Rates & Barrels - Replacing a star, Turnbull's no-no, and the skill of home-run suppression

Episode Date: May 19, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss the challenges of replacing a star, Spencer Turnbull's no-no, the skill of home-run suppression, and more. Rundown 1:11 Replacing Mike Trout (or any star during a prolonged absence) 11:18 A Plea for Mid-Week Injury Replacements 18:43 Spencer Turnbull's No-Hitter Against Seattle 25:46 The Challenge of Selling High on Pitching 33:24 Recent Pitching Debuts 43:58 Home-Run Suppression as a Skill 49:06 Buy, Sell or Hold: Jameson Taillon 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 just $1/month to start: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels presented by Topps. Check out Topps Project 70 celebrating 70 years of Topps baseball cards. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. Welcome to those of you watching us on YouTube. Be sure to hit the like button on this video and subscribe to the channel if you want to get updates every time we have a new episode available. On this episode, we will discuss the challenges, or at least the perceived challenges, of replacing a star in the wake of Mike Trout's calf injury, which, yes, that is a huge bummer.

Eno continues to run hot. Spencer Turnbull no-hits the Mariners. I think Eno's guys just keep matching up against Seattle. I think that's part of the secret. But we'll dig into that and a few other interesting recent pitching performances. We're going to dig further into the idea of home run suppression being a skill and provide some insight as to how you might be able to find some pitchers who really truly own that skill on a year-to-year basis. So a lot of ground to cover here. Let's get right to it. We'll start with the Mike Trout situation. He's out six to eight weeks,

you know, it's the grade two calf strain. For now, they're not bringing up Joe Adele and Brandon Marsh, so there's that. I don't think those guys are far away. At least one of them should be up relatively soon because, as we've said many times, this is an Angels team that fancies itself a possible playoff contender. So at least they've got some high ceiling options to potentially bring up and bridge the gap until Trout's return in a month and a half or two months from now. But for fantasy managers, this is a tough blow because it happened early in the week. So weekly leagues in a lot of situations, you're stuck with Trout taking a zero the rest of the week. And once you're able to swap them out, you're kind of going through this panic mode of how do you replace Mike Trout? I mean, it seems almost impossible to take a guy like that and actually come close to his production. But I dug into the numbers and it's not as hard as you think, because if you look at a dollar value calculator for the season to date, you find there are some surprising names who have exceeded or at least matched the overall value that Trout has provided to this point. I had no idea that Adelise Garcia is worth $35 this season and Trout's been worth $24. And of course, why we pay the premium for Trout in the first place? Well, we expect him to hit that high end at a much more consistent rate than someone like Garcia.

Isaac Heiner-Falefa has been more valuable in 5x5 leagues than Mike Trout. Tyler Naquin has been equally valuable to Trout so far. Randall Gritchick has been equally valuable to Trout so far. Randall Gritchick has been equally valuable to Trout so far. There's a common theme there though that they've all been a little lucky on batting average. So if you're looking at

going forward, you would take Trout's batting average over all those guys and so therefore probably fantasy value still. But it is a good point. And that is the hardest thing, right, to replace. If you're looking at trying to replace Mike Trout's batting average, I mean, we were looking through this earlier, and on the first page, a projected rest-of-season batting average from the bat,

there's almost nobody who's available. I mean, they're all the stars, basically, all the guys that we want. The only two guys that might be available, three, would be Nick Madrigal, depending on the size of your league, Luis Arias, and Wander Franco, which is kind of an amazing little side tidbit. But I don't think that those names are super useful. First of all nick magical probably owned second of all luis arise has no power or speed and uh wander franco isn't in the big league

so then you go to the second page and you start to get guys who can hit 270 not necessarily 280 290 like trout and there are a couple names on this page that might be available that pop out. Lorenzo Kane. Trout's not stealing anymore, so you could actually make some ground maybe with that. Jonathan Daza. But when

Charlie Blackman comes back, how much does he play? And he also does not have much power. A little bit like, what did you say? The Luis Arias of Coors Field? The outfield version of Arias at Coors. Yeah, and you really have to keep going down before you really get someone who could do even sort of 60%, 70% of what he does with batting average, power, and speed.

I think somebody like Brian Reynolds might be available. And then I think my favorite name on this list is Abasail Garcia, who we talked about, I think on Monday. But it's just a really solid all-around player, really tools up and in a good home park and just surprisingly available. So here's a guy who's projected rest of season is two 73 with 19 homers and six stolen bases. I mean, he's about the only guy who could, who could do trout, like do all of the things of trout in, in a short series, in a short sort of amount of time.

So, yeah. So you've got a pretty good mix of options, but you're not going to find the average projection with the run production. It's just not going to happen. You might find a guy that surprisingly is the next version of Tyler Naquin on the wire, like someone who ends up with more playing time than expected because of other injuries or other changes on some other depth chart. And one of their name that I think is interesting, I've mentioned him on several shows in the last couple of weeks, and I'm surprised,

I think he's available in about 70% of CBS leagues, is Harrison Bader. And I know with Harrison Bader, we're looking at a guy who probably skews even lower in batting average than, I mean, compared to like an Avi Garcia projection, you're probably giving up 20 to 30 points in most projection systems. But I think we're seeing some interesting things from Bader. He has shown a consistently steady walk right now going back to 2019. He's cut his K rate down a ton early on this year. It's only 17 games for him because of a late start due to injury, but I am curious to see where that number settles in as he gets more plate appearances this season. Four homers and a couple steals already in just 65 plate appearances, so I'd say he's another guy that is still out there on the wire in a decent number of leagues who could actually help keep you afloat in the outfield while you deal with Trout's absence. Yeah, if you kind of separate

the two, I think Trout only stole two bases and I think would probably steal maybe eight or nine more in the rest of full season. So I think focusing on the power might be the best way to go. That's the easiest thing to replace, and the league is warming up, and so power should be coming. And you can also do a sort for barrels per plate appearance, and you'll find some interesting names that might pop on your waiver wire, like Tyler O'Neal. You'd be sacrificing a lot of batting average,

but you might be able to get the power and the speed in one package. Adoles Garcia is there, but probably owned by this point. One of my favorites, a really underrated player that will actually get you most of the power and speed just not the batting average and is available in 62 of yahoo leagues brandon belt actually has more barrels than mike trout per plate appearance um our uh our show favorite uh rowdy roddy tellez Tellez, he's just in limbo. So he's a kind of Tyler Naquin situation, right? Where you're just like, I'm going to bet on the bat and hope that,

I mean, not hope that someone gets injured. That's terrible. I'm not suggesting that. I didn't say that. But prepare, be prepared. Have a guy on your bench that might be able to step in if things clear up playing time-wise, perhaps due to injury. Yeah.

