Rates & Barrels - Quality Speed Sources, Rule Changes On Tap & Pitch Clock Considerations

Episode Date: September 8, 2022

Eno and DVR discuss the pleasant surprise of having many sources of stolen-bases that are good all-around offensive players, plus Cody Bellinger's future, the risky speed profiles to avoid, underrating Jon Berti, and the potential impact of rule changes looming for the 2023 season. Rundown 7:30 Stolen-Base Leaderboard Packed with Good Players? 12:30 Cody Bellinger's Future; Brighter Leaving LA? 20:08 Low OPS, Good Speed, High Risk 24:02 Underrating Jon Berti 27:16 Potential Impact of Rule Changes on Stolen Bases 31:09 Cedric Mullins' Breakout Follow-Up 35:56 Pitch Clock Coming in 2023? Pitchers Primed to Gain/Lose 45:45 The Pie Slice Rule, Shifting 49:55 Joey Bart's Second-Half Turnaround Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Want visibly glowing skin in 14 days? With Nuole Indulgent Moisture Body Wash, you can lather and glow. The 24-hour moisturizing body wash is infused with vitamin B3 complex and has notes of rose and cherry creme for a rich indulgent experience. Treat your senses with Nuole Indulgent Moisture Body Wash. Buy it today at major retailers. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Thursday, September 8th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris.

You know it's going to be a good day when you're watching on YouTube and the music is flying by. When the music is in double time, it's going to be a great day. I'm caffed up. Or you drank a lot of coffee. I feel great. Got one show already recorded today. This is show number two all warmed up seen what the pitchers got

I'm taking the kids to their first concert they chose tonight, Imagine Dragons was their choice and in fact the cousins from Hawaii have flown in to see Imagine Dragons with them so this is turning into an epic level event that they'll remember their whole lives probably and now that they're remember their whole lives probably.

And now that they're petitioning us to leave them alone in their seats because we had to, the cousins sort of came on in the second half so they bought seats a little bit further away from us. So now they're all saying, let the kids be alone and the adults, you know,

leave them alone for like a set or something. And so it makes me nervous because my little one is seven but he'll have his older cousins there and they have phones and you know there'll be strict rules and you know what are the odds that you end up a fan of imagine dragons after seeing a live show i've had that i've had to listen to a lot of it, and I will say that it wasn't my favorite music coming in. I think they're okay, and I have a feeling I'm going to like their show

because I've heard that their shows are good. They seem like one of those sort of like big. They like to do things big. There's going to be lots of lights, and they're going to stomp around, and I bet you it'll be pretty good. Yeah, if you show up on Monday wearing an Imagine Dragons t-shirt, I'm going to assume you've joined the cult. Yeah, I

wonder what my parents will think because I was the kind of kid that went with my parents to concerts. So I saw David Bowie, Miles Davis, uh, you know, uh, Rita Marley, uh, the Grateful Dead with my dad and the fish with my dad.

So, um, you know, Madden Dragons does not really fit that. No, my parents didn't listen to the same music as your parents. Mom took me to David Bowie. To be fair,

we took the kids to a concert of our own music and we took them to My Morning Jacket and that was pretty good. But, you know, this is their choice. Enjoy. You know what my first choice was? I think the first one I chose, I can't remember the timing

exactly, but I think it was Soul Asylum, Screaming Trees, and Stone Temple Pilots. But I think it was Soul Asylum, Screaming Trees, and Stone Temple Pilots. And I tried to dye my hair red like Waylon, like Scott Waylon, but I didn't actually bleach it first. So it just turned in sort of like a brown purple. Yeah, you got to put the base coat on first. Not that I'm an expert in hair coloring. Yeah, how many times have you frosted those tips?

I graduated high school in 2002, so I think that probably gives you an answer to the question without me answering the question directly. I'm going to plead the fifth. This is as much information as I'm going to give you. Let's see.

First concert I would have chosen, probably a Dave Matthews Band concert. Again, high school kid, graduated in 2002. That was kind of the peak, I would estimate, for Dave Matthews Band. Yeah, I graduated in 97. I saw Dave Matthews Band. Allman Brothers, Dave Matthews Band,

and even the guy, Margaritaville guy. Jimmy Buffett. Jimmy Buffett. That was a big that i went to prep school in in boston you know those are those were like those are the concerts we all went to yeah yeah that was the first concert i chose best concert i've ever been to tom petty and pearl jam kind of not even close actually which probably means i need to go to more concerts in the future it's not knocking their music at all.

It's just it's a snap. Like that was by far the best show that I've been to. Paul McCartney right up there, too. I mean, it's hard to go wrong at a Paul McCartney show at this point, even even though he's what, 75, 80 years old. It's amazing. I hope I'm half as good at anything when I'm that age as paul mccartney is best show i've ever been to man i saw the shins with 500 people in paris okay so the the context was huge yeah

i tend to think about context a lot like i i saw one of my first concerts was burning spear in Jamaica with like 500 people and like outside. And, you know, I was I won't say what age I was, but I was having a beer and I shouldn't have. So it was fun. You know, there's always yeah, I tend to think of who I was there with, you know, what the sound was like and stuff. And because, you know, I've seen some big some big names in big arenas where I was like, eh. One thing, I think Radiohead was really impressive. I've seen them like two or three times,

and sometimes even at festivals, outdoors, which a lot of times I'm skeptical about those arrangements because I like indoor sound better. It's more sort of full body sound, you know? And then festivals you're, you're like, Oh,

I have to go see these people next time. Oh, we have to, like, it's always like so structured. You're like, Oh, I got to run here.

And then at three o'clock I got to be over there. And like, there's all this stuff, but radio head, I've seen them three different times in like arenas and festivals. And every time I was like, yeah, they're,

they're fricking good good it's a good call i've never seen radiohead wish i had because i think they would put on a fantastic show so music talk aside oh one more music thing they do have a game kind of like you know wordle and mlb pickle which was called wardle for a little while mlb pickles the baseball one they have one on spotify called hurdle where it's basically named that tune and it plays a segment of a song usually the first segment's like a second so you're getting a few notes at most med like jammed in there until you get a little bit more yeah i think you get seven or eight turns to get it and uh i had an ace on on wednesday On your first try.

On Hurdle. I got one on the first try. I didn't think that was ever going to happen because it's such a small tidbit. I got to try it, but I know I'll be super bad at it. I just don't have the memory for that sort of thing. I'll basically spend the whole time I'm supposed to be guessing going, Oh, it's the one with the... Yeah. Oh, oh, oh, oh, wait, wait oh oh oh wait wait wait wait wait wait it's on the

tip of my tongue it's such an old man top 40 music from the last 15 years my chances of getting the correct answer are very low so there's no i'm not the biggest radio listener either. But my sister-in-law, she would kill it. Fun game, though. Highly recommend it. So on this episode, actually a lot of baseball to talk about. I started looking at a stolen base leaderboard again on Wednesday night, and I noticed that the best sources of stolen bases are nearly all good players now, which I don't think has always been the case.

good players now, which I don't think has always been the case. We have plenty of flawed players, guys that might post a 70 to 80 WRC plus, but because they can run because they're on a bad team, they get lots of playing time. Maybe some of those players have been good defenders, so that's also helped prop up their playing time a bit in the past. I kind of like this because it means we're not as likely to have to draft a bad player in the early rounds just to satisfy our need for stolen bases, right? So if you take a look at a stolen base leaderboard as of today, you've got two players already with 30 bags, Cedric Mullins and Jorge Mateo, two Orioles. Mateo is basically the exception to this when you're looking at the very top of the leaderboard.

Everyone except for Mateo, who has reached the top 15 in stolen bases this year, has a WRC plus above 100. I guess there's a tie for 17 steals. So I guess Isaiah kind of also fits into the Mateo mold but most players especially the guys that have 20 plus bags have been extremely productive hitters aside from their stolen base contributions and I like that because it makes me

worry less about stolen bases in the future compared to how much I've worried about it in recent seasons yeah the approach that I took in most leagues has been really successful. To try and get good players that will steal you 10 to 15 bags, I've actually found myself, I think in my main,

I'm first in stolen bases. And I didn't draft a single player being like, oh, I need stolen bases. I was just like, just get them along the way. a single player being like oh i need stolen bases you know i was just like just get them along the way um and uh you know so i i think that's the best takeaway from all this going forward is just to to try and draft good players uh with speed um as long as you can because eventually at the end you're going to take the guys with no speed uh anyway um you know and those are going to be the values as you go deeper into the draft. But I was looking at 650 OPS as the line.

Jeff Zimmerman has shown that basically 650 OPS is where you start to lose your job. And there are only 13 hitters with less than a 650 OPS that were qualified for the batting title. Almost all of them lost their jobs. Let's see here. Let's focus on the ones with steals. But in the 13 players that actually, that's not right to say that they lost their jobs because they're qualified for the batting title. So they have made it to 400 plate appearances. But would you consider like Adam Frazier or Tony Kemp or Nicky Lopez or even Jonathan Scope?

Would you consider them regulars at this point? They at least have one foot in the grave, you know, quote unquote. foot in the grave you know quote unquote yeah i i guess i see them all as super subs that might be playing more than they should because of the state of their respective teams but looking forward i don't think any of those guys project to be 500 plate appearance players for me next season yeah i guess there's this concept of first division starter and second division starter, right? Still a thing, yep. Yeah, and I think a lot of the teams, a lot of the guys I named are on bad teams

and are about to be replaced. We just, on the 3-0 show, talked about Arizona, and we were pretty glowing about Arizona in general, and we said shortstop's a problem. I don't think Geraldo Perdomo is solving that problem. And we advocated for them to, you know, I was saying Swanson, you were saying Turner, like, you know, go get a shortstop. But, you know, Nicky Lopez, I think, has found himself sort of further and further away from

what you might call a core in Kansas City. and further away from what you might call a core in Kansas City. Miguel Rojas, I think, has always been more of a stopgap, but I would think that you would push Jazz over to short to start next season and make Miguel Rojas a backup for the beginning of the season. I think Whit Merrifield's role is up in the air. He's also probably projected to be better than most of these players. But yeah, we were focusing on stolen bases,

miles, straw, Nikki Lopez and Whit Merrifield and Cody Bellinger are the only double digit steel guys under six 50 OPS. And I don't think I would draft any of the next year unless Whit Merrifield's price drops precipitously. I have no idea what to make of Cody Bellinger anymore. I mean, we're talking over 200 games now

going back to the start of last season below the Mendoza line with something like a 250s OBP. 27 homers, 15 stolen bases combined over those two seasons but just not enough not enough evidence this season that he's going to come anywhere close to pre-2021 levels again

I think he's actually a non-tender candidate he's become that kind of player not because the Dodgers can't afford to keep him but because they can just do better. Or out of the roster spot. Yeah, you give them $20 million to spend towards something else. And that's a pretty sizable chunk of change that they could either put into a multi-year deal for someone else or even just take a flyer on someone else as a possible bounce back candidate.

flyer on someone else as a possible bounce back candidate yeah i mean this year at this point it's a one year 20 million 20 million dollar deal for a guy who has a defensive ability and some versatility um i think they probably just re-up him but uh i agree he could end up uh signing with uh you know a texas rangers squad you and, you know, maybe sometime with Donnie Ecker gets him right. I like there's enough there for me that a new voice might actually like I I can't help but still look at, hey, he still barrels the ball pretty well. but still look at, hey, he still barrels the ball pretty well. He's not a guy who swings at 50% balls. He's got a hole in his swing that I think people are just exploiting.

