Rates & Barrels - Round 1 of Dodgers-Padres delivers, and examining reach rate risers and fallers

Episode Date: April 20, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss Round 1 of Dodgers-Padres, the Jays' surprisingly effective pitching, and reach rate risers and fallers -- including Victor Robles, Cedric Mullins, Keston Hiura, and Javier Báez, among others.  Rundown 2:04 Round 1 of Dodgers-Padres Delivers 12:36 The Jays’ Surprising Early Pitching 22:37 An Excuse to Talk About Victor Robles? 27:19 Buying Into Amed Rosario’s Shifting Approach 32:01 Omar Narváez & Colin Moran Are Exceeding Expectations 35:51 Cedric Mullins’ Quiet Improvement 40:43 Carlos Santana’s Increased Reach Rate 44:33 Another Look at Keston Hiura’s Flaws 50:43 Javier Báez Finds Rock Bottom 58:56 Confident in Randy Arozarena Despite Low Z-Contact%? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Subscribe to The Athletic for just $3.99/mo to start: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Monday, April 19th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris on this episode. We talk about round one of the Dodgers and Padres. It was a win for the Dodgers, but a fun series nonetheless. So we'll dig into that. We're going to take a look at some early plate discipline concerns. We're seeing some pretty ugly patterns for some players that have us worried. So we're going to outline those concerns as we dig into some leaderboards. Eno, how's it going for you on this Monday?

It's good. It's good. I was at the beach yesterday. I could still be at the beach. It's hard to beat that. Although I tore through all my data on the trip to the Grand Canyon. I've never been this far over on my data. So I couldn't watch a game while at the beach.

It's probably okay. I actually had to put the phone away for a little bit. But we played, you know that game 500? Yeah, where you throw a football into a crowd, usually of children, and see if anyone catches it. I tried it with the two boys and just a little inflated ball. It worked all right. I thought it would end in tears. But we managed to actually

have each of them win a round. They're not the greatest athletes in the world. They're going to just turn this into a fight, I think. If they both won, that's as much as you could really ask for, I think, as a parent because that reduces the chances of them probably brawling with each

other on the beach. That's exactly right. Let's talk about Dodgers and Padres. Friday night was a really exciting game. Drama really at every single turn. Fernando Tatis Jr. came back, and he homered in that game. And this game went extras because the Dodgers played it a run in the eighth. Padres put up two in the bottom of the inning.

Dodgers scored in the top of the ninth. Padres scored in the bottom, again, to tie it. And then things sort of unraveled in extras with the Dodgers hanging a five spot in the 12th to eventually get the win there. But you think about this team, this Padres team, and they're clearly a small notch below the Dodgers, but they're capable of punching at that weight class. I think that was what they proved this weekend. It was something we probably knew and suspected all along. And it's one of those series,

every time it comes around, I think we're going to see everybody shifting the focus off of the usual suspects to watch things play out. The intensity, I feel like, though, has come up a notch since the teams have gotten better. This is an existing

rivalry, but Dodgers-Giants had a little bit more juice because both teams were good for a stretch there. But when you get teams that are natural rivals and then they add the fact that both are good it's really fun it's really fun and and you know if you put this rivalry up against some of

the other ones I feel like um yeah like think about like Yankees Red Sox games like one of the the the the like number one things that you might think of when you think about Yankees Red Sox games. One of the number one things that you might think of when you think about Yankees Red Sox game is a 20 pitch at bat. Those two teams see more pitches than anybody in baseball. When they play, it's like four and a half

hours, five hour games. It's excellently played and well done. it's it's that true outcome type baseball a lot of times um but this one feels a little more different like when i thought of this weekend's uh battles i thought i think of like the mookie betts sliding catch i think of the tatis homer um I think of a couple big pitches. The defining term to me almost seems athleticism. These two teams were very exciting.

And someone reacted. I said that Friday night was a very enjoyable game. And they said that only if I was a Dodger fan. I think that's too outcome-centric. That was a really good game that went back and forth. And the outcome of the game was in the balance the whole time. And we saw some really outstanding feats of athleticism. And, yeah, maybe somebody booted the ball around a key moment or a reliever couldn't get it figured out. But just enjoyable baseball, you know, that didn't always take five hours.

Every at-bat wasn't like a slog. Right, and you had a great pitcher's duel on Saturday night. Kershaw and Darvish going toe-to-toe. Dodgers took that one 2-0, and the Padres ended up taking Game 3. I think you had a little bit of something for everyone. Both Snell and Bauer pitched well in the final game of the series. I think that's one of the things I really like about these two teams right now. If their rotations stay healthy, you're not going to see a lot of 10-8 sort of games. You're not going to see overwhelming high scoring games because

these pitching staffs are good enough to keep great offenses quiet. And I think with that sort of balance, there's a lot more hanging on every single pitch. And I think that's why this one felt like, I thought on Friday night, that was a great game. And the only challenging thing about it, if you lived on the East Coast, it ran late just because it's a West Coast game that went to extras. There's not much you can do about that. Otherwise, no real complaints at all. I know people are kicking around the extra innings rules again.

A little frustration, I think, from a lot of people just based on some things that have happened early on this season. That's the rule for now. So I don't know if complaining about it's going to change anything anytime soon. But I don't know. I just think if I could change it, the runner would start at first base in extra innings because i would like to see i'd like to see the pitching team have an easy out an easy air quotes sort of out if they make a great pitch they execute a double play they deserve

to be able to swing the inning and possibly get out with a scoreless frame and get out quickly instead of having that sort of, well, you can move the runner around and get one and the other team can do the same thing. I kind of think starting the runner on second doesn't speed up extra innings the way the league hoped when they put that rule in place. Well, I mean, obviously it does. It does, but it doesn't seem like it makes that much of a difference. And it's not that compelling. If for a team to win with two sacrifice flies,

or like a bunt and a sacrifice fly. Mmm, yum. You know? There is a pressure, though, if the first team does that, the second team has to do that or more. So there's... And definitely it's working in terms of games are going shorter. We're not seeing these 20 inning long games anymore with this when this is implemented.

So it's working in that regard. And I will point out in one thing I want to point out is that extra inning baseball is not always quality baseball. If you look at what happens with swing rates, swing rates just start going up. Because everyone's just basically extra inning baseball. If you think that triathlon baseball is not great, extra inning baseball is the worst thing for you. Because all they're trying to do is either walk or hit a tank.

