Rates & Barrels - Returning stars, chaos atop the board in 2022, and a bright future in KC?

Episode Date: August 16, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss the return of Chris Sale, Fernando Tatis Jr.'s move to the outfield, a messy top of the board for 2022 fantasy baseball drafts, a Field of Dreams Game that overdelivered on expectations, Baseball America's updated top-five MLB farm system rankings, the possible value of Stuff+ 'max', and more.  Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels presented by Topps. Check out Topps Project 70, celebrating 70 years of Topps baseball cards. It is Monday, August 16th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. Thank you to those of you watching us on YouTube. Hit the like button on this video. Be sure to subscribe to this channel to get notifications when we drop new episodes. And if the previously mentioned field trips ever begin to happen, that's where they're going to go.

Field trips are good visual learning experiences. We would share as much of those as we possibly could on our YouTube channel. On this episode, we have a ton of ground to cover. A great weekend around baseball. Chris Sale is back, so we'll talk about some of the underlying numbers. We're saying with his first start back following Tommy John surgery. Fernando Tatis Jr. is back. He's playing in the outfield, so we'll talk about that adjustment.

We had a surprising no-hitter in Arizona, so we'll talk about that. And I'm going to count this as part of the weekend because we recorded on Thursday before the Field of Dreams game happened. We had a pretty amazing Field of Dreams game that went down way back on Thursday, so a lot of feedback on that. Also, a really cool thing that I just saw this morning. Baseball America updated its MLB organizational talent ranking. So just taking a look mostly at the overall value of the young players in a system. We'll talk about a few of the top teams on that list, some bright futures for some teams that might not have very bright presence. And one team in

particular that really kind of stands out because of their success here in 2021 you know how's it going for you on this monday it's good it's good i i thought i thought this weekend uh that my dog had torn his acl oh geez how'd that happen well um we don't i didn't realize this was not something you should not do. But I guess we take them on jogs, but only kind of on weekends. And that's called like, if there's like a term for it, like weekend warrior dogs,

binge running. Yeah. And I guess they're not, they don't have, they haven't built up like in the parlance of baseball time of our times, like they haven't built up the chronic ability to have that sort of acute stress. So it's a little bit like not doing your arm care routine, and then just trying to throw two innings. row two innings. So we only take them for like two miles, but they're very little dogs. And so I guess after this last two mile run, one of the dogs was trying to hop up onto the couch and yelped and his leg was spasming. And he was really sad. and i was looking up prices of acl surgery and also being sad yes yeah that's um but it's bad enough the dog is uncomfortable and in pain and then you start

to look at how to fix it and you're like oh my goodness this is going to be a big big problem to fix yeah but my wife it's so funny i'm, I'm, I'm just like such a stress case. I don't know. I, I might give off the, the, the vibe of being a mellow and easy going, but like in family matters,

like, Oh God, he tore his ACL. It's $4,000. Oh God. And my wife is like, can you just wait? Can you wait like three hours?

And yeah, three hours later, he was a little gimpy. Today, he's not showing anything. And basically, I did read up from him some more. And it was like, if they are gimpy, give them two days. If they're still gimpy after two days, then it's something worse. Yeah. So the fear i have by the way since we're sharing dog stories there's a lot of great parks in our area as you

know but they're just not flat and i think i mentioned this before i threw a ball downhill to hazel the first time we went to the park and she like fell because she was running so fast her legs couldn't keep up user error yeah she was so excited it was her first fetch in over a week and she just she just wanted to play so bad um so i've remedied that but i've noticed that the parks here aside from being like really hilly have some very odd just like missing parts of ground you'll have like these cracks just running through the middle of a park in in grass or huge divots and and maybe it's just the particular park I've been going to the most but it is not just

rolling former cornfields that have been turned into parks that are very smooth so you got to be a little bit careful where you play with the dogs around here this place was shaped by many earthquakes yeah I think you do find a

little weird where you're like why is there why am i like why is there like a cliff here yes also like any uh all the creeks and stuff that used to be there are dry now so now you have these weird things that look like they should be a creek but they're not and that might also trip you up literally. Yes. So watch your step. If you come out to the Bay area and just start going to parks and spending time with your dog there,

that's the lesson I have learned here just in the last week or so. Some other weekend highlights though, as I mentioned up top, Chris sale is back. He was available in a lot of leagues because with the timetable for his return, he was undrafted in the rule in NFBC-style leagues. A player that is undrafted has not appeared in the big leagues yet.

This season is not available to be picked up until that player appears in a big league game. So since Sale appeared on Saturday, he was eligible in those leagues on Sunday as a fab pickup. And a lot of leagues out there, he was just stashed on the ILL season as a very late round pickup but I got him for just over five percent of a full budget in my 12 team online championship because a lot of teams don't have money left and I figured hey if I'm gonna throw most of my budget at one player at this point in the season it should be Chris Sale I thought overall he looked pretty good just from a simple eye test. I had that start on in the background when it was happening on Saturday. I saw him touch 96 in the outing. The results were good, and yeah, it was against the Orioles,

so you take that with the necessary grain of salt. But I'm just curious, how did the stuff plus and location plus numbers look for sale in his first start back from Tommy John? Well, right now it's set to Elisir Hernandez. Who I think is also going to be a nice late season pickup because there were a lot of leagues where he was unfortunately dropped.

I was trying to sneak him in, but I have such little money, such little FAB auction money left that even my sneaky Elisir Hernandez for 20 bucks didn't work I couldn't do much more than that because I have literally 100 bucks left in most of my leagues out of a thousand I'm uh I'm doing dollar days already uh No, but I did look at Chris Dale earlier. The slider was plus plus.

