Rates & Barrels - Second Half Pitching Risers & Fallers

Episode Date: September 12, 2022

Eno and DVR discuss some of the biggest risers and fallers among pitchers in the second half of the season in search of late-season pitchers to trust, others to avoid, and potential bargains for those looking ahead to draft-and-hold season for 2023. Rundown -- New Role, Big Improvement -- Michael Wacha's Adjustments -- Blake Snell's Turnaround -- Bailey Falter's Run in the Philly Rotation -- Spenser Watkins -- David Peterson is Pretty Good -- Trevor Rogers is Returning to 2021 Form? -- Drew Rasmussen Improving In-Season? -- Could the O's Consider Dillon Tate as a Starter in 2023? -- Second-Half Fallers -- Craig Kimbrel's Slide Out of Regular Saves in LA Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first six months: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels Podcast Apple: http://bit.ly/AppleRandB Spotify: http://bit.ly/SpotifyRandB Google: http://bit.ly/RatesGoogle Stitcher: http://bit.ly/STRandB TuneIn: http://bit.ly/RBTuneIn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Monday, September 12th. How about a pitching episode? Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we're going to dig into some second half pitching risers and fallers, taking a look at a few different things, results, model-based things, seeing where they agree, where they might disagree, hoping to find some new pitchers we can trust in these final weeks of the season along the way. Maybe a few more established names that we shouldn't be as faithful to in the final weeks as well.

I think those decisions, every little micro decision now feels like it carries extra weight as we're sort of jockeying for position either to cash or hopefully to win a league. You know, it's that time of year. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. And Ian Kahn, I'm coming for your points record in labor. Had to make a difficult decision to, you know, in labor, it's like a 12 team AL only league. It's one of those leagues where you're just trying not to have to drop anybody because there's nobody on the wire and so you're always doing these like

oh can i leave this guy on the on the disabled list a week longer and you know all these sort of machinations and uh so luis patino is a guy i'd been nursing all season uh you know just in case i needed him for that stretch run. And I didn't have him in for the Yankee thing, but I had to have him in this week because they had this rule where, like, if he comes up, once he comes up, you know, two or three days, you have two or three weeks and then you have to activate him. So I would have had to activate him this week. And before he got sent down, I was like, ah, I either have to drop him outright, you know, I have to activate him this week and before he got sent down i was like ah if i i either have to drop him outright you know i have to activate somebody off the anyway you know it's one of those very specific things but it's actually kind of relevant to you know our discussion because

luis patino before he got optioned today um was the biggest dropper among starting pitchers in Stuff Plus from June 1 till now. So, you know, something ain't right with him. Yeah, I mean, you wonder how much just the injuries have had a cumulative effect on him not being the same pitcher he was as a prospect. I think it's fair to wonder about that. And it might take an entire offseason for him to take another step forward and get back to being that guy again. And maybe it's not going to happen in 2023 at all. I mean, I think we're probably looking at him more as just a late dart

and nothing more as opposed to the trendy sleeper that I had hoped he was going to be. I think he made the right call, even though if you timed it differently, you could have held on to him. I don't know if you're going to feel good about using Luis Patino, even in a league that deep when the season is hanging in the balance. At least in that case,

your team has a healthy lead. So if you had had him activated for the start on Sunday, probably wouldn't have really made a dent in the lead that you had. I mean, that's the one silver lining for a lot of our decisions right now is that your ratios probably aren't going to move much. Probably not. So unless you are within a,

like a literal point or two of ERA or whip, like that ain't moving in two weeks no no it's not i am learning that again that lesson has been learned many times but i'm living that one out right now so what i did to prepare for today's show is i made a giant leaderboard of first and second half stats and then subtracted first half numbers from second half numbers to see who was up, who was down. Looking at K minus BB rate, looking to see who is the biggest riser. I'll make it a trivia question for you.

You know, minimum 20 innings pitched in each half. This does include starters and relievers. Who is the biggest riser who has increased their K minus BB percentage the most from the first half to the second half well i'm gonna do a little bit of cheating it's not uh the worst kind of cheating it's just the one where i look at my stuff uh gainers and try to try to gain i try to try to spot somebody in there um is lance lynn anywhere in there Try to spot somebody in there.

Is Lance Lynn anywhere in there? No. Not enough sample in the first half, maybe. That, I think, is the issue, yes. How about Charlie Morton? Charlie Morton. No, he is up, though. Up 5.1 percentage points. That's a pretty nice increase.

We really liked this guy early in the year and then he disappeared for a while and now he's back but he's still not particularly helpful for us in most of our leagues oh well that doesn't sound drew rasmussen no no that doesn't sound like uh fran breval does either nope i will i'll spill the beans it's matt brash oh part of being a big riser sometimes is people who hadn't changed roles and who are still starters and stuff so yeah but part of it is just having a low mark and then being pretty good or very good and he's been a lot better as a reliever okay but i don't know like i don't know if we're looking at him and saying that he's clearly a reliever forever i know there are people that are very skeptical of his delivery who thought that maybe was going to be the outcome all along i just think every game has mattered for the Mariners this season and they didn't have the kind of buffer to let

it unfold during the season I think they might have to rethink their plans for Matt Brash again over the winter and possibly give him a chance to compete for the back of the rotation in 2023 even though the bullpen role has gone better than the starting role did during his time in the big leagues i forget who wrote it um might have just been a tweet and maybe it's mikey ajeto um that uh you know i don't think you're going to change his command that much and in fact there's a lot of research that shows that a big slider like his is harder to command, which is like kind of no dush. But like, and so I read a pretty good argument that he should have a cutter. Because then you have something that is in between movement wise between his slider,

his sinker and his slider have something in the middle. It's something that really worked for Adam Adovino. sinker and a slider have something in the middle. It's something that really worked for Adam Ottavino. Now, Adam Ottavino is a reliever, but you could see someone with sinker, slider, cutter, especially when it's a big kind of slurvy, sweepery kind of slider that Brash has,

you know, making it work as a starter. So I wonder if that is something that they've ever approached. That's totally something you could do in the offseason is try to develop a cutter coming into spring. Say, I've got the cutter. I'm going to try and, you know, try another try, you know, one more time at starting. And if not, you know, end up in the back end of the bullpen. Right. Because, again, he'll be great there. It's just a matter of finding something that works to get the walk rate down.

The walk rate's been high everywhere Matt Brash has pitched since the start of last season, and he's had some really good results at high A, double A, and decent results at triple A. That was mostly out of the pen this season. So I'm curious to see what is next for him. But the starters that have moved the most, Michael Waka, and he kind of fits into this conversation, is someone that I didn't really trust at all earlier this season, but I picked him up over the course of the year in a few different leagues and have started to use him in a few places. And they're pretty important leagues where I've thrown him out there, despite the fact that I don't think the skills point to ratios that are nearly as good as what he has done so far.

But the skills have improved enough to the point where i don't think the crash back to his true levels is going to be as harsh as i thought it was going to be a few months ago yeah i think that he's a little bit of a example of how much variance there is you know like for example the model says he's uh you know like a league average guy basically and um you know i don't think that he's really changed all that much about what he did last year you know versus this year uh he's throwing the change up a little bit more uh and the fast way he's going to more of the sort of fastball change up a little bit away from the cutter and the curve uh that he's been trying to develop all these years but uh yeah i guess that's throwing your best pitches more often but he's he's done something like this before it's not the first time he's been a guy who was mostly fastball change you know um in uh st louis in 2019 he had basically the same pitch mix

um and so i think this is just a little bit of like you know he wasn't as bad as he was before and he's not as good as he looks right now and i i kind of think of like a martin perez a little bit when i think of michael walk Yeah. And I think we're seeing, at least with the whip, we're seeing that situation kind of go back in the direction we expected it to, where you had to sub three ERA right now for Perez. I don't think that's going to hold over another full season. That would be shocking if it did.

So other names that came up for me, Blake Snell, this looks like a very good version of Blake Snell in recent weeks. He's got a 26% strikeout minus walk rate in the second half. Yeah, I did notice that Michael Walker has been going back to the cutter recently, and that's actually why he's, if there is a reason that he's had a better stretch, he's gone back to the cutter idea and not just fastball change. Who was the guy you were just talking about?

Blake Snell. Yeah, Snell is mostly, when I see, the story I see with him is just, you know, using the curve instead of the changeup as his third pitch. And that's something he's done over the course of the season. And I think that it's just, you know, he can command the curve better. And you'll see, the curve is, he's had games where he's thrown it a quarter of the time. He hasn't thrown the change since July 1st. He hasn't thrown the change more than five times in a game.

So I think he's fastball slider curve guy now. And I think he's fastball slider curve guy now, and I think he's best suited to that. In terms of command, in terms of strikeouts, it's all sort of rolling for him. Yeah, I think the long-term future for Snell is a little brighter today than it's been in probably the better part of the last year and a half. I mean, I think you can start to talk yourself into him

as someone that has one more very good season in his arm still. And by that, I just mean like another sub-4 ERA over a full season and probably a better whip than we've seen. He might be able to turn out something that looks like what you'd expect from a top-30 starter, a top-25 starter. He might have that. you're always going to get strikeouts 2020 upside in them i think you know something like a 3-3 era with 12k9 like yeah that would and especially if you put bulk behind that that would he might end up a top 10

starter he's definitely the kind of guy that i would love to pick as like my sp3 next year and hope that he bumps himself up to two and one status yeah and i think if you know the season long numbers stay sort of close to what they are right now that price will make sense if he keeps rolling through the final few starts of the year and pulls the era closer to the three five three six range and gets the the whip into the 120 high 120 range that's going to draw a little more attention he's living in that sweet spot right now where people are just like more of the same from blake snell but it looks like there's been pretty significant improvement you were on that pitch that change up for him a while ago as

a pitch that he really liked that he should not have liked so it's nice to see that he's made the change he is on the list of biggest stuff plus gainers in the second half he looks like he's around yeah he's about 15th sitting there with Tristan McKenzie this is among starters so Tristan McKenzie Marcus Stroman Lance Lynn those are

sort of 10 through 15 you know in terms of stuff gainers between now and July 1. He's really improved his stuff by doing this too. The easiest way to improve your stuff is to change your pitch mix. How about Bailey Falter? Did he make an adjustment in the model?

I know the model actually liked him a little bit relative to previous underwhelming results. We're seeing him with a 20% K-BB percentage in the model i know the model actually liked him a little bit relative to previous uh underwhelming results we're seeing him with a 20 k minus bb percentage in the second half so it's up 12 percentage points from where he was in the first half and this looks like a nice step forward for a guy that could continue to hold a spot in the back of the phillies rotation yeah there's something funny going on there and i actually talked to him about it. And the model may be wrong on him because the model says the changeup is good and he should throw it more. I think I even put him in the piece that was like, you know, underthrown pitches. And I talked to him about it, and he's like, no, your model is wrong.

He's like, my changeup's awful. What are you talking about? Yeah, he said it was awful. It's my worst pitch by far. I've been trying to figure it out all these times. And if you look at his results on Brooks baseball, like batters are hitting like 300 off of it. And it's like, they're slugging it too.

So it's like, maybe the model's wrong here. He just felt like he has a really over the top release point. And he's a breaking ball guy. I think that's why the model likes it is because he throws a change up from a weird release point that has really worked for other people. But so in the model, he's pitching better by not throwing the change up, which has made the model say that his stuff plus has gone down. But in my heart, I feel like he's improving. I think if he understands his changeup well, then he's doing the right thing.

But it is interesting that he also seems to be moving from a slider-based arsenal to a curve one. uh moving from a slider based arsenal to a curve one uh so most recently he's been four seam sinker curve and then just a few sliders mixed in it's uh it's not a mix that we've seen a lot of but curves especially kind of over the top curves like he has don't have a great um uh don't have a great platoon split. And he's blessed with really good command. So I think he could be another in the sort of Zach Eflin model, where he's just a pretty good pitcher that outproduces his actual stuff by using command and moving his pitch mix around a little bit. Yeah, walk rate for his career, 4.7%.

We're almost at 100 big league innings for Falter, and I'm not surprised to see that the whip at 119 is a lot better than the ERA at 458 to this point. The big thing for him is going to be getting away from the long ball. He's got a big home run issue so far this season. Even if you pull that down just a little bit, it's still going to be an above average home run rate. So that's the adjustment that we need to see.

We need to see a better pitch mix for that. I mean, tons of fly balls in a park that historically rewards fly balls a bit more than most, but a good late-round pitcher for next year and probably a more viable late-season matchups play than you might think, just based on some of the things that were happening earlier this season. I'm wondering if you've got anything on Spencer Watkins.

He's come up a few times, part of the Orioles pitching story this season, a guy that's turned out some decent innings. The improvement for him was from a miserable K-B percentage to an acceptable one for very deep leagues. I don't know if there's still more than an AL-only sort of arm here or a two-start week sort of option for mixed leagues, but what are you seeing with Spencer Watkins? Not a big difference in the model.

Ah, Jesus. I'm really messing up my thing here all right here i'm just doing trying to do ctrl f jeez would you hit command f i've made some weird greek letter uh you know his uh here it is his locations locations are up, I believe. A little bit. I don't know, man. Are we sure that he's changed something? Let me see. It's possible he's changed nothing.

It's possible that he just wasn't as bad as he was earlier in the season and he's just a back-end, innings-eating starter. That's fine if that's what he is. Every time I've seen games this year, watched games that are being played at Camden Yards, just seeing the shots of left and left center and how different that really is and watching balls that would have been home runs in the past

land in front of the warning track, it is pretty jarring. You can feel it a little bit more i know when they describe the changes in derrick cardi and a lot of people put some some pretty good stuff out there explaining what was likely to happen but seeing it play out it really just sort of affirms how drastic those changes were to that park He's added a cutter this year that he didn't have before. And it's a really interesting pitch because it gets the most whiffs out of any of his pitches.

And it also has allowed a.347 batting average and a.459 slugging. And also that isolated slugging that I just quoted to you is the lowest on any of his pitches. Hmm. He improved by adding a meh pitch, is how I would put it. Well, it's just another pitch, right?

It keeps you off the other stuff. Yeah, but the model overall and just his swing strike rate plus a 5, a K9 that starts with 5, I'm out. Fair enough. Reid Detmer's big mover, not a surprise given the new slider. We talked about him a few times on this show, so probably not a whole lot to dig into there.

I know we had that David Peterson question that came in maybe a week or so ago ago he's got a 22.5 k minus bb percentage in the second half that's fantastic that it's like amazingly good probably more than just a depth starter and injuries and eventually maybe people leaving that rotation uh no david peterson he might be more viable than than i previously thought by the way is the fourth largest riser in Stuff Plus since June 1. Yeah, I mean, that one makes sense. Just for people to enjoy the top five, it's J.P. Sears going from 76 to 86. Adrian Martinez, so maybe Oakland's going to find some guys this year. Andrew Haney with the new sweeper that actually moves less horizontally

reed detmers with the new slider carlos hernandez coming back up with a little bit of velo also in a kind of a shorter role so that might just be a role change graham ashcraft kyle bradish with the new uh pitch mix so um you know and then when uh who was it who was it we were going to after that mirrors was david peterson oh yeah peterson i think was just um i i think he's a fungible okay guy with a really good home park and uh you know some really good matchups that is somebody that that's the type of person i'm always going to be a little bit interested in but if you look at a good run of his that might have started you know in august he's had three starts at home and one start in miami so the only really

difficult start for him that wasn't at home was at philadelphia four innings four and two-thirds with three earned runs not that great but if you treat him as a streamer uh you would have gotten uh let's see here 11 16 17 innings with three runs and 18 strikeouts. That is successful streaming. Yeah. I would just, I would call him a home streamer. Velo up again this year too. 93.5 on the fastball, sliders up a little bit,

curveballs up, change-ups up, everything. Just throwing harder kind of across the board too. So I think that's helped to make him a little bit more stable in that support role for the Mets from home it'd be tempting i think to treat him next year as a sleeper for you know on the level of blake snell or something where you you maybe a little bit lower like sp4 or sp5 and think he's gonna jump up up, I think I would treat him a little bit more as someone that I don't want to start every week. No, I like him if he's going in that

kind of back of the top 300 sort of range. I think that's an appropriate place to think about. One of your first bench pitchers? Yep. Yeah, then I like it because then he doesn't have to start for you in week one, and then in week two, maybe you get two starts at home or whatever. One of those guys is going to be and down home starts road starts against the gnats i'm i don't think i'm gonna be fearing those next season if i had to guess probably

still not gonna be afraid to use pitchers in miami so yeah a couple division opponents at the top that are tough but even at home you might be able to get away with using him because the strikeout floor is higher than we're used to treat yourself to Tim's new fudge brownie lattes, made with freshly ground espresso beans, frothy steamed or ice chilled milk, and topped with marble chocolate curls. Now that's music to our ears. Available hot or iced, only at Tim's.

You've always wanted to be part of something bigger than yourself. You live for experience. and lead by example. You want the most out of life and realize what you're looking for is already in you. This is for you. The Canadian Armed Forces, a message from the Government of Canada. How about Trevor Rogers? Seeing some improvement from him, and we wondered if there was going to be an adjustment. I think there were suggestions earlier this year that he might have been tipping pitches up to a 17.3% K-BB percentage in the second half.

That's about an 8% jump from where he was in the first half. So a pretty big leap, probably a top seven increase among starting pitchers here if I'm eyeballing the relievers and pushing them off of the list accordingly. So what's been the change for Rodgers? I think, first of all, the model liked him a little bit more

than it did last year for some reason. Even when he was bad? Yes, the model was saying he wasn't as bad as he was early in the season. Then he improved within it. So he absolutely looks like a more interesting pitcher to me now, even with all these struggles than before. Right now, he has a 108 stuff plus, 100 location plus, 105 pitching plus, and he pitches in a nice park. I like that. I looked at the components and where this improvement came from because he is one of the bigger improvers. He's sort of like top 50 top 40 improver, but he mostly improved his slider. And that gives me great hope because

he's always had a good, he's always had a good change up, right? And so the slider has been kind of a part of the up and down nature of his career. So he's moved on the rubber this year, and he's tried some different things, and it seems like he's throwing more of a sweeper now. So I don't know, man. I think this is the kind of thing where he's playing himself into my consideration for next year uh and i'm more hopeful about him for next year i'd consider him an interesting off-season acquisition um in

terms of uh dynasty leagues and i think next year i'm considering him a step above david peterson he's more like a guy I think I could, I'm hoping to draft him and start him every week if things work out right. Yeah, I wonder how the prices are going to compare on those two. I think people had high expectations for Rodgers coming into this year, so that might help the previous track record.

I mean, a 264 ERA a year ago, 115 whip, well over a strikeout per inning. That's probably going to carry some weight, but easily outside the top 200, I would think, at least in early drafts, maybe someone that moves a little bit over the course of draft season, but nice to see him getting back on track and to see that change. Because I think the way he was before, there were some questions about whether he had another way to get consistent whiffs beyond the change up and if that slider has improved for the better that to me is a sign that he can actually do that i mean a simple would you rather you had peterson you said behind trevor rogers

is this isn't even a would you rather this is more of a ceiling question is it fair to say that trevor rogers has a comparable ceiling to blake snell or do you think snell's ability to miss bats raises that ceiling to the point you said like top 10 was possible for snell if everything were to go right with innings does rogers have that kind of ceiling or is he more of the ceiling of a top 25, top 30 starting pitcher if it all goes well again. Yeah, I think I'd have him, I'm going to have him ranked behind Snow. And I think ceiling is part of that consideration.

Though I do want to point out that for his career, Rodgers has a 10 strikeouts per nine. So, you know, I think there is, it's not like he's going to always strike out as few as he struck out this year. I think for him, the story this year has been trying to figure out how to use a sweeper because a sweeper isn't always something that leads to swing strikes the same way.

You have to learn how to use it for called strikes too. It's a little bit like a sinker, right? You learn over time how to throw the front door sinker at the hip and they, you know, they decide not to swing and then it moves into the strike zone. I think the sweeper is the same way where sometimes you have to backdoor it and front door it and try to take advantage of non-swings because maybe the movement profile is one that hitters can be like oh this is a really sideways pitch this is the sweeper i'm not going to swing so if he can start to put it in the zone basically uh he'll have more success with it and i think that's he's learning how to do that because he's always got the change

up um and it's also good news the four seamer improved uh over over time too so um i foreseeing change sweeper in that park i think i take snell's upside but i'm gonna have i'm gonna have rogers maybe higher than most yeah i could definitely see the the case for it as we've talked through it here. How about Drew Rasmussen's second half improvements? I know the models always liked Rasmussen, so this is one of the models, I think, biggest wins to this point. I mean, tip of the cap again to the Rays for seeing someone who's had multiple Tommy Johns, believing he could hold up as a starter, and then having him with a better second half K-BB percentage in the first half.

If anything, I would have thought those would be flipped just because of fatigue. And it's been so long since he's thrown this many innings over the course of one season. So where do we go from here with Rasmussen? I think he'll always carry elevated injury risk because of his past. But from a results perspective, this is even a notch better than we were seeing from him last year. The walk rate has actually improved quite a bit from 2021. One of the things that's super important was that Rasmussen has mostly recovered the ride on his fastball. And I think that's why you see some improvement in the Stuff Plus numbers.

Because he added a cutter this year and he was going to go cutter sweeper curve and i like that idea because those are pretty three different you know pretty different breaking balls and he's shown really good breaking ball command so why not give him another breaking ball you know i love the idea what it did was it killed the ride on his foreseam. And he went from having nine inches of vertical movement on Brooks baseball to, in the first month this year, seven and a half and eight and a half. So he really did lose some ride. In September, he's had 8.9, you know, the vertical movement on Brooks. So he's really close to where he was last year. That's basically where he ended last year too.

So I like that improvement in the foreseam. And I think just in terms of how you look at his usage over the course of the season, and you see that he's really settled in foreseam, cutter, slider, and the occasional curve. And I think the only thing that bothers me is how far they let him go into games. And there's always the specter of a heightened injury risk with a two-Tommy John guy.

But they let him go six innings now, and they let him go almost a full game when he had that no hitter going so he's been so efficient that he can get into the sixth and has produced 10 wins so maybe that part's overblown but the part that will never really go away is you know how much do we trust the arm in terms of injury yeah i wonder if maybe nathan evaldi ends up being um a draft day price comp for rasmussen because i think that that same sort of cloud has hung over evaldi for most of his career he will get injured the model loves him but you know yeah kind of not gonna crack the top 180p in any given year because

the projection for innings will consistently be more like 120 130 140 than 175 plus and the quality of those innings will be high enough where you might think it's actually worth it at that discount i tend to think it could be in this case. Really impressive performance from him so far this year. Among the many players that I'd just love to see how everyone responds to what he's done this year. If he goes inside the top 100, I probably have to bail because of the quality of the alternatives. Even with as great as the year he's doing this year,

he might not even get to 140 innings. Right. We've talked about this extensively on this podcast, idea that like oh well everyone's having fewer innings so maybe it's okay now maybe there's lighter guys that are now more viable like you know uh with all starters workloads being down but that's really kind of pushing it right like it's fine earned value calculator have on it? It's going to love his ratios though. What do you,

15 team or what do you think it comes out to be? It's tough because it's not going to be there on, on bulk and on wins and Ks. I'm going to say like, like 20 to 25th best starter. 20th. A $13. So among starters filtering down just for starters real quick three looks like maybe 25 probably yeah right around the back of the top 30 i mean he's

even so here's other names that have been 13 pitchers in the same settings. Joe Musgrove, who's thrown 37 more innings. Yeah, 37 more innings. Jordan Montgomery, same workload as Musgrove. Logan Gilbert, same workload as Musgrove. Kevin Gossman, similar. And it's actually more than Brandon Woodruff. Brandon Woodruff's only thrown

five more innings than Drew Rasmussen this season. Rasmussen's been a little more valuable because of injury yeah because well the ratios the ratios have just been tighter i mean a 257 er and a 104 whip is really nice actually yeah well that's a really good pitcher and he didn't cost uh as much as those other names you mentioned so ah now we back to, would you rather? Sorry, I stole your riff. Drew Rasmussen or Nestor Cortez for 2023? I'm going with Drew Rasmussen, man.

Stuff is stickier season to season. Okay. No, that's fine. If Cortez's groin is bothering him next year, he might not have the same outcomes when it comes to command. Drew Rasmussen or Tyler Anderson? We don't know where Tyler Anderson is going to pitch yet, do we? Because he's on a one-year deal.

Drew Rasmussen, same answer. You're giving me command, guys. Drew Rasmussen versus Christian Javier for next season. Javier has been a dollar better. These guys are very similar, actually. Yeah. I'm going to take Javier. Okay.

Hopes are that Javier comes to camp with a curveball or a changeup or something that he can command a little better and throws more bulk next year. All right, one more. Drew Rasmussen or Tristan McKenzie for 2023? McKenzie's got a shot at 200 innings this year. He's at 165 and a third.

And he was one of, he's in the top 15 for stuff improvers over the course of the season, which I think is kind of cool because, you know, we always, we thought like, can he continue to throw this hard? You know, can he, what's his's his is he how fragile is he you know stuff basically mostly based on his body i think um but now he's got his uh location above average and his stuff above average uh he's got a good park he's got a good park, he's got a team that makes the most I mean, what is the team BABIP in Cleveland this year? It's gotta be great, let me see here

the team BABIP allowed because they are just they seem to be game planning really really well or something their fifth best BABIP in the majors majors and of course the dodgers are number one they have a 256 babbitt pullout this is relevant to all the discussions of tony

gonsolin tyler anderson like you don't know where tyler is going to be next year huge for tyler anderson i think so i think there's a chance he stays yeah of course there's always a chance he stays but without the contract i don't think you can kind of be like, oh, he'll be there. No, but the thing is, so the Dodgers take someone like Tyler Anderson, get him on a one-year deal. I'd take him McKenzie over Rasmussen, I think. Just more innings. I'm with you. I'm McKenzie over Rasmussen, too.

But Tyler Anderson is the kind of guy that gets the one-year deal from the Dodgers, and then a team that's not as smart as like three years, 60 million. And you're like, um, that's not how you do it. Like good for him, but that's not,

that's not how you win. Yeah. I could totally see that happening. Yep. We still have family in the house as you can hear. Thanks dogs for alerting me to my own family being in my house. Thank you. They just want to make sure you don't get ambushed

by your own family. Yeah, right. And a child home from school with a stomach ache. Yeah, yep. We're deep in the weeds right now. I got a description of what was going on before the show. We don't need to air it out here. It does sound stressful.

I will confirm that. How about Dylan Tate, another Oriole? And the reason I want to bring him up is because he's improved a lot this year. He doesn't miss a ton of bats. And he's sort of like the Tyler Wells of last season, where you get this guy in the bullpen that's pitching really well, high quality innings, not really walking anybody. And it's making me wonder if Dylan Tate might stretch out and try and eat more innings as a back end starter next year.

Do you think there's enough in the arsenal for them to possibly consider something like that? Because he doesn't look like a closer to me, but he might be doing enough things well to give them more than 75 innings next year. It's possible that the model does not capture everything that Tate does because his changeup has really good results. I think the driveline model likes, driveline stuff plus likes Dylan Tateate's uh change up and for his career

batters are hitting 159 with the 186 iso so i could you could you read that other way but batting 159 is not bad and have a 19 percent whiff rate on the change. So the fact that the model says his change up is not very good, I think you can maybe ignore a little bit. If he has a good change up, he has a sinker that has a little bit below average stuff, which I think would be scary kind of moving to a starter. If it's 87 stuff plus now, what will it be as a starter however he locates it really well 107 location plus on the sinker and then the slider is a plus pitch across the board 130 stuff plus 116 location plus so i think the real question is what sort of velo will he maintain as a starter and if you want to give him the chance to show you that he can maintain it

i think uh you know for example uh spencer strider has not really lost any velo yeah he's sort of degromming it yeah so there are certain pitchers that um are just built to throw what they throw. So maybe you move Dylan Tate in and you find, oh, he can go four or five innings throwing at this VLO. That's how he's trained. So if that's the case, then yeah, I see enough upside there with the three-pitch mix, and there's a possibility. I think there's a possibility too,

but what you've seen more recently this year is he's moving into a setup role and has been the guy who will get saves when Felix Batista is down. Yeah, he's been pretty useful. I've got him in an AL-only league, and he's keepable at a low price. And I think in a 12-team AL-only league, it might actually make sense because there could be more than one way for him to increase his value next season. How about Jordan Hicks? The surface numbers are still a little bit poor with the 5-0-1 ERA, the 130 whip, 61 Ks in 59 and a 30 innings for the season.

Sierra suggests that maybe he's about a run above where he should be with his ERA so far. His second half has been better as well from a skills perspective. I thought it was strange they suggests that maybe he's about a run above where he should be with his ERA so far. His second half has been better as well from a skills perspective. I thought it was strange they tried to stretch him out as a starter. That decision did not make a lot of sense coming off all the lost time, especially what are you seeing in Hicks now? Are we seeing a more viable late inning reliever with the adjustments he's made? Well, you know, I think one thing that he never had in spades, which I think became really relevant when he tried to be a starter, was he's never been really great at command.

And I think what you saw when they were stretching him out was, you know, two walks in three innings, two walks in two innings, three walks in four innings, five walks in three innings, two walks and two innings, three walks and four innings, five walks and three innings. And that continued a little bit when they reversed course. But in this great run, I see more the reduction of walks than the increase of strikeouts as being super relevant. And he has improved his location plus from he went from 89 location plus to 93 and that's still pretty bad uh but you the way that it works is since it's cumulative

that means he's probably had like a 95 96 97 location plus um you know since j July 1st and that's absolutely going to work. So, you know, they have a sort of abundance of riches there where I don't know how important he's going to be for fantasy and I don't know that this improvement in command is enough to make him a viable starter.

So I think he's just going to be, he could be the next closer. He could be the guy if helsley takes a step back or something you know he hicks could still be a closer for them but right now i see him as kind of third in the pecking order there yeah i think he kind of jumps off the page for me just if you look back since about mid-august he's got a 17 to 3 strikeout to walk ratio and 13 to third innings i, three walks for him over 10 appearances is amazing.

Yeah, that's the big thing, yeah. Kind of putting it all together late in the year. The results haven't fully borne that out. It's a 540 ERA during that span, but that's usually what you're getting. Those skills usually go to like a 3 ERA in a short relief role. I think he could be a sneaky handcuff

for Helsley next year. Helsley's going to obviously shoot up the boards oh yeah so maybe he's the type of thing where if you're in a draft and hold you might be able to get helsley you know as your second reliever if you're lucky and then kind of maybe handcuff him with hicks late one more starter on the good side of the ledger, Zach Gallin getting better in the second half. And he's another one of those guys that I would have looked at and said, he's off to a great start.

Innings have been down the last couple seasons because of injuries. So he's maybe going to be someone we're worried about for a fade. That has not been the case whatsoever. He's done a good job all season, keeping the ball in the park as well. It's the best home run rate we've seen from Zach Gallin as a big league pitcher. The K rate's not absurd, but it's good.

And because he doesn't walk a lot of guys, this is a good all-around package. I wonder if people are going to look at him and look at him as an SP1 in disguise going into next season. Someone that if you wait a bit, if you don't go aces early, he becomes your SP1 in disguise going into next season. Someone that if you wait a bit, if you don't go aces early, he becomes your SP1.

Maybe you back him up with a few pitchers in the next couple rounds right after that. But I could see him getting that sort of treatment with ratios like this over a big volume of innings. Yeah, his stuff has gone down in the model. I think that's because he's not throwing the power change as much. His location has gone up. I think that's because he's not throwing the power change as much. His location has gone up.

I think that's because he's throwing the curve more and he can command it a little bit better. But this is more just finally coming around to what the model said he could do. You know, like this is just, this is who the model said he was all along. And I think the best, you know, this is the sort of stuff that I'm considering next year.

The best move is to get him as a high-end two. Because then you really have a chance of pairing him with someone where you get the two aces, but you didn't pay the two aces. You know, that's what I want to do.

Cause you can mess around and like identify the next Musgrove, right? Like Musgrove was, I think, you know, a model win this year. He's been good. It's not as good in the second half.

He's a guy that you could take as a tour, you know, the two that could fake you as a one. Isn't that sort of, am I describing gallon as what you're kind of talking about like maybe like you know oh i missed out on the guys i'm gonna take gallon now uh everything's better though if musgrove was your number two this year you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah you don't i mean you don't want him to be the one but he might actually end up being your best pitcher and you might have a good team even if that's the case.

I think Gallen's going to end up somewhere in the 10 to 15 spot in my rankings. And I still think if I can find a way to come out of drafts next year with two top 15 pitchers without paying the sort of first, second, or second, third round, like if I can sort of stagger that a little bit and still come out of there with two top 15 pitchers on my rankings, that's what I want to do. My best teams, that's what I did.

In my main, I got Wheeler and Musgrove. And that's what I would like to do again next year is get a back-end top 10 guy and then throw in a Gallon next to it. Gallon versus Shane Bieber for next year. What's the difference in those two guys? I hate you. Oh, by the way, Shane Bieber uptied.

It went back into I Couldn't Be More Wrong. So I was... I will eat the crow on that one. There was some doubt. It was going back and forth uh it ended up in the i couldn't be more wrong category so thank you for asking about the picture that i couldn't have been more wrong about unless it was cal control well hey you know i actually forgot about your your previous positions on beaver organically asking the question based solely on on leaderboard and statistical comparisons

not based on the yeah yeah past well i mean bieber uh has the velo has been up a little bit but he's 91.5 for the year and i just can't believe that that's never going to come back and bite him um and so i'm going to take gallon over bieber um, I'm not going to be so anti Beaver. I'm going to learn my lesson and Beaver will be in my top 15. So I would, I would assume that Gallin and Beaver are very close to each other, sort of like 12 and 14 or 13 and 50. Ah, double down, bury him, put him at like 30. I will be right eventually.

Start a fire in the comment section. It's the only appropriate thing to do at this point. If you feel like you've been wrong, just double down, triple down. Just keep going until you're right. That's the answer. His strikeout rate is really far down for his career. There are warning signs. Oh yeah, plenty.

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Treat your senses with Nuolite Indulgent Moisture Body Wash. Buy it today at major retailers. Let's take a look at some fallers using the same simple methodology that I've been using to find these risers. If you're going to give me a guess, Joe Musgrove. Biggest among starters, no. Sean Minaya. Minaya, I think, is a pretty big faller. He's a faller, but not extreme, which is surprising,

because I feel like every time i look up he's had a rough start and it's not i know that's not the case but it's just been the vibe lately uh is it possible like an alec manoa or michael kopeck no uh nathan evaldi oh down 11.1 percent in k minus bb percentage from the first half to the second half. He does figure around in the biggest fallers. But he still looks pretty good. In the model, at least. Have his results also taken a dive?

Yes. At least his Sierra is about a full run higher in the second half. Yeah. I mean, like I said, who was our darling earlier that we put next to Evaldi? Like Snell? I think I'd take Snell over Evaldi pretty easily at this point. Yeah. He's reducing his fastball usage, and he's trying to up his cutter usage to counteract something that's going on. Not using the slider as much.

He's definitely aware of what's happening. He's doing the old pitcher thing where he's trying to throw everything 35% of the time. Is he a free agent at the end of the season? I think he might be a free agent. Yes, he is. Because he was rumored to be on the trade block. Right, so he's a free agent. He'll be 33 in February. And if you look at the last few seasons,

2019, injuries, bad results. Shortened season, bounced back. 2021, very good. 2022, a small step back and lost time. Underlying skills still look good. Control's really good. Home runs have been bad. I don't care where he ends up, man. Like, if he ends up in San Francisco,

he's their type. I think he might be, yeah. He's exactly their type. Elevated injury risk, multi-year deal, not insane money. Arizona could be looking to beef up their starting pitching. I think he would be really interesting there. I don't like him as much in places like Atlanta, Boston, New York, Colorado.

Well, yeah. I think he's probably going to be more in the let me go somewhere that's good for me to turn it around and get one more big deal. One of those one-year deals. So he might be in Tampa. Yeah. You could try Tampa. Tampa likes the one-year deals. LA likes the one-year deals.

Everybody likes a one-year deal. Yeah, New York likes them too. But I think this is a good, this is a very good early target. I don't want him as a Yankee. No, but I think we know what happens in these situations, right? Think about Carlos Rodon. Once he signed with the Giants, how much everyone just took off with his ADP. Get Evaldi in the early part of draft and hold season

before he has a team. Yeah, take that chance. Because I think more likely than not, a smart team, probably one with a pitcher-friendly environment, is going to end up taking the chance on him. The home runs will come down, and even if that happens,

that alone will bring the ratios down and make him quite a bit more effective. A couple more names to throw at you here. No, dude, and don't bother me right now. Screen time request denied. Cookie request. Home from school with a stomach ache and he wants a cookie. Hmm.

Boy, he's got to work on his game. Yeah. Come on, dude. If he waits until 3 o'clock and says, Dad, my stomach is feeling better. Oh, now I'm hungry. Do you think I can have a cookie? Yeah.

That's different. But in the first half of the day? He's home like 15 minutes ago from school. No, I'm not giving you a cookie. Yeah, that's just not how it works. I think you can safely say he's not Ferris Bueller. And that's probably good for you as a parent because that could lead to some significant issues.

His game is not as advanced. Ferris Bueller stuff gone wrong. He's in second grade. He's got a little time. He'll learn the craft. He might be Ferris Bueller later. There's actually a chance. Yeah.

Shane McClanahan down but it's like dude he was 31 percent k minus bb percentage in the first half where where did you expect him to go so i don't i don't know if there's a whole lot to worry about there it's just a health question yeah his stuff is uh did decline he's in the sort of bottom 30 or in the top 30 in declines however you want to say that and it's it's a little bit worrisome paired with the injury part I think you know to have him

decline a little bit and then and then grab a shoulder I don't love that, but he's going to be in my top five next year. I don't think I'm taking him out based on any of this. It's going to be a fun draft season staring those picks down in the early part, probably like middle of round two, late part of round two in many cases is where he'd be going if you got him as a top five pitcher.

Freddie Peralta back on the IL with that shoulder. hard around two in many cases where he'd be going if you got him as a top five pitcher freddie peralta back on the il with that shoulder i think that that explains a lot of it and that's a harder one for me to have a lot of health confidence in given that it's put him on the il twice in a reasonably small amount of time yeah shane's has been a lot more like oh he had an impingement you know he might even be in the he might even be activated and pitching again this week so if he's back this week and pitches every fifth day for the rest of the season then i think that fades uh craig kimbrough looks like he's finally done as a closer second half fade they're not even using him exclusively as the closer anymore they also win by like 20 when they win so they don't generate as many save chances as you'd hope but

i think i've reached that point in a few leagues where saves are super clustered and kimbrell can be my third reliever in the lineup i still look very carefully at who the stick starter would be in that same lineup before even thinking about using Kimbrel in those spots. Yeah, minimum 100 pitches since July 1st. The biggest decliners in Stuff Plus are Mason Thompson, Elvis Piguero, Nabil Krizmat, Sam Maul, Austin Pruitt, say it ain't so, Hobie Milner, and Craig Kimbrel. Corey Abbott and Liam Hendricks round out the top 10 hendricks is in there however the number that he landed on uh 129 stuff plus is the best of

anybody in here kimbrough still has a 114 stuff plus uh for the season. And so, you know, you could say that he might be undervalued. Maybe somebody gives him a one year to make good deal next year, like he returns the Cubs on one of those one year deals they love to hand out in the bullpen. But if he went from a 121 stuff plus to a 114 stuff plus in two months that means that he's been living precariously around a hundred which is not where i want to buy my relievers i'd like to have clear stuff plus guys so let me get the player name and see what Kimbrel's been doing by appearance because it looks pretty bad oh look at that last four let's say last

ten appearances Kimbrel's Stuff Plus has been 108 appearances kimbrough's stuff plus has been three 108 yeah it's just not what you get from a closer on a great team in a loaded bullpen whoa and he had a five game stretch in in late july where he didn't crack 100 i think uh to some extent he's he's climbing his way out of that ditch. But I think you're mostly, this is like endgame bench type stuff where you're just throwing a dart and you're hoping some team that needs a closer

picks him up on a one and eight. You know where he almost, he's a little bit better than this still, but he's almost in that Mark Melanson, late Mark Melanson career, where you're hoping you get him the year he goes to San Diego, right? And he signs the 1-8 or whatever, and he gets you 30 saves,

and everyone's sort of surprised. I could still see another year or two like that for Kimbrel. Yeah, I think it's just the way it goes eventually. I wonder if he actually, he's probably not a Hall of Famer, but he could be, in the eyes of some at least. I mean, he had a really nice peak. I'm looking at some of the baseball reference

markers for him. The Jaws work that Jay Jaffe does has him not in, but there aren't many relievers in the Hall of Fame. Yeah. So trying to define what those players should really look like is still kind of happening.

This last four-year stretch is maybe taking him out of it. One thing I think you need to do with a reliever is you just need to have great longevity. That's how Billy Wagner and a lot of these guys separated themselves is what happened in the last five years. Billy Wagner retired at the top of his game you know true he wasn't really putting up fives and you know what is there's a there's a 6-5 era in 2019 a 5 in 2020 almost a 4 this year so i think he's kind of played his way out of it

a little bit but he might be motivated to come back and you know do the driveline or do whatever it is and and come back and uh uh and add two or three good seasons of 282 era to kind of you know put him like literally he could do that right like if he came back and did like three more seasons of a two era and and gave you like 100 more saves or you know like 90 more saves I think you might be in the Hall of Fame so he has 394 saves if he came back uh with a three three year stretch uh not even like his peak but like you know late peak uh he could be much closer to 500 saves and I think that puts you in the hall. He needs to do something.

I'm not predicting that for him. I'm saying there's a slight chance of that, and so I will remain interested in him on draft day next year. But this year I have a few shares of Craig Kimbrell because the stuff was still good. And I did get rewarded for it I think with the saves I wanted but I I'm not necessarily itching to re-up yeah the end of the season has not been as smooth as you might have hoped uh rapid fire here some other names that are big fallers in k minus bb percentage we'll stick to starters for the rest of this episode

Jesus Lizardo down five percent Marcus Stroman, which is weird. I think he said his stuff was up, but his results are down. Michael Kopech, he mentioned earlier, and yep, he's part of this group. Eric Lauer, Sonny Gray, Tyler Anderson, Dylan See's kind of doing the, I was way up here, and now I'm down a little.

Sonny Gray's been hurt. Lauer's hurt now. Dylan See's doing the Liam Hendricks thing. No, I'm still great. I'm just, you know, shame to claim a hand. Mike Clevenger, which would make me just wonder about fatigue for someone coming off Tommy John. He's also done a pitch mix thing, which I don't think is an amazing idea for him, which I think he's throwing the cutter more.

I don't know necessarily why. And then he kind of has been coming off of that. But he's added a cutter this year and last year, and I don't know. I like his changeup. I don't know why he's not throwing it. Frankie Montas down 7% as well. So some pretty big fallers in that group. A lot of them have been dealing with injuries, though,

and I think that's at least a good part of the explanation in most of those cases anderson tyler anderson being down and then thinking about what you said earlier about their babbip as a team being so good the warning signs are all there for for why it shouldn't be a big multi-year deal somewhere else this offseason yeah we're we're testing some new models, new pitching models that are slightly different, and Tony Gonsolin looks a little better in those, but I doubt I'll have a ton of shares of Tony Gonsolin and Tyler Anderson next year just because

a 250 Babbitt from the Dodgers in a year where they're going to have you know, have a big change in shift rules. I don't know that I wanted to re-up on that. The largest decreasers in Stuff Plus among starters, Luis Patino, number one. Connor Siebel, Jansen Junk, who is kind of in between starting and relieving and changing roles as a real way to lose stuff. Plus, Jesus Lizardo, fourth. Spencer Howard, Robert Duggar, Corbin Martin. Robert Duggar is down to almost not usable territory, of course.

Corbin Martin, that's a little sad. League average stuff now, and he had been at 105. Sean Mania, we've watched this happening in real time Adam Oler, Cutter Crawford bit of a role change aspect there too where he was relieving and is now starting and then just some interesting young pitchers that have dropped over the season Aaron Ashby and Braxton Garrett have seen their stuff

drop off over the course of the season. Injuries for both of those guys too. I remain reasonably upbeat about those two and will have shares of them next year. I really like Aaron Ashby's chance to jump from buying him as an sp5 territory to you know giving you an sp3 type season and I think Garrett is more someone that I'd hope to buy as a bench streamer that might surprise me into playing more often Garrett over David Peterson they're gonna be pretty comparable in terms of a price, though.

Peterson does have slightly better stuff plus numbers, and so that might be surprising to some because Garrett's best foot forward is his command. But Garrett's command is the type of command that has held steady in terms of his prospect ratings, his minor league numbers. It's not just a one-year command bloop. So I see him as a guy who has a lot of pitches and good command of them, whereas

Peterson doesn't have great command of his pitches, and none of his pitches are really that standout by Stuff Plus either. That's my reasoning for Garrett over Peterson, but I would love to draft. I'll have shares of both, and I would like them in the same place. Same range i think that 250 to 300 range probably where you're going to see those

guys settle in adp wise at least early on in draft season that is going to do it for us today and our dogs and my boys oh yeah yeah well yeah they're they're out to the guest appearances good luck to the the cookieeking child in your home. I don't feel good about his chances. We'll make sure he didn't just take a cookie. If you'd like to save some money to buy yourself some cookies, you can get a subscription to The Athletic for just a dollar a month for the first six months at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels.

Find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris. You can find me at Derek Van Ryper. Rates and Barrels returns Find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris. You can find me at Derek Van Ryper. Rates and Barrels returns on Thursday. Thanks for listening.