Did I dance around that one good enough? But, you know, those are some interesting players on the top there. David Bodie still really barreling the ball, but Matt Duffy threatens his playing time, I think. Yeah. So just an interesting thing to watch there. Matt Duffy actually, I think, he didn't show up on the projected rest of the season batting average, but if there's anything I think Matt Duffy can do for you going forward, it's some batting average.

Yeah, I would say most likely you don't have to worry about batting average from one player at this point, right? If your average is something you're crushing right now and you're not winning it by a lot, maybe then you're more concerned about it. But if you're kind of mid-pack, you got to think about variance here and how players can overperform the average projection, especially over a six to eight week stretch and sort of lean into that, sort of hope that you get lucky. I think the common thread here for the most likely replacements, and this could include people you're

trading for too, you're just looking for players who are high volume guys because you're maxing out the possible counting stats. That's the best way to offset the difference in skills between Trout or any other star player. You've lost plenty of great players this year to injuries. Just look for the guys who are playing a ton. And one thing that really pops for me, the Rangers are locked in on some of those guys. Part of the reason Isaiah Kiner Falefa has been so valuable. Part of the reason Nate Lowe and Nick Solak have been so valuable to this point.

They just play every day. Garcia's like that too. So if you can find guys who are not being platoon, you can find those, those extra extra 10 to 20 percent shares of playing time on one player those are the players that really give you the best chance because i think the other thing you can think about if you lost trout i haven't been tout wars 15 team mix league it's an obp league i think i want to take my next best hitter and trade that player and try

and get two players back right split one good player into two pretty good players and hope that i can you know get those upgrades in that maybe you get plenty of suitors for that sort of deal yes it's it's easy to trade that way it's hard to go the other way but i think it makes sense as a strategy to try to upgrade multiple spots when you're replacing one great player it's also the the volume thing was a really great point because most of the names that we mentioned the biggest risk for them was volume. Jock Peterson, great.

Weekly League, eh. Volume, eh. Almost all the guys we've listed as possible replacements other than maybe Brandon Belt, Brian Reynolds, Harrison Bader. Those are the only three that will like play every day. I think about a guy like Mark Canna as a good trade target here too,

because you could trade a good hitter and get Canna plus something else back. And there's a good chance Canna is better than one of the guys you're starting. And then the other guy you get is the replacement effectively for Trout. I think this is the way you really want to go about it, trying to keep things in line. Again, I'm not saying that this is easy, but I'm saying it's not impossible to keep your team in contention while you deal with this absence. The wild thing too, I don't think most leagues have these features yet. There's a couple things that I really like about the way Tout Wars has adapted over the years. The first rule is the midweek injury replacement. I think if you're in a weekly league and a player goes on the IL, as the next day's games begin, you should be allowed to swap in a player from your bench. That is a great modification. More leagues should adopt that because i do think it's difficult to get people on board with daily moves and even twice weekly moves some leagues don't commissioner services don't allow you to do it very easily you know you got to set up custom periods and all that

but if you have a mid-week injury option maybe it takes the commissioner tools to do it that is a great way to offset losing a player early in the week. I find that to be awesome. The second thing that they do is they have fab redemption. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't at least think about redeeming Trout for his full value equivalent in fab. The way it works in Tout Wars is you get 10 times what you paid in the auction. We have $1,000 fab budgets, but $260 in the auction. Trout was a $51 player in that auction. So you get $500. I'd get $510 fab back if I let him go.

I think Trout's just too good to actually do that. I think getting him back later is worth it. Six to eight weeks. So if he's eight weeks, he comes back. After the All-Star break. Yeah, you want him. You need him. But it crossed my mind.

I was like, wow. If he was a pitcher and it was like an elbow or a shoulder thing and I was more worried about him coming back and not being himself, then I probably would go ahead and do it. Well, I will say Donaldson and Caffs and what we've been talking about, I think it was maybe Britt talking about running being one of the hardest things to get back up to speed. Sprinting.

And what we've seen with Donaldson ongoing battles with that calf. And the fact that Trout said it was a pop, which is a tear. I mean, that's what a strain is. A strain is a tear. Listen, I'm not saying it'll be all year. And I'm not saying this is the beginning of the end for Trout. Bum, bum, bum, bum. You know, said Trout's done.

No. How old do you think our average listener is? That was Abe Simpson right there. Anyway, I'm just saying, it could be longer than six to eight weeks so you know plan accordingly and for the uh for the angels i do think we should talk about the real baseball here for a second because it does have fantasy implications too um they're only five games under 500 you could say right but the american league is actually fairly bunched up so if you don't if you instead of saying like you know they're this many games out of 500 if you express it in how many teams they have to swim move past four teams plus the twins might get going on

their own right so it might actually be five teams they have to swim move past yeah it's pretty interesting if you look at the playoff odds at fangraphs as of wednesday afternoon the twins at 12 below 500 actually have pretty similar playoff odds to the Angels, a 9% chance for Minnesota, 13.2% for the Angels. I mean, it's not an insignificant difference, but I think if you said, who do you think is really more likely to make the playoffs, factoring in Trout's absence especially, it's closer to a coin flip than it should be,

given the difference in their respective records to this point. I think you just, I think you got to call up Brandon Marsh and Joe Adele. I think you just got to do it now because it's, it's poop or get off the pot time. And, and you just lost trout. The only thing,

the only thing that can really save the angel season right now is I think, you know, two guys or one of those, one of those two guys going off. Yeah. And they've got room. They already had a space in right field for one. So bring them both up. See what happens. Bring them both up.

If it's so bad that one of them has to go back down or both of them have to go back down, at least you tried. At least you tried to do the best possible thing to salvage your season when you had the opportunity. I don't think it ruins their development to come up for three or four weeks and have to go back down if performance merits that. Not knowing what they could do, that seems like really being

just wasteful of what has been an amazing season from Shohei Otani, who as a result of Trout's unfortunate injury is now becoming a runaway favorite for the AL MVP. In terms of odds, I saw this over at BetMGM. Shohei Otani, he's the clubhouse leader at this point. I hope we continue to see amazing things from him the way we have all season, but it would just be a shame. I realize this organization has wasted pretty much all of Mike Trout's career with their lack of success around him. It would be a shame to also waste this season from Shohei Otani.