The changeup was plus. The fastball was around league average, so that pushed the overall line closer to league average. But one thing that we've been finding as we're doing the work on validation is that 400 pitches is kind of the magic number. consolidation is that 400 pitches is kind of the magic number um so you'd want at least three starts uh before uh you say anything definitive i don't know he's so excellent and the slider so excellent that i think the worst case scenario is the command does not come all the way back and the fastball is not his a plus fastball year. And I think even if those things both were true,

he would still have like a 380 RA and 10 strikeouts per night. Which plays just fine. I mean, that puts him kind of in the 20 to 30 range among starters if that's who he is. And there's a chance that he's even a tick better than that. That could be not vintage sale, but if he's a top 10 or top 15 pitcher the

rest of the way i mean if you are in a position where you had jacob de grom and we found out over the weekend that he had another setback in his bid to get back and chris sale was out there on the wire like you might actually luck your way into something that actually resembles a typical de grom not 2021 de grom because look, nobody does that over a stretch. But anyone actually could come close over six weeks. So I'm pretty excited about Sale. I think there's a lot to like here. And it's just nice to see one of the game's best arms back out there because it's been such a difficult year with injuries across the board.

But some good news for Fernando Tatis Jr. as well. He came back from the IL, and he's playing in the outfield. Made the start in right field in that first game back, homered in that first game back. I think this probably sheds some light on a few things long-term. I think there's a decent chance that long-term he's going to be in the outfield, kind of regardless of what happens in the near term with his shoulder. This gives me this belief that maybe we are going to have some kind of offseason procedure, even if it's just more of like a cleanup sort of thing.

We're not going to have a simple rest sort of offseason for Tatis. It's going to be a news filled offseason. But I also think this probably clears the way for C.J. Abrams to eventually take over as the Padres starting shortstop at some point, maybe in the first half of 2022. He's had injuries in the minors this year that have kept him from cruising through the upper levels of their system. I think we both thought there was at least a chance that in the event of a Tatis long-term injury that maybe Abrams would actually be debuting around this time. His season is over because of a fracture, I believe, in his leg.

So if you look at this situation from the long haul, those are my two takeaways. Abrams is probably their starting shortstop by this time next year, and Tatis probably needs some sort of work done this offseason. Yeah, it is interesting that... So we already have like two separate seasons of data for Furtado Tatis defensively, where it's like, one, he was one of the worst shortstops defensively in like his first season. And then it looked like he really went to work.

And the type of plays that he wasn't making were the easy plays. So we thought, okay, he just has to dedicate himself to it. And he came back and he's one of the best. And then this year, he's kind of regressed a little defensively. So if it's not just that he has to dedicate himself to defense and maybe there is

a softness there, like he's not going to be the best defensive shortstop and he's not going to stay there forever. Then you just have to think about where he's going to play because his bat is so good that that's what we're seeing, right? It comes back, plays right field.

His bat is so good. You, you need them in there. Probably the contract will be okay even if he's a right fielder at some point but i do think that's a little aggressive to take him off a short stop next year depending on the outcome of this surgery that he has i think i mean if the surgery is you know sort of what they expected and not that big a deal and just a little cleanup in the shoulder and he's already doing baseball activities before spring

training starts, then I would just put him back in shortstop. Yeah, we'll see how they play it, but I think there's going to be a lot that the Padres have to consider as they move through their offseason once they get there. This is the best offensive player Tatis has been as a big leaguer so far.

A 172 WRC plus this season. He's only played 89 games entering this week. But 33 homers, 23 steals. He's 23 for 26 as a base stealer. And everything just looks so good for him at the plate. I think the other kind of related question here would be. Where are we comfortable drafting him in 2022? We're missing the full extent of what the offseason is going to bring for him.

But if it's an on-again, off-again injury concern with his shoulder, if we don't get some sort of clarity that the procedure that he eventually has is going to reduce the likelihood of these setbacks, is going to reduce the likelihood of these setbacks. Does that bump him out of the top five, even though he has an easy argument to be the number one player in fantasy based on pure talent right now? I so want him. It's been really nice having him on my fantasy teams. He's a really great producer.

I've even had him in OBP where I was a little bit worried, and he's had a 380 OBP this year. The one name that bothers me when I think about, oh yeah, just put him in the top 10, top five, is Cody Bellinger. Because Cody Bellinger had a similar problem, subluxation of the shoulder that required surgery. He had the surgery. He couldn't come back as strong as he wanted to, and he's just now maybe turning the corner on that injury. So you wouldn't want to get the Cody Bellinger 2021 next year for top five prices. No, I would not wish that on anybody. But then Cody Bellinger was also his production wasn't as amazing before.

Right. Cody Bellinger's 2020 wasn't as good as Fernando Tatis' 2021. No. And I think the other thing that is really kind of eye-popping I'm looking at the rotowire earned auction values for this season is he's still really good he's number one he's wow he's been a 42 player to this point Vlad jr right there at 41 right behind him but that's with 89 games compared to you know 116 from Vlad jr there's a little drop Boba Shett is third among hitters by the way which you could have

given me 10 guesses as to who that player would be and i wouldn't have hit bo bichette as number three and earned value i don't think so is it because is he stolen a bunch of bases that's probably had a lot to do with it he's also got 89 runs scored so he's not only has he showed power and speed but yeah 286 with 20 homers 77 77 RBIs, 89 runs scored, and 17 steals. So, I mean, it's been a great season for Bo Bichette. Sad stuff in every category. Yeah, I think that it's one of those things where I think where you put him in the top five depends on a little bit of depth, what the waiver wire looks like when he goes down, what your IL rules are.

I think you will want to think about that a little bit. And that makes me say maybe not a number one pick because the number one pick you don't want to think about. It's tough though because... Who is the number one pick? The CUNY is coming off of ACL. Yep. The T's is coming off of this.

Betts has a hip thing that looks chronic. Yeah, you're not taking Betts at one. Trout is no longer number one. Is Trout coming back this year? I mean, I am beside myself that he's not even close to returning, at least based on reports, doesn't seem to be close to returning right now. You know that league where I nursed Otani and Alvarez in a one-util league? Oh, yes, I do.

