Rates & Barrels - Reverse Boycott in Oakland & Midseason Mulligans

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

Eno and DVR discuss the 'reverse boycott' put together by A's fans on Tuesday night and the future of baseball in Oakland if the team relocates to Las Vegas. Plus, they consider potential mulligans for the 2023 season as the midway point of the season draws closer.  Rundown 2:58 Eno Attends the Reverse Boycott in Oakland 12:07 Hogan Harris is Chewing Up Innings for the A's 17:56 Midseason Mulligans; Mid-Tier Middle Infielders 30:00 Underestimating Position Player Injury Risk 37:15 Incorrect Assumptions About Team Behavior 39:30 Playing More Importance on Pitcher K% 42:52 DVR's Corbin Carroll (2023) and Bobby Witt Jr. (2022) Missteps 49:53 Matt Olson's Increased Strikeout Rate 53:50 Isaac Paredes' Good Results v. Poor Statcast Numbers 1:00:37 xBA v. BABIP 1:03:09 Splitting CF From OF Positions  Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/rates and get on your way to being your best self. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Without even planning to support the brewers today, so I feel... This is Oakland. It's cut off. It's cut off the chest, so it just looks like we're wearing brewer stuff. Just gonna zoom in, brewers. Gotta be. Why wouldn't it be? Yeah, right. It'd be weird if it wasn't. Didn't they have, like like bad loss last night? Thanks.

Thanks for bringing that up. I'd just forgotten about that. Then I was excited about their early lead today. Then I just saw a tweet before we started recording. They're down four to two again. Oh, no. Doesn't matter, dude. They're going to win 83 games.

They're going to go to the playoffs and they're going to win the World Series. So you know what? Nothing that happens between now and that final day when I drink all of the beers, eat all the donuts and go running laps around the house when it's probably going to be 43 degrees and sleeting. I won't even care. I'll be so happy.

When is that going to happen? Hey, I do have some fun news. Luis Matos got his first Major League hit in his first Major League at-bat after, I think we were mostly correct just to give us, I'm going to give us the benefit of the doubt and say we thought he'd be up soon. Then we kind of talked ourselves out of it and said maybe the next three or four weeks and it ended up being the next day. I would say unforeseen circumstances in both Mitch Hanegar and J.D. Davis hurting themselves on the same day. in both Mitch Hanegger and J.D. Davis hurting themselves on the same day.

J.D. Davis tweaking his ankle and Mitch Hanegger broken forearm. I feel so badly for him. How many injuries, dude? He has the combo of whatever you want to define as injury prone. I think you can fairly say he has that, but he has the bad luck on top of it. He has some pretty significant bad injuries that will almost certainly lead to more injuries, right? But then stuff like this on top of that, it's horrible, horrible injury luck.

It sounds like he may need surgery at the last glance. Second opinion forthcoming on that could be a 60-day IL situation. So this could be a long run for Luis Matos. This is not the way we wanted to see it. But I think it does give us a long opportunity to see some of the things we're wondering about. The big question you had yesterday was power. We'll get to see that.

We'll get some batted ball quality numbers very quickly. And I think that'll give us a good sense of where the floor is right now. And maybe help us project ceiling a little better in that particular category. But I would think he's up to play and contribute for all the reasons that we discussed yesterday. And the contact, the sub 10% K rates at AA and AAA this year for a 21-year-old, for a guy who can do some damage, really exciting player. It's just a sad way that he came up. really exciting players, just a sad way that he came up.

But the story of the day, you get to go to the reverse boycott game on Tuesday night, and that was electric. I was watching that game on TV, and it was a fun atmosphere. You could tell. The players, yeah, the players were into it. Trevor May, when he got the last out, was hooting and hollering. Trevor May, when he got the last out, was hooting and hollering. And I think there was an added sort of intensity to the game. Ramon Laureano stole third in a situation where you're like,

you're already in scoring position. What are you doing? Dislocated his finger, I'm pretty sure. On the replay, it looked kind of gross. Even from watching, I was down in the stands with fans at that point, and you could tell he just hopped right up and was going like this with his hand.

I don't know if he'll miss time. Sometimes you can dislocate a finger and get back in there, but I wouldn't be surprised if he did miss some time. It was just sort of indicative of how much they wanted to win. He got to third, and he scored the go-ahead run on a grounder that wouldn't have scored him from second. So definitely some high-intensity players at their best, players talking about how we used to fill the place like this. And if you look back at 2001 to 2005, the A's were middle of the pack, sixth, seventh,

eighth in attendance in the American League. And that's something that can work as a kind of lower-priced alternative to the Giants in this market. To draw $25,000 a year, that's when you start getting past a million and a half in attendance per season. There are plenty of teams that would take a million and a half in attendance and would turn it into a sustainable business. And yet something happened in 2013, 2014. They have never ranked above 10th since 2014 in attendance in the AL. And I have to, you know, I looked through all the, I wrote a piece today that's up and I look through all the different factors. The Warriors rise is somewhat relevant, except that the research says that the, that teams between sports only compete on price, not on quality.

And that makes sense because they're different sports, you know, and there's never been a time when the A's were more expensive ticket than the Warriors. So I don't think that's it. And I tried to look at economic factors. The Bay Area, the average family income is up 75% since the last census. There are 400,000 more people in the Bay Area. In terms of the economy, it's not an economic situation that's going on. And so I kept coming back to, well, ownership changed hands in 2016. It became all John Fisher's baby then. And payrolls went from averaging around 20th in the league to averaging around 27th in

the league. And it might not seem like a big deal, but that is a big deal. And the first time they started mentioning leaving Oakland was, I think, 2006, 2007. They never ranked above 10th after that. So there's something there where it's like, hey, if you keep telling me you're leaving, why do I want to show up? Right. Why would I support you until you leave if you're just planning on leaving anyway? I think that's a fair position to take. Yeah. And that goes hand in hand with like, we're going to trade away everybody. We're not keeping anybody. We're not even going to keep Marcus Simeon on a one-year deal. Marcus Simeon offered them to do a one-year deal with no pay raise and they didn't take him up on it. This know, like, this is a way to keep someone.

Marcus Simeon is an Oakland kid, dude. He's a guy from Oakland. You wouldn't keep him for one more year. That was the year he went to Toronto and got himself a $180 million contract. You know, like, you couldn't keep him for one more year. So, like, I have to think that I agree with the narrative that was there last night, which is it's John Fisher's fault. It really seems that way.

Any one of those things would cause fans to react. And when you put them all together, it's easy to see how things have changed so much around pockets of success. And the current version of the team, I mean, geez, they're on a streak right now. They're playing really well. They swept the Brewers over the weekend. They won back-to-back games now

against the Rays to start the week, which is just incredible. But to do what they did on a Tuesday to draw was over 27,000 was the final number I think you had last night. That's better than all but 11 teams for a Tuesday night. For a Tuesday night.