Yeah. And in terms of, like, manipulating service time, even if you want to be cynical about it, like, bring these guys up for a little bit. They can go back down. You know, like, were you not going to bring them at up at all this season then that just seems kind of silly especially since joe was already up yeah you know so joe's going to come up anyway brandon washington's going to come up anyway just do it now and if you end up thinking it's lost or or they help you tread water and you kind of go off and trot comes back you could you can have an excuse built in to put them back down,

to send them back down. Say, oh, everyone got healthy. There's just not as much room for you anymore, and there's obviously stuff for you to work on. In terms of service time, there's all sorts of manipulation that can happen later. So I say it's past Super 2 for Brandon Marsh. Pull him up. Joe Adele, 2 for Brandon Marsh. Pull him up. Joe Adele, his clock already started.

Pull him up. Let's see what they can do. And there's a chance they fall on their face because they're both striking out more than 30% of the time at AAA. So I'm not saying this is a magic cure, but it is your best option. 30% is not what it used to be now that the whole league is striking out 25% of the time. Right. And the adjustments you're expecting them to make at AAA, they could make some

of those adjustments at the highest level. Maybe that's a way of speeding things up a little bit in a weird way, which wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. So I don't envy the position of Perry Manassian right now, but I also think this one is not that difficult of a call. You've got

two very good outfield prospects and you have a dire need for outfield help. Give them a chance. If that doesn't work and you're still staying afloat, trade for veterans later. The Mariners have a 1% chance of making the playoffs and they just called up their two best players. Come on. Yeah, don't get shown up by the Mariners. Like, that's... I fully expect this to happen by the end of, you know, by the time we get this up on the internet. And if not, then let this

lie here. Come on! Well said. Well said, my friend. All right, you know, I've mentioned this up top. You've been on quite the heater lately. Again, thanks to a friendly schedule for some guys you really like.

But, hey, give credit where credit is due. Spencer Turnbull, no-hit Demeriters. Can we get Rikidi into Seattle sometime soon? He'll get there. And once he's healthy, he's the next one, right? He has to be the next one. I mean, there's more to it than just Seattle. I think Spencer Turnbull is showing some signs of putting all the pieces together beyond that.

I think even prior to this start, the numbers were about as good as they'd ever been for him at the big league level. So what struck me was the increased use of his slider. I was looking at his pitch mix over on Savant. Love that he's throwing the slider more than ever. And because his arsenal is so deep, which is I think a big part of the reason why you've liked him for quite a while, he's not throwing that many fastballs. I love pitchers that don't throw a lot of fastballs. 40% with the four seamer. I love to see this mix. I think we're seeing the absolute best we are ever going to see a Spencer Turnbull, which leads us to a lot of the same questions that we had when John Means had his no-hitter

a couple weeks ago. It's kind of like, hmm, I wonder if the Tigers have to trade him this summer with years of control left in hopes of getting future pieces that'll be on the next great Tigers team. And I would imagine there's going to be some significant interest around the league if the Tigers wanted to do that. Yeah. I mean, we're all talking about Matt Boyd going somewhere else. I think Turnbull might get more back.

You know, combination of age and track record. One of the things that you can do to change your stuff number and Turnbull's two best starts by a stuff plus have been the last two, is to throw your best pitches more often. I think that's a cool way to kind of look at these numbers in tandem with just traditional ones like how often is he throwing the pitch, or CSW.

For example, his call strike percentage, call strike and whiff percentage on the slider is 38, which is decidedly above average. It doesn't always work super well in tandem because Turnbull's changeup and curveball do really well by Stuff Plus, but not by CSW. He's got a 6% on the changeup and an 18% on the curveball. So I don't know what's going on there, if he just can't play some that well or he's just not using them enough to get a good sample there. But yes, the increased slider percentage has been good, and I still like the fact that he still uses the changeup and curveball enough

because I just think that there could be a start where he goes heavy changeupup and curveball enough. Because I just think that there could be a start where he goes heavy changeup or heavy curveball. Just having these five pitches means that there's more opportunity to change the scouting report and change the approach in a given game. So, big, big fan of Turnbull. Did you have a question on there somewhere?

I didn't answer it. No, Turnbull, I mean, I just kind of said, you know, this seems like the best version that we've seen of him so far. And I mean, if we're looking at projections, rest of season, how much are we going to be glued to that as the actual likely outcome? We're looking at, let's see, what do we got for ratios? The bats got him at, where are the ratios? There they are. 454 and 139. That seems a tad on the high side with both. And

it would have seemed high prior to this no hitter too. I mean, we're talking about a guy that had a 397 in the shortened season and a 134 whip. So I didn't see a reason for him to fall apart after last year because I didn't see a 12% walk rate being his skills baseline. That looked like an outlier to me. Yeah, yeah. And his command plus is 107. That's one of the things I've liked about him is good stuff and good command. His history didn't suggest that that 4.6 walks per nine was actually a true number.

And then with his high ground ball rate, and we'll have a little bit more on that later, but at this high ground ball rate and his home park combination, I believe in his homer suppression at this point. Now, it has only been 255 innings, and that's not your traditional number for stabilization of home runs per nine. But just look at it. I mean,

he's just, he's got a 0.6 homers per nine, um, you know, going back and, uh, he's projected for 1.2 from, from a lot of these systems going forward.

Why? I don't think he's about to double his home runs allowed. So, um, I, I'm a big fan and I'm going to take the under on all those projections, although I will say that I'm not like, it's not number one with a bullet time for Turnbull. I had him 60. That was aggressive compared to most rankings,

and now I'd probably move him to maybe 50s in the top 50, back into the top 50, because he still doesn't have a great strikeout rate. He's still going to have to go on the road in New York or Baltimore or someplace where I won't want to start him. He's still not a guy that I will start every single time. Is that for you? I think he's in the same bucket as John Means for so many different reasons. Yeah, exactly. I like his schedule better than Means because being in the AL Central as opposed to being in the AL East gives you a few softer landing spots.