Otani and Alvarez in a one-util league. Oh, yes, I do. I'm going to win that league, and I'm going to win it on the back of Otani and Alvarez with Trout on my IL like the whole season. I had Trout and Bregman as my other two keepers out of the five keepers. And Alvarez and Shotani have been so awesome that it doesn't matter.

I got almost zeros from those two guys. Anyway, nobody cares about your team. I would say maybe Tatis is number one then, because who am I missing? Are we going to push Vlad like into the top five? So the top five from this year, you mentioned Acuna.

Yeah. Coming off the ACL, probably not there right away because there's a possibility, depending on how the rehab goes, that he's not quite ready for opening day. I think they're pretty... He doesn't steal as many bases. Right, might not run as much right away.

A lot of questions is just that he's not quite the same guy immediately. Long-term, he should be able to bounce back from it. So Acuna, probably not in there. Tatis is in the top five, I think. Unless there's something major. If it's like a, I don't know, an unexpected labrum repair or something, which doesn't seem like the case with Tatiana. Betts and Trout, I think, are not.

DeGrom's probably out of the top five right now based on what you're seeing at this point. I don't think you want to put Cole in the top five. Maybe. I mean, there's going to be some projections that say Cole is still top five. Is Juan Soto a top five player going into next season? Without steals? Without steals. I mean,

if you can put Vlad Jr. in there, I would argue that you should be able to put Soto in there just as easily. Where's Soto on your earners? Here's some more earners. Some more earners. Soto, because of missed time. Wow, Soto, you got to search down. He is $25.

He's not way, way down. Let's just listen to the other five in the top 10. Here's the straight top 10. It's Tatis and Guerrero at 42 and 41. The drop to Bichette at 35. Rafael Devers at 34. Marcus Simeon at 33, rounding out the top five. And then you got Trey Turner at 32, which makes sense.

He's probably in the top five going into the next season. Matt Olsen at 32. We talked about his new approach. Obviously, the counting stats are great. The power's been there, and the average has been there. Walker Bueller is the first pitcher here. He's at $32 as well. Ozzie Albies and then Freddie Freeman round out the top 10 so far,

with Jose Ramirez also tied at $30 with Freddie Freeman. The top five took a real big hit, and I'm not anointing any of these guys consensus top five right away. I guess Turner might sneak in. Turner has lived in the first round long enough where I think people will have more confidence in him than a lot of the other guys who are getting here for the first time.

Marcus Simeon at that sort of price, I don't think. But holy crap, is Walker Bueller the first pitcher off the board? Because the first pitcher off the board? Because the first pitcher off the board probably cracks the top five, at least in NFBC formats. Is Woodruff really close?

Because I was trying to get Buehler and Woodruff in every draft. Yeah, Woodruff, I think, should be really close. Let me get the full pitcher leader board up just to see that. Okay, yeah, it's real close. Buehler's 32, kind of off on his own. But that's in part because 12 wins on top of those great ratios de groms at 28 even with all the missed time zach wheeler also at 28 gossman at 27 and then brandon woodruff at 26 scherzer at 25 how about the brewers with peralta at 24 and burns at 23 so you're looking at those guys. And then I think Chris Bassett and Garrett Cole are tied at 22,

as is Carlos Rodon kind of rounding out the top 10 among pitchers so far. I think it's really hard. I think it probably goes something like Tatis, Turner, Acuna, Soto, Devers or something. And I think if I had to make the decision today, I think I would jam Vlad Jr. in ahead of Acuna and someone would get a deal on Acuna potentially. Maybe where I have Soto but Vlad.

Tatis, Vlad, Turner. Tatis, Vlad, Turner. I smell a Twitter poll. Soto versus Vlad is such a recency bias sort of debate. I think it's dead even, but I think if you put it on Twitter,

was it Vlad Jr. 80-20? Are they going deep rebuild or are they just going back to the well and spending a little bit? I don't know. It seemed like they were willing to trade anybody. They traded away a guy who was under contract for next year. Yeah, that was...

I thought it was unexpected. I didn't see that move coming at all from them. I think the bottom line here is the first round as a whole, wide open for next year because of all of the injuries, all the issues that have come up this year. That's wild. Drafting early, as it always is, will be even more fun. I'm now thinking,

I'm going to win five leagues this year. I'm having a pretty good year. I'm like, how? What are you doing with that next year? How do you feel about next year right now? Not real confident. One of my leagues, NFBC, I'm running away with it. It's an OC.

I'm running away with it. My entire an OC. I'm running away with it. My entire bench is hurt. And my bench is like Bieber, Pablo Lopez, Rizzo, Sanchez. It's all kind of short-term-y, except for Bieber. But I was looking at it. I was like, I think Bieber was my number one round pick. My first round pick was Bieber in this league. And I've been nursing that guy all year. And I actually from what I talked to Zach Meisel recently I don't think um I don't you know

there's a lot of people think that Bieber might not come back this season if he comes back it might just be to kind of show that everything's on track at the end of September it might not be I'm gonna come back and throw as many innings as I can. I think it's, let's look to the future and be smart and careful with it because it doesn't look good. I nursed that one too long, I think. But now I'm like, well, I'm in first anyway. Might as well just leave it there to see what happens. But yeah, I think the first round is an open question mark. I think that for, you know, it is interesting to think well it's just around

like any other but you kind of in the first round think i want to get a guy i don't have any question marks about that's what you used to think and then it was okay well with my top five pick i'm going to get somebody without any question marks now it's like uh. There's question marks in every round. Yeah, because going through this year's final ADP, Acuna obviously just down because of the injury. Tatis holding his spot, probably, as long as the injury situation's not terrible. DeGrom down because of injury.

Soto probably down just slightly because of performance, but not down that much. Yeah, missed time. Betts down. Trout down. Cole down that much. Yeah, missed time. Betts down, Trout down, Cole down at least slightly, Turner probably up, Bieber down, Jelich down. Jose Ramirez might be the other guy that has that candidacy for the top five because he's like Turner.

He sticks around as everyone drops from around him. Yeah, at least initially until people sort of find the floor, so to speak, and kind of figure out what they want to do, I bet in early drafts Ramirez will be a little high, and then as people talk themselves into other players, maybe he'll slide in kind of like the middle part.

