Rates & Barrels - Slow-Starting Hitters, Roster Shrinkage Fallout & Joe Ryan Defies the Model

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

Eno and DVR discuss several slow-starting bats and try to determine where there are opportunities to make viable trades, and where the early downturn in performance might be a warning sign of a disappointing 2022 season. Plus, they discuss some of the fallout from rosters shrinking, and Joe Ryan's success despite underwhelming pitching model numbers.  Rundown - Making Sense of Marcus Semien's April - Is Anything Actually Wrong with Whit Merrifield? - Randy Arozarena's GB% & O-Swing% Spike - Is Ketel Marte Broken? - Trent Grisham's Post 2020 Stumble - Jesse Winker's Quiet Start in Seattle - Franmil Reyes & Max Muncy - Justin Turner v. Time - Willie Calhoun Wants a Trade; Would You Trade For Him? - Josh Lowe Heads Back to Durham - Joe Ryan v. the Pitching+ Model 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 Watch the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Monday, May 2nd, Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. Eno looking more rested than usual for a Monday, and are you caffeinated? You don't drink coffee. What did you do? Did you drink some of that mud water stuff that's been going around? No, it was just a good weekend. I took the kids to the San Jose Giants.

They did the bouncy houses and the throwing of the balls. They were actually... I wasn't sure. One of the things I told them was it might be a little bit more fun than the Stanford games we go to, because they do more things like in between, in between innings, they have more like sort of game type things. And then I was worried that

they weren't going to do fun ones that day, because they do different ones all the time. And they did hilarious ones, because I think they're mostly hilarious. And the kids loved it. Like, one of them was a non-alcoholic run and beer chug. And it was amazing because there was two dudes and a lady. And the lady got to the table last. And there was a guy who got there first. She opened it and chugged it and beat them both and then flipped the table and like... It was like...

And the whole crowd was like, yay! So that was pretty sweet. And it's a fun overall experience because they think about what it is to take your family to a game. So cheaper tickets, you know, 30, 40 you know 30 40 buck tickets i mean people might say that's more than they expect but you know i think you get what you pay like it's good like there's they're like they're bouncy houses and there's like the games like carnival type games and the beer is pretty decent and the tacos were good so uh there's some barbecue but i was making

ribs that night so i was just gonna double up on the barbecue that day. It was a good day, good weekend. Had to take them to see Sonic 2, which sometimes you do things for your kids. I think that's part of parenting. Sometimes you sit through movies that you don't want to watch or you re-watch things that you've seen 20 times already. I think that's when they're real little. That's the thing I gather from my brother with his

kids. Try not to let them see me checking the box scores on my phone while I'm doing the movie. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. It's a quiet thing to do. You're not disrupting someone else's enjoyment of the movie, are you? You're also like the only people in there. Yeah, you're okay then.

But yeah, good weekend they they got some magic the gathering cards and uh were screaming at me about you know what elementals or this or that they got in their pack and so i think the kids had a really good time we did some and you know what you know one thing that's cool is they're getting back into throwing and hitting. Nice. So a lot more catch. And I love catch. Yeah.

That's awesome. Are you a throw catch or play catch guy? I'm a play catch guy. I'm a play catch guy. People say throw catch. Have a catch. Have a catch is, you know, it's kind of an old expression designed for that specific purpose, but play catch is just the way people speak English generally when talking about that activity. But I am not the foremost expert on the speaking of the English. That's okay.

We enjoy learning more about your process. As long as we're having fun while we're doing it, I think that's all that matters. We had a couple of brats. We had some beers over the weekend, too. That's right. You came over. That was good. Yeah, we had a little chance to talk about some of the stuff that actually made it onto the rundown. I think some of the model versus the results stuff actually came up

because deception is a thing that might not be fully captured by things we're looking at. But we're going to talk about hitters today that have struggled through the first month and one day of the season because we get a lot of questions that are basically, what's wrong with this guy? And what's wrong with this other guy? So we've compiled a list of some of the biggest underperforming hitters. We're going to run through and see if there's anything that's alarming for the long term, how much the expectations might have changed in some of these cases. We'll talk about some of the fallout from rosters shrinking down.

A lot of players getting moved. Robinson Cano was DFA'd, Josh Lowe was optioned, Willie Calhoun was optioned, and now he wants to be traded, which I think I can understand, given his trajectory in Texas, and a few other questions to get to over the course of the episode as well. So we'll go through this in a similar light with pitchers, probably on the Thursday episode. So if you're saying, oh, I want you to talk about pitchers that are broken, we'll get to them. We're going to keep it hitters and pitchers separate. I want to start with Marcus Simeon because I think of all the players I was looking at, he might be the earliest player ADP-wise that people are truly worried about. And something you said on the show probably two or three years ago, might've been the first

year we were doing the show, is you said you looked at O-swing percentages for hitters on new teams with big contracts and And you saw pretty consistently, right? There's an increase. There's an aggressiveness that happens at least initially with those players. And it makes sense from a basic psychology perspective, right? You sign this massive contract, you go to a new team and you just want to prove I deserve this. I earned this. I can be that player. I can be the seven-year, $175 million player that you think I am. And I think that definitely is happening right now with Marcus Simeon. When you look at his O-swing percentage at 33.6%, it's easily the highest it's ever been

since he became a full-time player. It's up about eight percentage points over last year. And there's something off in the underlying numbers with how hard he's hitting the ball when he makes contact. The former doesn't worry me too much. The O-swing percentage being up is not as much of a concern as the significant drop in the quality of the contact when he makes contact. Strikeout and walk rates are about where they've been. So how concerned would you be about Marcus Simeon if you had him on your roster already, or if you were thinking about possibly trying to make some kind of buy low trade to get him? Yeah, the term that I came up with was pressing, you know, and I think that's describing what he's doing right now. And, you know, not only people with big new contracts on new teams, but people who are traded at the deadline.

people with big new contracts on new teams, but people who are traded at the deadline. So I found that that was kind of maybe a useful thing for teams, like to think about the fact that we're going to trade for this guy. We want him to have really good natural play discipline. If he's going to be worse, almost by, you know, at least not by definition, but like by as a group, whoever we trade for at the trade deadline is going to be worse at play discipline for whatever reason, for pressing, for maybe seeing new pitchers he hadn't seen all year, that sort of deal. But it was Chris Davis and who was the – Jay Bruce.

Chris Davis and Jay Bruce were kind of my way in. They both really pressed. Chris Davis really pressed when he came to Oakland. And J. Bruce, who has a pretty good eye, pressed when he was traded to the Mets, I believe. I see the same thing with Simeon, and I do think that they're kind of related. If you're reaching at pitches outside the zone and you're making contact with those instead of the pitches you want to be making contact with

then that could be the cause of your lower hard hit rate I'm doing a big piece about plate discipline right now that should come out this week and I just talked to Juan Soto about it and he was just like

dude if you hit the ball inside the zone, you get way better outcomes. I mean, he didn't say dude, and he didn't say it this way. We all wish that the conversation you had with Juan Soto was him talking like you to you. Yeah, that's not how that went down. Well, he was awesome, actually.

He was perfect for the piece. It was worth all the work just to get three minutes with him. But he basically said, if you see the difference between production on pitches inside the zone and outside the zone, he said he didn't even, he's not like Brandon Nimmo, where he was trained to be an OBP god. Brandon Nimmo, his dad is like throwing him colored balls and telling him to shout out what the color on the ball was and what the number on the ball was. You know, Barry Bonds type stuff where like that's why he has great play

discipline. Juan Soto, you may not be surprised to hear, just decided to be Juan Soto. Isn't that great? He said he was a free swinger and then in high A he was like oh wait that's what the production is on pitches inside the zone versus outside the zone okay i'm not gonna swing as pitches

outside the zone bam done just okay it's that easy so i could just decide that i'm gonna be morgan freeman and i'm just gonna narrate everything from now on like for the next 50 years that's that's what i'm going to do and i just decided one day that's what i was going to narrate everything from now on like for the next 50 years that's that's what i'm going to do and i just decided one day that's what i was going to be yeah so i mean i you know that's why you see the higher swing strike rate for marcus simeon i think that's probably the cause of his lower barrel rate because if you look at the max exit velocity which has never been really good for simeon it's right in line with where he's always been, you know, right on the line of, you know, I would say that he has, you know, 45, 50 raw power, maybe just 50, you know, it's not, you know, I know he hit 45 homers last year, but there, you can do that with 50 raw power, especially on a peak season. And, uh, you know, if, if max exit velocity is a good measure of raw power then that would that would be

around 50 raw power um you're seeing the hard hit rate down you're seeing the bail rate down he's a compiler though and uh maybe selling low makes sense but i i don't see the dropping makes sense because i think he'll play all season he'll have a better streak at some point where he settles down and isn't reaching as much and chasing as much and I still think that like something like 2018 is possible where he hits for the season 260 with 15 to 20 homers and 10 to 15 stolen bases I know it's not what you paid for in terms of in the draft. And it's not maybe what the Rangers were hoping for, but still,

still pretty good player. The projections for the rest of the season are pretty consistent across the board. When you look at all the stuff over at fan graphs, I think the, the bat X is where I keep going for in-season, rest-of-season numbers. 247, 319, 427 is a slash line.

I'd still probably be on the over side of those numbers the rest of the way, but even if that's what he is with 20 homers, 10 steals, plenty of runs and RBIs, okay. You're disappointed if you took him in the third or fourth round and that's what he did, but if he bounces back to that, it's also

that's not the reason why you fell short in the league this year. There's enough to believe it's going to still come back around. He's swinging more at everything, and I think that will correct in the months ahead. I'd be very surprised if we talk about Semyon

again in July and all these underlying swing metrics look identical to how they've looked so far. Yeah. And it's funny, 180 power, 180 ISO right there from the bad X is, would be like 45, 50 power in a,

in a regular season, like in, in past seasons. Do you know what the ISO is right now across the league the league's iso yeah it's like 130 yeah nice good call 138 it's because i've looked at that page with the the average obp and the slug so many times it's just yeah it's committed to memory at this point 2019 the i the average league is is 183, and that's including pitchers. Let me do non-pitchers.

Wow. Yes. Non-pitchers, it was 187 that year. So part of me is trained to look at a 180 ISO and say, okay, that's the average power. But it is worth discussing the human aura, the ball, the fact that one 38, um, you know, like the April, let's look at the April, uh, numbers for 2021 for ISO.

We had a one 61. So it's, I mean, it's definitely down. And, uh, and I will say that I know that these people that are modeling these projection systems, they're all talking to each other and they're all trying to figure out how much to change the run environment right now. And it's not entirely clear. So my point is that if Simeon doesn't hit 20 homers, then it's mostly because the whole league is not going to their expectations. Like, for example, you cannot use XWOBA right now for a single player. Because, first of all, it's not that amazing, but it does have some predictive power for batters.

But right now, they have to wait to a certain point in order to adjust it. They always adjust the XWOo for the season that they're in once they they think they know enough about the run environment and they haven't done that yet because it's such a crazy year and we don't we don't know what the run environment's going to look like they don't want to adjust it so that you know basically 130 is the average iso and then the humidors kick in and start drying the balls out and And August is a crazy month for power, you know? So everyone's sort of, you know, trying to figure this out. I'm not saying that ball and humidor is why Simeon has no power.

I'm just saying that, like, if he hits 15 more homers the rest of the season, it might not be because of, you know, a failure on his part. It may just be a combination of ball and bad season for him. Yeah, I mean, that's a huge drop, though, compared to where he was. I realize we had the max volume problem with Marcus Simeon again, and that's a good problem to have. Yeah, 724 plate appearances last year. I mean, the last three full seasons we've had,

he's only failed to play in three total games. So you've gone over 700 plate appearances in each of the last three full seasons. Even if you're adjusting down for that, you'd say, okay, maybe it's a low 30s home run total with normal injury risk baked in. Well, you change the ball, you add a couple of things early on in the season that make a difference. It starts to compound pretty fast. So it sounds like you're mostly on that projection that I threw out there

with maybe a little less power. I think the 20 home runs is something you're pretty skeptical of at this point for a rest-of-season power number for him. I mean, we're looking at, let's see here, 70 balls in play for him because he puts balls in play. So this 4% barrel rate that he's got right now you know it's it's more signal than noise and he's had four percent barrel rates in the past that's why i point out he had this exact same barrel rate in 2018 when he hit 15 homers and that was before the rabbit ball so So, you know, 2019 rabbit ball, 33 homers, 2021, you know, not the rabbit ball, but also Dunedin and Buffalo. So he had some park assistance last year that he does not have now. He was the perfect storm of the unusual circumstances of Toronto's 2021

and the 2019 rabbit ball spiking up that home run total to 33. He hit 27 way back in 2016, though. Marcus Simeon's always been a bit of a challenging player to completely solve. Look how up and down he's been. I mean, he always will get you about 10 steals in a full season, but he's been pretty mean he always will get you about 10 steals in a full season but you know he's been pretty up and down offensively i i mean i still think that it's not a bad signing uh for texas because if you like it's funny how up and down he's been for fantasy because he's basically been

league average offensively except for the two big seasons every year. So if you get a guy where you're like, hey, he works really hard, he's got good defense, he's going to be, worst case scenario, league average bat, then you feel like you've acquired someone who has a high floor, and you've obviously seen high ceilings from him, and you like his durability. So if he's only a two- to three-win player for the next three to four years, I mean, that wouldn't be good for the contract, but the Rangers might take it.

It's not ideal, but it doesn't hurt you as much as you might think. The big numbers on the contract make you think a little differently about what you should get in return. But what you need to get in return is about what you described when you're talking about what Simeon's contract looks like. Let's get to Whit Merrifield for a moment. I've looked at his profile, and I think the only thing wrong with Whit Merrifield is that he's on a few of my rosters, and that's why he's underperforming. There's really nothing in the underlying numbers that scares me, though. He's still keeping the K rate under 15%, walking about the same as usual,

actually making hard contact at a good clip more than he has at any point during his career. I think this, to me, is just a slow start for a guy that will be fine as soon as he has a little better luck on balls and play. Yeah, I guess I'm not too worried. I mean, the swing strike rate being the worst of his career is not great, but the strikeout rate that's associated with it is right in line with his career numbers so maybe it's not that big a deal i don't think he's a very good hitter yeah i've never liked the profile as a hitter but i think he's still going to play a ton still gonna run so i don't know three three is it three attempts let me see he's three for three through 20 games can't steal bases when you're not on base.

He's got a 213 OVP so far. That's right. But if it's only three for three in the first month, then what if he only steals you 22 bags this year? So now you're talking about a guy who might end the season 260, 22 bags, five homers. Don't put that on me. That's what people want of Nicky Lopez. Ah, come on now. What? No, five homers. Don't put that on me. That's what people want of Nicky Lopez.

Ah, come on now. What? No, that's fair. It's not nice. I'm sorry. I have zero shares. I did not want to pay. I've said on this cast,

if I do have a bias sometimes, it's towards what Major League teams are looking for and what is a good hitter for a Major League team because I do think that baseball teams tend, trend towards making those same decisions and making the right decisions that way, right? Like, we don't have a lot of old school teams. The Royals are the closest to an old school team

that would, you know, would value Whitmerryfield highly, give him an extension. And, uh, you know, I'm sure that,

you know, other, most other teams around the league would, would have treated it differently. Would have probably traded him away at this point. Yeah. Well, they got them in such a team friendly deal.

It just doesn't, doesn't matter. It doesn't hurt them at all, even if they were to somehow reduce his playing time. But I've seen it before. I'm looking back at some of his month-by-month splits. He played 31 games last year, and they obviously lumped September and October together on Fangraphs,

so it's a little extra. But two for three as a base stealer that month. Last July, five for five in 24 games. Sometimes these things just fluctuate. Oh, does he just have big months? Yeah. Yeah. It's seven to eight,

seven to 11, 11 steals last August. So maybe it has to do with who he's, who he's facing. Yeah. Because supposedly stolen base attempts are, are kind of become meaningful early. Yeah.

I guess I'm, I'm not looking at anything with that organization from that perspective and believing they've changed and i don't think you would change with a player like whit merrifield anyway like if they were really changing he would be traded because they it's oh we're not going to do this anymore so let's trade him away to a team that actually wants to let him be himself so not worried about whit merrifield whatsoever i'm curious about randy arosa reina though i think he's the type of player who because of his approach we've talked about his willingness to swing a lot of pitches outside the zone in the

past i think that makes him very susceptible to highs and lows it's just the type of player he is a little bit of a free swinger. Walk rates down early. K rates in line with career norms. But a 35.2% O swing percentage would be the highest of his career by a margin about as much as Marcus Simeon's O swing percentage is up right now.

Tons of ground balls right now for Randy Orozarena as well. His projections point to a 245 average from the Bad X the rest of the way, 15 homers, 17 steals. Are you comfortable trying to move for him right now, expecting something like that? The projections also have him striking out

less than he has struck out since the start of 2020 the rest of the way, and I'm just not sure where that's coming from. Because he's struck out 28% of the time in every season he's been in the big leagues and yet everyone's projecting him to strike out less that is weird huh and he's 27 it's not like it's an aging curve thing is there a little bit of the early 2019 like the debut at the cardinals cooked in there and then the minor league track record

this is that's weird to me i think he's going to strike out a lot there is an interesting piece of thing we haven't talked about a piece of research and evidence that we haven't talked about in a while which is volatility and Bill Petty had this idea of tracking a player's volatility and you can just look at

those rolling graphs with weight on base average OPS you can see the kind of the peaks and valleys. Yeah, the amplitude. The amplitude, basically, right. And he did some research on that. I asked him to do an aging curve on that,

and what was amazing was that players over time are less volatile, which means that they have lower peaks, and that's what we associate with aging but also the players that stick around have higher floors right but how does that then the other the other finding from volatility was that strikeout rate is associated with positively correlated with volatility so you know you know, you know, having a high strikeout rate leads to volatility. And I think you can understand it in one way, which is just basically, this is how we define productivity. And of course, they have they have bad days,

because what you're talking about is, when he's striking out and not making contact, he's very bad. Right? Yeah. And then the then when he, you know, when he does make the high hard contact, he's productive for your team. Like it's almost by definition, um, you know, strikeout guys are going to be volatile, but he doesn't add the walk. So he doesn't add like a, you know, a level of, okay, well, he's, he's taking his walks right now. At least he has a 310 OBP or something, you know? Uh, so he's super volatile. But how do you treat that in a projection system knowing this guy's volatile? Because maybe this is just his really bad stretch. And then he's going to have another Randy stretch, right?

I think this is one of these things. I pull up charts like the one that's on screen right now. If you're watching us on YouTube and it's the 15 game rolling Woba. Oh, I was just going to play there. Yeah, there you go. So it's up on the screen right now. And it's, when-game rolling WOBA. Oh, I was just going to play there. Yeah, there you go. So it's up on the screen right now. And it's, when does this chart scare you?

If you're looking at a Rosarena, you know, you see a nice spike kind of in the second half of last year. And you see a few dips that are pretty similar. You see two dips from last season, very similar to the dip that he's in right now. similar you see two dips from last season very similar to the dip that he's in right now so this is in the range of of normal air quotes i guess you could say but i don't know like i i think when i see more valleys than than peaks i start to get a little bit worried and i think this would be a case where i'm I'm more worried than optimistic. Even understanding the type of player, having what I think is a pretty good understanding of the type of player that Randy Orozarena is.

Yeah, it's interesting. I put ground ball rate up on that one, on the same graph. And the peaks in his ground ball rate almost exactly map for his troughs,irs so when he's struggling it's because he's hitting the ball on the ground largely yeah so you see that first uh that first sort of the post uh 2020 hype the beginning of 2021 that little you know down downward spike there, that is the other time that he hit 60% ground ball rates. Then that next nadir that's really the bottom,

or game 80 of 2021, that's when he was hitting 55% ground balls. And now he's hitting 65% ground balls. He's in another trough. So when I liked him, it was because I thought he had, there you go. Awesome. Look at that. On the fly.

So you see what I'm saying, right? There is a, you know, my theory is not 1000% correct because of this area here in game 140 where he was hitting some ground balls and was being productive but my my randy rosarena theory is that he has basically a swing for power at the top of the zone and then he has a swing that he can make contact at the bottom of the zone and you know if he could if he could toggle that switch at the right times then he could have like that postseason run right because then he's doing the he's he's hitting the at the right times, then he can have that postseason run. Because then he's hitting at the top of the zone for power, and he's doing just

enough at the bottom of the zone so they feel like they have to go to the top of the zone. But right now, for whatever reason, they don't feel like they have to give him anything at the top of the zone. Maybe he's reaching at pitches outside the top of the zone so they don't have to come into a good spot at the top of the zone.

And they're just throwing him fastballs way above the plate and breaking balls super low. And he's not doing enough on either. His pull rate has spiked as well. He's up over 50% with his pull rate. Normally he's closer to the low 40%, 42% for his career now as a big league hitter. I don't know.

With the volatility, though, it's a weird part where I'm like, yeah, man, he could just get hot. We've seen it. Do you think that it's over? The max EV is the best it's ever been. The raw power is still there. I don't think it's over. It's like an approach problem.

I think what you're seeing right now is a good explanation in why the projections are not buying the average in particular. I think volatile player, I think low average. At least a low average potential. And the projection systems are sitting in the mid 240s to low 250s range

for Randy Rosarana. That makes sense for me. 15 homers the rest of the way. No argument there. He's been running. I think he's the kind of the way no argument there he's been running i think he's the kind of player that as long as he's healthy he runs he's three for three this season at 20 bags last year i'm buying the rest of season numbers with more k's than are projected because i i think 28 is the true talent strikeout right that he's showing. That seems very clear to me. It's 28, 28, 28.

Maybe you got to dial the average projection down a little from what the projections are spinning out. 230, 240 maybe. Yeah, but I think it's 230, 240 with good power, good speed, and good counting stats. Unless we think there's some kind of path for him to lose playing time, they have plenty of talent. He's not the kind of player that they're so committed to long-term.

Cause I don't really have players like that where it's impossible, but I think he'd have to play like this for another 30 games before it would actually start to cost him significant playing time. Yeah. I mean, they need him. You know, it strikes me as a,

it's interesting. I think that all three players that we've talked about so far are are by lows but not not by lows like oh i'm gonna buy you know the 280 2020 version i'm gonna pay that much for him right i think that one's that's out the window like with with merrifield i'm not buying him at you know 293 two 93 hundred and 35 homers. If that's the price I'm out. But if I can buy at these lower numbers that the projected numbers for all three of these players, I feel like you're still, especially if you need steals. Yeah. Like, I think this is a decent time to go buy any of these three guys, because I think

they will all three of them end up with you know I think maybe Simeon's only sort of 10 to 12 steals but you know if you want to group them as a group 12 to 25 15 to 25 steals you know as maybe maybe an average for the three of them around 20 steals that's useful a lot of people are looking for steals you know I would buy these three guys but I wouldn't want to buy it at pre-season prices like they would have to come down off of whatever they were expecting out of these people the draft day equivalent is not what you're going to send back as part of a swap to get any of those players i would say of the three the one who's most likely to hit his initial projection is still Merrifield for me.

Of those three. Yeah, he's just not striking out. And he was never a guy that was about power. So if you're worried about the power, he was projected for seven homers for some of these guys from some of these projection systems.

We're on pace for a two-hour episode. Yeah, let's turn it up. Come on. Cattell Marte. What's going on with him? K-rates way up at 25.5%. Walking less than we're accustomed to. This is the one I might not buy low.

Nothing looks good. He's not hitting the ball hard. His hard hit rate is down. His bail rate is down. His max EV is down seven miles an hour. And max EV is one of those things where it's not necessarily bad if he hasn't shown it yet, but he's got 63 balls in play and he hasn't hit one over 110. This is the guy that used to regularly do that, you know?

So I'm just not seeing it. The K rate is bad. The swing strike rate is bad. The reach rate is worse than it's ever been. Like, I don't think I'm buying him. And what part of it is, he's not going to give you any steals. So if he's not going to give you steals and you're not sure about the home run, I mean, the average at 26%, I'm not sure about the average anymore. The projections are 270. What if he only hits 260 with 15 homers and three steals going forward?

I'm not buying that. I don't know if he's a dropper because he can still play second base, but if somebody wants to buy him, I'm listening. Yeah, that's tough. I mean, a 10-team league player that you really don't want to cut, but I would say he is probably more in that Brian Reynolds group where you look at him and you're like, this is just strange. He shouldn't fall apart this quickly. And it's a killer.

He's so far away from the core skills that we're used to. And it's really killer in 15-team leagues where you're like, well, yeah, no, 275, 15-5, that would still play in my league. I should keep him if he's going to do that. And it's the same thing with Reynolds. It's like, okay, I should probably keep him in a 15-team league because even this reduced level of sort of 270, 20 homers and three steals or four steals from Reynolds,

that's still going to be worthwhile of keeping in a 15-team league. But it also is just so hard because you're not getting that yet and you still have to wait for the mediocre numbers. And you're looking at all these other guys out there that are like, you have great numbers, like Eric Hosmer. Man, should I have Eric Hosmer on my team instead of Quetel Marte? Don't do that to yourself. Just don't.

I think Trent Grisham is kind of interesting right now because he, in the shortened season, showed some skills that maybe nobody expected right the hard hit rate jumped during the shortened season barrel rate doubled over what we've seen throughout the rest of his time in the big leagues he's underperforming even his normal barrel rate is 19 and 21 barrel rates right now so a lot of questions about who he is as a player not surprisingly worst hard hit rate of his career, still walking, and the K rate's not way out of bounds,

but it is worse than it's been at any point during his time in the big leagues, still doing well though with that O swing percentage, and still giving us raw speed, sprint speeds in the 92nd percentile, so maybe there's a little bit of a well when you get on base at 292 you're not going to run as much so some of those missing steals are there but i think there are fair questions to ask about trent grisham's power since 2020 wasn't a full season and nothing in his barrel rate has looked that good at any point since that season yeah i

don't know if i if i see superstar potential. I did see superstar potential in him after 2020, just because the barrel rate was great. And even in a small sample season like that, you know, it was really great to see a 200 ISO from a guy who has a great eye and stolen bases. So I did, you know, think that Grisham had superstar potential. But now we have three seasons of a basically average, mediocre-ish barrel rate. So I think that he's, you know, like a 170 ISO, 160 ISO guy. You know, I think that's just who he is.

So without him changing his approach and maybe going and getting the ball, maybe he could do a Robbie Grossman-esque second part of his career where he goes and gets the ball up front and becomes more aggressive and then has a season where he hits 25, 30 homers with this new approach. But he's not really showing that approach right now. And it's one of the weird places where I'd almost want the O-swing to go up because I'd want him to be more aggressive and try to hit for power. But as he is right now,

I think that he can still be a guy who hits 235, 240, 330 on base percentage. And, um, you know, maybe now only about 15 homers. And since he hasn't even attempted a steal, uh, I'm going to say maybe only 10 steals. I think the steals are more likely to come back than the homers. Yeah. I really do. I think as a lefty hitting in that ballpark too, I think that works against them a little bit. Much easier for a righty to hit home runs in San Diego.

So I think that fuels a little bit of the skepticism. Is he too passive? Is he too willing to work the count and ends up in situations where he just doesn't drive the ball because he's taking pitches he could hit? I don't know if that's the case. There's just this interesting conundrum at the intersection of plate discipline and power, which is just that power exists mostly at the front of the plate. of plate discipline and power, which is just that power exists mostly at the front of the plate. In terms of I don't know if it's swing mechanics, or if it's just, you know, how it's how it happens. Maybe it's because that's where you pull

fly balls is in front of the plate. But in terms of hitting for power, home runs exist in front of the plate. And so you can actually despite the fact that, you know, plate discipline is positively correlated with everything, power, you know, walk rate, production, you know, swinging less is good for you as a hitter. Reaching, you know, chasing less is good for you as a hitter. There's this paradox where power still exists out in front of the plate. So the best players find a way to be aggressive selectively, right? And so, you know, to get the ball out in front once they swing and so the fact that he has such a great eye means that he's still a guy

that could turn that switch and figure it out that's why i mentioned robbie grossman right robbie grossman this looks like robbie grossman before he had the power surge right doesn't he look kind of look like robbie grossman 100 This is almost the same profile. Robbie Grossman stealing more bases early in his career. That's basically what Trent Grisham has been. If you were taking Robbie Grossman as a top 125, top 150 player earlier in his career, I guess the difference though is playing time. Grossman was always stuck on the small side of platoon. Grisham is at least as a lefty on the big side of the platoon, so he catches more playing time. That's why we keep thinking it can fall into place for him. I think it's one of those things where maybe in a different team with a different hitting coach or in a new season, it doesn't seem likely that he's going to undergo

the Robbie Grossman in season. He's just going to start being more aggressive this next week. More of a player to get at a lower price in a future draft season than someone to try and get right now hoping it's all going to fall back into place.

Not a terrible guy if you're rebuilding or something in Dynasty to maybe try and get. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. Let's talk about Jesse Winker for a moment. How about a 197, 340, 237 line to begin his time in Seattle? Barrel rate way down from what we're accustomed to these last two seasons at least. Max exit velocity not too far away, but a tick

down from where it has been as well. But the good news, the K rate down at a career low, walk rate up at a career best. So I think most people who have Jesse Winker on their team are looking at those numbers and saying he's coming back to expectations sooner rather than later, isn't he? he's coming back to expectations sooner rather than later, isn't he? I think so. It's a really bad combination for him of the ball changing, the humidor situation, and going from one of the friendliest parks to one of the least friendly parks for offense.

So, you know, there's probably a lot of people taking victory laps, talking about how far he fell in their projection systems or in their rankings once the trade was announced. But he's not this bad. I still see that raw power in the max exit view, though. I think that there's still a certain amount of pressing. You know, this could be reverse pressing. It's like, I'm not going to swing at anything until I feel comfortable.

But the bad news is that that underlying change in projections because of the park factors and everything still exists. So he still is probably more a 260-20 hitter, 20-homer hitter, than maybe some realize. Let's move on to a couple other names here. Franmil Reyes was one of the players we were asked about. What is happening with Franmil Reyes right now? This is a little bit in the vein of the Rosarino volatile player.

Isn't he a guy who just goes white hot at times? He has an incomplete approach of the plate and uh not great bat to ball skills but when he's going he's gonna hit mammoth home runs and i i don't know i still think he can get to 30 homers this year if you saw a chart of his rolling k percentage and it had never been worse before. Would that change anything about how you feel about a bounce back? Yeah, I mean, his swing strike rate is pretty high too. A little bit. It's unfortunate that his defense won't give him a spot in the lineup,

even if he's struggling this bad. I mean, how much longer does Cleveland give him before they start, I don't know, playing him only against lefties? That would be awful. Fair question. Don't think we're quite there yet. But, man, I'm looking at the multi-year by game. I just wanted to see how bad this K rate is compared to his previous normal.

He's never reached this level with his K rate before. On the rolling chart. Uncharted territory on the rolling graph for Franmil Reyes' K rate. Is it possible that he could bring it back down? Sure. Anything's possible. But he's also not walking.

Something's messed up. something's very broken with him in a 10 team league probably droppable because i think you can find high k percentage power guys you can find that 30 25 30 like yeah there's got to be somebody we can we can come up with even that might be out there for you. Maybe Max Muncy, our next guy. Well, yeah, Muncy got my attention because Max Muncy, based on rest-of-season WOBA projections, is one of the better hitters in the NL with the bad X.

And I'm trying to make sure that this isn't a case where Muncy's just not healthy because he had that elbow injury. And for me, one thing that would cause him to underperform his previous levels in terms of the quality of the contact he's making is if he's simply not healthy. As it stands right now, he's got his lowest hard hit rate. Lowest hard hit rate as a Dodger,

but the barrel rate is still where it needs to be. Max exit VLO is the lowest it's been. Max exit VLO is down. Walking moreavilo is the lowest it's been. Max Exavilo is down. Walking more. This is the thing I worry about. With a player like Muncy. I'd much rather have him than Reyes though, dude. Oh, it's not even close.

Because you're talking about a K rate at 20% instead of one north of 40%. Yeah, exactly. But I guess the thing I don't know is can Max Muncy become fully healthy again on the fly in season? Or would he need an IL stint at some point? Or will he need more time off in the offseason? Or will it just be like, he'll be better next year? Right. Those are the questions.

I'm looking at Muncy and I think there's a good enough chance he's fine because there's more there's more stuff still intact than broken but i'm also not buying in all the way at the i just changed the entire fortune of my team because i got a top 12 hitter in the national league by wobah i don't know if he's necessarily going to get all the way back for health reasons i wanted to check because i'm actually a little bit below where i want to be in in homers and power and a lot of my leagues and this is relative to other people so it's not just the whole knee being down like right i picked i picked a i maybe picked a fair amount of guys that had had good power and speed right that was my approach was to like get like these 25 homer 10 stolen base guys a lot of those guys right maybe they are hurting more than the guys who have no doubt power so i i and also given

that the ball is what the way it is i wanted to test the assertion that hey you if you want to get rid of frown mill you can there are other guys out there so i have loaded up our 10 team league, the three Oh show and invitational, which is helpful for us because it's a 10 team league. And I wanted to look at the best options on the wire real quick to give a sense of what we might do. Wisdom. Yeah. Patrick wisdom is like the prototypical strikes out too much.

Never had the Fran meal Reyes level of success, but keeps playing and doing what he's doing despite this problem with the K rate. It might outdo him in a given season just because of whatever. He's also striking out a ton, but at least he's hitting for power.

So no, on the IL, Kepler is available in our league, and I would pick up Kepler maybe for Frommville. You get a couple more steals instead of homers. Voigt, Santander, I still

believe in Voigt to a certain extent. If he was coming off the IL and Frommville was still striking out 48% of the time, I think I might make the jump to Voigt. I think Santander is a good one to pick up. That park is not going to end up being the number one pitcher park in baseball. I know that there's some park factors out there that suggest that, but I think that's probably an overreaction to the first month.

So I don't know. Seth Brown? Carlos Santana? Bobby Dahlbeck? Would you rather have Dahlbeck than Fran Mill? Dalbeck could lose time to Tristan Casas. The way he has started he's left the door open for Casas to come up and

play and that does not bode well for Bobby Dalbeck I think I still compared to most of those players would rather wait and see with Fran Mill Reyes a little longer which could be to my detriment I say this a lot this is what bench spots are for you don't want him in there right now great you got five or

six bench spots use one of your bench spots on Fran Milreis until he shows signs of life maybe look at the calendar and say hey he's got you know three matchups against lefties coming up in a particular week let's use him then and just try to be a little more selective about when he cracks your lineup as a result of what we're seeing right now i mean this this week he's got one lefty six games one lefty next week all righties so you may have to wait it out a little while i found one i might i might take over meal? Who's available in our league? Rowdy. Hmm. Yes. Rowdy.

He's not projected for 30 homers. He's only projected for 19. So you would be losing in projected homers. However, the Bat-X likes his power going forward more than any other projection system because the barrel rate is great. The max EV is great. Everything looks pretty good from a stat cast thing. So you'd be betting on someone who has green all over his stat cast and is striking out 19% of the time.

You'd be betting on someone who's doing the things you're supposed to do in small samples really well. Yeah. As opposed to the guy who has a 48% strikeout rate. I think you could justify that sort of maneuver where available. all right i think you could justify that that sort of maneuver where available last player i want to throw in for this conversation since this became most of the episode is justin turner yeah it happens sometimes you know it's it's there's a lot to dig into with these players and i think with justin turner turner is 37 37 and there's something that jeff zimmerman found which is projected bounce backs for players over 33 years old

are less reliable. And I think he was doing that on a season-to-season level, but I think that actually matters probably in season if it matters season-to-season, right? We haven't had the research done for us, but as much as all the projections say, yeah, he can still hit 270 with 16, 18 more home runs going forward, and as much as the Bad X sees something about what he's done

that it likes to give him a little bit more than that, we have to agree that at 37, those projections are not as reliable anymore. Yeah, I'm looking at the O-swing percentage right now over time. It's hung up at a pretty high level for a while now, kind of going back to the second half of last season. That's a concern. This does look like it could be the beginning of the end for Justin Turner. And I think that means different things to different people. So I should be more clear. I think it means Justin Turner might fall into more of a part-time role. I think it means

by July 1st, we're talking about him as a guy that plays three or four times a week instead of five or six times a week. Is there someone else that's going to emerge to fully take over that job? I don't think so. Miguel Vargas, if he mashes at AAA, could come up and become more of a threat. But I think as they're currently constructed,

Turner's going to have some chances to figure this out. They'll give him some rope. I mean, Vargas is 22, and yeah, he's killing it again in AAA. Not quite as much as he did the last couple of stops. That just doesn't seem to be how the Dodgers work, right? Oh, thank you, Justin Turner, for your service. And Miguel Vargas

is now going to take your job. Well, I don't know. I mean, they, max exit below, lowest it's ever been for Turner so far. Barrel rate 5%, lowest it's ever been.

O swing percentage, highest it's ever been. Yeah, so I mean, none of it's, the swing strike rate highest it's ever been oh swing percentage highest it's ever been yeah so i mean none of it's the swing strike rate heights ever been strikeout rate highest it's ever been so the the bounce back to what the numbers in this case point to a 276 353 463 line if you're using the bat x but a 256 333 410 if you're looking at zips. Two pretty extreme projections. Yeah, and I don't even know why, because it must be a regression thing, because in terms of how much previous information

each system uses or whatever, because the current StatCast numbers for Turner are not good. No, I'd be more inclined to expect the Zips projection the rest of the way, given the age, given these factors all being trending in the wrong direction for Justin Turner. So hopefully that was insightful and helpful in some way. If you have those players,

if you're thinking about trading for those players, if you have guys in similar situations, you can kind of diagnose what might be happening and adjust expectations. Consider selling low in some cases. Consider going out and making a move in a few others. I want to talk about the roster shrink fallout here real quick. I think the simple question I have for you is when you're looking in a deep dynasty league or an AL only league or a league where there's almost no quality players available on the waiver wire, if Willie Calhoun gets his wish and he gets traded out of Texas to a team that has playing time available, Oakland, whatever, are you interested based on what you've seen. We had an email about Calhoun before this move happened that was pointing to some of his underlying numbers and his X stats not being nearly as bad as his actual surface numbers. So do you think we should still be intrigued by Willie Calhoun if playing time opens up for him

and he gets a fresh start somewhere else? I mean, I love the fact that he makes a lot of contact and sometimes it's powerful. I like that the Maxie V is over 110. So, you know, he's got some raw power. It's just a little bit concerning to me. Like if he, he needs an opportunity. Well, you know, who needs good outfielders? Texas Rangers. Right. He needs a really good hitting coach to work with him. Well, you know, who has a really, really good hitting coach to work with him well you know who has a really really good hitting coach texas rangers so i don't know man there's something um something i don't i don't like about this situation but just the fact that he has a great strikeout rate and has exhibited some some power in the past in some of those leagues it would be enough for me to pick them up yeah i mean it's grishamy it's an 18.1 percent oh swing percentage easily the best of his career more walks than ever low k rate again he's done that forever and you look at some of the underlying

numbers the barrel rate is still just not there hard hit rates oh weird because he's hitting fly balls but yeah he's not hitting the fly balls hard enough to be barrels or is he popping those up like what is going on there it's a it's a strange approach i think they're i think i would bet i'd be willing to bet that there's something going on mechanically and that maybe he works with somebody you know on his own time and you know there's been some conflict between what he hears from the organization what he hears from his own coach i mean this is that i'm not i'm not putting this on willie calhoun because of anything that he anything he's exhibited i'm just saying that that happens a lot in baseball like that is if you see someone uh that's consistently struggling sometimes it's

because they're really you know sticking with sticking with their guy that they have, their coach, their hitting coach, and not really listening to the organizational one. So maybe there's different voices in Willie Calhoun's head that are pulling him in different directions, and it's not working. But I guess this is probably not a great moment, and this might be an awakening moment. Maybe the next place he goes, he says, all right, you know,

do what you will with me. Tell me what to do mechanically. I've got to do, I got to clean something up. Because he has a great eye at the plate. He makes a lot of contact. And that's something I would bet on. Yeah. And there are plenty of other teams that are giving players opportunities

that I don't see as much in as I can see in Willie Calhoun. Best example, Christian Bethencourt getting DH and first base opportunities in Oakland doesn't make any sense to me. If they said, we're the team, we want Willie Calhoun and we're just going to let him play and we're going to let him hit. OK, I understand. I understand why you would take that chance. There's still to be enough exciting things in that profile. The other big fallout thing, Robinson Cano getting DFA'd, it doesn't have that much of a fantasy impact. So we'll probably put that more on the 3-0 rundown for Wednesday. But I think Josh Lowe going down, I think it comes back to a question that I've, I've kicked around on the athletic baseball show a few times. And it's,

it's that I, I don't know what you learn as a hitter. When you come up in the big leagues, you spend 20 games at the highest level and you have issues like Josh loaded 38% K rate. That's a problem. You talk about a guy that had a 78 WRC plus many of the players we just talked about more established guys had worse stretches to start the season

than Josh Lowe did. But he gets optioned down as the roster shrunk after Sunday's games. How do you look at this and say, okay, when is he ready to come back? That's the thing I don't quite understand. I think the concern I would have had about Josh Lowe, and I took him a few places as a late flyer, was that he struck out

26.2% of the time last year at AAA. And AAA pitching last year was as bad as it's been in a long time because of all the injuries at the big league level were thinning out the quality of the pitching at the AAA level. Even in that context, you're talking about a guy who was 40% better than a league average hitter,

showed power, showed power, showed patience, and he was amazing stealing bases too, 26 for 26, which isn't going to help you if you don't get on base at the big league level, but I just don't know what the Rays are hoping he can fix going back to Durham. Yeah, and the eye

poured it over. He's not chasing balls at the major league level either. It may not show up in an amazing walk rate, but he showed an excellent eye. He hit a couple balls hard. I think this is more maybe the Rays saying, we are looking at the standings and we need to put our best team on the field in the Major League level

more than it is about his future and what's necessarily best for his future. Because I do think that it would be best for him to struggle at the Major League level. We were talking about this with Matt Brash too. Matt Brash's

command is not great. He just had a really bad outing now two outings in a row where he's walked too many people can't can't find the plate i don't know that he's for his development it's going to be better for him to go to the minor leagues because in the minor leagues he's not going to get that feedback as much. He can throw it hard towards the middle of the zone and his natural command won't be any better. And then he would come back up and not want to throw it to the heart of the zone because there's major league hitters on the plate.

You know what I mean? So like there's, I would rather that he stuck it out of the major league level and found places in the zone that he can live. And that's basically what he's looking for. And for Lowe, I think that over time, if you gave him, I think it's Lowe, if you gave him more time,

or is it Brandon Lowe and Josh Lowe? That's right. Yes. I think for Lowe, if you just gave him more time, you would get some more hard hit balls and he would settle in. I think it came down to a choice between Josh Lowe and Brett Phillips. Harold Ramirez?

Ramirez is at least performing in this limited role. I think Brett Phillips seems like one of the most genuinely fun people in the big leagues. I feel mean any time I suggest that Brett Phillips maybe shouldn't be on the Rays roster. I know. But I look at what he's done, and I know it was double-digit homers and steals last year

in that kind of part-time role. He had a 38.7% K rate last year. He's close to 40% this year. He's swinging at pitches outside the zone more than ever. Josh Lowe, to me, is just a better player right now than Brett Phillips is. So I think you had to run the risk of possibly losing Phillips. Maybe they didn't want to do that right now with everyone churning their roster.

Maybe they're going to do it in a couple of weeks and see if they can sneak him through later. It's 100% that. It's that Harold Ramirez and Brett Phillips don't have options. So if you would move on from either one of them, you would lose them. You'd have to DFA them. Look, they know what they're doing. They to, you'd have to DFA them. Look, they know what they're doing. They're smart.

They manage their roster really well. So it's just giving themselves more time to get something back that they might be able to get for someone else. Probably it might have as much to do with that as it does. Or timing. Like you said, like I know that Farhan Zaidi does this out here where he makes claims at certain times and he ends up dfaing the guy like three

weeks later but sometimes it's just that he hopes that he can keep them on his on his roster because he's he's gotten out of some finicky part of part of the rostering season you know i mean there are times when you have to like like this moment is a finicky moment for everybody around the league because they had to get it down the major league roster down to 26 so if you could claim someone now or not release someone like the rays are right not release someone now then maybe they could dfa brett phillips in you know a month and there's not as much roster upheaval around the league and not as many people would claim him and they get to keep him in their minor league organization maybe that's the thinking i just think this goes back to a structural flaw that baseball still needs to

figure out that the best players aren't necessarily on the roster. The mechanics of how the rosters work shouldn't lead to a situation where you're actively choosing the lesser of two players because you can have your cake and eat it too By sending one player down. And not sending the other player down. That doesn't feel right to me. So we'll see Josh Lowe again soon. He might play a lot.

I think the problem for us as fantasy players. If you're in a mixed league. You probably can't hold him. Because it might be a few weeks. And that's a zero. And you need someone else to produce. So it's a drop now. And try to pick them up again later

if and when that situation opens up the way that we'd like it to. Got one mailbag question that I will squeeze in for this show. We'll roll the other ones over to Thursday, but it's a model versus results question from Frank. Frank's a new listener to the show and a subscriber based on the work we do here. So thank you for subscribing to The Athletic, Frank, theathleticletic.com slash rates and barrels dollar a month if you don't have a subscription right now he's curious as to our opinion of joe ryan on the twins he had a great start to the season but his stuff location and pitching plus information look underwhelming

just frank wants to know is he using the data correctly is he missing something or is joe ryan a sell high candidate so i i kick it over to you first. What do you make of Joe Ryan and the gap between results so far in the big leagues and what the model tells us about his ability? There's 100% something that the model is missing on Joe Ryan, which is his deception. And there's some deception in the model as it stands because we have things like seam shifted wake in the model and we have things like release point in the model so people that throw weird pitches from weird release points are you know are loved by this model but joe ryan does something that we cannot capture because it has to do with the way his limbs come through when he pitches his he

leads with his elbow um so that pitchers hitters can't see where the ball is and then the ball pops up and then on top of that uh he does have some things that the model does capture in terms of like his height his release point and the way his fastball has ride on it um you know he does have some some good things going for him um but uh i would say that uh just ride it and just enjoy it i think sometimes when there's a huge outlier uh with the model there's either something the model doesn't understand yet um eric lauer comes to mind uh you know he doesn't he doesn't show that well in the model. The traditional metric that you would look for right now that's useful otherwise is strikeouts minus walks, and Lauer's killing it

there. I think if someone has a great strikeout minus walk rate and a poor pitching plus, then feel free to ride it and enjoy it. If someone has a poor pitching plus and a poor pitching plus then uh feel free to to ride it and enjoy it uh if someone has a poor pitching plus and a poor strikeout minus walk rate like a cal quantrill i would call them more of a sell high because that's those are the two most powerful metrics i have in my toolbox strikeout minus walk rate and uh and pitching plus and cal doesn't do well there yeah dakota hudson is a name that popped for me as someone who's just like dreadful in the model getting great results and i know it's actually so there's there's a guy like dakota hudson a guy that i watch all the time that seems to be a bit of a a mystery house and a riddle adrian hauser yes like

there's there's something about. Yeah. They both have sub 20% K rates. They have walk rates above 10%. Hudson gets more ground balls consistently, at least he has this year. But in the past, Adrian Hauser has been basically the same profile guy and everyone bets against this profile and it seems to work better than expected.

Hey man, I even picked up Dakota Hudson in one league for the two-star week this week so i you know i'm not i'm not like i'm not like just like i'm not just you know people i don't live in my spreadsheets you know i don't it's not the only piece of information i don't just look at pitching plus and that's how i make decisions. Sometimes I do the relievers. It's been very good to me this year with relievers. But with starters, I think there's just more going on, how things fit together.

No model is going to nail it completely. I will say that a 53% ground ball rate and 18% strikeout rate and 11% walk weight for Hudson, something's not working here. 3% ground ball rate and 18% strikeout rate and 11% walk weight for Hudson. Something, something's not working. Something has to go. Yeah. Like either he has to stop walking guys or start striking out more or my

guys, or he's going to, he's going to allow more, he's going to allow more balls in play. Like he's a one 80 Babbitt. Like he also doesn't throw hard. Adrian Hauser at least throws kind of hard. That's right.

He's a power sinker. Hudson's not power. Hudson's averaging 92 on his fastball. That's so strange to me. Yeah. I would say that I use it as a guide. I use it as a good way to find sleepers. When it is completely out of whack with

what's happening the results sometimes even i pick up dakota hudson for a two starter but if he burns me if he burns me whoo you never seen someone get dropped so fast yeah i've got him a couple places too so i i'm i'm concerned i'm concerned that had to do it, but I'm chasing some volume a little bit, hoping to sneak in a couple of wins and maybe like 7Ks over two starts. That's about the best case scenario I think I can hope for from Dakota Hudson. But no, you're not using the model incorrectly, Frank. Joe Ryan is a bit of a unicorn, perhaps, as we're learning here. Curious to see what the next month or so brings, though, as teams get more and more looks at him, too,

because I think the thing about deception is that it might not be as effective over time. It might be one of those things that has an immediate peak, an immediate value, and then the value sort of wanes. That's what I worry about, because my comp for him is Yuzmira Petit. Yuzmira Petit does the same thing where he leads with his elbow. If you can see on YouTube, he leads with his elbow.

You can't see the ball, and then it pops up at release and uh you zamer petite had the worst third time through the order penalty i've ever seen and immediately his the teams that did make good advantage of of him in his career were like you will never ever ever see a lineup a third time again and so how i look how much value petite has had. I'm not saying that Ryan is not valuable, but his viability as a starter, especially one that might see a lineup a third time, that's what I'm watching over the next few months. Yep.

He's definitely one of the more intriguing pitchers in the pool right now, just based on the gap between what you see and what is actually happening in the results. If you've based on the gap between what you see and what is actually happening in the results. If you've got a question for a future episode, ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com is the best way to reach us. You can find us on Twitter.

He's at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. You can also drop questions under this video on YouTube. Be sure to hit the like button and subscribe to the Rates and Barrels YouTube channel if you haven't done so already. If you have a moment to leave us a nice rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, we would greatly appreciate that as well. We'll get to the picture

side of the What's Wrong With Blank series coming up on Thursday. Thanks for listening..