That's the best thing about this. I mean, we saw the shirts, the green cell shirts. We heard the chants throughout the night. It's proof of what baseball can be in Oakland. And as the process of getting a publicly financed, publicly aided stadium in Las Vegas continues to move forward, it looks like it's going to happen. It's through the Senate. There was an element of sort of nostalgia, and it was a very poignant evening.

It was a very mixture of negative and positive feelings. Anger, sadness, happiness that we were all together one last time. It was unlike any other baseball event I've ever been to. It just kind of makes you wonder, right, if this inevitably does lead to the A's going to Vegas in the next five, six years, I think that's the timeline we're looking at. What's really going to happen to baseball beyond that in Oakland? Will it ever come back? Will there ever be an appetite for new ownership to come back with expansion? I mean, is Major League Baseball just closing the door on this

by allowing this to happen presently? It's not even about interest so much as just flat-out abandonment by the league. If I was honestly and not cynically or not angrily advising Manfred and Fisher in this, not angrily advising Manfred and Fisher in this. I think I would say, find a way to give Fisher a new team in Vegas. Leave the Oakland A's in Oakland so that if there is an expansion team, they can become the Oakland A's and take on that history. And the reason I say this is if you look at Vegas, the Knights are the most successful team in Vegas. They're the only team that was born in Vegas. They literally have shirts that say,

born in Vegas on them. And they're their local team. Taking somebody else's team, like the Nationals, there was a rebrand at least, you know, when they came on. And there was sort of a difficult divorce with their Expos history. And so that one, I'm not sure is the model for the A's, but it is relevant. If there was a way to make this almost an expansion team where you're like, we're giving you this team and we're leaving Oakland as an expansion opportunity on the table,

I would do that because Oakland would immediately be the largest market available in expansion. Right. Yeah. You've looked at this before. You've looked at Charlotte and Portland and Nashville. You've looked at Vegas. You've looked at these places that come up in these conversations all the time. Oakland is bigger than all of them. I think it would be the number one expansion candidate. Because if you think about it, Oakland would have the largest amount of industry, the biggest media market, the largest amount of fans. In terms of how young they are as a city, they're younger than every other location. younger than every team, every other location,

other than maybe the Raleigh-Durham sector is growing incredibly fast and is a pretty young area. Raleigh-Durham might beat them on growth year over year, but in terms of how big it already is, you know, Oakland beats them. So I think, you know, you could pick the knits if it's number one, but it would, I think, immediately be top three. Compare Oakland to Portland. Oakland is bigger. You've got a West Coast team.

I think it would be interesting if they were like, hey, we're going to go to Vegas, but we're going to change the team name and we're going to leave the Oakland history behind and sort of treat this like a semi-expansion, just like a new team. Yeah. It doesn't seem like it's going to go down that way, but we'll keep an eye on the story as more details emerge. I think a good reminder on Tuesday night of what baseball in Oakland can

be like. Yeah, the Vuvuzelas were back, the drumming was back, that sweet smell was back. there was it was uh it was a it was a raucous night and uh it ended on a sort of poor note with people throwing beer cans uh and beer glasses and stuff on the on the field um and i felt sad to see oakland staff have to clean that up um but i understood their frustration you know. Yeah, they're angry. They're angry at Fisher. There was a lot of F John Fisher chants. And, you know, I felt that. Let's get to a player that was actually in this game, Hogan Harris, who I knew zero about entering

this season, wasn't on my radar at all. I thought of the 10 or so starting pitchers the a's could rotate through over the course of the season he wasn't necessarily one of them pretty big strikeout numbers in the minor leagues i think he was drafted back in geez 2018 as a third rounders there's a little bit of pedigree there but um lost the 2020 season like everyone else didn't pitch in 2021. I think he was hurt. And then he comes back in 2022, old for the level, but big time strikeout numbers hit. High A, double A, and even at triple A, 29.5% K rate is good. All that with pretty high walk rates

and even some home run trouble at triple A as well. So just by like underlying numbers, there's something here. I watched him pitch a bit last night. I had a few interruptions from the baby that tends to be how i watch baseball these days he looks like a useful back-end starter to me but a guy that because of the ballpark actually can play up a little bit and maybe be a little more streamable than he'd be if he pitched in other environments yeah there's a couple factors

that i think reduce his usability which is the sort of follower, the opener follower situation they're going with. I know he can still get wins in that format. And maybe in some ways be more likely to get wins than other A-stars. They had a really hard time with that. But I think also it allows a manager to maybe say, hey, three's fine today. That's all we're going to get from you. And so I don't think he's reliable for wins. There are high K rates in the minors, but that's paired with a low swing strike rate in the majors. And I was looking at his Brooks page for minor league numbers,

and against righties, his foreseam in the minors had a 587 slugging with a 326 iso um and i know that's this is high minors so that's vegas uh and if you do look at his triple a time in vegas it includes a lot more homers than he had in other places but I would venture to say it's not a good four seam it's an okay cutter it's a really big change up and that's not a package we see very often and that we see succeed very often and I'm reminded of the time that I learned that the Guardians had found some piece of research that suggested that if you are elite in terms of velo gap, horizontal movement, and vertical movement, that that's not necessarily great. You either want to have a big velo gap and very little movement gap so that the hitter sees the same movement, but it's way slower. Or you want to have a power change that has a small velo gap and a big uh movement differential uh so they see the they see the velo in swing and miss because

of the movement i think when you have all of those things at once the hitter just sees that it's a different pitch immediately um because his four seam comes out at 93 his change up is 78 and he has a huge horizontal gap huge vertical gap and i i get the sort of cotton honeywell vibes off of it where i'm just worried it's too big a change up to actually be uh all that useful and when you look at the swing data which vegas doesn't you know vegas doesn't care about swing data right like it like vegas doesn't screw up swing data i don't think um so now i'm looking at minors majors all of that uh the uh the swing percentage on the change up is 40 that's more like a curveball uh so people don't swing that often at curve balls. They're the least swung at pitch in baseball. If he's not going to get a lot of

swings on the changeup, he's going to have to land it in the zone. Guess what Hogan Harris doesn't do well? Land the changeup in the zone? Command anything. It's a good park if you just need innings for innings sake. This is actually an interesting segue. We were talking about this and we should do this, I think. So we'll create like a doodle, like a little poll. We want to know what kind of leagues you're in.

We want to know what kind of leagues you're in just so we can tailor our analysis and know better how we line up with you um just a quick sort of four question poll that's like you know your average team is it in a 12 team league 15 team league is a daily weekly is to have fab something that we can get a sort of a good idea because for hogan harris i see you, I am in a lot of like weekly leagues with Fab. I can't imagine putting a lot of money down on him because I wouldn't know when he's pitching. I wouldn't, couldn't do him for wins. I don't know if I could do him for Ks. And then if he's on the road, am I even more nervous for him? So just the way he's being

used is difficult, but in an al only team league i might be into it in a daily league where you know i might be able to steal three or four scoreless in Oakland uh you know every week or so uh i could see him having uh some value yeah we'll get that up probably from the rates and barrels twitter account we'll also share it from our own accounts as well because it is it's one of those things. We know it's easy to get locked in on things we play and that might not be what many people listening play. So we want to make sure the show is tailored to be as helpful as it can be for as many people as possible. Best Western made booking our family beach vacation a breeze. And it felt a little like...

Good night, kids. Good night, Mama. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Good night, kid. Good night, Mama. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one.

Just start moving with the Peloton Bike, Bike Plus, Tread, Row, Guide, or App. There are thousands of classes and over 50 peloton instructors ready to support you from the beginning remember doing something is everything rent the peloton bike or bike plus today at one peloton.ca slash bike slash rentals all access membership separate terms apply one of the things i wanted to talk about today we do this i think every year around this time is ask you if you had mulligans one two three as many as you need usually three is like the max you should reasonably take if you're going to play nine holes of golf unless you're playing mini golf with the kids well yeah we'll say we'll say you're playing nine holes with your friends and uh you've all agreed to

take three mulligans but thinking about this this now midseason sometimes is actually more valuable than waiting until the end of the year because so much changes from now until September. any individual players that you really liked or didn't like that have underperformed or overperformed that you'd say, yeah, I was into this player and now I wouldn't be. I was not into this player and I absolutely would have been because I missed X, Y, or Z. What would your mulligans be for 2023 so far? It's funny because we say it all the time. You can be right and you can be wrong and wrong and wrong and then right again. All those possibilities exist, but this is one of those times a year where we're far enough in where your bad decisions feel like they're legitimately bad decisions now and not just the byproduct of bad luck.

I went sort of heavy on the mid-tier shortstops. Do you think that was a mistake? I have a fair amount of shares of Tim Anderson, Willie Adamas, and mid-tier sort of middle infielders too, so Andres Jimenez. I don't know if it's fair to kind of lump all these guys together, I don't know if it's fair to kind of lump all these guys together,

but I jumped back in on the middle infield in a way that I'm not sure was a smart idea. I have like Ahmed Rosario, Tim Anderson. I have these guys, and I don't think any of them is working out. Like Lindor is okay. He's not working out that well, but I don't think I can them is working out like Lindor is okay he's not working out that well but I don't think I can lump him in with this but I'm lumping this sort of mid-tier shortstops together

do you think that was a failure of process do you think those guys are going to be better do you think there was something I could have seen I think when you pick apart each one there's some stuff you could have seen Tim Anderson's power has been in decline you know so maybe i should have seen that andres jimenez's power was a question mark you know so maybe i should have loaded on that ahmed rosario has

never really been that great of a player right his flaws have been pretty consistently present right so what was i thinking you know uh willie adamas like seems fine maybe he's going to be fine he was never a big batting average guy and he's still gonna probably get to 28 30 homers and 10 steals and you know push the batting average up a little bit so maybe i maybe i'm just lumping him in unfairly maybe he's just been fine i don't know i think it helps to look back at what the draft board looked like for this group of players because there is a pretty wide range of what it took to get them i think we had i remember on our our shortstop preview episode we would have had tim anderson and tommy edmund in the same cluster by ADP when we talked about them.

And that was a landmine. That was a group where I think I looked at Edmund as a desperation play, where if I felt like the base of my roster was too heavy as far as not having enough speed, it was power heavy and speed light or pitching heavy and speed light, Edmund could help me make up that ground because I figured he wouldn't lose his job. And if the power was the thing that I was most skeptical of, that was fine. And even if it was in the bottom third of the order, he was going to play every day and he'd steal bases. So I thought by that process, there was a case for Edmund.

And he wasn't a clear avoid at price. He was more of a only draft him in these situations. So I don't have a lot of Edmund. I've got a good bit of Tim Anderson. He's been hurt. So it's really hard to just say, well, here we go. Tim Anderson was a mistake. And we talked about him on Monday.

I think he's one of those guys you can still see 2020 kind of prorated for the rest of the season as a possibility as he gets comfortable and as he gets healthy. So I don't know. I don't want to call that one a bust yet. Andres Jimenez, another guy in the middle who was second base only, that's one where I think we should look at it right now and say, okay, wait, what could we have done wrong here? I don't think I have Jimenez everywhere. I had a little bit of a Tommy Edmonds sort of read on him. Part of it was that the barrel rate last year, even with the increase in power, still wasn't very good. It was 6.2%.

But he has elite speed. Why isn't the elite speed not turning into elite stolen base numbers? Maybe it never did. I mean, he always had elite speed, and he only had 20 stolen bases last year. 303 OBP this year, too. Just not getting on base enough to take advantage. Yeah, and the part of the Cleveland disappointment

in general that I didn't see. I didn't think their offense was going to be this bad. I thought it was going to be below average, but I didn't think it was going to be bottom of the league type bad. So the counting stats have suffered quite a bit too. He's part of that, but other players around him have struggled. It applies to Rosario as well.

But I think there were... But maybe we could have have seen that it's not like they were top offense last year you know they made a lot of contact but they weren't a top offense last year i just i think it's pretty intense to look at how how much andres jimenez improved from the partial 2021 season he had to a full 2022 and then how much he's crashed back to being the player he was in 2021 to what he was in 2021 almost the exact same guy with the exception of striking out less he's striking out less but he still chases outside the zone a lot too it's bad contact yeah so will he get better again i mean you don't usually see guys throw up a six war season like this and be 40% better than league average and then go to below average

the rest of the way. Projections have him about 5% to 7% better than league average here on out. Are you in at that sort of expectation? If we were doing a second chance draft, he'd probably go 100 picks later than he went. He'd be in that...

Andres Jimenez would be going where Jeff McNeil and Jake Cronenworth and some of those players were going back in March. That's about where he might fall if we were drafting today. I think I would, because he'd be a good, I think he'd be a reliable source of stone bases.

He'll give you, I think he'll get to 10 homers, you know, 10, 11, 12 homers. You know, comparing to Jeff McNeil is like, well, 11, 12 homers. Comparing to Jeff McNeil, he's got a lot of the same skills as Jeff McNeil in terms of strikeout rate and spraying the ball. Then he's got elite speed on top of that. Yeah. I think you'd be too focused on batting average if you took him over Jeff McNeil.

This game is so hard because Tyro Estrada was also in that later range, kind of after pick 150. And so far, among shortstops by the auction calculator, Tyro Estrada is the fourth highest earning shortstop by the fan drafts auction calculator so far this season. Yeah, that's what I'm getting at too.

Is it, was there a process error? Like our mid round middle infieldielders not a good bet? And if you look with a certain eye, you can say, whoa, wait a second here. There's a group here that starts with Edmund that, I mean, you could even include Altuve. I don't know if that's fair, but I think maybe at his age, he was hurt when you drafted him. For the most part. It was after WBC, right?