I mean, it seems like everybody is just taking these wild, huge-ass swings and trying to end is either walk or hit a tank i mean that's like it seems like everybody is just taking these wild huge ass swings and trying to end the game with one swing you know what i mean and and then pitchers are taking advantage of that they know that everybody's in swing mode um and so they don't necessarily pitch uh towards the zone i don't know i've seen i've seen some 18th innings that were not compelling baseball, I have to say. And I think the biggest complaint you could have about Friday night's game is that the Padres essentially ran out of pitchers. Jake Cronenworth was pitching at the end of that game. And if you have a competitive game and you have to throw position players, that's not an ideal outcome.

Even though I know Cronenworth was a two-way player in college and has a little bit of that, but it just doesn't bode well long-term if that happens often. I'm not worried about that being a thing that's going to happen a lot with the current rules, but that was one of the disappointing things if there was anything disappointing about the series. Yeah. It happened again today. I think that position players pitching has worn off on me with, I'm kind of coming around to disliking it. At first it was so novel and so interesting.

You're like, ooh, you know, Pablo Sandoval's pitching, that's funny. But now I'm like, kind of like, okay, Jermaine Mercedes and Danny Mendick were pitching today. What is that? Like, how does that, like, howermaine Mercedes and Danny Mendick were pitching today. What is that? Like, how does that, like, how do I feel about that? Because, you know, Giolito was taken out.

They let him pitch, like, a 40-inning first inning, 40-pitch first inning, and then, like, he had, like, went to, like, 20 more pitches in the second inning before they took him out. And I don't know if I'm arguing for them to leave him in. In that situation, he seems like you don't want to leave him in. He could be hurt. So I don't want that to happen.

But at the same time, having two position players play a pitch by the seventh inning in a game that was still doable. I think it was six runs at the time, maybe seven. Yeah. Maybe you should just forfeit. Yeah. I saw that going around. I think it was Jason Mastrodonato was tweeting about that. Have a white flag, have an option to punt on a game after six or seven innings if you don't want to throw any more pitchers out there that are actually pitchers. And that's more or less what you're doing. You're just trying to get through the inning. Andnings if you don't want to throw any more pitchers out there that are actually pitchers. That's more or less what you're doing. You're just trying to get

through the inning and maybe if you catch lightning in a bottle, you can get back into it the next frame. But think about the paying customers though too, right? Yeah, and that novelty has worn off as more and more teams have done that in those situations. The little bit of novelty we used to have.

Well, the novelty has run out, but also think about someone who's paid for what they think is a seven or nine inning game. They want to maybe just, even if it's not a good game, like maybe if it's a blowout, like people stick around in blowouts, right?

There's some people still there. You just wave the flag. You're just like, okay, no more concessions, like from a business standpoint, no more concessions being sold, none of that,

you know? And from a like fan standpoint, it's like,ions being sold, none of that. And from a fan standpoint, it's like, oh, okay, I guess I would go home now. It's like a spring training game. A weird ending. Spring training games are just ending. It's weird. It would make a regular season game feel like a spring training game. You'd just be like,

oh, so we can just decide when things are over now? Okay, I guess I'll go home. Yeah, I'm not actually arguing for the white flag. I think it's just days like today, the Patriots day game between the Red Sox and the White Sox is one of those days where you're like, wow, I wish there was a way to get through this without having the position players pitch.

But here we are. I guess if that's our biggest problem, well, at least we got baseball back and we got a full season of baseball here in 2021. It does give all of the fans who think that they could pitch in major leagues some hope. Like, yeah, I could throw 65 like Danny Mendick. I could throw 47.

He was throwing knucklers up there, wasn't he? Yeah, he actually looked pretty good. Jermaine had some command of his 76 mile an hour heater. He thinks he can touch 94 if he gets to pitch in the game again, which would be... Yeah, I think apparently Tony told him not to air it out. Well, I guess that's it. Just like

when pitchers hit, we're just hoping, don't get hurt. The last thing you want is a key hitter to get hurt pitching in a blowout game. That's a bad scenario too. So I think that's part of where my frustration comes from is just wanting the best players to stay healthy and be out there the next day. But Dodgers-Padres, a great series in round one. Oh, to your point about the pitching staff too, best runs allowed in the major leagues this year.

Giants number one. Usually that's at least somewhat parkated. Mets number two. That's pretty exciting, but they're struggling to score a little bit. And then Dodgers, Padres, Indians, Brewers, and Blue Jays. That's the biggest surprise for me. The Blue Jays being in that conversation. Because you mentioned the Giants with the park factors.

Okay, I can wrap my head around that happening, especially for any 15-game stretch. I think with the injuries the Jays have dealt with, especially, I wouldn't have projected them anywhere near the top 10. So that, to me, is something I would not have expected at all. Yeah, and if you do the qualified leaderboard, they only have Ryu and Mats. I think Mats is single-handedly one of the bigger surprises, perhaps flukes, but also maybe just a well-coached turnaround.

But they've also had their injury problems. So like Merrimether right now, Julian Merrimether is on the DL. Tyler Chatwood is on the DL. Jordan Romano is on the DL. So they're going to be tested right now. Yeah. Mats, I mean, let's just pull on that thread a little bit. How real could this possibly be?

A big difference when you look at the underlying numbers. Homer has been a problem for him throughout his career. His home run rate this season is about a third of what it's been in his career. So, you know, that's skills growth on a small sample. Air quotes again. But look, he's not walking, guys. K-rate's decent. The batting average on balls in play, which't mean a lot down at 190 so he's been very fortunate for balls in play so far

as well but okay so what's different what's is anything different about matt's in the pitch mix in the velocity i always thought of him as a guy that really didn't have a consistent third pitch and that's why i always thought he was destined to finish with a low four ZRA, kind of a league average whip. When he's good, he's really good. When he's bad, he's really bad. Just an extremely volatile back-end sort of starter that maybe plays up a bit in fantasy because of some swing and miss in his arsenal. Yeah, and he's also one of these guys that because he throws 95 from the left, people kind of assume the stuff is there.

