Rates & Barrels - Shift Rule Winners, Breaking WAR & Superstar Fatigue

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

Eno and DVR dig into potential winners from the restrictions on shifting that will go into effect in 2023. Can José Ramírez become even more productive in batting average in the new landscape? Will teams swap defensive positions to counteract shift rules? How does Shohei Ohtani break WAR, and is 'superstar fatigue' a real thing? Rundown 4:37 Searching Statcast for Potential Shift Rules Winners 10:51 José Ramírez: Slightly Higher Ceiling in 2023? 18:45 Will Defenders Swap Positions Regularly? 23:05 An Increasing Number of Multi-Position Players? 25:43 Are Any Player Types Susceptible to Lose Playing Time? 31:06 Will the Market Overcorrect for Players Losing Hits to Shifts? 39:06 Shohei Ohtani & Breaking WAR 52:12 Superstar Fatigue Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Monday, September 19th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we will attempt to answer a very frequently asked question over the past week or so. Which hitters are most likely to benefit from the new restrictions on shifting, which will be in effect for the 2023 season.

So we fumbled our way through some savant searches, trying to come into the group of players that should benefit in some way. We'll debate whether or not it's actually going to be a small uptick in production, a medium uptick in production, or perhaps even a venti uptick in production. We've got a few other good questions related to defense. And then, of course, we haven't talked about this on our show for a while, but Shohei Otani versus Aaron Judge in the AL MVP race and in the battle that is ensuing there,

but also the challenges of properly valuing Otani. I want to talk about that because it's a topic that everybody's all over right now. But I also want to talk about it from the sense of recency bias, since that has a massive impact on how we value players going into next season. So we begin with a simple question. You know, how was your weekend? Good. Good. Yeah, good.

The the there were baseball games. We are a baseball family now. So the kids are in Little League. We went from one baseball game to another baseball game. Any tanks? Huh? Tanks? Well, in my son's, the older son's game,

there was a walk-off home run. But I would call it a solid line drive so it was not a over the flagpole moonshot that some kids occasionally hit it was you know a well-driven ball that just rolled past everybody yeah like a major league single sure well hey it's a walk-off home run he hit it hard he hit it hard it was the hardest hit ball of the day and and, it's a walk-off home run. He hit it hard. He hit it hard. It was the hardest hit ball of the day, and it's a big kid. So he was the team MVP for the day. Felix got, my older kid, he got two walks and a hit by pitch. The OBP through the roof right now. Yeah, exactly. He's got like a 750 obp

yeah so he's really he's really taken to the advanced stats does he have an elbow guard do kids wear elbow guards in little league no but nobody throws that hard so like i was like when he got hit afterwards i was like did it hurt are you hurt are you okay and he goes yeah i don't know hit my elbows no big deal yeah that's fine it was 45 miles an hour. It's okay. I almost caught it. Exactly.

But the one thing that is really tough about watching youth baseball are all the damn walks, dude. So many walks. Oh, man. With the younger son, he's in coach pitch, so not as much of a problem. But once the kids start pitching, man, it's really hard to hit the glove, you know? Yeah, I'm trying to remember back in the Little League days. I mean, Little League back when I played, it was 10 to 12-year-olds.

So it was mostly the 12-year-olds that got to pitch because the 10- olds couldn't throw very hard and if they could even throw hard they had zero command at age 10 so it's mostly the older kids that would pitch back then yeah maybe uh maybe some of this is because this is fall ball so we've lost some of the best athletes to soccer in the fall uh but uh it one of the reasons i wanted to do it was to get my kids in in the door in the process having getting them some experience before they decide they want to do fall ball which i mean spring ball which is more competitive it's also hilarious to me that sports are year-round every we're pretty much everywhere now because of indoor facilities where it's cold and everything because Little League was May to August, and then baseball was done,

and then baseball came back the following May. That's how it was. It wasn't that long ago. I was a kid in the 90s. I'm not that old, but the idea of being able to play in September, I would have loved that as a kid. Baseball was by far my favorite when I was their age, so really cool they get to do that. Let's get into some topics.

Let's get to the hitters who might benefit the most from shift restrictions. And I think there are a few ways you can try to do a search to hone in on players. So I think it's important if you share your methodology with us, because it will help all of us fish a little more efficiently as we navigate that leaderboard. No, you shared a pretty cool tweet that I think is sort of step one. And let me see if I can find it. You have Jeremy Frank from MLB Random Stats tweeted out, Most outs on ground balls, line drives hit into the shift this year. And Corey Seager's first with 90 and Kyle Tucker 66, Max Kepler 64.

Max Kepler has literally told me he's excited for the shift rules to go away, for the shift to go away. So, you know, that that lines up, you know,, Kepler Hoskins is on the list, a Seager. These are pull hitters, lefty pull hitters, right? So, you know, that lines up with step one. But, uh, I thought, um, I was thinking about the chart. Did you have that, that picture? Yes. The defensive alignment picture.

Yeah. Uh, those of you watching on youtube i just this is just uh how the league i'm gonna do half face this is how the this is uh uh this is how the league plays uh when it's shifting this is uh lefties with the shift on uh this is how they play them so you can see uh you know the the orange blob is the second baseman. He's playing in short right field. The red blob is the shortstop. He's playing up the middle. The green blob is the third baseman. He's playing basically with the shortstop when he plays. So that's your traditional shift right now. Now the rules are going to come in and say, well,

you know, two on each side and nobody on the outfield grass. That, I don't think, is going to change the second baseman's positioning that much. He'll basically just take a couple steps in so that he's right on the outfield grass cutoff. In terms of left to right angles, you know, one of the things we figured out in the shift was the second baseman should play you know if you're looking at this on youtube you see the 30 degree angle uh he should play pretty close to the first baseman in terms of angles because that's where pull hitters you know hit ground balls now there is uh going to be a rule about the shortstop but the reason this didn't change much in the minor leagues is because that shortstop can still stand behind second base at zero degrees. So he has to actually move, whereas the second baseman can stay at the same angle he's at and just come in, you know, two or three feet. The shortstop actually

has to move so that he's not on the first base side of second base. So that is an actual sort of left to right move. So my thinking is in that angle there between five and 15 degrees, there used to be a short stop and now there can't be. You know, and I think that's very different than in at the 30 degree angle where the second baseman is just being in a step or two i think that's also really hard to study so i took the easier easier chunk to study which is who hits balls at 5 to 15 degrees um who which lefties hit balls at 5 to 15 degrees where there now won't be a defender um and that was that's an easy query to actually to do on stat cast uh you run uh you

run your thing so you have a lefty batter uh your launch direction is in metric range you can add metric and you add launch direction you just put 5 and 15 as the degrees so now we have all the lefty hitters that this year hit the most balls into 515. And Kyle Tucker is third. Corey Seager is seventh. So those guys are on this list. However, there's a different type of player that's number one and sprinkled in throughout. So Alex Verdugo is your number one.

He hit 91 balls between 5 and 15 degrees. That's a lot. And I can include stats on here. So I can include batting average. Let's do that. So on those pitches, Verdugo did hit.378. But Matt Olsen hit 89 balls in that range and hit 247. So I do think Matt Olsen is going to benefit. Kyle Tucker hit 318, but there's a bunch of guys

who hit over 400 in that area. So I would say that if you hit 250, 280 like Brandon Nimmo, and you hit a bunch of balls there, you're going to benefit from this. I think the true talent is going to be like 350 batting average. Alex Radugo has done so well, probably because he's hard to shift because he sprays the ball everywhere. I don't know if he's going to do better.

But the guys that I think will do better are Matt Olson, Kyle Tucker, Rowdy Tellez, Brandon Nimmo, Charlie Blackman. Kyle Schwarber already hit 390 on those balls. He's killing the ball when he hits it over there. Yeah, so I don't know that he's going to do much better,

but Jake Cronenworth hit 314. Juan Soto, 71 balls up the middle,.225 average on those. Yeah, that's probably going to get better. That was probably going to get better even if the rules didn't change. Right, there's some regression to his established mean that would happen there. But it is part of why Juan Soto will probably have a better year next year. Max Kepler, 273 in the top 25 in balls in that area.

Jose Ramirez has hit 64 balls up the middle and is hitting 190 on those. And Jose Ramirez being a really pull pull fly ball guy uh you know there is some risk to his batting average i think we've talked about it every year uh you know as a first rounder it's not one of the best batting averages what if next year he puts together a really primo batting average with it yeah he likes to make me look stupid in the years where i back off of him as a first round pick that that's not a good track record for me uh i've i've had plenty of teams i have a dynasty team that's built on him and i've plenty of teams where i've i've you know i've won because of him but um you know 278 league average i mean he just there is something there does seem to be something

sort of risky about him you know we've talked about 50 fly ball guys you know he's been over 50 in two of the last three years so he's got this huge pull fly ball approach and somehow makes a bunch of contact while doing it it's a it's it's rare other people that if you gave him a 25 strikeout rate there'd be years where he hit 210 you know sure but he's kind of far from that right yeah he has an 11 strikeout i mean he's he's, I'd say he's a unique player because if you cover up parts of his, you know, of his, of his batting, like just like you cover up strikeout rate and contact rates, you would think this is like a all or nothing lefty slugger, right? Well, yeah, I think you could, you could look at that and come to that conclusion. If you

cover up the right things. I was also wondering, too, how much has he faded in the second half? Because he was really on fire for the first two, two and a half months. And I'm looking at the splits right now. Some injury. 19 homers in the first half, 87 games, nine in his last 55. Average down at 262 in the second half as well. 186 ISO. Yeah, not the same at 262 in the second half as well. 186 ISO.

Yeah, not the same guy so far in the second half, but the thumb injury is definitely worth the mention. That could be a pretty big part of why he's fallen off this much. But he also seems super streaky in his career, right? What was the year? Was it 2019 where we just thought? Oh, the two halves that year. Yeah, that was,

that was wild. Yeah. So he's a, he's a crazy, he's a crazy guy. Um, I, yeah, I mean,

he really does have the all or nothing slugger approach and yet he makes a lot of contact. So he's, he's a unicorn, I think. Well, okay. Just for a moment, what do we think his reasonable

draft day price is going to be? Is he a top 10 player, even with these shortcomings over the second half? You know, I saw someone sharing who would be your top pick. I think

Roda got Vlad. Had a poll out there. And who did he have on it? He had he had he had Julio Rodriguez he had Julio Rodriguez for the first pick. Julio Rodriguez,

Aaron Judge, Jacob DeGrom. I forget who the fourth one was. But already with those three, I was like, oh, I don't know, dude. Julio Rodriguez has stolen four bases in the second half. You know, so it is worth wondering. And the team has talked about not stealing as much. I'd never – Jacob DeGrom is off the list for me completely.

And then Aaron judge has stolen 16 bases this year and you know we'll talk about more about him later but uh in terms of making him my first pick next year i'd be a little bit nervous about the injury history so i think jose ramirez should be like a top five pick next year. All right. So he's still up there. Just because there's so much stability across the board. Yeah. I would assume that some of this is the thumb injury. And you're going to end the season with 30 homers and near 20 steals.

And then I think that these rules will help him hit for a better average next year. So we're talking about a guy who's going to be projected for like 275, 25 homers and 15 steals, and then you think you can buy him at that price and he might hit 300? I think he's going to have a 30-20 projection. Yeah.

And then put a 300 on there? It's possible. I mean, why is that not in the discussion for the first pick? Well, yeah, the poll, I just found the tweet a second ago from Vlad. Trey Turner, 35.7%. Yeah, that's it. Trey Turner is the other one, yeah. Julio, 32.4%. Judge, 26.1%.

Then DeGrom down at 5.8%. I thought the same thing when you mentioned DeGrom. I know there are people out there that would do it. I am not one of them. I just think the extent of his arm injuries in the last couple seasons are way too significant to even consider a first overall pick for him. I don't want to take him in the first round, honestly. I'm not taking him in the first round, so maybe I won't have shares.

But we were just talking about Jose Ramirez, and we're saying that he's got a 275-30-20 projection, probably. And Trey Turner is going to have a 300-20-20 or 20-30 projection, right? So I might order them, you know... I still don't know where to put Judge, man. Okay, let's say you just put him first. Judge, Turner, Ramirez. I mean, I'm putting Ramirez ahead of Acuna, I think.

I think that's fair, though, just because Acuna has talked about his knees still bothering him this year. I know with an offseason to rest for a little while and then build up strength again. The power sort of disappeared a little bit. I would be more comfortable. I would believe Jose Ramirez's projections a little bit more. I'd have some more doubt around Acuna's projections is basically what I'd say. Who do you think has a higher barrel rate this season,

Jose Ramirez or Trey Turner? I was just on Jose Ramirez's page, so I know the answer. You know the answer. Okay, they're not that far apart. Turner's a little higher, 7.9%. Ramirez, by comparison, 6.8%, I think it was. I just had it open. Ramirez's extreme fly ball approach means that he's homering on non-barrels,

whereas Turner has a 35% fly ball rate, and he's more towards getting on base. The batting average since 2019, Trey Turner, 298, 335, 328, 304. Yeah, that'll work with that power-speed combo. We don't know where he's going to play. He's a free agent. Plenty of places we could put him, like Arizona. We're not going to get into that again.

But if it was an auction situation, I might actually, He's going to play. He's a free agent. Plenty of places we could put him, like Arizona. We're not going to get into that again. But if it's an auction situation, I might actually, if I could get Ramirez for $1 or $2 less than Turner, I might just do that. That's my favorite thing about that format, though, is that you don't know. When the first of those two players comes out, if you like them both and you want to get one,

you don't know what player two is going to cost, so you have to just make that hard decision yeah on player one but i think i what i would do is throw turner first and then i would know uh if i got ramirez at a at a value you know what i mean sure turner first let him go to 40 and then hope i can get ramirez for 36 37 38 something like that you gotta throw him pretty quickly after turner goes for that because i think if you wait a round or two for someone else to throw them or if you throw them a lot later that desperation the I've got too much cash and I don't care what the guy went for 20 minutes ago has set in whoa what are you

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It's time for Tim's. At participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. But then we're bordering on a second part of the discussion about these shift rules is position eligibility. Yeah, this is pretty interesting. This came in as an email question from Paul. Paul wrote, with new rules coming in next year limited to shift, is it possible we'll see teams move the shortstop to the first base side of the infield and the second baseman to the third base side against left-handed batters? It seems like a good way to still get a defensive advantage without shifting.

If that did happen, would we suddenly see every middle infielder in baseball have dual position eligibility? 1000%. 1000%. This is going to happen. There's a little piece of analysis that stands behind this. Cameron Grove did an analysis where he said, you know, which positions will have the most pressure

on their range with the shift rules? And so he looked at where batters can stand next year and where it's more important that they have some they have range basically and he found that there was almost no change to the shortstop i think there's already a lot of pressure on the shortstop to have good range we put the our best range guys at shortstop for that reason but that doesn't change that much uh given the rules what does change is second base and third base against righties second base base against lefties. You want your second baseman to have range now that you can't have a shortstop be standing close to him. And I think

that means, you know, my first, you know, there's always 1.0 and 2.0 and like, you know, my first analysis was, okay, let's look at second basemen who are really bad defensively because they may not be able to play much at second base and so it made me worried for someone like nolan gorman who has the uh is tied for the worst outs above average at second base um you know as a person who has played second base so you know the the cardinals have a defense first philosophy. They like to have good defenders everywhere. With this new rule, there may be more pressure on that. Will we see Nolan Gorman move to the outfield where they have a lot of players? You know, what's Nolan Gorman's future look like? Is this going to keep him from playing a lot? That was my first idea.

But if you can put Nolan Gorman over at third base against lefties, you know? Move that and slide Arnauto to short. Nolan Arnauto is like an amazing... Yeah, either Arnauto plays shortstop and the shortstop plays second. Or you could just flip Gorman with Arnauto. And that's Gorman's old position, right? As as a prospect he was a third baseman right and against lefties he'll be standing over there probably won't touch a ball you know what i mean yeah well i think that's basically one of the ways you know when i when i discussed uh doing this uh in the outfield

there was some pushback from players and from coaches saying uh my players will now run an extra mile or two over the course of a game if you're asking me because i was asking could we could we switch left and right fielders based on who's at the play same idea but uh in the infield they're not running as far i mean it seems like a ridiculous thing to ask but you know over the course of 162 games, you ask your left fielder and right fielder to run across the outfield, you know, 10 times a game or something.

It could be an issue. That does not take a lot of conditioning to be prepared for that. I'm sorry. The pace of that is so low. It's not zero and it should be accounted for. But my God, we're not asking those guys to max effort sprint across the outfield 10 times.

That's true. They can just jog over there. You are jogging with apparent speed. That is the pace at which you have to jog between batters to get there, right? I don't think you have to Todd coffee it out of the bullpen yeah i'm surprised maybe uh maybe teams haven't done it more because there's not that much of a statistical difference between their left and right fielders defensively right it's just not worth pissing the players off you know to to get that little bit of an edge however i think it'll be worth a lot more with the shift rules in the

infield right so as as you kind of put pressure on range and you have rules about where certain people can be the obvious answer is going to be okay well now he's my second base you know now he's my third base like you might want to make me him stand somewhere else well okay nolan gorman sorry you have to run over to third and be a third baseman. And that was your sort of, you said something about that. And, you know, I think what clicked for me is like, everyone's going to have everything next year. At least around the infield, or at least the middle infield. And I think.

I think, but even this Gorman situation, he might go second to third. But yes, I think. That's very team specific. middle infield and i think i think but even this gorman situation he might go second to third but yes i think that's a very team specific dual second short stop won't be a very valuable combination i think there'll be a lot of people who have that right i think there's always been a little more weight for me placed on the the guy that could play a middle in a corner spot or a corner in an outfield or a middle in an outfield like though getting out of your position group has carried more value we've we've always talked about this as something

that's not necessarily defined by a specific projected value where it's oh well this guy's multi-position eligible let's add a dollar to whatever the projection system spits out for his value $15 guy he's a $16 guy, he plays two spots. If it were a dollar for being a multi-position eligible player, I would say it's $2 if that's not second and short or first and third. If you can go out of your group, that's worth more. Whether it's 2x on a dollar, I don't know, but it's 2x nonetheless if you can get out of the same group yeah yeah the questions i'd have if i was working in front office are like well it's the fourth out four outfielder shift dead because why don't i just make my second baseman my right fielder yeah you could do that

maybe they defined it as three outfielders fourielders, two infielders on the left, two infielders on the right. But, I don't know. I think we're going to see teams push back and try to do things. And I think one of the things that we'll do is run. The easiest thing to do is just, you know, now my second baseman is my third baseman. Voila. So, the general thought then on defense, that would be that individual defenders who play the infield and grade out poorly could be susceptible to losing playing time or at the very least depending on the team they play on moving around a lot more than they're used to yeah yeah i mean i

do think uh this this revelation about Nolan Gorman is somewhat important. I mean, if you're that bad of a defender and now the rules are putting pressure on it, he's been above league average, but he strikes out a lot. His projection

is around league average. If his projection is around league average and defense isn't good, this isn't the type of player that the cardinals like make room for you know like think about juan yep as right isn't his story similar where his projections around league average and his defense is not good yeah i think with gorman there's a lot of ceiling there. That's the problem. The offensive ceiling is the type of hitter that is minus eight outs above average, but you don't care because he's going to hit 30-plus homers and do a lot of good things for you. And DH will be open for them next year, I guess.

Yeah, I think Dickerson's coming back. So you're going to start with o'neill carlson and newt bar in the outfield um and you have alec burleson you know coming close yep has can play some outfield so i think basically gorman can fit in with the outfielders dh group um and they'll just have somebody like donovan be the backup infielder that plays everywhere. I think for all of this, you're right to bring up Gorman as a good example of someone that would be susceptible to being moved around or possibly losing some time. That DH spot is really important for him. I believe in him as a hitter.

I know the K rates have been high really throughout his entire time in the minor leagues. 2021 was the exception. That 26.7% at AA. That was a step in the right direction. That half season at AAA where he was under 20%, that's amazing. 2021 at AAA, not really a good gauge of a true talent strikeout rate. I see so much in the underlying numbers with that barrel rate being excellent in his first 4A. He draws walks. There's enough things he does well as an offensive player

where I'm buying into continued improvement that carries his playing time. Well, so then who is this really tough on? I mean, Colton Wong is the worst, but I feel like he has such a good reputation. And he's a borderline fantasy play anyway so he's you know either your either your league is deep enough where your colton wong shares is probably safe and safe enough or your league is doesn't care about colton wong you know so right luis renjifo is uh has is really poorly rated jorge palanco is poorly rated but i think that might actually work in his benefit i think jorge palanco might get shortstop eligibility again next year in the way we're talking about this right you you switch jorge palanco and

royce lewis or or or um acrea you know and on shift plays with the lefty. I was just thinking about the time that Correa missed this season. I want to double-check that Polanco didn't already play enough games at shortstop over the course of this year. I don't think he did. No, I don't think so either. I know he didn't because I'm in an interesting position right now. I'm in a dynasty league with a not-good-enough crew. I'm in a dynasty league with a not good enough crew.

We're like, you know, Devil's Rejects is this really tough league that we're in. And we're like fourth place. You know, we have a pretty good team. We don't have a shortstop. And we've been trying to buy a shortstop, and nobody will give up, even teams with multiple shortstops. This is actually, this revelation for me is like, okay, maybe I shouldn't stress about it too much.

Maybe Jorge Blanco will get his shortstop eligibility back. Maybe Colton Wong will get shortstop eligibility because they'll move him over there. So I do wonder if shortstop eligibility will become something that more, many more players have. Cole Wong is going to be 32 next season though. So from an offensive contract with the Brewers, they have a club option on him for,

it's gotta be around 9 million. Cause that was the average annual value of the deal. Might be a tick above that. It's probably right at that number where they, they turn it down. They might turn it down they might turn it down he's not a bad offensive player at this stage either it's similar to last year he's about 10 better than league average since becoming a brewer k rate still under 20 draws his walks

double digit homers and steals kind of an underrated mono league fantasy player a little tricky in mixed leagues because the counting stats have been pretty light. Only 58 runs and 40 RBIs. Yeah, he's been a little brutal. How about pushing some guys who are barely still in second base to the outfield like Cattell Marte? Yeah, that's a crowded outfield, though. Brandon Lau, yeah, it's true.

Cattell Marte and Brandon Lau. Yeah, it's just hard to tell if they're just going to do more work to hide these guys so these guys will get multiple eligibilities. Like, will Brandon Lau be a shortstop eligible next year? No. Or third base? Would they do the thing where they run him over to third base? Kind of hard to know ahead of time.

And I think one thing that is kind of true for both of all the stuff that we've been talking about with the shift and i think that's why it's kind of funny to see verdugo at the top there and to see the batting averages on those balls anyway is are so good that i think that we tend to sometimes overrate overemphasize how different baseball is going to be and how the players are going to be affected. You know what I mean? The second baseman is still going to play where he's playing.

He's going to have to come in two or three steps. I don't think that's going to change that much. We know from the minor leagues that the shift didn't change that much on the league-wide level. And then we know that the place where the defender can't be anymore, there still has a really high batting average on balls before. So we don't know how much higher that's going to get.

Will Max Kepler hit better than 220 on balls up the middle? Probably. Or Juan Soto? Probably. But we would have projected Juan Soto progress anyway. So I kind of think that in these cases um in a lot of these cases people are going to overrate like do you think reese hoskins is going to hit 300 next year because there's because of these shift rules no and i'm not even doing back of the napkin math i'm

sort of just running calculations in my head trying to think about the number of balls that will still be hit in these areas that were hit hard enough to get past where the defender can no longer play. And that's a pretty small number over the course of a season. It's a handful. So Max Kepler was an example I was thinking of because you mentioned him before. He's always had this low average problem. 235, 240 maybe? He hits a lot of fly balls too.

And he doesn't actually hit the ball that hard. Right. So I think we're talking about 10 to 15 points of batting average at the higher end, and even some of that is more luck than anything else. Look at this. On that thing that I was doing, the 5 to 15 degree angle, lefties hit the ball there 1% of the time of their balls in play, I think.

And they hit.350 as a league. So, you know, Verdugo might actually regress. But Matt Olsen hitting.250, that sticks out for me. You know, Juan Soto hitting, Max Kepler hitting.270 on those pitches. Jose Ramirez hitting.190 on those pitches. You know, like, that stands out for me it's still uh even on these players that hit the ball there a lot it's three percent of their balls in play so three percent of their balls in play how many balls in play do you get over a season like 300 hmm yeah typical just total balls in play. Yeah.

Sounds about right. Let's see. Leaderboard here. So we're talking about nine or 10 balls on which they would normally hit 350. Right. Batted ball events, actually, the high end. Marcus Simeon leads the league at 497 batted ball events. Okay.

I'm going to do 400 then. 400 then. 3% of 400 is 12 balls. So we got 12 balls that you would normally hit 350 on. That's four hits. Maybe they get five hits. There's going to be some guys that get a few more, and there's going to be some guys that still get a few less.

And Soto and Kepler might go from having two hits there normally to having four or five hits. So we're talking about adding three or four hits to some of these guys. Okay. So this would qualify, as we're describing it, as something to think about, something to be mindful of, but it's probably more like a third degree sort of thing. Do not go into next year. Hoskins is a righty. Let's do Matt Olsen then.

Marcus Simeon's high on there too, another righty. Let's give Matt Olsen three hits. Right now Matt Olsen is sitting 234. Okay? Let's just give him three hits because of this rule. 133 now. We give him three extra hits.

That's 134. Okay, we give him three extra hits that's 134 okay we give him three extra hits and uh let's see what his batting average is 239 239 instead of 234 right well the thing is like there's gonna be other things you find in matt olsen's profile that give you more optimism or more reason to be optimistic about him being great next year than just those handful of balls that would have been hit at shifted defenders that will now go through and turn into singles and he's still gonna he'll he's still also gonna hit a ton of balls at the second basement yeah so i don't know i i think this could be overvalued, overrated

as a thing going into next year. I'm not like... Corey Seager, let's see. Let's give Corey Seager four more hits. Let's just be wild and just give away hits. Give him eight. Give him twice as many because he's hitting the ball that way a ton.

All right, let's give him eight hits. So now he's got 141 hits on the year. His batting average would be 258 instead of 244. All right, all right, all right. But we also just really pushed. That's about 14 points. Yeah, that's not bad. That's meaningful.

But we pushed it pretty hard. But the thing about that is, okay, even if this rule change didn't happen, here's the other part of the question, and this applies to a lot of the players that are in this. He's projected for a 275 average. Right. You were already expecting some kind of regression

in the neighborhood of 30 points. Yeah. So if that plus the shift rule, let's give him 10. Let's just kind of lower, bring it back down to like six hits. 10 points for the adjustment to the shift rules, 30 for regression. So you're going to press 285 next year? That's your over-under? Maybe.

I think that might be that anyway. I mean, he had to hit 300 a bunch of times in his career. It's not unreasonable that he would do that again. But, I mean, but how much of it is just this shift rule is my question. You know what I mean? It's a smaller percentage

than people are currently expecting. Yeah. It's weird because I do, I think, you know, I still think Corey Seager is going to be a good draft day pickup next year. I just don't know that like I would just pull up, you know, lefty pull hitters and just target them all. No, I don't think anyone's going to do that, but you never know. It's the kind of thing that can surprise you when you get to draft season talk for 2023. Thanks a lot for the defender swapping question, Paul.

I thought that was a really relevant question for what we were talking about today. It would be really relevant because I think there's a growing sense of multi-eligibility players, especially in draft and hold. I've talked on this podcast about how I would like to have multi-eligibility guys even on my regular teams because then i can have one more uh bench spot be a pitcher um and i think that's more useful so you know there is a chance that we also overvalue multi-position eligibility guys and then find you know two weeks into the season that 20 players now have added positions. I have tried to find the players who, because of predetermined position moves,

will add eligibility in season, because I think that is not as often priced in on draft day as the player that has the two or three positions already listed next to his name. Like a Simeian who was a short stop and you knew he's going to play second or whatever yeah story this year becoming a second baseman and those kinds of guys that you just know like well he can't play the position he used to play because someone else is playing it therefore five games in now he's eligible at this other position too yeah want visibly glowing skin in 14 days?

With new Olay Indulgent Moisture Body Wash, you can lather and glow. The 24-hour moisturizing body wash is infused with vitamin B3 complex and has notes of rose and cherry creme for a rich indulgent experience. Treat your senses with new Olay Indulgent Moisture Body Wash. Buy it today at major retailers. Let's get to a question here about Shohei Otani and breaking war. This came in from David. Seems like with each passing day, we see Shohei Otani do something that is new and or changing what we think is possible for a professional baseball player. Along these lines,

it seems to me that we need to rethink war when it comes to Otani. Even when we combine his pitching and his hitting war, it seems to overlook the value that Otani brings and that it would take two players to replace Otani versus just one. There must be incredible value in his ability to effectively add another roster spot to a team. If we could figure out how to capture this war, I suspect the MVP race isn't as close as we think from a fantasy perspective i can personally attest to this i play in a daily league with a very short bench

and it is incredibly valuable to be able to get elite hitting and elite pitching stats from that single spot while also gaining value from the extra player that i can roster thanks david the daily moves leagues with otani are incredible he's he your 1-1 guy if you play in that format. He's still that guy. Regardless of what you think of Judge or Turner or any of the players in the conversation, Shohei Otani in a daily moves league where you get all those stats, hands down 1-1 for 2023. As far as the war calculation goes, I agree this is a problem because when you add up hitter war and pitcher war for Otani, it still doesn't seem right. Someone brought up on Twitter, too, that Otani, because he's a DH when he's in the lineup, gets the DH penalty in war, which is kind of weird because as a guy that can do something else, he's not like the typical DH who really can't offer anything of defensive value at all. Otani, of course, does more than that.

And that part's captured by being a pitcher. But the DH tax on him is also worth considering. Yeah, no. I think that in some ways, war is built to answer this question. Because the thing that's cool about war is that you add up all your things that you do on the field and uh and put it in in one number runs and then you can turn runs into wins of our replacement and so the fact that he pitches and runs and hits like war is made for that or that's the idea is to sum up all the different things you do on the

field and he happens to do more than most people so in some ways war is perfect for that uh but uh it's that last letter replacement that i think um makes this a very difficult discussion so when you think about your fantasy league the extra roster spot is worth so much because there are great players on the wire and so you might be able to pick up uh you know who's a who's a like maybe brian reynolds was dropped early in season right you might be able to pick up a brian reynolds you know with your extra roster spot created by by, right? So you, like, in one of my leagues, I'm fairly sure that Rowdy Tellez was like a free pickup for me because of Otani, you know, because I had that extra roster spot. I was like, oh, I can pick him up. Everybody else

is wondering, is he worth starting or not? I don't have to worry about that. I have an extra spot. So that replacement level is super high and in a way makes that roster spot worth even more because the player you can put it in is great. Now think about it in baseball terms. The player that you can just pick up off of waivers is not great. I'm sorry. It's just not usually good. And so I looked at this for a piece on The Athletic where I said, you know, what is that extra roster spot worth? And theoretically, it's zero because it's a replacement player, right? But then I tried to look at the 26th.

Oh, Jose Ramirez? Nope. Josh Naylor. So I looked at it, and the 26th roster spot, even if you do like 25th through 27th, that roster spot is worth like 0.2 wins. So it's pretty much replacement, right? The best teams, the ones that are on the waiver wire all the time, like the Giants or the Dodgers or the Rays, they can ring a half win out of that spot. They're trying to do that.

They want to do that. They are all over it, and they are trying to claim guys, and they claim guys, and the list of players is, it's not very impressive. There's a couple ways to think about it, though. There's the waiver replacement, but there's also the internal replacement.

So think about your lineup if it's a fantasy perspective, or think about that roster spot from the who gets promoted, which player gets added to the roster from AAA, and the best teams in the league have really good depth at AAA. The Dodgers have that. The Giants have been doing a good job turning on the waiver wire, so they pull in a Willie Calhoun or a Jermaine Mercedes or whoever it is,

but the Dodgers could at any point say, oh, Miguel Vargas is our extra guy. And if you're a really good team and you have a great amount of depth, then that player you bring up is probably better than the kind of player that you would get off the wire. If you're a team like the Angels,

you fail to capture the value of the extra roster spot because you don't field a roster of 26 actual above replacement level big league players as it is. You'd actually be like hurting yourself by not being deep enough to take advantage of that extra spot. I think you're right, but I think we also overvalue prospects coming out. A lot of times they're just like a waiver claim. For example, the Rays got the

most out of their 26 roster slot. We think of them as always having quality depth in the minor leagues, right? The Yankees, the Giants, the Dodgers, those guys all got basically half a win. But the Giants, the Dodgers those guys all got basically half a win but the Giants did it

more with waiver claims than with young players but either way the best teams got a half win like either young players or waiver claims. Now here's a partial list of the waiver claims Farhan Zaidi has made with the Giants that have produced

this half win. Jake Jewell, Jose Quintana, Luis Gonzalez, Sky Bolt, Luis Madero, Keane Wong, Tyler Anderson, yeah, that's pretty good, Wandi Peralta, Ricardo Pinto, Corbin Joseph, Kyle Bearclaw, Ryan Dull, Joey Ricard, Aaron Althair, Hans-Arrel Belter, and more. So that's your 26 man now here's why i think uh there is actual stress on war as a as a concept or construct for this discussion so war says it's just a roster spot the replacement player is not an actual player

we're not asking to talk about the actual player replacement player is just an actual player. We're not asking you to talk about the actual player. Replacement player is just a construct. It's just a level. We're just drawing a line here. And then value is above that, right? So it doesn't matter who would replace Joe Etan. It doesn't matter that you have to find a batter and a pitcher. It's just a roster spot.

So war still works. That's what war says. However, there are rules. Like, for example, you can only have 13 pitchers on your roster. And Shohei Otani does not count as one of those 13. Well, now you're talking specifically about Shohei Otani, right? And also, oh, by the way, Shohei Otani can only pitch every six days. So that replacement that extra roster spot you got it has to go to a pitcher but wait wait wait now we're talking about actual replacement players for shohei otani like we're actually talking about the specifics of shohei otani instead of

using war as a construct right if we just use war as a construct we take the extra 0.5 wins that maybe a good team can get out of that extra roster, we put it on Shohei Otani, boom, done. But I don't know. I don't know. I don't think that's fair because they didn't have to go to a six-man rotation because of Shohei Otani, but they do have to have a pitcher because he can only pitch every six days, right? So it ends up being either a starting pitcher or a pitcher because he can only pitch every six days right so it ends up being either a starting pitcher or a pitcher has length so that has some that is that is changing who you can replace him with you know and now you have to actually talk about shohyotani and the angels

when war is trying to tell you no we don't have to talk about the angels we don't have to talk about who would replacehei Otani. It's just a construct. But it doesn't work that way because we only have one Shohei Otani to talk about. If we had a ton of them, we could be like, oh, well, see, this other guy here, he actually pitches every five days, and so there's his value or whatever, or what works for this guy. We only have one Shohei Otani.

Maybe Brandon McKay can come up and and give us uh you know another way to look at the things but for now we only have one show itani so we actually have to talk about who would replace shoya tani but war says you're not supposed to talk about who exactly replaces a player yeah and just as far as the mvp race in the american league goes right now aaron judge up at 10.4 wins above replacement I mean that's almost almost two full wins above what Otani is when you combine his hitter value and his pitcher value to this point so I know the award should not just be decided by that but that's enough of a gap where I think Judge just has just kind of has the leg up at this time I don time. I don't know if there's enough he could do in the next two and a half weeks

to close the gap. I think it's Judge's award. Ten wins, and people don't like to talk about war, but I think that in this case, actually gives us a good look into comparing his seasons to other seasons in the

past. You know, 10 win seasons are very rare. In the history of baseball, in terms of 10 win seasons, in the history of baseball, we've got 50, 55 seasons. In the history of baseball. How many of those have come in the 2000s? We got Alex Rodriguez, Mike Trout, Buster Posey, Mike Trout again, and a bunch of Barry Bonds. Those are the modern guys. Yeah, the best modern season we have is the Barry Bonds 2002 season,.7 war so basically Aaron Judge is having a top right now he's having the 43rd best season ever by Fangraphs War yeah I think even if you

are very specific about value and you just want like it's just a war award for you or whatever or it's not or you don't even want to look at war I think that just saying that saying like Aaron Judge is having a top 50 season of all time I think that is enough for me to be like okay give him the MVP because

Shohei Otani is over here having a good pitcher season and a good hitter season yeah I would say even a better pitcher season than hitter season just based on how it's valued at this point. But neither one of those seasons is going to be a top 50 season ever. And even if you add them together, probably not a top 50 season ever. So it's okay.

You can give it to Judge. We don't have to give it to Otani every year because he's a hitter and a pitcher. You know what I mean? mean no of course not and also no value no number that's that purports to sum up value is without problems there is no perfect number that sums up a player's value. I'm just sorry, there is not. And since we know that the numbers can be fallible, can we like, like take a step back in the discourse? There's like a, there's a guy out here on Twitter calling major league players names. He's like a writer, supposedly, on Twitter, calling Vlad Jr. a little bee because he has an opinion about who should win, the judge should win the MVP.

It's weird and unnecessary. I mean, just generally, man. Please. It's a call for civility. Jesus. Yeah, I'm looking at the since 2000 the seasons we've seen the 10 more seasons i mean it's just not that many it's bonds bonds bonds again bets judge bets bonds trout posy trout a rod so we've seen 10 seasons like this since 2000 yeah enjoy it 10 10 wins and like i would say probably of these 54 seasons 45 of them are mvps you know and then the other five

just came oh you know you know who got jobbed a lot was millie mays willie mays had a bunch of 10 win seasons where he didn't win and i think you know to some extent willie mays willie mays had a bunch of 10 win seasons where he didn't win and i think you know to some extent willie mays does uh give us a problem or giving us an example and even mike trout himself where there's a little bit that's there's a recency bias or like a um like a fatigue almost right this happens in pretty much every sport when you have someone who is just amazing year over year over year. Yeah. I don't know how this happens, but it's superstar fatigue. And I think it's kind of an underpinning of all sports radio and many podcast debates that rage on forever.

In basketball, it's everything about lebron but in baseball it's trout fatigue when trout was at peak trout levels it was always about trying to figure out who could just knock him off the throne instead of appreciating yeah he was a special player and like you know right who's the next question you know almost a a triple crown like you know did he get did he get the triple crown that year? And he won? Did he? No, he didn't get it.

I don't think so. But did he win the MVP? No, he was second to Shoya Otani last year. Yeah, Otani won it. But then that also applies to Otani to some degree too. This year is an exception because you can pull back and see the historical greatness of the season that Aaron Judge had. Miguel Cabrera got the Triple Crown and got the MVP over Trout.

Whereas War said Trout should have won. I think that happens a lot, though, with superstars. I think there's just this, oh, no, it's got to be somebody else. Instead of just saying, wait, no, it's still the best player in the game. Also, shiny new toy bias or something it happens very big in beer by the way like everybody wants the new thing yeah do you have an old thing that you've been going back to lately uh we've been we've had some pliny the elder in the in the uh in the in the in the house because there's been more production.

And yeah, it's a great beer. I don't know. Still great. Still awesome. Also have some stupid hazies next to it with stupid cans. Sounds about right. But thanks a lot for that question, David.

Last email before we go. This one came from Sean. Sean writes, your podcast is the perfect thing to listen to when I'm out for a run. Any chance of a three and a half hour podcast to help get me through the New York Marathon on November 6th? No. Feel a no. Love that we could even be considered to help you along on a long, long run like that. And it's also a little bit too early for us to start doing positional things.

So you could just, you know, do first base, second base and third base on your marathon. Yeah. So I think the key here would be to maybe don't listen to the pod from about October 15th until race day. And you'll have three and a half hours worth of episodes stacked up, and you can just binge through three or four episodes from the offseason. Yeah, yeah. We'll have to figure out what we're going to do during the playoffs. Yeah, I think there's going to be some tweaks to the plan.

I know in years past we've done live streams. Last year we did after-playoff game recordings. The year before that, I thinkoff game recordings the year before that. I think we're going to do some stuff. That was the roughest. That was not great because I lived in Wisconsin at that time. So the time change didn't work well. I was producing the episode.

That was up very late. Britt was on the East Coast, still is. So it was even later for her and waiting for games to end. That was a bad fit. But I think we're going to do some stuff in the athletic baseball show feed around the 3-0 show. Probably more series specific stuff. So not necessarily show feed around the 3-0 show. Probably more series-specific stuff. Not necessarily the live stream, not necessarily every day, but we will have some

playoff content. We're just figuring out where and when. If you have any suggestions for us, especially from Rates and Barrels, because I think 3-0 show, we're following along. It's real baseball. What do you want from a fantasy baseball show during the playoffs? What helps you the most you want from a fantasy baseball show during the playoffs?

Yeah, what helps you the most in October from a fantasy baseball perspective? And we'll take a couple little breaks here and there, too. It's a good time for us to recharge, but we'll have plenty of episodes between now and the end of the year. And, of course, we're still going twice a week through the end of the season, which I just want the season to be over. We could start talking about next year. We could just get a really early start if you wanted us to.

Yeah, let us know what you want. Tweets are good. Email's a bit of a mess. So, at Eno Saris on Twitter, at Derek Van Ryper. You have email boxes like an on-fire dumpster right now. So, just steer clear of there for a little while unless you get a very specific question for an upcoming

episode. Ratesandbarrelsatthe at the athletic.com is the email address. If you'd like to go that route, if you need a subscription to the athletic, it's a dollar a month for the first six months at the athletic.com slash rates and barrels. That's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. We are back with you on Thursday. Thanks for listening.