Rates & Barrels - Sonny Gray to the Cards, Kenta Maeda to the Tigers & the Mariners Deal with the D-backs

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

Eno and DVR discuss Sonny Gray's move to the NL Central to head up the Cardinals' rotation, Kenta Maeda's shift to Detroit, and a swap between the D-backs and Mariners that opens up a few different paths for Jerry DiPoto, while Arizona adds thump at the hot corner with Eugenio Suárez.  Rundown 6:05 Sonny Gray to St. Louis 13:13 Gray v. Hunter Greene in Early Drafts? 17:23 Kenta Maeda to Detroit 23:45 Opportunity for Rotation Competition in Minnesota? 29:47 M's-D-backs Trade 36:29 Choosing From an Oatmealy Corner-Infield Trio 39:30 Strikeout Park Factors 45:33 Why Do We Love Seattle's Pitchers? 48:45 A Question About Fastball Shape 56:50 Shota Imanaga: Making Sense of WBC Stuff+ Numbers; Outlook as SP 1:03:45 Chris Sale, Carlos Rodón and Low IP Projections Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/ratesbarrels Holiday Special through 11/27/23! Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Links from this Episode Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/chamb117/viz/PitchLeaderboardv5/Dashboard Check out this offer from our sponsor: Get 20% OFF with our code RATES at calderalab.com/RATES to unlock your youthful glow with Caldera + Lab! #teamcaldera Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Monday, November 27th. Derek Van Ryper, Eno Saris, back from the trip to fan tireds of Thanksgiving weekend. You still got leftovers left, Eno? Just a tiny bit. Made a couple sandwiches, had a bunch of turkey soup. Just a little bit left. The doggies, we put some chicken in for the broth, you know, and then it's not so suitable for humans. The dogs are still eating on that turkey. Yeah, we had a great time uh i learned a

couple things um i don't think i'm gonna buy a butterball turkey next year i bought a butterball turkey and then salt brined it dry brined it and they if reddit is to be believed uh and yes there are of course reddits about these sort of things if red is to be believed uh you can dry brine a butterball however it is filled with salt water basically to a make it juicier and b perhaps sell it at a heavier price ah yes uh gaming the system a little bit there so i did uh uh after our last podcast uh have a little freak out uh because i thought i had a 21 pound turkey that was still in the freezer on tuesday was it you asked me on tuesday afternoon it was about three o'clock my time and you said when should i take the turkey out of the freezer it's like 21 pounds i just looked at you and it

was like i don't like four days ago we looked at you and it was like, I don't know, like four days ago? We looked it up and it was like, yeah, the weekend. We Googled it. It said it takes six days to thaw. And I was like, oh, no. I immediately closed the computer and ran. Well, there is a hack that I found this year. It was the first time we ever made Thanksgiving at my house because usually we go to either my parents or Steph's parents.

We come to your house when we lived in California. It was very kind of you and your family to include us a couple of years ago when we were there. And so we actually did make our own turkey, but we kind of realized that last minute. And in fear of not having a full bird that was ready, one of the grocery stores here actually lets you buy whatever combination of turkey parts that you want. So we bought a couple of breasts, couple of thighs, couple of legs,

couple of wings, and probably paid more per pound. I know you can basically get the turkey for free if you buy all the other stuff and do it, you know, whatever grocery store hacks are out there, but it made the prep a lot easier. It also made it easier for us to buy a smaller amount of turkey for the group

that we had. So I hope everybody out there enjoyed the holiday. The last thing we had was stuffing. We, I made way too much stuffing. So we, we had that leftover still as of Monday, but everything else turned out great. Homemade cranberries. That was my discovery of the year. It makes all the difference in the world.

I've never been a fan of the gelatinous canned stuff, but if you, uh, you make your own and you get some green apples in there, some Granny Smith apples, a little bit of orange juice, turns out real, real nice. So big recommendation. Although taking the stuffing and throwing it in your soup is pretty good. Oh, yeah. Because you get all that taste and then it kind of softens and stuff. And it's a different approach. One piece of advice for anybody listening, do not spatchcock in front of the family.

Oh, come on, man. You didn't know that that was going to be traumatic for the children? Oh, yes. Calvin was like, what are you doing? It's like, I'm spatchcocking. He's like, that is so gross. I'm not eating that. I'm like, well, no, you're not eating this neck that I'm pulling out of the bird.

And don't listen while I crack its breastbone. Yeah, that was the other big tip of the year that people have been throwing out for a few years now. If you can do it, it's a good way to prepare the bird if you're doing the whole bird. So for the rest of your turkey tips, consult the appropriate subreddit we will uh reserve turkey tips for next year you saw me i i texted you see the text uh the tweet i sent back to you when you passed out on the ground yeah you're just done trip to fan baby living there with a little cooking at like eight you know i was done on a lot of different levels i have increased respect every year for everyone that's ever prepared Thanksgiving dinners because the more I have to do, the more I realize it is a ton of work.

How hard it is. I was on dishes like all day. That was my role. I was cleaning up. My wife and my mother-in-law were kind of frantically putting all the stuff together, and I was just trying to keep the kitchen clean so the next dish could go in because, again, amateur hour. We didn't really know what we were doing.

We're not one of those houses that has like three ovens. That would make things a little easier if you got the space, but we're not those people. So, again, more turkey tips coming next November. You have that to look forward to next year. A couple things on this episode. First and foremost, if you have not subscribed to our YouTube page, you should do that. We'd really appreciate it. If you're already watching us on YouTube, be sure to hit the like button, barrel up on the like button on this video.

And then of course the opposite spiel. If you're listening to us on Apple podcast, Spotify, or any platform that allows you to rate and review the podcast, we'd really appreciate it. If you do that, it makes us feel good. It also makes our bosses happy, which this time of year could be really good for us. So please take a moment, leave us a nice rating and review. Quick update about the show. Next week, we're in Nashville for the Winter Meetings in Nashville, one of my favorite cities to visit. So I'm excited that it's there this year and not in Orlando or one of the other places they go that isn't quite as fun. two episodes coming out next week, scheduling them for Tuesday and Thursday. That is written in pencil because who knows what will happen between now. And then if we need to release an episode on Monday, we'll do an episode on Monday.

If we're going to do Monday, Tuesday, we'll do that instead, but two episodes coming next week from Nashville. So we're really excited about that. And it seems like things are moving along at a nice pace so far, you know, sunny gray lands with the Cardinals.

The Athletics' Ken Rosenthal has a report they'll have a deal hammered out later on Monday. We're seeing three years and $75 million. So the Cardinals have really rebuilt this rotation in the first month of the offseason, with Gray being the big addition and Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson being their previous additions to sort of just fortify the back end with some innings. As far as Gray goes, I had a predictions episode with Will Salmon last week in the Athletic Baseball Show feed. I thought the Rangers might actually be the team that would swoop in on Gray, and that was with an assumption that Jordan Montgomery might go somewhere else. Who knows how that all plays out? Reason being, the Rangers have often shopped in the bucket in

which I placed Sonny Gray, the oft-injured starter, the talented but oft-injured starter. 439 innings since the start of 2021, similar to Blake Snell, actually. He was at 436 and two thirds, and that's 85 and a third less than Jordan Montgomery so I just thought given all the guys the Rangers have been adding over the years this might be their fit but instead 25 million per to be probably the best starter in St. Louis by a healthy margin so curious what you think about this move for Sonny Gray getting out of target field and moving into Bush Stadium yeah recency bias is funny because I before I looked at the rundown, I did not have Sonny Gray in the same sort of injury risk bucket as Blake Snow,

but they're right there with each other, innings upon innings. Also both coming off of 180 innings, although Sonny Gray is older, so you might expect just a little bit more risk there with the health but I just like I like him so much because he has an elite breaking ball it's not the curveball anymore I think it's the sweeper now but in any case he's a guy who can spin it I think we've shown a little bit that guys who can spin it age a little bit better and I think that's been shown in the research but also just anecdotally if you think of the adam wayne wright's rich hills i think there's a lot of guys uh who over uh over time have outperformed at the latter end of their careers and usually i

think elite breaking ball you know the nice thing about sonny gray is his fastball is not quite in the like you know wayne wright end of career uh status you know he i think he was like 92.8 this year um and that's not that's below average uh for a starter these days but it's not uh you know it's not where i mean like wayne it was like 87 the last couple of years. So it's not down there. And by stuff plus his fastball still rates as above average. It's become a cut ride fastball now, which means that it has a little bit of cut to it. Everything he does has cut to it. You know, he's kind of one of those guys. And I just like that he he's changed his pitches over time.

He's added pitches. That's that's, I think, time. He's added pitches. That's I think important. He has different pitches he can go to. If the sweeper gets overused, he kind of showed a little bit of that in the playoffs. Maybe he can go back to the curve some. He's too fast. I just think he's going to age well. If you just take...

What's interesting to me also is if you take a step back and look at the shape of the offseason and what I thought might happen in the past, you kind of were waiting on the top guys to set the market. And then people could slot in and be like, OK, I'm not going to get the highest AV. I'm not going to get this. But we need to know how much, you know, dollar per win is. We need to know how much the top guy is going to go for. We need to see Yamamamoto go you know before

snell will sign because now we'll sign for a little bit less and then sunny gray signs for a little bit less but i think what we're seeing is a little bit i have this piece in my um in my folder ideas folder that i've never done but uh it's titled is it collusion if the robots did it and so basically i had this like moment of awakening when I looked at Sonny Gray. I just took his projection. I aged it a half a win over the next two years. So his projection is 3.3 wins on Steamer. And I aged it half a win, added it all together, and multiplied it by $9 million per win.

And I got 75. I think it's collusion if you program your robots all the same way. I don't know. It's just kind of crazy. In essence, if that's the deal, everybody's just going to get

at most two numbers to choose from. I bet you if we could get Sonny Gray's agent on here and give him some truth serum, he'd be like, he'd be like, yeah, really early on we realized 3-75 was the offer. And we had 3-75 from like three different teams and he chose the Cardinals.

You should put agent truth serum in your ideas folder because that would be fantastic. I feel like I've had one interaction at the winter meetings. This is probably 10 years ago with an agent who on his own gave himself truth serum and got very loose lipped about about a bunch of stuff some of it was actually factually inaccurate like verifiably like that happens without like these guys weren't actually drafted the same year so you didn't pull that off but yeah i just found that fascinating because the amount of information that they're holding and they've they've gathered over the years it's it's pretty interesting perspective too you know like being pro-labor but not actually being labor themselves and right right yeah and i think at the time there

was a player that this this agent represented he threw a number out for what he wanted for an extension and i think i may have even said it out a lot of it said that's not enough i just like you gotta get more than that and the player did get more than that, had a better career than even his agent expected. We will hide it. We'll hide all identities in this case because that is a horrible game of guess who. But anyway, this is part of why I love the winter meetings. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's like that was a phase of life where I could stay up late enough to to get that insight. I don't know. Don't know if I'm going to collect anything quite like that. I'll leave that to you. That'll be your wheelhouse. We'll see. Even I've been not staying up as late. The latest I stayed up, at some point,

I was having shots with Bruce Bochy and Gary Sheffield. Why? Again, winter meetings. There's no other situation where that would happen. I can't claim that I had their attention. You were just there.

I was like, we were best of buds, but we were definitely sharing some liquids. You were just adjacent to each of them. They were flanking you on the two sides, and it's just a coincidence. You looked around, and you're like, oh. Stuck in the middle. Like, wow. This is crazy. Okay.

Three shots of Jameson. Yeah, exactly. As far as Sonny Gray goes, the early draft market has been pretty kind to him, I think, relative to recent seasons. Sonny Gray, years ago, would get the top 100 overall treatment in his early Oakland days. And I think ever since then, the combination of injuries that he's dealt with has always

kind of held the price back. And it seems like I'm always in in the down years. If Sonny Gray misses time, I believe in the skills. I think he's a good pitcher. I tend to invest. If Sonny Gray stays healthy like he just did in 2023, I'm a little less likely to pay the freight. So your would you rathers in this case, right around that pick 125 range among starters, you've got Gray versus Hunter Green, Max Scherzer, Chris Bassett, and Jordan Montgomery. And I think it's really interesting because the last two, Montgomery and Bassett, they're to me very similar in what they bring to the table. It's innings, a slight lower K rate,

volume is good, volume plays, but the other guys... You could be buying high on both those guys too. You could be. Because when it comes to big innings, not as big stuff, you can have really great

seasons. Remember the Miles Michaelis season? It was like two seasons ago. You know what i mean and then you don't necessarily follow that up either so i i will tell you that i tend towards the hunter green sunny gray bucket where i'm like at least when they're pitching for me i'm pretty sure they're going to be good right um whereas pitching for me, I'm pretty sure they're going to be good. Whereas, that does get me in trouble. There's not a lot of innings in there. What I would like to tell myself going into drafts is get one of each bucket. If Hunter Green goes first, take Sonny Gray second.

If Jordan Montgomery goes first, take Chris Bassett second. Come away, hopefully, with some innings and some upside. I don't know. A question about Hunter Green. The results just have not been good, right? The stuff is fantastic. It's easy to see it when you watch him. You see a K rate above 30% for a guy in his first 237 big league innings. We love to see that. The walk rate's a little high, but it's not atrocious. Like 9.3%, you can live with that. The park boosts home runs, and he's had a home run problem so far. Lost time has kind of cooked into these first two seasons,

especially 2023. It kind of feels like you're buying a lot of improvement, even though you're getting a great strikeout floor. If you're taking sunny gray, you're taking Hunter green rather where he's currently going. Like you're, you're paying for the, you're paying for a lot of improvement.

We haven't seen, he has to improve in order to be worth that. I mean, it's improved by quite a bit, I think to return full value around the pick one 25 range. I mean, even his like sort of standard projections you know 425 era uh that's an that would be an improvement would be better than he's ever done uh but it

also wouldn't be a amazing for uh right but that wouldn't be amazing for uh for fantasy the stuff plus projections have a four er so okay now you're now you're talking a little bit better four era with you know 11 plus strikeouts for nine now not that's what people are buying and those are projections which is supposedly a sober look at it not just being like but what if you you know really took off? But I understand your question, and I think I would have Gray above Green just because he's demonstrated it. And it's not like either of them has demonstrated innings year after year.

Right, right. And I do think the big part of it is that we talk about home run rates all the time, and if that home run rate for Green has been running a little on the high side, you can take a little bit of home run rate improvement that could go a long way underlying skills otherwise being pretty solid it's easy to see where the projections get some of that optimism from but man they got to be right if if you're going to pay full freight again this year for for hunter green again great strikeout floor we We've got another move, though. The Tigers get in on the fun.

Kenta Maeda is headed to Detroit. It's two years, $26 million, kind of from the next tier down as far as expectations go. Similar injury concerns, though, to Sonny Gray, I would say, in Maeda's case, a little scarier because he's a few years older and because it was an elbow surgery that kept him out more recently whereas gray it's kind of like back hamstring a lot of other stuff that isn't necessarily shoulder elbow related i don't think it's been surgery yeah so you have that as sort of the extra concern now with maeda i think the the fun part from a fantasy perspective is it's easier to stream him in detroit i know i saw our friend todd zola put out a tweet saying it was pretty much a neutral shift from Target Field to Comerica. I disagree with that a little bit

just because of the home run park factors in particular. The huge improvement there. Comerica is the best park in baseball for a starting pitcher or for any pitcher to be in from a home run rate perspective. Target Field is kind of middle of the pack. That's an issue for Maeda as his fastball

has declined. You can see a little bit of an increase in the home run rate. He used to kind of sit 0.9, 1.2, and last year was tied for his highest ever, 1.47 home runs per nine. I think that's tied mostly into the fastball decline. That's happened in Velo and Shape and just over time with the surgeries. And it's interesting to me to see Sonny Gray

had the third best fastball stuff plus of any free agent starter. And Kenta Maeda, basically the the worst uh the only it's kind of hard because they you know people have sinkers and fastballs so like which one am i counting but any the in kenta maeda territory is hanjin ryu who like threw like 88 last year um and zach granky who also threw 88 last year so you know he's in a bad bucket when it comes to fastball stuff plus. And it's possible that fastball stuff plus should be valued higher than anything else because so much of the arsenal kind of comes away from the fastball. You know, the best breaking ball you can throw is defined by what your fastball does. You know, your best changeup you can throw is defined by what your fastball

does you know your best change-up you can throw is defined by what your fastball does the better the velo is on the fastball the harder it is for people to adjust to the breaking ball and the and the and the and the change-up so um i think that's a big reason why you see such a big dollar difference between gray and maeda because overall stuff plus actually favors maeda because stuff plus loves his his splitter but if you like if you just think about pitching like if the fastball's 86 and the splitter's 80 like is that going to work? Yeah. It puts a lot of pressure on locating really, really well, but I do think the park offset some of the potential catastrophic damage,

at least the home park. And the risk was totally different. Two and 24 is, you know, for the Tigers, the, the, the,

what they paid for it is totally different. You know, that's very different than three and 75, two and 24 is maybe it'll work out if it doesn't we got you know 12 12 million on our on our roster next year that we're not that you know and that's not playing for us you know that's that's that happens to most teams at some point and it mirrors i think you have this on the rundown so i'm stealing this from you but it mirrors the uh it mirrors the giant signings we got a former former giant manager pulling out the sort of sean mania

carlos rodon you know maybe he's guaranteeing the second year but a lot of these contracts have been 1 and 12 with an option for a second year you know this one he's just okay fine i'll just give you the second year yeah yeah two for 24 you said, not the two for 26 that you see on the screen. Typo. EDVR. First one of November. Yeah. Not even close to the first one.

Probably like that. It's very beautiful. I like the color. It looks nice, but it's incorrect. It's actually incorrect. Nice job. I do know the difference between a four and a six, if anyone's concerned. I still understand there's a difference in those two numbers.

Do you think this means anything? Like, do you think this means that Luis Severino gets a two-year deal? Does he want a two-year deal? Maybe Luis Severino is in a different package. He's like,

I don't want the two-year deal. I just want the one-year deal, you know, and get back out there. Yeah, this is where the age would factor in, right? If you're Maeda, you want the second guaranteed year

because you're hitting that point in your career where it could be the last. Probably the last multi-year deal you're going to get. Severino being 29 years old right now, he turns 30 in February, could probably hit the four-year

deal if he comes on a one-year deal this year, crushes it somewhere, and then goes back into free agency next winter. He tries to do the Robbie Ray, Kevin Gossman deal where he signs for a year, has a good year, and then gets maybe even the 5 in 100, 5, 120, 111.

So much about the interest level for me and Luis Severino, and it's probably true for many people, it's where he signs. If he ends up with one of our four to six orgs that we really, really trust with pitching, big thumbs up, two thumbs up, where everyone's going to like him. Some parks could really help

too, I think. Like, you know, just everything, when you're in New York, everything is just a higher wire act. Like, his fastball didn't drop that much velo. It didn't drop that much shape. Like, by stuff, he should have been okay. But just being a little bit worse and being in New York and facing those offenses and having that outfield dimensions,

I could see being interested in them, even though the Pittsburgh Pirates don't have an amazing track record. Recently, they've been developing some guys. Keller's gotten better under their watch. Oviedo got a little bit better before. Some news on him. He has Tommy John. If he went to the Pirates,

I think I'd be pretty optimistic about what he could do just because the park factor would at least help him there. The Cardinals, the Giants, I would love for him to end up there. I would just be more interested because I think it would just give him a softer landing spot. He could be who he was last year in Pittsburgh, San Francisco

and St. Louis and be useful probably. I think he'd at least be a home streamer for the most part if the stuff was as good as it was last year. I wonder what's going to happen with the twins. Are they a possible candidate for signing Severino? Because right now, with Greg on, Maeda gone, I assume they're going to add someone for depth. It's Pablo Lopez, Joe Ryan, Bailey Ober, Chris Paddock, Louis Varland, you got Simeon Woods Richardson probably. This is like post-surgery Paddock. And Louis Varland, who had been kind of in and out of the bullpen a little bit, and Simeon Woods Richardson himself.

So I would love to add Paddock, Varland, and Wood Richardson together and ask for like 180, 200 innings from the three of them. So that means you need one more veteran to help chew up some innings and maybe one more to put in that top three. It really depends on how you feel about Bailey Ober. If you trust Bailey Ober in a playoff series to be your third starter, then it's maybe two depth arms. If you don't... For what it's worth, they did not start Joe Ryan in the playoffs, did they?

Or they gave him like two innings or something? Joe Ryan had an injury late in the year, if memory serves me right. I remember having to manage him pretty carefully. He came back, though. Yeah. He came back, though. Yeah, they gave him like a game three start

where, you know, he... It's that groin injury late in the year. Now, he was pitching regular innings in September, so the injury wasn't holding him back in October, at least the same injury at the time. They just didn't really trust him because of the home run issue, I think. Yeah, and he's tough. I mean, talk about your difficult evaluations

for next year. 32 home runs allowed in 161 and two-thirds innings for Joe Ryan last year. ERA swelled up to 451, and things started off really well. There was a point, I think it was in late June, Joe Ryan had a 298 ERA and a.91

whip. That was coming off of a complete game shutout with 9 Ks against the Red Sox on June 22nd. Things really really turned after that for him. Yeah, I could see a Severino or Frankie Montas type thing for the Twins where they're like

this is our shot at adding someone at the top. And then maybe at the back end, even someone as boring as Martin Perez. And I don't mean, I'm not trying to be rude. Send him back to Minnesota again. But just like, you know, put him on the five.

And if you don't like what you see anymore, then, you know, you call up Sammy Wood Richardson or something, you know? I think if... So that would be, that's like my, that's like a budget version of my fantasy thing where I want one of the upside bin and one of the innings bin.

I think they may be interested in some other guys that are kind of clustered with Maeda ADP-wise. You got Michael Waka in that range. Seth Lugo's in there. Those kind of seem like twins guys that could end up being your third best starter if it works. Seth Lugo is legitimately my favorite remaining free agent starting pitcher in terms of how much I think it'll cost and how good he'll be.

I wouldn't give Seth Lugo the full Sonny Gray money, but I would think of him in a similar way. Think about it. What's the problem with Seth Lugo the full Sonny Gray money, but I would think of him in a similar way. Because think about it. What's the problem with Seth Lugo? You don't think the innings are going to be great. Or you're worried about the innings. Well, you should be worried about the innings with Sonny Gray. What's the best thing about Seth Lugo? He can spin it, and he's got an elite breaking ball. I don't know. I think he's not that far off of Sonny Gray. still could be a really good reliever if it doesn't work as a starter, but it worked really well as a starter this year.

That's a pretty good floor. I think I'd rather go that route with Lugo than with Waka because I feel like we've had conversations about Michael Waka. Going back to previous podcasts we did at other jobs, is this going to be the adjustment? Is this going to be the year? Is Waka finally going to do it? Is Michael Waka good?

Is Joe Flacco elite at baseball? Oh, God. It is. Thankfully, we don't have the Joe Flacco conversations going on anymore. But, man, Waka's still only 32 years old. This could be happening for five more years. But it's a guy that I've described him as a pitcher that everybody's interested in. He's pitched for five different teams the last five seasons, going from

the Cards to the Mets to the Rays to the Red Sox to the Padres, showing some flashes, which keeps teams interested again, but nobody... Seth Lugo has pitched in all those places? Waka pitched in all those places. Lugo was just the two stops, I think, between the Mets and the Padres. I don't think he had a third stop.

I don't remember Seth Lugo at the Cardinals. No, Seth Lugo has not pitched for the Cardinals. Yeah, Michael Walker. He's pitched all over. I kind of think of Michael Walker almost in the Wade Miley bin, which is like good change-up, cutter change-up. They have similar styles, cutter change-up.

Better than you might think when they're bad and not as good as you think when they're bad and not as good as you think when they're coming off a good season. Yeah, I think when you look at the end of the season too, there's a few really nice starts from Waka where he carved up a husk of a White Sox lineup, a Cardinals team that had given up by September. You can really get duped

if you look at some of those final starts and put those into the appropriate context. I think he's a useful pitcher. I just don't know if there's anything more than what we just saw from him in San Diego. Oh my goodness. Look at that. He's finished with the White Sox, Cardinals, and Rockies at home. His worst start in the last four was at LA. That just sort of amazing yeah so you know the usual tread carefully applies he'll do better than he would have done with that option for sure and deservedly so because the ratios have been good each of these last

two seasons between the red socks and the padres but i think i'm with you as far as preferring lugo to waka and being really curious as to what Lugo ends up getting as a free agent here this winter. Let's get to this trade. This is not surprising at all. The Mariners made a trade. Eugenio Suarez goes to the D-backs as a part of this deal, and Carlos Vargas, kind of an interesting relief arm, and then Sebi Zavala, almost certainly the seldom-used backup catcher for Cal Raleigh in 2024, going back to Seattle as a part of this deal. Actually, the return is so light that I would say that this is,

it's not a salary dump, but they got something back, but it's like they didn't want to necessarily pay the salary for this kind of production. I think that's more or less why they made this move, but I also wondered, so we talked about Luisuis arias in the last episode looking like a small side platoon bat when suarez was still on this depth chart and thinking about how much they played him in 2023 i wonder if this puts the mariners in the market

for matt chapman or possibly jamer candelario sort of like everybody's fallback option at third base if they miss out on chapman chapman i, is one of those guys that will end up being a solid free agent signing, even if the bat is slowly going into decline. We talked about it a lot at first pitch Arizona. The quality of contact was there in terms of hard hit rate and barrel rate, but he was not pulling his barrels consistently. So if you believe that Matt Chapman can fix that, then the offense can come back in a huge way, and he's still a great defender at third base, which is part of why I think the multi-year,

three-, four-year deal for big money totally makes sense. Suarez is at least an upgrade for the Diamondbacks. You think about what they did at third base between Evan Longoria, Emmanuel Rivera. That group of third basemen, which includes a few other players that rotated to the spot, hit.234 with a.304 OBP and a.340 slug in 2023. They hit 10 home runs from that position. Suarez at least gives them thump at a minimum.

Should be in the heart of that order. I feel like this is a pretty solid move for him. It gives him one more season to probably be an everyday player or very close to it maybe the complicating factor here is Jordan Lawler if Jordan Lawler is up on the big league roster all season or for most of the season Geraldo Podomo is not going to go away so you have to play him somewhere so maybe that eats into Suarez's playing time a little but they got some flexibility with DH so all in all I think this think this is a big win for Suarez even though the lineup context, the park, there might not be a massive upgrade there. The playing time just seems more stable for him now. Yeah, and I'm wondering with the

shape of the Diamondbacks minor leagues and what they've got going, if they shouldn't be considered a frontrunner for Eloy Jimenez in trade talks. Because I don't love Jake McCarthy myself, but just looking at past deals, a deal with Jake McCarthy and maybe even put Dominic Fletcher in as well. Of course. Put Jake McCarthy and Dominic Fletcher in as well. Yeah. You know, of course put Jake McCarthy and Dominic Fletcher together and,

and maybe some lower minors guys. And if you get Eloy Jimenez, then, then you're like, woof, like this is, this is a legit thing. You know, now Perdomo and Lawler,

like that's just, that's our safety blanket. You know, we've got two athletic guys. Should we bring up Lawler and he plays third and Suarez plays DH and Eloy plays some outfield or, you know, or we just put Perdomo and Lawler on here and every time Cattell Marte is

hurt, we have a second baseman or Perdomo, you know, starts taking some, some center field reps so that we can, you know, do things that, that way.

Like, I don't know. I think I leave Perdomo and Lawler alone, and I say, these guys are both going to help us next year. And then I can play around with the outfield a little bit and see if I can get more offense on this team. Because I think that's what they kind of need. I know they went to the World Series,

but this wasn't the best roster in the National League. No. So they need to keep improving. but this wasn't like the best roster in the national league no so they need to keep improving and i think they will i think they they've got you know between lawler and and the system's a little tricky to trade with right now because a lot of the players that you might have wanted to have graduated and are kind of a key part of what they're doing right now mostly the young pitching i don't know if they would move Tommy Troy. Drew Jones, of course, just had a brutal 2023 from every possible facet.

Would you trade Drew Jones away? Sell low via trade to add someone like Eloy Jimenez or add someone else? Maybe. That's kind of a fascinating path they could consider. I think there's a few different ways you can upgrade this roster and maybe not blocking the dh spot would be their best choice

given that suarez is there because if you can use suarez part-time at third base the rest of the time at dh and keep some of those younger more athletic guys on the infield regularly i think that gives you a better all-around starting nine most days. Yeah, I mean, the good news about this team organizationally in terms of the future is they're great at the middle. They seem to have found solutions up the middle. I'm counting Alec Thomas because I think defensively, at least, he's a plus in center, and he can at least hold water for them. But if you put Corbin in center, it hurts you arm-wise,

but I think he can also play center. They seem pretty good up the middle. What they need are add some back-end starters maybe, have some of the guys they're developing turn out better in terms of pitching development. Maybe add to that bullpen. These are things that yes, every team is trying to do, but

are not the hardest things in the world. Doable. Doable adjustments to continue getting better. I like Suarez. Suarez is better. Like you said, he's a better solution for them at third. Not everyone can sign Matt Chapman. Not everyone can sign Jamer Candelario. So just solving the problem without going into the free agent bin is probably a good move. So I'm curious to see just how it plays out for Suarez.

I think what we saw last year, 2023, I think it's a pretty good indication of where the projection should go for 2024. Low average, good OBP, not great OBP. Big time power, pretty good run production, so long as he can avoid injuries. Max volume player. From a oatmeal-y, bargain bin, corner infield perspective, I'm thinking about early drafts. I might do one next week while we're in Nashville.

Maybe. But they're slow drafts. That's the problem. I don't want to do a slow draft. I want to sit down and just knock a draft out in like two and a half hours. Oatmeal-y corner infielders looking for thump. Suarez, Josh Bell, or Anthony Rizzo? Who do you like the most out of that trio right now? All three going after pick 250 in November drafts.

I might take Suarez. He has very established flaws in that strikeout rate. But with Rizzo's health, it's a pretty big question mark. Suarez also is in the middle of a park upgrade. You know? And so even though Arizona is a neutral park, Seattle's one of the hardest places to hit. It's just cold. You know?

The ball doesn't travel as far. Although, it's a dome, so that's not a good reason. It must just be dimensions. Atmospheric conditions. Anyway, it plays. You can look at any park factor. It's a hard place to play.

So I'll take Suarez. I think I'd actually go Rizzo of that trio. For now, you're getting a little more of a discount on him. He's supposed to go through a normal offseason. It's a nice park. He's demonstrated that he can hit there. Yeah, basically hits second or third in that Yankees lineup. I think there's a little more there in terms of average because of the park.

We saw some really good stuff from Rizzo before the concussion. He hit.304,.376,.505 with 11 homers the first two months of the park. We saw some really good stuff from Rizzo before the concussion. He hit 304, 376, 505 with 11 homers the first two months of the season. It was not the same after that late May concussion. I think I'd go him out of that group because I think the power output's close for the group.

Suarez probably leads the group in homers, but yeah, you're going to give up a lot. It's hard to get enough power with average that late in the draft too so i think that's where rizzo kind of jumps out to me from a real life perspective suarez versus jamer candelaria who do you think actually has a better 2024 it's the better all-round fit uh suarez is projected for 1.6 wins and candelaria 1.8 1.9 uh just looking away from the projections defensively i give it to suarez i think you know i feel like candelaria is like almost got moved off the position in in detroit like he first. So Glove I give Suarez.

Kind of OBP skills, maybe a wash. Contact skills go to Candelario. Power goes to Suarez. So I think I know what the projections say, but I think I'd take Suarez. Yeah, I think that's where I'm at for this year only i think where it gets complicated is you know year two year three i think candelario might be at that point where you can get a little more out of him for a few years his offensive profile scares me

less i'm also curious to see this is one of the park factors that doesn't get discussed probably as much as it should is what happens with Suarez's K rate getting out of Seattle. Among the things that ballpark in Seattle does, the three-year rolling average for the Mariners ballpark, T-Mobile Park, it's a 110 strikeout factor. It's tied for second with the Brewers. The only park that boosts strikeouts more is the Trop. And we know that Willie Adames is among the players that have talked about how difficult it is to to see the ball and hit there so and he went to milwaukee he's number two yeah yeah milwaukee's right there tied tied for second with the mariners but the thing is chase field has a 95 park factor for k's so it's a pretty big difference where you know

suarez is likely a 30 k rate guy in a park like Seattle. Maybe you knock that down 28, 29%. It's only a handful of Ks over a season, but maybe it just helps him age a little more gracefully since the quality of the contact is still there. The swing decisions, he's not chasing pitches outside the zone at an alarming rate. He's still doing that at a career norm sort of level. I wonder if just getting out of Seattle kind of stabilizes his offensive profile for a little bit longer. There's a club option for 2025 on that deal, so it's possible he's in Arizona for two years.

He gets down to 28 or something, you know, 27. He just reverses the aging for a year or two. Yeah, nudges the average up 8 to 10 points or something in the process. On the margins, it matters. I just thought it was... It's just a weird thing the idea of park factors for strikeouts you think that strikeouts are very

you know the pitcher and the catcher and what's the park gonna do but these things are mostly accounted for it's you know you you they you there are i will say this i do think there are power factors for strikeouts. I think that exists. And I think that the reason it exists is multifaceted. You've got the batter's eye. So behind the pitcher, there's different colored materials. Some people have IVs. Some people allow people to sit closer to the batter's eye.

And so I think in Houston, that was a deal where there's actually people seated kind of close to where the ball comes out from the pitcher's hand. The reason you have the batter's eye is to give a background for that. You're looking for the ball release. The batter's eye is one of the ways. Pitchers brought up just last year to me that mounds are different. I don't know if mounds can be really different if mlb is on top of like policing these things but their subjective feel almost becomes more important than the reality because if you're standing on a mound and they

said some of it was like how much space there is behind home plate so do you feel like you're on top of home plate or do you feel like oh this is a big park and do you like it if it's a big part you know i mean so like uh how they feel on the mound is one thing uh lighting is one when we talked to willie adamez he said that they had led lighting and that was something that uh matt olson said too is that like when you have like led lighting you kind kind of, you just, there's a shadow on the ball almost. And it's almost like you only see the top half of the ball lit up, you know, and the bottom half is kind of shadowy. Whereas more ambient kind of sun-based lighting, maybe that doesn't happen as much. I don't know.

Maybe different kinds of lights different shadows so anyway it's about uh the batter's perception and the pitcher's perception of that space that they're in and uh and i do believe that it can lead to some parks just being an easier place to strike out yeah it's kind of interesting those three parks the trop american family field t-mobile park they all have roofs and i think for the most i mean the tropicana field that's not retractable that's always closed american family field rarely open because the weather and oh there are arizona rarely there are clouds 120 miles away keep the roof shut and come on like arizona it's like it's 125 degrees today yeah so i just wonder and the odd thing is it's the strikeouts are less of a problem there i'd be curious to know if the lighting in the ballpark is something that's actually very different between those two places, given the extremes in that particular park factor.

But again, a park factor that I had not thought much about, I think until it was actually Todd Zola who brought it up to me a few years ago. When Garrett Cole went from Pittsburgh to Houston, there was a pretty big swing just in the strikeout park factors between those two places. And I was like, what are you talking about, Todd? That's not a thing. And we went through it. It was like, yeah, that actually is a thing. We should pay closer attention to it because it can actually make a difference, especially for pitchers moving in from one good

spot to a bad spot. Worst place for K is, of course, Coors Field. Not a surprise, right? But that's the other atmospheric conditions, right? The way your pitches move can change from park to park to affect your yeah and maybe that's why the domes are saying they're good for strikeouts maybe think about pitch design think about pitch design modern pitch design you're trying to hit certain like movement patterns right and you're like i want this to move like this and this and this well what happens in a dome you kind of the pitches move the way you expect them to because there's no atmosphere it's more consistency yeah right so that might maybe

that favors the pitcher because the pitcher's like oh yeah i did get the plus you know 18 you know and i got the minus five and you you know, got all the different movement patterns he wanted. So I hadn't thought of that. Yeah. So more park factors chatter throughout the off season. And speaking of Seattle, you know, we, we were talking a lot about George Kirby from the first pitch, Arizona, and I get the sense that Kirby is going to be that early round pitcher that creeps up and creeps up and creeps up. And by the time you get to March, if you're playing in a very competitive league, high stakes league,

whatever it might be, it's going to take even more to get George Kirby then than it does right now. And he's not cheap right now, to be clear. I mean, he's going to maybe end up top 10. Yeah. Very good chance.

He's top 10 among starters, ADP wise, because he's like kind of on the, on the cusp of that already. Why do we love Seattle pitchers? Part of it is the park factors, right? They're good pitchers, but they're also in a good environment, a great environment for pitching given that it suppresses homers,

but it also boosts strikeouts. And you take the skills they have, you take the quality of the team they have, you take the quality of the bullpen they have, all of the secondary factors are also good behind them. I was starting to think that you could, with the right sort of roster construction opportunity, mostly like an auction salary cap draft situation, you could probably stack Seattle pitching. Couldn't do it in a snake because Luis Castillo is going at the end of round two right now in a 15-team league. Kirby's going at the end of three, so you have to push Kirby all the way to the beginning of three if you want to do it. But I don't think it's a bad idea. I think it's such a great place to pitch.

All those factors are in place right now where you could end up with their three best starters, and you might be really happy with how your roster plays out over the course of the year if you're thinking about going aggressive early with pitching anyway yeah i mean the entire rotation last year was fourth in era with a 389 era um and uh good peripherals to boost to support it and that includes uh you know starts that you wouldn't have to include uh necessarily in your fantasy situation because it includes starts from trent thornton and tommy malone and 10 starts from marco gonzalez with a 5-2-2 era that you wouldn't necessarily start on your team uh so yeah if you if you paired it down to castillo kirby gilbert and Wu, you'd probably have something like a 3-4, 3-5 ERA in the next year.

Bryce Miller, a lot of strikeouts. You're Wu over Miller choosing between those two, right? Because they're going around the same time, like in that 180 to 200 range? Yeah, I think so, because I love Bryce Miller's foreseam, but the rest of the package, he's still trying to figure it out. I love both of them, but he still hasn't right now.

He's the strange four seam cutter and uses the sweeper as like a, to steal strikes. So it's like, really he's a four seam cutter guy with a, with a sideways curve ball. He uses sometimes. And Brian Wu, you look at him and you think oh he's a two pitch pitcher but he's actually a four seam two seam sinker he's a four seam

two seam sweeper gyro slider guy so he in fact has four pitches and i think that they he's almost at a better place in terms of figuring out how to use those four pitches in tandem. Whereas if you were selling me on a fastball cutter guy, I'm like, I don't know. It's almost like it's a very Strider-esque kind of attempt. Yeah, and that's a fine line to walk. We've talked about how often strider gets away with missing in the heart of the zone it takes a ridiculous fastball to be able to do that

and i don't think maybe bryce does he have that good of a fastball well you know people we did have a question about fastball shape yeah And the interesting thing for him is, the one thing that's annoying is you're going to go to Brooks Baseball, you're going to go to Savant, you're going to go to Alex Chamberlain's pitcher leaderboard on Tableau. All those are great places to go. But if you do those things, then each of them is going to have

a different way of describing movement. So, you know, if you go to Brooks, you look at Bryce Miller's, you know, fastball movement. This is Brooks baseball. You can see that he has a 9.9 inch vertical movement on 95 mile per hour fastball. So 9 is about average. So already you know he's got above average vertical movement. Then you can look over at the vertical release column and see, oh, he has a sub six foot release point. So now you're saying, okay, this is a guy who releases the ball from a lower release point and has above average ride that's a really good combo so that's a way you could look at brooks and see it another way you can do it is you can go over at baseball savant and you can see uh bryce miller they have some color-coded stuff so uh this is this is probably

uh you know an easier way to understand things but you can look at what they've got here the vertical movement uh and horizontal movement they've got it color understand things, but you can look at what they've got here, the vertical movement and horizontal movement. They've got it color coded. So you can look at his four seamer and see, oh, he's got three inches of vertical movement over average, given his release point. I think it's, I think they consider release point, but he's got three inches of vertical movement and it's helpful because it got a nice bright red coloring you can say oh that's that's good i know that is good um and then you know if you're talking like you know uh induced vertical break which is ivb which is sort of uh pitching coach talk um you can go over to alex chambersland's uh pitcher let's say it's called like a pitch leaderboard he's got uh this is version pitch leaderboard version five uh and you can go

to specs and you can do something like uh sort for vertical break and And here on his, I know that he has actually, um, looked at, uh, vertical he's adjusted for release point. Um, and again, the number is going to be totally different. So it was a 9.9 on Brooks. It was an 11.9 on baseball savant and uh bryce miller is 18.4 vertical induced vertical break now uh anything above 18 is good uh he's got this induced vertical break of 18.4 and he's got the low uh he's got the low release point so that's another way to understand shape but when we talk about fastball shape we're talking about sort of the geometric shape from release to to the plate and like the good fastballs have that have a straight line almost in terms of watching it it's super hard it's super hard because you're watching mostly for like batter reactions

it's really hard to tell but i guess sometimes you can tell that like the ball kind of went straight as opposed to like went down but that's it's really hard especially if they're like going to different locations at the plate and stuff you know but i think it's super hard to scout with your eyes and i tend towards if you can't measure it you don't know it and uh that's i'm biased in that direction what i would love is if all the people could get together and just have one number for us that would help that would many of us understand it a little better and to know oh i'm on this leaderboard and it it means the same as the other leaderboard because there's a standard but because there's a

of a different point that those are all based off of, you have these extra complications. So like what types of shape are best? Well, you know, ride is always good. Like that's something we've talked about for a long time. Part of what makes, I think for me, seeing ride on television difficult, you get different camera angles.

And, you know, with pitchers throwing on a mound, like it's there's kind of an illusion to it i think the way you described it like good ride is more like what looks like a straight fastball on tv is actually good ride but if you were sitting behind the plate the perspective is different and i don't know if a straight fastball in person probably isn't as good probably doesn't have as much ride as you. So it's like where you're watching the game also kind of impacts what it's going to look like while you're trying to watch fastball movements. I find that to be really challenging as well.

Yeah. I mean, watch a Joe Ryan fastball. It is a great pitch. And it also is a pitch that he uses over and over in the top of the zone that people hit for homers so you know if you're like eye scouting you'd be like you didn't have a good fastball i just saw him give up a homer you know and it's just like all these straight things at the top of the zone well yeah

i mean it's it's pretty good and he uses it so much that yes people do hit homers off it so uh i find uh i find it hard to see some of this stuff uh with my eyes and i that's why i respect you know the heck out of scouts like i'm i'm uh i'm looking at the numbers because it's it's it's better than me trying to be like oh yeah like this guy's cut of his jib. The job is really hard, by the way. Everyone knows, but it's a very, very difficult job. So thank you for that question, Isaac. One thing I would say that I like about Savant and about Alex Chamberlain's thing is it gives you a sense

of where they sit. Anything that's extreme, anything that's at the top of a leaderboard or at the bottom of a leaderboard is usually good because you're just not in the middle of the leaderboard. When you go over to Alex Chamberlain's leaderboard, you can sort. I just did minimum 500 fastballs sort by ride. There's Bryce Miller in the top 20. Most of the pitchers with fastballs in that top 20 like Felixix batista

is number one you know uh christian javier is right there by bryce miller so usually it means that's a good fastball and you can kind of do some some like comping there where you look at the release point you look at the the movement and if you look at savant it says how much percentage better than average that number is so getting getting a sense of anything that's... So sometimes good shape can just be something that's just totally different. Look at Yenier Cano's sinker and you sort different leaderboards

and you'll be like, wow, it has the most sink of any sinker. That's probably good. It's probably a good pitch. Yeah, at the very least, the ends of the leaderboard are going to give you some reasons to dig into some videos. Hey, wait. What's going on here?

What happens when this pitch is thrown? What does it do for results? What does it do for whiffs? How do hitters react to this pitch? I think that'd be the thing you'd start to look at, trying to pair what the leaderboards with the numbers say versus what your eyes tell you when it comes to a fastball shape and effectiveness. But thanks a lot for that question, Isaac. I think at some point in the future, what we would like to do again,

we're people that have a lot of ideas and those ideas folders to have some visuals to go along with a conversation like this for YouTube. That's something we think we should make. I think there's there's an appetite for that because I think we're all trying to see it and understand it better than just have to go, this is great. The numbers say it's great.

It's like, well, yeah, but we want to see it. We want to be able to verify with our eyes that this is as effective and good as the numbers say that it is. I've got a couple odds and ends here. I'm just going to get to one because we had a question from Ryan about Shota Imanaga

and his posting is happening soon. I think the last update I saw was like in the coming days. So paperwork is in process. Yeah, I think the news today is that he's posted. Yeah, so he's going to be on his way. The question from Ryan was,

is there concern that the stuff plus hype for Imanaga is too high considering he was working in a different role? He wasn't necessarily working as a regular starter. The best stuff number in the World Baseball Classic, right? And then there's all the other differences. We talked about players coming over from Japan where the baseball is different. How well does the stuff in his arsenal right now,

how does that translate against big league hitters right now out of the box? What are your expectations for Imanaga compared to the other free agent pitchers that we're looking at in this class? Yeah. The question was right to point out that he kind of, Shota Imanaga pitched in kind of a hybrid role, was not kind of going six innings with this stuff plus. And that, you know, that points to the sample. I think in the sample, I had 88 pitches from Shota Imanaga and 60 from Yoshinobu Yamamoto

and he beat Yoshinobu Yamamoto by two points also while being in this sort of hybrid reliever type role that's going to increase your velo you know pointing out that he was 93-ish in the WBC but 91-8 in the regular season that does point to some of why Imanika is going to get less, as well as the age, the age factor. There's a five-year difference between them. So that's a big part of why Imanika is going to get less. The reason why I still find it intriguing is a couple parts. One, let's say you give him,

I don't think it's fair to give him that stuff plus as a reliever because it still was 88 pitches and three appearances so that's a that's okay so that's 30 pitches that's a little bit more than your average reliever is more like you know like 15 pitches 20 pitches so a little bit more but let's say you do give him the full reliever thing the reliever to starter conversion that i found and and has been true for drew rasmus and other people in the past has been about five points of stuff plus even if you wanted to be aggressive and say it's seven or eight um you would still end up with shota monaghan having a better stuff plus than Hugh Darvish and Sandy Alcantara and Christian Javier in the World Baseball Classic.

So I think it's still super interesting. He's got great pitch movement numbers. He had amazing numbers in NPB last year. I mean, better strikeout minus walk numbers than Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Shoto Manega did. So there's a lot of things that are good for him. In terms of what's it going to look like at 91.8, maybe Nestor Cortez's foreseam goes 91.6 miles an hour, has 19 vertical IVB.

Maybe he could be Nestor Cortez-esque. And if you took Nestor Cortez and put him in a different park, I think he'd have some pretty good numbers. And he had a good year for New York in 2022. So I'm not saying that they fit all the way. In fact, I would say that Imanaka is probably going to be better than Cortez because Imanaka comes with plus secondaries as well.

Whereas Cortez, it's like the cutter is his best second pitch. I like Imanaka's going in the 250 range of November drafts because, again, not knowing where he's pitching, not knowing park factors yet,

that's a pretty big question. If he does end up in Yankee Stadium, then the excitement level is only a slight jump from where he's going. But he seems like he's undervalued because you're looking at, this is below, we talked, I think, in the last episode about McKenzie and Andrew Abbott, some of those guys going in the post-200

range. You might have guys going in the Reese Olsen, Nick Lidolo, Christopher Sanchez, Reed Detmers. You got Mason Miller and Machine in there, too. There's a lot of guys I like down there. Those are some good names, but I would love to get two or three out of that group because I feel like all of them have jobs,

are going to give you innings, and if they pop and you're, and they're good, then you keep them on your roster. And if they're not, you're, you're streaming, you're,

you're picking up the next guy. It's a good, good place to shop. If you jumped them up to the early range of where he's going, it'd be stuff like the Monica versus Bailey over. Sailing Carlos Rodan right there in the pick 180 range. I've made these mistakes so many times. Don't do it again.

Don't do it again. And this is where I would say be careful. You can push a guy too hard. Like, you know, like, yes, I'm excited about Shota Amanega, but, like, would I take him over? What was the first name you said? That was Bailey Ober. Yeah, Ober, Sale, rodan would be kind of the

i don't know i mean that's it's still a it's still an okay place to shop but like i i'm i'm sure the names above that are are are more established and you know and like you're gonna say no to chris sale over showtime a while ago i don't know i don't know i i i had a lot of a lot of flyers on Chris Sale in 2023, and it was painful. Yes, but you have to remember, you cannot put someone in the Do Not Draft box just because you're angry. I'm not angry. I'm just disappointed. Just disappointed. Oh, that's a parent line. I've had that one ready since the first time my parents told me they were disappointed in me. It's like, oh, that's so much worse than you being mad at me.

Yeah. It's just, oh, just. Sale got his strikeout and walk numbers right last year, 29% and 7%. Yeah, I mean, if you just kind of, if you just say, well, he wasn't great in terms of homers again, which has been the case most of the time he's been in Boston. Because the VLO has dropped in Boston. Yeah, so that's worked against him. Pretty bad numbers in terms of left on base percentage too, looking at that.

He was just under 70% last year, career 76.9. So maybe some bad luck in that regard too. You can start to explain why the ERA came in a little high. Boston bullpen maybe? How many innings though for Sale? I think it's appropriate that Sale and Rodan are right next to each other because there are

huge questions about their innings. Talent, no doubt, but range of outcomes is extremely wide for both. What can you expect inning-wise from Imanaga? Yeah, I was looking at his workloads too. I mean, it was 148 plus 11 more. Yeah, he's right around the 160 mark is usually where he ends up.

I suppose I might trust him to have more innings than those other two guys. suppose I might trust him to have more innings than those other two guys. I mean, I was going to put Rodon and Sale around the over-under around 140. If you get 140 from those guys, you're pretty happy. Man, Rodon. Rodon seems like

really like... I think putting a number like 140 out there almost doesn't make sense. It's going to be 50 or it's going to be 180. Look, I know reading numbers on the podcast is not a great... Last year. Time for reading numbers. Great segment.

It's an award-winning podcast because they read numbers as well as anybody. 64 and a third in year one with the Yankees. 178 in his only year with the Giants in 2022. 132 and two-thirds coming back off of major injuries with the White Sox. Only seven and two-thirds in the lost season. Whatever.

Throw that away. 34 and two-thirds in 2019. 120 and two-thirds back in 2018. 69 and two-thirds in 2019, 120 and two-thirds back in 2018, 69 and a third back in 2017 and a couple full-ish seasons with 165 and 139 and a third way back in 1615. I'm kind of surprised they gave him $162 million over six years.

I mean... Is this how we're going to look at the Blake Snell deal later? Even Blake Snell's injury history isn't this scary. Rodon... I'm glad he got paid. He's a great pitcher. He's been through a ton health-wise. To see him get back and to get to that level again was great.

I guess the other problem with Rodon versus Sale, when we saw Rodon this year, it just wasn't working the same way. The K rate was down. Home run rate was way up. I'm not saying that's who he is, but I think your proof of concept on Chris Sale that there's still a very good pitcher there through the things he's gone through.

You have more to lean on with Sale than you do with Rodon. Yeah. Brutal. So if I'm choosing today, I'm choosing Sale between the two at the price, and I'm hopefully learning my lesson with the guys that have dealt with devastating injuries and missed a lot of time because that group in particular has been tough for me in the last year or so.

You got anything else on your mind before we go? No, I wonder, you know, now we've had a lot of the mid-level deals go, and I'm looking at this list of available pitchers, and it's Blake Snell and Shohei Otani, and then just a lot of sorting through the one- and two-year deals. Maybe Lugo gets three. Maybe Gilito gets three, but I think it's going to be a lot of one- and two-year deals after that. Maybe Stroman gets three. Eduardo Rodriguez is going to get three.

Jordan Montgomery. But I'm not as excited about those names. I'm excited about Snow and Otani to figure Eduardo Rodriguez is going to get three. Jordan Montgomery. But I'm not as excited about those names. I'm excited about Snow and Otani to figure out what's going to happen there. It seems to me we've in a weird way, the middle class has signed out first. Now we get maybe

a winter meetings full of all the top names. Yoshino Yamamoto, Blake Snow, Shoya Otani, Bing Bang Boom, maybe a Soto trade. Maybe some bats too. Get a few of the position players going. Bellinger, Chapman, Reese Hoskins. Love to see where those

guys start to go. That'd be great. I think we're lining up for good meetings as far as some things happen. Just because we're getting big enough moves now, the seal has been broken. Teams are actively trying to get deals done, even if they're wondering what's going to happen with the very top guys.

I think you nailed that a little bit earlier on in the show. We saw some trades that set the groundworks for later. For example, the Braves clearing out all the players. That was an arbitration, but it was also roster spots. So they're in a good spot for, I think, a Dylan Cease trade. Might make a lot of sense for them because they don't have their, according to whatever their rubric is, I don't know if they have a ton more money, but they do have assets.

They do have roster spots. So, you know, I could see a Cease trade happening there. We've seen some other teams kind of uh even the something as small as the san diego trade for scott barlow for uh yara de los santos like that's that saved them six million dollars that's part of their work for you know are we going to trade soto or are we going to try and find three starting pitchers for like 15 million dollars? I think they can actually find three starters for 15 million. I don't know if those starters

will be healthy and productive all season, but I think they can do it. I mean, there seems to be like a fair amount of supply at the bottom of the market. If they want to go with Alex Wood and Hyunjin Ryu and Wade Miley. They might, and they could strike gold. I mean, they did it last year. You might laugh at some of those names I just put out there, but like, you know, was Seth Lugo, you know, was that Michael, Seth Lugo, Michael Walker last year? That was, you know, from the same bin. That's why I think they might be able to get away with it.

They just did it last year. And why, why, why break up this this band if you don't have to you can find a way to keep it together for one more year i think you try to keep it together for one more year especially given there is some upper minor strengths in pitching i don't know i don't have movement numbers on these guys so i can't fully form an opinion but the mildly pitcher of the year uh was in double a and snelling is right there so like he was the he was the mildly pitcher of the year uh was in double a and snelling is right there so like he was the he was the mildly pitcher of the year i think so you've got some young arms so you could just buy some older arms and if they go bad hopefully one of those guys is ready yeah yeah

could go could go young if they have to uh once they uh get to at least the early i don't know like the early part of the summer maybe is when we'll start to see some of those prospects get a look, if they can find a way to keep it afloat in the rotation until then we're going to go. And as a result of the Turkey tips, we gave you extra time at the back. So, you know,

sorry for the Turkey tips. If you didn't want those, we'll try to save them again for pre Thanksgiving. They're a little more helpful. I think going into the holiday, coming out of the holiday, but sometimes you get to debrief to really know like what worked this year what went well what didn't go well if you hear this on monday cyber monday the 27th of november still have the one dollar a month deal at the athletic.com slash rates and barrels that goes away at the end of the night so be sure to get that as soon as possible if you don't have a

subscription already you can find eno on twitter at you know saris can find me at derek van riper if you get a question for a future episode rates and barrels at gmail.com is the best way to send those our way that's gonna do it for this episode of rates and barrels we're back with you next week thanks for listening Thank you.