And I realize one of the teams you'd want Turnbull to pitch against is the one that he pitches for. So, you know, if that's not happening anytime soon, who would you rather have for the rest of the season between two of your favorite pitching children, Turnbull or Means? Oh, man. Let me get Means' page out before I answer. I don't want to be like, the last guy who threw the

no-hitter. Always lean on recency bias whenever you can. Yeah, right. Means' walk rates are better. His history of home run suppression is worse. I don't know that his strikeout rate is going to be demonstrably better. So I'll take turnbull just because, uh,

the park situation is so much better. I mean, means might hit a rough patch when Baltimore heats up. Yeah. The kind of rough patch where you get a lot of crooked numbers and a home run rate. That is really problematic. Uh,

Boston's offense being like a more typical Red Sox offense adds some difficulty. The Yankees, even though they've struggled, they've been pretty much league average. They'll probably be a little better than league average the rest of the season, so I still see them as a tough matchup. If the Rays bring up Brujan and Franco,

they're not going to strike out as much as they do now. They're going to put more balls in play. They're going to be more capable of doing damage too, plus the Jays are tough. So really every in-division matchup is at least an average difficulty matchup with the potential to be worse for means going forward. And I think that's enough for me to also prefer Turnbull at this point.

Not a lot that separates them at all. They belong in the same conversation. But there is this, they do point to a difficulty which is gosh isn't it hard to sell high on pitching because we all need pitching and you're like the guy's doing it and why can't he keep doing it i was looking at uh my numbers for jt brew breaker and um i still like him he still has great command um the stuff plus hasn't been trending that well the last two games, whereas his worst two of the season. I think it has something to do with his pitch mix.

He backed up off the slider a little bit and started throwing the sinker a lot more, which I don't think was a good move. Slider and curveball are his best pitches by stuff plus. Slider and Curveball are his best pitches by Stuff Plus I think that Brubaker Means and Turnbull are all sell highs

and it's like thank you Eno or thank you whatever thank you Stuff Plus but then bank it man and maybe the best thing to do is put them together and just try to move up the leaderboard.

You know what I mean? Pair them with someone else and try to get an upgrade. Like, you might have, like, if you're listening to this podcast, you might have two of these guys on your staff, right? There's a pretty good chance

that there are a few people listening that have both or all three. Right, so, yeah, yeah or all three and i think that if you put them together um yeah i just think that there are there you know if you if you look up the rankings there's going to be pitchers that are just more sure things i think we're talking about uh three pitchers that are all you know i'm going to do rankings for this Friday. And I think that they're all going to be sort of like 50 to 55 or 55 to 60, somewhere in there, right? And I would say that the marketplace right now might value them in the top 40. Yeah, I think there's not much that separates 40 from 80, though.

It's the same as we say all the time, right? But there is like a top 15 or 18 that's way more exciting. What if you put two of those guys together to get Buehler? Because the guy who has Buehler is just not as super excited about the numbers and is a little bit worried about the fastball velocity. I would take Buehler over a combo of Means and Brubaker or Means and Turnbull. I think 10 out of 10 Rates and Barrels listeners would probably do the same, though.

I don't think you're pulling that trade unless you've got some pretty inexperienced players. Okay, how about this? Would you trade two of those guys for Kenta Maeda? That's more realistic. One or two of those guys for Maeda. Maybe one gets it done. There's a possibility you could

pull that off. I'd rather have Maeda than both. Maeda has fallen. If you're talking about the rankings, I still want to have Maeda ahead of these guys. That's the kind of trade you can make. The actual buy low, sell high. The more likely trade you could make is taking

one of your pitchers and maybe an extra hitter that you have and flipping that combo to try and get up to Bueller, right? If you had, I don't know, let's say you had Nick Castellanos and then one of those pitchers, that might be able to open the conversation to get up into that top end of the pitching ranks because you're giving up a really good hitter a solid pitcher and trying to buy low something along those lines to me is more realistic i think the challenge trades in particular make it really difficult because anyone who's using in-season rankings or projections to guide their decision making is going to see too much of a gap between the pitchers we're

talking about yeah the pitchers that you want so you have to do something that kind of gets around that yeah it's a good point the rest of season projections are not super kind to all three of and the pitchers that you want. So you have to do something that kind of gets around that. Yeah, it's a good point. The rest of season projections are not super kind to all three of these guys. And yet, they gave you what they gave you so far. So, huzzah. And if you're looking to replace guys like that because you traded them away,

Justin Dunn was going on the other side. I mean, I realize a matchup against the Tigers is pretty easy, but 9Ks, just a couple earned runs, five hits, five and two-thirds innings from him. I kind of threw this your way Sunday. I was bidding on players in Tout Wars. I'm like, hey, Justin Dunn looks

maybe a little more interesting than I expected him to be at the beginning of the season. So I threw in a low bid on him on Tout Wars, got him in that 15-team mixed league, and now in other leagues where he's available, I'm starting to look at the schedule and trying to decide if he actually has a little bit more appeal. The only thing that occurs to me sometimes when I watch him is that I'm just not sure how different the breaking balls are.

He throws some kind of similar-ish breaking balls. But the really good news is that his foreseeing fastball, so many pitchers, when I look at these stuff numbers, the breaking balls are good and the fastball is bad. That's sort of the brew breaker combo. But in this case, Justin Dunn has a 107 stuff plus on his four-seam and then 120s on the breaking balls. So he's absolute stuff plus play. stuff plus play um and the i think the thing that has made it work more recently is that his command kind of jumped from below the reliever shelf to above it last year he had a command plus in the 80s this year it is 98 uh in the latest update that is absolutely going to play and uh an

interesting pickup in all leagues if he's available. Definitely somebody to keep an eye on. And I think with Dunn, I look back at the track record. Maybe this is a trap similar to looking at the minor league track records of strikeout rates for hitters and saying, oh, this guy's not going to strike out that much in the big leagues. He didn't strike out that much in the minors. Dunn didn't have extreme walk issues. I mean, AA, 7.1% in 2019. That is absolutely fine at AA. Missed plenty of bats. Did a decent job keeping the ball in the park.

Has done a pretty good job keeping the ball in the park so far this season. I think when you put the command plus number with that minor league track record, that sort of gives me the nudge to say, yeah, okay. That 15 plus percent walk rate we've seen from Justin Dunn in 87 innings so far as a big league pitcher, that's really not what he's going to be going forward. That number is probably coming down. Maybe he's a nine to 10% guy, but if the home runs are in check, he at least becomes someone that in certain matchups you can throw out there. Whereas previously, I looked at him as a complete no fly sort of pitcher. He's the guy that I didn't

want anything to do with. The fact that you could use him in some starts in a mixed league now, that makes him pretty interesting. Yeah, yeah. I think I figured it out why I think that the two breaking balls are the same. By vertical movement, they're almost identical. A little bit weird, but the curveball is more sideways some people think that's weird but and think that sliders are more sideways but curveballs traditionally

on average have more sideways movement so his curveball the way that it differentiates it has 10 more inches of sideways movement but they both go like 80 to 84 so you won't notice on the on the miles per hour but you and so sometimes horizontal movement is hard to see with uh different camera angles so that must have been what set me off but i think a 10 inch difference horizontally is enough to say that he has three pitches so uh i'm all in on done you know done also um is one of those deals where if you had the stuff plus numbers early um you noticed that he had uh you know he had you know some appeal and that's the whole idea of stuff numbers is that they can look at vlon movement and tell us more than just the strikeout rates from that game.