And he's tried all sorts of different ways to deal with that. And he's not dealing with it successfully. But if you look at the history of Kyle Schwarber, who had a similar hole early in his career and has had some ups and downs, he's had some sub 200 batting averages. Schwarber. Now, if you told me I can get you someone that has done things like Schwarber in the past and can play center field. Like he's obviously going to sign with a team next year. I think it'll be a second division team to be a second division starter and uh if the price and the price will drop even further and i may have more cody bellinger shares next year it just seems weird that i want to see him go somewhere else if the dodgers couldn't fix him by now i want to be able to fix him this time

a different hitting coach oh yeah i guess a different off season i'm not saying brock is bad like you know no it's just it's not that something's not right the they've tried everything there that that's the issue it's not that they don't have the right people or that he's totally unfixable it's that the player organization match just doesn't seem to be there right now they They can't get him right. So the optimism would probably be there if he landed somewhere else, but it has to be a good somewhere else. It's not just, oh, he's on a bad team and he's going to play a lot.

We also believe in this organization being capable of fixing a player. And also the fresh start thing, and this is, I'm going to put my Ian Conn hat on here a little bit. So, they did this thing where they mic'd up

Mookie Betts. Alright? And Mookie Betts is in the outfield and they ask him, who on your team needs a fashion revision? Mookie Betts goes up to the outfield, like outfield meeting so it's him cody ballinger and

maybe chris taylor i forget maybe trace thompson anyway he comes up and he says to cody ballinger i think the answer is you and cody ballinger goes what's the question uh and moogie bet says well they're asking me in my ear who on this team needs a fashion revision most and i think it's you and cody looks sad oh no oh it's like awful he he does this thing where he's like me me are you oh i think i think my style is okay and luki's luki's like it's okay but it could be better and he's like yeah i guess it could be better and like bellinger's looking around like is everyone looking at me kind of look you know and it's not a good moment and it made me think of like what it must be to be Cody Bellinger right now, where it's like, dude, they were making videos about like MVP season. And I was me and like, what have what happened?

And he must be super, super frustrated. And he's had little glimpses. And then they then they're like after he had a little glimpse they publicly said well we're gonna sit him down here for a couple days a reset like you had a little taste of like post post all-star game you're like oh i had a little good week there you know and then something goes a little bit wrong they're like we're gonna sit him down for a little bit i mean i think that no matter what you're doing working with him confidence like i talk about this with pitchers all the time command is confidence i

have to have the confidence to throw my stuff in the zone right so when brian wilson was doing all that stupid stuff to begin games as a closer it's all it's all there but it's a confidence game i do all this stuff and look like this and make the face just to have confidence and retain my confidence so that I can throw a knuckleball. And they won't expect it because I'm sitting out here huffing and puffing and looking like a crazy person. So I think on the opposite side is true. When you're looking for a change of scenery, let's say you're working with him and it's working okay in the cage. You're telling him, yeah, this is looking good, Cody. This is looking good.

And he goes out there and he strikes out three times. Is he going to keep doing what you're asking him to do? Or is he going to try and ask for a new thing? Or is he just going to shut down? On some level, even if the coaching is good, he might need a change of scenery just to even hear the coaching because he's in a free fall. It's sad that the kind of playful, harmless sort of question that Mookie Betts gets while mic'd up finds its way to Cody Bellinger and takes whatever shreds are left of his confidence in this moment and just smashes them to smithereens because that's so unfortunate dude you know what you do when you when you're in that position is you take down

the biggest baddest dude in the in the in the in the clubhouse right yeah go after the guy that just got paid go after freddie yeah yeah yeah you go yeah exactly you go after freddie make fun of freddie for probably wearing the same clothes that Freddie wears. Yeah, yeah, Freddie has that crazy shirt. Freddie always wears this one shirt. You've got to have something in your back pocket for that because when you get mic'd up, you know you're going to have something like that to go after Cody.

Oh, man. Yeah, that's pretty rough. So situation probably dictates how interested I am in a bounce back. But I actually, in a weird way, feel better about Bellinger somewhere else than I do if he stays in Los Angeles. And we'll get some clarity on that in the next couple of months. I'm looking forward to knowing more about where he actually will be. You've always wanted to be part of something bigger than yourself. You live for experience and lead by example. You want the most out of life and realize what you're looking for is already in you. This is for you. The Canadian Armed Forces. A message from the government of canada try tim's new sweet chili chicken loaded wraps and bowls today take your taste buds on an exciting

new adventure for lunch or dinner with our delicious new sweet chili sauce it's time for sweet chili chicken it's time for tim's at participating restaurants in canada for a limited time but back to the question at hand, like, you know, some of these guys that are under 650, like Cody Bellinger and Whit Merrifield, we think may project to better than 650 in the future. I do think there's a conversation to be had about Myles Straw, who, you know, still above replacement, still the center fielder for the Guardians,

still sign that extension. It's only $5 million a year, basically, until 2026. So maybe he can be their backup center fielder. But are you drafting any shares of Myles Straw next year? He, by the way, by the auction calculator on Fangraphs, has been a below replacement fantasy player. Yeah, and that's with 16 stolen bases. It might get to 20 for the season.

It's because the average is low. There's almost nothing in terms of RBIs. 25 RBIs and 501 plate appearances. That is absolutely brutal for Myles Straw. He's exactly the kind of player that baseball seems to be moving away from. Defense only. The new baseball is we want to have power in every position. I think the other issue here is that Cleveland

has a lot of young talent coming up. They may trade some of that young talent to get someone who's an ideal fit in center field as a regular. And there are multiple paths for straw to become a fourth outfielder and more of a defensive specialist the salary i don't think the contract stops him from it you know nope i don't think so and even if he's playing every day he's stuck in the bottom of the order because he's not getting on base enough so then you're talking about geez this is almost like the gerard dysyson seasons in Kansas City where you look at him and say, there's 30 steals coming there, maybe. Okay, but it's coming with less than full-time playing time, so everything else is going to hurt you.

Zero homers, man. The only way that works is if you build everything else so exceptionally well around your lineup that you've covered the missing counting stats I think the idea in New York was Isaiah Kainer-Falefa and Ben Rotfeld at catcher and shortstop

because we have man-eating sluggers everywhere else right like we're just gonna slug the crap out of it, except have really good defenders at second and short, at short and catcher. And look at us now. There's people calling for Oswaldo Peraza

to start over Isaiah Nakayama-Falefa. We were calling for Volpe to start over him. Or I won't put that on you. It was me. But, you know, yeah, so Myles Straw going forward, I don't know that I can get with it. I was looking at rest of season projections with their OPS projection. John Birdie with a 678 OPS.

Bubba Thompson with a 595 projected OPS. Who else is in the danger zones? Jorge Mateo, 664 projected OPS. I do actually think he's in the danger zone for next year. If he's going to have a 660 projected OPS, that means there's a 40% likelihood that he doesn't make 650 OPS and you know they've got Gunnar Henderson right there yeah that's a danger zone player for me who else is a danger zone player for me Corbin Carroll is predicted for 700 OPS Tyro Estrada 709 Nick Gordon 733 Nick

Nico Horner 711. I think those guys are safe-ish. Corbin Carroll, obviously, that's a projection that's altered by the fact that he's so young. I don't know how much value that projection holds for you. I think I underrated John Birdie in hindsight. I think because he broke in late. I had too many questions about his offensive floor, which has proven to be higher than I thought it would be. I think I was quick to dismiss him after a down year a year ago. It was a 210, 311, 313 line from him. 624 OPS,

below that threshold. I thought we could be done with John Birdie, but what he's done this year looks a lot like what he did when he first got that opportunity with the Marlins in 2019. And even similar to what we saw from him in the shortened season in 2020, I mean, the barrel rate's actually up at 6.6%. He doesn't chase pitches outside the zone.

And he's currently hurt. I think he's playing hurt even. So that slowdown, I I think is just part of the ebb and flows of the season. If I'm running the Marlins, John Birdie is my starting second baseman next year and Jazz Chisholm is my starting shortstop. Yeah, I wouldn't

mind that at all and I think he would have the most imbalanced profile that I'd be willing to take a chance on from a speed perspective. Like I don't think John birdies necessarily my first choice for how I want to build a team because if he goes down and you're expecting,

let's say you 35 to 40 bags, you're trying to get to 80 in your league or something close to that. You got half of it with that one player and then he goes down, right? That's just, that's more of a risk and roster construction preference i try to avoid building that way but i would say he is the most imbalanced player that i feel comfortable rostering because i think the other skills are good enough to where he doesn't completely evaporate and lose playing time i went to the second page i'm still looking

at guys who are projected rest of season to have more than three stolen bases and have that danger zone OPS projection. And I found some more names for you. Isaiah kind of left a rest of season OPS 636. And I think just given what we were just talking about, I think he's absolutely in the danger zone. And I don't know, it's more of a keeper situation, but also next year when you're drafting,

I don't think I would count on Isaiah Canna for the left for the start all year. Maybe that'll be obvious. Maybe in the next three weeks he'll actually lose his starting job, so we'll say duh, you know. But right now even, I would say that's the case. Leote Tavares, 642, right on the line. Adoles Garcia, 691. That means there's at least sort of like a 30

chance he doesn't make a 650 ops next year uh victor robles 630 so he's on the do not draft do not resuscitate uh andrew velasquez uh 607 i don't think anybody's really uh depending on that so anyway some more names for you uh some older guys that might be slipping towards Do Not Draft are Colton Wong and Manny Margot with 690 OPS projections. If they fall with an aging curve, you may find they have a sort of a 660 type projection next year, which is very borderline.

Yeah. Tough group overall, though, because it just seems like this type of player is largely being pushed away. Now, what gets complicated is that we are facing an offseason where a lot of rules could change. And I think some of those rule changes could actually have an impact on the stolen base pool. So there's a few things that could change.

The pitch clock, which seems very likely. The pie slice rule, which we've talked about before, which keeps defenders from playing straight up the middle, right? So you extend the corners of the second base bag out toward the outfield grass. You wouldn't allow runners or fielders to be in the space between the two lines of that arced area behind the bag. And then larger bases, which have happened at all the minor league affiliates this year, going from 15-inch bases to 18-inch bases.

Kind of working backwards, larger bases seem like a great thing for stolen bases, because you think about how close many stolen base attempts are, getting the extra couple of inches potentially for the leadoff and then getting into the bag that will probably increase the willingness for some teams or at least certain players to take off more frequently. I think will increase stolen bases. It's interesting because that means more stolen bases and that means it's more scarce. That means I think the strategy of taking good players that just steal a few bases is even more important. One thing that I do would want to add is that you want to have some diversity of age probably because I think stolen bases age so poorly that you could be like, oh, I'm just going to take JT of Rio Muto. He stole 17 bases.

He's a good hitter with stolen bases. Bada bing, bada boom. He's a catcher. You know, he may steal five next year. You know, that's not out of the, that wouldn't be out of the norm. So I think you do want to think a little bit about age and sort of some diversity of age in your lineups as you're drafting. But otherwise, I think stolen bases will be more plentiful next year. little bit about age and sort of some diversity of age in your lineups as you're drafting uh but

otherwise i think stolen bases will be more plentiful next year i think the pitch clock will have some effect on stolen bases because we don't know exactly what the rules are going to be in terms of what the pitch clock how long the pitch clock is and how many steps offs you can do and how many throws to first you can do uh but the larger bases it's just math it's going to lead to more stolen bases it led to more stolen bases math. It's going to lead to more stolen bases. It led to more stolen bases in the minors. It will lead to more stolen bases in the majors. So do you think it'll...

The shape of that addition, though, do you think it matters? Like, will it just mean the guys who steal a lot of bases will steal a lot of bases? Or just everyone will steal a lot more bases? I think it's going to be kind of across the board i think the situation is going to be just consistently better to steal a base more favorable they've mathed it all out all the teams have mathed it out they're like if your start if the

pitcher has this pop you know this time into the plate and the catcher has this pop time you should go right and even if you reduce the velocity yeah and if you start roosting in velocity yeah another little edge to the base runner yeah so i i think that i think it's good for the game i like stolen bases um and uh i think we'll and it'd be good for fantasy i think so that we don't fetishize the stolen base so much and have to have whole pods about stolen bases. Yeah, well, that's content. Content moves some product, so I guess that's a good thing. I think I want to have one team next year

where I fade stolen bases. Not completely, but try to pick up all those values where you're like, oh man, why is Kyle Schwarber still available? Because he doesn't steal bases. Yeah, I'm going to try to stick with more balanced approaches on steals because the leagues where I did that this year turned out just fine in terms of being very competitive, if not winning those categories. I don't think we've talked about Cedric Mullins on this podcast at all this season. Can you remember any conversations we've had about Mullins at any point? We've talked a lot about the Orioles on the 3-0 show,

and they've hung around in the playoff race much longer than expected. But the big step from Mullins last year was one of the big fantasy storylines of 2021, and I think we spent a good portion of the winter wondering what exactly his follow-up would look like. The speed's been there. He's already matched last season's stolen base total, 30 bags a year ago, 30 this year.

Home runs have been pretty much cut in half, still enough time to possibly get above that mark. But 30 homers last year, he's at 13 this season. We know they changed the dimensions of the ballpark Camden yards. Mullins being a lefty would be slightly less impacted by that than if he were a righty, even though we know that there are some opposite field home runs that would be impacted for a typical player. So when you look at what Mullins has done over the course

of this season, are you comfortable looking at what he's doing now and saying this is the true talent baseline? Or do you think there's a path for him to get back closer to the power up that we saw a season ago in that breakout? I think this is him. It is a little bit of a lesson in regressing even things like barrel rate. even things like barrel rate. He had barrel rates of three minus three percent minus in his first three attempts at the big leagues. Then he had an eight percent barrel rate in his in his big breakout year last year. And what happens if you regress an eight barrel rate towards a three barrel rate, you get four and a half. It's it's almost uh straight down the line in terms of what you might have projected for him and it is one of those interesting things i think the lesson here for me with mullins is uh to not get caught up in the arrow next to a guy

um and just really try to appraise the value and what i mean is mean is, you know, you can talk about, oh, Mullins is not gonna be as good as next year. Oh, he's going to regress. Yeah. The arrow is down. Like if you come and you, you are his age and you come into the big leagues at 26 and you finally get a chance and you do a 30, 30 season, I'm sorry. The arrow is down next year. It's just, it is. However, if you just did some math and looked at the projections and actually just drafted him where he is he's the ninth best outfielder in fantasy baseball this year so if you don't sort of focus on the arrow and you focus on just a strict appraisal of the player i think that's how you get a lot of values right like how do you get a value out of an old

player well you don't focus on how old he is like how do you get a value out of an old player? Well, you don't focus on how old he is. Like, how do you get a value out of Paul Goldschmidt? You don't focus on how old he is. You just look at the projection and say, where's that worth going? You know? Right. It's leveraging the price being wrong on draft day.

It's not that, you know, the projection is usually right, but people mishandle the projection at the draft table. And I think the other part of Mullins this season is that the lineup is better around him too. So he's on pace to have pretty similar counting stats, slightly more RBIs, probably a similar number of runs scored. So that's actually helped really keep that value afloat for him as well. And with that stolen base pace being closer to 35 plus plus extra few bags makes a pretty big difference if you i think i drafted mullins in the middle of round two of the very early draft i did with zola the one that starts up at the end of the previous season because there's fine like what you you probably draft him as the sixth best outfielder so what yeah yeah we're doing fine

in that league and he's part of the reason why we're doing fine in that league because the team context all kind of worked out we got good balance on that roster and yeah if you drafted him at the high point of his adp you're fine he's he's not a problem even even if he was their first rounder which would be really really pushing it i don't think i saw a lot of that even if he's your first rounder you know got the ninth-best outfielder in the first-rounder. That means you draft him as the third-best outfielder or fourth-best outfielder. That's not killing your team right now. I kind of think there's a chance he's going to be slightly undervalued

going forward because it's like a pendulum. It goes too far in one direction, and it goes too far back in the other. I think it's that arrow. People see the down arrow. They look at Cedric Mullins and they see the down arrow. He's not as good as he was. Never going to be a 30-30 guy. Still going to be an everyday player. Lineup's going to get better.

Lineup gets better. What if he bounces back and has a 6% barrel rate next year? He could hit 22 homers. Even if the stolen bases come back. You're going to have a 22-30 season next year and call that bad? No, he'll probably be a top 10 outfielder again.

Whoa, what are you listening to this for? Wait, who's talking? You know you're driving a 2024 Ford Escape with available Alexa built in, so you can change the music. Oh, yeah. Alexa, change station to 99.2. See? Purchase a 2024 Escape ST-Line all-wheel drive with tech pack at 3.49 apr for 72 months with down payment that's just 267 bi-weekly cash value of 40 294 plus eligible ford owners get a thousand dollar bonus for details visit your local ford store or ford.ca so we had a question

about the pitch clock though i figure we should throw in here because it's something that we're talking about with these rule changes. This question came from Abe. Abe wanted to know, are there any pitchers you think will gain or lose quality with the pitch clock? I was watching Mike Clevenger recently, and his routine will probably need to change based on how long he takes to get set. Wondering if anyone's looked at how easy that is to do and what are the knock-on effects all the best Abe so pitch clock could have a lot of impacts on our 2023 season and it's interesting that you can look at a tempo leaderboard now StatCast has that over at Baseball Savant and you can look at bases empty you can look at runners on base and you see a pretty big difference. A lot of pitchers are probably six to eight seconds slower with runners on base. That seems to be the normal distribution there. And what's interesting is you were looking at the pitch clock in the minor leagues and what's likely to be implemented at the big league level. We don't know what the specific times are going to be, but they're using 14

seconds in the minors right now with no runners on base and no starter has a tempo at or below 14 seconds. There's some guys that are very close guys under 15, 15 starters under 15, 15 seconds, but it would be a pretty big adjustment for pretty much everybody across the board. And it gets even worse for relievers. Relievers, as you can tell watching a game, they take a long time before throwing pitches. And I think that's where we'd see the greatest impact on a player's performance is with bullpen arms who are maxing out and taking a long time to do it. with bullpen arms who are maxing out and taking a long time to do it.

Yeah, I think it may have a lot to do with what we see on the aging curves of relievers. Right now, relievers are averaging 94 miles an hour. I would assume that that number goes down for the first time ever in the pitch tracking era if pitch clocks are implemented. What you'll see is somebody like Kenley Jansen is really slow. Kenley Jansen was down to 90 miles an hour, went to driveline. You know, there's probably a weighted ball component to his recovery of two to three ticks after that low point. But he also got a lot slower on the mound. And that's what you do. You wait as long as possible between That's what you do. You wait as long as possible between your max reps, basically, on the mound.

So I would assume that older relievers will be a little bit worse of a bet if this is implemented next year. But to your point on the starting pitchers, I think it is going to be a tough one. I think people will focus on Shohei Otani, 21 seconds, Michael Kopech, 21 seconds, Corbin Burns, 21 seconds. And that might be a little bit of folly because, A, they're so good, at least Otani and Burns, they're so good that if they lost, you know, 0.2, 0.3 miles per hour off their fastball, they're still going to be good. miles per hour off their fastball they're still going to be good uh maybe someone like luis garcia who you know in my model has a 99 stuff plus uh as it is and has a big home away split when it comes to that stuff plus and is also losing a little bit of stuff plus over the course of the season and we've seen him sort of be fatigued at the end of seasons that's where maybe yeah okay you know luis garcia paul blackburn uh they're real slow um you know i could chris archer you know on those fringe cases i could

see it but i think it'll be more of a blanket type thing because if you're you're right like there's nobody who's under 14 so even someone who's fast like crow irvin or aaron ashby or logan webb yeah it'll be a lesser adjustment for them um shane bieber but uh it'll still be an adjustment to them you're still gonna have to cut a half second off of that because you can't average 14.0 that's that's the number you're supposed to throw it by so everyone's gonna have to at least shave a second off of uh their tempo and uh and i don't know i'm not gonna draft cal quantrill because he's fast you know what i mean like it's it's one of those things it'll be really hard to model um and i may have an eye on this when it comes to you know where will i rank mitch keller who is fast you know uh 15 second tempo versus uh austin both who is slow right otherwise similarly skilled

pitchers maybe this is a tiebreaker sort of consideration yeah yeah and i don't know how i will represent that on my draft sheet i may just have a column that has tempo on it just so i can uh just eyeball it but uh you know in terms of modeling it uh maybe some teams are doing this yes teams will be doing you know why because free agencies have and you know they will they'll have some sort of model in place where they think they can project maybe the velocity of a starting pitcher given a certain tempo because they have minor league data right so they can see what happened to their minor league pitchers below when the clock was implemented that's complicated because these guys are coming up they They're young. They're developing.

It's going to be some pretty noisy data, though. You know who's going to get a contract at age 40 with all of this? Who's fast? Jesse Chavez. He's super fast. He also throws the ball like 88. That's the thing.

Brent Suter is really fast, too. I'm just looking at the leaderboard. He's third fastest among pitchers with at least 25 pitches thrown, 100 pitches thrown. Yeah, I set the threshold really low to see who cruises. I figured Suter was going to be at or near the top of that leaderboard. He's third among all the players on the board here. If you don't throw hard, that's one way to gain an advantage because you're throwing off the timing and the comfort level of the hitter you can go in the go in the opposite direction it's

kind of funny that the brewers have a few other guys that they don't throw particularly hard i mean ashby has decent velo but not elite velo right so he's way he's quick wade miley is quick jason alexander's been filling in as a back-end starter. Eric Lauer, who's not doing it with velocity, a little more deception. He's fast. Adrian Hauser is fast. I've always kind of wondered. The Brewers are kind of fast, huh?

Ashby's fast. Except for Burns and Woodruff, they're slow. Yeah. So it's almost, they're kind of like, hey, if you're really good and you've got great stuff, go slow. If you don't have very good stuff, go fast. Better to keep the batters on their heels, right? Yeah. You're throwing 89 anyway. Yeah. What are you waiting for? 89 and a half? Just go. Just keep going as fast as you can because that's actually going to

give you the best possible results. So I do think there's going to be an impact. I think it's going to be worse though on the relievers because if you look at only relievers, the slowest people you see are almost all short relievers. Kenley Jansen, extremely slow. 26.1 seconds between pitches with the bases empty. Giovanni Gallego is up there at 26. A lot of older ones, too. A lot of older guys. Devin Williams is up there

Chapman is taking forever Chapman's slow, Ryan Presley is slow it's not surprising, Ryan Helsley is slow a lot of your great shutdown relievers Klasse, Kimbrel who can afford to lose a tick

or two in some cases the difference from where relievers are to where they would need to be with a 14 second clock is massive that's not going to be 0.2 miles per hour it's going to be more i think in these cases there are six relievers under 14 out of 579 and one of those is wade miley another sam long another is brent suiter which are kind of relievers slash starters you know somewhere in between so kirk mccarty bo solster and jesse chavez i have that i have it set on 100 pitches minimum they're the only ones under 14 oh my gosh but i again i wouldn't i wouldn't go all the way and draft uh who are

some relievers that are fast you know nick sandlin reaver san martin no i'm not i'm not i'm not advocating for that at all i think it's going to change the way pitchers train this offseason if they're conscious they're all gonna, they're all going to have to simulate this. And I wonder, do you think they would consider at first implementation trying 17 or 18 seconds? I think so. And then seeing

how that goes, making sure they don't break a bunch of pitchers. Oh yeah, it seems pretty extreme. And then possibly speeding it up some more. Yeah, do whatever you want in the minor leagues with those guys. They don't have a union. Thank God that's changing. But I do think that the union

will soften some of these things. The big base, I don't think anyone feels like it's going to hurt them. No, I just feel when I play softball, which is slow. Having more space around the bases seems just like a good safety thing so you don't run into people. Yeah, I think it'll be especially helpful at first base too

where they've had that issue of you're supposed to be running in the baseline but then the base is in play, so it's like you're kind of crossing a line at some point. A bigger base would help with that. Oh, the last one was the shift rule um which we which we haven't discussed too much we talked about uh the the pie slice rule as how it affect hitters but there is a larger game effect that actually ties back in uh to our discussion about ops and steals and how the game will look with regard to that, which is the pie slice rule may go into effect next year.

We know that some sort of shift rules are going into place. And we also know that just saying that two people had to be on each side of second base and couldn't be in the outfield grass, we know that that did not make much of a difference in minor leagues in terms of balls and play and all that. What did make a difference was extending the lines past second base and creating that sort of pie slice behind second base. That brings a lot of singles back in.

Well, what happens to your old, big, what happens to your O'Neal Cruz? What happens to your J.P. Crawford, maybe? What happens to your D.D. Gregorius? What happens to your Ahmed Rezar, your Kyle Farmer? These are poorly rated defenders at short. What happens if you're telling them you can't shift over there? They're going to look worse, I think. I mean, I know OAA is supposed to be adjusted for starting position all that stuff but okay not that necessarily they'll look

worse than numbers their impact will be worse on the team they could be the same players but you can't mitigate how bad they are on defense by putting them in the right place as much anymore now they have to stand 8 feet away from where they normally would stand or 5 feet away from it. So I think there will be some added emphasis on defense. I'm not sure how quickly it'll happen.

Will O'Neal Cruz not play shortstop next year because of the pie slice rule? Will Ahmed Rosario be off of shortstop next year because of the pie slice rule will luis garcia not play shortstop next year because he's the worst defender by oaa at shortstop um how much of this is a year-to-year thing jp crawford had good numbers defensively until this year maybe there's just something weird going on with him bodily wise this year so i don't know

what this means in the short term i think it's a little bit easier to think about uh maybe prospects and like you know value defense a little differently going forward if you want a guy to stick it short i don't think you want to hear anything about them maybe moving off the disposition later i think that that sort of timeline will change you understand what i'm saying like like Carlos Correa, if he was coming up right now and they were saying, oh, we think he'll come off for short. I think with the new rules, he'd be more

likely to debut at third. Yeah, it's a lot to think about. I mean, I think in the case of a team like Cleveland, where they've got a ton of middle infielders coming up, maybe that puts Ahmed Rosario in greater danger of losing some playing time somehow.

Maybe Ahmed Rosario goes and replaces Mal Stronser. They've dabbled in that, though. I don't know if that's really the future. I think that's just more likely to lead to a trade because Rosario's been a good offensive player this year.

But I think it really depends on the next best option you have and where you're at as an organization, right? So I think with O'Neal Cruz, the duration of the experiment of playing him at shortstop lasts until you are contending again. I don't think they're contending in 2023. They'll be better, but I think there's still another year away from kind of having a year,

maybe like what the Orioles had this year. So you would probably just say, it's fine. We're going to see how he does. And we want more information. We know if we move him to right field, he's got a great arm. He's going to be fine in right field. We know enough about him to know that. What we don't know for sure is that he can't play shortstop.

So let's solve that. That's right. I don't think it's going to happen next year. Also, like from the perspective of keeping him engaged and in the game and, you know, at the top end of his possible outcomes, yeah, you just do it. One more topic to get to here. We've got a question about Joey Bart, and this came from Ryan. Joey Bart has really seemed to change his approach in August.

More aggression, more contact, leading to the lowest monthly strikeout rate of his short career, and by far the best month of Woba in his short career. Looks like he's doing all his damage against fastballs, but it is a lot of damage. Is this something sustainable? Have I been too quick to count Bart out?

Curious if he'll be a useful sub $5 keeper in auto-new fangraph graphs points. Thanks, Ryan. I'll admit I was pretty much ready to say the Giants needed to think about who their next catcher was going to be. And that was probably just about two months ago. And they lined up perfectly with Joey Bart looking different. Ever since he's come back from a demotion to AAA, the quality of those plate appearances has been better. I actually watch the Giants a lot more now living out here than I ever have in the past.

And you can see it. And you can kind of see, again, putting an Ian Conn hat on, just a lot more confidence in Bart. You can actually see the way people react to him around the team is different. Yeah, he looks better. He definitely. Everything, it just, it all looks better. But what's weird is, I thought, you know, it's interesting that the question said,

you know, aggression. I thought that he stopped swinging the balls, and, you know, the last time I looked at his rolling, you know, O-swing on Fangraphs, it was way down. It's back up. So he is swinging at 40 40 pitches outside the zone again um and that doesn't seem to matter too much yeah like it like he the the thing is untapping his

power uh i remain uh i remain a little bit skeptical that a guy with that many that much swing and miss in his game is going to uh is going to make it as more than a backup. And there's, you know, for what it's worth, there's enough of a nervousness or what's it called? Scrambling for a catcher in the sort of acquisition logs for the uh for the giants that i don't think that they think you know that catcher is a sure thing one nice thing is the

one thing the number that's going down all the way is that strikeout rate uh he's more at sort of a 25 to 30 percent rate since he came back and that's been for for real so what what are we looking at here we're talking about a like an eight percent walk rate a 25 to 28 percent strikeout rate uh 300 obp 400 slugging yeah i i think we're probably looking at a player that is tracking into mike zanino territory maybe with a lower k rate maybe but peak mike Zanino territory, maybe with a lower K rate, maybe. But peak Mike Zanino ends up being a pretty good player in the years where he has good luck on balls and play, finds a way to hit 250, and in his best power seasons, he's popped 33 home runs as recently as last year. that all seems like pretty good outcomes for Bart relative to how low things had become just in the first half of this season even. Yeah, yeah.

And the key to being Mike Zanino is hitting a ton of fly balls. So that when you make the contact, it is in the air. So one last rolling graph I want to check for Joey Bart is the fly ball rate. Oh, and look at that. That's up to 40%. I would want to see him keep pushing that, keep staying above 40%,

and even push it into 45%. Just be a guy that is always looking to homer. Embracing being a three true outcomes sort of player might be what was the what was the keeper question what was the number uh five bucks in auto new uh or under five man i mean if it was one or two because in auto new you it adds two dollars so if he is five bucks then he's seven bucks next year and i think there's going to be some

catchers on the you know you can draft next year for he's seven bucks next year. And I think there's going to be some catchers on the, you know, you can draft next year for less than seven bucks. That'll be fine. I'm a little more optimistic. I think the playing time is going to be there. I think he'll be among the good cheap catchers. But yeah, depending on how much the price increases, how quickly, then it might not be a ton of long-term value,

maybe more of a short-term solution for you in 2023 that is going to do it for this episode yeah thanks to the dogs geez yeah come on thanks thanks for getting on the podcast today dogs they have made their presence known yeah what's going on up there uh they're actually the cousins have been over four so they've smelled them before and they're fine with them but this time they've come with their father instead of their mother. So this is all about the father, I think. Yeah, that's a big change for the aspiring good boys. They're they're working on it.

That's the important thing. If you'd like to send us an email, rates and barrels at the athletic dot com is the best way to do that. You can find, you know, on Twitter at, you know, Sarah, you can find me at Derek Van Riper, get a subscription to the athletic or a dollar a month for the first six months at the athletic dot com is the best way to do that. You can find, you know, on Twitter at, you know, Sarah, so you can find me at Derek van Riper, get a subscription to the athletic or a dollar a month for the first six months at the athletic dot com slash rates in barrels. Enjoy the weekend. We're back with you on Monday. Thanks for listening..