His ADP will be eight by the time we get to March, but it'll be five if you're drafting in November and December. I mean, other than that one sort of half-year blip, he's been a really remarkable, consistent performer, Jose Ramirez, with that body. It's not the body scouts dream of. No, really good player and probably underappreciated in a lot of ways.

A couple other quick weekend highlights to get to. Glad we got into that future segue because that was pretty fun. How about that surprising no-hitter from Tyler Gilbert over the weekend? I saw this courtesy of the Associated Press. Tyler Gilbert threw a no-hitter in his first big league start, and he was the first pitcher to do that since Bobo Holloman. Amazing. I've never heard of Bobo Holloman before. Happened in 1955, I believe. I've never heard of Bobo Holloman before.

Happened in 1955, I believe. Yeah. That sounds like a 1905 name, really. Sounds like you would have played with Oyster Burns. Oyster Burns stabbed him. Yeah. Tyler Gilbert, I'm pulling it up. I remember it doesn't blow you away from a location and stuff standpoint. His best pitch was

the knuckle curve by Stuff Plus. It's the only pitch that's above average. He drew it 11 times. His cutter, forcing combo, they look like both basically average pitches. It was a weird pitch mix. When I looked into it, I was like,

how on earth did that just happen? As he said, guys were just hitting balls at guys, which is kind of how most no-hitters happen. Yeah. His called strike percentage on the day was – oh, this includes other ones. But for the season, it's 22%. And also because he was a relief earlier,

this was the worst stuff plus of the season for him. Yeah. So really cool story because he was apprenticing as an electrician with his dad this time last year. And here he is throwing a no hitter against the team that has playoff aspirations in August, no less. I think they even didn't they just they claimed I think it was a Rule 5 guy that they claimed from the Dodgers? Minor League Rule 5 guy. Didn't even get on the 60, yeah, wasn't even on part of the 60-player pool for the Dodgers a year ago. That's pretty awesome.

Yeah, very cool story. Also, shove it to the guys that let you go. Yeah, I like that. go. Yeah, I like that. The other weekend highlight, which I'm just rounding into a weekend highlight, of course, was the Field of Dreams game with the stock off from Tim Anderson.

That game delivered on every possible level, which I think Major League Baseball needed. There was a great email that Chris sent us, one of our listeners. The way Major League Baseball handled ticketing, Iowa residents actually had

the first priority to buy tickets. Face value was like $400, though. So they were cost prohibitive, which is a problem. And then, of course, like any special event in any sport, the people that get those tickets access first are going to try and resell them to make some money. I would imagine this happens with

winter classic games in the NHL, right? They play in baseball stadiums and football stadiums. They played a game at Lake Tahoe, which I think had to be scrapped partway through because the ice was melting. But the scenery was beautiful before that game was put on hold. They did have Little League game playing the night before at the venue. So that's pretty cool as well. game playing the night before at the venue, so that's pretty cool as well. Chris's email

points out to you that Field of Dreams is way better than Space Jam or Detective Pikachu. I didn't really provide a lot of insight into my lukewarm tone about Field of Dreams. I don't dislike the movie. I think I was disappointed as an adult re-watching it

for the first time since I was a kid. As a kid, I had it on the same level as Sandlot. As an adult re-watching it for the first time since I was a kid. As a kid, I had it on the same level as Sandlot. As an adult, I actually think the Sandlot is a slightly better all-around baseball movie, but absolutely worth watching if you haven't seen Field of Dreams. A surprising number of people hadn't seen it, probably watched it over the weekend after seeing the game. I thought the execution of the event itself, just the way the game played out, it was Hollywood worthy, right? Like everything Major League Baseball could have wanted

from White Sox Yankees in Dyersville, Iowa, it all sort of happened. Yeah, the nerd in me was wondering about park factors. Park factors are hard enough to figure out when you've got seasons worth of data. So just watching one game i was like well did they just make a another yankee stadium because everything was going out to right field right but was that wind um i did see some speculation in our inbox uh for juiced balls. And I will have to say that having just been in Denver for the Home Run Derby,

where they not only turn the humidor off for those balls, but also use special Home Run Derby balls, so in essence, juiced balls, it doesn't seem impossible that these events where we don't have Trackman and Hawkeye, we don't have any way to track it, that those balls might be different. I don't know. It's not insane. But I did wonder at least a couple times what was going on with the ball and the stadium when the homers went out.

It's not like the homers were just enough. Most of them were pretty no doubt. But I don't think that I thought when I saw Tim Anderson make that contact on that last pitch, I did not think home run off the bat. I think he knew it was a home run off the bat, though. You take batting practice in a venue, you see how the ball travels, and you can probably get that

feel pretty quickly. That was an email from Peter, by the way, that wondered if they had used juiced balls. I think the way I would describe it is I don't think the level of henchmanship, I hope that's a word. If it's not a word, henchmanship is now my word. I don't think it's at a level where they say, let's get some super springy baseballs for Iowa. I don't think it's quite like that. I think it's more like, we're not going to put these baseballs in a humidor and we're going to set it up in a way where it will probably be a more springy ball,

but it's not specially designed. It's just there are things they could do to control it that they won't do for a situation like that for some of the reasons you mentioned. If I had to guess, I would guess I was dry and hot. Yeah. This time of year, very dry, very hot. Yeah. I saw Derek Carty had a thread trying to project the park factors.

It was projected to play hitter friendly oh okay yeah card is on top of the park factors man he he nailed that arizona change with the humidor he did he absolutely did that one figured out so i think the big question here going forward feel the dreams game clearly a success people loved it. They're still talking about it days later. Who plays in it next year? And I mean, how far into the future do you think we do this? I think you could do this at least for four or five years, if not longer.