So there's a couple of debuts, right, that we had even just last night. Yeah, Tucker Davidson was one that I wanted to ask you about because I had that start on and it looked like a pretty good pitch mix. I think it was mostly 93-94 with the fastball. Secondary stuff looked okay. It looked like he had pretty good command too, which after watching the Logan Gilbert debut last week, we know guys come up, sometimes they just have nerves, and they're not going to be as sharp as they have been in the minors. revealed because any starter in Atlanta immediately becomes worth thinking about. The team context is generally good. The bullpen is struggled, but they score runs. And win probability is at least solid. It's an organization that develops pitching reasonably well. What did you see in some of those underlying numbers from the Davidson debut?

I was trying to match the eye scouting with what I thought Stuff Plus would say. Were you close? I think so. I thought stuff plus would say. Were you close? I think so. I thought the slider would be great because that slider had a two plane movement and was 86. So what I do know from stuff plus is that, uh, hard breaking balls are, are,

uh, get good numbers. Um, I also thought that he placed it pretty well. And so when I looked at Stuff Plus today, I saw 135 Stuff Plus on the slider. It's only 30 pitches, so you could expect variation. You could expect it to go up or down by six as much as much as six in the next start. But the location plus was 117. so the slider is an excellent pitch and he went to it often you'd go double up triple up on some guys um and so he really used that as a

major weapon the curveball had a 118 stuff plus and a 110 location so like he i think he has uh two breaking balls he can do a lot with the four-seam fastball, though. You had a comment about how that looked. I thought it just looked straight, like really straight. And one thing you told me before the show is, yeah, maybe it has decent ride, though, because the camera angle does impact how we perceive a fastball on TV. But it looked like a pretty ordinary four-seamer to me. Yeah, I have a hard time four-seamer to me.

Yeah, I have a hard time scouting fastballs, actually, which is weird because in the past, you would look at the fastball velocity and be like, wow, 98 with the... You can see tail, right? But I don't think the tail is super valuable because I will tell you one thing, I just traded away Marcus Stroman in a league, in a keeper league. I traded away Marcus Stroman for Ryan Yarbrough and Heimer Kandellario in Devils Rejects, 20-team dynasty. And the reason I did it is Stuff Plus hates Marcus Stroman.

77 Stuff Plus for Marcus Stroman. And when you watch him, you're like, wow, look at all the bend on that sinker. It's an amazing pitch and blah, blah, blah. And I think that there's a fair amount of horizontal movement that is not super good, super useful for pitches. And then I posted this, and the last time I put a piece out that, you know, look at Trevor Rodgers' fore four seam and look at julio urias's four seam and those are separated by like 20 in stuff plus and yet when you watch them

i don't know you know so uh i did caution you on that however tucker davidson's fastball has a 69 stuff plus. Not great. And interestingly enough, he had not, I've, I left the door open for you. If you want the Tucker Davidson was just demoted as we're recording. It doesn't necessarily mean he's not staying in the rotation. They might just be looking for extra bullpen arms right now.

And they'll put somebody else on the IL in a few days when they need to bring him back up. I mean, they lost, they lost the Roker on the IL in a few days when they need to bring him back up. I mean, they lost Soroka for the year, so there is a whiff of an opportunity there in that rotation. Well, and the Waskari Noah

bench punching, which I don't know if we talked about that on Monday. It's just sad because he looked pretty good despite the fact that he got hit a little on Sunday. I was impressed with the two-pitch mix. Plenty of velo. Lots of movement on that fastball. That is a gross fastball. It was like 98 with plenty

of run. I just maybe wonder how on earth did we not think he'd be at least a useful arm prior to the season once it started to happen earlier in the year, of course. He got under the radar a little bit. It was a bit of a watch the radar gun,

which is a simple thing. We're going to give you another really simple thing to watch out for with the question coming up, but sometimes it is just as good as watching the radar gun. He jumped up to sitting 96. What about Bailey Ober? He got up for the twins. Oh, but I do want to say one last thing about Tucker Davidson.

Overall, the Stuff Plus is still 102. This is not a crazy, like it sounds terrible to have like a 69 fastball, but like generally the fastballs are a little bit lower, and there are a lot of pitchers who succeed with suboptimal fastballs. So I would say that I remain like pretty upbeat about Tucker Davidson. I got some David Peterson vibes watching him. I think he throws a little harder than Peterson, if I'm not mistaken. And he has a better stuff plus number than Peterson.

Yeah, and if David Peterson's useful in your league, then Tucker Davidson, assuming he comes back soon, is also probably useful in your league. Yeah, David Peterson has an 86 stuff plus with a 121 slider, and his sinker is 67, and his foreseam is 77. So the fact that Tucker Davidson has two breaking balls that are good, I think that he could be better than David Peterson. Ober did poorly.

He's a non-pedigree guy, 12th rounder of the Twins back in 2017. Also, surprisingly, despite his stature, his giraffe-ian stature, he wasn't really a stuffed guy even just sort of watching him. So 102 stuff plus on the changeup, but that was not his sort of primary pitch. The slider only 96 and the four seam 78. Overall stuff 82. Really hated his curveball at 62. So there is some opportunity because Pineda's down,

but I don't know that I'm putting many eggs in the Bailey-Ober basket. The Bailey-Ober basket. The Bailey-Ober basket. A large basket, though. 6'9 pitcher. So, yeah, I think he's more of an AL only, just deep, deep, deep league sort of filler, not necessarily someone you're excited about, keeper dynasty or mixed situations.

I want to talk to you about a few of the Royals pitchers. Chris Bubich is back. Six scoreless innings against the Brewers. That was a Christian Jelic Brewers lineup. He was back from Nashville. He DH'd in that game. Am I wrong for looking at this group of pitchers which really includes Singer

and Bubich and Brad Keller is kind of part of this too and thinking that these guys are just interchangeable. They're mostly two pitch guys and I don't really see high ceilings, even though the floors look pretty steady for most of them. They all look like they could at least be competent back-end starters,

even if they don't bring the high ceilings that we're always looking for in young starting pitchers. Yeah, I almost feel like I can't pick the right one. I almost feel like they are all good picks at home, especially with certain matchups, and you're always picking one of them, and then you could pick the one that blew up. But there has to be something about pitching development

that they're doing a little differently, because, yes, I think they think it's fine to be kind of a two-pitch guy. But Brady Singer has a 97 stuff plus chris boobich has i'd like a much worse number i was just looking at it i've forgotten it already it's it's very forgettable uh his stuff plus is, Bubic's stuff plus is 72 and has not moved off of 70 all season. Brad Keller, though, does something slightly differently from the rest of them. And it's not just the seam shifted wake. And his 102.7, so 103 stuff plus with a 161 stuff plus slider, which is, I think, one of the top five in baseball. And a 95 four-seam fastball.

Yeah, he's a two-pitch guy again. But it gets him through far enough. And he gets ground balls, man. A lot of ground balls. he gets ground balls man a lot of ground balls he gets ground balls and i did a search for a ground ball rate uh in the last five years he's 10th in ground ball rate in the last five years among qualified starters uh and has a real nice homer per nine 6.66 homers per nine in the five-year span so i just think think that Brad Keller is a step above the rest of them. And I took a quick look at his game log, and I realized that I think those three early blowups

have kind of changed our appraisal of Brad Keller. And a lot of people are just out on Brad Keller because he does not have a high ceiling anyway. So they were like, well, if he's got a low ceiling and a low floor, why are we interested? But in his last four starts, he has a 380 ERA with about a strikeout per inning, 1.2 homers per nine. The ground ball rates down a little bit, but he seems to have figured something out. And I love him as a home play.

So I'm going to put Brad Keller slightly above the other two, but I'm also agreeing with you mostly. And Keller is a very gettable starting pitcher, either straight up off the wire or as a throw-in in a trade, really not going to take much to acquire him from teams that currently have been riding it out with him. But always good to notice and point out when someone gets shelled or goes into a terrible slump early in the year, they have

a bad April and they start turning it around in May. It takes more than a month sometimes to undo all that damage from the very first month of the season. All right, you know, so we were just kind of hinting at this a bit talking about Brad Keller, but we had a question come in from Isaac. I've been talking about home run suppression as a skill that some pitchers have, and Isaac actually plays in a couple of auto new leagues, so he's always looking for pitchers who avoid homers because in that format, which is a points format, there are stiff penalties for giving up home runs. Are there any indicators he should be looking at to identify pitchers who are good or could become good home run suppressors? Thanks, Isaac.

Yeah, you know, I think he said in there that he kind of looks at at parks. You know, there's this weird finding, though, that fly ball pitchers and ground ball pitchers um doesn't the park doesn't matter so much to the home run rate which i i still can't i still can't figure that one out we've talked about that one before i don't want to talk about it anymore um but uh uh the i do think the parks the parks matter and and one thing that you could do is if you just look at, and this is my idea, is just use ground ball rate as a proxy. There are way more fancy stats. There are fancier stats that you could use. But when you look at ground ball rate, you realize it's a pretty strong indicator. Over the last five years,

if you sort by ground ball rate, you've got Marcus Stroman with his 0.9 homers per nine, Dallas Keuchel with his 0.9, Lance McCullers with a 0.8, Clayton Richard 1.2, Tyler Chatwood with one, Brett Anderson with one, Mike Montgomery with one, Max Freed with one, Luis Castillo with 1.2, despite his home park. Brad Keller in 10th in ground ball rate with a.7 homer per nine, where that's somebody who has similar skills as maybe somebody like Clayton Richard with a great ground ball rate, not as great strikeout rate, but he had a better home park. So I still think that the park matters,

and I think the ground ball rate matters. Now, the trick, the way that you can use this incorrectly, the way that you can fall into a trap is just by saying, oh, okay, fine, ground ball rate. I'll just pick up guys with great ground ball rate. There are bad pitchers with great ground ball rates. I just mentioned Clayton Richard. You know what I mean?

Like, you don't want to just be – you really do want to combine ground ball rate. If you look at ground ball rate plus strikeout rate, then I eliminate most of the clunkers on here. Even if you use seven as a – let's use eight as a benchmark. Then you get Lance McCullers, Tyler Chatwood, who's been good as a reliever, Max Freed, Luis Castillo, maybe a good by-low, Sonny Gray, Carlos Martinez, who was great when he was healthier, Trevor Cahill, who's been a little bit underrated at times,

Alex Wood, Aaron Nola, Noah Sindergaard Zach Godley even who has not had a bad home run rate just bad walk rates Patrick Corbin Clayton Kershaw, Charlie Morton so all those guys have really good home run rates and good strikeout rates and are good fits for those leagues. So just a simple little thing,

just looking at ground ball rate and putting it up against strikeout rate. And the reason that I mentioned that is because there's been some studies with like, you know, why aren't ground ball rate pitchers better? There's a piece that I was reading by Matthew Murphy in 2015 on the Hardball Times. Are ground ball pitchers overrated? And he pointed out that ground ball pitchers, when they do give up hard contact, will give up more homers. So they have the home run per fly ball rate is higher. He pointed out that the strikeout rate for ground ball pitchers is generally lower. And so he pointed out that generally fly ball pitchers do better because they're fly ball strikeout guys. So that is true.

But in this case, you're talking about raw homers as being an input in your league, and you care about just raw homer rate. I'm in the league that has home runs allowed by pitchers. I care about this. If you care about that, more ground balls just means fewer chances for home runs. And that remains true no matter how you look at it.

It's just better to also combine it with strikeouts so you're not just picking up jabronis. Good use of jabronis. Second time this season that jabroni has been used on rates and barrels. Last time, of course, it was Britt referring to my prediction that the Red Sox would be not terrible. It was a jabroni prediction. She didn't call me a jabroni,

which I think is really important to remember, which is why I've just been like, yeah, I'll just let it ride. That's why you're going to let her wriggle off the hook on that one. I'm going to let the Red Sox thing just play out a little longer before I start getting real excited about it.

But advantage DVR, at least in mid-May on that one. A related question came in. We'll kind of dig into a few other ways this could be looked into as well. Jamison Tyon has really been kind of bizarre in terms of his profile. K rates at an all-time high, right? 11 Ks per nine, 28.7%. Walk rate is right in line with his career norms at 6.3%.

The home run rate has gone through the roof. One of our listeners, Ben, was asking about Tyon in a 12-team league because he's been great from a K-BB perspective, but he's giving up a lot of barrels and hard contact. We're seeing a lot of balls in the air, and those balls are turning into home runs, probably in part because he's not in Pittsburgh anymore. He's in Yankeekee stadium and as a righty in yankee stadium giving up the platoon advantage to lefties you are going to get into some trouble if you're allowing a lot of hard contact in the air but is jameson tyon in a 12 team league someone you would actually hold on to or possibly pursue if you don't have or is he actually someone that you would cut if you had him or try and move him a deal and move away from him at this point i'm i'm buying i'm buying i mean you know i have to

give you this stuff in in command because that's that's what i do uh but uh the the stuff plus number uh for him is oh this is still showing bad color. Come on. It's above average. I know that. I'll get to it in a second, but he also has good command. You know, let me look at his command plus number here, which might be surprising to some people that are watching, but I think that what happens with command is a poorly commanded pitch goes for a Homer and you're like, ah, his command is no good.

You know, um, where it's kind of hard to see that three out of four pitches are being commanded. Well, you know what I mean? Um, and so,

uh, I seem to have lost, uh, stuff plus, but I think there was around one Oh seven. So you talk about a guy, one Oh seven, one Oh nine, um, one Oh seven stuff. Plus one Oh nine command Stuff Plus, but I think there was around 107. So you talk about a guy 107, 109,

107 Stuff Plus, 109 Command Plus. I am looking at the leaderboard here and it says, for example, that Tyone has allowed the 33rd highest exit velocity on fly balls and line drives. highest exit velocity on fly balls and line drives. Leaving aside the fact that there's plenty of good pitchers on this list ahead of him, Walker Bueller is giving up a harder 95 mile an hour. Frankie Montas is above him. Brad Keller is above him. And Tyler Glass now is 14th. And Madison Bumgarner, we've all decided he's back.

Oscar Hinoa was sixth in fly ball line drive exit velocity. Shane Beaver is fifth. You know, Alex Chamberlain really has made it his personal sort of bailiwick to kind of go after what pitchers can control over balls in play. And I think he's done a great job. He's had different stats along the way, and he's kind of explored this. And I don't want to speak for him, but my conclusion in sort of reading his work and looking at things and looking at what I know

is that it's easier to control the batter's launch angle as a pitcher, right? Because you can throw high pitches or you can throw low pitches, right? So the high pitches generally go for fly balls, low pitches go for ground balls. so the high pitches generally go for fly balls low pitches go for ground balls so it's you have more control over the verticality the vertical spray um then you do over the exit velocity or the horizontal spray if you look at sort of like pull rates and stuff it's it's it's

not they don't stay stable year to year um and then if you look at exit velocities allowed they don't stay stable year to year and they don't link look at exit velocities allowed, they don't stay stable year to year. And they don't link up that well with outcomes. I was just looking at 2019, the year of the home run. Brent Anderson gave up one homer per nine that year, and he was second in fly ball exit velocity. So I just don't think fly ball exit velocity is that useful, and I don't even think that barrels allowed

for pitchers is that useful I want to focus on strikeouts walks stuff you know and maybe some command because command will your your ability to limit the exit velocity will come down to command in certain levels right because the middle of the zone gives up higher exit velocity and the edges give up less. But if he shows up as being good at command, then I don't think that he's going to keep giving up two homers per nine, especially when his career is one homers per nine. And especially when this year, the homers are down. So just focus on the fact that he's striking out 29% of the batters he sees, walking only six, and generally pitching well. I wonder if this is shades of Sonny Gray's time in the Bronx in some ways. I mean, it is a tough frigging park, man.

Really tough park. We started to see some skills growth from Gray at that time, and Gray's home run rate didn't go through the roof, though. He actually kept his home run rate near career norms and just walked more guys, maybe trying to avoid the damage of the long ball. The K-rate jumped his first season in Cincinnati. But I look at that profile for Tyone. He's a hold for me, a buy where you can.

Definitely not a guy you'd want to cut, even a 12-team league, because team context, no matter what people are going to tell you, is still at least average. The Yankees have their flaws, but they have a good bullpen protecting leads. Good bullpen. And they at least have an average offense, probably a better-than-league average offense when it's all said and done. They at least have an average offense providing run support for their pitching staff, too. So aside from the skills looking generally good, I think this all points to Tyon being really interesting. Now, I think what you were mentioning about average exit velocity on flies and liners and barrels and looking at that leaderboard and

trying to decide if that leads us into a good place in terms of finding guys who can legitimately suppress home runs going forward or not, I do think we're still too early to know for sure if that is meaningful and i think the bieber situation in particular is really confusing because he's often very high on the average exit velocity for flies and liners in a bad way like giving up a lot of hard contact in the air and i think that was even the subject of a presentation that that alex chamberlain gave back at pitch con two springs ago now or was it last spring i think it was the spring during the shutdown last spring and i just think we can we can run into some roadblocks along the way trying to figure out like how meaningful

some of these numbers are and they may correlate reasonably well with different things that we care about but there's noise here too that we have to be mindful of and we have to figure out like, okay, how quickly do pitchers change? Like how quickly can they see a flaw because of these numbers and correct it, right? I mean, it's just, it's a slippery slope right now. So I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole saying, oh yeah, Alex Wood leads the league and barrels allowed per plate appearance. So Alex Wood therefore is just amazing. I think there are other reasons to look at that profile and to say, oh. So Alex Wood, therefore, is just amazing. I think there are other reasons to look at that profile and to say, oh yeah, Alex Wood's turnaround might be real. It doesn't have to be only about his ability to avoid barrels. It's his ability to miss bats,

his ability to avoid free passes, the park he's pitching in. The home run rate's usually been good in his career, right? I mean, there are other things we can draw from the ground ball rates through the roof right now 61.5 percent ground ball rate like you said leading the league in barrels allowed in a good way fewest barrels allowed percentage wise or elite ground ball rate what's the better reason to support i mean they they're not they're not totally dissimilar i like, part of the reason the barrel rate's so good is because of the high ground ball rate. So much is on the ground ball, yeah. But I trust the ground ball rate being a skill that he might own,

whereas I'm not as confident that missing the barrel at that level is necessarily something he is locked in on. Think about, like, okay, here are the angles coming off the bat. This is like a YouTube thing. Here are the angles coming off the bat this is like a youtube thing here are the angles coming off the bat right yep you know that one has to go down there we go these are the angles coming off the bat the general angles 45 is the most we're usually and then there's a bunch of worm burners right um if you're talking about ground ball rate you're talking about this whole swath here you're talking about like 40 you're talking about ground ball rate, you're talking about this whole swath here. You're talking about like 40, you're talking about like 30 degrees, right?

When you're talking about barrels, you're talking about this little bit here. You're talking about like 15 degrees, right? So you're focused, hyper-focused on these 15 degrees. What about the balls that are just outside? You're not counting them. That's not a barrel. You know what I mean? You hyper-focused on these 15 degrees. What about the balls that are just outside? You're not counting them. That's not a barrel. You know what I mean? You're only looking at these 15 degrees.

If you're counting all ground balls, you're counting sort of like 30, 35, 40 degrees of possible outcomes. So you're just looking at a bigger chunk. And it's just going to be more meaningful, I think, than like, oh, that was a near barrel. Well, then should we count it? Or, you know what I mean? Was it luck? I mean, did the hitter make a mistake? Did the pitcher get lucky?

Did the pitcher do that? Yeah. So I just think it's like, I know it's a bit of a hammer and a blend instrument. And then, of course, I think one of the biggest things that is confounding all this,

and I was thinking about this with regards to the hot hand theory. So it's coming up a little bit because Steph Curry is going off in basketball. And no matter how you look at it in free throws or three-pointers, it's really hard to show any predictive ability of your next three-pointer based on how many three-pointers in a row you've made or how many free throws in a row you've made. So that's been one of the biggest ways that people have said that hot hand doesn't exist. There is no such thing because you can't predict. There's no real effect on Curry's next three-point attempt.

It doesn't matter how many he's made in a row. So there's no hot hand. That's been one thing. And then Rob Arthur has this piece in baseball where he said a row you know so there's no hot hand that's that's been one thing and then rob arthur has this piece in baseball where he said hot hand does exist in baseball uh because you know a pitcher's fastball velocity and a start can be predictive of how well he does in the next start right but what i was thinking about on the dog walk this morning is that's not the hot hand. That pitcher's true talent has changed.

Right. If you put that into your projection, your projection will be better because the pitcher's true talent has changed. He's not the same person. He's not Steph Curry taking one three-pointer and then another three-pointer. He's Alex Wood with 91 and Alex Wood with 92. And Alex Wood with 92 is going to be better

than Alex Wood with 91, right? It'd be like if you could measure how hard a hitter was swinging the bat. Like when you're swinging the bat faster, you'd have a better baseline projection. But we don't measure that. But we don't know it. So then we say the hot hand doesn't exist.

Well, maybe it would. No say the hot hand doesn't exist. Well, maybe it would. No, the hot hand doesn't exist. If I just flip quarters and the next quarter has nothing to do with the last quarter. Right? Right. But if your true talent is changing, then it's a measurement question. You just haven't figured out what the right measurement is, right? That's what's so difficult about pitching is their pitch mix changes from thing to thing, right?

And then their opponent's strengths change from thing to thing. And then there's going to be like, oh, like I was saying about this. Merrill Kelly has been throwing his sinker more often. And so his stuff number has been going down, right? The next time he faces the Dodgers, the Dodgers murder sinkers. They're like the fifth best in the league at hitting sinkers, right? What if he doesn't throw the sinker as much because the Dodgers like sinkers? So the scouting report says throw more four seams.

Oh, and check this out out his four seam is better by stuff oh and in the start merrill kelly therefore has a higher stuff number so the opponent somehow changed merrill kelly's true talent yeah yeah he changed what you were trying to do to attack a particular lineup his strengths and weaknesses better but is another way of saying it. But generally, I think that changing your pitch mix, adding a pitch, subtracting a pitch, changing the movement on a pitch, changing velocity on a pitch, those are four ways a pitcher can change their true talent.

And they can do that from start to start. So, Tyon could come out next time and throw fewer fastballs. I think a lot of people are saying that. I think that could be a good idea. I mean, his stuff, like I got the machine working again. His stuff plus on the slider is 112. On the foreseam is 110.

On the curveball is 106. On the changeup is 100. He has four above average pitches. It doesn't seem like the fastball is a problem. The CSW on his fastball is 33%. That's good. But whatever it is, maybe there'll be some sort of change that Tyon will do.

And then I don't know if I'll be right or wrong because he might make an adjustment and be a better player. And I'm right for having said that he was better than he was. See, I don't know if I'm getting across how difficult it is to evaluate pitching. I just feel like their true talent is changing more radically from start to start than hitters.

I'm just thinking about this from a tie-on perspective too. I think it's right in line with what we're talking about is his barrel rate is through the roof right now. His barrel rate allowed, but my instinct for a pitcher is to immediately regress back to previous levels. It's a barrel rate.

Over time, it's like BABIP. It's a fancier BABIP. It's that type of measurement, but just a little more precise in terms of what you're actually getting. So I think it's a key difference is like how we think of barrels. Like hitters, I think, have a lot more control over their barrel rate than pitchers do.

It's not that pitchers have no control over it because if you throw the ball in middle, middle parts of the zone too often, yes, you will yield a high barrel rate. But I do think there's a much greater degree of control when we're talking about a hitter and his barrel rate than we are about the pitcher and the barrel rate that he allows. Yeah, and I think that has to do with command just being tough.

I think command is the sort of barrel and those sort of outcomes and stuff is more related to whiffs. And this is interesting for the wonks. Stuff is trained towards outs. So that's why Rikiri would look good but maybe not have the best strikeout rate. But if it's trained towards outs then tyon has the stuff to get outs and he shouldn't be giving up you know we've got

x wobocon on here on just uh just to give an idea of like the quality of contact that he's allowing and uh the change up has a 0.87 x wobocon So maybe he should just stop throwing the changeup. Maybe that's what he should stop throwing. But I just see a guy that could make an adjustment and has good underlying skills and is not this bad and is not going to give up two homers per nine. So that's the real analysis, I guess. Do the Yankees face the Mariners anytime soon? That's the real question.

That would be good. Research to be done momentarily. But yeah, I'm with you on Tyon. Again, definitely think he's a hold and a lot of interesting questions coming in. So thank you to everybody who's been sending those in. I think it fuels our curiosity and I think there are a lot of people out there

wondering and thinking about the same types of things. So please keep sending those in, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com. You can hit us up on Twitter. He is at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. Great deal right now at The Athletic, $1 a month to subscribe. Theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels is one way to get there. Otherwise, click on one of Eno's articles.

He had a great A1 story about the differences in bats. We talked a bit about that on Monday. Click on that, subscribe to that piece, anything you can do to subscribe and support us. We really appreciate. Thanks to the many of you who have done that over the last couple of years. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening.