Rates & Barrels - Re-ranking early starting pitcher movers and projecting upcoming prospect callups

Episode Date: April 21, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss Corbin Burnes' excellent start to 2021, where he ranks among starting pitchers for the rest of the season, plus early starting pitcher rankings changes, ETAs for several top prospects weighing service time considerations.  Rundown 4:08 Corbin Burnes' Historically Great Start to 2021 13:10 What's Wrong with Zach Plesac? 23:06 Other Early SP Movers 34:24 When Are We Going to See Jarred Kelenic In Seattle? 43:08 Waiting on Wander in Redraft? 48:44 Is Kirilloff Coming Up Soon? 53:08 Luis Patiño vs. Rich Hill 63:17 Fast Starts From Carlos Rodón, Alex Cobb & Zach Eflin 69:26 Where is Aaron Sanchez's Velocity? 71:57 An Appreciation for DVR's Brewers Leak 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 Subscribe to The Athletic for $3.99/month to start: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it is Wednesday, April 21st, Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we will discuss the very impressive start to the season for Corbin Burns. He has been outstanding to begin 2021. We'll take a closer look at what Burns has been doing, how he's been doing it, and try to figure out how I, a fan of the Brewers who watches Corbin Burns all the time, don't have him on any fantasy teams. Pretty weird that that turned out that way. We'll talk about some other early pitching movers ahead of some new rankings coming from Eno later this week. A lot of great mailbag questions.

And we're going to look at some potential prospect call-ups now that we're past the point where players who have not played in the big leagues yet can accrue a full year of service time. So we could see some big names up in the very near future. Eno, how's it going for you on this Wednesday? I am doing well. We've got a baby in the house, a newborn baby in the house, just trying to watch out for my sister-in-law as she recovers from giving birth this past week. Nice. And so there was a fair amount of crying last night.

And I had one of those nights where I woke up so many times that I kept going back to the same dream. Just like, this is what I'm working on. I'm doing this dream. And so here's the dream i was writing a fast and furious sequel oh we need more of those and so every time i went back i sort of was like kind of workshopping a different aspect and like you know and it came i came down to like, I had convinced myself that the Fast and Furious hadn't showcased the women enough. And so this movie was going to be about daughters of somebody. And one was going to be like the feisty rebel that knew how to drive without being taught really because she just had that energy. And the other one, everyone was trying to teach her how to drive without being taught, really, because she just had that energy.

And the other one, everyone was trying to teach her how to drive, and she supposedly had logged all these hours and supposedly knew how to drive, but didn't have that passion yet. And she had to find her passion and try to come up with some plot points and stuff. It's a very weird thing to wake up from. I'm like, okay, let me get to work on that sequel, I guess.

Yeah, would that be Fast and the Furious 10, I think? It's a lot. It's a big franchise. I just want you to remember all of us when you become famous in Hollywood. Hopefully you can do a once-a-year guest spot on the pods and talk about baseball once in a while and sell the movie, of course. It all came from that one weird dream.

That's strange. Do you even like the franchise that much? No, I haven't seen one in a long time either. I mean, I think it's okay. It's fine. I watched them. Tokyo Drift, baby. And I do have a screenplay.

I guess probably a lot of people in our business do. Well, you live in California, so by virtue of where you've lived for as long as you've lived there, you must have at least one screenplay. It's about kids in Jamaica and all sorts of other stuff. It is kind of action-y, though. Are there any cars in it? No.

Scooters. Scooters. Nice. should get hunter pence to do a cameo that would be funny he'd probably do it right yeah anybody anyone anybody want to help me sell my screenplay well if you'd like to help eno sell his screenplay you can tweet at him at you know saris email us rates and ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com. Let's bring some content that people are here for. Let's talk about Corbin Burns, who has a 40-0 strikeout-to-walk ratio now. It is the best start to a season by a starting pitcher ever in terms of most strikeouts without a walk. I believe Kenley Jansen, as a reliever, has a longer stretch of more than 50Ks before his first walk. I believe Kenley Jansen as a reliever has a longer stretch of more than 50 Ks before his first walk. I want to say it was 53 was the number. It was on the Valley Sports Wisconsin broadcast last night. I keep wondering, how do I, as a Brewers fan who absolutely

appreciated the quality of Corbin Burns' 2020 season, how do I not have him on any of my, I don't know, 13 fantasy teams? I have more fantasy teams than there are Fast and Furious movies. So it's pretty humiliating that I don't have Burns anywhere. ADP, he was 17th among starting pitchers in the NFBC from March 15th on in my last set of rankings. He was 21st among starters. So yeah, I was a tick below the market, but not so far below the market where I was passing on him. I liked him. I just didn't get him. And I'm really frustrated, and I think the main thing that I was focused on during draft season, the reason he wasn't ranked higher, I guess, is the process-related question. Why didn't I rank him higher?

The command plus was 88 last year. The walk rate, even when he was good last year, was a little high. And I thought the weird makeup of the schedule in the shortened season was something to be particularly skeptical of with pitchers in the two central divisions. So those are the things that kept me from taking a guy that based on strikeout rate and projected ratios, you could have argued into the top 15 pretty easily. Looking at what the original projections were. Those have since improved. They're amazing. We'll talk about those in just a minute. And had I done that,

I wonder if I'd only have him in one or two teams. It would not be a case where I would have had him everywhere, even if I had ranked him closer to, say, Blake Snell. I think it's an okay process. The one thing I would say is that one of the reasons that his Command plus even improved to 88, because it was worse before that, is that he went to the cutter and the cutter was the pitch he could command the best. So maybe we should have extrapolated from that and said,

oh, he improved to an 88 command plus by doing the cutter more. Maybe he could do the cutter more than 30%. However, the part that's good process is how many pitchers do you know throw a 96 mile an hour cutter as their primary pitch over 50% of the time? I mean, the number of pitchers that throw a 96 mile an hour cutter is already on the level of three or something.

And maybe that should have been the clue. Hey, this guy's doing something pretty awesome that very few people can do. That's right. Yeah, I guess so. And just to do a Command Plus update, because I'm working on my ranks right now, it's 102 now.

So, I mean, yes, that's where the regression is going to come. He's not going to be this good. But he could maybe have a sub three walk rate you know uh three pro nine uh for the season he could have like a two something walk rate and if he does he's already shown us uh three straight seasons now uh that he can strike everybody out so i think you know it's a weird thing to say when somebody has like 40 strikeouts and zero walks or whatever, but I think I'm more impressed by the zero walks. Yeah, I mean, that's so incredible for a guy who in 2019 looked as broken as Corbin Burns did, but really just building off what he did in the shortened season and sort of going toe-to-toe with Jacob deGrom in terms of ERA and whip and strikeout rate going back to the start

of last season, which again, we're talking about a guy who was probably the worst qualified starting pitcher in the entire league two years ago. His transformation is really pretty comparable, I guess you'd say, to maybe what Lucas Giolito did with the White Sox, right? Giolito bottomed out as one of the league's worst starters, went at it, made some changes, and became a guy that was a late first-round pick this draft season. To me, that's sort of the trajectory Burns has put himself on right now. I know we're not doing any drafts anytime soon. If we were, I wouldn't be surprised if Burns went at the 1-2 turn of a 15-team league.

If he would have jumped up into that cluster where Giolito and Trevor Bauer and Walker Bueller and where those guys were consistently going. Yeah. In the context of today's piece that I've got with Ken Rosenthal about spin rates, grip substances, and the difference between the different spin rate substances and what baseball is doing about this. I do know that there are people within baseball that are concerned with Corbin Burns' spin rates. I mean, he has outer-worldly spin rates on his cutter, and I think he's thrown a 4,000 RPM cutter this year, which has really not been heard of before. However, I did some digging, talked to somebody, and they had 3,000 RPM breaking balls and fastballs from Burns in 2016

when he was throwing 94. So he's always kind of spun the ball really well, spun the ball really well. And if you're throwing 94, when you get up to 97, 98, you're going to have more RPM. So none of this stuff is very easy. And if baseball is really going to crack down,

it's going to be really uncomfortable trying to figure out who the good pitchers are at some point. Because, as I've reported before, it's so ubiquitous that there's going to be some big names that are going to fall off if they really go after this. I remain somewhat skeptical, but from behind the scenes, they're like no we're gathering this stuff and you know we'll move on it i just ahead of a cba and all this i remain skeptical maybe it's not the sort of thing that you necessarily want to find in mass in season though isn't this something you'd rather completely and thoroughly punish in between seasons. But you don't, you don't, because remember we talked about this, they're not paid in the off season. So you don't really have a mechanism in the off season.

Yeah. Suspensions, fines, those are all in season. Like suspension is, or is a de facto fine because you lose those game pays, the game day payments, right?

What are you going to do in the off season? Suspend them for the coming season? Yeah. I think that's, I mean, that's, that's the direction I'm going. It's possible. I mean, the game day payments, right? What are you going to do in the off season? Suspend them for the coming season? Yeah, I think that's, I mean, that's the direction I'm going. It's possible. I mean, the way they're saying is they're collecting balls and they're just basically making a dossier. And like, they think that they're, that anything they say will have more heft to it

if they can say on these like 10 game dates, all the balls that you used had all this stuff on it and none of the other balls did or whatever right i feel like doing that over a full season is going to be a much more compelling case that the players association would have a much more difficult time pushing back against than finding a start or two where you have all the chain of custody concerns we talked about and different things that could have led to a substance ending up on the ball. So I'm looking at Burns. If you want to say he's a top 10 pitcher right now, I can't fight back on that.

100% top 10. And I think placing him between 5 and 10 will be difficult, but it may be closer to 5. Amazing that I feel pretty good about my call that Brandon Woodruff is a top five pitcher this season. And now I'm like, but I have to make room for Burns. I just wish I would have had them flipped. If I would have put Woodruff at 21, people wouldn't have been up in arms about that. And then if I would have had Burns at seven, I would have been some kind of genius.

But I'm not some kind of genius. So I had Burns right next to Zach Pleszak. You would have been wrong about Woodruff. Well, hey, you know what? So here's what I think, though. I think there are some pockets that you have in your rankings where you either are going after players in that range or you're not. That's why you didn't end up with Burns. In part because of construction, yeah.

Either wanted two aces, you weren't going to get your... If he was in that sort of number three, you weren't going to get an early number three. Right. Because you either got your two aces or you got one good pitcher and you just weren't ready to take your...

I guess Burns is owned by a lot of people who maybe took Buehueller or Beaver early and then, then took two or three hitters and then took Burns. Right. So, I mean, it kind of worked out for me.

Like in the main event qualifier, I had a mid first round pick. I got to Grom and then coming back through, I got Bueller. So on a DeGrom Bueller team, I wasn't going to throw a sixth rounder at Burns. Like even if he was the best player in my queue, I was chasing something else.. So on a deGrom-Buehler team, I wasn't going to throw a 6th rounder at Burns, even if he was the best player in my queue. I was chasing something else, and

that happened a few different times. So I think that's part of it, because I also don't have Zach Plesak, which is great. I'm very happy I don't have Zach Plesak. I clearly overranked him. I think I got one share somewhere, and I had him overranked, so it is interesting. I have very little hinge in Ryu. I had Ryu right there

with Burns. The thing I liked about Ryu more than Burns was just the ratios over a larger volume of innings. I think very little hinge in Ryu. I had Ryu right there with Burns. The thing I liked about Ryu more than Burns was just the ratios over a larger volume of innings. I think I was putting a premium on innings around that range. So like Berrios and Lin and Ryu to me were a little more of a priority than Burns and even Plesak who had the big breakout in 2020. So interesting that Burns is like a plus 10 or more for me in the rankings compared to where he started and please sack he's probably more of a minus 10 or so like he might be a guy that if i'm re-ranking players for the rest of the season maybe zach please sack falls to the back of the top 40 or in the 40 to 50 range among stars man no further that's not enough you don't

think i'm dropping them enough if i could put them in the 40 to 50 range i are we gonna get into it now sure yeah what's going on with please sack i don't i don't know if he'll make my top 75 man that's a that's a fall for a handful of starts so it's a i think it's a compelling story uh hopefully not too navel-gazing. And hopefully people don't doubt my process after this. But I'm going to be an open book about this. So I've worked with different people for stuff numbers over the years. It's just the way it works. I'm not a modeler. And so I have to work with people who model.

And they get hired by teams. I mean, it's happened. And so I'm not talking ill on Ethan. He got hired by the Twins. He teams. I mean, it's happened. And so I'm not, I'm not talking ill on Ethan. He got hired by the twins. He obviously knows something about what he's doing. And he had a great stuff number, but I do think that one of the things that Max Bay did, the person I'm working with now at Choice Fielder, who I've talked about on this, on this podcast before, one of the things that he did was he used an extreme gradient boost model which basically means that um he started rewarding uniqueness better right and so um you know somebody like

tallard glass now ended up gaining a lot of stuff points and so on um so uniqueness was better valued because you sort of boost the extremes i that's how i understand it somebody who's listening is like oh god he said it all wrong um but anyway yeah um uh that's how i understand it and so um so plesak had a 110 stuff number in my old stuff system. I just asked Max and he had Plesek at a 101 stuff. So it's picking the nits a little bit, but it's like either he had pretty good stuff or he had average stuff, right? Going into the season. However, everything's fallen apart since. His slider, which was a real weapon for him last year, has become league average because he's lost three inches of drop on his slider. Plesak has.

He's lost movement on a lot of his pitches. All of his pitches, probably poorly. And right now, Plesak, in Max Bay's stuff number, has a 76 stuff. 73!

Sorry, I overrated him. He still is showing as having above average command. The command plus is doing okay. And Max Bay has like a location number and his location number is above average. So he still could be a league average pitcher just with command. So maybe 75 is too far. But if you look at people that have above average command

and a 73 stuff, his comps right now are Julio Teron, Louis Thorpe, somebody named Nick Ramirez. It's a reliever for the Padres. Tommy M-effing Malone. He's almost a perfect match. So, you know, league average is not fantasy league average, by the way.

Right. That's league league average. So it's a story of how stuff numbers change how our idea of what is good stuff can change how this is all work in progress but also the last piece is as police acts movement has gone down the league average movement has gone up pitches are riding more four seams are riding more sliders are dropping more this year and please like is doing the opposite so that's just made everything look terrible so i think most likely i will have him somewhere in the 60s to 70s somewhere in their last pitcher

type and if anybody values him in a trade i would trade him right now. So my reason for being more careful with Plesak, even though I had him ranked literally next to Corbin Burns, was the velocity drop last year. It blows my mind that after this many starts, four starts, that guys could move this much. But I get it. I understand why we're doing it. And I think that little velo dip 1.2

miles per hour on the fastball from 19 to 20 for police sack. That was that little nudge that made me say, okay, wait a minute. This is a young guy that should not be losing velocity at all. All those things we talked about with burns with the schedule in the central, you missed a couple of turns because of the suspension, all those things were kind of kicking around in my head with police act too. So, you know, I I was skeptical about Plesak for different reasons. And he was a little more of a conscious avoid, even though, again, I wasn't consciously avoiding the player right next to him. So pretty bizarre sort of thing.

There's another thing that Plesak's at the center of, actually, velocity. So the ball is lighter this year, so velocity is up across the league. And it's up more year over year than it has been 11 years and that's comparing velocity in april to velocity last year in july and august velocity peaks in july and august now does velocity peak because of training methods or because you're like in the season and you're everything's going good or does velocity peak because of weather and my theory is that at least some portion of it is weather so if we're comparing cold april velocities across the league to warm august velocities and it's still up i think that's another reason why plesak looks worse because if you compare his current cold April velocity to last

year's uh August velocity 92.8 uh he's at 92.3 now he's either steady or worse or down and the league is up velocity wise if you look at Dylan Bundy he's really benefited from these changes in the ball. So I don't know. I think pitchers of all people should move faster. A, we get more information from them start to start, right? So every time we get a start, we get a ton of information. Then we don't get any information for a while. So starting pitchers, that's weird. B, I think that their outcomes are dependent on the physical attributes of their pitches and the physical attributes of their

pitches become meaningful very quickly yeah i think that's a good logical argument this rankings update is the most important rankings update of the season as the season goes on i think you're in in-season projections, your projections, your numbers, they become more meaningful. Your traditional outcome numbers become more meaningful. In the early season, in this part of the season, it almost matters more what your pitches are doing and how much velocity you have. I'm looking at the rest of season projections over at Fangraphs. Interesting. I think Derek Cardy was pretty clear about his skepticism as it pertained to Plesak this year. And the bat actually has the most encouraging

projection for Plesak the rest of the way. A 431 ERA and a 123 whip. The other systems, Zip, Steamer, are at 454 and 451 for the ERA, 129 and 130 for the whip. Similar K rates across the board, 8Ks per nine at the high end from the bat. But a home run issue, you know, a walk rate that's higher than what we've seen in 2020 and in 2021. So that's kind of an interesting thing to keep an eye on here too. He's looking a lot more Tomlin-esque than Bieber-esque. Yeah, it's strange though. It's really strange because just as the shortened 2020 kind of tricked us maybe with Zach Plesak, I don't want to fall into a similar trap

for the early starts of this season. Overreact. If the velo ticks back up, if it is cold weather, that changes things again pretty quickly. But if you look at his slider, it's been bad all year. What do you think he was trying to do with that pitch? Or do you think it was just a thing that happened? I mean, that pitch shouldn't be this bad.

It went from last year having like a... It's really hard to talk about when you're talking about like zero inches of drop. But having like a zero to one number in PitchFX to this year having five there. So basically he lost three to four inches of drop on a slider. And you could say like, well, did he get more cutterish with it? Maybe. He went from throwing it sort of 84 to 86 to this year being 86 to 88.

So maybe it was on purpose, but it didn't work so maybe it was on purpose but it didn't work if it's on purpose and it didn't work that would be the good that'd be a good sign right then you'd be like okay maybe in the next start he can be like i'm going back to the old slider this slider sucks yeah that would be a step back in the right direction so a big drop for you for plesak burns on the rise understandably given the start that Plesak. Burns on the rise, understandably, given the start that he had. Who else is on the move as you start working on those ranks

for the end of this week? Well, one guy that sticks out is Joe Musgrove, number one in Stuff Plus at 129. I also like that Garrett Cole is number two in Stuff Plus. That fits my sort of expectations. There was one stuff run that did not have Cole that high. So I'm glad to see Cole there. I think I understand with Musgrove because if you look at him,

he has four pitches that have varying amounts of vertical movement, and vertical movement is one of the most important things. He's a very kind of over-the-top guy that kind of can do ride or a little bit of drop or a little bit more drop or a ton of drop. Uh, he has a ton of, he does a ton of pitches, um, and he has at least average command. So, um, I, uh, I think that's more meaningful than the, uh, than the no hitter thing. And I, in researching this, in researching this, I found out something interesting. I was looking at sort of the worst no-hitters, and Joseph Posnanski has a piece about the worst no-hitters of all time.

And I didn't really notice this because I've seen the Doc Ellis. Have you seen the Doc Ellis thing where he takes acid and he throws a no-hitter? Yeah. Have you seen, like, the animated one? No. Yeah. You haven't seen the animated one? No.

There's an animated one. It's kind of fun uh but i don't remember this line out of it joseph nansky found a funny line uh he said that doc ellis said i started having a crazy idea in the fourth inning that richard nixon was the home plate umpire but uh in any case doc ellis that day uh he did throw a no-hitter. He only struck out six against eight walks and a hit batter. So that is anything but a perfect game. And I think Musgrove, great game, pitched a great game. I wouldn't have moved him based on a no-hitter.

I will move him based on the quality of the stuff. I will move him based on the quality of the stuff. I think the other question I have with Musgrove pertains to past fluctuations in velocity. He'd have these stretches where the velo on the fastball would tick up and he would look like a top 35, top 40 starter and either he'd get hurt or the velo would go away and he'd kind of go back just being an on and off the roster guy in a lot of mixed leagues.

When you look at the adjustments that have been made to his arsenal, do you feel like he is less susceptible to taking that step back with a velocity fluctuation than he might have been throughout his time in Pittsburgh? It's possible. He's kind of looking like a guy who throws a wide variety of pitches, like more in the Hunjin Ryu sort of tree of pitching than the Tyler Glasnow one. If Tyler Glasnow was throwing 91, I don't think it would all work out. But Musgrove is right now, by pitch info on Fangraphs, throwing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 pitches more than 10% of the time, and five pitches more than 10 of the time and a sinker five percent of the time so he's looking much more re-u-esque oh that's a good one re-u-esque um especially now throwing the cutter a quarter of the time which is kind of i think his big

uh his big uh innovation this year so um i mean terms of velocity, he's not really standout. It is, he is closer to his better velocity. But I also wonder this, is it easier for him to throw 94 on the fastball, on the four-seam fastball, now that he's only throwing 10% a game, as opposed to when he threw 33% a game? Yeah. Maybe that's a little part of the ticket. I wonder, yeah, if you're going to throw 75-plus pitches as a starter, if you can get a little more velo on the fastball, if you throw fewer fastballs, if you're throwing that pitch 50 to 60% of the time, establishing the fastball, you're probably tiring yourself out a little bit more. I mean, I imagine max effort fastballs take a little more out of a pitcher than breaking balls, but that's an assumption. I don't know how true that is or how quantifiable that it is.

I mean, in terms of elbow stress and torque, max effort fastballs put the most torque on your elbow. That doesn't really quite answer your question. Right, yeah, just from a fatigue standpoint or something like that. But it seems related. In any case, I like what I see. In fact, Musgrove kind of reminds me of where I think modern pitching is going. You know, fewer four seams at a higher velocity, a lot of bendy stuff,

and basically three breaking balls, you know? So, you know, that's, uh, I, we didn't know it at the time, but Shane green was the future. Had no idea that things could, could play out quite like that. Uh, any other,

I've got some, yeah, I've got some other movers. Uh, Julio Urias, um, one 19 stuff, one 11 command plus coming off of like a, I think a one hitter in 7 or 8 innings

the other day against the Mariners. It was a great game actually. I thought it was really fun to watch because there were some stolen bases. It was a tight game. Really well pitched. Good command. I think a bad command is not fun to watch actually. It's not. These guys both could really command it and uh so i i thought that was a really great game and um i'm not sure that urius will move that much because i was really i was like i think i was hot there were other people based on like the questions people asked me i guess i was the high man on here sometimes i don't read enough of other people's

rankings to know sometimes about the high man so So just like having people be like, aren't you worried about his innings limit, man? I was like, okay, I guess I'm the high man on Urias. I'm not really worried about his innings. And in terms of his performance per inning, I'm totally in love. And I figure the people like Plesak dropping from in front of him will mean that Urias will de facto rise. But I already had him in the top 30, so I don't know that... Am I going to push him to the top 15? I'm not sure the strikeout rate will be there for that. The other one that sticks out, Charlie Morton.

I watched the start the other day. He was throwing bendies at 96. Looked pretty good. I thought... And if he's sitting 96 that means to me a lot of the things that made me push him down a little bit the shoulder health the declining velocity

early in the season last year a lot of that stuff kind of goes out the window you know if he's sitting 96 right now we've got to be a little bit, what have you done for me lately? And there is research, of course, that suggests that there is a bit of a hot hand with pitching. You can predict a pitcher will be better than his projections

if his fastball velocity is ticking up. So look at Morton, fastball velocity ticking up, might outperform his projections. Is at the very least healthy, all systems go. Probably going to go up a little bit in my rankings. I think Chris Paddock is an early faller for me. I was a little bit too optimistic about him. I don't know if I just put one good pitcher next to one bad pitcher throughout my ranks

or if it was just an early trend, but I had Paddock over Urias because of innings. That would 100% be flipped now I do think Urias moves up but Paddock I don't think you bury him I don't think it's a full-on police act situation but the same flaws we saw last season have not been corrected we're not seeing a third pitch and I don't think the walk rate we're seeing early on this season is necessarily what we're going to get going forward from Paddock because I think he is good in terms of 118 command plus yeah like that's that's a skill i think he's proven he owns so i i think he's more of like a top 40 to 50 starting pitcher for me as opposed to a guy that i wanted to keep in the top 25 there's there's some inklings of uh positive change for him like

the the the fastball does have more ride it just does not have the same ride as it had in 2019 so he made back some of his uh some of what he he lost in 2020 but then he also just totally turfed the curve in the cutter which i i'm sure is related but he's like okay i lose the ride on my fastball when i throw the curve and cutter so maybe not throw them however in the long run i think he needs them. So I'm waiting for a breaking ball. Overall, Paddock, 94 command plus, 118 command plus, 94 stuff plus. He actually is sitting right next to a guy who's a perfect comp for him in terms of those two numbers, Marco Gonzalez. The one difference, though,

and this has been really hard for me to quantify in these numbers, and I even talked to some team analysts who said, yes, it's not the easiest thing. Number of pitches. What differentiates Marco and Gonzalez from Chris Spadek? Yeah, Gonzalez throws at least four pitches, doesn't he? Yeah, and if

you watch that start against Julio Rios the other day, it was very meaningful because he just he didn't have he didn't use the curve for like two innings and then right when they were like okay i'm with it on the fastball on the change i can spot it bam he threw like three straight curveballs to one guy so uh that's what the value of having multiple pitches and so even if i have this perfect comp of uh and stuff numbers, I'm going to take the guy with more pitches and put him higher. Yeah, no, I think that's a reasonable sort of adjustment. And Gonzalez might be someone I was a little too low on, on the heels of what happened

last season. But I think the command is a skill he absolutely owns at this point as well. It's a big part of how he's made it to this point. The deeper arsenal is a good tiebreaker. I'm with you on that. The Mariners leave their pitchers in more than almost any other team, almost on the level of the Indians. Those two teams leave their pitchers in deep into games and have in the past. The Mariners, though,

different from the Indians this year maybe, is they don't have a good bullpen. I mean, I think Graveman's okay. Don't say that I don't think any of those arms are any good, but it's not a very good bullpen, right? Graveman is pretty exciting as a reliever. I'm warming up to the idea

that as a three-pitch reliever who can get up into 96, 97, that's a nice core group of skills for him. They're using him as a bit of a fireman. They've given him some saves, but I think they're going to continue to give him on tarot saves. That's their two guys. Misiewicz is okay as a lefty,

but maybe they have three guys. It's not three dominant guys like the Brewers or something. It's not like we have our A games. It's like we have some okay guys, and then we have some worse guys. Yeah, we're really not sure what's going to happen after the sixth inning when our starters do pitch well. So Marco Gonzalez has led all pitchers in decisions for the last two years. Yeah, it doesn't look like that's going to change anytime soon.

It seems worthwhile unless you have losses as a category. Well, we're looking forward to those new rankings coming from you on Friday. I imagine that will lead to a lot of questions in your chat on Friday. So I'm looking forward to the cat gif, looking forward to the questions and I'm looking forward to the actual rankings themselves. Once those drop.

All right. You know, I want to talk about prospects because we have reached the point where teams can call up a player who has not previously accrued any service time and that player will not be able to accrue enough service time this season to gain a full year. So you get the extra year of control barring overhauls to that system in the upcoming CBA renewal. I want to look at this just from a player-by-player situation because I think everybody is a little bit different based on where these teams are at in terms of competing. The question that came in from Nathan was pretty simple.

Any ideas when they'll call up Jared Kelnick now that the roster manipulation period is over? With Kelnick... It's never over. It's never. It's always happening. With Kelnick, it's tricky because if you're really cynical, you could say, well, because the minor league season

hasn't started yet and because Kelnick's never played at AAA, they're going to wait until AAA starts and then for two or three weeks, if he goes there and he hits, he's up and then he's up for good. And that would fit with the Super 2. That's why it's cynical. This is why it's cynical because that almost sounded like reasonable. Yeah, right, right. The reason it's cynical is because the Super 2 deadline is in June. So by waiting till uh this the season starts in may uh in triple a or wherever it's the minor league season starts in may uh you could say oh uh we wanted him to get into some games oh look it's been three weeks and he's done this and it's june now and you know

because i think it doesn't even start till may 4th or something. So like, you know, oh, three weeks. He's got his timing. Everything's good. Now we get that cynical. And also super possible. Super possible. The only thing that makes me think anything different is, A, we're not sure exactly how organizationally it's the best way and sort of in terms of marketing to best way to react to those bad statements by the president because the president said we offered Kellan a deal he said no so he's going to be in the minor leagues so what's the best way to react to that being like

no we're keeping the minor leagues for this reason we don't care about what that guy said he wasn't right you know we're keeping him for this reason that's that's the reason or to seem reactionary be like no we're bringing him up you know like not us you know we don't do that um so i don't know how they'll react maybe they'll just say hey make it a baseball decision make it only a baseball decision only thing about baseball in which case i would say it's probably about time to bring him up, right? Because who's DHing for them right now? You got Marmoleos DHing some. Taylor Trammell is scuffling.

Lewis is going to jump into center. Who else is playing in the outfield for them? Who's the right fielder? So, yeah, Trammell, I mean, he sticks, right? They were playing Jake Fraley. He's hurt uh you've got so yeah tramell i mean he sticks right they were playing jake fraley he's hurt you've got lewis back now mitch hanniger's plan yeah yeah that's it so so you could uh go with uh uh you could so you could say tramell lewis hanniger marmoleos at dh uh marmoleos france you float the dh and you say jose marmoleos it's nice that you barrel up balls sometimes but you know the next time we win a playoff game you probably won't be

on the roster like just being realistic about it feels mean but uh but this is this is so this is why it's not happening it's a combination of baseball and this. They think maybe they're over their head, right, at 11-7. They've had great starts like this before. They're over their head. And they want to kind of go through the different players they have and see who is going to be around for the next playoff season, right? So it's not just like roster spots are scarce things. And so they want to give Marmoleos and Moore enough time to look at them

and say, is this what we want? Or do we want to put France at second and re-sign Seager or do something there? Is Marmoleos like our DH? Can he be our DH? Can he be a third outfielder or even a fourth outfielder? Or is he who we release when we call up Kalanick? So I think

they just want a little bit more time to look at these other guys as much as they want to look at Kalanick. But I will say that the longer they stay in first place, I think the pressure starts to be on, hey, let's get good now. You know what I mean? Absolutely. But I think the other way you could on, hey, let's get good now. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Absolutely. But I think the other way you could look at this, again, the skeptical side always going to be there because of the way service time works. In 2019, Kelnick reached AA. He was only there for 21 games, but he was 33% better than a league average hitter. Had there been a 2020 minor league season, maybe he would have started back at that level. He probably wasn't going to stay there very long. And that experience that he needed at AAA, needed, air quotes, that would have occurred a year ago. And he may have forced the issue and been called up last summer. That could have happened in a full 2020. It's not outrageous at all when you look at the level by level production,

especially for a player his age. So are you risking anything by putting him on the field at AAA? An injury, I guess you could get hurt there. He could get hurt playing in a big league game and you could lose him for a long time there too. I just think doing right by the player in this case might go a long way towards starting to rebuild that relationship, right? After the Mather comments, that didn't sit well with Jared Kelnick and it shouldn't have sat well with Jared Kelnick so doing the right thing in this case maybe it's about getting years beyond the years of control and saying we think he's a franchise player we want him to spend his entire career in Seattle and we want to show him that we're turning the

page we're not going to be the organization that Kevin Mather made us out to be. Yeah, I guess then it hinges a little bit on Marmolejos randomly because right now he's 45% better than league average, showing power that's supported by the max EV. It's a very good max EV, very good barrel rate, not a great contact rate, but if he puts the patience together, that barrel rate, he looks like an actual major leaguer so either you'd have to cut like i don't i'm not looking at a roster right now and know exactly but i'm also thinking about like in terms of playing time you'd have to not

give him any playing time even if he's on the roster or you'd have to demote tramell tramell projects to be worse than marmolejos with the bat. Trammell has a 42% strikeout rate. I don't know. I think you can justify it. What are you waiting for from a baseball standpoint? Right. Either you don't want to cut Marmolejos or demote Trammell, or you think they're good enough that Kellnick gets more time.

I don't know. I'm sure that someone's screaming at the radio right now. Kellnick's better than all these guys. Why would you care about Jose Marmolejos? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think you could live with Jose Marmolejos becoming someone else's DH. Because the probability of him being enough of an impact hitter as a non-valuable defender are so low.

It's lower than Jermaine Mercedes being a relevant offensive force in the league a year from now. And he's like a 28-year-old that you picked up on waivers, right? Yes. So if you expose Marmolejos to waivers and lose him to have Kelnick and trammell in your lineup simultaneously oh well you're developing two longer term big leaguers one likely star and one at least average sort of player in the long run with a chance to be an above average player to me that seems like the better use of that playing time i don't i think kelnick could be up this weekend i don't have any inside information or anyone who is indicating that to me but i just don't know what they're waiting for at this point because if

they're going to really try and go all the way to super two if you're waiting you might as well wait for that and hope that that's still a thing that's that's the other thing yeah that's the other thing i don't even think super two will be a thing yeah so i want to hold kelnick and redraft leagues at least for another week or two before I start thinking about cutting him. Because that's what it comes down to for us in these redraft situations in mixed leagues. Injuries are piling up at an alarming rate. You know, we're trying to find flexibility in our rosters. The prospects who aren't getting called up, they can't stay on our rosters forever.

I want to give it at least one more week on Kelnick because I think the Mariners are really not standing on firm ground by just delaying this any longer what's the difference between um what the the sort of unhinged idiotic rambling i just did about the mariners uh roster where i tried to navigate baseball and financial reasons, which just broke my brain. And the Rays, what's the main difference? The Rays are even cheaper. The Rays are a playoff caliber team that is not playing above its skis. And every game will matter because no matter what the media is saying about the Yankees right now, they're not garbage.

They will be there at the end of the year. They will be a threat. And every day you go where you're talking yourself into Joey Wendell and Yandy Diaz, who are nice pieces on a contending team, but should not necessarily be everyday players on a contending team. Every day you're running those guys out there over Wander. You run the risk of putting a one and a half win player in the lineup instead of a possible five win player in the lineup. That's a massive difference. And I think that's where it breaks down for me. I think there is a fundamental difference because if you're in the Mariners, you might still be an asset gathering stage, right? That's why I was talking about Marmoleos,

right? Because you might be an asset gathering stage. You might just say, hey, we might've gotten a free league average DH with Marmoleleos so let's give him a couple more weeks to see if we did right uh because we're really kind of playing for next year the year after the rays aren't playing that game right now they know what wendell is they're not playing wendell to see if wendell will be around for the next playoff game he was around the last playoff game you know what i mean like they're they're not an asset gathering in that same way. And I think that there's also a really open spot on that infield that Franco fits into right away.

I don't know if it's second or third, but pushing Wendell to super utility and Yandy into the first base mix is fine. Even if you have to release Yoshi Tsutsugo, it'll be okay. Yeah. Tsutsugo in some ways is sort of their marmalade house, a little more of a commitment to him based on the contract they gave him, but old, has some power, but not really going to help you anywhere defensively,

and is not playing well right now and projects to be league average at best. I guess the other difference to play Deadpool's Advocate against my own argument is that Wander has even less upper level minor league experience than Kelnick does. And the leap from high A to the big leagues is a big leap for any player. We've seen a few guys do it. Alejandro Kirk did it last year and surprised everybody in a really limited amount of playing time. So maybe that's their, maybe

internally they have actual good faith conversations that say, you know, we think he's going to be a big league player. Let's make sure. Let's be sure before we bring him on. What are we looking for out of Franco? You know, they're not just playing

intra-squad games. They are playing these weird games where one team goes to the other team's alternate sites. Yeah, I've seen a few random clips from those. Right? You've seen them talking about it. So I don't know how structured that is, but you could have some sort of internal goals.

We want to see Franco hit 110. We want to see him hit a ball 110. We want to see him hit for a little more power. We want to see him lay off the slider the long way or whatever it is that they're working on. They've got some sort of internal checklist. It could be there. But I don't think that G-Man Choi or Yoshi Tsutsugo should really keep them from... I mean, Choi has been released by other teams and Tsutsugo is about 20 batted balls away from having two seasons with enough sample to say that he does not have a really great barrel rate.

I guess he had an okay barrel rate last year, but it just came with such bad strikeout rate that I don't know, man. Yeah. I don't think he's a great hitter. It's not looking good for Setsugo. And all of it comes back to the same kind of question I brought up with Kelnick. How much longer do you hold Wander in mixed leagues where your bench is getting thinned out? I think I've got him in TGFBI

or one of those NFBC leagues where I've been staring at that spot. Especially with like, I have one team with Marte and Altuve hurt. And it's like three spots on my bench with a middle infielder. And I'm like cycling through free agent, middle infielders, just trying to stay afloat until I get at least one of those guys back. It's getting tough out there.

Tough sledding. One more week for Wander. If he's not up by next week, Sunday, is it a drop then and say, well, hopefully I can get him back? If he doesn't come up in the next week, because there was a kind of ish deadline that just passed, which is they can't now accrue a full year this year.

So that's passed. So if they don't come up in this immediate future, then you have to wait till June. This year. Right. So that's past. If you, if, so if they don't come up in this immediate future, then you have to wait till June. That's what you're basically saying. If it doesn't come up in the next week, you have to wait another month. So whatever decision making you're making now, you have to say,

am I comfortable now keeping him for another month? After this, that's a long time to play short, especially if you've got a few players that are already on the IL. It's a relationship to how many people you have hurt and where you are in the standings. In fact, I think the higher up you are in the standings,

the more likely I'd try to hold. Because you could have a little bit of a slide and then, ooh, wanders up, and that's how I win the league. Let's talk about Alex Kirilov for a minute. Twins contending like the Rays. Clear spot when they let Eddie Rosario go during the offseason. And there was a note that flew by.

I was looking at Roto-Wire where they had a need in the outfield because Max Kepler went on the COVID IL, I believe. But they didn't want to send Kirilov from Minnesota to Oakland. They don't want him to fly commercial, which makes sense, right? It opens up a bunch of issues that logistically could delay his arrival even further. You get the sense that Kirilov

is probably going to be up and up for good, or at least up for a while, starting with that weekend series against Pittsburgh. Is there anything I'm missing with Kirilov that I should be thinking about that would keep him from coming up soon? I mean, Garlick played okay while they were trying to kind of – they were trying a platoon, I think, of Garlick and Rooker. and Rooker.

But, you know, Garlick is projected to be 30% worse than the average of the bat. He's a right-hander. Wasn't he even a catcher at some point? He seems like the kind of guy that's played everywhere. How many Garlicks can there be? Well, they only show outfield in here. But, in any case,

I don't think he profiles that awesomely. He's 29 years old, right-hander. It could be one of those, let's see what we got out of him because we really want to go to Kirilov at some point. Rooker has not played well and has not put his stamp on it. And I think Jake Cave, if everybody's being honest with each other, I think he just profiles as a backup centerfielder. And he's played to a 16 WRC plus so far. So there's a pretty

glaring need for offense from somewhere in there. The team is not scoring as many runs as they'd like. Kepler and Buxton are fine. And then there's this kind of a black hole. So, yeah. Where's Kirloff? It's coming soon. And in leagues where he's been dropped already,

I would actually consider adding him this weekend, even if he doesn't get the call, because I don't think they're waiting until the minor league season starts. I think it really is a matter of days in that case. And he projects really nicely. Yeah, I mean, look at it. Zips loves him. 286, 327, 458.

But even at the more pessimistic end where the bat is, 265, 315, 425. Not a bad projection from the jump. Those playing time projections could shift wildly as soon as something happens, right? Like if he comes up this weekend for Pittsburgh, plays all three games, I think I would automatically shift the playing time more to like the 450 that Zips shows. And then if you prorate all the rest of them to 450, they're showing 390s and 370s, then you basically get 15 homers from everybody. Let's go to the pitching side real quick. Mackenzie Gore, maybe not for a little while

with Denelson Lemaitre coming back. He's actually going to pitch by the time people hear this episode because the Padres have a matinee. If you had to put an ETA on Gore's first start for the Padres, would you say it's before June 1st or after June 1st? I'm saying after because they've been using ryan weathers and he may still be in the rotation may not uh that's not super clear but i think that at least it is clear that ryan weathers is ahead of mackenzie gore so that gives them with lamette coming back six six guys ahead of Mackenzie Gore. So you're waiting on a major injury, I think.

Yeah, I think at least in redraft mixed leagues, Gore is going to be a drop for me this weekend, barring something unexpected happening. He might be waiting on two major injuries, right? Because Ryan Weathers, if they don't go to a six-man, then Ryan Weathers is the next starter, really. They did lose one of their depth options, Adrian Mori Morihan unfortunately gonna have to have Tommy John surgery so one fewer option that they could use to cut ahead of Gore but I do think some of the command issues he showed back during spring training and possibly at the alternate site last year to maybe give them

the urge to see what he does in AAA obviously PCL very tough environment for any pitcher so I'm kind of curious to see how he fares once that Obviously, PCL, very tough environment for any pitcher. So I'm kind of curious to see how he fares once that season starts. And then Gore's former teammate, Luis Patino. Rich Hill has not been good so far. You know, Hill's only made it through five innings once

in his first four starts, and he's allowed four earned runs in each of his first four outings. How far away are we from a Patino call-up? I mean, do you think he'll be someone we'll see in the big leagues before we see Gore? Yeah, you you know i think with patino it's about uh they're just trying to

get enough innings out of their old guys before they bring their young guys in because they don't think that any of their young guys can really pitch like 150 innings right so if you were going to get 100 innings out of Patino as just a regular starter in the sort of glass now mold, um, I think you could call him up, I guess in the next couple of weeks, right? You could call him up the next couple of weeks. Yeah. Just mess around with the all-star break and a few different spots in the schedule. Yeah. He'll be, I think Patino is likely to be sort of a 4-5 inning pitcher. So you're not going to get a ton of innings

in every start that he does, right? It's weird to me that I look at Rich Hill's stuff plus and he still is the super modern pitcher with a 120 stuff plus below average command. He uh can spin it up there

the problem is just that i think he's a two pitch pitcher the velo is so low i think people are just going to sit on one of those two pitches and hit a bunch of homers and we're seeing that home run rate rise over his career and um i i caution normally looking at home run rate at this point, right? It's full of noise. Just look at, what's his face? Jameson Tyon. I had him as having above average stuff and command. There was some okay stuff,

okay actual KBB results in his first couple of games, and he'd given up a bunch of homers. And I was like, don't look at the homers. Homer rate takes almost like 250 innings or something to believe, right? It's not something that we know about in the first week. However, you look at Hill and you just look at the steady march forward of his home run rate, I think you can say that he's likely to give up like a home run a half per nine innings, which is at his current whiff rate, which whiff rate actually stabilizes fairly quickly. It's on the order of sort of 300 to

400 pitches. How many pitches is he throwing? Let me see here. I got it. Why isn't this easier? The pitches is hard to find sometimes. Anyway, he's probably throwing around 300 pitches. Yeah, because he's been going four-ish innings four times. At least 200 by far. Maybe 250. We have like

four seasons with a bad home run rate and we have two seasons we have about 55 innings now with a bad whiff rate. I think we can actually believe that he is going to strike out around 8 per 9 and give up 1.5 homers per 9 and have a bad walk rate. It's just not a recipe for somebody you want to go to in your next start. Yeah, so thinking about all that, I do think Patino is coming up relatively soon.

I do think the usage needs to be such that someone's going in front of him to give him chances at win because they are going to, at least early in the year, be very careful with his workload. If he's thriving, going through the lineup once, starts to go through a little more, goes from a three inning guy to a four plus inning guy. Maybe eventually they take away those sorts of restrictions as you get to the later part of the season. They take away those sorts of restrictions as you get to the later part of the season. But I do think they have sort of the long view with his workload and to keep him fresh for a possible playoff run later this season. So if I'm holding one of Patino or Gore on a roster right now, it's actually Patino, even though I think Gore probably still has a long term ceiling that's a little bit higher. I wanted to mention my man Joe Adele. You know, he's still a top prospect.

I think he may actually have to wait for some AAA games. And the reason is Albert Pujols is just a wily-ass veteran, dude. And if he continues to just pop a homer every once in a while it's going to be really hard for the angels to basically cut him which might be the position they're in right now in order to kind of bring adele up right because otani is pretty much the dh most days and jared walsh has settled in as an everyday player and is now their right fielder so if you want to bring up Adele you got to push Walsh the first and you got to make Pujols either cut him or just make him like a pinch hitter Pujols has been a below average hitter since 2017 like he's been he's had a five-year run now being a below average hitter I he's a

hall of famer probably 44 years old inner circle hall of famer. He's probably 44 years old. Inner Circle Hall of Famer, no doubts. Amazing career. Great to be chasing milestones. But if you are a contending team right now, you're better off having Jose Marmolejos getting that playing time than Pujols. And I'm not saying that to be dramatic or to be a jerk to Pujols. It's malpractice for a contending team

to give him playing time right now. It's bad. And if you want to mess with Joe Adele? Joe Adele, we said this before, because the strikeout rate was so high in the shortened season, seeing if he's figured it out at AAA, I can actually get behind that a little bit. But you know who you'd be playing

right now? Brandon Marsh. You should see if Brandon Marsh can hit. If Brandon Marsh can't hit by the time Joe Adele's had a few weeks at AAA... You could give Marsh a month. Yeah. Yeah, you could give Marsh a month right now. Yes, you should be playing Brandon Marsh over Albert Pujols right now,

just based on how the pieces fit. And then Jared Walsh gets all the playing time at first base. Like, that's the way it goes. And you could probably call up Marsh, put Walsh at first base, give Pujols at least one or two starts a week at DH when Otani's not because he's

not a seven-day player right so give Pujols just enough time there and pinch hitting and just like keep make him feel um you know active and part of the team and you know and and and may get some value out of him but uh he's been under replacement for four straight years. Yeah, it's been long enough. You're justified in playing him less, not playing him at all, or letting him go. Again, it's hard because he's an all-time great, but

there's enough there to justify that decision if the Angels want to go with that. So I think we see Marsh before we see Adele, and then I don't know how they make it work. If both of those guys are ready in July, I don't know how they make all the pieces fit. Maybe another injury or something else.

Maybe Justin Upton starts to lose some playing time at that point in the season. But Adele already having some service time, that's the other factor in why they would make him wait. But the fact that he was striking out so much helps to justify that pretty easily. Just real quick, a thing about other players like this, it's really hard for us. There's no pop-up prospects that we can look at minor league numbers and say, wow, this guy's killing in a

double A, and so you should watch out for him as he comes up, right? That's why the list that we just did was fairly short. The other names I can add can add to it i guess are jj bladet uh sort of feeling around in the in the dark joan duran yeah maybe for twins yep no oh yeah i was thinking of Jaron Duran. Yeah, for the Red Sox. Red Sox. I guess that's the sort of two names that come to mind. I guess Vidal Brujan, but I don't know how to fit him into the Wanda Franco conversation. Is it a little bit like Brandon Marsh where maybe he gets the first month, Brujan? I mean, here's how you would justify it. You could look at that situation and say, well, Brujan has played at AA and Wander hasn't. And since Brujan was 13% better than

league average at AA already, and he's a little older, it makes sense to give him that opportunity first. But when you compare him to Wendell and Diaz, there's not as much of a gap there. I think Brujan will be a better, more exciting player than both of those guys. But from the jump, based on projections and current expectations, it's a little bit harder to talk yourself into that move. He could end up being sort of like a Wendell replacement. Yeah.

Brujan, in terms of ceiling. And then we're just're just sorting prospect lists and trying to be like, oh, that guy could come up I guess. You know what I mean? Adley Rutchman and Spencer Torkelson and some of the more advanced guys that

lost last year, which everyone did, even getting a feel for how close they are. They haven't had a chance to force the issue. They need games to force the issue, at least to get people in the public to say, hey, this guy's ready. What are you doing? Why aren't you calling him up?

If those guys are mashing at the alternate site, if a tree falls in the forest and no one's around to hear it, did it really fall? It's that situation. Is Nolan Gorman raking? I don't know. If Nolan Gorman is raking,

then at some point, maybe they cut bait on Matt matt carpenter because they need offense right yeah uh is christian robinson raking he his eta says 2022 and he you know he's played a ball but you know so we're having a little bit hard to do that i just wanted to uh point point out that there might be some surprises off the 2022 ETA list. It's something you can sort at Fangraphs. So you might find someone like Alec Thomas or Christian Robinson from Arizona or Nolan Gorman. You might find somebody like that come up. And you didn't expect it until a little bit later. Yeah, I think ETAs are difficult to do anyway.

And they're triply difficult coming off of a non-existent minor league season a year ago. Let's get to some of these questions. We'll go rapid fire on these. Adam wrote to us with a pitching question, wondering if some other pitchers who are off to good starts, we talked about a few last week, are doing things different and you think it's sustainable. He asked about Carlos Rodon, Alex Cobb, and Zach Eflin. Of course, Rodon threw the no-hitter last week and his velo is back. It's fastball, it's slider, it's changeup. I mean,

this is the guy that we saw when he first entered the White Sox system. This is the guy that we saw when he first entered the White Sox system. This is the guy that I saw in spring training six years ago, and I was really excited about because he's showing all three of those pitches with that velo all the way back. Yeah, he shows as having league average stuff and 91 command plus. I think I can understand why because he can't really command that changeup, so it's not really a great third weapon. And I think even if you watch the no-hitter, it's a lot of fastballs and sliders from the left side. I think he will run into some homer issues against righty lineups with pop,

especially if he's not doing exactly what he wants to do with the slider which is 91 command plus uh suggests that he won't he um has trouble with sometimes so i don't think i'm gonna move rodone uh he makes it into my top 100 maybe top 75 ish maybe but uh still a back-end guy for me um ephelin though has actually improved his stuff a little bit and still has that elite command number. So I like Eflin a fair amount. And I forget exactly where I had him, but I think he'll be comfortably top 60.

What were the other names you had on there? Alex Cobb was the other one. Yeah, Eflin, I had at 61, so maybe a slight uptick for him up into the 40 to 50 range, probably at the higher end. He's actually pitching right now as we're recording. But yeah, Alex Cobb, I mean, has that change working? Had it working at times last year too, right? Stuff in command numbers.

Loved him last year, and I made fun of myself. You didn't want to put your name on it last year. But this year I did push him a little bit. I pushed him to about 125. I think that's higher than people had him. And I'll push him again off of 125, 120 into the top 100 safely. I think maybe top 75. I think I would rather have Cobb than Rodon. The command gives you a better floor. I think the home park is a better situation. I think the Cobb will have

better matchups sometimes. If it's a 12-team league, I'd rather just switch between Cobb and Rodon, right? And just take the good matchups. That's where I have Cobb. I'm into Cobb. I will put him in at least the top 80. Yeah, definitely three guys all moving up from where they started

based on what we're seeing early on here. Thanks a lot for that email, Adam. Tim wrote in with a question about Mookie Betts' sprint speed. He's in the 42nd percentile right now. Most years of his career, he's somewhere in the 70-plus range. Last year, he actually was at the 87th percentile. So anything to be concerned about with Mookie, or is it just too early to really have that at a level

where we're comfortable saying that the speed's not coming back? Could it just be kind of a strange combination of factors, not having enough competitive runs to say that it's meaningful? I mean, what do you make of this? Yeah. The thing that's interesting is that Jeff Zimmerman has shown that times to first are more valuable in terms of BABIP and also stolen base percentages and numbers. And so we don't have that for Betts, right? I guess he just hasn't had enough competitive runs to first base, and they define that as he has to top it.

Yeah, you got to have a competitive run to first on a topped ball or a weekly hit ball. And so I guess he's hitting the ball too hard to care about his sprint speed is what I'm saying. No, it does worry me because in the absence of knowing it's time to first, you have to assume that it's time to first or down given that his sprint speed is down that much. It worries me a little bit because

uh sprint speed tells you about athleticism tells you about health it tells you about the general shape of a player's career and such a drop off um maybe it's the back you know it could be he missed time what did he miss time with back and he hit by a pitch this week which i don't think has anything to do with the numbers we're seeing yet because it hasn't been enough time and it was in the arm, which wouldn't make him run slower. No, but he missed time with something else where he just missed a couple games.

He doesn't seem completely like himself when you look at the underlying numbers, right? Like the max EV is a little lower right now. Barrels are down a little bit. It's not a panic situation or anything like that, but I would probably attribute it to not normal health to begin the season. That, to me, is at least an explanation that I'm comfortable with for now and sort of something to keep an eye on in the next couple of weeks.

There's my new nephew, if you can hear him in the background. Making his podcast debut. Forearms. I'm just trying to scroll through some of his injury history because maybe he just missed that time with the forearm, but I'm trying to see here. Let your nephew know that he'll be paid at the end of the month like everybody else.

Back. I knew it. Back. April 13th. Ask my friend Paul Sporer about back issues, man. Yeah. You know, I would love to know more about what the back issue is, the underlying back issue. And I guess all I can say is it's something to watch. I don't think I would trade him this year based on that alone. All right. Thanks a lot for that question, Tim. Let's go to a question about Aaron Sanchez from Steve. Steve writes,

so I was told there would be 96 mile per hour fastballs with Aaron Sanchez. Can he really continue to live at 88 to 91 with a seemingly above average curveball? Is that enough as a Giants fan? I'd like to see him just throw like he did in his showcase and his entire career leading up to that i'll be over here watching his next start again with one eye open that email's from steve i'm definitely disappointed because i was excited about that number from the showcase too like that phrasing i was told yeah i was told like hey i i was the messenger. I was relaying information. I am also disappointed. I was told by you.

Yeah, happiness guarantee on Aaron Sanchez showcase velocity reading. That's what we want. Well, you know, right. I would say that it is a general caution on those showcases because what are they doing? They're maxing out. that it is a general caution on those showcases because what are they doing? They're maxing out. So whatever number you hear is the max, it can be compelling, but you have to subtract two to three miles an hour off of it. So if he hit 96 in a showcase, then that means he could sit 93. Now we're not seeing that either. So something has happened between now and the showcase.

something has happened between now and the showcase. And I will tell you, fastball velocities coming back in a situation like this become very reliable after three starts. And so what we have from him is a pretty steady, what is it, 90 mile an hour. He had a one in the middle, 91.5. I think if he sits 91 for the season, we'll call that a win. However, it won't be a win for fantasy. I'm out. He is throwing more curveballs than ever, and so far that's working.

So is he hopeless? No. But is he the guy we thought he was a few years ago? Well, that's also probably a no. Probably more of a home streamer in the right spots maybe the occasional two start week if the matchups aren't bad but yeah I think you're right to be skeptical because he doesn't have good command right so

whether you just use walk rate or command plus you're going to come to the same conclusion that he is going to get closer to walking four and a half for nine so that's going to put a lot walking four and a half for nine. So that's going to put a lot of pressure on his strikeout and ground ball rate. So yeah, just a guy who has good starts every once in a while.

Yep. On and off the roster in just about all mixed leagues, I think, for Aaron Sanchez. Last question comes from Tom in Milwaukee. He writes, first off, as a Brewers fan, I appreciate Derek's fandom leaking into the show on a regular basis. Never enough Freddie Peral to talk. Unfortunately, I've got a few emails that beg to differ with that. So I've tried to tone it down with Freddie this year. But Tom is wondering our thoughts on Matt Chapman versus Dominic Smith in a corner infield spot for a shallow league. Overall projections don't look that different but i'm wondering if you think if smith can outperform his home run projections and thus be more valuable if he could maintain his batting average edge over chapman that's interesting because i do think

he will definitely maintain the batting average edge by 30 to 40 points. I think that's pretty safe. But Matt Chapman does not come off the field unless he's hurt. He is a max volume player and the underlying numbers back up the power. I think I'm Chapman over Smith in this case. I just think the volume of those counting stats from Chapman, the homers, even if those are close, I think the runs and the RBIs are going to favor Chapman just simply because he's going to play more. Yeah, I mean, to wit, Dominic Smith does have two homers, but he has six RBI in the season and two runs. And the last note here says, Smith will sit for the second game of Saturday's doubleheader against the Rockies. Smith will sit for the second game of Saturday's doubleheader against the Rockies. Yeah. Even if it's a daily league, right?

Let's say it's a daily league and you think, oh, well I can get out in front of this by combining Smith with another player. Well, now you've used two roster slots to try and get to where Chapman can get to with one roster slot. And for what it's worth, it's a fair amount of effort

to do that sort of thing. It is. You have to really stay on top of, is he playing today? You have to tweet at the beat reporters, is Dominic Smith playing today? I'm in a daily moves league for the first time in about five years, and it is...

I do this for a living. I get to talk about fantasy and talk about baseball for a living. It can be grueling, yeah. I'm still not in the habit a few weeks into the season of checking on Wednesdays for the day game lineups. And I'm not into that rhythm yet. So you can create a bigger problem for yourself. I have three tabs open with my two auto-new teams, my Yahoo team that's daily, and my CBS. I have four tabs open and through

the week like one of the first things i do when i get to the office is downstairs is like i gotta check those four lineups and it can take it's just four teams but it can take you know 45 minutes to an hour uh to like kind of suss it all out and then i have to a lot of times it's definitely an hour if you count when I look back, like closer to game time to see, you know, if anything has changed. So yeah, those teams,

those games are, those teams are way harder to manage. It's adding up. I'm not going to think about how much time I'm spending on it right now, especially now that the weather is starting to get a little better too. I don't want to bum myself out on twitter you can

find us he's at you know saris i'm at derek and right brig and send those screenplay ideas you know his way i think that's uh greatly appreciated the athletic.com slash rates and barrels gets you a subscription at 3.99 a month if you don't already have a subscription you can get you know his updated rankings and those drop later this week. He mentioned that story that he worked out with Ken Rosenthal. All sorts of good stuff. We got weekly planners from Al Melchior. We've got more updated rankings coming up the next couple of weeks. I've got

some prospect stuff I'm going to dig into later on this season. So lots to get to on the site. If you don't have a subscription already, you can email us ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com is the best way to do that. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Friday.

Thanks for listening.