Rates & Barrels - Second-Half Rebound Hitters, the 'Pie Slice' Rule & the Marlins' Offensive Woes

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

Eno and DVR discuss several hitters with the potential to rebound in the second half -- with the emphasis on players whose value has fallen since the start of the season -- the potential impact of the "Pie Slice" Rule on current big leaguers, and the Marlins' offensive slide with Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Jon Berti on the IL. Rundown -- DVR Makes Another Spreadsheet -- Another Drop on the Joey Votto 2022 Rollercoaster -- Biggest Difference: ROS Projection v. Earn Value So Far -- Josh Smith: Deep Leagues Only? -- Vinnie Pasquantino v. Nolan Gorman, Long Term? -- Nick Castellanos, Rebound Coming? -- Seiya Suzuki is Healthy Again -- The 'Pie Slice' Rule -- Who Would Benefit From This Change? -- Adjustments Coming in Miami? -- Four-Man Outfields/Outfield Shifts 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 Related Reading: Jayson Stark on The "Pie Slice" Rule: https://theathletic.com/3417955 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Friday, July 22nd. You can't stop us from doing two shows a week, airlines, with your flight cancellations wrecking everyone's plans. We're going to power right through. Two episodes, back-to-back days. On this episode, we're focusing a lot on hitters for the second half, talking about some possible pickups, also some players you could be trading for, really searching for players who could be bouncing back from disappointing first halves. And we're using projections to do that. Plus, Eno dug into the pie slice rule, looking for some players that might benefit from that. Always fun to talk about pie and love the name of the rule, love the spirit of the rule.

Always fun to talk about pie and love the name of the rule, love the spirit of the rule. Hope it's something that we actually see sooner rather than later at higher levels currently being experimented with in the Florida State League. And if we have time, we'll talk about the Marlins and some of the woes they're going through offensively, which Don Mattingly seems to be attributing to a lineup full of players that are mostly the same. And I don't think he's necessarily wrong about that, especially with Jazz Chisholm on the IL and John Birdie on the IL right now. But let's start with the topic at the top, the bats for the second half. You know, I put together a giant spreadsheet. I took the rest of season projections from the bat X. I took the year to date earned value so far in the fan graphs auction calculator for a 12-team league,

and I calculated a number that looks at the difference between those two, looking for players who are projected to be a lot better than they were in the first half and change of the season, which, not surprisingly, the difference, the positive difference, guys, the players who are going to be better going forward than they've been so far, are a mix of prospects and injured players. Right. Guys that either didn't play in the first half or played very poorly in the first half have very low values, but that are projected to have good or great values in the second half of the season. So how do you feel about the methodology here? Did I do something that was actually useful or did I just make a pretty spreadsheet with a lot of colors on it i i like it i like it i like also the idea that um you kind of want three greens or at least uh one white and three greens to line up to to get what you want. Because, like, for example, Josh Smith is on here, and he's projected to be basically replacement level.

He's been really bad. It's not that impressive to get up to replacement level from really bad. Or at least it's not that useful to us. And then, you know, as you get further down the list, when you get the kind of green across the board um i think those are almost a little bit less like super green across the board those are almost less useful too because um you know jd martinez has earned uh you know eight dollars so far projected for another level 11 that's a pretty mild by low if you ask me you know um you know so

you know there's a there's a little bit of sort of feeling your way through this but just to have all those names in front of you um you know i think it's pretty useful i mean i use a different method where i just uh created the fan graphs uh fan graphs custom board where i had uh oh swing or chase rate on their barrel rate max ev and hard hit rate um and i just sorted by barrel rate and looked for people who had poor isolated slugging numbers um you know one of the people i found on there that I really liked for the second half was Brandon Belt. So I went over and looked at your sheet. Brandon Belt has

earned minus $4 and he's projected for $0.40 more. It's a question of the depth of your league because that replacement level becomes more valuable. But I think Brandon Belt is –

there's also a question of, like, are we talking about buying low your trading or is this a guy you can pick up off the wire? And I think Belt is available on the wire in some leagues and someone you should look up to pick up. I think, you know, compare Belt to Votto. You know, I'd almost rather have Belt, even though this system spits out Votto is slightly more likely to be valuable.

Yeah, I think your on-again, off-again situation with Joey Votto is pretty tough to deal with because you haven't been a 12-team league, you were telling me before the show, and that threshold's a lot different than a 15-team league as far as when you would move on from a player like this.

The projections point to him being good enough even in a 12 where you wouldn't want to make that move, but what are you seeing more recently? Because we talked about him with some of the struggles earlier in the season. He went back to old bats, I bats i believe trying to change his bat looked like he was sort of putting it back together and then looking at the last 30 days he's been about 20 percent worse than league average he's got like one homer in his last 69 plate appearances so it's been an up and down

ride so far for vato what's making you feel like it's time to actually let him go, at least in these more shallow formats? I did one of those rolling graphs on Fangraphs where I just looked at hard hit rate and WOBA and nothing else. And they track really closely. I think that's partially because of some of the inherent bias in the hard hit rate that is in those graphs. It's not the stack cast hard hit rate. It's the hard hit rate that's done by stringers. So, of course, if you're getting hits, those look hard. You know what I mean?

To a stringer. That's sort of an inherent bias there. But they tracked really closely. And what I saw was there was a rise in hard hit rate and wolba that was the kind of oh he put the bat away and everything's good again and that that went away and there's a little bit of a second rise coming but that strikeout rate as a as a like a sort of through line for all this just makes me feel like whenever he is hot and whenever he does something good,

it's just not going to be as good as it used to be because he's going to be striking out a lot. Yeah, and even the Bat-X, which is the projection system I use to run these rest of season numbers, has him projected for a strikeout rate 24.3% that would be the highest of his career. Going forward, if he did that, that'd be even a tick higher than it was a season ago. He's at 26.2% this season so far.

So I do think it's fine to adjust expectations downward, but Votto versus Belt is a really close sort of toss-up. We've gone through a few of these over the course of this season. I don't envy your position. If I were in that spot, I'd probably still follow the numbers, maybe to my own peril. Belt's one of those players that I think is just a little underrated because of all the time that he misses.

The projection should ultimately account for that, but I almost wonder if the volume input for the playing time could be slightly off on Belt, and that could be dragging down his rest-of-season value. Because if you look at what he's projected to play for the rest of the season, it's only 50 games, 232 plate appearances at the high end. It seems like that could be a little bit on the light side compared to a few other players. Like Votto's projected for 299 plate appearances.

So we're talking about less than a half season. A difference of 60 to 70 plate appearances is actually pretty significant in terms of what that's going to do to all of your counting stats. And don't they have like similar injury risk? You know, yes, Belt's knee is becoming concerning, but Votto's back is concerning, you know. But you're getting the same swing and miss concerns from Belt, too. Like, the profile is just so similar, and it comes without the floor.

He's been a little bit steadier, Belt has, with the bad ball production, you know what I mean, in terms of his barrel rates and, you know, stuff like that. So, yeah, his home park is worse worse and vada's home park is great nevada does catch fire then uh that'll look silly but it's a 12 team dynasty and he's getting near the end of his career he doesn't have any trade value in the league uh and i needed to activate number five on this list actually because of the headers he's number four, Tyler O'Neal. I needed to activate Tyler O'Neal, and I just think Tyler O'Neal is going to be more valuable to my team.

The projections say he's going to be more valuable to my team. He has more positional versatility in places I need. And so Tyler O'Neal, come on down. I do think I would trade for tyler o'neill you know you know i like the number the top two guys on this list you have vinnie pascantino and eloy jimenez i think i would love to trade for those guys uh but uh tyler o'neill is projected to be better than them going forward. So if they're all on the table, and to some extent,

Eli might be harder to get from just what people think of him generally, I think. I think Tyler O'Neal is one of the best by lows because I think people think, oh, that year must be a fluke. He's injured. He's not doing it this year. I'll let him go. Yeah, the names that came out at the top, again, looking for the biggest differential between rest of season projected value and value earned so far. Vinny Pasquantino at number one, just over 12 bucks. Eloy also in that range. O'Neal Cruz, Tyler O'Neal, and Max Muncy in the top five.

O'Neal Cruz, Tyler O'Neal, and Max Muncy in the top five. We've talked about Muncy a few times just not being healthy, and that's the thing that makes him much more difficult to buy into. He showed up as having one of the better bat speeds. Am I right? No, he had a poor bat speed. There were a few Dodgers on that list in that piece that was kind of surprising to me. Have we not talked about that on the podcast yet?

No, we should get to that probably on a different episode because it almost merits like a full conversation yeah but if if you hear this and and you're wondering there is a piece called what you need to know about stat cast bat tracking uh from mike petriello that was really interesting there's some bat speed stuff in it and one of the things that came out because it it was put in Houston and L.A., was that you actually have the bat speeds for those players at the best sort of sample size. And Jordan Alvarez and Trace Thompson had the best batting bat speeds on their respective teams. But Max Muncy had the fourth best among the Dodgers, which I was really surprised to see. I was also surprised to see how many Dodgers have below average bat speed,

including Freddie Freeman, Cody Bellinger, and last among both teams, basically among the regulars, was Justin Turner. So I think this is pretty valuable information uh and it does say something about max muncy that i was surprised to see i thought he would be down where justin turner is that the bat speed would be hurting because of his injury but it hasn't been the case uh according to this bat tracking uh number so um i do i did hear internally from other analysts that this information requires a fair amount of washing and cleaning and that there's a fair amount of error in it. And that this is to caution that this is kind of early going. However, some of that was with regards to tracking sweet spot hitting. I think bat speed itself, they feel fairly good about,

but they're also trying to tell you how often they actually physically hit it on the sweet spot of the bat. And he said that part has the most error. So that makes sense because you're talking about millimeters on a moving bat. But that's neither here nor there.

I think you've decided at this point yourself, dear listener, that Max Muncy is either someone to go acquire or someone you just don't want to bother with. Right. And the price might be even lower now than it was two months ago because now we're sitting on almost

four months of underperformance. So he does pop in this particular calculation. Jonathan India, not surprisingly, does pretty well. He missed a lot of time in the first half. Just a well-balanced player who does everything. So I wouldn't have any reservations at all about making a move to get India at this point. Brandon Lau, who was hurt a lot in the first half, stands out here. You mentioned Josh Smith before.

I think in a 15-team league, Josh Smith is fine because he offers up some cheap speed, but he continues to be the kind of player that doesn't hit the ball hard, so I think he's got a pretty clear limitation in terms of contact quality. I did get a scouting report on Josh Smith from someone in that organization

that I thought was interesting. A Tommy LaStella that can run. Doesn't Tommy LaStella hit the ball harder? Yeah, it hasn't been so impressive yet. I would just say, I guess, that it's been 71 batted ball events for Jeff Smith. That's sort of surprising. Yeah, I guess Tommy LaStella doesn't hit the ball that hard. He started to this year in a very limited sample,

but historically that's really not been a strength of his so maybe that is a really good comp what's interesting about smith too is that he hits the ball in the air like he has a sort of even ground ball fly ball mix so he has the mix of someone that should hit for a little bit of power but just not the oomph but someone i think someone i would watch in sort of deeper dynasties because they're giving him a real chance if if the batted ball power starts to come through and now he's also working more closely i guess with donnie ecker in the major league group uh as opposed to uh their hitting coaches in the minor league group so um somebody i would just watch um like we said at the beginning though though he's projected to

basically be a replacement level that does not make him super interesting next after josh smith though is a guy who showed up on my method from nil reyes if you look at the leaders in barrel rate from nil reyes is still 11th in the big leagues and i know that is not uh related to strikeout rate i mean it is this is i think barrels on balls and play so it does look the other way on his 40 strikeout rate but i i did look at fran milreis's strikeout rate um and the rolling graph of his strikeout rate is improving. He had basically the worst maybe 30, 40-game stretch of his career when it comes to strikeout rate early this season. He settled in a little bit closer to 35%.

However, his reach rate is actually trending upwards. So he's all kinds of mess at the plate right now and you know i wouldn't i wouldn't um i wouldn't tell you we're totally wrong to just avoid the situation but if you're looking for power and there's a fair amount of people like that who are looking for power given what happened with the the ball this year uh you know i don't i think tyler o'neill and fran Franco Reyes are like, I got to take a shot at somebody that might just hit 15 homers the rest of the way. Yeah, I think I would look at Jorge Soler in a similar light, and I think there's a little less swing and miss in that profile. Even though his K rate is up compared to where it was last year, I can deal with a 29% carry. With Reyes, the rolling graph is interesting

because while in the last probably 50 or so games or plate appearances, I think this is with the, yeah, this is plate appearance, or games across the bottom, it is trending back in the right direction. But when you take a look at the multi-year view, the three-year view, the peaks and valleys are still generally trending in the wrong direction.

Even though it's not as bad as it has been at its worst this season, Fran Mule Reyes' long-term K rate is pretty clearly on the rise. So I think he's one of those players that is probably going to swing his way out of the league a little more rapidly than you'd expect based on how good the peak was it almost reads like a like a bit of a hole right yeah like he's been he's been solved and there doesn't seem to be a counter adjustment that he can make yeah and he's tried you can see even as the k rate has has gone up that you can see you know times when his reach rate and his chase rate goes down um and uh that's been good for him but it's hasn't arrested the increase in strikeout rate you know what i mean it hasn't been like oh he stopped chasing balls and then the strikeout rate came down they're sort of like he stopped chasing balls and the strikeout rate kept going up so you, maybe this new thing where he's chasing balls is him trying to,

like maybe he's a guy that they figured out you can pitch at the top of the zone. And so he has to actually go get those balls and try to do something with them in order to prove that he doesn't have a hole at the top of the zone. But I don't know. It seems like a big mess. I think just personally with a 40% strikeout rate I I'd rather try uh O'Neill or Solaire first if uh if I had a list and then you know Pasquantino is really interesting too do you it's hard to tell when the kind of this shine comes off

you know a listener was asking me if I'd rather have pascontino or gorman and you know with the positional value and this is in a dynasty situation with the positional value it's probably gorman but it depends a little bit about well how my infield looks because just on bat pascontino has actually hit a ball harder than Gorman and has a similar barrel rate and has a 17% strikeout rate. I think, you know, if the bloom has come off the rose for Vinny and sometimes it can happen really quickly, I think he's a buy low too. Yeah, I think that's possible i think with gorman what's going to be challenging to figure out is how much of the triple a strikeout rate last year was gorman figuring some things out and how much of it was triple a in 2021 especially in the second half of the season being really depleted time will tell

right but he's so young for the level so young for someone who's debuted with as much power sorry you're gonna boo me why are you booing me i hate that phrase sorry which phrase time will tell well i mean you do have to wait to get the answer here i know i know i'm sorry it's like a right that was like a it's like a it was a writing response it's like i'm not allowed to not allowed to write it so anytime i see it i'm like boo yeah that's a classic don't write the way people talk yeah that's a good point yeah i think when talking it's not as bad there's stuff broadcasters say all the time that you can't write when you're trying to put a column together good news for gorman is that you know if you look at his per

game thing the the the chase rate is just going. So he came into the league pressing, be like, hey, I belong here. And the chase rate has gone from 40% to 30% in 50 games. Yeah, and I think the other thing with this is if you go back and you look at someone like Austin Riley, who was also young for levels going through the minor league system in Atlanta. It showed some flashes of making the K rate better in his brief time at AAA before he came up in 2019. Big raw power. And you look at the hitter that he has become, I think that's the sort of ceiling you can tell yourself that Nolan Gorman has.

that Nolan Gorman has. And I think it comes back to how much do you believe in Vinny Pasquantino's hit tool versus Nolan Gorman's power and plate skills? Like there's power in Pasquantino's profile too, but it might be more average power. Like it might be the 20 home run power, which is fine.

If he's going to hit 290 while doing it, which is possible. I don't know, man. He's hit a ball 112, you it which is possible i don't know man he's hit a ball 112 you know like i don't know i think vinnie might have plus power 60 hard hit rate early on for vinnie pasquantino right like it's all it looks pretty good and like the barrel rates are pretty similar i do think that gorman might be able to settle in around 24%, 25% strikeout rate. And Zips kind of believes in that. And that means his batting averages would be a little bit safer than it looks right now.

So, yeah, with the positional thing in there, I think it's probably Gorman by a nose. But I did want to throw that out there because Pascantino, especially in redraft leagues, could be a buy low guy. Try Tim's new Sweet Chili Chicken loaded wraps and bowls today. Take your taste buds on an exciting new adventure for

lunch or dinner with our delicious new Sweet Chili Sauce. It's time for Sweet Chili Chicken. It's time for Tim's. At participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. One more player to throw out there, but it's possible to like both. We're just talking about one versus the other because you were asked a question about those two players specifically. I think those players both have bright long-term futures. Nick Castellanos pops again, and this time last year he was one of the more highly projected bats for the rest of the season

who I felt like via trade didn't require nearly as much as he should have required. Same sort of circumstances here, just in terms of how he projects compared to how I expected him to project, but this time we've got some pretty significant pullback in what he's done so far this season. We're seeing Nick Castellanos swing at more pitches outside the zone than he's ever done before, right? He's always had a good hit tool, and the power has sort of grown over the last five or six years.

Hard hit rates down, barrel rate also down. Is he healthy? Is this a player that's been pressing, trying to earn every dollar of that new contract? I mean, what do you make of what's happened through the first 90-ish games now for Castellanos in Philly? And is he as much of a decent buy low or positive regression candidate as this search seems to indicate?

I think the Harper injury came at the worst time because what Castellanos really needed to do, and I'm trying to sort of read this graph, is that he really needed to settle down and become, basically go back to who he was. Right now, he is literally, he's literally chasing more balls than he has in the last three years. You know, and it's been a steady march upwards. And if you just graph his chase rate against his Woba, it's very obvious. One keeps going up, the other keeps going down. And I think that with the Harper injury, it's like

everyone's sort of looking in his direction. There are other producers on that team. He's not the only one. But if he got hot, it would make up for a lot of the missing Harper offensive production. The 15-game rolling average chart does not give me a

lot of confidence. Your chart points out rightfully that he has been valuable so far and that he should be more valuable in the future. So just a straight projection-based approach says yes, that he's a good buy-low.

And even with the increased aggressiveness on those pitches outside the zone, the K rate's 24.7%. He has a plus hit tool. I mean, he has a really good hit tool. Yeah, it's almost like in some ways it's working against him right now because the quality of the contact is down. He's getting to pitches and swinging at pitches that he shouldn't be hitting, but he's hitting them and just not doing damage,

which is probably a more correctable flaw than not being able to do damage. Just put that quote from Juan Soto in my piece in front of him. It was like Juan Soto was about in front of him it was like you know juan soto was in high a and he was like yeah i just looked at my slugging percentage outside the zone and my slugging percentage inside zone i thought hey i i should stop swinging pitches outside the zone i think league wide the slugging percentage on pitches outside the zone is under 200, and inside the zone is over 400, maybe over 500.

Well, yeah. It was the game on Thursday night, Dodgers-Giants game, where I think it was Eduardo Perez on the broadcast said, when Barry Bonds was a hitting coach, his advice was to swing at strikes, and that can help you with your swing. And it's like, oh, yes, that's good advice. Also a little look into why the best players are not always the best coaches. Just swing at strikes, dude.

I mean, I was saying the same thing, but I could see Barry just being like, well, if you can't do it as good as I can, I don't know how to help you. Until you start swinging only at strikes, I can't fix you. so do that first and then come back and see me and we can talk some more this is like michael jordan just being like just hit the open shots yeah exactly so hopefully some help within that group uh say a suzuki looks kind

of interesting to another injured guy that i just think across the board can do a little bit of everything i know the cubs are yeah probably paring down the roster even more, but playing time's not a concern. Could just be a quietly productive player in the final two months of the season. I'm buying Suzuki. I'm buying Tyler O'Neal. I'm buying Vinny P.

I'm buying Eloy, if someone will let me. I just feel like it would be harder to get him. I'm picking up Eddie Rosario in deeper leagues. I have found myself doing that. I'm intrigued by the idea that here's a guy who had a poor chase rate

that apparently couldn't see the ball. What if he could see the ball? One other name that showed up when i did and it's actually kind of fascinating how many players are on our both of our lists like you know i did this list where i just i sorted by barrel rate i'm just basically looking at people who have below 200 isos right and i'm like if you have a if you have a top 50 top 30 barrel right you should probably have you know an iso an isolated slugging percentage over 200 because league average isolated slugging is like 160 or 150 i think it's gone down so um you know the guys that popped on this list pretty quickly are like gallo uh voight fran meal uh you know those are those are some guys we've already

we've talked about some of them acuna which you know good luck buying the sure yeah yeah max muncy's on this list um adam duvall jorge soler so those are some of your traditional guys um but one guy uh you know i always want to because i you know hey shout out to the people that shook my hand at the all-star game and in chicago it was great to see you please do approach me um i'm you know i i'm always willing to talk baseball i love uh hearing from people what they like about their podcasts. They usually don't tell me what they don't like, but hey, why not? If it comes with a nice handshake, then I'll take it. So I did talk to a couple people that play in some pretty deep leagues. So I wanted to throw a deep league name out there for you.

Jake Berger is currently hurt, but he's in the top 25 for barrel rate on the season. He does strike out a little bit too much. Not a great play to approach. Defensively, you know, you're going to's possible that jake berger uh when he gets back um you know finds some sort of uh maybe part-time uh playing situation where they can take advantage of his power so um i don't i'm not sure of that one uh but i did see that he was owned in less than five percent of yahoo leagues um and uh if you especially particularly if you have a daily league and you're looking to just pick up somebody that might give you some more power uh i think burgers is an interesting guy the other name that's kind of interesting because a ton of the players we're talking about are guys that don't run much or at all i mean tyler o'neill will run some javier baez always comes up for me in these mid-season searches.

When things are bad, it seems like it's reasonably easy to trade for him. And one thing I didn't realize, because I don't think I have him anywhere this year, Baez is down to a 24.1% strikeout rate. That's the best strikeout rate that he's had since 2016. I don't know if that's necessarily going to hold, because his O-swing is as bad as it's ever been. It's still the worst of his career, I think. Yeah. So I wonder if part of what I was suggesting with Castellanos could be happening with Baez, right?

The increased reach is happening because he's trying to make something happen. Team struggling, first year with a new club, big contract, just trying to do things. And then as a result, the barrel rates down. Night in the ball is hard because he's making contact and hitting bad pitches. Only nine homers and three steals so far. But if you told me Baez is going to get back to being himself, he's going to hit 250 with a low OBP and maybe get you double digit homers and double digit steals the rest of the way with a high volume accounting stats because he plays every day.

I don't think I'd push back on that. Yeah. And, you know, in the rolling graphs, there's been a concerted effort by him to reduce his chase rate. So there obviously seems to be some sort of adjustment going on. And the one thing that is always true of him is that he's super streaky. I mean, if you just look at the graph for 2021, he was pretty awful for the beginning part of the season, and then he was kind of white hot to end the season. And you can kind of almost see in his day-to-day wobble,

you can see pretty awful for the first 50 games. Had a nice little hot stretch, came back to earth again, but I think if he follows last year, he's got another hot stretch in him back to earth again, but I think if he follows last year, he's got another hot stretch in him and it could be pretty amazing. He's not my type of player, but when you are in the buy low neighborhood, you're kind of looking to catch lightning in a bottle a little bit. He's the definition of that.

Another name to think about. hopefully that opened up some opportunities for you on the trade front if you're in the league that lets you make moves let's talk about the pie slice rule because i don't think we've really discussed that in detail on this show and i think the easiest way to explain what the pie slice rule is is to imagine a line on each side of the second base bag that extends out to the outfield grass and then you have this triangle with sort of a rounded top around the infield dirt that looks like a pie slice right you got the crust at the back of the dirt you got the part of the base where the inside part of the pie would be. Well, the rule would be that no defenders would be allowed to stand in that space. So the batted ball up the middle would actually be much more likely to become a hit again. That'd be a spot where you're not allowed to shift.

And I really like this idea as a way of just not eliminating defensive manipulations completely, but just saying there's a few spots where you can't stand. You can get close to there, and if you've got the range to get in there, okay, great. We'll see what happens. This is being tested in the Florida State League, but if they implemented this for 2023 in Major League Baseball, I don't think I'd really have any problem with it.

The one thing that kind of, yeah, kind of, like kind of, the one thing that doesn't, it's the first time they would draw some lines on the ground and say, no defender can stand here. It's a little different. I mean, if you wanted to put your first baseman in foul ground to start, you know, you can. You could. But so I think of it kind of like someone explained this as like modifications in the NBA, right? You have different lines on the floor, restricted areas where defenders can't go, the three-second rule, all those different things that have been implemented over time. This seems in that vein.

This seems appropriate. This seems like a small step as opposed to saying you know no shifts at all like that that's a bigger adjustment i think this at least is one step toward that without going too far what's funny is that this kind of is the next step because what they did was and this is uh there's a piece that i helped start jason stark on a little bit but he did all the work um i just did a little picture so you can see what the pie slice looks like. And I also heard some stuff, but that's new here. The thing that's going on with the pie slices,

they tried the thou shalt not shift and said, you have to have two on each side, and they can't be on the outfield dirt. And outs, percentage of outs converted, percentage of ground balls turned into outs went up. I would say, really, it stayed the same. What we said, what we found was the teams would still put their second baseman basically standing on the grass,

as far as they could into the hole against lefties. So that second baseman is standing pretty close to the first baseman, far into the hole. And then they would just have their shortstop stand on the bag, basically, at second base, and even sometimes float into uh into the other space once the ball is pitched so what happens is the ball of the middle is is an out and the pulled ground ball isn't out and so everything's still outs and then so what they try to do with the pie slice is say no you can't just stand you can't stand right behind the bag and gobble up all these balls in the middle we want those to be hits and that's the part where I kind of like it. Because we tell

people in Little League, we tell people in college, I think aesthetically it makes sense. In fact, it makes sense a little bit with hitting philosophies that a hit up the middle is good. That means that you're basically matching

the pitcher is throwing it to you down the middle and you're hitting it back up the middle you know and uh and so i think that we still aesthetically and from our training and from what we know from when we played baseball we think oh man he's called to that one at the middle shortstop standing there you know um and it's like that weird feeling of like oh but that's what we were taught to do and so i like that idea of like hey let's let's bring this back let's bring the single up the middle back because we're taught to do it it seems like a good idea it seems like a good idea for how you should hit and uh we've been taught that it's a good idea and and it it's it's beautiful and and it would also take, it would actually do something.

You know, like the other rule that we tried didn't do anything. So why ban the shift if it doesn't change anything, right? So that part I like, and I'm pretty interested in it. So I did a query here where I just basically asked, who hits ground balls and line drives up the middle. You know, you could do this in a tighter fashion where you actually try to, you know, use the angles that are provided in StatCast to like actually, you know, get the pie slice. But in fact, I don't think that players control balls and play to that level you know i mean like there's nobody being like i'm aiming for the pie slice

so i think actually just asking who it's ground balls and line drives up the middle you're going to start to get a sense of who is it and i I'll read you, how about I read you the top 10 because it's pretty interesting. There is a type that we would be rewarding and it may not be, it's, let me just read the names. Ahmed Rosario, Nicky Lopez, Isaiah Kainer-Falefa, D.J. LeMayhew, Alex Verdugo, JP Crawford,

Juan Soto, our first power hitter, Rafael Devers, Eric Hosmer, Vlad Guerrero Jr. I'll do a couple more. Rymel Tapia, Tim Anderson, Beau Bichette,

Tommy Edmond, and Jose Iglesias. There's a weird group of players. I think there's actually a common thread. But I think it's weird that there's this mix of... They're not power hitters. But the power hitters that get in there are pretty strange. Well, they're also guys that go oppo some, right? These aren't your big pull hitter guys.

Juan Soto goes oppo. Devers goes oppo. But yeah, Ahmed Rosario and DJ LeMay, it's easy to see the similarities in their approaches. Yeah, I mean, there were so many of these guys. They're just spray hitting guys without power for the most part. Bobachek goes oppo, but he's somewhere in between the guys with power and the guys without power, but a lot of these guys have no power. What do you think that means though do we do we want

more of those types of players i i think it'll help their batting averages maybe you know to some extent and this is going away from fantasy and this is a little bit of question of what you want when you watch baseball to some extent i could actually see it you know because like you know omar viskel like you could have a guy who's really good at defense and who can just hit the ball at the middle and they become more viable if you do the pie slice thing right like nikki lopez is probably has one foot in baseball one foot out but with this rule he's more likely to play and he's the type of guy who would hit maybe with this pie slice rule let's give him let's give him a big boost let's say he hits 280 290 steals you 25 bags plays good short side now that sound a little bit like a viscal or something

like a like an old school player it would be an old school player it's not without power i think that i think that's what we want a little bit we want guys who put the ball in play and fly around the bases i think this is actually a good list i think what's going to happen is you're still going to see you're still going to see a lot maybe more teams will will take this approach and use players like this because if you look at Nicky Lopez's projection right now for the rest of the season, 247, 303, 308. I mean, that's like no power there at all. But you said

he's going to hit 280. So you got to bump his OBP up a bit too, right? If he goes from high 240s to 280, it's like a 330 OBP. That changes where he hits in the lineup. He's also a good runner. A lot of these guys are at least average runners, and some of them are very good runners. And they're good defenders. So suddenly, those

players maybe become top-of-the-order players that are table setters, and maybe your table setters can steal more bases again because they're going to take those risks. They're bigger bags. They're changing the rules. There's pitch clocks. I mean, this could actually work you know if

what you wanted was more balls in play more guys running around you know more old school you know athleticism first type guys this could work i mean this is the type of list these are the type of players that you look at normally and be like you don't want too many guys like this, but even, even in a real life lineup, I think you generally feel okay having one, maybe two of these guys, if the defense is really good and depending on who your alternatives are.

But I think this kind of scratches at something that Don Mattingly is dealing with right now in Miami, where the Marlins, especially with Jazz Chisholm and John Birdie on the IL, are a one-note song offensively. They are a team that relies very heavily on the long ball, and they don't do much else. They don't do much else. And I think giving teams more ways to construct a roster that can be competitive is a good thing. Having more strategies is a good thing. We probably have hit the optimization point with swinging away. And this would help to begin to reverse that trend. It's not going to flip it by itself.

But this is the kind of tweak that's not radical that at least starts to open up more possibilities. So, I'm on board. It's an amazing group of players that aren't valued by the league for the most part. I mean, yes, Crawford kind of flipped. These are

short stops and stuff like that, but I think most people are like, why trade for rymel tapia you know like uh and uh jose iglesias is no good and yuli guriel is overrated or whatever you want to say and um you know so you know to some extent some teams have gone in on this like luis arise is on this list of 20 he's's found his way towards more playing time over time, right? And they've generally been like, you know, you're so different from Miguel Sano. Maybe we should have both you guys on our team, you know?

And I would say that Isaiah Akana-Falefa for the Yankees is the same way. It's like, well, we have a bunch of guys who are going to walk and hit homers. What if we had a guy who would just put the ball in play and play some good shortstop? So I think there's been some teams that have been like, hey, let's have at least one of these guys in our lineup. But I think generally we've gone away from them. In terms of what is actionable here for people going forward,

I think you should act like the smart teams and have one or two and not pay much for them, but enjoy them. If J.P. Crawford next year gets another offensive boost from this, offensive boost from this, you know, then, you know, he could hit 280 and have 10 homers

and five steals. That would be his best offensive year. It wouldn't be something you'd want to be like, I'm featuring this guy. I'm really pushing him. I'm trying to get a ton of shares. But if you kind of looked at this list and said,

you know, some of these guys are going to fall. I'm going to pick one of these guys or two of these guys, you know, late in my drafts. And a lot of them have positional versatility too. So like, you know, maybe I'll just cover some of my backup positions with somebody off this list. You know, Adam Frazier, Miles Straw, Whit Merrifield. A lot of these guys are going to be cheap next year. They're not having good seasons.

These are good players just to help with the batting average category. Just to give you a little bit of a lift there and maybe be more competitive in that category than you'd be if you had too many players that are not like that. I think it's worth keeping an eye on this list. And then I think in the context of the Marlins, they're talking about how they're going to make changes. I think you have to wait on John Birdie. You can't just make him healthy and call him up. John Birdie, you can't just make him healthy and call him up,

but I do think that there's a possibility that somebody like him and Wendell, where you're just not sure of the playing time. If you're reading between the lines, and if Mattingly has any power, you may see some more at-bats for Birdie and Wendell, and maybe, is it fewer for Bryan Anderson? And fewer for, is Avi Garcia going to start losing some playing time? Not in year one of a four-year deal. That's what his GM is probably telling him.

This is a weird lineup because, I mean, obviously Jazz isn't there right now, but they're older than you think. Garrett Cooper, 31. Joey Wendell, 32. Soler is on the wrong side of 30 now. Aguilar is 32. Brian Anderson is 29. Avi is 31.

Jesus Sanchez, one of their few young regulars other than Jazz, having a somewhat disappointing year, I think. Miguel Rojas is 33. Stallings, who they traded for, is 32. They do not have the rest of that young core of position players in place it really is kind of like jazz by himself right now and then a lot of questions about how good jesus sanchez is and then where that that next player or two is going to come from yeah and you know i i would and I would take a look at, I'm looking at projected WRC Plus.

Is Luan Diaz going to get a chance? I'm trying to pick a loser. First, you have to pick the loser, right? Yeah, you got to start figuring out who they're going to move, but I think they're a trade deadline team that is going to do something significant. We've talked about them.

Jesus Aguilar? Does he go to a contender as a bench bat? I mean, he's 32. And I mean, he doesn't strike out that much. So he's a little different. But he also isn't really hitting for a ton of power. And right now, he's a league average bat as a first baseman.

So he doesn't really have that much value to the to them long term and if you if you let Jesus Aguilar go you just at least open up a place for Cooper to play you know and then you open up basically an outfield spot and then you maybe call up JJ Bleda

I mean that's the question if Bleda is going to come up but also the question is is Bleda any different from these guys? Because he strikes out a lot in the minors. The one thing he does do better than almost anybody at the big league level is take a walk. And maybe he can come up and actually have a power. The other thing I would do if I were the Miami Marlins

is consider changing the fences. Move them in it's just um it just seems like you know more the more sort of up the middle your your part can play the the better it is uh so you you don't have to overpay for avi garcia you know what i mean i think they had to overpay for avi garcia in terms of i mean i think they had to overpay for avi garcia in terms of at least years in order to get him into that ballpark and i think if you make it play more fair then you you become more of a player for for hitters i think garcia was in a position that maybe he and his agent knew was probably a once in a career situation for him to get a multi-year contract, especially he was 30 this winter.

So they knew if he was going to get four years at an AAV of 13 million, this was it. Like this was their only chance. So yeah, I don't know if we can look at that and say, you know, the Marlins had to reach because of their park. I don't,

I don't know for sure. Same stuff. We talked with some of the other free agents that have signed, though. Swinging at more pitches outside the zone than he has in recent years. Not barreling up quite as many balls. It seems like it could easily be a guy that's just making some bad swing decisions, trying to put the entire offense on his back and then making the offense worse in the process. Yeah, they have the sixth worst chase rate in baseball, so there could be some questions for their hitting coach, especially when you see some of these guys chasing more than they have in the past.

Yeah, pretty strange. Also, Avi's not pulling the ball as much as he did a season ago with the Brewers either, going up the middle actually kind of a lot, and hitting the ball on the ground a ton, 55.6 percent ground ball rate for Avi Garcia I could actually see myself having him on a good number of rosters next season I think there's a chance I'd even trade for him in an NL only league right now just because I don't think the playing time goes anywhere I think Brian De La Cruz could play a little bit more depending on what they do at the trade deadline no sure thing but at least he's younger than some of the other guys that they're currently trotting out there on an everyday basis uh you point out a

good thing the marlins are uh fifth worst i have the have the fifth lowest pull percentage in baseball um and the third highest ground ball rate so i don't know if they have a hitting coach that's saying hey let's beat the shift by hitting oppo ground balls but i have to tell you that that is a valuable tool i think you can add to a larger toolbox it should not be the goal right that's not the primary not going to win a lot of primary philosophy it's sort of a ground balls it's like the thing the thing you do as an extra thing like oh you could take this pitch the other way we got to make sure we're covering that like brandon belt last night bunted in the shift to get on base in the ninth inning you inning down by three.

Good. Well done. You can't win the game with a homer there. And they're giving it to you, so go take it. But it's not the same as saying, okay, let's work on hitting oppo ground balls and VP again today, guys. I got one other positional

question for you, thinking about the pie slice rule, thinking about something we've seen deployed a little bit more often in the last couple of years, it's really more impactful on a short list of players than most things. But do you think the league should preemptively make a rule about the number of players that are allowed to stand on the outfield grass? Should we try to do something to get away from the four-man outfield? That was part of the rule that they did do. They said that two on each side and none on the outfield. the four-man outfield. That was part of the rule that they did do.

They said that two on each side and none on the outfield. And none on the outfield. Yeah, so they had to stand on the infield grass. I think there was an interesting piece. I think it was a BP that said that a big part of what has happened in suppressing runs has been outfield shifting. And it doesn't even have to do with necessarily four outfielders. It has to do with what the outfielders are doing out there,

where they're standing, how much they move. I see a fairly aggressive outfield shift every time I go to a game in San Francisco because they've got triple's alley there. And so what they do is they, they have a guy standing triple's alley. alley now if you know what that looks like that's i don't know like 30 40 feet off of the line and also 30 40 feet off the line they put the right fielder in triples alley and the reason they do that is because it's so big the right fielder can go get outs that would be triples and doubles. And he can man that. And then that pushes your center fielder over to left center,

and then your left fielder plays closer to the line, and that's partially because one of the kindest places for power in AT&T is actually down the line to left field. So I think you get some catches along the wall there. You can rob some homers there with your left fielder. Also, you can protect Jock Peterson, who's probably a DH, and you put your center fielder, and he gobbles up everything from center to left center,

and your right fielder stands in triple's alley. That's a fairly aggressive shift. People have written about it. People have noticed it. It's not, I'm not telling you a lot of people listeners have heard this before but i'm just saying uh that's the kind of shift that has been reducing uh the the batting average on balls in play has gone down further than the batting average on ground balls has so it is in the hundreds now it's in the low hundreds i think and i think it

went from like 160 to 120 or something um i don't think there's anything you do about that dude unless you start drawing these lines everywhere right i mean that's the old that's the one part where that's what i was saying what it makes me feel about the the pie slice thing okay you draw the pie slice thing and someone says, okay, let's go to work on outfielders. So now you're going to draw left field, center field, and right field on the outfield? Why not? You can cut amazing shapes into the outfield.

So you could cut it with the lawnmowers. You could do it with the mower. Make it look really nice. Yeah, think about this. What if you extended that pie slice that ends at the dirt all the way to the outfield wall, and then your center fielder had to cover all that space in the middle on your corner, guys?

You better have a damn good center fielder. No more Mike Yastrzemski in center, dude. You better have a guy who can fly that rule would be wild because the amount of ground a center fielder would have to cover would just be two dhs in the corner and just everyone would be like I need Billy Hamilton but it's I don't know it's just among the many things that we could see at some point, but I'm just looking at that going, well,

there's, there's a line that we're adding right now. Just extend it on out there. And it probably pushes the corner guys too far to the side. That's probably, but then you're having like, now you're having lines on lines and it's, um,

so I, uh, I like progress. I like, it's already kind of on this picture too. You can see it. I like improving. It's already cut on this picture too. You can see it. I like improving the game. I like more strategies for winning.

And when you tell them you can't put people somewhere, that's fewer strategies for winning. But it's also more strategies for offense. Now you can have more Nicky Lopez. Do we want more Nicky Lopez? No, I think I want guys that hit the ball hard into the outfield to not be robbed of a double because we just know where they're going to hit it. And because it's so difficult to hit the ball hard into a gap anyway, given that pitching keeps getting better and better and better, you got to have something. Hey, good.

You hit a ball that was – you barreled a ball into the outfield that actually got caught because the shift in the outfield was set perfectly. That's probably a little too far in favor of the team playing defense. Like good job on you figuring that out, but we actually want those balls to be balls in play. Here's the dumbest thing about it though.

I think you could draw the lines for left, center, and right, and you wouldn't change outfield batting average on balls in play. Because we did the same thing on the infield. We told two people on each side, and it didn't change batting average on balls in play in the ground. I think the genie's out of the bag. It's the Pandora's box. It's open. People are now very good at looking at clusters of hits and saying where the defenders should play.

And even if you draw some lines in the outfield, you'll have your left fielder standing right on the line. You know what I mean? You'll have your center fielder standing right on that right field line. And you'll still I think it won't change a thing. Well, hey, we'll see. We'll see if that's the next adjustment.

But pie slice rule, Florida State League in the second half and we'll see if that actually gets pushed to the big leagues maybe as soon as next season. I imagine it's the kind of thing that could show up pretty quickly. I think that's when I was saying I heard something, I think yes.

I think basically abandon the shift. And then you can actually hear it in between the lines between what Rob Manfred said at his availability at the All-Star game that pitch clock and shift rules are on the table for next year. So that pitch clock and shift rules are on the table for next year

so if pitch clock and shift rules are on the table for next year and we try to shift rule that didn't change anything and now we're putting this pie slice thing and if the pie slice thing works it will be the rule that they put in next year when they put in the pitch the pitch clock in the and the uh pie slice rule or the the shift rules they wouldn't put in a rule that they know doesn't work. I don't think they would. I can't say with absolute confidence. You're probably right. I'm not certain that you're right.

But as always, if you've got questions for us, send us an email, ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com. You can find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris. You can find me at Derek Van Ryper. If you're watching us on YouTube, be sure to hit the like button on this video, subscribe to the channel. If you haven't done so already.

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