Rates & Barrels - Promotions, Extensions, and New Opportunities

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

Eno and DVR discuss the promotion of Mason Miller to Oakland, Brayan Rocchio and a potentially brief look in Cleveland, an extension for Hunter Greene, another impressive outing from Taj Bradley, Mike Soroka's comeback bid, A.J. Puk's early results in Miami, and a few mailbag questions. Rundown 1:17 Mason Miller Promoted! 9:20 Brayan Rocchio Gets the Call to Cleveland 11:30 Hunter Greene Extension 13:53 Taj Bradley Continues to Impress 19:01 Adjusting for Alek Manoah's Disappointing Start to 2023 25:45 Josiah Gray's New Pitch Mix 33:49 Trusting A.J. Puk 37:10 Jake Burger's Impressive Power Profile 42:22 Statcast v. FanGraphs' Hard-Hit Rates 49:12 Other Factors to Consider w/Pitching Model Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Buck the Rates and Barrels. It's Wednesday, April 19th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. Programming note, I guess, is that we are flipping days of this episode and the 3-0 show, even though they're in different feeds. So the episode we've been doing with Britt midweek is now going on Thursdays on the Athletic Baseball Show. So our Thursday Rates and Barrels is now coming out later in the day on Wednesday so I don't think it changes much for anybody uh we were gonna record shows together both days anyway it just kind of changes the timing of things if you listen to both changes the freshness of our content on the 30 show makes the 30 much less likely to have stale

information although we're on quite a run with Rates and Vowels recording during news moments. Oh, the Prospect show. Project Prospect is on a two-week heater already with talking about players that, you know, in the case of Mason Miller, I think it was clear he's coming up soon, but we didn't have the news that he was coming up today at the time we were recording. It came out like 20 minutes before we stopped. So we'll start there. Mason Miller is debuting Wednesday for the A's.

We talked a lot about him on yesterday's show. And it's a big stuff play. It's just a high risk, high reward from a volume perspective and maybe a command perspective as well. You mentioned yesterday that the arsenal might not be that deep. That could be problematic for him as well as he tries to turn the lineup over a third time. That could be a shortcoming, but the velo was huge in that last start at AAA. I don't know if I brought that up. Several pitches over 100 miles an hour. This is a big time four seamer. You mentioned the cutter yesterday. There's a slider and a change up. If he can get one of those other pitches working more

often, then I think we could see a really productive run for mason miller yeah uh i updated the doc with minor league stuff plus numbers wish i had had that yesterday but uh number one is a weird name weird luis palacios nothing the name is weird it's the it's a strange placement he sits like 90 so strange that he has the best stuff plus in triple a um i wonder what's going on there he also has an awful location plus so that explains his awful numbers he has pretty awful numbers if you're looking him up right now so anyway that's a weird one uh but anyway after that goes mason miller's second mike burrows third uh who's unfortunately on the schneid uh right now with an injury but taj bradley right there who's uh ported that over to the majors

um and simeon woods richardson still in the top 10. Grayson Rodriguez. Tanner Bybee has moved into the top 10 with a second start. Kyle Harrison still in the top 10. And then somebody whose name I do not know, Elvin Rodriguez. Elvin Rodriguez? A Ray? Oh, of course. 16 innings, three starts. Just about 8Ks per 9.

3 walks per 9. Hmm. You wouldn't think he'd had top 10 stuff. Yeah, you know what, though? It's a little funny. He has spent time in the Angels organization and the Tigers organization. And, oh, look, it's two organizations that don't get the most out of their players. And now he's a Ray.

And now something's clicking. Who'd have thought? Also, an 11% swing strike rate is better than his K9, so there might be something going on there. He's had that swinging strike rate, though, before, so that is not a change from the Ray's system. I should put that out there just to be completely fair, but these are the best ratios we've seen from him in this very brief sample of AAA.

So an interesting name just given the injuries that are piling up. But of course Mason Miller is more interesting. Yes. So have you shifted a little bit on your talent based expectations for Mason Miller, having seen the updated model. Yes. Um, I am right now opening the per pitch type so that we can, Oh,

how did I do that? Miller has to Mason Miller. Did you have a weekend on a Tuesday night? You know, I did. I am foggy, rather groggy. I went to a fish show last night. I'm doing my best.

Leave me alone. Doing my best. Mason Miller's cutter, 143 stuff plus. Mason Miller's fastball, 140 stuff plus. Mason Miller's slider, 127 stuff plus. And the fourth pitch where is it where is it let me see come on memory serves me right he didn't throw the fourth pitch more than once or twice once yeah change up 77 stuff plus i i don't know i think what do you think fastball fastball cutter slider

it's a righty with a four seam fastball uh a cutter and a slider it could work i guess well there's not a lot of people like that but the cutters should be good against lefties i talked to him last night at the game before the show, and he talked about the cutter is new. The cutter is new, so he was really fastball slider with the occasional changeup before.

Mr. Fastball Slider right now is probably Spencer Strider. I thought it was interesting that Lance Brozdowski, who's getting daily mentions on our show, he said maybe this could be your strider. I thought of it more because of just how quickly he was going to move and how few innings we saw him throw in the minors. But from an Arsenal perspective, the comp actually holds up even better than just by a path sort of concept, which is what I was stuck on before. I never want to expect any guy to come in and do as well as Spencer Strider did last year, even if the two main pitches are very similar.

I would suspect stuff numbers on Strider's two pitches are not that much greater than what we're talking about with Mason Miller. I think the real concern is innings and wins. than what we're talking about with Mason Miller. I think they have real concerns in innings and wins. Yeah. The A's are on a pace to give the fewest wins to their

starters in history of baseball. They're just so good right now. That's the word. And then he had, what, 28 innings in the minor leagues? How far are they going to push him? Okay, this is an exercise we've had before. How far back into a player's past

when they've lost a ton of time to injury are you willing to go to set your number for a workload? And do you think that's what the A's are actually doing? If you go back to college for Masonason miller went to where are you getting these numbers this is from baseball reference he pitched at waynesburg by the way d3 the heaviest workload in a season that i can find for mason miller would have been his actually the end of his college career was at Gardner Webb if this is right. So about

100 innings. 98 and two thirds in 2021. He got a handful of innings with the A's. That was the year he was drafted. Yep. Okay. So. A bunch of injuries and two years ago. So if 98 and a third innings was the high from two years ago. So if 98 in the third innings was the high

from two years ago. And since he's thrown, what, 30 innings? Can you use that as the previous workload and just say, alright, the target is 125 or 130. Is that fair? That's what I would do. Yeah, okay, I guess.