But it's a 95-mile-an-hour sinker that actually has basically average movement by sinker. So at this point, throwing 94.5 with average movement on your sinker is not going to actually improve your stuff number. You know what I mean? There's just too many people that can do that so i think i agree with you the breaking balls have never been great um when you look at uh his stuff plus numbers uh it's 93 overall uh maybe 94 not very great and um the sinker is 105 so actually he does he does okay there uh the change up is 102 so he's got the two pitches and then here we go slider 76 stuff plus curveball 72 yeah so he's just uh

he's like a fastball change-up guy that's never really had a great breaking ball um and i see him 94 uh stuff 101 command plus i just see him as a guy who's most likely going to be league average, and he's in the wrong league for that. Going to be facing DHs. As the weather warms, I see that home run rate tripling perhaps. So I am not a believer. I mean, the good news here, he's healthy to begin the season, too. That's been part of the story with Steve and Matt.

A lot of missed time due to injuries. So at least he's got that working for him right now. If that stays, then maybe he ends up getting back to his previous career best. A full season. 340 ERA, 121 whip. I don't think you can expect that, especially in the ALEs. Next best season was 397 and 125. To me, that's about as good as it could possibly get.

And even that is beating the projections by more than a half run in most cases. So I would still take the over on that 2018 set of ratios from Matt. Yeah. I mean, there's room. We hate nuance, right? There's room for him to have an okay season and be valuable to the Blue Jays and also not be a great fantasy option going forward, right? Yeah.

Yeah. If he's about a two-win pitcher over the course of the season, throws 180 innings, that's good for the Jays. Ends up with like a 4-5 ERA. Has a stretch where hits a 5 ERA, but maybe they win some of those games anyway. I think generally, though,

I don't think this result will hold on a team level. They're being hit too hard by injuries, and Stripling, I just looked, uh, stripling. I just looked, has a 62 stuff plus on his four seam fastball.

That's a guess who has a 61 Kai Tom. So, uh, yeah, I think that is a big yikes. Um, and K was looking okay recently. I don't have him in this for some reason. Um, maybe he pitched right after, um, Yikes. And Kay was looking okay recently.

I don't have him in this for some reason. Maybe he pitched right after we made this run at those numbers. I just personally don't think of Anthony Kay as much more than maybe a fill-in five, more of a six. So, Ray needs to start finding the plate quick. Yeah. Right right now he's walking almost twice as many as he's striking out and then what like rork is kind of at this point i think a five more of a six fill in five right yep so you've got two fill in five sixes you got ray could be a three matt's could be a three then you have one be a three. Then you have a one. I mean, that doesn't seem like a great rotation. No, and I still think there's a lot of importance on the quality of the innings they eventually get from Nate Pearson.

I just think because of the lack of quality in that rotation, they need Pearson to come up and be more like a mid-rotation guy, if not something better. It's hard to expect more than that, given how young he is. But that's sort of what they need as a team, given the lack of alternatives. 100 innings does not seem like it's coming from either Julian Mayweather or Tom Hatch. No. So if you're only going to get 100 innings

from the two of them combined, maybe even, I might even set the over-under at like 90 for the two of them combined just with the way you start the season like this. You know, it just hurt. Then that's like at least another 100, 150 innings of what they thought would be quality innings that they're looking to replace. Yeah. So it's a little bit on the precipice there.

As much as it looks good early on, I'm kind of like, you know, you guys could use a couple more pitchers. A little wobbly, and I'm not sure they're going to be committed to getting that help in season. I wonder if that's more of an off-season sort of push as opposed to something they can do in June or July. Maybe a lot hinges on the record at that point too, right? If they're still in the thick of the AL East battle,

then in that case, maybe they're willing to make that move sooner rather than later but i do have my doubts about just how much they're going to push in here in 2021 but yeah robbie ray i'm sorry i just i can't get on board and roark like you said probably a true five or six at this point of his career. Interestingly enough, there are still different... Though most teams, I think, are studying stuff and have their own stuff numbers, I think there's still a disparity in stuff numbers. I think that there was a big internal discussion about Tywon Walker versus Robbie Ray because they had both those guys last year and they had the opportunity to bring them both back. And so by this public facing stuff number, we've got Robbie Ray

coming in at 97. That's the one that I'm working on with Choice Fielder. His name is Max Bay. And Walker comes in at 109. I'm working on with a choice fielder. His name is Max Bay. Um, and Walker, uh, comes in at one Oh nine. Um, so just based on stuff alone, you'd,

you'd figure, uh, you go with Walker, but, um, I had, uh, some inkling that their internal stuff numbers saw things differently.

Yeah. That's pretty interesting. Cause that's a decent gap in that public facing number. It's not a coin flip. Yeah, that's pretty interesting. That's a decent gap in that public-facing number. It's not a coin flip. And it seems to kind of line up with Walker doing well so far, and Ray not, but

I didn't even get to the command number, which you know favors Walker. Yeah, unfortunately it just has to. I can get it out if you want it might actually be pretty hilarious let me see here uh ray at one point was one of the worst i'm gonna guess he's in the low to mid 80s yeah i'm gonna put like i'm gonna get 83 yeah yeah nice oh 94 oh he's improved it even though he's walking eight per nine. How is that possible? He used to be in the 80s.

Walker 104 command plus. So, I mean, by these numbers, you go with Walker and it seems to be working out for the Mets. Yeah, so far, so good, at least as far as the Mets adding Taiwan Walker, one of the nice early season surprises to this point. All right. You know, let's get to some early season surprises on the plate discipline front. We're going to dig into some movers in terms of swinging at pitches outside the strike zone. Let's start with the negative. Now, let's start with the positive. We need some good news. We're just talking about Robbie Ray not having command. We got a question about Victor Robles that came in,

and I'll use any excuse to talk about Victor Robles, and I'm paraphrasing, but it was... Yes, you were. Basically, the question was, he's terrible, and he's hitting lower in the order. Are you worried? And naturally, I wanted to look at some of the underlying numbers and see if anything was wrong.

There's some good news here. Even though he's hitting lower in the order, a lot of times against righties especially, he's going to be bottom third of the order. Against lefties, he can move up and maybe lead off. So I wouldn't worry too much about the lineup placement. That's going to be fluid. But we are seeing a slightly lower K rate, 24.5%, compared to where he was at last year at 28%. And he's walking more than ever. 12.2% walk rate early on here for Robles. No power yet,

does have a stolen base, was caught once. Counting stats haven't been good. Nats, of course, did miss a couple games early in the season, so they're a little behind schedule as a result of that. But the underlying, underlying numbers. among hitters with at least 20 plate appearances this season, a 14.2% improvement from where he was. So he's not chasing pitches outside the zone. And that to me means a lot for a guy whose plate discipline was definitely a problem last year and wasn't necessarily great even when he played well back in 2019. Yeah, I think he's, you know, Britt was talking about how he kind of came muscled up and wanted to be Juan Soto. And I think he's actually doing a much better Juan Soto impersonation this year without the power, of course. But just in terms of a 367 OBP, I think if you were the Nationals, you're happy with the way it started out for Robles. Because this is what you think he can do more, right? Have the lowest swinging strike rate of your career, have the highest walk rate of your career, and maybe

at the end of the season only have 10 homers. I think that that outcome is better than you swinging for the fences and having a 65 WRC+. Just look at WRC+, 90 WRC+. if he can run a 90 WRC plus out there then with the defense in center field he's going to be a valuable player for them if he's running a 65 then he's not so valuable so I tend to think the defense is good I tend to think that a 367 OVP is good and that he'll keep running him out there and that he's kind of a buy low in fantasy. Hey, your words, not mine. I want to run it by someone else because my bias precludes me from providing analysis about Victor Robles. But again, I've got him almost everywhere, so I can't buy low. It's more of a hold for me. But if you're not in a league with me,

You can't buy low. It's more of a hold for me. But if you're not in a league with me, I think Eno's on point here. I think this is an overall good underlying number of sort of start for a guy that kind of needed something to fall back on, given that the surface numbers haven't been good so far. And for the most part, I would say that this list is an interesting early season way to find your buy lows. Because if somebody is, and we should provide the link because this is a cool little tool that they have at fangraphs so you can you can compare season over season stats but if you just compare reach rate over last year these people that are on this list are seeing the plate much better and swing rates are something that become more meaningful early on.

And so if they are not swinging at balls and they just haven't hit a bunch of homers yet, you know, the homers, that's the worst thing to look at. You know, isolated power, that's the worst thing to look at. That takes a full season to understand, you know. A guy could go out and have a three-homer game tomorrow and all of his stats would look completely different. I tend to think that Omar Narvaez, I don't know if he's actually a buy low. He's actually performing well, but I believe. I think Steven Piscotty, who's number one on this list, is actually a decent buy low.

Piscotti, who's number one on this list, is actually a decent buy low. More of maybe an AL only type situation. But I think the power will come for him. Uli Gurriel. If there's a reason for this person to be fringe, like injury or age, like Albert Pujols is number four on the list. I'm not telling you to go get Albert Pujols. I think Jared Walsh is in the middle of taking a job right now.

Yeah, and I think once the outfield gets more crowded, that's when Pujols gets squeezed for sure. I think for now, Walsh can play a little more in the outfield just because they haven't brought up Adele or Brandon Marsh. But the other guy that caught my eye near the top of this list is Ahmed Rosario. And I'm curious to know, what do you think what a player is just swinging less in general? So swinging just 40% of the time for his career, Ahmed Rosario has swung 52.6% of the time. Outside the zone though, he has his O-swing under 30%. Usually he's right around 40%.

So when you see a guy swinging less overall, does that temper some of your enthusiasm about a reduced O-swing percentage? It does because I'd much rather see them take it all from O-swing. So if you look at what Rosario has done, he's taken 12 points off of his swing percentage, but he's also taken something like eight or nine points off of his zone swing percentage and 13 points off his reach rate. So it's good that he's taken more off his reach rate than his zone swing, but it also means that he's only swinging at 57% of the pitches he sees in the zone, which is going to lead to strikeouts. You know, look at this. His called strike percentage is the highest he's seen.

So if you look at called strikes as whiffs, this is an interesting way to look at called strikes as whiffs. You know what I mean? Because he's changing his play discipline, but he's just shifting more to the called strikes than the swinging strikes. And if you look overall, he's got 32% called strikes and wh swinging strikes and if you look overall he's got 32 percent called strikes and whiffs this year and his career is 29 so he he hasn't really made an improvement that's i think you could use call strikes and whiffs almost within a player best to just see

oh yeah he's just he's just moving the strikes around a little bit i mean i think the the little glimmer of hope is that swinging less he is is walking more early on, 9.1%, easily a career high for Ahmed Rosario. And he's not striking out a ton, so that's good news. fastballs you can drive or looking for something and being a little more selective to get there. But, you know, there are downsides to shifting the approach in an extreme too. Like you mentioned, you can fall behind in counts more often and, you know, just end up down 0-1, down 1-2 because you're too passive. You're not taking advantage of opportunities earlier in the account. That could happen as well. I'm just a little surprised to see that walk rate improvement from him because I thought Ahmed Rosario was just going to be a 4% to 5% walk rate guy. It works for some guys. It works for Tim Anderson. Tim Anderson's probably never going to be a guy that walks a lot, but that's fine. The hit tool seems to be a lot better

than we once thought. He hits the ball hard and he runs really well. So that, at least for the next couple of years, keeps him in this well above average overall output. With Ahmed Rosario, we've never seen him finish as even a league average hitter. The 99 WRC plus we saw in 2019 is the best we've seen so far. I know he's only 25, so it's possible we haven't seen his best season yet, but it's also possible that we have because he's been in the big leagues long enough where you can't rule out that possibility at this point. I will say something about him. Would buy him low if he is still starting like May 5th. And the reason I say this is look at how they treated Oscar Mercado last year.

They gave him a month. Yeah, that could be all it takes. And I think we've talked about this at least once already this season. Trying to learn a new position on the fly as it pertains to someone like Andrew Vaughn. Clearly, it could have an impact on you as a hitter because you're carrying those mistakes with you. Maybe you're not getting as much time to focus on hitting as you'd like. Eugenio Suarez is struggling a little. Yeah, and Keston Hira too. These are all guys we're probably going to talk about at some point in the next little while here. Rosario has moved back and forth between shortstop and center field.

He's let off three times this year. So that's a bit weird. But again, maybe that's just the function of getting those opportunities, trying to take more pitches. Helping him be, yeah, helping him take more pitches. Yeah, and he's had four starts this year that he's been on the bench. So he's played, I think, 11 out of 15 so far. Looks like enough playing time. We're in deeper leagues, especially if I'm really desperate for speed

and don't want to trade a lot to get that opportunity for 15 or 20 steals. He might be the kind of player I would take that chance on, just given what we're seeing in those early numbers. The other name you mentioned, Omar Narvaez, I think he just got back to being the guy that he was during his last season before he came to the Brewers. I mean, the thing that struck me about Narvaez when I dug into him for a piece at that time was that he would show power to the pull side and he would sort of adjust his approach in counts where he fell behind and we'd see him go the opposite way. And I think he's shown a little bit of that this season too.

He's off to a great start. So it doesn't fit the, you're going to get them in a discount sort of mold, but the kind of guy that maybe wasn't rostered in shallow one catcher leagues who by all accounts is playing enough and doing enough with that playing time to easily now be rostered and active in those formats. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think when, when you can, even with a role player, I'm looking at Colin Moran's page right now. And when I look at Omar Navarez and Colin Moran, when I look at their pages, it's like a guy who's surging early on. I know that none of these stats are really stabilized in the way that you would bank on them or whatever. But the stats with the most signal in them are swing rates.

And we're starting to get close to something where barrel rates and max EV matter. Because Colmaran has 37 batted ball events at 50. You sort of talk about it being stabilized. That doesn't mean that 50, it magically means everything. And at 37, it magically means nothing, right? It means that we're on a continuum where we're getting closer to these being meaningful.

You know, Moran's got the best barrel rate of his career and the best reach rate of his career. Best walk rate coming out of that. So while I don't necessarily believe the batting average, I think the rest of it for Moran looks like it also looks like then you have to look at like you did with Rosario in terms of how many starts they get

and what their playing time looks like, right? And I think for both of these guys in Narvaez and Moran, they're playing. There's no obvious person to take their job from them. Their swing rates and their batted ball stats from StatCast look good. So I think that's like two thumbs up, right? I mean, what else can you do? Yeah, Colin Moran is probably a player that I underestimate a little bit

coming off the shortened season. I would agree with you. There's not really anybody who's coming up to take that job. Other thing that he's changed too, he's putting a lot of balls in the air. Last season, even though he was hitting the ball hard, he had a 56.3% ground ball rate, actually the highest of his career while he was having a career best 472 slugging percentage, very odd sort of combination, but a 27% ground ball rate through 16 games. So doing what he needs to do to get to that power more often early on and right in the heart of that Pittsburgh lineup. Sure. They're not going to score that many runs, but he's going to be in the thick of things when

they do. Yeah. And, and, you know, for what it's worth, like launch angle is really interesting. It's, it's funny that barrels works out as being such a good stat because I think that pitchers have a good amount of effect on launch angle. If you think about where they throw the ball, it has a big deal. High balls go for high angles, and low balls go for low angles. So there's a lot of pitcher control over launch angle, but barrels are still like a really effective stat and if we looked at moran last year we should have seen in a small sample

but in a sample it's good enough 127 batter balls he had the best barrel rate of his career the best max ev of his career even his best average exit velocity even if that's a not not the greatest stat to use like maybe we should have seen it coming. One last player from the risers, players that are doing well, reaching less, Cedric Mullins. A 3-55, 4-12, 5-16 line through 16 games. Okay, yeah, that's not going to continue.

I happened to see the one home run that he hit, crushed one at Yankee Stadium. He's a guy that gave up switch hitting, so I think that's kind of interesting just because focusing more on one swing, that makes life just a little bit easier. They've got every reason to see what he can do as a hitter. We've seen decent plate discipline overall during parts of four seasons now that he's been in the big leagues. 21.4% K rate's not bad for your first 500 plate appearances. 7.2% walk rate, walking enough. Obviously, we like the park in Baltimore for hitters. Nothing's changed there. And he runs a little bit. So I'm just curious, as you look at the early season numbers for Cedric Mullins, where do you think we go from here? Do you think we're

talking about a guy that gets to the dozen or so home runs that the more optimistic projections have for him in 2021? And do we see him possibly get on base enough to rack up close to 20 steals? Yeah. I mean, I think this is another good place to go shopping for steals if you need them right now. I think he's going to hold on to his job. And that's the number one thing here for the Seals. As for the homers, I don't know. You see some, he has some really interesting up and down in the power numbers and in his walk numbers in the minor leagues. So maybe we should have seen this plate discipline was part of the package. Like he could lay off some of those pitches outside of the zone.

And he's doing it. So I believe it. He could lay off some of those pitches outside of the zone, and he's doing it. So I believe it. The power, I just don't necessarily see it when I look at his stack cast numbers. You know what I mean? Like career 2.3% barrel rate and 341 batted ball events. So I think maybe sort of 8 to 10.

Yeah, I guess the thing that gives me a little bit of hope, though, look at the hard hit rate. I mean, the hard hit rate's been decent. Well, it's just wonky, dude, this year. Yeah. The balls, all the balls are going faster. Yeah, I guess 43.5% right now is not 43.5% a couple years ago. I don't think so.

I don't think so. And if you just look at his average EV, it's gone up from 88.6 to 89.9. That's about the jump that you've seen in the league. So maybe 43% is last year's 32%. Maybe his hard hit rate hasn't actually functionally changed. Last year's 32%. Maybe his hard hit rate hasn't actually functionally changed. Well, hey, at least he's not going the other direction, but on the radar because the O-swing percentage down more than 10 percentage points here in the early going. Let's do this real quick. Let's do this real quick.

So leaderboards on Savant. We're going to exit velocity, but we're going to do hard hit rate. Let's make sure Mullins is on it. Mullins is 56 out of 142. Okay, you do that math. 56 out of 142. A little better than middle. So above, was that 60th percentile roughly?

So you think that's around 60th percentile? I'm just concentrating on trying to get this other leaderboard up. Yeah, so it's 61st percentile, I believe. Okay, and then last year he was three. Oh, I haven't done it short of that right yet. Hold on. Hard hit rate. Tatis was number one in hard hit rate last year.

This is how the sausage is made, folks. Yeah. Mullins, 310 out of 438. Okay. So he's had an improvement. Yeah, that's a decent jump. That's about 30th percentile. Yeah.

All right. So he's probably hitting the ball a little bit harder. All about 30th percentile. He's probably hitting the ball a little bit harder. There it is. We're in on Cedric Mullins, folks. We're in on Cedric Mullins. Had to double check the math to make sure it wasn't just the ball being different.

It's an important thing to keep in mind. Percentiles, I think, are a good way to... I think it's still instructive to do that in front of people because it's still like what people should do. If they see – like let's say you see a guy who has like a 5% increase in hard hit rate, maybe that's just all the ball. Could be.

And it would be disappointing to trade for that player or pick up that player and then find that out weeks later. Like, huh, it's just the ball the entire time. Yeah, you don't want that to happen. We are going to hit the negative side of this in just a moment. So if you have these players, I have a solution for you. All right, you know, you could be the bearer of bad news as you look at the opposite end of this leaderboard,

the reach rates that have spiked the most early on. Who are you most concerned about going forward? Carlos Santana? Yeah, that's a guy that shouldn't be reaching. He's never done this before. At his best, he's very patient, does damage, usually a low average, but a great OBP, and then the power is there to show for it.

So far, it hasn't been there. And I don't know what it is, but if you compare 2021 to 2019 in terms of his swing heat maps, he is just reaching at pitches above the zone. Like he's just really falling apart on the high fastball. He's just really falling apart on the high fastball. And I wonder if it's just that's what the league is doing generally, right? And it's been doing it even more from 2019 to 2020 to 2021. So maybe that's his kryptonite.

Maybe we found something that he can't deal with that well. And, uh, and that, that can be all someone wrote, you know, at 35 years old. You know, you had a piece,

I think either last year or two years ago now talking about players who had changed teams being more aggressive, right? That was a piece that you had and And Kansas City is new to him, even though AL Central, he's been in Cleveland for most of his career. But yeah, the swing rate overall, 46.2%. Carlos Santana has never swung this much

in his entire career in general. And 24.1% for the O swing, easily the highest of his career. Normally tops out around 20%. The last time he got to 20%, his one year in Philadelphia. That's right. I was going to say it.

Yep. Oh, man. Comfort level. He's just trying to impress everybody. Trying to hit a five-run home run every time he steps in. It's interesting because the team's doing decent. Oh, they're in first

even. April standings are fun. I don't even look at them. That's why I'm like, oh, they're in first. But they're in first even april standings are fun i i don't even look at it that's why i'm like oh they're in first um but uh uh they're also scoring uh 4.4 runs a game which is top third and puts them on par with like the brewers that's the wrong league the mariners and the athletics they're ahead of the mariners and athletics in terms of run score. They haven't had Modesty. Maybe this, I don't know, you know, maybe Modesty comes back. Maybe the team

continues to go and Santana just calms down. I mean, you'd think that he would regress to every other year in his career when it comes to excellent play discipline, you know? Yeah, and the weird thing is he's still walking a ton a 16.9 walk rate k rate hasn't gone completely off the charts 18.6

is high for him but i mean it's not alarming to see that right so i think part of the problem too is you look at carlos santana obviously at this stage of his career, especially doesn't run well. He is pulling the ball more than ever. So he's going to be a low average on balls and play guy at this stage of his career for sure. So there's, there's that too.

Like the batting average drain is real and that's not changing. I don't think you, I don't think you drafted him expecting anything close to that two 81 that happened in 2019. I can't really walk anyone through how that actually happened for a full season, but it did. Yeah, he's going to hit 220, 230 probably in the best case scenario. The projections are too optimistic. Yeah, OBP is more like passable. So if you're in an OBP league and you're just trying to get an accumulator on

the cheap, sure, you could do that. But I think we're seeing the signs of a player who is in the twilight of his career. This is not shocking for a guy who's 35 years old. Yeah. But the guy that I'm really worried about, and it's because I'm a Brewers fan, but it's also because we've talked about him before and we wondered if the problem he had had in the past was something he might be able to correct over the course of an offseason by changing up his swing. It's Keston Hira. I mean, the surface numbers are miserable. If you got Keston Hira on your team or if you've watched Brewers games and have seen him, he just doesn't look like the guy we saw in 2019. And he's not getting to the power quite the way that he was

in the shortened season either. So I don't know. I mean, I'm panicking in part because I root for the team he plays for, but I'm also panicking because I think the underlying flaws we're seeing with his swing rate being as high as it is right now, he seems like he needs to go to AAA and press reset because he's still chasing pitches above the zone and he's just not going to catch up to those pitches yeah it's just his contact rate a heat map is just it's no good uh if you look at his contact rate uh it's just a solid blue uh across the top of the zone even probably the top third of the zone i would say and actually kind of the top half of the zone um I would say. And actually kind of the top half of the zone. And he makes his best contact low and in.

And, you know, that's his bread and butter. But right now where the pitches are going is anywhere but low and in. You know, if you just look at his pitch percentage heat map, it's all low and away and up and in. If you just look at his pitch percentage heat map, it's all low and away and up and in. It just seems to be if you look at the fastball heat map this year they're throwing it way above the zone. They almost don't even, like a four seam

in the zone, he sees only way outside. But everything else, just above the zone. They're just picking apart that hole. And if he starts thinking about it too much, you start looking at what he's doing against breaking balls, and they're throwing that one off the plate away. And he's reaching on those. So he's just stuck in between.

And I don't know, man, I don't, I don't see a way out. I see triple a in his future. I mean, among qualified hitters, Keston here has the second worst zone contact percentage in the league.

And when he came in, he was in the 76% range and you could live there. You could live at 76% when you do damage the way Hira does. That's perfectly fine for a zone contact rate. But when you're living in the Javi Baez portion of that list, you're broken. You're at the extreme end of swinging and missing. I think sliders just ate him up. JT Brubaker, if I remember this plate appearance correctly,

there was a weekend matchup against JT Brubaker, if I remember this plate appearance correctly, there was a weekend matchup against JT Brubaker. Brubaker threw him three straight sliders, and Keston Hira struck out in about 25 seconds. It was just painful. I think we're going to see our guy Daniel Vogelback get some run at first base for a little while. Once the minor league season starts, if Keston here is still struggling anywhere near as much as he's struggling right now, he's going to see time back at AAA this year. And that's really disappointing for a player that was still an early middle round guy, right? Round six, round seven type pick. He wasn't a top 50 guy, but he was still in that 60 to 90 range in a lot of leagues. So I'm definitely concerned and I'm not necessarily buying low in redraft. Maybe,

maybe I'd be buying low in longterm keeper and dynasty. You know, it depends on how much of a discount I'm getting, but definitely concerned of where I've got them in 2021. You know, organizationally, it might make sense to send them down because for what I understand, Keston heroura has...

They all do. They all have their own batting coaches, but maybe there's been a little bit of trouble getting through to him from the organizational standpoint that he's had his own way of doing things. If you have success like that, then...

I was writing about the Stanford swing and everyone would say, oh, the Stanford swing is terrible stanford swing is terrible but carlos quentin uh you know was a great you know power hitter in in in big leagues and he went to stanford and it's like well i found out that nobody touched his swing when he was at stanford because he was he was hitting for power at stanford so like he never learned the stanford swing so um it can it can be to your benefit to not always listen to your organization and to have your own coaches and stuff. I'm not saying that that's a uniform thing. You should always listen to your organization's coaches.

There are teams that are bad at player development. We're learning this. But at the same time, if you come up and do amazingly and then just start to not do as well and not do as well and not do as well you do come to that moment where you have to say do i have to listen to somebody new you know do i have to listen to somebody new you have to try something different i can't just say this is what got me here because if i stick to this is what got me here i'm going to be gone yeah i so i may need to make a wake-up call basically right i can't i mean i can't diagnose it any more than what we're describing here i i just think he needs to

press the reset button and make some mechanical adjustments and some of this is pitch selection too we've seen kyle schwarber and cody bellinger get this treatment in terms of pitching right we've seen both those guys at some point where it was like we knew it was going to happen in the play appearance. It was just going to be high fastball, high fastball, high fastball. You know what I mean? And they found their way out of it. And we've seen good hitters go down even

in year three and come back and become better players. Michael Conforto comes to mind as a guy that had to go down for a little while. Alex Gordon. Alex Gordon had very similar actually. Started out okay and then just no and then no

and then no. Went to the minor leagues, reset everything, reset his approach to his physical body, reset his approach to the plate and came back and had a great career. There's two more hitters I want to get to. The first is on pace for a 40 homer, 50 steal season.

That's terrible. With a 45% K rate and a sub 2% walk rate. Obviously, I'm talking about Javier Baez, who I mentioned a bit earlier, has the lowest zone contact rate in the league. Not a surprise. I'm pretty sure he's been in this position before. But he's not on this changer list, is he? Not on the changer list, I don't think,

because his 2020 was awful. Yeah, he's continued to be awful. Right. He sort of hit rock bottom last year in so many ways, and I'm looking to see if that was even a shift from years before that. I mean, his O swing percentages were actually worse a few years ago. So he's not swinging and missing at pitches outside the zone

any more than he used to. He's actually improved there. But he's making a lot less contact when he chases pitches outside the zone. So things he used to be able to hit outside the zone, he's no longer hitting. And his zone rate, the amount of pitches that people are giving him in the zone are just every year going down. Yeah.

Because that's the book. back 10 years and you've got a player you know like javi baez that has now for 300 plate appearances had a two percent walk rate and 40 strikeout rate right i think that player would no longer be playing yeah and i have evidence for this i looked at uh terrible plate discipline seasons in the past versus now and it was in the context of tim anderson and paul de young um having close to sort of like eight to one strike out to walk ratios at some point early in their careers um and me saying like gosh eight to one uh seems like a bad deal. And how often does this happen? So I looked.

And in history, like going even to like 1990 or 2000, you had on the order of like two or three players a season that had like an 8-1 strikeout to walk ratio. And then just now in the sort of 2015 in the stack cast era you're starting to get 10 15 20 players a year that are doing this um and it's been a big explosion i think most of all it has to do with rising striker rates around the league you know so 40 strikeout rate is more acceptable um emphasis on power so let's say you uh are a very good defender and have lots of power and have this historically bad

strikeout minus walk rate. They can say, you're giving us enough value in these other places that we're going to leave you on the field. Traditionally, that has been the purview of catchers. So, and I don't think it's ever

really a good place to be on a leaderboard with a bunch of catchers uh offensively so here are the worst strikeout to walk ratio and this was done in 2017 so it's obviously old and there's probably people on top of it now probably tim anderson and paul deong and now javi baez are are near the top of this uh but i wanted to have bigger seasons so i had a 400 plate appearance minimum um and this is uh miguel olivo is our man uh he can do it uh he has a 23 strikeout rate and a two percent walking rate uh in the season 2006 and that is the worst season of plate discipline we've ever seen.

11 strikeouts per walk. But I just wanted to run through some names real quick to give you an idea of where Javier Baez, this is who Javier Baez is hanging out with right now. Right now he has a 45 to 1, or I guess like a 25 to 1 strikeout to walk ratio. So that's untenable. But even if we're talking about 7, 8, 9, 10, we're talking about Miguel Olivo.

The best hitter on here is Yvonne Rodriguez. Chris Truby. Jonathan Scope. Mike Zanino. I'm talking catchers, man. Sean Dunstan. Hal Lanier. Tim Anderson's on there.

He did make it on there. Miguel Olivo. Yvonne Rodriguez. Again. Both those guys there. Miguel Olivo. Ivan Rodriguez. Again. Both those guys again. Mariano Duncan. This is like backup infielders, right? Alfredo Griffin.

J.P. Arancibia. Juan Encarnacion, who basically his career ended because of terrible play discipline. Eddie Rosario is one of the modern names on here. Alcides Escobar is on here. It's mostly guys that were either just amazing. Javi Baez actually makes this list

in another season. His 2016 already made this list. People in Chicago are talking about extending Baez and I'm like, there's no way I would hand somebody with these strikeout walk rates People in Chicago are talking about extending bias, and I'm like, there's no way. There's no way I would hand somebody with these strikeout walk rates a long-term extension. I wouldn't give him a multi-year deal.

There's no reason to. I mean, the defense is good, but it's not elite anymore, right? That's the other. If he were playing gold-glove caliber defense and going through these struggles, okay, maybe you could argue, yeah, he's a bottom third of the order guy. Occasionally, he gets into a ball and hits a home run, but he's a good defender. His defense is good though, right? He's a good defender. I don't think he's necessarily an elite defender anymore.

But if you look at the list, I ran a leaderboard back to 1966 and sorted by walk to K ratio. They have that on the site now. I didn't have to do all that work. It's incredible. He's 22nd from the bottom, which in career, in career, in career. Yeah.

The only relevant hitters who are worse are Tim Anderson, Adalberto Mondesi, Adam Engel. I'm just going to say, is not a relevant hitter for this conversation. He's a good defender, but he's not a prominent fantasy player. It's mostly pitchers that are worse. The leaderboard is

Phil Necro, Gaylord Perry, Levon Hernandez, Greg Maddox, Fergie Jenkins, Jorge Alfaro's there. You don't want to be... This is where you want to be, on a leaderboard offensively with pitchers and catchers. Yeah. I'm not laughing at him.

It's not good news. No. It's definitely a problem for Javier Baez. I don't see how he gets out of it. If I could even get anyone interested in training for him in the few leagues where I have him, I'm definitely ears at this point because I don't know how this movie ends, but I'm not optimistic.

It's the Geico commercial with the kids wandering into the tool shed full of chainsaws. It's that. It's that type of scenario right now. And we should have seen it coming, man, with the 45% O-swing rate. I'm telling you, man, if you are in long-term keeper rate leagues uh pick the

right moment uh to to to to trade these guys but uh if you look at the oh swing leaders this year uh that are young that are meaningful uh bias is still there devers i'm i'm i think that he is a sell at some point you just got got to pick the right moment. Obviously not now if you're winning. He's on my list as someone that may not age that well. Luis Robert. He is fifth in reach rate this year. His overall stats look like he's taking a little bit of a step forward

in terms of a manageable K rate and some other things. But the underlying stats suggest that this is going to be a real issue for him long term. And Ozzy Albies, not great. 20th highest reach rate and showed as a changer, right? Didn't he? Thought he did. He wasn't top of the list, but he was somewhat prominent on there. The other player I want to ask you about, last guy before we go, is Randy Orozarena. Fun player. We talked about him a ton during the postseason. Talked about him a lot during draft season. We're only 14 games in.

A slight uptick in Ks. Slight drop in walks. Nothing alarming to this point there. He's hitting a ton of balls on the ground so far. A 64.9% ground ball rate. In the limited time we saw him last year, he was at 46.5%. Oddly enough for his career as a whole whole sitting at 55.2% which is where his first little sample with the Cardinals started but again we're dealing with so few plate

appearances I'm not sure we can say with a lot of confidence well this is who Randy Orozarena is what do you make of what we're seeing so far because he's another guy where the the O swing percentages I thought would be a lot worse than they are, but they're really not bad. They're actually good. So this to me looks like a hold or possibly a target situation if you have someone willing to move them. Yeah, I think things look okay.

I think what we're in the middle of watching the book change on him, if you look at the heat maps, the fastball heat maps, he used to get high fastballs out over the plate. And if you remember in the postseason, he hit at get high fastballs out over the plate. And if you remember in the postseason, he hit at least a couple of those the other way for big homers. So those are gone. He's not getting high, high, high pitches over the plate anymore. And so what's left are high pitches in which are a hole for everybody. There's almost not a hitter in the world who has a red part right here. That no sense how can i even hit this ball um and then uh uh breaking pitches down uh and and fastballs down so he's even getting four

seamers down which uh if you look at the hero map and the arizona map they're like couldn't be more diametrically opposed uh so arizona is getting uh getting thrown with the low low fastballs and that is why i brought up the thing about uh pitchers having control over your launch angle. I don't think that Rosarena's mechanics have fundamentally changed from last year to this year, but his ground ball rate has. Why? Well, they're throwing him low in the zone now. But I also see a guy who had higher ground ball rates in the past. So I'm not that worried.

I feel like he's comfortable down there. You know, he used to hit those balls. So what I think will happen is the K rate will come down. The batting average will go up. The power will stay sort of stagnant for a little bit. And then he's going to force pitchers back up in the zone sometimes, or at least with some mistakes and then we'll have like another power tear so i think he's like a fairly good everyday

guy that has huge power streaks you know so that's to me suggests that i'm still going to get to my 25 homers and 15 stone bases it's's just going to come in fits and starts. It's going to come when the book is changing and stuff like that. I'm not that worried. O-swing is a big part of why. You're expecting more contact in the zone than what he's made so far. 63% puts him third behind Baez and Hira at the bottom end of that list right now. I think that has to be sort of part of the change. You can't be that low in zone contact percentage

if you're going to bring that average up, if you're going to get that K rate down. It's just not going to happen. Yeah, and it is a word of caution that the number that becomes meaningful right now, the number that has the most signal in the swing rate stuff is pure swing rate so even when we're talking reach rate we're we've we've reduced our sample and we're looking at more noise so um reach rate but but it is pretty good uh when you look at something like zone contact you're cutting it again you know what i mean like you're you're you're you're cutting your your your denominator so you're you're you're reducing you're increasing the noise so like if i was going

to rank the swing metrics for how important i think they are number one or like right now number one is swing number two is o swing number three is z swing And then we get to the contact numbers. So I, you know, if he had a 70% contact rates in the zone in the past, you know, I think he can get back there. Yeah. And that swing percentage overall,

43.5%. It's not outrageously high. It's actually a little better than the typical swing rate, better than average. So not a lot to be concerned about, even with that somewhat slow start from Randy Orozarena. He really reminds me of Ramon Laureano, man. And I just hope that they don't have to trade off seasons.

Only one can be good at the same time. Yeah. Yeah, I get a real Laureano feeling from him. Laureano has really improved his strikeout rate this year and seems to be putting together one of those best seasons of his career type

situations. I think that might happen for Laureano this year. Definitely exciting what he is putting together so far. We talked about him a little bit on Friday with Britt. I think it's definitely very encouraging, and a lot of it looks sustainable. I think we said 30 steals was within reach for him, just given the fast start.

I mean, the rate he was going to steal bases at anyway was going to get him in the low 20s. And he and Biggio being on this list both remind me that, you know, it's not just terrible if a guy is reaching more, especially if they're not reaching more and reaching at the, like, 45% level. You know what I mean? If a guy goes from, like, reaching – so this is what Laureano did. If he goes from reaching 26% to 33% of the time,

I don't think that's necessarily very meaningful, right? It's still right around league average. It has to do with the function of how he's being pitched and how he's reacting to that. And sometimes can be a good for a player to be more aggressive like i know that biggio right now is showing this high strikeout rate but if you look at the isolated power it's good and there might be something waiting for biggio if he is more aggressive there might be some one last layer he can unlock if he's aggressive, partially because if you look, his swing rates are so low that his swing rates in

the zone are pretty low. So right now he's got the highest swing rate in the zone and the highest reach rate. If he can iron that out, there might actually be one last level for Biggio to unlock. Yeah, he's been a player we've talked a lot about over the last couple years because the profile is pretty unusual, so I'm curious to see where these adjustments lead him over the course of this season. You can send us an email, ratesandbarrels

at theathletic.com. If you've got questions for a future episode, you can find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris. You can find me at Derek Van Riper. If you don't already have a subscription to The Athletic, you can pick one up for $3.99 a month to start at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Wednesday.

Thanks for listening. Thank you.