You already did the hard part. You built the stadium. You have the infrastructure in place. I think you got to kind of make this a bigger deal and rotate more teams through. Do you think it has staying power? What's the hockey one? They do it every year. The Winter Classic, and the thing that makes the Winter

Classic work, though, is it's a different venue, right? You play a hockey game in Fenway Park one year, then you play one in Coors Field the next year. Right, and also it's not tied to a movie. It's kind of weird that it's so tied to a movie. We're going to celebrate Field of Dreams every summer? I think the challenge, though, and I threw this on the

rundown last week we didn't have time to get to it is what other hollywood baseball environment would you try to recreate could you recreate a field like the sandlot i mean obviously you have to make it safe for players and you could make it look like the sandlot but it has to play like a regular baseball diamond you can't have uneven grass and different things in there but could you could you make the outfield backdrop could you actually recreate that on a major league field i think you could do things like that and and probably you know create this in other ways but i think you do want to run this at least a couple of times with a few other teams open it up to a few more fan bases for itself yeah i mean you've got to justify spending all that time and effort on it.

I was thinking, what other ideas could you have for baseball? One is Durham, for Bull Durham. Yep. Bull Durham would be another one. Sandlot would be one. Rookie of the year, you already have the stadium. He's got a lot of kid pitching a big league game, which might be a major liability and labor issue.

You also have to have him break his arm first, too. Angels in the outfield. Yeah, angels in the outfield. You could... Got the stadium already. That's why I say, don't tie it to the movie. I think it gets weird when you tie it to the movie. Also, then you're celebrating one movie

every year. I like the idea of just traveling and and and barnstorming and playing in in places that don't have a baseball team uh play in like play in england like they do in football you know play we did we did that once for baseball but playing uh you know play in latin america man like Like what? Latin America loves baseball. Why don't we have a game in the Dominican Republic? Major League game. Yeah, I think the infrastructure situation everywhere you want to bring this game does become a challenge.

If you're trying to get thousands of people to be able to watch, you've got to go to a place with a stadium or you have to build one. That's probably why they did Puerto Rico before Dominican Republic. Go to a place with a stadium or you have to build one. Probably why they did Puerto Rico before Dominican Republic. Or you have to have some sort of portable stadium that you can put around an existing field easily, which I think would be a really tough engineering sort of thing to do. But again, I came away very impressed by all this. There were chances for it to be kind of overdone and silly, but I actually thought it was excellent. I would play a game in Buffalo every

year going forward. Just as a tradition? Just like a series. Yeah, why not? Just remember, hey, this was our COVID home park. Let's do this. I mean, I guess Major League Cities especially don't want to lose any home games, especially businesses near the ballparks, but

imagine if every Major League team... Maybe one of those last spring training uh remember when you that rivalry week the spring training games where i mean out here it's always the giants play the a's right before the season starts yeah yeah you see whatever that is if it's like blue jays red socks tune up or whatever it is do that in in balt in in uh in buffalo i mean just They put all that work in that stadium and they're going to have some memories associated with Buffalo, I think.

Yeah, you can't really play a baseball game in Buffalo in March. Not comfortably, anyway. Oh, that's right, March. Get a nice snowstorm. The Blue Jays still make the money, come on. Do some August thing in Buffalo buffalo it would be cool if we had a way of playing a game that mattered

in the triple a city where each team's affiliate is located like that would be one way to sort of build up the relationship between the major league fan base and the minor league city because clearly those are big markets that don't have a team of their own but it would make more sense that's the feeling i'm getting like that's what i'm talking about with buffalo yeah right like if there are if there were a big faction of white socks fans in charlotte where their triple a team is or if in nashville there's a huge contingent of brewers fans right that'd be kind of cool to have these different things you'd have you know brewers bars popping up in nashville like you can have stuff like anyway. But I just think it's another way to grow your fan base, have a larger footprint for people that follow your team

and care about your team. Nightly Parks should not switch organizations from year to year. You should have really long contracts to build that up so that you almost have sister cities. You have this real affiliation with your minor league cities. You know what I mean? Well, I think in a perfect world, you'd always have something within about two hours, right? Even the distance from Chicago to Des Moines where the Iowa Cubs are, that's close enough because of modern travel and being able to jump on a plane

and get there very quickly. That kind of works, but it starts to break down just because there aren't enough, I guess, adjacent big cities to pull it off. I don't really understand why that's never been the case. Obviously, there's...

Even if it's a little bit further, I think it's cool to have this... I like this idea of like, okay, if we're going to slim down the minor leagues then let's really let's like lock these relationships into place and have some sort of long-lasting uh you know relationship that you're building with these other cities uh i think it'll lead to a lot of fun and maybe it solves some of the logistic problems that we've talked about in the past too where teams can better support the players there because they know they're going to have the property there for right yeah like if you know

you're going to be into coma or you know you're going to be in stockton for a long time then build a little dorm there for for your for your players so they have somewhere to live and boom like that's going to be your spot because you're locked into stockton for 20 years you know and then you can actually make an investment in their lives in a way that will really matter to them. So I think that it's actually super important. And I think right now you're seeing people leave the minor league game because they can't afford it. And that's that will trickle up to to what we're seeing is the minor leagues right now um have already they're already reporting reduced uh quality of gameplay jj cooper had a piece out about this in baseball america

where he said uh fielding percentage is at like a 10 year low strikeout rates are at a high and walk rates are low and of course some of that is game trends but some of that also is just they had a full year off and then uh some of that is this you throw the housing crisis on top of that i mean like how awesome are you going to be at playing baseball if like you're you're sleeping in a car because you can't afford a hotel room for the night right yeah i think the the other factors that was a great article that jj put together the other factors i mean you change some rules at low a you also have really young players showing up there because of some of the changes with rookie ball i mean there's just all

sorts of but i had a major league outfielder share that article with me uh saying you know this is 100 true and it's already visible at the major league level that they're calling people up to just have no. And I think about it this way. This is anecdotal, but think about it this way. How many rip the doors off the hinges debuts have we had from like a young hitter this year? From young hitters? None immediately come to mind.

I can't even think of one. Let's take a look. Rookie hitters so far this year. Jonathan India is not young, young, but he's been good. But he also played in the big leagues before this year, right? I don't think Jonathan India played in the big leagues. No, he debuted this year. India had a pretty good debut.

Adelise Garcia is a little older akil badu is a rule five pick not like amazing but good andrew vaughn has been solid overall and better lately so he's kind of trending in the right direction but i think your point stands i mean it hasn't been a great year for rookie position players as a group it's been a really tough year for them and even guys that we thought were going to be closer to can't miss sorts of players i mean dylan carlson by no means has he's been bad but he's only been a little above average he's got a 108 wrc plus right he's got a 261 341 419 line jared kelnick who i thought was gonna hit the ground running he hasn't quite figured it out yet. I think he had a pretty big weekend. It's a pretty long list of guys that have let us down,

and I don't think it's necessarily because they're bad players. I think it's because what they're trying to do with the transition from AAA to the big leagues right now, it's much more difficult than we realized because of all these pretty unique factors from 2020. I don't know. I don't know that there's an angle to take on this. Young players are always a risk. I think that when we draft in redraft leagues, when we think about this, we all know that they are probably a bad bet on some, but we always take a couple, try to take a couple educated bets, maybe pay a little bit less,

get a second tier guy, whatever it is. We all have a rookie strategy, right? I mean, it's, everyone has their thoughts about, you know,

how valuable rookies are and how to, how to treat them, um, in, in, in our leagues. Um, and I don't think that you necessarily need to change it that much.

Cause what if you change it and then everything goes back to normal after they have a year of minor leagues like they've had. Right. Um, I would just generally say that uh i'm in the camp that that thinks that uh players making their true debuts are not always the best investments the numbers bear that out and ariel cohen's done the research looking back at fab i think jeff zimmerman at some point had done it too. Usually you don't hit on the Juan Soto, Jordan Alvarez sort of level. More often than not, you spend more than you should in Fab and get less production than you would ordinarily get if you spent that much on a player in season. But I'm glad you mentioned Baseball America. They've done some great work throughout the year.

And well, as long as I've been reading stuff about baseball, they've done great work. They had a recently released updated list of the top organizations in baseball just in terms of overall talent. And you should check out the full list over at Baseball America. I'm not going to give away all 30, but their top five came in with the Mariners at number one. Not really a surprise there based on the core they've got. Kelnick and Julio Rodriguez and George Kirby and Logan Gilbert. That's just the top.

The group of prospects they have is really good. They are a young team positioned with a very bright future. The next three, I think, might surprise some people. We have the Orioles, the Royals, and the Pirates, and the Giants round out the top five,

which is just when you think about how good they are right now at the big league level and how old they are at the big league level. I think that bodes really well for their chances of having this current old group, which actually will stick around a little bit longer. Brandon Crawford just got a two year extension recently as those guys fade away in the next couple of years, that young talent they have coming up will possibly just keep them at a very high level. So this could be a sustained peak for the Giants on the horizon. It might not just be, hey, they were really good this season in 2021. They did some things right. The league caught up to them. They might be kind of offsetting the loss of these players

in the next couple of years with legitimately good prospects. But Orioles, Royals, Pirates, all being in the top five, if you're a fan of any of those teams and you're understandably frustrated or disappointed at how things have gone for yourselves in 2021,

the future looks pretty good. Yeah, yeah. It's funny to think about how long these teams have been bad with respect to their ranking currently. Because you've got the Royals and you're like, duh. But it's almost the Royals like, well something about it then you know that's how i feel a little bit you know versus the orioles where you're like yeah okay this is the beginning this is all right good that's you did step one you amassed a lot of young talent um things look like

you know i think i think the rebuild uh looks like it's going fine in Baltimore. I wouldn't say there's any real warning flags yet. They haven't traded away as many guys as I might have expected, but maybe that's because they think they're starting to build now and they've got these arms that are going to pop. D.L. Hall and Grayson Rodriguez are going to come up. I have to admit that other than Rutschman, I don't really know how much position player depth or position player prospects they're they've got they must be younger because i've just they're not coming to the top of my head i know that like using old diaz i think has really fallen off so i don't i don't know um

if it's more like of a depth thing or just like really young players that i just don't know about but i would say that the royals looks fine the The Royals one looks to me like, okay, you guys, like, come on. Like, it's been a pretty long time. You've been rebuilding for a while. This better start coming together. The Giants is just amazing when they do that. That's when you have the Dodgers and the Padres, you know, winning in the moment and still sporting really great prospects.

That's when you usually feel like you're set up for a really good run. So that's what comes to mind to me when I look at this list. Yeah, I think the Royals have only been actually bad for three-plus years now, going back to 2018. They were right near 500 in 2017.

They were at 500 in 2016. They obviously won the World Series back in 2015, and they lost in seven in 2014. So back-to-back World Series appearances, two 500 seasons, and then a four-year dip. That's normal. I think when teams win the World Series, especially smaller market teams,

but most teams, when they win, there's going to be a correction. They're going to lose a lot of that core because they probably had a bunch of controlled guys who became free agents. They couldn't retain all of them or chose not to. I was extrapolating. I'm extrapolating a little bit of being unimpressed

in their pitching prospects as they've come up. I think we've now had four or five in a row that you're like oh but wait wait till jackson coar comes up wait till brady singer comes up wait till daniel lynch comes up and i mean are any of those guys above average major league starters fair question um and i i think the the problem they are going to run into is if none of them become above-average big league starters, are they going to be competitive going out trying to get the occasional ace that could be available in free agency?

Even the second-tier guys like Zach Wheeler obviously pitching like an ace. Like the Charlie Morton, the older guys that you can sign for a couple years. Yeah, that's a tough tightrope to walk. But I think the reason why they are grading out so favorably right now i mean obviously bobby witt jr high expectations there nick prado has really reinvented himself eric pena looks like a really good international signing mj melendez they have a future catcher and eventually take over for sal perez it looks like they do tick a lot of boxes especially with two guys up the middle who are going to be impact players and then I think because of the volume of that pitching staff, I think you can find believers in each of those guys.

Even if we're somewhat underwhelmed relative to expectations on Daniel Lynch or Brady Singer or Jackson Coar or even Ace Alaci with some of the issues he's had with control in the minors. You still have believers in some combination of those guys working out as good starters for this team in the long run. Yeah, it's a lot of players who could pop, I guess. You know, I had a pitching coach, or I think he's a pitching coordinator, tell me once, I'd rather get a player that was close to the major leagues than a 15 year old or a 17 year old or whatever yeah um and the idea is that they first of all have proven that they have near major

league talent so like you know that the talent base is there and then his idea was they are usually like a tick like a tick away uh either a tick of velo or a or a change in pitch mix there's that you've got you know near major league talent in front of you and you just have to change things like i think uh daniel lynch uh there's a possibility there his sinker grades out better than his foreseam. And I know that they pushed him to the foreseam because that's what modern pitching development is. But I think if he actually went to a sinker change up slider situation, that would be his best foot forward. And I think he might be a better pitcher then so i kind of even though his raw stuff right now is 91 i see you know 113 stuff plus on the slider

113 on the curveball um you know a change up that he locates really well i think he's the guy that um who was who the other one? There's Brady Singer. I'm counting Singer as part of it since he came up last year. Lynch, Lacey, Coar, I would say, are the core guys. Yeah. I wish my life was a little bit faster.

And Carlos Hernandez might be part of that. We talked about him on the last episode or two episodes ago. I think that's literally my favorite of the group. Brady Singer, nothing is above average stuff-wise, so I think that's going to be really rough on him. There's no

sort of pitch mix attack that I can do. Who else was... Jackson Kowar, I think, just had minus minus command, right? Right, and it's like, okay. So clearly he was amped up for that first start. The fact that it happened again the turn after that is a little bit of a concern.

But he's been generally – well, he was pitching really well at AAA. That's kind of – man, I wonder if he's got a case of the thing right now because his numbers in the minors have taken a turn for the worse since that big league debut, too, and things were looking so good for him through the first two months of the season. It's crazy. Stuff Plus really doesn't like these pitchers.

Kowar doesn't have a pitch above average by Stuff Plus, and his location is the worst I've ever seen, 80s. I've never seen that before. But it was three appearances you know it was not 400 pitches so maybe there's more there but i think if i had to pick one it would be lynch and it would be um you know like some sort of kz mys ask second year where he comes back and he's retooled you know his sink Or like Logan Webb, where he was like, why am I throwing so many four-seamers?

It's not that good of a pitch for me. Logan Webb comes back and leans into the slider and the sinker and has all that success. I think Lynch is my guy out of the group. Other than Carlos Hernandez, who just needs to slowly improve the command over time. I thinknandez who just just needs to kind of slowly you know improve the command over time i think that's that's all he's got to do yeah i think it makes sense i mean pedigree alone lynch was probably clearly the best of the bunch based on expectations with the exception of lacy because of where he was drafted but uh the last four appearances for lynch

definitely a step back in the right direction 266 era ERA, 118 whip during that span, 19 Ks in 23 and two thirds innings. So maybe starting to figure some things out at the big league level. There's an interesting side conversation here. We're doing all this work on Stuff Plus to try and get it to the public in a way that y'all can just like play around with those cards and stuff.

And so we're doing some of the validation work. And one thing that we just found out is that stuff plus stuff plus and location plus both matter a lot in pitching plus. So if you kind of want to look at a player in the now, you want to look at both. And location plus command plus does not add any information to our model over Location Plus. So I'm comfortable using Location Plus as a proxy for Command Plus going forward. But here's the thing that was really interesting. Even though they're both equally important in our model, Stuff Plus is stickier year to year.

I think that makes some sense because it's the move the shape and movement of your pitches you know that doesn't change as often as i think maybe you go to a different team you have a different pitching coach you have a different approach we're going to start throwing the cutters here or there you know what i mean like that that seems like that happens all the time like how what do you hear happen more often I've developed a truly unique new pitch that is different from my other pitches. And I'm going to start using, or I just started featuring the cutter inside the lefties.

Yeah. The latter, because it's a much smaller adjustment, you know, it's just, it's like, like you already do this thing, try doing this thing the same way you've always done it,

but over here, that's, that's a much more subtle change. And I think on top of that also, uh, in terms, You already do this thing. Try doing this thing the same way you've always done it, but over here. That's a much more subtle change. I think on top of that also, in terms of subtle changes, I think the health stuff that they go through, they're going to let them pitch if they can hit 96 and shape the pitches like normal. They'll be out loud out there.

But if they maybe have aches and pains that don't show up in that, then they'll show up'll be out loud out there but if they maybe have aches and pains that don't show up in that then they'll show up in location you know because you know i feel like that's the finny fin it's more finicky command is more finicky it comes and it goes um and that's we have some numbers to back that up now so it came up because i was looking at um acquiring bailey falter and sam long in a trade that didn't uh end up happening you're not gonna get into that right now are you it's just one of those things where you like you did 80 million back and forth it's the same freaking deal at the core and

me and my uh my team partners just like whatever but we were trying to look at bailey falter and sam long which also it's a very small deal to acquire bailey falter and sam like come on anyway it's pretty small it's pretty small but uh looking at them they, they're very different. Bailey Falter has good command of average-ish stuff pitches of many of them. Sam Long's a little bit closer to being a two-pitch guy. He has the pitch with the best stuff out of the two pitchers is his curveball. Which one of those would you bet on going forward?

And it seems like the bet is Sam Long. The best pitch probably gives you the best chance of being something. Exactly. Yeah. I even put this one to a pitching coach I know, a major league pitching coach, and he said, yeah, I think I would take Long because they're both probably 45s as starting pitchers, but Long is the guy who could be a 60 reliever.

Right, and Falter would probably just be a 50 reliever if everything clicked. I think then the other question is if the command is similar for those two players or location plus is similar. And just for anybody who's listening who doesn't know, 45 is average on the scouting scale so uh yeah we're talking like are either of these guys have a potential to be above average starting pitcher maybe not i mean they don't really profile that way yeah 60 would be a high leverage like wipeout reliever probably going to make some all-star games like that's the type of pitcher you'd be talking about like a 60 reliever but the

i'd rather have long or that profile if those are my two choices there is a stuff plus question that came in from shane that sort of fits into what we're talking about here so i'm going to throw this your way shane's question is this and stuff plus is known to fluctuate from game to game or even pitch to pitch is it possible to look at a pitcher's max stuff plus number and determine their stuff ceiling? Looking back on Tristan McKenzie's adrenaline-boosted debut, is there a way to kind of set the bar for that level of potential and then monitor things like rolling stuff or velo averages?

Could we have used this method for guys like Manoa, Patrick Sandoval, and maybe Sammy Long in the future. Thanks as always for the award-winning handcrafted artisanal barrel-aged podcast. I like the last three adjectives the most. I like winning awards and stuff, but handcrafted artisanal barrel-aged podcast, that made me smile. So thank you for the email, Shane. Now, what do you think about this concept of a stuff ceiling, a max stuff plus sort of number and the value of that? Well, yeah, that's why we were talking a little bit on a show before

is that even these advanced stats like barrel or stuff, regression is still a thing. Sample size is still a thing. So what I would say for myself is I saw these huge debuts from Manoa, McKenzie, and Shane McClanahan in terms of stuff. And then they sort of fell off of that. Part of that is you debut with adrenaline. I don't know that I would want to assign that adrenaline fueled stuff number as your, as your stuff max, because I wouldn't, I don't think it's necessarily sustainable. Right.

I think that, uh, that's like your post season. I guess it could be a max, but I don't know how much the value that gives you. All right. I'm agreeing. I'm agreeing. I'm agreeing. Yes. I think it is. I mean, it's better than not being able to put those numbers up.

Right. Yeah. Right. It's back to the once you show a skill, do you own it? Do you? I don't think that they could sit at their debut levels. But I did think since they debuted at that grade of a stuff plus level, they could regress and still be great. And that's been true for Manoa and McClanahan.

Yeah, Shane McClanahan is exactly the guy that I thought of when you just said that. So I'm glad you threw his name in there too. But yes, it's kind of like, does it have to even be the debut? How much does your best Stuff Plus number in an outing really tell us about your your true talent level is it any way is it any way analogous to what we've been talking about with max exit velocity and how that that or those types of of readings and how those could be helpful or in some way predictive it is possible because i mean it's we i've talked about max pitch velocity being interesting i mean once a guy can you know and i know this from like even Farhan Zayed, he's admitted that it's true. It's like once you see a guy, you know, throw 99 or something, like let's say you're looking at John Axford, right?

And he's been out of the league for two, three years. And, you know, you're like, why do we care about John Axford? Well, then he sends you video. He's hit 99. Well, now you're interested in John Axford. That's how much like, uh, uh, one, one, uh, max pitch velocity can mean. So I, I, I can dig it. I just wanted to point out that like, you know, there is regression and you know,

that the sample size that we like is, is, you know, three to 400 pitches at least. Um, but we, you know, in this size that we like is, you know, three to four hundred pitches at least. But we, you know, in this tool that we're going to have, we're going to have rolling stuff plus. And there will be, you know, a question. And I hope that people, you know, we're trying to improve this as it goes on. So we've made improvements to the model over the course of this year. into the model over the course of this year. And I don't expect that what we have debut here for in September for a soft launch for Stuff Plus is going to be, you know, just that's it for next year too.

Like, I think we're going to always be improving this. So one thing that maybe people could do research in our app or, you know, linked with us is hot hand theory. And sort of like, we know from Rob Arthur's work that fastball velo for for a pitcher can actually be predictive on a short on a short uh on a seasonal level like on a game-to-game level so I would assume that it's not that crazy to say that stuff plus

changes and stuff plus could be predictive of changes in in performance um and so we're gonna have those rolling things what i notice when i look at someone like tristan mckenzie uh is that when he first came back he did have this uh super high peak uh his second best uh stuff plus number of this season and it did drop off but so you had that one and you could be like oh my god tristan mckenzie's back and i did drop off. But so you had that one and you could be like, oh my God, Tristan McKenzie's back. And I did go and try and get a couple of Tristan McKenzie's because I was like, damn, this is a great, if this is max pitch stuff plus, it's good.

And then he regressed off of that. So it's better to use three or four starts in a row because now we see this picture of mckenzie of being um around league average and stuff um he was way worse than that before when when his view that was down so uh i think around league average of stuff with league average location and the one of the better pitching parks in baseball and one of the better pitching strategy teams in baseball makes McKenzie a slightly above average fantasy pitcher. Yeah, I mean, McKenzie,

I'm trying to decide if I'm right for liking him back in March based on me not having him anywhere and watching him have success in August. And I don't feel that good about it if I am right. So on how i feel i don't think i get a w here okay you feel good i don't feel good therefore i don't have a w all right i could see i feel good about mcclanahan calls i don't know i was a little bit worried for a little bit because they weren't pitching him long but uh that one worked out pretty well yeah andoa, I think there were pretty good signs in his underlying numbers right when he came up, too, and he's delivered in a really big way since that time.

We are going to go. Before we go, I'm going to let everybody know you can get a subscription to The Athletic for 30% off. It comes out to $3.99 a month at theathletic.com. Get all of Eno's pieces, Eno's articles, Eno's stories, and everything else we do as well, including the fantasy football draft kit. That season is upon us now

that we're in the back half of August. On the rare occasion that I write something, that's included too, but really you're signing up for everybody else because they write a lot more than I do. On Twitter, he's at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. You can also email us, ratesandbarrels at theathlet athletic.com is the best way to reach us. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of rates and barrels. We are back with you on Wednesday.

Thanks for listening.