by a stringer it is i mean it is done by stringers as line drive rate it's unless you have a stack cast to find one but so line drive rate. It's unless you have a stack cast to find one, but so line drive rate is defined by stingers. And what they happens is they see a ball and if it's a hit, it was a line drive. You know what I mean? You can play that game. When you watch a game, just watch a game and try to decide what a line drive is.

And it's almost impossible, you know, especially when you start talking about line drives in the infield line drives, the outfield, like where does that line drive, the outfield become fly ball, that line drive to the outfield become fly ball, you know, all that stuff.

But I was thinking about this when I was looking at Colton Couser because his ground ball rates are not what we would call worrisome. There's only 1 over 50% for Colton Couser. But when I was looking at his fly ball rates, I'm like, why are his fly ball rates so low? So Colton Couser's fly ball rates are like 22, 25, 29. Those are pretty low fly ball rates. And so I thought, let me just go over here while they're all talking

and do a line drive rate for AAA with at least 200 plate appearances. And there is Colton Couser, number 17th with a 30% line drive rate. And there's Von Grissom at 38th with a 30% line drive rate uh and there's von grissom uh at 38th with a 28% line drive rate now it is not bad to hit line drives there's no way you can convince me it is but it also doesn't stick that well i mean cole calhoun is third here with a 34% line drive right fourth is brett phillips fifth is davidcher telling you, well, you could hit a line drive and not hit the ball hard and still not be that great of a player. You know what I mean? So line drive rate is not something that I want to put my money on, but it is also tells you a

little bit about Colton Couser ran 300 batting averages with 23, 25% strikeout rates. I think it does speak a little bit to hit tool you got a 40 45 hit tool on colton cowzer i think maybe that's low on on on fan graphs and then when you go over port over to von grissom uh you get a 20 present hit tool 45 future so they don't think much of his hit tool either but yet these are two guys that are top 40 in line drive rate in triple a this year so i'm not saying that i have a easy takeaway point here but i would say that maybe we're underrating the hit tool for colton cowzer and von grissom and maybe we've gone too far as an industry away from line drive rate

because this is like literally the first as an industry away from line drive rate, uh, because this is like literally the first time I've looked at line drive rate on a leaderboard in five, 10 years. Um, and maybe that's, uh, some part of the magic here for, for Grissom and Couser is that, uh, maybe they do have some sort of a line drive stroke that's going to help them, uh, keep better batting averages than they're projected for. Mostly, when you look at Grissom and Couser,

you are impressed by their batting averages above all else. I really feel that way about Couser, by the way, about what you're saying. I don't know if I felt quite that way about Grissom, except, to your point, grissom is a much better strikeout guy than kouser is and he only had a he had a 15 line drive rate in the majors that he's registered this year 15 so coming back to it's a little less extreme for grissom in that uh he has similar ground ball rates to colton kouser but his fly ball rates are actually higher

than colton kouser's um so i don't think that he's necessarily filling up online drives every year uh the same way cowzer was but uh yeah i i don't think that the industry or at least fangraphs in this case uh thinks that highly of either hit tool uh i think it's a little bit more obvious when you look at von grissom's line that maybe his hit tool is a little better than his scouting grade yeah i i think that's sort of been borne out now in the numbers but i i wonder so orlando rc has been better than people expected this year no doubt about that he's held that spot down he's 14 better than league average he's like 28 years old you can see because they extended him the braves extended rc they gave him

a three-year 77.3 million deal, and I think there are still people that are like, wait, why'd they do that? Well, that looks pretty sharp right now. Yeah, I think they were doing that to be the utility guy, but, you know. Yeah, and that's not a guarantee of future playing time, but it just means he's there. And the bar to be a good enough defensive shortstop

and to be at least as good of a hitter, it's pretty clear what Grissom has to do if he wants to claim that spot. Albies isn't going anywhere. So then unless he hits enough to be in the rotation or at least force a rotation for DH, that's the other sort of problem that Grissom runs into. He just seems very blocked as far as the long-term value goes. I think short-term, maybe you could plug him back in as your middle infielder in a 15-team league, but that power, it might not be just around the corner.

It might be a few years away if it's going to happen at all. I think when you look at contact quality and low K rates, you see enough to project more. But are we talking 15 homer seasons at Grissom's peak? Or do you think there's more than that based on things you've seen at other levels? There might be more at it. You know, I was also looking just as a funsy here. One of the things that stands out about his last major league run was cutting the soft hit percentage down. So, you know, we focus on like what kind of contact he can make.

He had an 18% soft contact percentage in his first debut in 2022, down to 13% this last time. He's not pulling the ball at all. This is Grissom. He's not pulling the ball at all, which is definitely part of the problem, but you can see where the fix is.

It's 13.2%. And I went and looked. That would put him inside the top 50 of the least soft hit percentage, and based on that medium contact percentage, which is 64, that would put him in line with, I mean, it looks a little bit more Stephen Kwan-ish, Andrew Benintendiendi but there are some other similar players in there like Tim Anderson Corbin Carroll runs a higher

hard hit percentage but Anthony Volpe is in there so just an interesting look if you're looking at like the full contact isn't there but the quality of it is still has a lot of potential to bounce back where he's making better medium

and hard hit contact percentage in general if he can just find those barrels and he can adjust and pull the ball a little bit, get it in the air. I just say all of those little things are part of this recipe of like, why do we buy back in? Why are there post-hype sleepers?

Why do we buy back into these players? Because the talent's there. I agree with Eno. I think the hit tool grades are too low. I think he is a guy that you should target in fantasy in general because he steals a bunch of bases. And I think there's 10 to 15 homer power

at least if he gets an opportunity. But he didn't get it because it was all about defense and positional. And he never got that opportunity to play in the outfield because that team is too stacked. From what I hear, Ron Washington doesn't think he'd be a short stop and

ron washington is the guy in the end the man i mean he's the guy who's going to make you a shortstop if he believes in you he made marcus simeon into a shortstop because he believed in marcus simeon and he doesn't i don't from what i gather does not have that same belief for vaughn so i don't think i think the middle infield is out uh but a piece of of more upbeat news is uh Marcelo Zuna's not going to be a brave next year and uh they have a team option but I just don't see them picking up that big of an option for a guy who's been that bad and even as he's been good this year Marcelo Zuna hasn't been that great you know I don't think he's worth you know 12 15 million I haven't looked exactly's worth $12 million, $15 million.

I haven't looked at exactly what the option is, but he was being paid about that. So I think they let him go, and if they let him go, that means there's a bit of an opportunity for the Braves in the outfield. And I think you get the sort of short-term boost where you get a guy who's playing in the outfield but is eligible in the middle infield. I think Eddie Rosario, the team has an option on.

It's a cheaper option, so they may keep him around. But with how up and down Eddie Rosario has been, I think there's a non-zero chance that Grissom sort of gently beats him out or pushes Rosario to DH. I mean, there's an opportunity on that Braves team next year. It's in the outfield. I think Grissom can get it.

And they have not taken the opportunity to trade Grissom in any of these deals, offseason, you know, trade deadline. So I have a feeling that they are keeping him for the bat and they are going to find a position for him. And it'll probably be in the outfield in this offseason trade deadline. So I have a feeling that they are keeping him for the bat and they are going to find a position for him and it'll probably be in the outfield in this offseason. I just saw games played so far this season. Grissom had 19 games in the big leagues earlier in the year, all of them at shortstop,

one short of qualifying in leagues that require 20. That one game could be elusive. We'll see if he finds his way into that lineup at that spot one more time this year. Otherwise it could be no outfield play, uh, no outfield play in the minors this year. Yeah.

It was all practice stuff. Crazy short, like twice as much as he played second at triple a, but playing both middle infield spots still, uh, during his time. I wondered about that. If that was about building the trade value.

That's why I was so shocked that he wasn't moved at the deadline, because if you were trying to find a spot for him at some point, you would think at least split it up, get him in the outfield. Why would you not do that? If Ron Washington and the team truly doesn't believe he can be a shortstop, well, it would probably be about building up trade value and a shortstop is just exponentially going to be probably more valuable unless they put him in center and i always thought that that was going to happen and he was actually one of the more like surprising players not moved at the deadline just

based on need this is definitely a thing the guardians do by the way play guys a shortstop to build a trade yeah that is 100 yeah it's a thing it's 100 of the thing i mean it's the same thing as why if you pay attention to the international market and free agents, guess what? 70% of the players are shortstops. You don't see second basemen. Here's what you see. You see centerfielders, you see shortstops, and catchers. There's three positions when you're 16 years old

in the international market because there's a buildup of value when you're playing at those spots and athleticism young enough to stick there. But since it's survived, I kind of think i wouldn't be surprised if we see it i just you know the way rc is playing i think you can you can play them at shortstop i don't think they seemed i mean 19 games maybe there's internally a debate i mean this could be another thing maybe internally there's a debate about whether or not he can be shortstop but the i don't think the numbers uh suggest he can't be really one more game that's all we're asking for the fantasy community.

In the next few days, it could happen. Garcia needs a break or something. Yeah, could he get moved over? Yeah, but what if he slid over in the game? That should count, right? That would be games, not games started. Games played by position versus games started. I want to say a lot of sites use games played,

at least for in-season requirements. Well, I mean, I guess not Yahoo i guess well don't you remember the the yahoo famous where anthony rizzo had slid over on uh on shifts and they gave him second base eligibility because of where he shifted that's yahoo yahoo's the wild wild west they're like pew pew pew you get a position everybody but uh i guess his game started so cross your fingers marcus Colston at tight end, leaving baseball and going to football for 15 seconds is an all-timer from Yahoo as well. My last bit of fantasy football knowledge there.

I know the joke. We got back to Eno's time playing fantasy football. I'm glad that one landed. Let's get into checking in on the rookie pitchers. We talked about a few guys yesterday. One of our listeners asked us about Tanner Bybee and Gavin Williams, Bryce Miller and Bobby Miller, and where they might be at with their respective workloads compared to previous seasons. So I thought it might be beneficial to talk about the rest of this rookie class on this Tuesday episode.

The other Guardians pitcher, since we started with two of the Guardians yesterday, is Logan Allen. He's at 111 and two-thirds so far this season, went to 132 and change last year. That was about a 21 inning increase. I guess the broader philosophical question here is how much do you want to glean from an individual's previous increases within the organization? increases within the organization how much does that matter because there's so many other factors that could be in play like if you had a minor injury maybe the team wanted you to throw 40 more innings but you only threw 20 because you were hurt right that doesn't necessarily mean that that's the cap for that pitcher or all pitchers in that organization so i feel like we're just still playing that guessing game the guessing game play each and every year the organizational philosophy is internal and we can try and project and guess based on things we know from the outside but that's all we're doing

we're taking our best guess like i would look at logan allen and say 160 is definitely in play and if that's the case he's got about 50 innings left in the tank for the rest of the regular season so you figure five or six innings per start. That's like eight to nine starts pretty easily still being in play, which gets us pretty far. That gets us almost to the last week of the season. If he starts eight or nine more times. I think so. I think that gets us there. That's it. That's interesting. The the 50 for whatever reason, as soon as you said 50 starts, I was thinking, man, 50 starts is going to gonna get us there it's 100% good when you broke it down based on innings and if we've got nine starts nine starts probably gets us to like early September so in like a head-to-head maybe maybe you are losing out in a guy like Logan Allen I'm not sure I'm not sure how we're gonna step out of all of this by the way more philosophically

of these pitchers because like I thought what the Marlins were doing with yuri perez was going to be to build up this back-end value um that you know hey you're going to sit him for a month and then you're going to build up all these innings so he can compete but then now he's been put on these like strict pitch counts where it was like 80 pitches couldn't get to the fifth and i think from a redraft standpoint that's really changed his value rest of season on those strict pitch counts. It seems like the Guardians are a bit more, I don't know, they're being a little bit more liberal about it. Like, they're open to more interpretation of these guys going, like, I haven't really seen anything capped on Bybee. I'm not sure even saying, like, we could realistically get to 160.

I don't know if they would slow it down. I think how they build these pitchers, they work these pitchers these pitchers they're gonna they can press him to the very end and i'm not sure that's the best thing for him ultimately but um i don't know he's kind of a little bit lower in the pack even though the season's been pretty good it's been a three five five era but he's got a full run expected higher um expected era if you're paying attention to any of that. I think overall, whiffs have been decent, but the changeup has had the primary whiff stuff. Fastball's been okay. So I'm a little bit indifferent. He's lower on the ring for me for Logan Allen. Yeah, I think there's some limitations that we've seen so far this year. And how much more development is there? He's already 24. Is he 25 in just a few weeks?

Is he a finished product? Is what you see what you get in the case of Allen? Compared to I think with Bybee and Williams, I feel like there's still one more level. I'm less sure of that with Logan Allen. Also, I wonder what do they do with those type of pitchers? Look at Savali.

They gave up on Savali. Now maybe you can argue it's like like they gave up on savalli now maybe you can argue it's like how they did it they didn't want to and everyone's kind of crying about it and stuff like that for me they just wanted me to hit her you know you know that i mean and that could be part of it and they were like oh man we really are reluctant to get rid of him but i think you can as much as there are the success stories with the guardians i i wonder what what their struggle with is on that back and like police act didn't work out savalli you could argue yeah you can't say that they're great

developing pictures but they definitely like make mistakes i mean so i'm just wondering like where the gap is because i mean gavin williams is so naturally talented like that guy was going to be a star something was untapped with tanner by william Williams and Bynum are the aces. And, you know, I get from Alan, I like him, but I get a, we're going to maximize his outputs without really thinking, caring too much about the future. Like introducing a cutter, you know, and then relying heavily on it. It's like a Cal Quantrill thing.

You know what I mean? It's like- Well, that's what I was going to ask you. It an amazing picture but we want him to succeed now so like hey let's max you out now and not worry so much about your future you know well i'd say okay so that's what worries that's actually like you just got to kind of where i was going with that like do you think this is like all right let's get everything we have out of it or what would be the thing with a guy like logan allen that you think it? I mean, he was primarily fastball sweeper, changeup, under 10% usage of cutter and slider. The slider had pretty good, at least underlying numbers.

Batting average is low against the highest whiff rate of any pitch he throws. Is there something that you think this team would need to change to make him take that next step? Because I think we're all saying like, I don't know what that next step is with Logan Allen. I don't see it. Well, when he first came into the league, his stuff plus numbers were much better, and it's really pretty simple. When he was first pitching at the beginning of the season,

he was sitting 93, and since he came back from the IL, he's sitting 91. There's even a game here where he's sitting 90. So I think the thing with him is, I think this, you know, one of the big things that they do at the guardians is kind of like,

you know, you're a soft tossing guy with good command, some good secondaries. Let's get your velo up. And I don't know if that's sticking with him. So, I mean, if I heard next spring that Logan Allen's velo was up, I would buy more heavily into him.

Let me ask you this. Who would you rather have? Everyone's going to gasp. Logan Allen or Brandon Fott? Fott. Yeah, Fott for me okay i'm just saying i mean the stroms change with him moving on the rubber has been just like night and day for him as far as like utilizing what you throw and making you better and i guess logan allen hasn't had the

didn't have the struggles obviously that like fought had but like we we've seen a night and day change with fought and it's i feel like alan has just been kind of like in coast and median line median line so unless they have like raw and just the the raw is better for fought i think you know yeah i was there that science came and uh that he pitched recently and i thought you know i remember seeing some 96s and i feel like a 97 yeah he pumps 96. I think he's been sitting like 94, 95. I mean, the fastball's there. But Strom, when they moved him on the rubber,

it has now made that a viable pitch. No one was swinging outside of that fastball. If that thing didn't touch the zone, it was never being swung at. Now it's being swung at. People are actually swinging at it on that move. The sweeper's been better, and now he has a comfort level, I guess, of where he's moved to throwing the change up more. But I think six weeks ago, that would have been a silly question. It would have been Logan Allen by a million miles for people. But I think Logan Allen, to me, is kind of a capped

talent pitcher. Still very good. And maybe, like I said, maybe the slider usage, maybe seeing more of a slider would be a big benefit to him down the line. But I think the upside lives in a lot. A lot of these names that you have here, DVR, there's a lot of upside pitchers. You could ask the same thing about Tosh Bradley. Tosh Bradley has gone through the ringer. Would you rather have the floor of what Logan Allen is

or the ceiling of Tosh Bradley? I'm usually playing for the ceiling when we're looking at these young pitchers, because they're, yeah. If the adjustment can be as, I don't want to oversimplify it. If,

if moving on the rubber, if doing something like that can unlock everything for someone who has talent, like Brandon fought, then I would bet on the talent because it just changes on a dime once that adjustment finally kicks in or once they figure out what adjustment needs to be made. The other thing I like about Fott, and this is why I had him in so many places and why I was so excited about him back in April, he threw 167 innings

last year between AA and AAA. He's in veteran workload mode. They don't have to worry about shutting him down to preserve his arm for next year. He's already fully stretched out that way. And since rejoining the rotation, 29-6 strikeout to walk in his last 29 innings. It spans five starts. He's got at least five innings and four of those five starts. The only exception being the Dodgers, which, hey, look, the Dodgers get everybody. So it really looks like thoughts starting to build up some momentum that might make him a kind of a trendy later round riser. Once we get to the draft season for 2024, you mentioned Bradley. We should talk about Bradley for a bit.

Bradley got good. Well, just really quickly, you know, like taking a look at rookie starters by Fastball Stuff Plus is almost a great proxy for how I feel about them. It goes Bradley, Bobby Miller, Yuri Perez, Bryce Miller, Grayson Rodriguez, you know, Gavin Williams. You know, that's – and the next name. You know, I have stopped here, arbitrary endpoints. I did stop at six. Luis Medina's next. It was just an obvious flaw with Luis Medina. You know, I have stopped here. Arbitrary endpoints. I did stop at six. Luis Medina is next.

It was just an obvious flaw with Luis Medina. You know what I mean? So it's shown flashes more recently, though, ironing out some of those control issues. And as soon as I got excited about him, he came out and had a bad start, walked a bunch of guys and gave up some runs. But clearly 98 stuff plus on the four seam. Logan Allen, 98 stuff plus on the four seam uh logan allen 83 stuff plus just about that's why i brought up the cutter because i'm like the what has what's already happening is an admission an admission that his fastball is not great and so that we need another hard pitch and when your

fastball isn't great you know like i like cal bradish but you know when your fastball isn't great then you have to there's going to be stumbling points. It's going to take a while to like figure it out. And you, you, I think you cap your upside. You just, you have only a certain amount of things you can do the old pitcher tricks, which is throw your fastball list, throw a cutter. You know what I mean? It's like throw your slider 40% of the time. So there's, there's, there's not that much that they can do.

Whereas Todd Bradley is going to start with a superhuman fastball and could he, percent of the time so there's there's there's not that much they can do whereas taj bradley is going to start with this superhuman fastball and could he you know tweak the curveball grip could he treat the change ball grip like there's like a bunch of different things he could he throw a sweeper you know like there's a bunch of stuff he hasn't tried yet and not to keep extending this wanted to ask you real quick you know i remember at the beginning of the year we were looking at fots uh stuff plus on the fastball and i believe it was in the 80s i want to say you pulled some 80s on there i wonder what it wasn't altitude adjusted remember that was the whole discussion you know i agree with that but what i'm curious about even taking the altitude adjustment has their what rookie pitcher has seen the biggest increase of stuff plus on their fastball from

triple a to the majors i mean he might be the number that's not something i can ask here and we could probably find the answer really quick but i wonder if he's the biggest increase of stuff plus in the minors to the majors we've seen on the fastball especially if you account to the recent fought starts with the new rubber adjustment, not the old ones, I would bet you he's got to be at the top of the leaderboard. Obviously accounting for... But I don't know. The altitude adjustments,

there are other pitchers in there that might be more aligned, so he might be one of the biggest increases. Yeah, he's up to 99. I mean... He was not remotely close to that early in the year in AAA, altitude or not. What are you guys doing with Taj Bradley in redraft leagues?

We're in a stretch of schedule for the Rays right now. They have an off day between their two series this week, so they're off Thursday, off Monday. They don't need a fifth starter until next weekend. It'll be a turn against the Yankees at the Trop. They could throw a Rasmus Ramirez, or they could bring back Cooper Criswell. We've talked about all the bulk guys they throw. But are you looking at the adjustments Bradley's made, the growing pains he's gone through, the flashes of success he's had at the big league level and occasionally even at AAA this year too,

even though he's trying to make adjustments while he's pitching down there? Are you looking at all that and saying, I'm holding him through these troubles because the final month of the season might be really good? Reason being, he's thrown 133 in a 30 innings last year. They gave him a 30 inning bump to that number. So we're probably looking at another 65 innings from him before he hits his cap. They have to think about the postseason too, but they also have to make sure they get there. It's a lot to unravel, but do you see enough good in the changes

through all the struggles to believe in Taj Bradley and to keep holding him while waiting for this next opportunity? I'll let Nino get deep into it, but for a redraft, I'm going to say no. I would move on. Frankly, I've presented this in a couple other spots. I love Yuri Perez, but if you're in shorter leagues with the inning caps, I think in some of those leagues, in redraft specifically,

you could probably move on into finding other streamers or something like that. Taj is a no-go for me. It's been bad. Post-All-Star break, 6-7-5 ERA. Post-All-Star break, 6.75 ERA. Pre-All-Star break, 5.43. His whip, 1.50 to 1.39, gotten worse. When you look at the game log as well,

he's gone five, I think, in only three of his last five starts. He's given up three or more earned runs. And remember, he's only gone five in three of those. In four of those five starts. A lot of walks. Strikeouts are there. He's inconsistent. He's working through it.

This is not what I want at this point of the season. It doesn't help you in Roto. The upside's not worth it. And in head-to-head, I think this could be a playoff disaster. I'm a huge buy on Taj Bradley for next year. And keeper, dynasty, I would love to take him off of someone's hands, especially a competing team. If I'm not, give me Taj Bradley

for a full offseason of readjustments and improvement. So then, you know, he can then go have Tommy John next year because he's a raised pitcher. But I will buy Taj Bradley for the offseason. I'm not interested in redraft anymore. You know, he hasn't been pitching as long as a lot of other people, so I get that sense that maybe it'll take some time,

but I'm still in for this year. My reasoning is such. He had 134 innings last year and uh he's at 97 now so i think he has uh all the innings he wants the rest of the season um and i think that the the rays will need him uh if not uh in that fifth starter spot uh you know in terms yeah, could they fudge their way through the rest of the season without him in that fifth starter spot? For sure they could. But more in terms of you're looking at this roster, if it's going to have a deficit in the lineup in the postseason, you know, at shortstop, then they're going to need to win a lot of games three to one. And I would rather have Taj Bradley as part of my A team for the playoffs, even if it's in two innings, which means I need to have Bradley stretched out to a certain point. I need him pitching in the major leagues leading up to the playoffs. So I see a story where he's going to

pitch in the major leagues through September. I think he's going to pitch in the major leagues through September. I think he's going to be mostly a starter as they keep him stretched out. And the last thing I'll say is other than stuff plus he has a top 10 strikeout minus walk rate and a 30% strikeout rate is a catnip to me. um i know the homers have been an issue and uh it hasn't been looking great but this to me looks like a package that could change on a dime especially since he's still striking people out on that level 16 starts you know how many quality starts he has dvr well i you know quality starts i know i'm just throwing it out don't don't don't don't put a ray on your team and quality starts yeah i'm just saying i'm just throwing it out. Go in six. Don't put a Ray on your team in quality starts. Yeah, I'm just saying. I'm just throwing this at you.

Do you know how many? Probably three at most. One. He's gone six innings, one in 16 starts this year. Yeah, I mean, it's Blake Snell all over again back in the day. But, yeah, again, the stuff is awesome. He's freaking awesome. He definitely will have all of it.

I just question all of those starts that he has, how many of them help your fantasy and how much like really help you want this year yeah yeah yeah it's only a this year thing i'm all i have that bias towards keeper laser i'm like no this guy is obviously good and he'll be good eventually and probably that eventually be this year but it's not always this year yeah yeah i just think the the constant tension the most difficult thing in our game is balancing short term value and production against long term ceiling. So when you're sitting there in your league, I think the decision I had in one league this weekend was Taj Bradley or Reese Olsen. You cut one of these guys from your roster.

It's a 15 team league. I think in a 15-teamer, waiting it out with Taj is more palatable than trying to wait it out in a 10 or a 12, where there are viable pitchers available, at least compared to a 15. But Reece Olsen is interesting because 96 and two-thirds innings thrown so far, he threw 119 and two-thirds for a career high last year. You give him 50 more innings, and he's still less than plus 30 from last year's total so he doesn't look like he's gonna get shut down more than you know a start or two before the end of the season looks like Olsen's good to go he actually has a really good whip compared to previous results and all of the minor league stops a 1-1-4 whip ERA is up over four near the mid fours at 445 we just saw a nice start last time out against the twins so what's the realistic expectation for olsen which of those ratios is

a better indication of what you're likely to get from him the rest of the way we love the ballpark right comarica is a great pitcher friendly ballpark plenty of strikeouts but like i almost wonder if reese olsen's better than taj bradley for the rest of the season because there's less waiting around even though i don't think anyone here would consider reese olsen over taj bradley in a keeper dynasty like it wouldn't even be a debate i feel like he has that um he's got the the 2023 unlocked cheat code of a pitcher early on. He's like heavy slider. You know, his primary pitch has been slider. 32% with, he's got a 42% whiff rate.

My problem is I just don't know how like elongated that's going to be when your fastball is. I don't want to use like suboptimal to be like it's trash or anything like that, but it's got a 16% whiff rate. He's throwing it around 95. It's got a 172 batting average but a 266 expected on it strikeouts are under that 9k per nine I just think Reese is like oh here's what I think you could look at a streaming option and you could see Taj Bradley

and Reese Olsen and if Reese Olsen even has the slightest edge of a decent matchup, I would play him over Bradley. Yeah, I would play him over Bradley in that. All season long, I would not be shocked if he is more valuable, but it's a much worse offense. And it's just going to probably have to be me digging in. What are the potential starts he has over the next five if I was committing to him season long over Bradley?

Because you painted it. In a 15 team, I probably would maybe go the upside of Bradley because both of these players potentially can just end out the season. I would rather probably play on bigger stuff. Though, if you throw in a third mix here of giving me a veteran pitcher that's sitting out there i'm gonna you know i don't nick pavetta's not gonna be out there but i had one just the other day while we were talking talking about this i'd probably rather go in that realm of veteran pitchers that are playing up than

playing the upside of either one of these guys especially one that's on like a poorish tigers team uh like if you look at uh just most recently olsen's fastball has been playing even more down with a stuff plus in the 70s in the last two weeks um but uh for the full season a larger sample olsen has actually had above average locations uh which surprises me and gives me a little bit of that hunter brown s vibe and i asked hunter brown why his uh why his walk rates uh were worse than the minors and why he got these bad command grades and you know he said sometimes it can be as simple as like working with the major league coaching team and the major league catchers the major league catchers are the best catchers in your organization

um and you better have a sense of which pitches you can use to get back into counts and uh how to sort of deploy your arsenal better um and this is a guy who has decent raw stuff in terms of at least his secondaries his his uh his slider and change up both rate excellently in his curveballs at least average so i think all the pieces are there, but long-term Olsen's fastballs are not that good. I'm pretty sure of that. I think I agree with Welsh on that. And so you've got a guy who's got good secondaries in a good park long-term.

I easily take Bradley over that, but short-term if you're looking at matchups and it's like, especially if it's like Bradley in New York versus Olsen against Cleveland in Detroit, it's like exactly that one's pretty easy. I'll take Olsen. Yeah. You got to watch out for those those teams in division for Taj as you try to play it out in the stretch run. You mentioned Hunter Brown, you know, career high in innings was last year, 126 and a third. He's about to pass that 123 and a third so far this year.

Last year, 126-3. He's about to pass that, though, at 123-3 so far this year. This one's one of the more complicated rookie workloads to think about because I imagine the Astros want him to be part of that rotation come playoff time. So it's not necessarily about not having enough innings left overall, but just needing some of those innings in October, which means they could back off him for a little while. How do you think they go about it? Is this a case where they say, hey, JP France, we're going to burn off all of your innings before the playoffs and we're going to scale back on Brown and then we're going to ramp

them back up? Well, yeah, it's like you would rather overwork JP France than Hunter Brown if you're thinking about long term value, which feels terrible to say, but I would imagine that's kind of part of their internal thinking right now. Or even if you're just thinking about the playoffs, you'd rather have Brown in that rotation than France. And France is already, you know, who was it that they, when they added Verlander, like the next appearance that France had

was out of the bullpen. I think they got Arkady back too. Yeah, and then they started talking about maybe um a six-man rotation is that is that is that enough to to keep brown's numbers down i think they could do something like that because you got verlander fromber hunter brown javier kitty and france all healthy right now so you have six healthy starters if you want to deploy all of them the dumb thing about that is it's going to cost you a Justin Verlander start or a Fromber start, which you'd rather have your best pitcher start.

Could you pair Brown and Javier or something and try to get the most out of them in smaller samples? The trick is you still need Brown to be stretched out. So whatever you do, you have to be able to undo it in time for the playoffs. You know what I mean? Like if you just shut him down, then he has to come all the way back. And so that's not good. If you move Hunter Brown down to two innings per appearance or whatever,

you have to move him back up to four or five. So maybe the sixth man is actually the best thing for this particular team in order to keep all these guys stretched out. I was thinking about it in the way the Rays do it. Usually you let guys go six plus because you're not worried. You kind of cap them at four innings, five innings for those later season starts. That way they're still where you need them to be, and then you can just push them back up to six.

That's the most reasonable thing you can do do you can skip one turn maybe along the way and get away with that too depending on the schedule the one wrinkle is they're three and a half games out of the division and even though they are in the second spot in the wild card race that is going to be a hotly contested spot in the wild card race you've got the blue jays at 66 wins astros at 68 even the mariners 63 um you know those are all teams that are going to be fighting for that last uh the wildcard rate so they'd rather be take the rangers on but you know i wonder if there's going to be some delicate playing around the last week of the season where they decide okay we're cool with the wild card at this point and would rather manage our rotation going into the postseason than uh use up on all of our bullets to attack the rangers i'm curious about

something i feel like we've speculated a ton this year about like oh this would be good if this team piggyback this player and these two i don't feel like anybody's doing that you know i don't know if you've ever talked about this but is there a six-man rotation right now no no but i'm saying like piggybacking like keep a five-man rotation and piggybacking and that's where i'm going with this have you ever talked is there an what is the advantage outside of the obvious taking away one person off of your bench what is the advantage to a six-man rotation overtaking two pitchers and piggybacking them which also could theoretically untax your bullpen a little bit if you give them each four innings and they go eight i don't understand why more teams i don't admit and there's maybe

something deeper why you wouldn't piggyback two guys instead of stretching to six if you don't need to give uh rest to a guy like verlander and you want to take away a start. I think, I think it's the manager. So you're saying piggyback, we'll get eight out of it. Well, what happens in practice when you put those two pitchers out there and the manager wants to win the game,

the four inning guy comes out in the third. And then the next guy comes out in the six. You know what I mean? And you got one less arm in the bullpen i i get no i just mean also the manager's impetus to win the game will will cut like we'll we'll undo it a little bit the we we we do have a team that's piggybacking you guys know who i'm about to talk about i think it's the well i mean the rays tend uh the dime actually the diamondbacks were doing one today but the uh the rays the giants are oh you're right you're right they did that with like walker the other day yeah they haven't always on uh piggybacking situation in i think two spots uh with anytime wood comes in somebody else has pitched two three innings before him and anytime mania comes in, somebody else has pitched two, three innings before him. And anytime Minaya comes in, someone's been pitching before him.

Stripling has an opener. So in three spots in their rotation, the Giants are playing around with it. And I think it's kind of like piggybacking with Wood, opener for Stripling, and Minaya is the glue. Beck is also the glue. So Beck and Minaya and Stripling and wood are all three inning pitchers and they just figure it out you know surprised we haven't seen kyle harrison if they're doing if they've got two spots for piggybacking i think he'd be perfect for that and wouldn't you rather

see you know by the playoffs of kyle harrison could be an actual playoff starter for you and you can move wood stripling and mania and beck and all those guys into the bullpen basically. Let him piggyback Stripling. Go Stripling goes two or three. You come off of a veteran and then he comes in three innings. 100%. I'd rather that in going into a playoff series that I knew who my third starter was. Yeah. And I don't even

think they know who their third starter is right now. Got one last player we should talk about. Grayson Rodriguez. I think he could be maybe the most difficult pitcher to project from a workload perspective and the orioles playing for a first round by the previous career high was two years ago 103 innings rodriguez was hurt last year get to 75 and two-thirds i think you can project off of the previous high even if it wasn't last season oh my goodness somewhere 140 150 get to somewhere 140, 150,

but he's thrown 115 and a third, and he's pitching well. No, I see 122 for Grayson. For Grayson? Yeah. When did he get to that? I don't know. I'm looking at his page on Fangraphs.

I've got 81 in the big leagues and 41.1 in the minors. Hmm. 81 in the big leagues. Did he just start yesterday? Yeah, he just started yesterday, so the stats probably weren't updated this morning when I looked. So 122, and you said his previous high

was 103? Previous high was, yep, it was 103 back in 2021. So I just wonder how much they're going to push him and how they're going to navigate it because they need him. He's an important piece for them.

He's pitching so well, and he's throwing hundreds in the sixth. Last five starts, third 11 k to b beat is one homer allowed 303 era whip below one like it's all clicking right now this would be a terrible time to have to significantly alter your plan for grace and rodriguez and like and and any of the stuff we're talking about piggybacking this or that or this like all that is is messing around with someone who's finally pitching like you need them to. And wouldn't you rather go into a playoff series, Grayson 1, Braddish 2, Flaherty 3 or something? It looks so much better if you can be like, we have an ace. Without him, I'm not sure they have an ace.

I don't see a number one that I want going. I like Bradish, but as your number one? What would be the number that would set off the alarm for a team? I know it's like, what, 70 innings last year, whatever, 120. What do you, is there, this is all theoretical. It's like, oh, we don't want to do this and this, but what's the alarm? Last year, did somebody raise their hand in the in the front office well that's

what i'm asking i'm curious if there's like a number that is going to have everybody freak out because why would you have done this why would you have not managed grace and maybe because of what a disaster some of the season was yeah maybe they didn't think they'd need him in the playoffs or want him in the play or they'd have yeah they did want him yeah i think the number that would freak people out would be something like 170 if he gets to 170 you're talking about the fantasy community like people freaking out for next year anything fantasy community uh coaching baseball you know grayson goes out gets 160 and then you got some talking head somewhere that's like you know the the the orioles are really being pretty uh uncharacteristically uh they're marketing his future volatile yeah they're what are they doing

here we need to have a bigger conversation about these arms and you know like that's what it's going to be and i like what's the number that causes that uh mlb network uh roundtable conversation yeah it's it's probably close to a hundred more than year. So maybe it's even 160, maybe 90 more than last year. So like five more starts, essentially, is what we're saying on Grayson. That's basically that's when people are going to start asking, especially it's going to be backwards analysis to where if he starts to fade at the end of the season. Well, they gave him too much. He couldn't handle it. Got got tired.

Didn't build him up the right way. It's like, well, what? He was struggling earlier this year when he was fresh and healthy. This isn't necessarily a link between fatigue and performance. It could just be performance. I mean, this is another guy that I'm going to be all over next year. And it's funny because I was fairly invested in him this year because the projections were so good. But he finally kind of showed us, I think,

what he can do. I don't know. I don't know. You know, with Bradley, the one thing I can tell you is he has all the innings he wants the rest of the season. I can't tell you that with Grayson. Yeah. I think you have to watch the news

and watch the schedule very carefully and see if they tip their hand at all as far as how they're going to get through it maybe bring tyler wells back into the big leagues at some point is part of the solution but john means is also rehabbing i'd throw out that's probably that might be the stop gap that we're not thinking about is uh grayson gets you all the way to john means his return where he can go deep and then maybe they piggyback we can keep speculating maybe they piggyback something with means you don't want to press the last few innings for grayson or just like you know one inning out of the pen for the fourth or fifth or six like you know that exactly that can be huge you know

how many games get decided in the sixth like you know to have somebody that come in in the sixth i mean that's kind of what i think about bradley being useful for the rays like they're gonna throw one of 103 you know if he's sailing it back and just uh adding velo it'll be nuts these are the problems we have each and every year of course there are a few more rookie pitchers we'll talk about on a future episode we got to a lot of the most concerning ones on this episode from a workload perspective we are going to go on our way out the door a reminder you can get a subscription to the athletic for two dollars a month at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels you find welsh on twitter at is it the welsh you can find eno at eno sarah's you can find me at derek van riper that's gonna do it for this episode of rates and barrels we are back with

you on wed. Thanks for listening.