As far as a ceiling. I'd take 100. Where would they stop him? Best case scenario probably more real like a more reasonable expectation yeah 100 yeah that's pretty useful it's super useful though because you might get them all now and you can solve it later yeah yeah especially because of the park all, so top 50 starting pitcher in that group or outside of that group? In that group. In that group, okay. I don't know why I'm dragging my feet on some of these guys that Stuff Plus

likes, but you have to consider other things too sometimes. Alright, inside the top 50 means you can pick him up basically everywhere. They've said regardless of how this first start goes, he's going to stay in the rotation. The debut comes Wednesday against the Cubs. It will likely happen before many people get to hear this podcast. We're putting all this out there, sight unseen. But I'm with you. I think

top 50 is a reasonable expectation based on the pure arsenal, the stuff that Mason Miller has. And even with that workload restriction, he can do a lot of good for us given how difficult it is to pick up pitching especially in deeper leagues other prospects up brian rocchio gets the call to cleveland and the more i look at rocchio you know the more i think he's one of those guys that he can do a little bit of everything but because he's a glove and hit tool first player, he's probably a better real life player for the Guardians than he is a fantasy player. And those

skill sets oftentimes get stuck as AL only, NL only type players who kind of bounce on and off your roster in mixed leagues if they don't develop something extra. Maybe it's a little speed, maybe it's a little power, maybe it's a little bit of everything where he's a 10-10 guy or a 15-15 guy at some point, but I'm not as excited about Rokio

as I was about any of the shortstops we discussed yesterday. Like, Zach Netto, by comparison, I actually think has a much higher fantasy ceiling than Brian Rokio does. Plus, there's a little bit of a complicating factor with the playing time because Ahmed Rosario's hurt right now. Yeah, the corresponding move is Rosario. So that's the other thing. This might be a short-term thing. It's a corresponding move test more than anything for me because I do like the contact. He might get there in slightly different ways, but I do think he can be an Ahmed Rosario type

player. So he's a decent replacement for people that have Rosario, but I wouldn't go that hard into him because of it. I mean, the projections are one thing, 250 basically with less than league average power, but even if he hits like he hit in the minor leagues, it's like a 280, I think 1515 type package, like you're saying.

Now, because the age level has been very favorable, there could be one more level of development for Rokio. What might happen over time in the big leagues, you know? Could be a year three, year four sort of thing where suddenly there's more power. That's the way I can see this playing out. So i'm not going crazy trying to pick him up everywhere but he is on the radar especially if rosario ends up on the aisle i think at the time of this recording they had not made that decision just yet but that would be the thing that would open up a lot more playing time the reds have extended hunter green and i think with hunter

green he was he was someone you definitely liked coming into the season. I think a lot of people were into Green as a breakout pitcher this year. It's a six-year, $53 million contract extension as a club option for a seventh year. I think this takes out two years of free agency for Green. The Reds get their cost certainty. This is a nice start to the season so far in terms of skills. A 24-6 strikeout-to-walk ratio and just one home run allowed through four starts. Only 17 innings so far for Hunter Green.

But I think we're seeing the signs of that big step forward from him. And now we've got this extension that keeps him likely in Cincinnati for the rest of this decade. Yeah, stuff tells the same story as K-BB, and this is a guy that if someone dropped on your wire, you should pick him up. It's pretty easy to see. Tons of strikeouts, 31%. That's got to be one of the league leaders. Yeah. Strikeout rate, leaders among starters spencer strider jacob de

graham joe ryan chris sale the stuff does not back that up pablo lopez showy otani garrett cole logan gilbert hunter green nick lodolo so looks pretty good looks pretty good to me i i think it's a great deal it's uh the one thing is you can you're more assured to get a great deal the one thing is you're more assured to get a great deal for me on these team friendly deals with hitters you know

injury could lead to a lot of different outcomes but still at 50 million dollars even if he misses a year due to Tommy John or something he's going to be great Hunter Green has a ceiling that returns the value of the entire deal in one year if he reaches it. Like that's actually a possibility for him

with the talent that he brings. So the easy, why would you do it if you're the Reds? Why would you take on a little bit of risk? That's the reason Hunter Green, of course, getting those guaranteed dollars, wanting to make that commit the other way. And I think in the case of the Reds, it's clear that the young talent is there. It's just not on the roster yet in full.

It's going to be another year or two before you start to see all the prospects they traded for joining Green and Nick Lodolo on this roster and making things a lot more exciting in Cincinnati. We did see another start from Taj Bradley, you know, and it happened to be against the Reds and the Rays. We started recording to the Rays were just pummeling the Reds early on. It was a debut from Levi Stout, one of the, I don't know, less hyped prospects that the Reds acquired and all those deals.

He came back to them in the Luis Castillo trade, but the Rays on fire. Taj Bradley looking like he's going to have in the luis castillo trade but the rays on fire taj bradley looking like he's gonna have a longer stay in this rotation though because we finally have a little more information on jeffrey springs it looks like he's gonna have tommy john surgery that was based on a report from mark topkin that came out on tuesday that was a wild ride man that that day it was like oh you know they announced that he's got a a sprain and you're like well that's not good that's a ligament that's going to be a month or two and then they're like well they changed their announcement it's a strain and strain his

muscles and you're like oh he could be back in two weeks if it's a grade one strain and then literally like a half hour later tommy john yeah brutal it was a wild up and down roller coaster. But yeah, it's unfortunate for Springs, unfortunate for the Rays, but fortunate for Bradley. I do think he's in the rotation for good. Why not? I have no reason, if I'm them, to take him out. Let him pitch. Even when Glasnow is healthy, without Bradley, you're doing the Fleming

opener thing. Even when Glasnow and Eflin are healthy, you're doing the Fleming opener thing. I think Bradley is better than the Fleming opener thing. And that's when Glasnow and Heflin are healthy at the same time. And that means also Shane McClanahan, Drew Rasmus are all healthy. And that seems like it's going to be a tough thing for the Rays this year. They're just going to kind of cycle through guys.

So when Bradley's healthy, he's in. A couple of things here with Bradley. I think if you're in a league that allows trading, it's a good time to go and reach out to whoever picked up Taj Bradley and try to get a pitcher from them because they may be plus one on the starting pitching side. It's not a good time to ask for Taj Bradley. Don't ask for Bradley. We'll get to that in just a second. But there's a possibility.

Look at that roster. See if there's one extra starter that's good enough to start on your team that's not necessarily starting on that person's team right now. I would definitely look at that the second thing is where does taj bradley rank for you rest of season i'm looking back at your late march ranks and jeffrey springs was at 36 drew raspison was at 29 i think you put bradley right in there he just takes over one of those spots yeah i think he's a top 30 pitcher uh Right now, overall stuff plus with no minimums, DeGrom, Otani, Green, Strider, Bradley, Ashcraft, Rasmussen, May, Burns, and Cole. So there is not a single person in that top 10 where you say,

what is going on there? And so you can kind of assume that Bradley belongs in that group I mean it's all fire and and bluster and and nastiness in that top 10 so uh Bradley absolutely I went pretty hard on him as I said in my main um just thinking that he would get the opportunity to run with it and And because of the minor league stuff, numbers are so good. And, you know, I paid a fair amount, $326. It's probably maybe the most I've ever played on a single player. But we feel pretty good about having Bradley in our rotation now. We've got Bradley and Grayson Rodriguez.

It's heavy stuff plus play on our main squad. You've got some ceiling. Yeah. So the Bradley arsenal so far, it's been close to 50% four-seam usage. That pitch has been excellent for him so far, averaging 95.8 with that. The cutter is actually his second pitch.

There's your four-seamer cutter combo. It's 28.6% usage on that. Throws that at about 87.7. But stuff plus loves his changeup, which is... His changeup, he's only thrown 12% of the time so far, and he's got a curveball that he's actually thrown almost 10% of the time. So those other pitches do get a bit more usage from Taj Bradley already, and you wonder, as he gets multiple looks at some teams over the course of the season,

if that mix might even change a little bit, where he goes to those secondaries a bit more often. It's a split. It's a split, a gyro slider, and a huge curveball. The curveball, Stuff Plus says it's average, but it looks nice. I mean, it's minus 10. It's a real big curveball. And so, you know, I think it's a package that'll work. It has strengths. Look, this is funny. It looks good, but the curveball has already allowed a homer and has a 3.75 batting average, so maybe he replaces some of those curves with split fingers,

which Stuff Plus loves and has a 125 ISO. So I think this is all systems go. And yeah, he's a top 30 pitcher. All right. So we just added two guys up into the top 30 and top 50 range between Taj Bradley and Mason Miller. So I think we should take a couple of guys out, at least one who's still healthy. Springs, of course, by injury, unfortunately, falls out of that group.

But Alec Manoa, you expressed concerns about him last week. I was a little more on the side of, let's see some more. I think I'm going to hold off on being concerned. Does Manoa fall that far? Is he no longer a top 50 starter? If you're re-racking the rankings for today, does he end up somewhere closer to geez the tyler malley jameson tyon range the guys that were just on the outside looking into the top 50 i mean this is an easy one for me you're asking me to take somebody out of the top 30 and i had him 30th so yes he can

drop out of the top 30 uh he had poor stuff numbers last year uh he was projected to have 100 stuff plus this year and and he's had 95. It's not one of the biggest losers in stuff plus. It's a combination of losing a little bit of stuff and maybe just what the projection systems and what the models saw, which was not the greatest stuff. So, yeah, that's an easy drop for me. I think I would drop Manoa um maybe to the gosh yeah i think to yeah

low 50s uh you know once i start where chris bassett was going into the season you know uh where kyle bradish was you know would would i take would i take bradish over Manoa right now? Let me check. You're thinking about it, yeah. Yeah, I'm thinking about it. I've obviously been the high guy on Bradish. And his stuff is pretty good. 93 stuff plus on the fastball, Bradish, and then a 137 on the slider and 122 on the curveball.

I think he's pushed that fastball to the point where, you know, an 88 on the sinker. I think that's good enough for him to succeed. So, yeah, right there. Bradish versus Manoa, I guess. The projections back during draft season, I remember seeing, I think it was Steamer and the bat both had the ERA north of four.

Yes, the bat was 421, Steamer 427. The whip, 124 from the bat 128 from steamer and those were the worst projections even the the best projections i think zips was the most favorable the highest on manoa was 371 for the era 113 for the whip that was easily worse than what he had done in his big league experience it was it was projecting a drop off for a guy that was really young i mean manoa just turned 25 years old in january and i just i had a hard time with that it broke my brain i think the only thing that kept me from having manoa on i don't think i'm on any teams this year is where he was going it was just in a pocket of the draft board where

i liked some of the hitters that were going i I was dabbling in first closers. He was almost going like an ace, ace light, you know, like back-end ace. And if I wanted two aces, I wanted one ace more in the top 10. And if I wanted two, I would get them, you know, earlier. And so once I got, you know, my ace or my two aces, I didn't feel like I needed to jump back in where he was. So the projections actually changed some. ace or my two aces, I didn't feel like I needed to jump back in where he was. The projections have actually changed some. The most happy about him going forward is Zips with that 3-7-1

ERA 1-1-3 whip that you mentioned, but preseason, Zips was also the high guy, and preseason, that was a 3-4-3 ERA and a 1-0-7 whip. That's a pretty big move after 19 innings. Yeah. So he's already lost a third of a run of ERA. And now, basically, three of the five systems on Fangraphs have him projected for over a 4 ERA. I don't know.

There's also the run environment this year is higher so maybe i'm being too harsh on him a four era might still be useful in a lot of leagues maybe he's a maybe he's a top 50 guy this episode is brought to you by peloton forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one just start start moving with the Peloton Bike, Bike Plus, Tread, Row, Guide, or App. There are thousands of classes and over 50 Peloton instructors ready to support you from the beginning. Remember, doing something is everything. Rent the Peloton Bike or Bike Plus today at onepeloton.ca slash bike slash rentals. All access memberships separate.

Terms apply. We talked about Ricky Tiedemann on the show yesterday, and when you look at this Jays rotation, it's been a bumpy start to the year for Chris Bassett. His last turn was better. Manoa has underperformed, at least so far. Barrios doesn't look like he's going to be fixed. Kikuchi looks good for now,

but we've seen this movie enough times to know that that's not necessarily something you're going to expect for the next five months. And I wonder, for as good as this Jays team is, how vulnerable they could be with this rotation. Because part of the Jays getting back to the postseason and being a dangerous team in October

was having a one-two punch with Gossman and Manoa, two guys that you could trust to go out there and just flat out win you a game. Even if it was a matchup where your own bats went quiet, those two guys could pitch well enough and do that. I mean, it's not in my nature to look at a guy after four starts and just say, nope, it's not coming back. There could be an adjustment there. There could be a mechanical tweak. Who knows? There's any number of things that could happen. It's weird to me that he's walking not coming back there could be an adjustment there there could be a mechanical tweak who knows like there's any number of things that could happen it's weird to me that he's walking as many guys as he is so far that's been a huge problem the home run rates through the roof the hard contact

rate not surprising that the home run rate being up is also up i just wonder if it's if it's actually fixable with manoa it's just weird his slider is reading his average right now and the slider was always thought of as a real strong point for him yeah and that's that's the strange thing is that it's in that's that's through the model that's a that's a problem with something he's doing with the pitch that's not a results-based analysis on him so that's where i think the the added concerns if that was the best pitch before and it's just kind of average, that's a huge problem for a guy that didn't have... You see something similar with Berrios who used to

look good in the model because he had like a 140 stuff plus on the curveball. It's at 105 now. So basically this model is saying he's a league average breaking ball and a league average change up and slightly below league average fastballs. It just reads a league average change up and uh you know slightly below league average fastballs

it just reads as league average um for barrio so i think there's some real problems here and that's why i went on the radio in toronto and you know they pushed me to a hot take and my hot take was uh ricky teeteman will be the second best uh starting pitcher for the toronto blue jays this year and that could salvage things if that's true. And he's, he's healthy enough to pitch deep into the season. You know, if you go, God,

they get them instead. Yeah. Yeah. Move burials to the pen or somebody just gets injured and they give him a chance. Hmm. There's a possibility that somebody is injured. Yep.

I mean, just looking at these stuff numbers, you're like, you're like, well, are you guys healthy? I have another guy I wanted to ask you about because I caught some of the Nats Orioles game on Tuesday night, and it was a Josiah Gray-Dean Kramer matchup.

Not necessarily a pitching matchup I was tuning in for, but I think I was looking for, I think it was actually DFS purposes. Yeah, I had Jamer Candelario in a lineup, so I wanted to see if Jamer could hit an early home run for me before better games came on. And I was watching Josiah Gray, and they threw the pitch mix up on the screen on the Masson broadcast. Oh, the Masson Cup. That's what that matchup should be called, the Masson Cup. Josiah Gray is throwing the slider more than anything else. He's going slider and curveball at 37% and 24%. And then the four-seamer, the cutter, and the sinker with the occasionally two changeups. So he's throwing his two breaking balls as his most heavily used pitches.

And I'm wondering, as someone who was previously kind of out on Josiah Gray, in part because the Nats don't usually bring a whole lot to the table as far as making pitchers better, Because the Nats don't usually bring a whole lot to the table as far as making pitchers better. Did Josiah Gray do enough sort of taking his future into his own hands as you put it in the past? And did he change himself in a way where you could actually trust him as a more viable starter with this approach? No. I think the move to the cutter and away from the foreseam is good. That's the thing the model likes.

That's the thing the results like. And it is something that he has changed this year, and it has made him a better pitcher. However, the model says that the cutter is his best pitch, and it's league average. And I think the results agree. There's a 276 batting average on the curveball. There's a 167 ISO on the slider. That doesn't sound high,

but you're not supposed to have that much of a slugging on your slider. You know what I mean? It's a pitch that usually has like you you look and you're like oh this guy's allowing a 200 slugging on this slider you know um and he's allowing a 389 so um and that goes with a dead zone dead zone is fastball i think the the real problem with josiah gray is he does not extend. He has poor extension. I think it's bottom quartile extension, maybe even bottom of the extension.

He's a little bit like oh man, who's the... Tyson Ross? Yeah, Tyson Ross had a really short delivery. It just always plays worse than the eye test

because we see it from behind the plate. You're like, that looks like a good breaking ball. That looks like a good fastball. It's 95 or whatever. When you're at the plate, behind the plate, you start to see that you can just see it longer. You can see it longer and

that reduces the effectiveness of everything. Just to your point, I look at the extension column pretty often when I'm looking at pitch mixes on baseball savant. It's all the way over on the right side. It's a bunch of 5.7s and 5.9s. Usually you don't see numbers less than 6. Yeah, it's unusual.

It's improved too from last year. He was at 5.6 and 5.5 and 5.4 on his four-seamer slider and curve. over six yeah it's it's improved too from last year he was at five six and five five five four on his four-seamer slider worse than the league last year in this year he's not worse than the league but yeah that's uh that's disappointing to uh to say the least i was just intrigued by how much the pitch mix had actually changed i think with this new pitch mix he's uh he's he can leap into sort of of streamer status for me because he is going to get some matchups where it's going to be all right.

But a 79 overall stuff plus is really poor. And just to put it in context, Patrick Corbin has a 79 overall stuff plus. So the Nats have a type. Actually, Trevor Williams has a 79 stuff plus. So, yes. The 79 club. It's really weird, actually, because the other two starters in the rotation, Mackenzie Gore and Chad Kuhl, both have 94 stuff plus.

They only have two numbers. If you're a stuffist, Mike Rizzo, anti-stuffist. Yeah, right. Very, very clear based on what they've got cooking there. Let's talk about Mike Soroka for a moment. I saw that he pitched very well in his most recent outing at AAA Gwinnett, struck out five over six scoreless innings, only had a couple of walks, scattered four hits.

It's been a really rough road for Soroka coming off of the Achilles injuries, two Achilles tears. That could be a career-ending situation right there. He's still just 25 years old. Bryce Elder's pitching fine for now, but when Soroka first broke into the league, even though it wasn't a profile that was going to lead us to a ton of strikeouts, I thought he was a bit of a rich man's Kyle Hendricks in some ways. The ratios are going to be good.

The K rate's going to be a little bit low. But because the team context is good, it's going to work really well from a Roto perspective. If the volume is there innings-wise, Mike Soroka is going to exceed expectations, even if projections are a little bit wrong about him year over year over year. He's finally healthy again. I'm curious, once he's back, and we don't have any word that he's rejoining the rotation just yet, once he's back, are you in on Mike Soroka after all these injuries?

Yeah, yeah, I think so, and maybe even a little bit more than the model says because he right now has a 101 Stuff Plus in the minors. He's hanging out between Forrest Whitley, Riley Thompson, D.L. Hall, and Logan Allen has fallen a little bit in his next start. He is the average stuff plus maybe. But that's better than Elder, Dodd, and Schuster. Yep.

So I think he's going to get the role. So I think the time is there. He's going to pitch. He's going to be in the rotation if he's healthy. And he seems like he's healthy and then two i think you know the model struggles most on change-ups and uh and sinkers um and uh you know he has a good slider um and you know he has the model says a 92 stuff plus on the thinker but he really commands the thinker well you know and i that's not showing up in his location plus numbers and maybe that's what they're waiting on to to activate him is to

to get that command back but he's a guy who can really command the sinker and then has weapons to get whiffs too so i think i think uh i think stuff and strikeout rate models undervalue him a little bit, and I would take the under on his 4-1-5 ERA projections for most models. I like him a little bit where the bat has a 3-7-9 ERA and a 1-2 whip. I think he can do that. Won't be a big strikeout rate guy, but I think he will be a run suppression guy. Yeah, and probably a wins machine in that Atlanta rotation too. Speaking of extension though, my goodness, looking back at what he was doing before he got hurt,

this is even less extension than Josiah Gray. Wow. Five fours, five threes, even some five twos back in 2019. That is the least amount of extension I've seen on a StatCast page so far. New record. I wonder where it is right now. Yeah, that'd be a good bit of information to have. Yeah. Well, we'll have to wait and see. Wait until he comes back, probably, to have that question answered. But just better movement profiles, even given the poor extension. Yeah, and that makes a pretty big difference. Got one more question.

This is an NL East related question, or pitching question, that is. Is it actually happening for AJ Puck right now in Miami? Are we trusting this? Is this the arrival of a new possible top 10 closer? We're always looking for new closers to join, especially younger guys that could do it for a handful of years and, and be the, uh,

the port in the storm, if you will, and maybe be a 25 or, or 30 save, uh, source on a regular basis. Are you buying into what puck is doing for the Marlins? Yeah,

I am. I am. And I think he can be that, that closer. Um, he, you know, Tanner Scott has the best stuff plus in that pen but we don't have to look at his location plus which is poor just watch and know it that tanner scott probably has too poor command to be a closer it's just you just you just can't like you don't trust that

you know right if it's scouting scale it's it's 80 stuff with 30 command yeah it really is and so puck uh right now is reading a little bit lesser in terms of stuff uh but he's superior in terms of location plus um it is interesting he throws a a sweeper and he's a lefty and sweepers have big platoon splits um but and you know as a lefty you'd be like oh that's that's a that could be a problem um but he does have two really good fastballs and the model doesn't love the change but um it could be uh big for him he has that sort of starters mentality um and so i think that he will over perform his stuff and be a good closer yeah i think he's i don't know if he's the top 10 closer uh you know there's some context there

in terms of how bad the team is uh is this bullpen good enough to continue to deliver save chances to him? There's some questions there. If someone offered you AJ Puck for the shares of Ryan Presley that I know you don't have, would you take Puck? No. You mean like in a keeper league

or something? No, in a redraft league. Is Presley hurt? He's got zero saves. No, I'm taking Presley. Iley hurt? He's got zero saves. No, I'm taking Presley. I don't know what you're talking about. K rate's down. That was an easy one for me. Home run rate's up. I don't know. I don't know.

I'm Mr. Ryan Presley. I'm the guy that always has Ryan Presley on my teams. I'm just trying to find a common ground here. Look at that. His stuff plus and his fastball fell beneath 100. I thought he was going to do more with that changeup after he showed that pitch in the postseason. I thought that was going to be a bigger part of...

Stuff plus likes it, but he's still a two-breaking ball guy, and I think he still has enough velo to be the closer there. I'd still take Presley over Puck. They've bumped up that slider usage again for Ryan Presley. He has thrown the change up a bit more this year than he did last year with that loss of on the fastball. Almost down a full tick so far. So trying

to make adjustments, probably going to be okay, but you're not quite there with AJ Puck as a top 10 closer, even if you are a believer. A solid closer to probably from that next group is where we'd go if we were re-ranking and re-drafting today for the rest of the season.

One position player question that's been on my mind for the last 24 hours or so. Is Jake Berger an actual better hitter than Yohan Mankata at this point? Defensively, there's a problem. Berger needs work defensively. Mankata's a good defender at third base.

So that's where the White Sox might run into some difficulty once Mankata is healthy. But I think I'd like Jake Berger's bat, even though he strikes out a lot. Further supporting evidence. Further supporting evidence. Mankata is better. What are you talking about?

Further evidence. This is a weird would-you-rathers today. This is not. No, this is not. We're going back to 2021. Since 2021, Mankata's played 257 games. He's played four times as many games. He's hit 28 homers.

Struck out 26% of the time. Has a 244-333-393 line over the last two seasons in a few weeks. So that's a 104 WRC+. Jake Berger is more of an up and down guy. 259, 315, 517. That's a 130 WRC+. That's painful for me to hear these numbers.

And I wonder if they gave Berger more time, if he could lower the K rate a little bit. Yeah, he certainly had way lower strikeout rates than the Miners, but also higher whiff rates than you'd expect given those strikeout rates. So he's always had the whiff. Barrel rates over this time? Moncada? 8.8%. Berger?

17.5%. Jake Berger might be good. Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. Are you prepared to live in a world where Jake Berger is good and takes on Mankata's job? No, that's the part I don't think is going to happen. They're going to let Mankata go when his contract is up.

But Mankata is going to play, I think, when he's healthy. is up. But Mankata is going to play, I think, when he's healthy. I think one of the problems for Jake Berger is Eloy Jimenez's defense and injury history. Because if they could play Eloy in left field,

then Berger could DH more, and he'd have some time there. The other path, I guess, would be playing Andrew Vaughn less. Or just playing Vaughn less but Vaughn's 258 378 power hasn't been there so far

371 for the slug I don't know maybe I'm just I'm wish casting more playing time for Jake Berger than he's likely to get but I will give you that Jake Berger is good he's a good hitter I don't think he's taking yeah that's a good qualification He's a good hitter. I don't think he's taking... Yeah, that's a good qualification.

He's a good hitter. And I don't think he's taking Mankata's job. I think defense is a part of that reason, too. It matters, for sure. I think that's what complicates things for the White Sox. But it says a lot about, I think, where Mankata's current offensive level really is compared to where it briefly peaked back in 2019. So, I don't know.

That one really surprised me. Does Andrew Vanna buy low for you? Keeper in Dynasty Leagues, for sure. I like that pull percentage inching up. I want him to pull the ball more. And pull percentage inching up, the walk rate going up, the chase rate going down. There's a lot of

good stuff in here. His max EV has always been good, so it's about tapping into his raw power. And I know the barrel rate is down, but it's not in a significant sample yet. Is Vaughn a member of the previously named Nathaniel Lowe Lift the Ball More Club?

Yeah, lift the ball, pull fly balls. This guy needs to pull fly balls. I don't know why he doesn't pull fly balls. Someone should tell him to pull fly balls. I bet someone's telling him. It seems like it's hard. Yeah, that is. But that pull percentage inching up says to me that maybe he's inching that contact rate out in front of the plate a little bit so so my reasons for buying in though the plate skills are really good right now he's walking more than ever he's kept the k rate down yeah he's he's good enough offensively to play the hard hit rate's still there he's hitting the ball hard even though

he's not hitting it in the air and pulling it in the air. That, to me, is still correctable. You're talking about someone with 1,100 big league plate appearances. I would say that you're at the point in the year where if you're in a keeper league or a dynasty league, you're starting to identify the slow starting players that are younger guys that could still get a lot better. And if you have to start playing for the future, even if you're not, if you're just trying to get better in the short term, you want to take a few chances on younger players that can help you down the road, Andrew Vaughn fits that description.

There's still a very good chance we have not seen his best season. There are enough core skills there to go ahead and buy in now while you can. Price will still be low and the payoff could be significant. Yeah. Agree.

I'm in that phase for at least the one keeper league I've mentioned in the show, the XFL league where I've had just a rash of injuries. Ryan Bloomfield and I have the injury bug in a bad way in that league. We'll be eyeing up players like Vaughn in the next few weeks and probably making some moves. Bunch of great mailbag

questions here. You know, the first one is a really important one to keep in mind. If you're just looking up players on Savant and Fangraphs, this question came from Chris and Chris just wants to know what's the difference between the hard hit rate on Fangraphs and the hard hit rate you see on baseball Savant. And I mean, the numbers are really different. Baseball Savant,

54.3%. That puts juan soto in the 91st percentile yeah from fangraphs the the calculation uh it is a calculation so it's not video scouts making decisions on the hard hit rate on fangraphs it is a calculation done by baseball info solutions but the calculation includes uh hang time location and general trajectory so i believe that it's a little bit more barrel-esque right where um general trajectory sounds like there's basically launch angle in it on some level, right? Yeah. So if there's launch angle in there,

then it's more almost like a quality of contact metric than a hard hit rate. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think it's a more precise form of barrel rate. Is that the way you'd describe it? The exact algorithm is not available to us. Right. But, yeah, I don't... It could be more valuable than just straight-up hard hit rate.

It could be. Because it does have some quality of contact information in terms of good angles in that case if you look at this year 26.1 compared to last year when it was a down year for Soto at 29.4 do you have some concerns at this point that we're seeing a little more of the same that we're not seeing the elite of the elite player that Soto had been for his first four seasons in the league I've been concerned with him the the top end isos have disappeared with the the ball and so he's more of a kind of 200 220 iso guy since we've had this new ball in play and that's because he's a bit of a let it travel guy um that uh goes oppo and he's really lost the oppo homer so now his pull rate is up uh and his barrel rate is up second best he's ever

had i think those are quality things um and uh yet he's had the biggest ground ball rate of his career so he's pulling ground balls and something has got to change for him i think he's had the biggest ground ball rate of his career. So he's pulling ground balls. And something has got to change for him. I think he's just in an adjustment period, is how I'd put it. He's not, you know, I know that some people read it as sort of whining or, you know, trying to absolve himself of blame. But he is reportedly having trouble with the pitch clock. And so, you know, he's with the pitch clock. He's got the pitch clock thing.

He may be eyeing the shift and thinking he'll become more of a pull hitter. I think there's just an adjustment period in there. I'm not ready to write him off. We are seeing more pulled balls than ever from Soto, up to 37%. That could be good. If he's going to hit the ball in the air and pull it, good things are going to happen. than ever from Soto, up to 37%. That could be good. Yeah. Yeah, if he's going to hit the ball in the air and pull it, good things are going to happen. The barrel rate, 17.4% here early on.

I wouldn't be panicking if I had him. I would love to trade for him if I had someone willing to trade him to me. I just don't know if the people that have Juan Soto on their teams are actually all that worried. If you are worried, I don't think you should be. I think he's such a – He's our number one bat in our main, I think. We're actually a little bit more worried about Masataka Yoshida, who I'm not

fully sure that he is a buy low because he has an extreme ground ball rate and he was, he had a high pitch and the high, high in the zone that I was watching the other day and he hit a grounder on it. So he has this like real kind of ground ball heavy approach. So I'm worried about these projected ISOs and he doesn't have much speed.

So even if he gets it going in terms of that is a really great great strikeout rate and he does have a really good eye and really good contact rates but even if he gets it going in terms of batting average and hits 280 from here on out i'm not i don't know i might set the over under on homers around 12 or 10 yeah all the projection systems are still above that for power right now, and they're even a little high on average, which is thinking about the part of our conversation about Manoa and how quickly his ratios have changed.

I would have thought that even 13 games in the big leagues would be impactful for a guy whose previous inputs were all based on another league. Yeah, they haven't moved much. I mean, the ISOs are moving down. That's where the biggest impact has been on his projections. He's kind of like a 180 ISO by most systems going in, and now he's 160 to 170.

Yeah, Yoshida, a player that I have on zero teams, so I wasn't even aware necessarily just how bad love the strikeout rate I kind of fell in love with the strikeout rate and thought you know at least we'd have a another Stephen Kwan but Kwan lifts the ball a little more than this I mean 67% ground ball rate from Yoshida he's got he's got to fix that I wonder what his ground ball rate was in Japan yeah and then I wonder how relevant that really is yeah does that even matter yeah yeah that is a weird thing you know better pictures are harder to lift here's one for you the two related to yoshida did the performance in the wbc convince you like were you already interested

before that or did that kind of... If you were on the fence, did that make you say, yeah, this works. This guy's good. It did help make the decision for me. Because there were things to like. He's doing this against elite competition. He's hitting homers, too. And doubles.

So I thought, he can lift a ball. He has power. Yeah. Thank you for the question, Chris. You have to think, you know, there is actually pretty inconsistent quality of opposition in the WBC. It is not unlike spring training. And I wouldn't necessarily look at the spring training slugging numbers.

So, yeah, bad process for me on that one if that really made my decisions. Well, it's early, but, yeah but you've got some reasons to be concerned, and we've got plenty of time to see if those reasons will be fully validated. We've got a question from loyal listener OJ, and it was inspired by Caleb Ort. I don't think Caleb Ort has ever inspired a question on our podcast before. He's a 32-year-old reliever in Boston, and the question is how should actual teams and our fantasy

teams balance the subsurface numbers against opportunity costs of not rostering younger guys with upside? It's a guy like Caleb Ortt popping in a pitching model versus someone much younger. In the case of the Red Sox, it'd be someone like Thad Ward or

Noah Song, who they lost off the 40 man. They've had a few other guys that have been removed as a result of protecting these older guys that pop. So how do you balance that from a real life and from a fantasy perspective? If you have someone on the wrong side of 30 that just jumps off the page, but you have other guys that are in their mid-20s who maybe don't pop in the model, but have more growth potential that they could untap. And they might even have the benefits for a major league team of being inexpensive

or being optionable, whereas someone like Ort, you know, eventually is out of those options because they're so much further along in their career. That last bit is really important. If you build a bullpen where you don't have at least two or three optional guys,

I think that you're going to be in trouble over the course of the season. You just want to have the ability to rest a guy without putting him on the IL, basically. That's what those options are. And so he does, if you have too many of them, yeah, you can affect your balance and then have,

what you end up doing is boxing yourself in a corner where you have to release somebody, you know, if you don't have enough options in the bullpen. And that happens to teams every year, right? There's always this carousel, and somehow the Rays always end up with the good reliever at the end of it uh so uh it is something that you have to consider but uh i'm also a little bit like uh what are you doing for me now in the bullpen i don't think that i want to spend too much time thinking about future bullpens. I do want to spend some time.

I want to think about it. I want to have optionable guys next year that are good. But in terms of, am I going to think this guy is going to help me in the bullpen four years from now? I think that's pretty unlikely. Yeah, bullpens definitely seem like they're built for now and not for later. Or actually does have options left. Ryan Brayan brazier though is another good example of someone that

does and then also the results are bad but the model likes him yeah so like how long do you trust the hat when you're looking at someone who's in this case 35 i mean caleb or it's 31 i could kind of talk myself into a few uh a few reasons to believe that he could get better and and still be pretty good whereas brazier you're like okay this dude's probably at the very end of his career yeah yeah it's interesting that is um that the model likes him i need i need to get that hold on why why does it like him i need to figure that one out real quick hold on pitch modeling stuff. Once upon a time, Brian Brazier had one really good pitch

that led him onto a bunch of my rosters. I think that's probably still the case. Must be a really good slider. Yeah, I thought it was a slider that he could get a ton of whiffs with. I think that was what brought him to my teams a few years back. Weird.

It's a sinker. That's very odd. That's surprising. And not a sinker. That's very odd. That's surprising. And not a good slider. Maybe that's why he's having trouble getting whiffs. His best pitch is a sinker. The slider gets great results year over year.

It doesn't get great ground ball rates. This is a weird pitcher. Gets whiffs though. Gets whiffs and guys don't do much with it yeah yeah so you you stick around for a little bit but you're right like he's out of options he's not under contract uh next year and uh you know if he's not helping now and and like a 104 stuff plus is actually kind of borderline for for a reliever you know how long do you stick around with a 104 stuff plus when the average reliever has like a 102

stuff plus and the results aren't there you know what i mean yeah like if he's popping 120s then you're like well we're gonna wait a little bit longer like caleb ortt has a 127 stuff plus you definitely hold on to him before and he has an option right you you release brazier before you release a word yeah i think if if you put me in the chair of making the actual decision and you say well use the red socks example i would have much rather kept one of those younger guys they lost from the 40 man they kept brazier because the red stocks are trying to do that thing where they they spend some money and they hang around and they kind of play the middle. If you're going to play the middle, you should skew to the younger side of the decisions for your pitching.

You want more controllable guys as opposed to the 35-year-old that might help you in the seventh inning. To me, that was a bad process. Who did they lose? I think it was Thad Ward, Noah Song, and Franklin German. Yeah, and I know some people on teams that like Franklin Germain. Right, so at least one of those guys probably made sense more than Brazier. Yeah, I think you're right. Although I can see the process maybe being like,

well, he has good stuff in our model, he can help us this year. Thanks a lot for that question, OJ. We've got one more question. This one comes from Angelo. Angelo wants to know if we have any concerns about Luis Castillo. He's pointing to a drop in Stuff Plus to begin the season, which, I don't know. I think, first off, I mean, Castillo's pitching really well through four starts. I know those are different things. You're looking at process versus results, but seeing that the fastball velocity is still good,

the slider and changeup are both still there as viable secondaries. I would assume that Castillo will also gain some ticks on the fastball. Well, he's shown us this multi-year pattern of struggling or not having his best stuff early. The cold weather does seem to have some kind of impact on him. Or earlier in the year, he's just not as sharp as he is. Stuff Plus would also go up if he threw his slider more, which I think he'll do over the course of the season. This was an eye-opening thing.

I stood in for my semi-annual Max Scherzer yelling at Eno Saris about Stuff Plus session last week. And one of the things that Scherzer brought up was that the best pitchers think about the season as a full season. You're going to see the Astros again. You're going to see this team again. You're going to see the Astros again you know you're gonna see this team again you're gonna see the A's again and so you know we had Chris Bassett telling us well I don't want to show everybody all my pitches in the first inning then what do I do in the in the fifth you know and I think that there's some players that even say well I'm gonna have April me and I'm gonna have September me and

they're gonna be a little bit different so his stuff plus would go up right now if he threw fewer fastballs forcing fastballs he's at the uh six year high or seven year high and fastball rate if he threw fewer of those his stuff plus would go up but maybe he's made the calculation i'll throw quarter i'll throw 25 sliders later in the season. But right now, I'm going to try and get back by on the fastball. So we'll see fewer fastballs with more velo. I think his stuff plus will actually kind of go up to meet his production.

And the other thing is, the longer your track record, the better your K-BB, the more I will ignore the stuff plus. Especially with starters. For me too, the other thing that I really think is interesting with Castillo is when you have a fastball that averages 96 or 97

and you lose a tick or two, he's sitting at 95-1 with his fastball. I'm not worried about Luis Castillo only throwing his fastball at 95-1. You can afford to lose that. There is a bit of a shelf there. There's a bit of a1 with his fastball. I'm not worried about Luis Castillo only throwing his fastball at 95-1. You can afford to lose that. There is a bit of a shelf there. No, there's a bit of a shelf there, I think. It would be more of a problem if he didn't have good secondaries.

You know what I mean? If he was Spencer Strider and he went from 97 to 95, I would be worried because I think the shelf now is around 96. It's moved up. I used to think it was closer to 94. It was 94, but now the average is 94, so it can't beat the 94 shelf. Does the model still like the changeup for Castillo?

When he came into the league, that pitch was unbelievable. He's throwing it a lot less now than he did years ago. It prefers a slider, and that's been the change that the mariners did was make him more of a four seam slider guy that can go to the sinker and change but to me there's two luis castillos and so since there's two luis castillos uh i think that's a good thing do you know what i mean like he if if the slider if he's got bad slider command one day or or he's hitting a bunch of lefties or or a righty team like he he has two different ways to beat and i

think that's good yeah i would agree i think he's much more with arsenal much more balanced than different ways he can attack even though the the pitches aren't thrown equally he can just come up with a different game plan and that does make it easier to go through a lineup. You think about seeing the Astros a bunch of times and how are you going to deal with them at the beginning of the season, how are you going to deal with them at the end of the season? I think it's a really good point that Scherzer brought up to you.

It's playing chess. It's having a plan that's going to work not only today, but that's going to work two months from now and three months from now in the postseason. That's why I always prefer pitchers with more pitches. Yeah, that's built in. That's like the built-in insurance to have more in the tank later on.

Thanks a lot for that question, Angelo. We are going to head out on our way out the door. A reminder that you can get a subscription to The Athletic for $1 a month for the first year at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. You can find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris. You can find me at Derek Van Ryper. If you've got a question for a future episode, ratesandbarrels at gmail.com is the best way to get that to us. If you were watching our last video and my voice stopped with like 10 minutes left in the show, I fixed that. So you can listen to the end of the episode on YouTube.

It was fine on the podcast version i have no idea what button i clicked or if i leaned on the keyboard or something i have no blame the baby i i probably was the baby's fault probably working on it went to go help with the baby button mash something getting up from my desk and clipped off 10 minutes of audio so my apologies for the technical difficulties because I didn't realize it happened. Someone asked, they said, am I just the mushrooms kick in or did the DVR's voice just cut out?

And I tweeted back, I'm like, probably the mushrooms. And looked at it later, I was like, ooh, producer error. So my apologies for that. But yeah, hit us up on Twitter, at Unoceros. I'm at Derek and Riper.

That's gonna do it for this episode of Raids and Barrels. We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening.