Rates & Barrels - Stabilization of barrel rates, sinkers vs. two-seamers, and the 'Corbin Boom'

Episode Date: May 26, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss the stabilization of barrel rates, sinkers v. two-seamers, Corbin Burnes as a potential outlier ace, the Giants' improving offense, and more.  Rundown 4:44 Barrel Rate Stabilization 17:55 Sinkers vs. Two-Seamers 27:54 Why Are There So Many Corbins? 29:18 Is Austin Gomber Getting Better? 40:48 Corbin Burnes: An Outlier Ace? 50:59 Digging Deep: Tyler Ivey & Edward Olivares 61:46 (No, DVR Isn't Really on Joe West's Side) 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels presented by Topps. Be sure to check out Topps Project 70, celebrating 70 years of Topps baseball cards. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. If you're watching this show on YouTube, be sure to hit the like button, subscribe to this channel. If you're listening to this podcast on a platform that allows you to rate and review it, we'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to leave a few kind words and a nice review for us.

It goes a long way toward helping new people find our show, which is good for all of us. So Eno, how's it going for you on this Wednesday? It's good. I'm up to 312 miles on the year, so I'm on pace when it comes to running. I'm in the plateau part of my training where I'm not advancing all my goals as much. But I'm consolidating and I'm getting used to trying to set my baseline at 18 to 20 instead of 15 miles a week. There's certain advancements I'm making. But it is kind of frustrating because at the beginning, you're like, when you start off, you're like, oh, I went from three to five in a run very easily. And, you know, oh my gosh, I, I, you know, I just ran eight, nine miles in one, one go. And that was easy. And then there's some point in the, in the process where you're

like, oh, it's like harder to get these gains. Something that I've actually seen Calbodi talk about a little bit with driveline and velocity training is that like you'll have a large gain at the beginning. There will be kind of a plateau regression period. And then if you follow the protocols, supposedly you break through again in the end. Yeah, you got to break through those walls

to get up to those next levels. And maybe you got to train with one of those oxygen mask things, you know, that makes it seem like you're at altitude, even though you're not. Maybe that's step two for you, because if you start using that for a while and then take that away, it's going to be easier to run those distances. Well, it's funny because baseball was a hobby for me at one point, and then I turned it into a career. Baseball was a hobby for me at one point, and then I turned it into a career.

And so I'm obviously a very enthusiastic hobbyist when it comes to my hobbies. I turned a hobby into a career. And I've actually done it twice because I had beer graphs, and beer was a hobby, and I turned that into a job at some point. So I do tend towards that kind of insane level of enthusiasm for the things I do. Um, but I'm trying also to like, just have a few hobbies that I'm not super crazy about. Like, yeah, I run, I'm not like a runner. You just do it. Yeah. I do it.

You know, I think about it with basketball like i'll read some stuff on basketball you know i've i'll write some stuff on the athletic sometimes about basketball um i enjoy thinking about it i know most of the players i guess you know i play a little fancy basketball but i'm trying to put a stop gap up where i'm like i don't need to watch every playoff game tonight you know i don't need to, I don't need to watch every playoff game tonight. You know, I don't need to like, I don't need to go nuts. Like there's like a couple of weeks of playoffs you can just, you know, peace out on and, and, and kind of get in, get in at the end because there's so big, there's so many players, so many teams in the playoffs that, you know,

so I, I'm a, I'm a fair weather basketball fan. If I ranked my hobbies, basketball is down there with cooking. I'd like to do it. I could go pro in cooking. Maybe. I'm not real good with knives, especially if I try to work fast. That's a problem. That is a problem. If I went to culinary school, I would probably get like a C or a D in chopping.

In knife skills. Knife skills, yeah. Knife skills would be the class that I need the most of. But on today's episode, lots of great questions rolling in. As always, we're gonna talk about barrel rate stabilization, sinkers versus two seamers. Hmm, yeah, seems like an interesting question.

The idea that Corbin Burns could be an outlier ace. And everyone's been talking about Austin Gomber on Twitter. So we got a lot of Austin Gomber questions. So we'll try to figure out what's going on with him. Of course, he wrecked people like me a few weeks ago with a bad start in San Francisco. But this was a two-start week for Gomber that's off to a much better start this time around. So let's begin with the barrel rate stabilization question. And I think it was William Contreras who inspired this particular question from Kurt. He writes, you all have talked a lot about when you can start trusting certain stats

and barrel rate is one of the first ones that starts to stabilize appropriately placed in quotes here in Kurt's email. I want to emphasize that around 50 balls in play, right? Anyway, can you take a player's performance? Let's say William Contreras, who at the time he wrote this email had seven barrels over 30 some balls in play and assume a floor. Let's assume no more barrels for him over the next 20 balls in play. So seven out of 50 50 that's a 14 barrel rate could we say at that point that he's at least a 14 barrel rate hitter with the same

confidence that we would with 50 balls in play seems logical and if that's the case why don't we do this more so can you add those plate appearances without adding the result or add the balls in play without adding the result and reach a stabilization point quickly. And then Kurt admits, also shamelessly plugging a player that I've got on the trade block. So please say good things about him regardless. Keep up the good work. All right. So thank you for the email, Kurt.

thought to juice the sample and stabilize it because it seems like some high level low level statistical fudging that you probably shouldn't do and i think there's also that misconception about stabilization points what what the actual idea of a stable stabilization point is and how people talk about them and utilize them seem to be two actually pretty different things yeah yeah because so there's a concept that Tom Tango talks about called ballast where uh ballast is like the how much of league average how much league average aggression do you need to bake in how much weight do you need to put on the leagues on the regression versus what they've shown so far. And the whole idea of stabilization is that once you get to that point, going forward, you can use the player's own stats more than the league regression, league average, except you would still use the league average going forward.

So like, yes, you could put all that ballast on William Contreras and get him to 50. But then going past that point, you'd still want to use something like 60% player, 40% league average. So to fill out the rest of the season, you'd still be regressing it. Does that make sense? Right. So in this example, instead of getting that 14% number, again, seven barrels over 50 balls in play, which was 30 plus the 20 that didn't happen yet. You would not look at that 14 and go, oh, that's 14. It'd be more like saying

it's more like eight or nine once you put it in the weight of the league average going forward. Unless you have multiple seasons going back. And then you could say, okay, we'll give, let's say Contreras has, well well now Contreras has uh I don't know if we're doing barrels per bad ball event then he's at 20 20 percent 7 over 35 but if you had other seasons where you had a 10 and a 12 right when you got to the 50 and you said okay now he's at 14 for this year we've got a sort of established level around 12. Let's regress him heavily towards 12. And you'd say, most likely going forward, he's still a 12 guy.

Yeah. In this case, you'd use league average would be five. So you would take, you know, even if he got to that 14, you would say, going forward, let's use 60% of 14 and 40% of league average. And yeah, like you said, that probably does end up around 8 or 9. Which wouldn't be bad. But then it's interesting, too, because I think since the time this email came in, we got a few more balls in play from William Contreras. And no more barrels.

So the worst-case scenario has played out so far but it could actually come in a bit lower than that and i think i i just i want to be very careful about the stabilization points as an argument that a player truly owns skills and i think the way that todd zola has described it to me in the past that makes a lot of sense is that you reach the stabilization point and it's now like equally likely that what you saw in this last sample is as real as you saw previously. And that's kind of like, okay, like that's still only equally likely. Right. So it's like that's not a skill that's been locked in. It's not a skill that's like a thing that you're going to project going forward, which previously I know he's said this

and I believed it to work this way too. I used to think it's stabilized. It's a skill. Project it going forward. Do not do that going forward. That is wrong. You will make a lot of mistakes that way. Yeah, it's complicated. You have Alex Kirloff right now has 47 body balls.

Let's say he's got 50. He's got a barrel rate around of 21%. That's really good. You'd still regress it halfway to league average. So you'd still estimate him probably as a 10% barrel rate guy going forward. Now you have Byron Buxton, who has 69 batted ball events. Nice. And he has a 21% barrel rate. You would actually regress him a little bit less hard

because in 2020, in 96 batted balls, he had a 13.5% barrel rate. And then in 26, in 206 batted balls he had a 13.5 percent barrel rate and then in 26 in uh 206 batted balls he had 7.8 percent barrel rate so you'd actually kind of do a projection where you would take maybe 50 of his current barrel rate you know uh 30 of last year's barrel rate 20 of the year before you might even want to put some league average in there still. Right? That's the Marcel approach, I believe. Yeah, that was Marcel.

I just did a dirty Marcel. Marcel is five times last season, three times the year before, two times the year before, add them all up, divide by 10. So you could do something like that just in your head to kind of be like, okay, I think Byron Bucks, he's not really a 20%

barrel rate guy, but he might be a 12 to 14 guy. He might be a 15 guy. So that's a lot of power. That's more power than we expected out of him. The magnitude of the increase in Buxton's case helps a lot when you're using that methodology. He's probably one of the most extreme examples of year-over-year barrel rate increase we talked about him a few weeks ago he had a track record if you throw out 2018 because of injuries he was basically up in barrel rate every single year from the year that he entered the big leagues back in 2015 which eventually sure you can't keep going up like he's not he's not going to pop a 25% barrel rate in 2022. At least I don't think he will.

Yeah, I guess age is counteracting any sort of... He's 27 now. This is going to be his peak year. Yeah, so hopefully that helps Kurt and everybody else out there. Oh, we didn't actually help Kurt specifically, though. Do you have anything nice to say about William Contreras? I think he's got decent power. I think that there's some questions about strikeout rate. He's a young catcher that has other catchers, once they're healthy,

that could just slot right back in front of him. And I think that maybe he's kind of a conventional catcher type where he's going to hit you like 230 with you know if we're full season 230 with 20 homers i mean that that's like half the catches in the league but that's good i mean he's that kind of catcher you know it it gets worse it definitely gets worse. There's Jeff Mathis. Yeah, and I think with Contreras long-term, I think what's going to determine whether or not he's a workhorse catcher or merely a guy that hits a lot, kind of sharing the job with someone who's got better defensive chops

is the development of how he handles the pitching staff. I think there's reason to believe he can be a good defensive catcher. It's a rare case where he's a really young guy whose bat seems to be a little bit ahead of his glove at the position. But because of that Travis Darno injury, Atlanta didn't really have a choice. And they're piling up in Atlanta. Marcelo Zuna is going to miss, I think, five to six weeks with that finger injury he just suffered. Is that the newest report on the dislocated finger yeah i just saw that fly by on one of my screens from david o'brien so just traded for him in auto new

i almost traded for him in tout wars the only thing that kept me from doing it so i reached out to the guy that had him because i i lost trout in that league and i was already lagging a little bit in offense and i thought i probably got to move j Josh Hader for at least one bat and well the trout injury happened after I started kind of working on a possible trade once I lost trout I said I don't know if I can trade hater and only get one hitter back I've got a gaping hole to replace while trout's out and I need an offense anyway so if I trade Josh Hader to somebody I think I need like two $12 hitters back instead, instead of like one $25 hitter. So just because of the happy coincidence of losing Mike Trout, I didn't end up following through on that deal to get Ozuna. And it's just, it's unfortunate time because I think he is, I think he's really stable as a hitter. I know that the track record's pretty

up and down, especially in the batting average department, but you think about where he's played in his career and how difficult it is to hit home runs in those parks with most of his time coming in Miami and St. Louis. That's legitimate well above average power. And I think in that lineup especially, the best of Marcelo Zuna's season was pretty clearly still in front of him.

And now that's on hold until maybe sometime closer to the all-star break big size and atlanta becomes a team that i was definitely fearful of a few weeks ago but i think they're kind of be dropping closer to the middle of the pack in terms of the offensive expectations like they can still put up some crooked numbers and do damage obviously you still have kunya still have albie still at Freeman, but they're not upper crust anymore. There's definitely some more pitchers I'm throwing out there.

With the bad news for the Mets when it comes to the hamstring on Carlos Carrasco and the removal of Thor from his rehab start. Plus, just the ongoing MASH unit that is the Mets right now.

They lead the league in dollars and players on the IL. I think there's still a window for the Braves. I think they just need to hang around until they're fully healthy again. We've talked about their pitchers. I guess they need Max Frieded to kind of step up especially with Soroka out for the year so there's there's a couple guys that need to step up but if they can hang around till Ozuna comes back I still think like without looking at numbers who do you think you would take for the division? If I were betting on it today,

I still trust Atlanta more than I trust the Mets. And the Mets have dealt with a ton of adversity so far, so maybe they can find a way to keep weathering it. But part of my belief with the Mets pulling it off this year, winning the division and being a legitimate threat deep into the postseason was getting Syndergaard back. At least as of today, they're trying to downplay it like it's not that

big of a deal. They're not overwhelmingly concerned about him leaving that rehab start after just one inning, but that's still a setback, even if it knocks him out for another couple of weeks. If they don't get him until July, previously they were going to get him back in June. That's one more month where they got to patch it together

in the back of the rotation, paired with all the other injuries they've been dealing with. It kind of seems like they've been fortunate to stay where they're at in the standings to this point. I could see a pretty harsh stretch for them, kind of pulling them back into the pack, and that could be really problematic because their depth is being tested

in every single facet right now. Yeah, but Acuna gets hit one more time, and Atlanta's going to run out on outfield of Pache, Heredia, Inciarte? They are going to catch everything. You can't hit a ball on the outfield if those three guys are out there. I don't even know if Inciarte is helping.

Yeah, but I think, I mean, the Mets are 2 over 500. The Braves are at 500 entering play on Wednesday. The Phillies are only 1 below 500. You still have the Marlins hanging around, and I still think the Nats are better than people give them credit for. I pulled that trick once. It's going to be a pretty tight finish, maybe. Every single game counts right now in the NL East,

but definitely a tough blow for marcel ozuna going down for at least the next six weeks but five to six is what david o'brien had in his tweet just a little while ago uh mentioned before a lot of great questions coming in this one i feel like has been debated in baseball circles and i found an an old piece that David Lorela did over at Fangraphs. And the question came from Tim in St. Louis who writes, am I hearing the terms sinker and two seamer being used interchangeably? I'm only an occasional baseball savant visitor,

but I assume these were distinctly different pitches from a right-handed pitcher. Sinkers go down and two seamers back up into a righty or away from a lefty. Feel free to tell me I'm crazy or that I misheard or explain how I've gone my entire baseball fandom misunderstanding pitch movement. Thanks, Tim in St. Louis. He's not at all crazy. I mean, the basic rubric is that sinkers have two-plane movement. They go arm side like he describes and down.

And two-seamers are usually kind of a one-plane movement thing where they just go across. They just have arm side movement. The difficulty is that when you're looking at the numbers, when you're trying to classify the pitches, you're guessing. You know what I mean? It ends up often being arm slot too.

The lower your arm slot, the more of the movement of the pitch will be down and more sink you'll get. So are you just going to say people with lower arm slots throw sinkers and people with higher arm slots throw two seamers? It's like, that seems wrong. So I use it interchangeably and maybe that's wrong, but just generally it's hard. It's very hard when you're looking at the numbers to kind of definitively say, this is a sinker and this is a two-sinker.

So when I do research, I click both buttons. It's a little bit like the curve and the knuckle curve. I did some research on this. I asked a bunch of players, and the knuckle curve might be superior to the regular curve because it usually goes harder, usually spins faster, and it helps people with lower arm slot get on top of the ball. So it's a very cool pitch. But is there definitively a difference when you look at the numbers?

Could you look at some movement numbers and velocity numbers and be like, oh, that's a knuckle curve? No, not really. So when I do the analysis, I click knuckle curve and curve and group them together as curves. So that's sort of how I treat it. I think there's something about, yes, theoretically, they're very different pitches, but in practical baseball, it's hard to spot the difference.

When I think of two-seamers, I think of Trevor Bauer, who is a more traditional sort of high spin, over-the-top, release point kind of guy. He doesn't get a lot of sink on his two seam and when i think of sinkers i think of marcus stroman who i think gets a lot of his movement from arm slot and also grip he has a pretty interesting grip so he kind of finds a way to put a lot impart a lot of side spin on that pitch yeah i do think of guys more like stroman when i think of a sinker but i use the

terms interchangeably and i know you're the resident expert here with which with pitch grips do you find that the variations in the movement that we're describing do they change at all because of grip in addition to the arm slot yeah i think that's the stroman thing there's uh the the weirder grips go on sinkers two seamers are just you kind of take the the ball and you've got you know the four seam you kind of going across right you have a baseball with an arm i gotta have a baseball hold on how do you how do you not i wish i could take the one behind me and hand it across the screen to you. That'd be an amazing editing trick. Oh, thanks, dude. So four seam, you just across the four seams.

I'm trying to get that right. There you go. You're kind of across the four seams, right? Kind of ripping down on that. And then a two seam is just usually your two seams. But then you got guys who do one seamers, like Joe Musgrove, do a one seamer. But when you do a four seam like this, the spin is really like this. Why is it not?

There we go. The spin is like this. And that creates ride. There we go. The spin is like this. And that creates ride. When you do a two seam, and then you can get some seam shifted wake, where if you got...

The seam shifted wake is if one seam sticks around and creates a wake. So if you kind of spun like this, see how this is here for a lot of the time against the wind? That creates a wake. So if you kind of spun like this, see how this is here for a lot of the time against the wind? That creates a wake. And I think that pushes it down like this. So it's a function of seam shift to wake. It's a function of physics.

It's a function of the grip. It's a function of the arm slot. The arm slot just imparts, if you have a lower arm slot, it imparts more sideways spin. Because if you just imparts, if you have a lower arm slot, it imparts more sideways spin. Because if you think about it, if you're up here, you impart vertical spin. But if your arm slot starts going down this way, it's not just vertical spin anymore, it's sideways spin. And the more sideways spin on it, the less vertical spin it has and the less upward push

it has. So the less ride it has. And so therefore more sink. So guys down here will throw sinkers. Guys up here will throw four seamers and true two seamers that just go sideways. Yeah, I guess I think there's also probably something to be said for the goal for the pitcher, depending on what other stuff he throws, who he's pitching against, all those other things that might come into play. You might be trying to do something that sinks

more than something that has that arm side run, like depending on who you are and what other stuff you have. Yeah, I think two plane movement is generally better because the bat is smaller than it is longer. So two plane movement will get it off the bat, whereas one-plane movement, like a cutter or a two-seamer, will just get it to go along the bat.

So get it off the end of the bat or jam them. Just get it off the sweet spot with sideways movement. So when you have sideways movement and vertical movement, you're more likely to miss the bat. But I just think that it's kind of hard, and generally baseball prefers more over-the-top guys because they want that ride. So if you're over-the-top,

you have to really have great seam-shifted wake effects in order to get any sink because all of your spin is like this and giving you ride. So a guy like Frankie Montas, super over-the-top, good ride on the foreseam, found a seam shifted wake effect on his sinker to get some sink but it's still mostly just a two seam it doesn't have a ton of sink it doesn't have a ton of sink compared to like a Marcus Stroman sinker do you

think that complements the splitter that he throws particularly well though given the differences in those pitches there's something going on with Montas that I just don't understand. And I think it has to do with him devolving into a two-pitch pitcher at times, maybe against certain pitchers, certain hitters, or late in games. Because if you just look at, you know, Frankie Montas overall, and you say, okay, this is a guy who has a really good foreseam in terms of velocity uh it's got good ride um you know by stuff plus his foreseam fastball is 20 better than the average uh he's got a good split finger that should neutralize

uh lefties that's by by uh his split fingers 117 stuff plus. He's got a good slider, 141 stuff plus. Like what's the problem here? Even his command plus is not even that bad. Let me see here. Let me find his command plus. I just downloaded a new one today. His command plus I think is average. his command plus I think is average let's see here 102 so I don't get what the problem is the sinker uh that I just gave some love to is 84 stuff plus and he throws it more often than his foreseam so as much as he's made the sinker a viable pitch for him I think that he maybe falls in love with it too much it's interesting I mean I guess I had a similar thought when I was looking at Corbin Martin got hit by the Giants. And maybe I keep underestimating the Giants. They've got a track record going into the last season of exceeding expectations offensively, and they're doing a lot more damage. I streamed him somewhere

for that two-star week. It made sense. Giants are good, though. They are good, but it still made sense to me because Corbin Martin is supposed to be good, but what Corbin Martin is doing or what the Diamondbacks are asking him to do or what their game plans are doing with him right now is they're having him throw his four seamer 65 to 70% of the time. And I don't get it because if you look at the stuff numbers on everything else, his secondaries are good. He has good pitches he's not using, and he's throwing the fastball way too much. And I don't know where exactly in the script that's going wrong,

but it's just frustrating to be able to see, like, no, this should be working. And it kind of falls in line with some of the scouting reports that we were getting on Martin as a prospect, but the execution just isn't there. Yeah, it is interesting because his slider has a 140 stuff plus, and he's thrown nine of them. And his four-seam fastball has an 87 stuff plus.

He's thrown 118 of them. Yeah, it's two starts. It's just like don't throw that pitch nearly that much. The location plus on his slider, Martin's slider, is 74. And let me do a picture by type here and find Corbin, Martin. Oh, why are there so many Corbins? Come on.

I don't know what the Corbin boom was all about. Corbin, Martin slider command plus, 93. If I was looking at this, I would say replace a lot of those four-seamers with sliders. As long as you can put them in the right place. I know why there was a Corbin boom. Corbin Bernson, dude. L.A. Law. Think about the timing of when that show was popular.

Corbin Bernson as a prominent actor at that time, think about the age of Corbin Martin and Corbin Burns. Huh? I think that solved it. I think this is it. Oh my goodness. That's it, right? What else could it possibly be? Why else would Corbin be such a popular name for guys in their

early and mid-twenties right now? Plausible. We've got it. Sleuth. Sleuthed. Absolutely sleuthed. On the fly, too. Didn't even take me a whole afternoon

to come up with that. Just knocked it out right there on the fly. I think we've lost our place on the rundown. Were we going to talk about the Giants? They weren't on the rundown, but we can talk about them, or we can save them, because we have Austin Gomber coming up in just a minute i i've now uh i've come into this problem oh yeah you

can come up with austin gomber but or we can just use it right now as a as a transition let's pay some bills real quick all right let's pay some all right you know i know you're excited about the giants so we're gonna get there through through Austin Gomber, a Rocky. The questions that came in about Austin Gomber were basically, is Austin Gomber getting better? I mentioned earlier, people like me streamed him earlier in the year for a two-start week. The Giants crushed him, ruined our perception of who Austin Gomber is as a pitcher. And look, he's still a starter in Colorado. There's still only a few select times you can use him, as it turns out this week, at the Mets, at the Pirates. Kind of that perfect storm you're looking for to throw a low-end pitcher out there. But looking at some of the underlying numbers, Stuff Plus, Command Plus, are you seeing anything that points to a more usable Austin Gomber than we might have thought coming off of his blowup in San Francisco a few weeks ago? Gomber than we might have thought coming off of his blow up in San Francisco a few weeks ago.

I mean, yes, his stuff plus is up. And then his last start against the Mets, it was a career high. Eighty eight. Hmm. Yeah. None of his pitches rates above average by stuff. Plus the slider and change up, though though are pretty close to average the four seam is a 62 that's worse than corbin martin's four seamer if i remember yeah yep um and corbin martin's secondary stuffs are all are all way way better so uh also kind of disconcerting

that the knuckle curve is a 72 stuff plus because that's his second most used secondary so I don't know that he has an overall you know package that makes me super excited and then of course he's a rocky and it's hard to use and then you kind of think about like well you you know we already tried this and what was do you remember the second half of that second start wasn't as bad like i'm stuck with him because it was a weekly league it was passable i want to say at least five innings i don't think it was more than three earned runs maybe even got a win in that second one out if i remember correctly i remember ian sending me a text to go hey i'm rooting for you today bud

pro tip if you want to just kind of rub me the wrong way, call me bud. I don't know. It's one of the few things that kind of pisses me off. I just don't like it. Unfortunately, I call my children buddy. And every once in a while, I'll get in trouble. I'll get in trouble and call my wife buddy. See, she probably likes it even less than I would like that.

Yeah, I think so. See, she probably likes it even less than I would like to. Yeah, I think so. But, yes, at Arizona, four strikeouts, two earned runs in six innings with a win. So, all in all, you got nearly eight innings with 11 earned runs. Oh, yay. But you got the win. Anyway. It's seven Ks.

I think the thing to learn here is don't stream against the giants uh first of all um you know a totally decimated mets team like i'd like to see what gomber does against the pirates i bet you i mean i bet you won't be that good uh because i think that mets team at that moment was was really picking on picking on the kid. You know what I mean? Just really just beating up on like a quad A fully injury replacement type lineup. And so I think that was about the best streaming situation you could have. I am interested to see what happens to Pirates. But don't consider the Giants a patsy.

That's my point here. Maybe Gomber is streamable this week. That's fine. But don't consider, if the Giants are part of your two-start week, don't necessarily be like, oh, yeah, that's fine. Because, you know, A, I think that's a home park that obscures that belief a little bit. You know, it is still one of the best pitchers parks in the league but on top of that is just the awesome job that donnie ecker and that hitting coaching staff is doing in san

francisco that is actually having on tangible on-field results with with guys that you know when i wrote with baggerly last year that the giants had had the best year-over-year turnaround in offensive turnaround in like 20 years. There was a lot of people who said, oh, it's 2020, which was a good point. And it's just regression. It'll go away again next year. Well, all those guys have gotten better. Longo, Crawford, Belt. They're all having career best years in reach rate and in barrel rate.

And those things are related. I think there's a real tangible game plan. If you ask Brandon Bell, he says, I just get the information I want at the right time. I just had a plate discipline stat that I relayed on Twitter today that was from stats, and it was like, who swings at the best pitches and doesn't swing at the worst pitches? Brandon Bell was fourth overall in that stat.

So I think that they're just getting the most out of them. And this is the kind of thing that the Padres, the Dodgers have been doing forever. The Dodgers have been, if you look over the stack-ass era, you know, top three in barrels and top three in reach rate. Well, this year, the top three teams in reach rate are Giants, Dodgers, and Padres. And the Giants now

are third in baseball and barrel rate. So I think these things are really related. If you can not swing at balls, you can get the most out of your batted balls. And so I don't think the Giants are patsies. I'm not necessarily saying that Brandon Crawford is going to hit 30 home runs

this year, but I would not at all be Brandon Crawford is going to hit 30 home runs this year, but I would not at all be surprised if he has a career high in home runs. I think that just generally that offense is well put together and just well prepared. I think what you're seeing there is the value of game day prep. There's still an edge

to be gained. That's what you see with the Indians. A really great combination of park factor and pitch preparation. So that's why their pitchers always kind of overshoot the mark, I think. A couple of thoughts here. The main one is, well, I think there are three phases you go through as a rebuilding offense. First, you're just bad. You don't score. You probably strike out a lot. Even if you don't strike out that much, you just don't score. You're just not good. So you start off as bad. Then you get some guys that can do damage. So you start doing damage, but you strike out a little

too much. So you build an offense like the one the Giants have now, maybe like the offense we've seen in Tampa Bay. I would say the Brewers kind of fit like this too. It's not a top-end offense, but it's an offense that when it's working, it's really good. The Giants have a 102 WRC plus as a team this season. So yeah, they're at least league average. They just strike out a little more than most. And then eventually, when you get to that level where you're doing damage, you start getting better players. So then your K rate starts to come down because you're able to go out and kind of paper over some of the holes,

the Astros free agent upgrades, right? And the Cubs before they won, they, they both really increased their decreased their strikeout rate. And some of that's young, like young players coming up, striking out more at first,

bringing it down over time. Some of that's your, your veterans who are selling out to get to the power. There's a number of narratives. Michael Brantley is a free agent, you know, signing, signing guys to replace the, you know, instead Brantley is a free agent, signing guys.

Instead of having Chris Carter out there anymore, you kind of go to Uli Gariel and then Michael Brantley. You kind of just improve the strikeout rate on the margins. Right, so they're in phase two. And phase three is bringing up Luciano and eventually guys like Luis Matos and some guys that should be elite hitters with lower K rates that'll bring that number down. And obviously we've talked about Tampa with Brujan and Wander being two guys that are going to bring that K rate down. So, you know, I think that's sort of just the development of going from bad to good offensively.

And the Giants are smack dab in the middle of that process. A thought to hear, though, is that Austin Gomber couldn't find the plate in his first start as a Rocky. That was against the Dodgers at Coors back on April 4th. He walked seven hitters that day. Just a miserable start. He's had a couple of four-walk starts since then, but a lot of ones and twos and even a couple zeros sprinkled in. After that debut, he's gone at least five innings in every single start except for that Giants meltdown. And that was just the day where nothing was working for him. And that was something that I think Scott Jensen pointed out.

He's like, it didn't matter who he was pitching against that day. He couldn't be pitching against the beat-up Mets version of the lineup they've got right now. He would have got hit by that group of guys. He would have got hit by literally anybody with the stuff that he had on that day. Sometimes pitchers just don't have it. That was his day where he just didn't have it. So I think the one thing you are getting from Gomber in leagues that are deep enough to use him

still mostly on the road, commands go in the right direction and you're getting depth into games, which if you're playing in a quality starts league or a league that rewards innings or even just a typical league that rewards wins, he's at least on a bad team, hanging around in games long enough

to give himself a shot at decisions, which is important. We talked about it with Marco Gonzalez, you know, having that trait. And we care about wins in this game. So I do think there are some things happening with Gomber that are making him more palatable than he was even just a few weeks ago. The problem is still Coors Field. There are so few times where I would think about using him at home. Maybe we get to August or September, and at that point you're just chasing the wins in Ks, and you don't care anymore about the ratios possibly getting blown up. But I find it really difficult to hold him in most mixed leagues.

All right, I'm going down my rankings. I'm going to get to the point where I don't start the guy at Coors Field. How about this? I'll put it this way because people can quibble with my rankings. How about this? Three straight guys I wouldn't start at Coors Field. Okay. Three straight guys I wouldn't start.

Okay, 38, 39, 40. Dylan Bundy, Chris Bassett, Zach Afflin. Yep, I wouldn't want to play any 40 dylan bundy chris bassett zach afflin yep i wouldn't want to play any of those guys in course and you could probably say some of the guys ahead of that because you have different like you have different rankings than i do and any listener has different rankings than i do but let's say it's safe that like basically your top 30 you want to start at course right and that comes with an asterisk of you might have really good pitching depth and your next best option is good enough to say

not even taking the risk with a top 20 or 25 range guy. There might be some back-end options you don't have to use. That seems most likely the easy rubric is you could start your two best pitchers at Coors and nobody else. I could live with that as a general rule to live by. Gomber is not, hopefully, one of your two best pitchers. If you're in an NL West only league and weren't allowed to draft Dodgers this year, maybe? No, no, it's still shouldn't be true.

Denver only league, true tender only league rocky's only i kind of think we should make a format like that where you for people who are just fans of one team like a micro league where maybe it's like two three or four people and you do draft everybody like a pick six or something you can't i mean there's too many players no you keep it small keep it casual though i just think we got to find more ways to get people to play who haven't tried to play you can't you can't take the plunge from not playing at all to saying i'm going into a 15 team nfbc league like there's there should be some some steps in between it shouldn't be your only option to take the full plunge like that but thanks a lot for the questions about austin gomber because he's interesting more interesting than he was even just a few weeks ago.

And as you all know, the quickest way to my heart and the quickest way to our rundown is to ask a question about a brewer. That is the surest shortcut. And obviously, for those who've listened to the show for more than a few days, Victor Wallace. Did you see where I put Freddy Peralta on my rankings, dude?

I actually didn't notice how high he was. Do you want me to look right now and then have my shock phase happen? Yeah, just tell me. Where is he? 16th. That's fantastic. I couldn't come up with a reason to put him lower.

His rest of season projection by the bat is 12th best. Jeez. His stuff plus was 115. His command plus is 101. His K minus BB was 28%. I was like, if I put him any lower, someone will say, you don't trust your own rubric. That's one of the biggest movers from draft season to now.

Probably the biggest mover. I feel like it's going to be wrong, but why? I'm not going to tell you it's wrong. It's not a slider. Is he a two-pitch pitcher? He does throw a curveball, right? He's about a 2.333 pitch pitcher, if we're being

precise. But at least those pitches are the pitches in baseball right now. You're talking about like sort of a hard high spin riding four seamer that he throws with full extension just blowing up at you and then the oh so this is actually a decent transition he's the modern he's like what you want out of the modern pitcher he's a riding four seam guy with the with the with a power slider, right? Mm-hmm. So I guess the question is length into games, third pitch. He can be inefficient when he's not locating well. That is absolutely a weakness.

Pitch count runs up and he's out after five or in the middle of the sixth. That's a problem. But, I mean, how many pitchers have length right now? There's so many pitchers that are out in the fifth and sixth. Right, if you're giving him an A to f grade for ability to pitch deep into games he's probably only like a b or a b minus at worst so compared to the league yeah yeah it's not that bad uh so yeah you put him 10 15 years ago he's an f sure yeah f for freddie and yeah why not but i had a question come in about Corbin Burns, and it's interesting because

we've called today's league a slider and four-seamer with Ride League, so this email came from... How did I miss the name on this? I will look up the name momentarily. Anyway, the email reads as follows. Pitcher had one of the most dominant highest whiff sliders in baseball, which he threw about

30% of the time in pair with a four-seamer that big leaguers destroyed. He then made a pitch mix change, started throwing the slider about one third as often and became one of the best starters in baseball. The pitcher, of course, is Corbin Burns, probably an editor, Corbin Burnson. Last name, just a coincidence. We know he dropped his four seamer for a cutter, which he throws more than half the time and a sinker change slider and curve all about 10% of the time each. The strange part, I guess, is that his strikeout rate hasn't taken a hit. In fact, he is an elite strikeout pitcher.

So what makes him different from other two-seamer sinker pitchers? And for me, the answer is that cutter. Because the cutter is something he commands really well. And because of that movement, the problem with the four seamer, it was pretty flat, right? And it would get just murdered when he missed with it. The cutter gives him some buffer. He can miss a little with the cutter and live to tell the tale with the hard contact not being as bad. But he commands that cutter all over and around the strike zone.

That, to me, is just the huge difference with Burns. over and around the strike zone. That, to me, is just the huge difference with Burns, even though that deep arsenal obviously gives him a lot of weapons he can use to turn the lineup over that third time. I mean, within the constellation that is Corbin Burns, it made sense for him to make that pitch mix change because, like you said, the foreseeing was flat, and he couldn't command it.

So between those two things, it got blasted. That's how he had that three homers per nine or whatever in that one year so moving to the sinker as his primary fastball unless you call the cutter it whatever but moving towards more sinkers than four seams was just about command at first he commanded the sinker better so he just put it in better places and avoided damage but yes the reason he's so excellent is because the cutter is really his primary pitch. And that is a pitch that, you know, I can tell you from Stuff Plus, cutter is 116 Stuff Plus. For, you know, a primary pitch, that's really great. You know, for example, Peralta's foreseam is around there. So, you know, that's a really great way to do it.

And then I guess the answer, what makes him an outlier, what makes him so successful is that in some ways he is the modern pitcher. He leads the league in spin rate. So, you know, other than, so if you look at just pitches thrown over a 2,800 RPM, this is actually from John Boy. He was doing this while we were on his podcast yesterday on talking yanks he did a search for percentage of pitches or number of pitches over 2800 rpm number one is trevor bauer with like 700 number two is corbin burns with like 400 so he's got the highest spin rate on a cutter in baseball and like i think we're still trying to understand completely why spin is good because it doesn't always turn into movement and you think it it's the movement that's good but i will tell you that the further we go into the rabbit hole that

is stuff plus the more spin seems to matter like the next version of stuff plus we may break out spin from transverse and gyro spin which is we may break spin into its component spins uh to get a better sense of the value of each of those types of spins and um the early indication is that that will make a big difference in our model. So spin is good, and Corbin Burns has a ton of it. And in that way, he's a modern pitcher. In the four-seam slider way, he's not necessarily. The interesting second part of the question kind of compares Burns to the Dodgers relievers who also throw some pretty high spin pitches and are filthy with Velo especially,

but they don't tend to miss that many bats for the stuff that they have. Brewster Gratterall, probably the absolute best example. We kind of like the equivalent of what we used to see from Dustin May pre-injury last season where it was like, this guy's not striking more guys out with this arsenal. How's that happening?

How much of this really is just the five different pitches and hitters, just not really knowing what's coming because the slider wasn't a bad pitch for Burns, but he's just not using it nearly as much as you think that he would use it for as good as it is. Yeah. I, I bet you there's some interaction effects by stuff.

Plus sliders is best pitch, 180. It's one of the best sliders in baseball. And the usage rate is pretty low for a pitch that good. I wonder. I don't have a great answer, but I do wonder if you're throwing a cutter a ton, even if the slider looks like it should be really great, if you need to be careful

because they're too similar in some way. Let me see here. I'm also looking at the Corbin Burns Command Plus on the slider. And while you're looking that up, by the way, thank you to Peter for this question. I like this question anyway. It's not just because it's about Corbin Burns.

That is a happy coincidence. 97 on the slider. I think, you know, one of the things, too, is that pitch mix is kind of a snapshot in time. A lot of times I think pitchers actually think about facing divisional opponents again later in the season. I've actually had pitchers admit to me they'll be like, oh, they're going to see more of this pitch later in the season. You know, and so

you know, somewhere between if it ain't broke, don't fix it and I'm going to have to face these guys a lot of times and I have other pitches and there'll be other games where you're surprised how many curve balls I throw because his curve ball rates. Well,

it's curve ball has 142 stuff plus. So if he can, you know, maybe you'll have a game where he busts out a ton of curve balls and everybody's like super excited about his curve ball all of a sudden. So in any case, he can really spin it. Even the change up rates.

Well, um, I don't really foresee a problem, even if he doesn't have a foreseeing with Rod. He does have a foundational fastball-type pitch that has good stuff. And in fact, I think that is the calculus that needs to be made that I'm we're that i'm not amazing at that we're not amazing at which is you need to have a certain amount of pitches that have stuff and you need to have a certain amount of pitches that have command you know your action pitches and your command pitches it's great you really what you want is one of those to be both that's why is good his stuff his cutter is good by stuff and good by command and so he can use it if he needs to steal strikes or if he needs a swinging strike and then he then you need to have other pitches

you can command really well that you can use for you know when you need a strike but you can't just have one pitch you can command really well that's not going to work because hitters are going to know in certain instances that you're going to have to throw that pitch. In certain counts. They can hunt it. Like when we look at Carlos Rodon's changeup or, you know, other people, like you've seen pitchers that have a good changeup. And you're like, why don't they throw it more? The reason is they can't command it. So they can only really throw it in two strike counts.

And it can't be like a 3-2 count. Yeah. So a great email from Peter. And I would say Burns is more of like, as you said, the new prototype of what an ace is trying to be and what a new ace is going to look like rather than an outlier. It could be an outlier now, but could be more normal in the future. All right, let's get to a question about Tyler Ivey, who came up, made a start, and vanished. And I think it's kind of interesting. If you play in a deeper league, keeper dynasty leagues or AL only leagues, you're always kind of waiting to see which next option is going to come up on a team like Houston, especially given some of the development success stories they've had on the pitching front.

So the question was very, very future forward. It came from Tim. By the time you read this, Tyler Ivy will likely have made his big league debut. Yep. Could you break down his long and short-term value based on his stuff plus and command plus in his first start? Strikeout rates in the minors have always impressed, but I've been burned by the Houston minor league voodoo in the past

with Francis Martes and David Paulino, where their pitching prospects look untouchable in the minors and then don't quite have the same stuff when they get to the majors. So obviously not a guy we're picking up right now in redraft leagues, but what do we see from Tyler Ivey that first time out? Good news and bad news. Command Plus is 92. I think given that it's on one start, I think you could give him League Average Command.

The rest of the good news is the curveball and change did pop as good by Stuff Plus. And the four-seam fastball was a 95 Stuff Plus. I've learned from looking at this that that is around average, even if it doesn't say 100. Four-seam fastballs are usually a little bit lower. even if it doesn't say 100 for foreseeing fastballs are usually a little bit lower that's a capable that's a sort of a cromulent uh foreseeing fastball there from tyler ivy the bad news is the slider was a 77 stuff plus uh the good news is that um it's uh more important for sliders to have command than stuff.

His command plus on the slider was 112. So may not be the most amazing breaking ball, but he can place it. The curveball looks legit. I'm not saying this is a guy that pops in the same way that even an Urquidy did for me in the preseason. But I like him some. I think that his low strikeout rate in the debut was an anomaly. He has enough stuff to strike out more guys in the future.

Yeah, so probably someone worth considering if he has a more prolonged opportunity. Nice that he threw four pitches in his debut, right? Like he only went for it, you know, you know, four and a half innings. He,

he didn't have to show all his pitches. So he, he shows confidence in throwing all four pitches. That's also a good thing. Yeah. I'd love to see that. Cause a lot of times you see guys with three or four pitches in the scouting report and they lean on two when they show up and you're kind of like,

well, how are you going to make it deep into starts throwing two pitches if they're not both amazing pitches from day one tim was also curious if we saw a path for edward olivares in kansas city he's off to a fantastic start at triple a it's a level he didn't previously play at by the way of course olivares got got a chance in San Diego during the shortened season. I think he was up briefly in Kansas City after the trade last year, too. And, you know, didn't play all that well for a first time. Big leaguer had a 70 WRC plus.

But check out his plate skills in the minors. He's got 11.9% for the walk rate right now. A 13.1% K rate. A 200 WRC plus, which even if you're 25 at AAA is pretty amazing. There's power, there's speed. The question is, is there a path for him to actually contribute in Kansas City anytime soon? Because one thing I'm doing right now is I'm just hunting depth charts for players who are underperforming and seeing if there's a short term path that way, or if a guy like olivares just needs

an injury to one of the regulars before he gets that call back to kansas city he's doing well but he's also 25 you know and this would be his second or third attempt at double a or triple a and higher you know what i mean considering that he didn that he didn't have it last year. So I kind of, it's almost like a veteran going down on rehab at this point. He should be doing this well if he's got any ability in the major leagues. So I don't know that it's moving the needle for me

in terms of what I think he could be. I don't necessarily, maybe if the walk rate holds, then you can have a guy that might be around league average with the bat and league average with the glove

in a corner situation that could hit you 15 homers and steal you 10 bases in a full season and I don't see him swim moving past I mean, not Ben Attendee, with Merrifield out in second, you'd have to have Merrifield at second

Lopez out and he'd have to beat out Isbel. Eh, there's a chance there. Nicky Lopez is doing okay for some reason. Isbel's back down. Lopez, he's got a 77 WRC+. I think the path for me for Olivares would be if they're comfortable not playing Michael Taylor in center field every day,

if they want to use him as more of a bench outfielder, use width there and shuffle things around and put Alivarez in a corner, maybe that's the way it actually happens. I mean, Michael Taylor's doing kind of exactly what you'd expect him to do with the increased role. I mean, he's showing power, he's showing speed, he's striking out a lot, so he's a low average, low OBP, good center fielder, on track to be like a one-and-a-half to two-win player, kind of glove first, right? Like, that's good, but not great.

Not valued by the marketplace, not someone that anybody is really going to trade a real asset to get, not someone that would command any sort of money on the open market. And so, therefore, if you follow that train of thought, not someone maybe that the Royals value that highly. Right. So more of a temporary solution for them in center. But Lopez is bad.

Lopez is bad. He's walking, and he's not striking out a lot, but he's not really doing much when he hits the ball. Lopez should be the utility infielder. Well, now that the we've got modesty back this week i think that kind of pushes lopez back into that reserve role i would i would just personally play merrifield and because and then olivaris and taylor and you know merrifield can play some of the outfield too the player you described you know decent

average double digit homers double digit, that plays in most mixed leagues. At least 15 teamers with five outfielders, maybe even some 12s if it turns into everyday playing time. I'm definitely intrigued by what he's doing. I do see a path. I don't think he's going to be a star, but I think he can be an above-average option for deeper leagues because he can contribute. He's a minor leaguer, so would you stash him over Joe Adele or Brandon Marsh? No, not over

Jaron Duran or Bron Wander. He's not cracking that group. Maybe the next group. Yeah, kind of a second tier guy. Probably not a stash, but more of a watch list sort of player where when we get that call that I'm interested, I'm going to go ahead and make a move because we could be stashing franco all year and

not get him i was thinking about that because i'm writing my prospect piece for this week and super two considerations seem pretty likely at this point i mean why wouldn't they be a factor if you're waiting this long and that means we're still talking about weeks instead of days. And it also means that we could see Brujan before Wander. That wouldn't be all that surprising. He's like three years older, and he's putting together better numbers right now at AAA, as he probably should as the older player.

But I think the other part of this is when you think about the raise, the moves they have to make, that's not the problem. They made the big move trading willie adames the two corresponding moves they have to make to get both brujan and wander up one option mike brasso easy to do he's been brutal so far this season he has options left you're not exposing him to waivers to expose brett phillips to waivers if someone doesn't get hurt or you don't trade someone else. That's not a high bar to clear to get both of those guys into the big leagues at this point. Yeah. I've reached out to Jason Martinez who does roster resource.

And he said, one thing that I don't know how to translate for our readers is, he said the cutoff for Super 2 was around 2.115 in the past. Yeah. What does that mean? Two years and 115 days. 115 days. Yeah, because it's the top 22% of players in service time between years 2 and 3. That's the cutoff for Super 2.

It is the most ridiculous random thing. Okay, so 115 days. They'd rather not. They'd want the player to play fewer than 115 days going forward. So 115 divided by 30 is 3.8.

But since it's all relative, it depends on what the rest of the league has been doing with the service time of players in that range. 3.8, so 24 days. So that means somewhere between six and 10 days into June. Right. At the shorter end, if you want to err on the side of caution and leave some buffer for yourself in case the whole league is manipulating it,

yeah, then you wait a little longer just to make sure. And then I think it gets to the business type questions eventually where it's like, okay, the AL East has three teams clearly contending for the division title. The Jays, I wouldn't say could be countered out of it. They're at least a credible playoff threat. Every game matters in that division too, because the difference between winning the AL East and going to the wildcard game in terms of the revenue you get and the guaranteed playoff games, that's a pretty significant gap. So if they felt that they had to bring both of those guys up, spend the extra money on

the extra year of arbitration just to make the playoffs this year, not as a wildcard team, maybe it pays for itself that way, depending on how those numbers line up. Yeah. Yeah. Go to Tampa and make that argument, please. I don't need my goofy thoughts bouncing around. go to Tampa and make that argument, please. They don't need my goofy thoughts bouncing around. They've got plenty of people way smarter than me that have already probably made these...

There's probably people in the org that are like, come on, let's just call them up. Let's just put the foot on the gas right now. Let's make this team even better than it already is. They're winning like crazy right now. They've got a top seven offense. They're averaging five runs per game right now. There's only teams doing that but they have to do breaking news yes breaking news no this is not this is not that fun it's fun of a different kind today today and the news today

joe west has broken the record for uh umpiring games and in the game in which he broke the record, he tossed Cardinals manager Mike Schilt. It's just a perfect demonstration of Joe Westianism. Joe Westism. I have no idea if it's because I'm a fan of a Westianity. Maybe it's because I'm a fan of a Westianity. Maybe it's because I'm a fan of a different team than Division,

but for some reason, Mike Schilt getting tossed from a game just warms the cockles of my heart. I don't have nothing. You're also cheering the fact that Michael Kopech sprained his ankle falling off the mound. Never cheer that. I like Michael Kopech. I don't have an anti-mike thing i just i

i don't know i don't know why mike schilt in particular like him getting tossed especially by joe west would anyone you'd never want to get tossed by angel hernandez right that would be the most humiliating thing possible joe west book is so long. I think it was that A.J. Hinch said he was really early on in managing and he got tossed from second... Joe West tossed him from second base. It was like his debut as a manager.

Who do you think has the highest total of umpire ejections of the same manager? It'sby cox as the manager is joe west the umpire who's tossed him the most times oh man i wish that umpire stats were more searchable like that that's what we we need baseball reference to add more umpire stats for us hey sean foreman you're doing a ton of work to maintain this awesome site.

Could you do some more and just get some umpire data in there for us for our pleasure? I think there's actually a fair amount of pushback from the umpire union. Otherwise, we'd have more public umpire data. Agreed. I'm with you. It's a hard job. We don't say that enough. That's actually a very hard job that is made to look easier than it really is thanks to amazing modern technology.

And yeah, I don't know. I'm not defending the umpires. I'm just saying we should have a little more respect for the difficulty of the job. And I actually love Joe West for the moment for tossing Mike Schilt. I'm sure Mike Schilt deserved it. If you're enjoying this show, as I mentioned earlier, please take a moment to leave us a nice rating and review. If you'd like to support The Athletic by getting a subscription, we'd really appreciate that too.

$3.99 a month is the current deal we have to start at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. On Twitter, he is at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening.