Rates & Barrels - Roki Sasaki Joins the Dodgers (Oh Yeah, Tanner Scott Did Too)

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

Eno and DVR catch up on recent baseball news including Roki Sasaki's decision to join the Dodgers, Tanner Scott's four-year deal with the defending World Series Champions, and Kirby Yates' recent addition to the same bullpen. Plus, Anthony Santander to the Blue Jays, a big international signing for the A's as Shotaro Morii bypassed the NPB draft out of high school in Japan to join an MLB organization, and a few mailbag questions following the first week of position previews. Rundown 2:54 Roki Sasaki Chooses the Dodgers 9:05 The Keeper/Dynasty League Outlook 17:59 Tanner Scott Signs a Four-Year Deal with the Dodgers 23:36 Joe Sheehan Highlights Baseball's Recent Parity 31:50 Anthony Santander Joins the Blue Jays; More Additions to Come? 37:38 Shotaro Morri Signs with A's 44:31 Baseball Prospectus' New Arsenal Metrics 57:43 Spencer Torkelson's Long-Term Value 1:03:53 Nolan Gorman's Playing Time Projections 1:09:32 Accidental Omission From 3B Preview: Max Muncy 1:13:40 Dr. Tim Explains Loose Bodies to Us Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.social Follow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.social e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Producer: Brian Smith Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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in a difficult game in a difficult week. Listen to the daily football briefing in 2025. It's out every weekday wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Tuesday, January 21st. Derek Van Riper, you know, Sarah's here with you with a news driven episode. We got some breaking news on the free agent front. We know where Roki Sasaki is going to begin his big league career. I think we had some creeping suspicions all along that he was going to join the Dodgers. That became official, but the Dodgers did a few other things, bolstering their bullpen. Anthony Santander has a new home.

We have a high school player making the leap from Japan, signing a deal with the A's. We'll talk about that a little bit later in the show. Baseball prospectus has some new arsenal metrics out. So we're taking a little detour from the position preview series for today. We get back at that tomorrow on Wednesday. Three outfield preview episodes coming up this week. So a ton of ground to cover, youno, briefly, how was your weekend? It was good.

We went to Fisherman's Wharf, which is like really a touristy thing, but there aren't that many, there weren't that many people there. It was a beautiful day. And also had to go all the way to Sacramento for Science Olympiad, so now I'm traveling officially for my son for science things and he had to... I did the little scoring too so I was a volunteer judge for the Rube Goldberg machines and it was fun but it was also stressful because these kids like you know I'm telling them that their score and like

you know like they're... and some of them just like weren't good. And I ended up doing like a little bit of coaching being like, so this is why, you know, here, this is why it didn't score. And like, if you like keep doing this, you want to do this, you want to do this, this is a big score that you didn't do, you should do that next time.

You know what I mean? Like ended up being a kind of a coach in the end, but just a interesting slice of life through the, through the weekend, a day at home, a day in the wharf and a coach in the end, but just an interesting slice of life through the weekend. A day at home, a day in the wharf, and a day in Sacramento. Did you wear a I Am Science shirt or hat? No, because they're not made yet, hint hint hint. Right. Well, actually, in the Discord, speaking of it, in the discord DM one of us if you are interested in being the sort

of haranger of merch or whatever like because there's been some people want to do that and we can't do it so somebody else like get on top of it and we'll help you. Yeah do that, jump on the discord you can join that a lot of good conversation happening there and we'll get to some topics from the discord including some mailbag questions Later on in the show speaking of merch. I bet the Dodgers are going to move a lot because Roki Sasaki Has chosen to join the Dodgers. I don't think this is that much of a surprise given, you know, Shohei Otani's there They're probably the best team in baseball by Structure and spending and all sorts of factors right now

by structure and spending and all sorts of factors right now. This is one of those things that I think is only more frustrating to a lot of people because of the way international free agency works for players like Sasaki coming out of Japan before hitting the full service time agreement necessary to become actual full-fledged free agents, right? This is not like the Yoshinobu Yamamoto deal. This was going to be a cap deal all along.

We know Sasaki met with a lot of teams. He wanted presentations. One thing that's come out in the reporting sense is that Sasaki wanted presentations that answered a question about why teams felt his velocity dipped in 2024. It's a great question. And if you're in the position of Roki Sasaki,

yeah, getting as many top minds around baseball to weigh in on that is a great idea because it's a little bit of a mystery, right? Is it arm health? Is it mechanical? Could it be something else? But all right, what do we make of this? Like Roki Sasaki to the Dodgers. Like this is the expected outcome all along.

So it doesn't change fantasy expectations all that much. But how much better do you think the Dodgers just got with this edition, which isn't even in isolation because they've been so aggressive this winter? It's tough to say, because he did lose two miles an hour and it went from 98.9 like sitting to 96.9. So 96.9 is still pretty good for a starter, but you can tell why somebody who had been hitting

100 regularly in games, it's like would Paul Skeens went from where he was to sitting 96 next year? He would be asking for answers as well. So I can see why he did that. And you can also see in the numbers. So here are the strikeout minus walk rates of the recent pitchers that have come over from Japan and you know if you use a three-year strikeout

minus walk rate and the reason you don't use home run rates is because they don't have as many home run hitters in Japan and so like Yamamoto gave up two homers in 171 innings in 2023 just two. I can't imagine anybody doing that in baseball like pitching nearly 200 innings and giving up two homers He gave up seven homers and 90 innings last year. Yamato did so you can really focus on K minus BB You can see the better pitchers are at the top the worst pitchers at the bottom the pitchers that didn't even make this list Are the pitchers barely that were not the best ones? So at the top of this list is Sasaki with a 28.4 K-BB. That's so good. I mean, 28.4 would be a great strikeout weight. So to have that with the walk rate

subtracted is amazing. Otani himself only had a 22.7. Hugh Darvish had a 22.5. Yomamoto 22.2. So that's the top four. The problem is that last year Sasaki went down to, I think, sort of like a 21.8, so he, or no, actually below, it was like a 21.5, so he would have been between Masahiro Tanaka with a 21.7 and Shota Imanaga with a 21.3. So he goes from the best pitcher by K-BB coming over from Japan to like fifth best or sixth

best. And you know, I think generally that's the difficulty where, you know, people talking about what Roki Kasasaki is going to do this year are running into is that he's either like amazing or pretty good. And if you talk about the flaws, people might put a headline on it like, is he a bust or like, oh, you know, doesn't like Roki Sasaki,

but it's more just nuance of like, I can see the flaws and I can see what, you know, he doesn't have good spin rates. He doesn't spin the ball well. He's never really thrown a good breaking ball. When he was throwing an okay breaking ball, he was throwing a gyro slider 89 miles an hour and it almost doesn't matter how good your slider is, if you throw it 89 miles an hour it's good. Now it's down to 83 and a half which is below that 85

percent, 85 mile an hour marker. So Sasaki's breaking ball this year is not likely to be good. So you can say, oh, you know, still talking about bad stuff. The VELO's down. He doesn't have a good spin. He never had a good breaking ball. You know who my comps are? They're perfect. I think they're really good comps.

A high velocity Kodai Senga, or a sort of peak Kevin Gossman. Yeah, those are two very good pitchers. Like think about how we've treated them in fantasy. Think about how good they actually are in terms of, would you choose them to start an elimination game in most rotations? Yeah, and I think if you're in the position of the Dodgers,

you're loaded to the point where Roki Sasaki might be your third or fourth best starter today. He has time to work on those things. And I think it's interesting, too, I want to point this out because it came up at least once already this season the oopsie projections for guys that are not included in the initial set if you see them over at fan graphs are going to spit out a replacement level sort of projection that's what's going on with Roki I don't think oopsie's actually throwing a

503era on Roki Sasaki there will be a real projection for him that comes out later. You see Steamer out there at 330 for the ERA, 111 for the WIP, 179 Ks in 139 innings. That's a projected 31.6% strikeout rate. If the velocity is back, I could see that, but I have a hard time paying for that until we have proof, right? Until we get to spring training and we see those longer outings where he's able to sustain the elevated velocity, I think you have to assume the VELO stays closer to where it is. Even with that, the ceiling is really high. So we're probably more in the splitting hairs category of, yeah, the market's a little too

aggressive on Roki Sasaki for redraft leagues. I know for keeper and dynasty leagues, people are talking about him and saying he's the runaway first pick in leagues where players who just signed in the past, well, basically going back to the twenty twenty first draft, the first year player draft format. He's the runaway first pick. So even with your who would he be going up against? Bazzana. Yeah. Bazzana, the Bazzana, Condon, Caglione class of players.

Yeah, I could see it. I guess I could see it. I don't normally like to put a pitcher at the top. And I took Yamamoto over Langford in one of my leagues and I kind of wish I could have it back. I usually can find pitching but any case Yeah, I think that's probably true One thing that keeps me from putting him in the top 15 despite my comps despite, you know Recognizing he should strike out a lot of guys is the Dodgers.

And I'm not saying this as a, oh, the Dodgers can't keep anyone healthy thing. No, no, the Dodgers are going into a six man rotation. And I think that the sort of cap for their pitchers is like 135 innings. Because not only are they gonna do six man, but they're also gonna try and coax all these guys to October. So any little thing that hurts a little bit,

they're gonna go on the IL preventatively, you know? Like even, you know, just to keep them good. So I think that you're talking about maybe Snell gets to 140. I'm like, we're talking about maybe Snell is the high volume guy on the staff. But I think I think my general projection for all those guys is 130. What that does if you do 130 for the top five guys, which are glass now, snow.

What are we looking at? Glass now, snow, glass now, snow, a tiny even coming off of the shoulder injury. Yamamoto. Yamamoto. Yeah. And Roki. And Roki.

Those are your top five. I would say Otani's probably the low man on this. Maybe 110, 120. We've been talking about this in the Discord. I was like, well, you know, he missed all of last year with the elbow, so he should be good there. Then someone brought up the shoulder, it's not the throwing shoulder, so I thought, you know, maybe he'll be fine. But apparently, Dave Roberts said something, maybe like, maybe he misses April as a pitcher. So if that's the case, then he is their seventh starter,

and we can give him 100, and we have to find a fifth and sixth starter for them. Dustin May is out of options. So I think Dustin May is making this rotation. Now, that's good news for him because you might be able to give him 110 innings if he can stay together for that many, right? But it's bad news for the rest of the lineup

because I think that they also have Tony Gonsolin, who's not out of options, but has been a starter for them. And I think Tony Gonsolin is their six. And one of those guys, Otani just replaces somebody who's hurt basically when he comes back. There's kind of two ways to think about this. Like the first is that they've been doing this already, and now they just have a better cast of characters to do it with. So knowing that, knowing we've had these caps, knowing that we haven't had a lot of two start weeks just because of the way this has worked,

trying to use extra days, it's been part of the Dodger's approach for several years now, even if they don't call it a six-man rotation all the time, it's something that they do look at the days off for starters. Are we going to see an overcorrection where people say, I can't I can't pay full freight for these guys when the reality that people need to accept is some of them will exceed the projection. If you will go over 130, I'd be stunned if they didn't have start.

Like two starters go over 130 innings, which to good luck. But the per inning quality will be so good that even if you are Rostering one or two of them that end up missing significant time you still get the replacement, right? So I just think this is one of those things where Relative to other teams it's not as extreme as it seems and because we're looking at guys that we wanted to forecast as mostly as it seems and because we're looking at guys that we wanted to forecast as mostly sp1s and sp2s We have this sort of like added dread compared to the other guys like them They're gonna come up way short innings I think they're gonna come a little bit short innings, but maybe maybe the quality ends up paying off

Like maybe the ratios are better All right Maybe the strikeout rates are a little higher like another way of saying it and it's awful because these are human beings But it just you get to the cross so well that there's a price for everyone There's a correct way of valuing everyone right in fantasy And so I'm sympathetic to what you're saying, but I still can't put any of the Dodgers in my top 15 And here's why Tyler glass now last season had the season you're talking about Like a three four nine er ray

He managed to strike out Where I don't I don't have the raw totals 168 in 134 ratings and that's exactly what we're talking about, right? That's almost what you're talking about with rookie Sasaki, right? You said like 174 and 139 right like, you know so Tyler Glass now had the season that Paruki Sasaki is projected for. He had the season that we want out of Dodgers. And he was the 23rd best starting pitcher last year by the auction calculator.

Now that's because he had a lot fewer innings than the people in front of him. And maybe some of those valuations are suspect like Tyler Holton was the 19th best pitcher last year by the auction calculator. Maybe that's true. But let's say like a good season from these guys is top 20. I can't put them in the top 15 because I think that that's sort of the cap for a 130 inning season right now is 20. So a lot of these guys, basically I have them with Spencer Strider right now in my working ranks.

I have them with Spencer Strider coming off of injury. Who else do I have in that area? Blake Snell, Tyler Glassnow. I have Garrett Cole a little bit ahead of them because I think Garrett Cole can throw more innings. I have Max Fried around there, and I have Yelm Mota there. I just basically have all the Dodgers and Spencer Strider

in like a little injured tier from 15 to 20. It's the best I can do to figure this out. I do agree with you. The one guy that I have sort of a step above this is DeGrom, who I have at a similar innings projection, but I think his ERA could start with a two. I think that's sort of the bet that the Dodgers are making on a lot of these guys is that the ratios are gonna be

so good, not that they care. I mean, it's run prevention for them. Like even better than glass now season-wise. Yeah, I kind of think that's what they're looking at. And I believe it. Now, I think you're right by volume to say yeah they're not top 15 but they're not far from it. I think the market's treating them similarly so I think they're still very draftable where they're going. I don't think we're seeing inflation because of

team quality on Roki and Glasnow and Yamamoto and injuries are a part of that for all those guys. I think generally people are a little scared off because there are pretty significant, at least yellow flags with all of these guys as good as they are. I think you could do a really interesting pairing, you know, even if you don't invest in one of the top five starting pitchers. I got Corbin burns as the eighth pitcher in one of my drafts. You know, you could take Corbin burns and one of those Dodgers, you know, to balance out some of your strikeout rate, you know, there are some other really high floor guys from Brevardes, Logan Webb, George Kirby.

They're high floor guys that don't have standout strikeout rates. And if you added one of those to one of those Dodgers, you might come out with what ends up being something like a pocket aces, you know? And so I definitely think there's use cases where you can do that. I wouldn't want to start out with DeGrom and Sasaki. I think that's pushing it. That might be a little, I mean in a shallow league maybe,

but the deeper the league, the harder it is to pull that off because the quality of those replacement innings starts to go down considerably if you're in a 15-team league. I'm looking at it, look at the prices and going, maybe I could stack Dodger starters because they actually are stretched out enough where you can just keep drafting them and they'll cover for each other. And the bottom of your roster will cover for the guys that are actually out.

So I don't know. You love your stars and scrubs. I do. It works. It serves me well. It wasn't just Roki Sasaki, though. Tanner Scott goes to the Dodgers on a four year deal. First question, is he their closer? Like are they gonna use one closer and is Tanner Scott the closer?

I don't know, I mean he's a lefty. Who's their best lefty other than him? It's mostly righties. I can't think of a lefty right now. Yeah man, do you think that matters though, like to them? Scott's good against hitters on both sides. Yeah, but Scott was amazing against Otani. So Scott, you know what I mean?

That's all this was really about. It was just not having to face Tanner Scott. It's just eliminating him as signing him. If you got Soto coming up in the eighth, don't you bring up Scott against him? Yeah, probably. Yeah. So, I think Scott is like, you know, their best reliever. And if Kopec is healthy, there's a lot of chatter about Kopec, I guess.

What did Bob Nightingale say? He's hurt? He's going to miss a month? I saw a report from Fabian Ardaya this morning that pointed back to something he pitched through in the playoffs, like an actual injury that wasn't bad enough to sideline a man, so we'll have to see what actually surfaces from this. I'm so used to him being banged up from the end of last year, but Alex Vesia is probably their best left together wise. Because of Vesia, I think you could use Scott as a close up. Because you could just match up Vesia if you want to. Against Scott, yeah. Against somebody like Soto, yeah, you could do that. But the complicating factor here

is it looks like they're also adding Kirby Yates. And if you didn't have Kirby Yates on your roster, or if you weren't a Rangers fan, I don't think you may have realized how good Kirby Yates actually was. I missed out on Kirby Yates entirely last year, and I shouldn't have because I had someone we trust telling me Kirby Yates looked like a good value,

looked like a good opportunity, didn't listen. I don't think he has the fastball to close though. I think that was a decent year for him, but I don't think he has the fastball to close, and I think that's why they kind of moved away from Evan Phillips over time. Like Evan Phillips has pretty good stuff, but he doesn't have a great fastball.

So I would say like, Kopec and Scott are like co closers and trying in as a setup guy That's how I would that's how I would try to get it across now. It's hurt 20 each 20 saves each is that what you're thinking? I think so because I think you can just be like oh the big righties are up in the eighth or the bigger lefties are Up in the eighth, you know and whichever way skew, I mean, I really respect Kopec. I think he'd be a great closer. So, you know, the health is a question that we can't really answer right now.

I think that's gonna be one of those ones where we find out a lot in like two weeks when Pitchers and Catches report and he has to actually stand in front of somebody and say what happened. Yeah, in the meantime, I think Kopec kind of falls into the don't really wanna draft him bucket after being someone that pre Scott and pre Yates

I actually liked a lot because I thought there was a chance he'd be the primary source of saves for the Dodgers now It's like a shared opportunity if that now it's some lingering questions about health lovely It seems to be up and down the entire roster right now Real quick. I don't want the whole show to be about this, do you think the Dodgers are ruining baseball discourse is just ridiculous? Because I don't think the Dodgers are ruining baseball. Well, I did want to say one thing real quick about Tanner Scott, because I've seen some people be like,

what about the bad command? He has bad command. But I did want to point out that relievers in general have worse command. If you look at just the major league average for walk rate for starters, it's 7.2%. For relievers, it's 9%. So just remember that you're not comparing to 8% or whatever as league average. So when Scott is projected for a 10 or 11% walk rate, that's bad, but it's not as bad as if he was a starter. You kind of have to

have a different sort of rubric. As for the Dodgers running baseball, no, I mean, if I was a Dodger fan right now, I would feel great. You know, my team is doing everything they can to put together the best possible team. I don't think that's, you know, wouldn't every other fan of every other team feel great

if their team does much. Now it becomes a question is like, well, my team's owner can't do that. So then I, that's why I'm mad. We don't know. That's it's like a big black box. We don't know what they can do. You know, we don't know what they choose to do. We don't know what they can do.

And for every sort of, oh, let's just have a floor without a cap. You're just never going to get have a floor without a cap, you're just never gonna get a salary floor without a cap. You can't force the bottom to spend more without raining in the top. And baseball has tried everything they can to tamp down player salaries. What is a draft?

A draft is a way to reduce salaries. What is an international draft? It's a way to reduce salaries. What is an international spending's limit? That's a way to reduce salaries. What is an international draft? It's a way to reduce salaries. What is an international spending's limit? That's a way to reduce salaries. So they're trying all their different ways to do it. Arbitration is a way to reduce that. So they're doing all these things to try and reduce it.

They would love to have a cap. The ownership would love to have a cap. It would just be an excuse. It would be a built-in excuse for not spending it would be like oh the rules say I can't spend You know and they're already you know giving plenty of excuses like that, so I don't want to give them another excuse I think you had a great quote from Joshian though Yeah, so Joshian had a great message here just the last four seasons alone 23 of 30 major league teams

have made the playoffs, 12 of 30 have won their division, four different teams have won the World Series, and seven have played in the World Series. I think the Astros have been in the world series too. How many years? Four. So just the last four seasons since the shortened 2020 season. 23 out of 30 teams have made the playoffs and 10 have reached the LCS round. As Joe writes, I truly don't know what higher level of parity you could possibly ask for. I mean, I feel like we forget the conversations

that happen around this sport in August and September where people are saying the regular season doesn't mean anything. Too many teams make the playoffs. Look at the results of more teams making the playoffs. Look who, we had a Rangers Diamondbacks World Series two years ago. What are we doing here? I would like to posit that there is such a thing as too much parity. I do believe this because if it was truly random

every year and anybody could make it and the Marlins just won the World Series this this coming season, you know, I think it would just like break our brain. Like it wouldn't make sense as a fan. You want some sense of like, oh, these teams are on the rise and these teams are on the fall. You know, you want some idea of like, who's good and who's not. If you just turn on a game and you have no idea

who could win it and you have no, like you can't even play along, you know? You just be like, it's just utter chaos. So, you know, on the, you know, the continuum from, you know, everything is super predictable to utter chaos, I think we're in a decent place, you know? If you just look at the numbers in terms of like how predictable baseball is compared to other sports,

it's less predictable than other sports. You know, like home field advantage. Home field advantage is strongest in basketball, second strongest in football, hockey goes third, and baseball's fourth. Baseball has the weakest home field advantage. That sort of speaks to how much chaos there is in baseball. And if you think about the NBA playoffs,

I feel like they get the two best teams in the finals more than almost anybody. Right, I think if you have a frustration with baseball right now, it's probably directed at a different group of teams and owners. So it's not the Dodgers, it's not the teams at the top. This has been happening, I think really our whole lives or at least throughout the entire time of our fanhood

because before it was the Dodgers, it was the Yankees. The Yankees were the team that would go out and get every big free agent, right? And now it just happens to be a different club doing it. I agree with something you said, and I've seen this written before, a little bit earlier, where you said, you know, there is an advantage to being in the biggest markets

and having the biggest TV deals, and that's true. And having deeper pockets, there is a point at which Steve Cohen can outspend a lot of the other owners and ownership groups Right, that's true Where I think you have to be mad if you're a fan of a different team is if you have sat out free agency Completely, right if you have an owner or an ownership group That's just sitting back not making moves not increasing payroll Or you're like the Guardians who made the playoffs and traded away

one of your best hitters to sign a 38 year old, you know, on a cheap deal. Yeah. Is it the Dodgers or is it more of the teams like the Guardians who aren't doing anything? Yeah, I just, I think that list of owners and ownership groups is so much longer. That's where your frustration should be.

Or the Cubs, like why don't the Cubs, the Cubs should go all the way up to the salary, the first salary apron. They should be, they should even go past it probably in terms of market size, in terms of money that they have at their disposal, in terms of TV deal, they own their own TV channel, all that stuff. They should have won Tanner Scott.

Yeah, and I think the Guardians example It's like when we think about the Guardians this team that does really well with limited Major League payroll resources Much like Tampa Bay when they have an opportunity in free agency to address a clear need Let's say that the Guardians maybe could use a corner outfielder. Does that seem like a fair example? When the Guardians can't go get Michael Conforto on a one-year deal and choose not to go get him on a one-year deal and the Dodgers do and you're like, what the heck? The Dodgers don't even need Michael Conforto. That's the stuff on the smaller end. Like I get it. Yeah, the Guardians aren't going to throw Juan Soto money out there. Fine. They're not even playing on the level

you'd expect them to play at. That, I think, is what ruins baseball. When you could be a fan of a team that literally sits the offseason out. When the A's are spending more money in pre-agency. Yeah. And there are teams that are competitive teams that are not doing anything right now. And yeah, I get it. The Padres situation right now is a little complicated. But doing nothing is bad for the sport.

It's not the Dodgers that are ruining baseball. It's the teams that are sitting back and doing little to nothing to get better year after year after year. That's what's hurting the sport. I use the New York Times Games app every single day. I love playing connections. With connections, I need to twist my brain to see the different categories.

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At this point, I'm probably more consistent with doing the crossword than brushing my teeth. When I can finish a hard puzzle without pins, I feel like the smartest person in the world. When I have to look up a clue to help me, I'm learning something new. It gives me joy every single day. Start playing in the New York Times Games app.

You can download it at nytimes.com slash games app. Obviously the Yankees and Dodgers would vote against this, but I would like to know if sharing local TV money is possible. Yeah, and the mechanics of that would get complicated real fast. It's politics, it's politics. It's owner politics, right?

But could you, you know, unite the smaller market and mid-market teams to vote against the Dodgers and Yankees on this matter, maybe, if you cared to, if you thought it'd be good for baseball? And I would say that there are little small little hints that it's possible that we could be moving towards something like that where more of the TV money is shared. And the reason I say this is because Rob Manfred is making these comments about how he would like more teams to not be under contract locally

with their TV money so that he can sell games piecemeal to all the streaming companies before they do anything else. And if you think about it that way, this starts to be a locally shared model where he's gonna be like, oh yeah, you want Cubs Guardians on this day? He's gonna be trying to sell single games and packages of games. And if he does that, then everybody should get from that money. Right. So there's, as these teams are losing their local valleys and fan duel or whatever,

you know, baseball is very happy to gobble them up and start producing them themselves, because they would love to basically just have an array of games to sell and send them to the highest bidder, basically like variable pricing models. And if they're doing that, I think then everyone gets to share in that. So I think we are at a crux of where the economics of baseball might be changing and the TV is the key. I'm a little bit more optimistic than some people because a lot of people are just saying,

oh, the cable model's dead, this is gonna be really bad for baseball. I think through streaming there might actually be, because I'm a consumer of streaming too. When I did, what I realized was I cut the cord because it was cheap, right? You know, and Hulu was way cheaper. But I've realized I'm spending just as much, if not more than I used to on cable.

Yeah, it didn't last. You knew that wasn't going to last, though, right? That was temporary. Like we can compete on price now, then we eliminate the competitor. We can raise prices and make more than our competitor ever did. But now in order to get everything I used to get, I now have to have Peacock and and Amazon Prime and Netflix. And you know, so like, it's gonna be something similar where the consumer is gonna end up paying more

to see their baseball, but that is an opportunity for baseball to sort of, you know, get more money out of the consumer and do something different with their TV money, which might change who gets the TV money and how the TV money is distributed. That's all I'm pointing out. You know, I would feel better about that if I knew that came with the promise

of 30 ownership groups actually trying harder, but I also know that it's not gonna play out quite like that. They could still just pocket the money. Yeah, that's still probably part of the end game on this one. Back to some baseball news you should know, Anthony Santander heads to the Blue Jays. The Blue Jays got one, you know, and it kind of leads to a few different questions in the sense of like, OK, you added power.

You needed power. You made your lineup better. And the long term implications of this trade, I can't find anybody or this signing. I can't find anybody who likes this long term and thinks it's going to age well. But the more fun way to think about it is, what does it mean for the twenty twenty five Blue Jays? Are they a team that would swoop in and possibly add Pete Alonso on some kind of short-term deal or do something else to supplement their lineup? Because they do feel like a team kind of caught in the middle. The middle's not bad. We were just talking earlier

about the Rangers Diamondbacks World Series just a couple years ago. Maybe the Blue Jays can cobble it together, make a few moves over the course of the year and end up being good enough to get there. We know that's sometimes all you need to actually make that run, but it still feels like even in that framework, they're another bat away from being a more serious mid-pack team that will make the post season in 2025.

Yeah, Santander is the slugger that they needed behind some of the guys that can get on base. But, you know, in terms of really stand out on base guys, they've got Vladimir Guerrero Jr. I mean, they actually look at projections instead of what happened last year. But, you know, because last year, it it was basically just about your girl junior Oh and Spencer Horowitz who's not there anymore. So anyway, in terms of projected OVP, they've got Vladimir Guerrero jr. 383 Alejandro Kirk 350 Bobish at 330 Santander 319 and then springer Schneider Jimenez So like this is not gonna be a team that gets on base that well, you know

Is it a team that's going to slug well? Well they got, in terms of slugging percentage, they have Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Santander, you know, 545 and 474. And then you go down to Bo Bichette, 440, Dalton Varcho, 421, 405. So it's not gonna be a team that slugs all that well. Is it a deep team?

They've got, in terms of WRC Plus, they've got Guerrero, Santander, Bo Bichette, Alejandro Kirk, Springer, Orelvis Martinez counts, Dalton Varsho, Davis Schneider, and Andres Jimenez as league average or better. So it's a slightly deep team I guess. That's nine guys that can have a WRC plus of 100 or better. That's not bad.

They really got two, because they did add Jeff Hoffman not that long ago too, to bolster the bullpen. So it's not just like the off season of Anthony Santander and nothing else. I do think a lot rides on the bow bounce back, a lot rides on adjustments that you've mentioned that they could make with Andres Jimenez. They believe they saw something that he was doing differently when he was showing a little more power a couple of years back, a lot of rides on adjustments that you've mentioned that he could make with Andres Jimenez. They believe they saw something

that he was doing differently when he was showing a little more power a couple years ago in Cleveland. Yeah, but the projections don't care about any of that. The projections are pretty just across the board. Yeah, a little bit of bounce back for Boba Shedd, of course, but not gonna give Jimenez more power just because there's some biomechanical change

they can make. So I think the baseline for this team is decent. I think if they were in a different division, like if you just drop them in one of the, in one of the centrals, wouldn't they be a contender for the division? Yeah. So you're saying maybe like an 85, 86 win projection is what you are back of the napkinning for the Blue Jays

at the current time? Yeah. And if they and if things broke right, that would be Bo Bichette bouncing back, Jimenez adding power, Springer not turning into a corpse, and maybe Bowden Francis' breakout being legit, maybe finding somebody between Yagiel Rodriguez and Jake Bloss to be actual number five, and maybe Will Wagner or Ernie Clement

sustained some of the good stuff we saw last year. I think if all those things happen, Jeff Hoffman stays healthy, yeah, you can start getting into the 90s. A lot of maybes. Yeah, it's a lot of maybes. Those are the rose-colored glasses. And it almost never happens that way,

except it does sometimes, right? Like those are the years that you're better than people expected. Yeah, well, it's gonna be interesting to see if they're able to pull off one more big move. It feels like one more would make a pretty big difference for them right now as far as giving them a little nudge. Would you put Bregman at third for them

and make Clement a utility guy? Oh, yes, I'd much rather have Bregman than Alonso because of how the roster's built. I think Bregman would be really good fit there. If you get Alonso, you have Guerrero and Alonso clogging up DH in first, and Will Wagner, Davis Schneider, Ernie Clement, you know, all trying to play third and back up outfield.

And you can't hide Springer at DH. Yeah, but like a 330, 340 range OBP with 20 home or power from Bregman and good defense at third base, yes, that would fit really, really well. I don't know if it'll be a long deal or if it'll just be like a short-term deal. I mean, we've seen it before. Maybe that's the best fit where Bregman goes there

and mashes, shows the power still there, gets the OBP back up for another year, and then gets more of the payday he was hoping for this winter a year from now. That might be one of the better case scenarios for the Gs. Yeah, like a three-year 60 million with a three-year 75 or something. With an opt-out after this year. With an opt-out after one, yeah. Yeah, that's probably what it's going to look like.

Let's move on to another story that's really interesting. Shotaro Mori has signed with the A's out of high school, from Japan. Almost everything about that is kind of wild, right? We don't think of the A's as a team that necessarily does well in international free agency. And we rarely see high school players from Japan leave. Although they did get cesspit-ous.

They did get cesspit-us, but especially just from, I can't even remember if I've ever seen. They're just good for a surprise every 10 years. Yeah, right. And Mori is a two-way player who the A's are gonna keep developing as a two-way player. I think by most accounts would have been a top 10 pick in the NPB draft had he stayed in Japan,

but he wanted to start his professional career in Major League Baseball sooner, the deal is worth just over one and a half million dollars. This is a pretty big deal because Mori could be a bit of a trailblazer for a younger generation of players coming through in Japan who might not go the traditional route of beginning their professional careers in their home country, staying for as many as nine years. Some guys do leave a little earlier, they reach those agreements to do so, we've seen that happen.

And this also comes not that far after Rintaro Sasaki ended up going to Stanford out of high school instead of staying in Japan, right? So we've seen. I'm excited to see him soon. Yeah, this will be this upcoming season. So there's a lot changing, it seems like, in Japan for amateur players and how they're thinking about their careers.

And I'm just curious what you think about Mori and what this really means. Yeah, I was talking to Patrick Newman, a friend of mine that also used to run NPP Tracker online, the website that had some pitch data from Japan and he stays on top of the game over there and he pointed out to me the the thing that's the most eye-opening about this is that the 1.5 million dollar number that is more than first-round picks get in Japan so a lot of times it's just about the money and and if the money is if you are are a first round pick in Japan and you can get more money going to America where a lot of them want to go eventually.

They want to be on the biggest screens. They want to be in the biggest league in the world. And they're seeing Shichiro Yotani succeed. They're in the world and they they're seeing shouyo tani succeed They're seeing Yamamoto succeed. They're seeing all these guys succeed They think they can do it and the money is better if you sign with a team directly then, you know You kind of feel like that decisions almost made, you know So, you know, I think this is gonna happen more often even if more he doesn't succeed, just because if teams are willing to put

one or two million dollars on the table for a guy, they can start stealing first round picks from Japan. Which is not great for the state of professional baseball in Japan, but it is. That'll do weird things too, because if it makes the league worse, then all of our translations and all our ideas of like what the Talent level in Japan is is are gonna change. Yes. I mean, it's it's I don't know it

Gives you mixed feelings. I think but I generally I feel like in sport You should have agency over your own career So it feels like the right outcome even though there's downside that comes with it Yeah, I agree And I mean one of the things I would like to do and we've talked about this is reduce like lower the age For international free agency I think that would do some stuff where you could have players go to Japan and dominate for you know Three or four years and still come over young, And that might be one of the better outcomes.

But I do think that this probably raised eyebrows in Japan too. I don't think that they like, and when I say they, I mean probably the leadership of NPV is not super happy about Mori and Sasaki coming over. Not Roki Sasaki, Rintaro. Yep, times are changing though. We're seeing that for sure with the- Or maybe even Roki makesaki, Rintaro. Yep, times are changing though, we're seeing that for sure with the-

Or maybe even Roki makes him a little bit mad because he sort of forced his way out with more years left, he could have played in Japan. Yeah, I wonder if the next iteration of how rules change and just plans change, if it leads to more players from other countries going to Japan to play eventually. Like they just have more roster spots available. They relax the gaijin rules. They have rules where

you can only have one or two foreign players on your team. Yeah. Yeah. KBO Korean League has some restrictions on the number of foreign players you can have as well. But I wonder if that changes and everything becomes a little bit more of a two-way street where players go to the comes a little bit more of a two-way street where players go to the best league they can get to. And hope to just play their way up. Yeah, because you have a lot of like 30, 35 year olds from America wanting to go over there. Just a little side note, it's kind of interesting.

The Pirates claimed Trey Cabbage off of waivers and then had a financial deal with a Japanese team. And those financial deals can be worth mid six figures. So they might have just made like $150,000 on the side. Like claiming Trey Cabbage and selling him to Japan. Anyway, just a weird little thing. That fits under the who's really ruining baseball. That's right.

Who's their biggest signing this offseason? Which the order. Okay, so they had they signed somebody, didn't they? You know, have they signed anybody? Who are the pirates? Who are the pirates signed? Let me see. They sign.

You sure have forgotten quickly if they have. No, they made that move to get Spencer Horowitz the trade. They brought back Andrew McCutcheon. Right, that's not spending money. Bringing back McCutcheon is not spending money. Oh, I guess they signed McCutcheon. There we go. No, that doesn't count.

They brought back a guy who was already there. Andrew McCutcheon's great, but where was Andrew McCutcheon going to go? Like who? Like, come on, what are we doing here? You know who they have though. They didn't sign him because they already had him, Billy Cook. Billy Cook! Let Billy Cook. Let Billy Cook.

Can he cook? Can he do that too? Yeah. We think he can play everywhere. All right. So baseball prospectus has some new arsenal metrics that came out and it's a lot about how pitches interact with each other, right? We talk about pitching plus stuff plus the model you have and those are a lot. Those focus on like pitches in isolation. How good is this pitch based on its characteristics? And what was really cool about the arsenal

metrics that was dropped is it featured a lot of Tobias Myers, which I really liked. But I think Tobias Myers fits into this bucket of pitchers that have wide arsenals. And because nothing is amazing, we can often underrate them. And I think Arsenal metrics really help us understand the relationship between pitches and why guys can succeed without elite capital S stuff. They have ways of making it work because it creates confusion for the hitters.

It creates a last second guessing game or makes the anticipation more difficult or it makes the quality of contact worse. There's all these things that can really work in the pitchers favor when pitches work really well together. So what were some of your takeaways kind of looking at the introduction of the new arsenal metrics that BP rolled out? Yeah, it's pretty cool.

These are not an exact match, but a continuation of the work by drive line that we talked about with mix plus and match plus. I forget which is which, but one was basically the distance. I guess that would be by baseball perspective, the movement spread. So that's the sort of difference in movements between your pitches. And then the other one was how well your pitches like fit together or tunneled together if I remember correctly with mix and match plus the suite that baseball protects has turned out is pitch type probability surprise factor movement

spread and velocity spread pitch type probability and surprise factor you know surprise factor is you know basically the you know how surprising the observed pitch movement was based on the distribution of possible pitch movements. So how, I guess how different a pitch can be from the other pitches. Velocity spread is the same. It's like basically the velocity band you can cover. Pitch type probability has to do with being, is tunneling is, is sort of, you know, how, how well the player can determine which pitch is coming given the release point and the pitch trajectory. So basically these are all arsenal metrics that

kind of tell you a little bit about how the pitches fit together. And what's interesting is that stuff does try to have something of this where we have an anchor in the fastball and we define the secondary pitches off of that. So there is some sort of idea of tunneling and making decisions and the fastball is the anchor. The problem is that I think that there can be some interactions between the other pitches. You can expect slider and get curve or expect curve and get slider. It's not necessarily that you'd be sitting slider, but yes, I think even that, there's

increasing evidence that some teams are sitting slider. If you have them sitting slider, that'll hurt your model if you expect them to be sitting fastball. These things will capture a little bit of the interactions of the other pitches. We have here, just courtesy of baseball prospectus, this is surprise factor and you're looking at how much can these pitchers surprise you given the width of their arsenal. A lot of these are basically describing the width and breadth of a pitcher's arsenal. And Logan Gilbert has a wide, I think Max Fried is probably the poster boy for this, a large

movement spread, a large velocity spread, a large number of pitches that he can go to. It's not a guarantee that you're good. Carlos Carrasco is high on this list. Kenta Maeda is high on this list. Marcus Stroman is high on this list. It does have something to do with how many times you can turn the lineup over. And so one really eye-opening chart that they have is that batters make better swing decisions the more they see pitches. We know this is a third time through the

order penalty, so that the third time through the order the batter sees the pitches better and does better. And what they found is that batters with high surprise factor or movement spread or velocity spread pitchers with that, the batters in the third time through the order, they don't do as well. So it softens the third time through the order penalty. So basically what these get at is, you know, Stuff Plus tells you, we said this once, Jeff Ponce over at Baseball America once said, if you are too stuff heavy, if you go too far down the road of Stuff Plus,

you can end up with a lot of relievers. And that's true because you end up with a lot of guys who just have outstanding pitches and they don't all fit together in the way that a starter's need to. And we've noticed this ourselves, like, you know, on this podcast that like, you know, they're the Chris Bassett types and these Max Fried types, these pitchers that do better than their stuff number because they have wide arsenals, they know how to use them.

And so this is quantifying some of that. And so I'll try to throw that as much as if they release the full thing. It's not on their leaderboards yet, but you know as much as I can I'll look to these sort of factors. I do have in my rankings right now that won't, it won't show to everybody, but in my working rankings I have a column that says number of fastballs and I have a column that says number of pitches, you know. So I have been sort of doing that in sort of a crude way, has been looking at this.

This gives us a chance to quantify those things and have them on a leaderboard and add that to our arsenal. We had another question from Dr. Tim, right? Is it Tim? Yeah, Dr. Tim. Dr. Tim asked, you know, how do we use Stuff Plus Best? And like, I have an easy answer for you, which is with debuts, you know, how do we use Stuff Plus best? And like, I have an easy answer for you, which is with debuts, the smaller the sample of information

is, the more important Stuff Plus is. So if you have one start of information, then Stuff Plus is one of the main things you should be looking at. You know, once you get to five starts of information, you should be looking at strikeout minus walk rate. That's more powerful. And once you get to five starts of information, you should be looking at strikeout minus walk rate. That's more powerful. And once you get to five seasons,

you gotta start to look at ERA actually. Like five seasons, you start to get a sense of, oh, these guys have quirks that might be repeatable that aren't being captured by all of our metrics. But one start is great for Stuff+. It's great for relievers. I do think for closing especially, I want Fastball Stuff Plus.

I think we've seen that guys who have like an incredible slider but not an incredible Fastball can maybe, you know, can maybe close at times but aren't necessarily what teams wanna go to. So I would say Fastball Stuff Plus plus overall Stuff Plus is really good for finding closers. And then if you've got a guy who just came up and you don't know anything about him, you want to know about his stuff plus.

These numbers are sort of like in the off season when you're looking at different pitchers and you're like, well, this pitcher has good stuff plus, but when you had five starts or we had 10 starts and I'm not sure he's a starter, then you can start to look at these BP factors to be like, is he a starter long-term? You know, I don't know who's like this? Bowden Francis. Bowden Francis is somebody who's who just started a little bit and has some stuff plus information for you, has some results information, could go back to the pen, was just in the pen. Is he a good guy to pick up this year? Stuff Plus would say he's a good guy to pick up this year? Stuff Plus would say he's an okay guy to pick up this year, but these metrics from baseball

perspective have Bowden Francis as the number one guy for movement spread for starters. He has a big ol' splitter and a big ol' curveball and a little slider and a fastball with ride. He takes up a lot of space and he uses that to his advantage. So, you know, I think these numbers make me feel a little bit better about Bowden Francis, about Spencer Arragedi, Grayson Rodriguez. These are types of pitchers that have wide arsenals and. Decent stuff plus numbers, actually. So it's like, you know, all the things are pointing in the right

direction for them to be good starters. Check out the full post over at Baseball Prospectus. It's unlocked, but you should support BP if you can. Get a subscription. It's called Introducing BP's New Arsenal Metrics, Steven Sutton Brown put it together. There's some really cool visualizations in there as well as you go through it.

Highly recommend it. Good work all around there. The name that actually popped into my head because he's been sitting at the top of my queue You know draft and hold for you know, how do we use the plus is? Landon Roupe Landon Roupe pops in the model hasn't had a ton of big league innings the roles kind of funky, right? You know 23 appearances for starts the stuff model really likes him

Secondaries more than the fastballs. The sinker is fine. The four seamer is one of the lower four seamers you're gonna find in the model. But Rook is the sort of guy that I might not even look at for super deep leagues at all, but when I see how much he pops based on the quality of his pitches, he creeps into my, oh, okay, I'll throw a dart there

because the park's good. maybe there's a couple guys in front of him that are gonna open up innings because they have injury risk. It's kind of like finding flyers that don't otherwise stand out is one of the main things I use it for. And certainly in deeper leagues where you can stash relievers, finding future closers.

I have had a lot of success getting a little bit ahead and figuring out which relievers are gonna end up moving up in the pecking order in their respective bullpen over the course of the season, just leaning on stuff plus. Yeah, I would look at it. Rupa got hurt a little bit in the revision, but he still has an outstanding curve ball, breaking ball,

that I think can be a foundation. He talked about learning a cutter too. If he's cutter, sinker, slider curve, that's enough for San Francisco. So I still agree that he's a, did he show up on any of these lists? He didn't show up on the BP ones, but just thinking about that question from Dr. Tim,

I was like, oh, it's guys like that. It's just, it leads me to dig into guys that didn't really fit into a role. They didn't quite get into the high leverage spot. They didn't quite have a starting opportunity to call their own. And a lot of times, yeah, the workload is a tad on the small side.

I do think the BP stuff, it helps illustrate guys like Tobias Meyers at the lower end and higher end like Max Fried. It really helps put some more context to that. And if you watch those guys a lot, you probably have made some observations like that. But if you don't watch them all the time, and you're trying to figure out from a numbers perspective,

like how do they do it, I think this is a big part of quantifying what's been missing for a long time. Yeah, Simeon Woods Richardson, Ranger Suarez, Bowden Francis, and Tanner Bybee are all guys that don't have great stuff plus numbers that show up in their metrics as a positive. So I think that's an interesting thing. The other one that I would just suggest too is if you want kind of a real shorthand way

into this, oopsie. Oopsie includes stuff plus in its projections and nobody else does. So you can look at something as simple as Jesus Tanoko's, you know, fan graphs page and you're wondering, you know, that seems like the closing roll in Florida is in Miami is open. You know, somebody else might be using Steamer or ATC in their projections. They get a 379 ERA and they think, think oh it's probably going to be Fauche. Well oops he has a 354 for Tanoko which is something that a closer that's a closer level ERA and

Fauche has a 387 and if you go back down to the test that I was suggesting, you'll see that Fochet could be kind of like an outstanding breaking ball, not great fastball guy, whereas Tanoko has a better four seamer than Fochet. So I think that's the kind of analysis that I would go for closers and that's how I'd use Stuff Plus, you know, kind of evaluating two pitchers that could be a closer. We've got a few other mailbag questions we'll get to here before we go. This one comes from this Hitty Beetle. I'm not allowed to swear on the show anymore,

neither is Eno, it's a company wide policy. Oh, I thought I found a loophole. You're not allowed to. No, no, no, that's not the loophole. So what I have to do when I see a handle in Discord that has what I assume to be a swear word in it, I have to put the capital letters in different places and pronounce them in weird ways. So this Hitty Beetle, oh, one.

It's a Hitty Beetle. A Hitty Beetle wants to know about Spencer Torkelson's long-term value with Colt Keith moving to first base, Kerry Carpenter largely being a DH and thinking about how Torque kind of fits in to not just the 2025 picture, but also a keeper in dynasty. Like where are you at? Do you believe in the skills long term that Torquilson brings to the table? So if it's not in Detroit, is there still an opportunity for him to be an impact everyday guy somewhere else in the long run?

I don't know, man. I, you know before last, before 2023 I tried to trade for him in a league and we had this exchange with the owner where he was like, I don't, you know, what are you trying to do here? You know, like, you know, Spencer Torres, he's like a one-one or whatever, like you can't just have him.

And it was like, well, we're not generally, you know, that upbeat about his future. But, you know, we thought we thought we'd give it a shot. You're right. You're right. You know, it's like, you know, either believe in a redone. Then he had that season and we were like, oh, maybe he's on his way. But then he had 20, 24. And just the sum of it to me is somebody who does not have, like for how little he reaches, because he doesn't chase that much on pitches

outside of the zone, he doesn't have a great walk rate. And for as much as the contact he makes, like his 10 to 11% swing strike rate is not that is not that bad His strikeout rates higher than you'd expect So there's something that's not working like it's it's like soft factors or something You know what I mean? Like if I just told you here's a guy who's hit the ball 112.7. He's had good barrel rates He has a 10% swing strike rate for his career and a 9% walk rate like you'd be like, yeah sign me up So the components are there but there's something to me about how this is, like we've given him almost 1500 plate appearances.

He's been a 95 WRC plus. He's projected for a 102, oopsie, 107. That's like league average for a first baseman. So I think I'm leaning him out. I can see why you might like process, like you might do the Voltron thing Really like if I take this strikeout rate and this swing strike rate and this barrel rate and this max TV and this Walk rate I can I can make a 240 hitter with 35 homers. I don't know if it's gonna happen

I just ran a custom leaderboard real quick before but this question up and For players in the big leagues for the last three seasons So it starts in 2022 with a thousand or more played appearances Age 25 or younger right? That's a pretty interesting group of players sorted by WRC plus There's only 38 guys that qualify among position players Spencer Torkelson over the three years combined This is his big league career so far has a 221 average of 300 OBP and a 392 slug this is his big league career so far, has a 221 average, a 300 OBP, and a 392 slug.

That's a 95 WRC plus, and it ranks him 26th out of those 38 players. The only players lower in WRC plus during that same span who are under 25, have also got 1,000 big league plate appearances. They play premium defensive positions. Bryson Stott, CJ Abrams, Leodi Tavares, MJ Melendez, uh oh,

Jared Kelnick, Dylan Carlson, who's a free agent at 26. And nobody's trying to sign him. Yeah, Caber Ruiz, Geraldo Perdomo, Anthony Volpe, Ezekiel Tovar, Michael Garcia, and Bryce Tereng. So all the guys who can play defense to an elite level are probably fine, because they're young, and they're cheap. Then you have the guys you say,

uh oh for are corner outfielders in first baseman. Yeah, and the guys ahead of them with negative, significantly negative defensive value who have been better with the bat so far, you get up as high as Andrew Vaughn, and I think he's only been under 25 for part of that time so his entire body of work doesn't even wait wait So that's already like oh my god He's looking up at Andrew Vaughn looking up at Andrew Vaughn a one-o-eight

Placement life for his career right at least for the time He's under 25 in the last three years a 108 WRC plus by this leaderboard Nolan Gorman's ahead of him with a 104 It's a 222 301 435 line might be in the process of losing his job and Christopher Morrell Who's like? Gorman but from the right side also doesn't have a position strikes a little less than Gorman like those are the types of hitters ahead Of Torkelson right now, and they hit the ball harder don't they? Torkelson ran a nice hard hit rate last year So if you're talking about Max, maybe on the Max side,

but I don't know, is he hopeless? No, but the comps are not encouraging at this point. So I'm not really going after Torkelson as more than just like a cheap flyer. If he gets cut in a keeper or dynasty league, I can pick him up for a couple of bucks and just see what happens. Sure, at that point I'm interested.

I think if you're like rebuilding and you get him as a throw in, but not somebody you're asking for. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't look good. And maybe you get a little bit of a boost if he ends up in a better playing time situation because as a righty in those circumstances, he has to hit a lot to get that rollback.

Yeah, he's a righty for space. Yeah, where is he gonna go on top of that? If he got let go right now, where would he go? Miami,, yeah, he's like, where's he gonna go? Like, on top of that, like, if he got let go right now, where would he go? Miami, I mean, he's still got an option. So he's, I think he's gonna be in the minor leagues to start the season. Yeah, it's a rough outcome, but thank you for the question. This hitty beetle, 01.

There was actually a Nolan Gorman question too. This came from just Jack111. What do you think about Nolan Gorman's playing time projections the longer we go, especially with Nolan Aronato still in St. Louis, that could be a little bit tricky just because of how they have to make all the infield pieces fit.

But do you think the Cardinals 2025 youth focus could actually push him back to the 450 or 500 plate appearance range because projections have him closer to 200? You know what I saw the most amazing thing, Jeff Zimmerman has a couple of posts on Blue Sky or Twitter and he wrote a thing on fan graphs that was checking to see playing time projections

and who did well at them. And depth charts on fan graphs are one of the worst. So that is a huge place of possible improvement as a fantasy player is doing your own, figuring your own playing time out. And one of the sort of better side ones that was a surprise was Marcel. I think Marcel was like third best out of everything.

And you know what Marcel is? Marcel is five times last year plus three times a year before plus two times a year before divided by 10. Yeah, it's more or less if I were making a new projection system today, the best I could come up with on my own It's something that Marcel did for a long time. Yeah, that's a knock on me not on Marcel. Marcel's fine.

Well, I bring this up because if you just did a Marcel projection for Gorman, then you would probably get 400 plus. Whereas he's being projected for 300, and I think, you know, this is my sort of blank assessment is that I think Thomas Segeisi, you know, might get the shot. Because I think he's a little bit more the type of player that Cardinals seem to like. I think they sort of shy away from big strikeout guys,

you know? And, you know, the other guy that's a little bit like Gorman is Jordan Walker. Just in terms of, you know, And the other guy that's a little bit like Gorman is Jordan Walker, just in terms of hitting the ball hard and striking out too much so far in his major league career and not having great defense. That's not the Cardinal way. Now I don't know if the Cardinal way is changing.

I see Brian Smith, our producer, fist pumping in the background. You said it, not me. I still cough, that's not good. I just don't know how much is going to change. I mean, I think, you know, the youth movement could help Gorman and hurt somebody like Brendan Donovan. Like maybe he gets traded or, you know, a little bit of reduced role, but it could also help Segeci, you know? So it's not obvious who, So it's not obvious who gets the biggest portion of time.

Right now, Fangraff's just said second base is 30-30-30. I think Nolan Arda's not going anywhere. Yeah, if that's your expectation and they do have to make that decision on Donovan, they could also just trade, I mean, there should be teams that are interested in Brendan Donovan. Maybe they just trade Brendan Donovan because he's not on their next great team.

Maybe that's something they have to think about. But to answer just Jack111's question, I think Gorman's playing time's light. And I think the Marcel example is a good reason why, even if you don't see it happening just yet. Because even if Nolan Aronato is still there on opening day, do you think Nolan Aronato's still there after the trade deadline?

I feel like that next round of, hey, we need a guy, is gonna hit the contending teams in a way where, by then, and also if they're not winning in St. Louis, maybe Gorman's more open to waving the no trade clause at that point. I just think there's, as likely as he is to still be on the roster on opening day, he's quite a bit less likely to still be there in August.

The other thing that's like, that's like Cardinal-ish is that like they might say something about taking a step back or not, you know, not spending free agency or whatever it is, but they did not trade away Sonny Gray. They did not trade away Eric Fetty and they do have a representative team, right? They are running out of team that looks okay on paper right now. You know, it's a little bit old in places and it's probably not a great team but they have a closer, they have some you know decent relievers, they have five starters, they even have like six or seven starters that are alright. And so if you think about it that way

then there is a chance that somebody like Victor Scott goes back to the minor leagues because you know he hasn't been great, he has options, there could be you can make the argument, he has stuff to work on. Last year in AAA, he had a 59 WRC plus. He's coming off such a terrible year that it would be like, even if he had a good spring, he'd be like, oh, you're doing good,

we want you to keep the momentum going. Go to AAA, kill it there. Michael Ciani and Lars Knutbar can handle center for us. Michael Ciani is an elite defender, and that's so Cardinal-ish to me is to be like Michael Ciani is the starting center fielder, Victor Scott in the minor, Knutbar is the backup center fielder and oh does it what does that mean? Alec Berlison has to play the field some. Alec Berlison plays the field some, Nolan Gorman has some place to play even if Segeci makes the roster or Brendan Donovan does. So, you know, there are, and then Gorman is listed

as the top third base option if Arnado goes. And the Yankees could maybe still use Arnado. I don't know why I'm the only one talking about that, I feel like, but, you know, they've got Oswald Carrera listed as their number one guy in third base. So, there's still a chance that Arundado gets moved. That's an opportunity. Second base is an opportunity.

And DH could still be an opportunity if Victor Scott doesn't make the team. Yeah, a few ways the pieces can fit even if Arundado's still there for the cards on opening day. Thanks for that question, Just Jack. We got an accidental mission question from our third base preview. Max Muncie, did we just not like Max Muncie no actually Max Muncie fell

between the space on the rundown and the actual show it happens sometimes you get a group of six or seven players lumped together you hit five or six out of the six or seven and a Max Muncie falls through the cracks kind of like when your cell phone falls out of your pocket and lands in the space in your couch that's not on the floor and you got really go fishing around in there. That's where Max Muncie landed, relatively speaking on this show. I like Max Muncie. I hate that so much.

Oh, it's the worst feeling in the world. You hear it, you hear it fall in, but you know it didn't hit the ground. It happens in my car sometimes and I just know it's in that one part. You had to get out of the car and move the seat forward. Yeah. You cooked.

You know it's over. You can hear it. You hear it playing Plinko between the pieces of the car seat. It's just great. You're on deck. Oh God. Rerouting, it's your GPS, your address.

Your notifications are going off. You can't find your phone. It's somewhere, who knows. Back to Muncie I guess. I mean, there were these rumors that Arnado was going there, and I think that he suffers a little bit from, you look across this Dodgers lineup

and you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, and then they have Max Muncie. You know? He's a little bit like a Kyle Schwarber where he's gonna hurt your batting average and hit homers. He's coming off an injured year and he's 34, so you're not sure how healthy he will be this year.

But again, let me do the Marcel on his playing time real quick. But he does seem like he's just pretty much the everyday-ish starter at third. Do you think they'll throw Edmund there sometimes? I guess lefties? Not often. Or what do you think? I'm Edmund there sometimes? I guess lefties and not often sit them or what do you think? I'm not really worried about playing time. I mean, Muncie's been 565 played appearances or more every year, the previous three years until he was hurt last season.

He still makes a lot of hard contact. You know, the barrel rate dipped a little, but the swing decisions haven't changed all that much. I mean, look what he was on pace to do last year. He would have hit 30 homers at the pace he was on had he played a full season. Would have drove in 96 and scored 94. It looked a lot like what he did in 2023. I think Max Muncie outside the top 200 overall is actually a great value. If you can afford the batting average risk the projection seemed to even be pushing that down

a little more than they need to. Marcell's would be a 570. Yeah, man. Like I, the playing time's not really the problem. I just think the average could be light, but it's absolutely fine. And that part of the position is a little thin anyway. So I'm in, I'm Max Muncie.

I mean, he's old though, you know, and you can't completely trust the projections Especially when you can tell just by looking at his max EV that his bat speed is going a little bit It was his worst barrel rate in five years Actually his worst barrel rate since he became a regular there is some you know risk that and he's like He's turning into like a fifty fifty percent fly ball guy that that's why he'll turning into a 50% fly ball guy, that's why he'll never have a good batting average. But OBP leagues I think I'd still be in,

and I'd only expect to just have a lot of Max Muncie because I'm actually so worried about third base as a position that I end up getting a third base move for him. Oh, okay, well I think he's a good corner. But I can see him as sort of a least possible, least last possible acceptable starting third baseman. Yeah, yeah, if you're in a 15 teamer,

you addressed everything else first, you're kind of fishing outside the top 200 for someone, I think you could actually do worse than Max Muncie. So thanks a lot for that question, Ubelewski, I don't think there's profanity in that handle. If there is, I'm apologizing to anyone. That's in another language. Yeah. I think Ubelewski was a safe handle to read on air.

We had one more email from Dr. Tim, who was explaining loose bodies to us. Loose body 101. This is important because I think on our last episode, we're like, what does that even mean? In any joint, a small piece of cartilage can get chipped off. The body doesn't eat this up, but the little tiny piece of cartilage is still floating around getting nourishment from the joint fluid.

Over the course of years, it can continue to grow and turn into a little tiny pebble or even bigger. These pebbles are like tiny asteroids with bone in the center and cartilage around them. Treatment for them is typically arthroscopy, a television camera, and those little asteroids are pulled out. you know mentioned ligament Damage and that technically is true But it's a little bit more nuanced for a joint to be wobbly enough to start knocking off pieces of cartilage Ligaments are potentially a little loose and wobbly and the joint is loose and wobbly this allows for that kind of instability

I guess technically it is ligament damage, but it's more nuanced than that so the loose bodies man small piece of cartilage You got to watch out for those. I Think it's I nuanced than that. So loose bodies, man, small piece of cartilage. You gotta watch out for those. I think it's, I'm reading between lines here, but I think it's a decent surgery. It's not like he had surgery on his flexor tendon. If somebody calls that elbow surgery, they're not doing it justice. Like that's one of the lesser elbow surgeries,

if I'm correct, and Dr. Tim can correct me in the future. But he's also pointing out that the one I had, and he's right, there's an avulsion fracture, which is where the ligament pulls a little piece of bone off and like off the, you know, the big mass of bone. And you know, that's different because that's not a fragment that's like floating around. It's still attached to a ligament.

Fracture 101 from Dr. Tim is your standard description of the bone cracks in half. That's pretty obvious, that's a fracture. But the second one is where the ligament pulls that tiny piece off. And he said it's similar to if you put tape on a piece of paper and pull the tape off, it takes a little paper with it.

That's the evulsion fracture. Behaves more like a ligament tear, but technically it's called a fracture. It's a good visual though, because I think that, I've seen that before. Yeah, unfortunately on mine, they should have done surgery to push that bone back in and instead the bone grew out to meet it. So now I have like a larger bone there than I'm supposed to. Yeah, it sounds like you're winning.

Some bizarre way. I don't know if it's helping you. Not when it's raining. I can feel it. Thanks to Dr. Tim for the clarity there. If you got questions for us for a future episode you can send those in through Discord, drop them in the mailbag channel, you can also email us at ratesandbarrels.gmail.com is one of the many ways to get in touch with us there. You can find us on Blue Sky, you know us as enoceras.bsky.social, I am dvr.bsky.social. That is going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels.

We resume our position preview series in the outfield on Wednesday. Thanks for listening. Hey everyone, it's Robert Mase. The NFL playoffs are here and we've got you covered on the Athletic Football Show. For wild card weekend all the way through Super Bowl 59, my co-host Derek Klassen and I will guide you through every game, matchup, and big-time performance on the way to one team lifting the Lombardi Trophy in New Orleans. Catch the Athletic Football Show wherever you listen to podcasts.