Yeah. Some before, some after. It was kind of in the middle of the... Some people drafted him right before he got hurt. But, I mean, let me just read you a stretch of middle infielders that starts with Altuve at 69. Nice. Altuve at 69. Nice. Altuve.

Edmund. Still. Gunnar Andersen. Xander Bogarts. Tim Anderson. Wanda Franco. Andres Jimenez. O'Neal Cruz.

Dansby Swanson. Willie Adamas. Gliber Torres. Ahmed Rosario. Now that's 60 picks jeremy pena carlos correa is in there too right it's carlos correa that's so that's 69 to 130 60 picks at least in the first half of at least the first third or whatever we've had so far, I count them almost all as busts, except for Wander has been above what you might have expected or around what you might have expected,

and Xander being around what you might have expected. Everybody else has been worse than you expected. Yeah. I don't think this is a bad process, which is a weird thing to say when things are going this wrong. And especially when you have that many wrongs in one group of players. Why I think it's okay, why I think this is not bad process is the reason these players, for the most part, are being drafted in this range. Because they are extremely safe for playing time.

Their only real paths have been to break. Despite being not so great. A lot of them have had injuries, so that's part of it. That's just the chaos that can happen. So that doesn't wreck you. I think you can ask specific questions about guys like Jimenez. You can ask about Jeremy Pena. The less proven players in this group.

I think those are the fair questions to ask. But they also still played because they're shortstop, so they have been safe in terms of playing time. Even Ahmed Rosario has been so bad, has played. It has been a disappointing year for the position in a lot of ways for all middle infielders, really.

Do you know what's interesting about this group, too? They're right-handed. Right? Yeah, it's a very right-handed group. Who's right-handed right yeah that's very right-handed group who's left-handed o'neill cruz yep what amanda's um is that a switch that's left that's a lefty as i say yeah he's at least a lefty i thought he might have been a switch there's a lot of righties on this list and it's just interesting to think about the the shift rules and wander's been great by the way wander's been the guy that you should have got and that one was kind of like well yeah like there was there was a long history of people liking wander and i also think there was more than a few drafts

where you know he was the number one uh middle infielder out of this group. My ADP that I'm using is from October 22 to... Why? I'm looking at March 18th through April 1st. Just for the sake of... I did not have great settings on this because I changed it to 15 teams and it just... Anyway, there's still a grouping there

even if maybe not exactly this grouping at any one time. But there's still a grouping here that sort of sticks out. And I think that basically as drafts went on, Wander went up. Yeah, Wander has been

the best shortstop by the auction calculator so far this season. Bo Bichette, just a mere 10 cents behind him. Bobby Witt Jr. inside the top three. And then Tyrell Estrada and Nico Horner at four and five. I updated this group and it still all exists. Yeah. They're all together in this group. I thought Xander Bogarts was really safe. And I think Bogarts might be an entry point

into where I think I made the biggest mistakes this year and where I really need to be more careful about my process. And I was pretty aggressive with position players who had previous injury issues. Bogarts, I think, was on the lower end of the risk scale. At the upper end, it was guys like anthony rendon brandon lau i wrote about a bunch of these guys and they've been hurt and they've just they've still been hurt and when they play jesse winker i think i mentioned him maybe a month or so ago probably my my biggest miss overall and i'd liked him before the brewers made the move to get him i thought he was gonna have a bounce back it's like he had the surgery. He's healthy now.

Everything's good now. The bad stuff already happened. He showed all the good stuff pre-injury in Cincinnati and he's not only the byproduct of the ballpark. Tyler O'Neal I have a couple shares of. O'Neal was someone where I ran past the stop signs on injury risk. I think I have to be a lot more careful about the types of injuries that I'm willing to accept. And maybe with even like a hamstring or a quad or something that you wouldn't take to be as significant as a hip. Can be repetitive, can come back. estimated how well I can predict whether or not those are going to be a problem or not.

And I'm not sure where exactly to turn, but to be more mindful of days lost in recent seasons is something I'm going to have to do going forward. That's a mistake. I thought those discounts were steep enough to take them, and they clearly haven't been. Or at the very least, I ID'd some particularly bad players. I thought Anthony Rendon was one of the safest bounce back candidates possible, and he does not hit the ball hard anymore. It's just not there. I don't think it's coming back. I think it's easier for me to give up on guys like this

who were hurt, who I thought were going to come back healthy and didn't, than to give up on the guys like Jimenez who took a big step forward last year and have really fallen hard through the first half of this season. I can have more optimism about Jimenez because we're not also factoring in major injury into our analysis and our future projection. Yeah. I think there's also, for me, something there for pitchers. I had the feeling that one of the things I have been falling in love with is the guy who had Tommy John and returned before has already pitched,

and so it's not his first year back. You're not drafting him hoping he comes back. You're drafting him the year after. And, yes, that's Tyler Glass now, Dustin May, are probably the high-profile guys that I'm thinking of right now, but maybe even like a Justin Verlander, right, guys than I'm thinking of right now, but maybe even like a Justin Verlander, right? Where I'm like, there's an injury discount here that I don't think should be there. The quote-unquote

TJ honeymoon or whatever. And then Glenn Fleissig here says, typically about two years after Tommy John surgery, the ligament is completely healed, but it's not magically better. So they're still aging right um and then you know and this is that's in a piece uh from michael self uh michael selfino on 538 about justin verlander but you know there's also um just injuries around that you know there's injury risks you know there's the ligament and then you know tyler glass now reminds you there's an oblique you know and there's a it's a little bit like what you're talking about with uh position players you know you could focus really like on jesse winker's back

and he's had the surgery and or whatever it is you know and then forget that there's a ramifications from the surgery itself and then be other body parts that can fail and that some of these players uh kind of you know show you that that frailness across the body so the the other the thing that is tough about this is i think some of these guys fall too far. And I think we might get a nice run out of Tyler Glass now still. What if we get 75 to 100 innings of vintage Tyler Glass now from here to the rest of the season? Then he probably might be worth a lot of the draft day cost. It's the draft day cost plus, depending on your league rules, the roster spot. And even with IL spots, a lot of leagues have limited il spots you held someone who was out for eight weeks

instead of someone else who was only out for a couple of weeks and the quality of that player you know matters too so you have to factor all that into what it really costs to roster a player that long but i think there is a difference in in the most leagues I play in treat pitcher injuries versus position player injuries. I think the discount on pitchers actually makes more sense to me still. And I'm saying this as someone who got just roasted by position players. Some of it's age, too, for position players. That's got to be part of the calculus for me going forward. I think Rendon in particular, it's like, well, hey, look, he was a metronome player for a long time and stranger things have happened, but now he's early thirties.

If someone else is right about that rebound, so what? Like they get a, they get a good value and he's a good player, but there's a, there's enough ways it can go wrong, including performance. It could be somewhat healthy and just not be the same player anymore. And I think that's the, that's the outcome that is more likely to occur than I have been planning for, to come back and to stay pretty healthy, but not be the same player. That's been Jesse Winker before the IL stint. He's been out there. He's just not performing. He's been there. He's been present. Now, the worst part of this, so Winker is one of my most rostered players.

Ramon Laureano, so much Ramon Laureano. Some injury aspect to that too i mean he's he's not been great on the field but you know there's a return from injury aspect and a new injury aspect he's been hurt too right and i don't think i'm going to be happy with how much ramon loriano i have at the end of the season based on where things are my i went to him too i have a fair amount of shares you know, this is just a soft thing and I don't think we can add this into the process, but I don't think he's induced

to play games in Oakland right now. I don't think anybody really, I mean, that's not fair for me to say anybody would be. I think it's hard because there's 26 roster spots. He's happy and he's in the major leagues now. Right, yeah. But Laureano's like an established guy who's played well. He's played on teams that have won, and now he's doing this.

And his manager was hitting Carlos Perez ahead of him. Carlos Perez is like a 30-year-old journeyman catcher type. I don't know how I misread that. Was there something I should have seen coming with how he was going to be used? I thought Laureano was going to be basically the leadoff guy. One of the few guys that started all the time, yeah. High in the order. Now he's like losing at-bats against righties.

It's, you know, sometimes, here's the part where there's legit process that I wonder about. You kind of assume that a team will act a certain way, right? And so you're like, well, well oakland you know they've got some young guys going but they probably need one veteran to play all the time they can't just you know platoon everywhere and you know they they'll want to shop loriano right so they want loriano to like play as well as he can they can trade him um but then you might have Marc Cotze, who's like, hey, if we lose 130 games, I might lose my job before I even get to year two or three. You know what I mean?

So right now, my best option against this certain type of player might actually be Connor Capel instead of Ramon Laureano or whatever. Connor Capel instead of Ramon Laureano or whatever. I thought I had a good sense of who would play the most in Oakland, among other places. And sometimes you're just flat out wrong. You think you've got the team solved and you don't. And it comes back to bite you in the form of lost playing time. And even just the role, it's not even,

you just flat out missed because they wanted to rotate young guys. They wanted to see who could, they know Laureano is Laureano and he's not on their next great team. And unless he's playing so well that they have to keep playing him just to get someone else to trade for him,

which I thought he would do. Yeah. Then maybe they just saw it early enough that he wasn't. Maybe they were shopping him and just realized we're not getting really any good offers. Yeah, they're just not going to get much back for him. They've just accepted that and they've moved on, which is probably what they've done.

The pitching side, it's so tough. The Tommy John discounts, I think I'm more in than out on that group still. I really am. Tommy John discounts, I think I'm more in than out on that group still. I really am. I think the hard part was navigating a non-IL spot situation for Glass now because that was a long, long wait to get him back. That's something that I'm probably less likely to do in future years, even if he continues to pitch well and stays healthy here forward

because playing short is a problem. It is very hard to do. I think a sort of pitching miss for me was a type of player that did not have standout strikeout rates that I still thought could be successful. And I think that the shift rules really put a pressure on strikeout rate that I should have anticipated better and I should have drafted. pressure on strikeout rate that I should have anticipated better and I should have drafted. In the past, my teams have always done really well in strikeout rate, have been near the top in strikeouts and so on. I think this year, there's a certain class of players that has been really hurt by the shift rule changes and allowing more balls in play. At the very top,

it's Sandy Alcantara, who I think has been hurt that way. But I think there are other pitchers that are like him that have suffered because of the new shift rules, and it's something I have to adjust to. Yeah, I mean, I think Sandy's a good example of this. We talked about Aaron Nola a couple weeks ago. I don't think Nola, prior to this season, would have fit in this bucket,

but I think in this season, in a second-chance league, does fit in this bucket, but we talked about how he's trying to ramp up the velocity again. Had a great start against the Tigers the day that episode came out. I'm curious to see what happens to him physically as we go through the next few months. Yeah, now he's ramping up the VLO.

What will be the secondary effect? Right. Meshing that with the clock. There was a piece on MLB.com saying there's no link between injuries and the pitch clock. First of all, it's on MLB.com. Thanks, listener, for sharing that with us. But all that information in that piece like literally

comes from lbd.com um and then secondly it cuts off uh you know the first two days just saying that you know the spring data this year is different because the springs have been different in the past few years and i don't i don't know if that's fully fair uh these are a bunch of players that came to spring and had to deal with the pitch clock in spring. So that could have been the first wave of injuries to the pitch clock. You just cut off a huge part of where the rise in injuries came from. And then secondly, their baseball perspectives came out with a piece that said that more of the injuries, the share of injuries,

is coming more from pitchers that were slow in the past. So that was never addressed. And then thirdly, there's always this like, well, it didn't happen in the minors. And I just, the way pitching is managed in the minors, I don't actually think it's a good corollary. I'm not sure. Pitching is different, completely different than minors. The starters average 50 to 60, 75 pitches per start. They get extra days of rest uh there's piggybacking they're very careful with rest in the minors in a way they aren't in

the majors yeah those are all good points and um yeah i'm not really going to take an mlb.com report about the pitch clock and injuries having no core, no real correlation, no clear correlation. Nothing to see here. I, and then I think there's going to be secondary stuff. So Nola is really interesting to watch cause he's had, you know, some injury history and,

uh, he, he definitely tamped down the VLO, uh, in response to the clock. And now he's realized that he's better at a higher VLO. So, uh,

uh, is there going to be a secondary group where they've gotten tired over the season and gotten hurt? You've always wanted to be part of something bigger than yourself. You live for experience and lead by example. You want the most out of life and realize what you're looking for is already in you. This is for you. The Canadian Armed Forces, a message from the Government of Canada. So let's be clear.

When it comes to shipping internationally, can I provide trade documents electronically? Mm-hmm. The answer is FedEx. Okay. But what about estimating duties and taxes on my shipments? How do I find all the... Also FedEx. Impressive. Is there a regulatory specialist I can ask about? FedEx. Oh. But let's say that...

FedEx. What? FedEx. Thanks. No more questions. Always your answer for international shipping. FedEx. WhereEx. Thanks. No more questions. Always your answer for international shipping. FedEx, where now meets next. I'm wondering if I have been making a mistake these last two seasons with Bobby Witt Jr. a year ago and now with Corbin Carroll this season, where I'm nitpicking too much with young players and making them sort of prove it for a year so i'm missing out on the opportunity to get a future first rounder in round four or round five i think it was a very similar

line of thinking that kept me away from carol even though i liked him a lot as a prospect who wouldn't the tools were very obvious but i remember talking to you about this back in january and i was talking myself into it a little bit 5..5%. Barrel rate as a rookie. Struck out kind of a lot. Still could have some growing pains. But I was saying, to my credit at least, probably 30 steals in there. Sure. Who else in the fourth round is going to give you 30 steals?

I was just worried that we'd see only a small amount of improvement in K rate in the first full season. You'd still strike out 23 or 24 and that's fair but you know and the cruise thing is really annoying because cruise went right near him you know then he was like the next round guy and i would love to say well if you went hard on a rookie early you went one for two is that fair cruise actually yeah it's an injury and cruise was showing some real improvement out of the hood. And there is research that suggests that players don't necessarily improve as much as they used to, that they kind of enter the league.

Maybe it's player development's gotten better. They kind of enter the league at their peak and stay at that peak until 26 and then drop off, which suggests that maybe young players are a decent bet. But it has to be one of the top two. I think it gets to be a much worse proposition lower on. You either want the top one or you want the one nobody's talking about. Yeah, I think the hard thing for me is that the difference is we saw Carroll a little bit in the big leagues before this draft season with Witt. It was basing it off of what he had done in the minor leagues.

Both are fantastic players that have a lot of ways to be good in our game. And even though Bobby Witt Jr. still has some real offensive value flaws, he's hitting 237 to 276 OBP. That's pretty messed up. I know it's been better recently. I know there are underlying signs when the barrel rate's up again this year. 12.8% barrel rate. It's fantastic. The K rate hasn't gone up. Still more good than bad for a guy in his second big league season.

I think with Carroll... When does it start to cost him? When does it start to cost fantasy owners? When are you going to start to say, maybe Bobby Witt Jr. is more like a Javier Baez type player at his peak than we would like? We throw that name out there all the time

as a toolsy guy that's a good fantasy player or was a good fantasy player for a long time. Questionable approach, bad approach, and it didn't get better. Sometimes it does get better. Sometimes players adjust and they do hit that full potential and even if chase rate is down a whole percentage point even if he doesn't get better he's still very good for a while yeah and i think that's something

that is really tough sometimes i definitely get nit pick the nets and focus on the negative and miss players sometimes because i'm all in all in on whatever thing I've been like, oh, well, he does this and I don't like it. It can serve you well sometimes when you're picking the knits with Oscar Hernandez or Tommy Edmund, and you're kind of ahead of some of the issues. But it also serves you poorly when you're like, Adoles Garcia has a terrible plate approach and he's never going to be good again.

Well, you were wrong on that one. Yeah, he's really good. He was really undervalued. And I was wrong about that. Carroll, I think this is the thing that we've talked about a couple times this year that really deserves more of a deep dive. When someone's not barreling the ball, but they're hitting it hard, usually they're hitting it on the ground.

This is my piece this week. I'm going to get to this. This is what I'm really excited about. Part of the reason I dismissed Carroll at price was that he only had a 32.9% hard hit rate last year. He did not hit the ball that hard either. He didn't barrel or hit the ball hard. I just thought

it was going to take longer. What I was throwing out in the process was ridiculous production throughout his time in the minor leagues. The other part of my bad Corbin Carroll analysis, as I'll call it, or misguided Corbin Carroll analysis was I was so into the Diamondbacks young pitching and thinking so much about how hitter friendly their double a and triple a affiliates are and amarillo and reno i think i'd let that get into my head about corbin carroll a little bit too i said yes he's very good he's great but some of what he's doing from a power perspective i think i believed that could have been aided in a big way by those environments. And I don't think that was a totally stupid thing to think, but I do think results and age to level, as we've talked about on a lot of Tuesday episodes,

they matter. They are a big deal. So I don't know if I'll make this exact same mistake again. I'll probably make similar mistakes again when players are in that 50 to 75 range with a short track record. And look, until what, three weeks ago, I think people that took Gunnar Henderson a little later mistakes again when players are in that 50 to 75 range with a short track record and look until until what three weeks ago i think people that took gunner henderson a little later yeah carol

i mean i put him in my sort of maybe bust lineup just a second ago but now he kind of looks i didn't hesitate on him because he's been hot and he's been hitting homers and now he now his line looks like a lot more like what i expected it to yeah it really it really does so i don't know i'll i'll try to figure out there's more of a takeaway with carol that can help me in the future he's gonna overtake bregman isn't he he's gonna pass him yeah i would think so yeah right now they have the same batting average. Gunnar Henderson has one more homer and three more steals. Gunnar has better R and RBI and Bregman has much better strikeout rate, but Gunnar has much better

barrel, balls and play type stuff. I think he's going to overtake Bregman. I bet you end of the season his value is higher than Bregman's. I think it's going to overtake Bregman. I bet you end of the season his value is higher than Bregman's. I think it's definitely trending that way. And the underlying numbers, to Henderson's credit, if you were patient with him, if you had the ability to do that, especially in deeper mixed leagues where the replacement wasn't that good. The chase rate was always good. The barrel rate was always good.

He had a max EV that was good. The things we'd like to see were there, so it was easier to try and talk yourself into holding on. But the contact rate was bad. It got a little hairy there. A little. You don't want it over 30. No, but for a guy that was still in what amounts to his first calendar year in the big leagues,

it wasn't abnormal given the other things that we saw. A few mailbag questions that we'll squeeze in here. This is a guy I don't have anywhere. I don't have to use a mulligan on Matt Olson. And I think if you did draft Matt Olson, you're not mad. But the question from Matt is, what's up with Matt Olson? I don't think Matt Olson's asking about himself, by the way. It's a different last name.

The strikeouts are killing me. It's a head-to-head points format in this case. So if you're in a roto league, you're probably looking at Matt Olson and saying, I'd like the average to be a little higher, but I'm pretty happy with the power and the run production and all that stuff's there, right? 18 homers, 46 runs, 45 RBIs, no complaints whatsoever. It's the 229 average and the K rate, which with one more today is now sitting

just a shade below 30% at 29.6%. Is this just part of what you get now with Matt Olson, even though projections are all pointing you back to something very close to what he did a year ago when he struck out just 24.3% of the time in his first season with Atlanta? There's a whiff of them finding a hole on him or something. If you look at his whiff rates, this is the worst whiff rate of his career. I'm talking about swing strike rate here uh and the worst strikeout rate of his career other than 2020

the shortened season which was his worst season you know when i look at him i always think you know oh you got to bust him inside um but he he's developed that stance in a way to be able to hit the ball inside. And people actually pitch him further away and he swings at pitches inside. So let me see. In terms of pitch percentage, where he's being pitched last year versus this year, the biggest difference on the heat maps is above the zone. That's a little scary.

I'm starting to wonder, is Matt Olsen's approach and what he's doing right now, is he similar to peak Eugenio Suarez? Is he like a bad high ball hitter that's going to strike out on high pitches? Yeah, I wonder if that's going to strike out on high pitches? Yeah. I wonder if that's where the hole was. Got to look at the heat map on Suarez too. I'm looking at the barrels and K rates, walk rates, everyday roll. A lot of similarities there.

I mean, being in the Atlanta lineup, I think you can stomach an average like this when it comes with excellent runs. I think this is a little bit more of a question about next year than this year. I mean, this year, what are you going to do? You're not going to sell him low. He's going to be fine. No, you're just hoping for a better second half. Yes, there's a developing hole up in a way. He's actually kind of an in and low hitter. And that's what ended Brandon Moss' career. So how much do you discount him next year?

What kind of a strikeout rate do you project him in this year? This year, the projection systems aren't really impressed. They're saying, no, he's going to go back to 23%. He'll be fine. But there's been a little bit of a change in pitcher performance versus him. Yeah, I'm skeptical of that projection. I think I'd be more comfortable splitting the difference than putting him all the way back to the 23 24 percent range i get them like a 28 percent strikeout rate going forward

240 average just just round down on the average and round up on the strikeout rate still a lot of good wrapped up in that profile the power is amazing barrel rate's amazing barrel rate's best of his career he's he's a great barreler. And I think he has a good enough eye where, you know, to some extent he's just going to lay off that pitch high and away. And how easy is it going to be for a pitcher to consistently hit high and away on him, you know? Mm-hmm. That's a fair question.

Thanks a lot for that question, Matt. We had a question here about Isak Paredes. And if you are watching us on YouTube, be sure to hit the like button. If you're not watching us on YouTube, subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'd really appreciate that. Isak Paredes has the unfortunate beer is

cold lollipops. Diaper needs to be changed. The red's all bad. It's all blue. All the good stuff is blue and all the bad stuff is red. Yeah, but by results, things are looking pretty good. A.254 average,.339 LBP,.473 slug, 11 homers in 227 plate appearances. This is a player we'd like.

He's got a poop on my victory lap. We liked Paredes. We both like Paredes. Finally has a good BABIP. Finally has a normal BABIP. Paredes, for me me is sort of like the band that I liked before they got popular. I'm like,

I liked him before the Rays traded for him. I thought there was something here. So I feel great. But now we got to be really, truly hipster and be like, well, we don't like him as much as you guys. He's not cool anymore.

Too many blue lollipops. You know what? I get a little vibe when I look at it is a guy who makes the most off of the the balls he does hit hard like a bregman ish thing because if you there are a lot of characteristics that are similar to bregman uh bregman is a high and tight hitter that makes a lot of contact has a good eye at the plate and in the past has outperformed his barrel rates by pulling every damn barrel that he has, you know?

And all those things are true for Paredes. Flat swing, high and tight, pulls those barrels, and he gets the most amount of homers he can out of those barrels. I don't know if there's an easy way to kind of, to spot these players. But, you know, you can see in his line the 48 fly ball rate and the 50 pull rate and you can tell just between those two numbers he pulls his fly ball so he pulls a lot of fly balls so he pulls a lot of fly balls he has 18 strikeout rate if there was a slider for those you can put them in the red. You start to wonder, the spray charts up on the screen right now, it looks exactly the way you'd expect it to.

Like if someone gave you... Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. If someone gave you the lollipops first and then gave you the results and said, draw the spray chart of what this player's doing, if this player's good. You might do this. You'd probably scribble something close

to what you see from Paredes, which is just taking advantage of the way he's pitched, taking the pitches he can drive and driving them. And this always leads me to a question of how sustainable is this? How long does this work? How fast does the bottom drop down? Well, you can look at the upper bounds on Bregman, you know. Yeah, and I don't even think, I mean, I guess, yeah,

he does have pretty good plate skills. He's always had good plate skills. That's been part of what made Paredes interesting before he got to the power. I think he's very similar to Bregman. So this is interesting because I think this is where the Lodum concept kind of comes into play again. If most of the people who look at Paredes see the lollipops and say, this isn't going to last. That means he's undervalued, right? If you see a player whose approach actually works similar to Bregman's, then you can say, yeah, I know this is unorthodox. I know these numbers that we usually care about don't look right,

but this is working. It goes hand in glove too with the picking the nets, right? Like sometimes just appreciate what a guy can do and appreciate the positives you know yes the barrel rate's not good but he's demonstrated last year he had 20 homers with a six percent barrel rate right so you know if he's demonstrated some true talent ability to turn six percent into 20 homers in 381 plate appearances then this is a guy who can at least hit you 20 to 25 homers a year

you know even with a poor barrel rate because he pulls it all right down the line and so then you really have a Bregman you just have a discount Bregman you're talking about a guy 250 20 to 25 homers uh not in the lineup every day doesn't have good barrel rates doesn't have good max EVs but does have a good strikeout rate, does have a good walk rate, and knows when to turn and burn. And so, yeah, I think that there is something to that what you're saying. He could be an interesting acquisition, win-now acquisition in Dynasty. I've seen him traded for surprisingly low returns.

Yes, I think people are generally skeptical for all these reasons. I look at the rest of season projections. Even the projections throw some cold water on there. The bad X is the most pessimistic. 2.39, 3.18, 4.14, 10 homers. That player is not going to take a lot to acquire in a trade because whoever has Par ace right now, unless they really also not a terrible player.

That's it's pretty, if that's your floor, the average hurts, but where I think he's, he's really stable runs and RBI supporting stats can be the difference maker for some of these kinds of mid range players. What makes a mid range player play up and end up as a top 100 guy being in a better situation than guys with equal skills

who are in bad spots? That's, I think, something that works in Paredes' favor. And I'm saying that as someone who is not surprised at all to look at the Rays over the last 30 days and see that they're like 7% better than league average by WRC+, instead of 40% better. No one

looked at that in April and said, that's who they are all season. Like, no, they ran hot and played well. And all the things that happened at the beginning of the season happened. But the more likely, what are they going forward is something closer to what I think we've seen over the last 30 days,

because that's who they've generally been when they've been good for the better part of what, five years now you also have to be i think careful with team factors because you might say he's that parade is raised they platoon everybody he gets platooned he doesn't play that often he's fourth on the raise in in plate appearances and i in fact i believe he's one of their everyday players it goes wander franco randy rosarena they play when they want to play Yandy Diaz has turned into a real asset for them

and he's basically their everyday first baseman I would suggest that Isak Paredes is their everyday third baseman when you get down to Harold Ramirez Taylor Walls, Manny Margot and Luke Raley who are 20-60 plate appearances short of where Paredes

is, you start talking about, well, those guys don't play every day. Yeah, I'm right there with you. So I do think Paredes is a bit of a lodum guy because it's not popping the way that you would think for people to be excited about him. And I think there are more positives than negatives in the profile that point to him continuing something similar

to what he's done so far. Thanks a lot for that question, David. We had a question from Andrew. XBA versus BABIP. Why do so many analysts seem to ignore XBA in favor of BABIP? Is there any particular reason you think people prefer one to the other?

There have been some studies that don't show great predictive quality for the X-Stats, X-BABIP, and X-WOBA. So that's part of why I don't do it. And I think the reason those studies exist is because X-BABIP and X-WOBA are tied to league outcomes. And if you're listening closely, there's a little critique of Stuff Plus in there, that they're tied to league outcomes and they need to kind of be retrained mid-season. So right around now, I think they retrain it. And the reason they need to wait

is because the ball and the atmosphere, you know, the shift rules, you know, what makes a hit, what makes a certain collection of exit velocities and launch angles a hit? It kind of changes year to year. If you think about it, it changes due to the ball.

Is the ball flying harder? Is it giving a better exit velocity? Is it flying through the air faster? Is it have less drag? You know, are there shift changes, shift rule changes? So, you know, it can get a little squirrely I don't prefer to use BABIP by itself because that has as many as many issues as well right

I mean it's pointed out in the question right it's like yeah when people talk about BABIP and I've used it sometimes just look at year over year like is this player unlucky relative to previous norms but all the calculations I'm going through are things that XBA includes. That's part of the question Andrew pointed out. The hard hit rate. Some of the things that you're going to break down individually. You're just taking a different path through the same underlying numbers. But early in the season, you would have done better to look at a lefty's hard hit rate and spray chart

in order to sort of suss their unluckiness than you would have to be look at xba which hadn't learned about the shift rule changes yet yeah that's an interesting way to put it but it's a lot of similarities even though one actually probably generally xba is maybe a little better than babbitt but uh and maybe maybe going forward, it will be better because maybe they're finding a regular ball that works and, and, you know, maybe they'll, they'll, uh, chill out on the shift rule changes for a year or two. Thanks a lot.

We can dream. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna cross my fingers or hold my breath on that one. Uh, thanks for that question, Andrew. One last question that came in from Robert. Robert writes, I've been arguing with my league for a few years about having center field as a separate position from the rest of the general outfield positions by reason being, just like the infield center field has separate skill set than the other outfield positions. I understand left and right being combined, but even as per baseball reference, the values are similar you can clearly

see center field is weighted differently obviously defensive war isn't part of fantasy stats but the point is that it's weighted differently because it's a totally different skill set just like in the infield you wouldn't combine third base and shortstop any insight into why every site just uses general outfield spots am i on to something interesting question for sure my longest term league has lfcf and rf and i have to say that gets difficult because for some reason uh left field is always you're just it's hard to find left fielders i don't know what it's just kind of one of like it's one of the lesser it's the second base of the out yeah yeah it, it's where you stick a guy. And so sometimes it gets hard. You're waiting for the guy to get his 10th or 20th start in the left field

just so you can stick him there. It does create some problems in terms of – I would say problems. It's a difficult word. I'm not saying – It just creates situations where you have to now when you're looking on the waiver wire you have to look for a center fielder because your center fielder's hurt right so it's not problems it it's a quirk and nuance to the game

it adds a layer of complexity to the game that you that you know some people are just aren't used to I'm not uh I'm not fundamentally against it in any way And I agree with the premise. And there are slightly different players in center field. But I would say that it's a little bit like you would still roster shortstops even if they were just infielders. Like, let's say you just have an infield position, then the shortstops would still be the best ones. You know, for the large part.

Center fielders, you'll find, are the best outfielders because they're young, they're stars. It's where you put Julio Rodriguez and Mike Trout and stuff. So you'll find that it's not elevating a class of player that is not valuable in baseball already in fancy baseball already yeah and i think if you you know like why do we like holds at all because middle middle relievers would never be rostered anyway without them you know it's not a great step but like we do it because oh it makes this whole new class of players relevant when you do centerfield

it doesn't make any new players relevant yeah it's maybe it puts a little extra artificial weight on because of scarcity that's gonna bump some players up but but no the scarcity ends up being in like the corner more than center center is where the best players are so it's not really that much scarcity there i'm looking at the guys that played center the most last year i don't know like that's where they're supposed to be, but it's not quite like that for our game. Like some of them are there. Julio Rodriguez plays in center, of course.

But look, the guys that led the league in games played by position at center field last year, Miles Straw, Brandon Nimmo, Mullins. Okay. Yeah.

Obviously we're rostering Mullins already. Trent Grisham, Cody Bellinger, bad last year. Julio Rodriguez. Oh, Victor Robles, high on this list.

Good for him. Brian Reynolds, not really a center fielder anymore. I. Brian Reynolds. Not really a center fielder anymore. I mean, not going to be a center fielder long term. Michael Taylor. High up on this list. Michael Harris, who was promoted last year. Alec Thomas, not in the majors right now. Mike Trout, a center fielder who's not really a center fielder anymore,

but is still a center fielder because his name is Mike Trout. Austin Slater, Nick Senzel, Bradley Zimmer. These are the guys that play the most in center field. They're not all fantasy relevant players. Yeah, but just sort them by WRC plus and look at the first 12.

You know what I mean? Or the first 15. Let's look at the dollars earned so far. I'm going to do a plate appearance cut off of 400. And I'm going to do center fielders on fan graphs i'm gonna sort by wrc plus and i'm looking at uh 12 is dalton barshell 13 is cedric mullins 14 is tyrone

taylor 15 is dylan carlson micah stransky riley green lane thomas so that's where that's where you're shopping that's what i'm saying is it makes Lane Thomas slightly better. Is that a big deal? I'm not opposed to it. If you're in a five outfielder league, if one's an automatic center fielder and the other four are just general outfielders, okay. I don't know if it adds a lot,

but I like the process behind this idea. I don't know if it changes a whole lot though. That's sort of what I'm saying. That's kind of the problem. I agree with the process of the thinking process for sure. I don't know if it changes a whole lot, though. That's sort of what I'm saying. I agree with the process, the thinking process, for sure. I don't know if it changes the game much. I don't like left, center, and right all being split out the way that you described for one of your leagues. It's just too weird. Yeah. My team's not doing well. I'm sort of in a rebuild, but I've got Brian Anderson in left, Jack Sawinski in center, and Mookie Betts

in right in a 12-teamer. Cody Bellinger, Tyler O'Neal, Alec Thomas, all hurt or run the minors. That was not very good. But it does have Mookie Betts in it. It's just frustrating because Mookie could play anywhere. I'm convinced. Mookie could play any position.

He's got second, short, and right field eligibility in that league. There's no reason why he couldn't play center field. Yeah, that's true. There's no reason why he couldn't be a center fielder. Anyway. I'm sort of surprised they don't play him in center. Especially when they were fielding out men in those guys. But those guys are younger

and they run better and maybe they're better defenders than him. I'm sure they've got their reasons. They usually do. Thanks for that question, Robert. We are going to go. If you've got a question for a future episode, ratesandbarrels at gmail.com is the best way to get that to us. On Twitter, enos at enosaris.

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of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening. Thank you.