Rates & Barrels - Starting Pitchers Facing Reduced Workloads & Biggest Underperformers of 2024

Episode Date: August 19, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss the expectations of a tapering per-start workload for Paul Skenes as the season winds down, the second-half adjustments to usage of Garrett Crochet by the White Sox, an explanation for Ke'Bryan Hayes 2024 struggles, the most disappointing pitchers of the year -- relative to initial projections -- and a few weekend happenings on the waiver wire, including the return of Matthew Boyd and growing interest in A's starter Osvaldo Bido.  Rundown 2:18 Paul Skenes Approaching In-Start Limitations? 8:07 At Least They're Not Going the Shutdown Route 14:31 Garrett Crochet's 2025 Outlook 17:29 The Dreaded Velocity Leaderboard w/Injuries 25:18 Ke'Bryan Hayes Playing Through a Herniated Disc 29:11 Biggest Underperforming Pitches of 2024 (So Far) 39:06 Accounting for Different Run Environments Across Projection Systems 49:20 Where the Money Went This Weekend Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Thursdays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Monday, August 19th. Derek Van Riper, Enos Serres here with you on this episode. We take a look at some baseball news you should know. We seem to have a workload reduction plans in the cards for Paul Skeens, Terrick Scoobel, a couple of very important starting pitchers. So we'll dig into the implications of that. We are going to talk about underperforming pitchers, the pitchers that have missed the mark compared to their initial projections by the widest margins so far. Take a look at where the money went over the weekend and some moves that we made with our own clubs as well. You know how the weekend treats you.

Pretty good. Yeah, we had a good time. I saw the new Alien movie on Friday night and it was fine. I mean, it was fine. I don't know what I don't know what people want when it's like Alien 8, you know, all right, I want to know good It's like what did you what do you expect this point? It's like just going and seeing your buddies you know, I'm like hanging out like we did at Alamo, which I actually love Alma draft house because It's it is like that. It's like you're seeing a movie at the bar Good concept saw some friends had some beers saw a that. It's like you're seeing a movie at the bar. Good concept. Saw some friends, had some beers, saw a movie. It was fine.

Sounds like a successful weekend. It's all you need. Yeah. Felix had my eldest had a good throwing session on Sunday with some of his better Velo and some of his better curveballs. And he's got fall ball coming up soon. So he was excited about that. You had him thrown in front of a radar? No, this was me guessing.

Oh, okay. That's okay. Also I got a couple of welts, you know, so I can, I can judge the Velo from the welts. I think that's fair. I think it's how they did it in the old days. So it's a tested method. It's fair.

Yeah. If you'd like to join our discord, by the way, you can do that with the link in the show description. You can talk about movies, how much you love Alien. You could ask sit start questions. You could throw mailbag questions in there too. All of those things are in play. Nice community we got growing over there.

Let's get going with some news though. Paul Skeens recently added to the list of pitchers who will have their workloads monitored. The good news is based on people who've been briefed on the situation, I guess we'll say, they're not planning on shutting Paul Skeens down completely in Pittsburgh, but reducing his innings seems like something they're going to do on a start by start basis, which eventually causes some problems

from a fantasy perspective, because if we're going three or four innings every start with guys like Skeens, we're very unlikely to get wins unless they throw an opener in front of them, which seems like something they would never do, because it would only benefit us and nobody else. But the other implications here, this is from a story that Ken Rosenthal, Steven Nesbitt and Zach Meisel wrote on the Atlantic was that if the Pirates taper off the innings a lot or were to shut him down at some point, it could impact where he finishes in the National League Rookie of the Year voting and where he finishes in that voting would impact whether or not he gets a full year of service time this year. So

the reasons why the Pir pirates would be more careful are a little more layered than just managing Paul Skeen's arm. That being said, I think they could shut him down today and he still might be first or second in the National League Rookie of the Year voting because he's been amazing. And I think voters would look past the delayed start to his season

and the early ending, despite a fantastic rookie class in the National League. It's a loaded class, as we've talked about before. Isn't that just a weird set of incentives? We want him to win the rookie of the year or not be in the top three. Yeah. Yes, that's not a great situation. So at this point, you're kind of screwed because I think no matter, I mean, screwed from a front office, we don't want to give them a full year of service time set of, you know, that set of incentives. You're screwed. He's a top three guy, you know? So at this point you'd rather he won. Because you want that pick.

But then long term, there's there's a health discussion. I think that one thing that's sort of fascinating is, you know, I think Velo is one of the leading indicators. We Josh Kyle Kunel works for the twins, put up an injury zone finder. And he was talking about velocity, release point consistency, zone

percentages. And I think Velo is still the easiest way to kind of to spot a guy, maybe in fatigue. And I just thought I'd port over to Jordan Hicks's page real quick, just because I know he's not the same situation in terms of being a young guy that you're protecting in the same way, but if you were monitoring Jordan Hicks and saying we are monitoring for health reasons, we'll move him to the pen when you know

when it seems like he's out of gas. I think there was tons of not even yellow flags, red flags you know for H Hicks before they pulled the plug. So he's sitting 96. Let's just call it 96. He's sitting 96 for his first seven starts. Then there's a 94. All right. All right.

Everything's fine. 95 the next one. Then there's a 92. Okay. Well, maybe he was, was that the game where he's sick or he was barfing or I don't know. 95, 95, 96, 93. OK, what's going on here? You know, 95, 93, 95, 91.

For me, he's out. You know, that's it. I think I would have pulled the plug earlier. You're getting 93 from a guy that started the season 96. For them, I think Hicks is a veteran. And so there's a little bit of a like, can he still be good at 93? So there's that question.

Paul Skeens started this, started the year sitting 100. But if we take that aside, that's like the sort of, you get a debut bump. He's been 99. And so he was 99 for six starts. And then he was 98, 99. Last three starts, 98, zero, 97, seven, 97, nine. So he's down a tick.

I don't know. Is that enough for you? No, because I think the other information I would want is I'd want to see all starters and just what the tendency is. I mean, I think it's within the normal range of things we see to see a tick go over the course of the year. Velocity does tend to peak in August. Yeah, and sometimes guys get a little stronger and throw a little harder later in the year. Just sort of, I think there's a lot of different reasons for that.

Sometimes there's a mechanical fix. Sometimes your arm just feels better. You can't explain them all in one shot. I think the bigger question for the Pirates, and this is probably the way they've been thinking about it the whole time, is what do we need to do to keep Paul Skeens healthy while making sure he throws enough this year to have no restrictions or minimal restrictions in 2025?

That's probably been the goal the entire time. And if he was good enough to win the rookie of the year within the bounds of whatever innings workload that allowed, fantastic, great, that's a win for us. If he wins it anyway, despite being a little lower in innings, oh well, or if he comes close, well, you did the best you could

around the more important constraints. So I think it's easy to get caught up in those rules and think that that's the only thing a team cares about, but I'd be stunned if they were managing for those rules and incentives and not thinking about the big picture, given how good Skeens is and how important he is to their immediate and longterm future. Yeah. And one thing that I like is that they're talking not about skipping starts. Cause I just talked to Terrix Google about this and Terrix Google is probably, you know, someone that you might be putting in a similar bucket, you know,

somebody that everybody cares about. Everybody has shares of everybody, you know, invested in his outcomes. He's maybe headed for the Cy Young, you know, so there's there's there's personal hardware that's within grasp. But his team also cares more about next year than they care about the Cy Young necessarily. And so there's the same sort of complicated set of incentives. And I was talking to him about, you know, just skipping starts. He's like, I don't like that. He's like, I don't like I don't even like that over the All-Star break.

You know, he says, I think it's pretty clear that, you know, this first couple of games back from the All-Star game is not the best baseball. You know, the hitters are the hitters have taken time off and the pitchers have taken time off, you know. And and there is science. I've quoted on this show before about how your body has adaptations to high level athleticism. Your body adapts to be able to make those things possible

and that those adaptations can go away on the day on three to five days. Like if your body, if you're not requiring your body to sprint, you know, 100 your body to sprint, you know, a hundred meters in 10 seconds, you know, every, you know, enough, like if you don't do it enough, you can't do it. You know what I mean? Like there's no way that the sprinter going to the Olympics takes, doesn't sprint for a week before his big sprint.

Yeah. You know? They're going to be running a lot. Probably a day off, maybe a day, two days off, maybe there's a plan in there, but it's not to completely rest for a full week and oh, and now I'm going to run again. Yeah. So there's no, I don't think there's,

there's much science that says that it'd be a good idea to skip starts. It's that's not what they're trying to do. Now we've been talking about this like six inning minimum idea. And part of why I hate it so much is because I think the best way is what they're talking about with skeins, which is maybe he's only going to go five. Maybe we only give him eight innings. I mean, this is the part of the modern process of trying to keep young players healthy. And it's better for him to go out there and pitch us a shorter

amount of pitches and fewer pitches and short amount of innings than it is from just skivvy entirely. And if he gets shut down completely at some point, yes, we do have off seasons that does. You could start the off season, but you don't want basically skipping

a star is almost like starting the off season and restarting. You just don't want to do that. It's it doesn't make sense. So I would expect him to get like sort of 80, 85 pitches and be almost like where Drew Rasmussen was at one point where like, if he's super efficient, he can get the win still, you know, if he's not efficient that day, then he's going to go four and a third and be out.

It's you knew with Paul Skeens that this was a risk and also that you weren't going to maybe get a ton of wins. So it's, it shouldn't affect too much of what you, what you want out of him. The occasional win, good ratios, those are all still in there. I think what's really difficult to cope with is if you were relying on Garrett crochet in the first half and you found maybe on the waiver wire in a lot of cases you found an ace and he pitched like one for the first three months of the season the white

socks I think are doing something similar and that they're they're not just slamming the brakes and saying take a month and a half off take two months off but they have not had Garrett Crochet face more than 18 batters since July 6th. He went four innings that day, faced 21 batters. But the game log since then, two, four, three, four, two and a third and four for innings. So no chance of a win.

35 to 10 strikeout to walk ratio going back to July 6th. Gosh, is he dropable? He's not gonna get you a win 35 to 10 strikeout to walk ratio going back to July 6th. Gosh, is he droppable? He's not going to get you a win this way. It's more of a workload than any real like reliever you're going to see. So you get those you get K's. It's a strikeouts play, but he can't get wins. And then the ratios haven't been as good in part because of one really bad outing against the Cubs, right?

For the most part, he's still been pretty effective in those roles, in that limited role. But it is very hard in a league where, you know, five by five wins, 20% of your pitching points come from that category, and you've got it, cannot get them because of the way they have to try and let them work without like overworking him. Yeah, and I think some of the, you know,

people like I've had some questions, oh, has the league figured him out because he had that seven game start against the Cubs, the seven inning, seven earned run in two and a third innings start against the Cubs crocheted in. He had a five run, three earned run against Seattle. So he's had some bad starts. I think he's I think he's got

a little bit of the Taj Bradley type package where it's very, very good fastball. He's going to figure out the pieces around it. The going to the cutter was good, but it has he's still a two pitch pitcher. And I'm not sure his second pitch, the cutter, is as good as like, you know, a Spencer Strider fastball slider combo. So he really needs to start reintroducing the slider back, you know, that he put away, Crochet does.

Or, you know, we talked, I talked to him in length recently, we talked about the splitter and he's like, no, my elbow hurts when I throw that. So it's not gonna be a splitter. But, you know, there's got to be another pitch, you know, maybe he can tweak that change up. Maybe there's something there where he adds. But even fastball cutter slider, like, why not bring the slider back? You know, so I think there's, I think he'll be better next year. You know what I mean? Because you're, he's gonna be thinking about starting,'s going to have more innings in his back pocket.

He's going to be used to starting. He's going to have an off season to develop another pitch. Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, I think how you plan on drafting crochet still depends on what happens in the final month and a half of the season. It's got to get through healthy, even with these reduced workloads. But let's assume three, four innings at a time for a while, maybe shuts down a week or two early.

Finishes with like 150 innings. He was healthy all year, ends probably with the similar stuff he has now. So three, six ERA, bunch of strikeouts. I mean, yeah, I'm drafting him. I mean, I know a lot of people will be like injury red flag. So it will depend on sort of where he's available and how much people are spending on him.

But I think that a lot of people will be out because they'll just see, oh yeah, he threw 150 innings, but he's never done that before. And he's been an often injured guy. Like he's got to be, he's like the new Tyler Glass now, I guess, maybe. Oh, fun. Another polarizing ace that everyone's going to fight about on the internet. I mean, it's all the things to fight about on the internet. It's relatively small, but the pricing I think is going to be high. I think there's going to be enough believers in crochet. I guess the other, the other question will be, is he actually going to get traded this off season or is he going to stay in Chicago and be part of the rebuild?

Is he going to be on a bad team again next year? That's obviously a concern from a, a win perspective, but then like a player development, like who's going to help them get this new pitch? Well, a lot of pitchers take that in their own hands as we've talked about on the show before. And like, look at what he did from the beginning of the season to the end of June, a 302 ERA, those are the 237 FIP underneath.

I mean, that's like Cy Young stuff, a 141 to 20 strikeout to walk ratio and 101 in the third innings, like you can dream on that. He could be pitcher one. It's literally the same thing I said about Glassnow going into this season. It just comes back to health. Glassnow's on the IL again, hopefully for

another relatively short stint. But nevertheless, like the pool of pitchers is packed with guys that throw really hard, have durability concerns, either behind them or in front of them because of the characteristics that make them as effective as they are. Other than the fact that crochet has been broken a bunch of times already. So that's, it's even worse than glass now is injury history.

I assume he's going to go inside the top 10 among starting pitchers, which in NFBC style leagues and 15 team leagues means he's carrying an ADP inside the first three rounds. I think that's where Garrett Crochet is going to go. Skeens is going to go even earlier than that because Skeens does not have that injury history. He throws hard, has the future concern. We wonder how long it can work the way it's going to work.

But no matter how you feel about the Pirates, you almost certainly think they're better than the White Sox are going to be in 2025. So you have to bake in a crochet trade to make the team convex better for a crochet. And I think we've seen a level of consistency from Skeens that gives you just a little more confidence skills-wise, even though crochet has great skills. So I could see Skeens being maybe a top five starter by ADP going into 2025, but crochet being in that next year or sub tier right below him. I mean, I lost my mind when you said throwing hard because there's been an update.

Oh, that the list that we looked at last year on this time of the hardest throwing guys and how they were all hurt. And so here's 2023 minimum 50 innings pitched as a starting pitcher. Velocity sorted by fastball velocity. Bobby Miller hurt an ineffective, not the same as he was last year when he was led the league with 99 miles an hour. Hunter Green now hurt. Sandy Alcontra Tommy John Yuri Perez Tommy John Grayson Rodriguez Has been the sort of bright and shining hope for most of your bees hurt now Spencer Strider Tommy John show He'll Tony Tommy John Shane McClanahan Tommy John Cole Reagan's been good so far this year. Hazel's Luzardo is a Tommy John he got.

No, his Luzardo was, I believe, a shoulder or a lat. Let's see back. Let's see back in the parentheses. That could always be lat, though. Forearm and shoulder strengthening. Lumbar stress reaction was the official diagnosis. Hurt most of the season, right? So that's the top 10 where I just had like,

it was like five Tommy Johns and everybody's been hurt this season. And some previous Tommy Johns for some of those guys too. I mean, you mentioned McClanahan, he hit Tommy John before. And it continues. I mean, Garrett Cole's 11th and he's hurt and he's come back, but he's not exactly who he used to be. Luis Severino is hurt all the time and is not who he used to be.

Tyler Glass now has been hurt off and on this season. It's been a good season. I'm not I'm not I'm not trying to put him on the like, oh, he's been hurt all year. But, you know, he throws really hard. And that's what's Luis Castillo is like the only guy who seems like he can throw this hard and stay healthy. And he's had that weird thing where he always doesn't throw hard at the beginning of the season and really sort of ramps up over the course of the season. Once you start getting down to the top 20, it gets a little better.

There's Luis LRT's, Edward Cabrera has been hurt. George Kirby is healthy. Taj Bradley has been largely healthy. Luis Medina. Brandon Woodruff. So I don't know. I mean, it's is the is the real answer. Everyone gets hurt or is it that it's worse at the top here? It seems like it's worse at the top here.

So if you'd resort this list for 2024, Skeen, Soriano, Hunter Green, Jared Jones, Garrett Crochet, Dylan Cease, Tarek Scoobel, Luis Heal, Logan Gilbert hit 100 in his last start, Tyler Glasnow, Taj Bradley. I mean, maybe I'm out. Garrett Crochet being like third in fastball velocity and having the injury history he And then, you know, the first year of the year, the first year of the year, the first year of the year, the first year of the year, the first year of the year, the first year of the year,

the first year of the year, the first year of the year, the first year of the year, the first year of the year, the first year of the year, the first year of the year, the first year of the year, the first year of the year,

the first year of the year, the first year of the year, the first year of the year, the first year of the year, the first year of the year, the first year of the year, the first year of the year, the first year of the year,

the first year of the year, the first year of the year, the first year of the year, the first year of the year, the first year of the year, the first year of the year, trade given his injury history. So are we happy that Reagan's Velo is down and he's only 25th and Velo? Maybe we are. 95, six could be just, could be enough. He's been great. Yeah. A lot of guys in that 95 range, they've also been hurt too. Right. I know. That doesn't get that much better. It doesn't get that much better. Like Zach Wheeler, I'll get Tommy John forever ago. Then we're back in this Tommy John honeymoon. Is that still a thing that we really care about?

I tend to think that we can't predict injuries that well, but maybe the reddest of red flags should really, if they have an F health grade, should be something you pay attention to. See, you know, what's funny is Garrett Cole had a C health grade on Jeff Zimmerman's health coming into the season, partially because of Velo. Cause Velo's in there. Yeah. And I'm sure I looked at that and was like, come on, see, that seems a little bit harsh. A lot of people were like, your health grades are bad because there's no way

Garrett Cole has a C. Well, if you're looking forward, that's, uh, that's the grade you would want. You don't necessarily need the looking back grade. Like that's, that's already there. That's why fastball Villevillo is one of the things that is in Jeff Zimmerman's health grades. Yeah, so I guess, I don't know, are we shopping in the Tanner, Bytey, Freddie Peralta?

We know Freddie reaches back and gets a few extra ticks sort of when he needs it, which is- He's been hurt. Well, he's been hurt in the past. He's been healthy so far this year. Kirby, really good command, 95, nine. Like that seems like a good spot. He's been healthy so far this year. Kirby, really good command, 95, nine. Like that seems like a good spot. He's up a little bit this year.

He's eighth in fast ball velocity among qualified starters on four seamers right now. Wow, yeah, but don't do the qualifiers. Don't do qualified. It's just what happened to be open. There's no qualified starters, yeah. There are no qualified starters. Luis Castillo, 95, six, 27th, you know, that seems fine.

But you can't just be like, oh well, is there 95? They're fine because Carlos Rodon has 95.5 and no one's going to give him a good health grade. No, no you can't. His whole pitching life has been that way. I tend to actually think that Grayson Rodriguez, you know, being 15th on the list of year with the 96.1, like, I still like Grayson Rodriguez.

Grayson Rodriguez is probably going to be a little bit higher on my list next season than a lot of other people's lists. I think I'm going to sign up for a draft during first pitch Arizona. I just like drafting early. I just like having one where I sit down and have to try and solve it. I don't know, dude. It's such low information. It's so bad. Like all of my drafting holds that I did, the first one that, the first drafting hold I did, I only am starting my healthy pitchers. I have no, I have no bench healthy pitchers. Is that the one that I jumped in and then you just, you clicked in it too.

And we're like, we're in the same league. This isn't great. I think so. Yeah. I mean, I think I, where am in the same league. This isn't great. I think so. Yeah. I think, where am I in that one? It's not good. I think you're at 11th right now.

It looks like, oh, Chef Mike, Michael Armstrong, a top that lead, maybe going to run away with it. I'm in 11th in the first one I took. I'm in seventh in the second one I took. And I'm third in the last draft champions I did, which makes all the sense in the world to me. I don't know. I think, I think you have more of an edge drafting early than you do late because of the

things that make drafting early hard work against everyone. And I think you and I and many other people that get to do this full time have the benefit of time on our side, research, early prep that a lot of other folks don't necessarily have the luxury of baking in. That's possible. And I think, you know, if there was a change to my strategy, if there's something that I kind of learned from that first one, I think was that I did not emphasize, um,

a health picture health enough. So like I said not emphasize health, picture health enough. So like I said, I have actually do have one healthy guy on the bench right now. It's Paul Blackburn at San Diego. But I'm you know, I've been playing Trevor Rogers like all year in this league because everyone's been hurt. So I think I think early in the off season, if you're drafting, you should actually care a lot about health. I think you should, I don't know how much we, you're very good at predicting it, but if you can build yourself the safest, most boring, uh, draft and hold in October, do it. Just the, just guys who were not even that good, maybe.

They just seem like they're going to be healthy next year. Oatmeal October brought to you by Better Oats. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I highly recommend that if you're going to be drafting that early. That is a great wrinkle to include. If you're shopping while working, eating or even listening to this podcast, then you know and love the thrill of the hunt. But are you getting the thrill of the best deals?

Rakuten, shoppers do. They get the brands they love with the most savings and cash back. And you can get it too. Start getting cash back at your favorite stores like Old Navy, Best Buy, and Expedia, and even stack sales on top of cash back. It's easy to use and you get your cash back through PayPal or Check.

The idea is simple. Stores pay Rakuten for sending them shoppers, and Rakuten shares the money with U.S. Cashback. Download the free Rakuten app and never miss a deal. Or go to rakuten.ca to start getting the most bang for your buck. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N. Let's get to one other injury thing before we move on to a broader topic. I just happened to notice this digging around looking for some updates.

Kebrian Hayes has been playing through a herniated disc for most of the season. This is according to a report from Jason Mackey in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. I read that and I thought, well, that explains literally everything about Kebrian Hayes' season. And it's not even that like what he was doing in the second half of last year had to necessarily translate into a full season of production that looked like that. It's that he was a league average hitter

over the course of all of last season and he's among the worst qualified hitters in baseball this year. And that doesn't make sense because even as he was trying to figure it out in 21 and 22, he was within 10 or 15% of league average and playing great defense and even his defense, I think grades out a little worse this year. So you can tell like it's had a major impact on him. I'm reading some of the quotes. You could also tell that as a guy that signed a contract extension there,

he wants to be out there every day. But playing every day, her needed disc isn't going to get better. It's just it's not going to get better until you rest. So it made me think that there might actually be a rebound coming from Kibryon Hayes, health permitting. I just don't know if I want to bet on this kind of health problem being okay in the long run, even if it's okay for a little while. Because like we just had another one with Christian Yellich, right? Yeah. And it was kind of an ongoing thing where I don't know if it ever,

it's hard to know. Like Yellich, I feel like a lot of times Yellich doesn't give great quotes. It's just, it's just not his nature to give a lot of information. But we know that the back has been hurting him for a while and we know that he's having surgery on it now and that he sort of put it off for a while. So we, I think I would rather hear about surgery for, I would rather they shut him down soon and hear about surgery. That's what's that's what I'm hoping for. I did trade for him Springer for him in a 20 team dynasty. And I I don't actually this news doesn't actually make me feel that much worse because okay, there's an explanation for this year. And what I'm hoping for is some sort of cleaning this up, doing something about it and a chance for some, some rebirth next year. I'm dropping him in every other league.

Like I don't feel that badly about trading for him in a damn dynasty because this is a deep ass dynasty. If he can get back to 320 OBP and hit 10 homers and to steal 10 bases next year, then I think I did the right thing. I finally got to the point this weekend in TELTWARS 15 team league with unlimited IELTS spots. So it ends up playing more like a, I don't know, 17, 18 team league probably with all the injury stashes. Oh, because you can't there's not that much on the wire because

everyone's just stashing there. Yeah. I finally cut to Brian Hayes from that team because he's not on the IELTS. I can't stash him and I didn't want to play him. I just didn't want to. I splashed a big bid in there on Junior Caminero and felt like I maybe won the lottery, even though I don't know if I'm going to catch Jeff Pontus and then Ray Flowers, the top of the table.

Ryan Boyer is up there to Caminero is playing. I mean, I was a little bit worried about playing time, but he's playing. Yeah. Playing every day. Basically their everyday third base. They're making the right call. They're just getting ready. And it doesn't, it doesn't look that terrible. I've seen some terrible at bats from him, but overall it's, it's pretty good. I mean, he's taking walks. He's hitting the ball hard.

I mean, it's what you, it's what you wanted. I felt like I got a massive upgrade when I won that bid over the weekend just because of how much Hayes has struggled. But I'm glad we have a reason now, at least it makes some sense that you take this much of a step back after what looked like a pretty nice growth year for him in 2023. So last week, we talked about underperforming hitters, the players that were furthest away from projections so far with seven weeks to go in the season. We're going to do the same exercise today with pitchers. And there's one name that just jumps off the page right away.

It's Pablo Lopez. He's still here. He's come up on this show a couple of times this year. And I think every time he comes into the conversation, it's usually in the form of a mailbag question or someone saying, hey, what's really going on with Pablo Lopez? What's actually different? And every time I've looked into it,

all I see is a higher home run rate than we've ever seen from Pablo Lopez before. And I don't see anything else underneath it that makes me believe that stuff's changed in a way where he can't be the Pablo Lopez that we've seen going back to his last couple of seasons, his last year in Miami and his first year in Minnesota. I think he can be a mid threes ERA, good whip, strikeout per inning pitcher again.

Like I was a little bit of a Lopez skeptic at price on draft day, but now I feel like I'm going to have a lot of Pablo Lopez on my teams in 2025. Yeah, I think he probably there will be an overcorrection. You know, for his career, he has a 1.1 home runs per nine. This year he has 1.4. All of his strike out and walk rates are pretty much in line or better than his career rates. 372 career Sierra for Pablo Lopez, 345 this year. You know, that's that's as good as anything.

I mean, the K minus BB and Sierra are very strong predictive numbers in this type of sample. So I think that's the basis. I have talked to him and I have seen in the numbers that the four seam is acting a little differently this year. It's lost some ride. It's added some horizontal in a way that I don't think he wants necessarily. And the curveball has been a little bit different to where It's added more drop than it's ever had and I don't really know if that's what he wants Because there's a velocity component. He was throwing a little bit harder last year the curveball but I would notice I would I would point out that in terms of fastball velocity and

vertical movement On the fore seam and the curveball so velocity and vertical movement on the fore seam and the curveball. So velocity and vertical movement on the fore seam and the curveball. There has been some improvement in August and you know I'm not looking at his game log right now so I don't know if he's been great because I for me he's been kind of a guy just stick out there, but he said it was a pretty notable quote that I liked He said that he's he's Trying to find things in his base that he can that he can optimize and make better Because he doesn't really want to fool around then he thinks that's too late at release and all that that's too late

It's it's got to be something else. That, that's set setting all this up. So he, uh, his most recent tweak is a mini twerk. So he like does this like weird little thing with his butt. He does like a little mini twerk with his butt before he pitches. So he's like loading, like doing like a muscle load with his butt. Yeah. It's like a little preload. Yeah. It's like a little preload where he kind of just like shifts what his pelvis is doing. But he's like, little twerk. And he did it. And I was like, that looks like a little bit of a twerk. So, you know, that's,

that's a fun little thing. The VLO is up and, you know, now I can look at his game log real quick and see how he's been recently. Yeah, I mean, the last two starts have been really good. Yes. If if your stinker is five innings against the Cubs and four earned runs and then otherwise, you've been great since the July 5th. Like, let me let me just do the quick game log thing. I know this is such arbitrary end points. Oh, he had a bad start on July 3rd.

So July 5th on. Oh, I counted the July 5th start. He's got a 364 ERA in his last eight starts, even counting that out against the Astros. He looks more like himself. Kayser down a little bit during that span, but there's some reasonably tough matchups kind of sprinkled in there that may have tempered that a little bit. Yeah. I mean, the Mets offense is decent. He was in New York though. The Royals offense is decent. Texas is decent. Cubs are, these are not, you know, the worst offenses.

Some of them are not great. He, you know, he did well against Milwaukee. Yeah. From seven six on, two seven nine ERA, you know. Amazing. But also a 95 to on the four scene. So that's a better number than he has for the season. And I think it's an indication of, you know, somewhat to some extent, the the tweak having some effect. So, you know, he. I don't know if you'll win a Cy Young. Maybe last year will be the highest he gets in terms of Cy Youngs. But he's a really good pitcher. I think that's the best way to sum them up. It's just, you know, but who put up that list

again, the biggest underperforming pitchers, because some of them, some people, they weren't listening. They were, they're listening. So it's canning Lopez, Michaelis, Savalli, Arigetti, Peralta, Gossman, Freddie Peralta, Kevin Gossman, Carlos Carrasco, Brian Bayo, Carlos Rodone, Max Fried, Frankie Montaz, Trevor Rogers, Chris Flex and Zach Efflin. So I think there's a lot of ones on here that if you're listening to the show, you weren't in on, I don't think we told you guys to get canning. Michaelis was projected to be bad and was worse, you know? So I don't think a lot of people sign up for that.

So Aragetti we've talked about a lot. And I tend to think it's actually just the wildness that I think is hurting him. I think it's lack of command wildness that I think is hurting him. I think it's lack of command and so I don't I hesitate to say he's gonna be as good as a strikeout red says he'll be but I don't think his fate is is written down in stone yet. It's also more of a probably a shorter sample than some of the other guys. Aaron Zavale he's been pitching better recently and I don't know what to say about him. It's not a good fastball. I don't know. You know, there's definitely a lot of bad fastballs on this list.

You know, and and again, Montas, Rogers, and Flexin, nobody was really in on them. Nobody really got was paying there. But I do think the most interesting names are Pablo Lopez, Freddie Peralta and Kevin Gossman. Maybe to some extent Carlos Rodome, but I just think I think that's a really tough park. I think he's been pitching fine, you know. But Gossman, I did look this up and just after I said Kevin Gossman is a good bylo. Kevin Gossman did this. So his fastball stuff plus in March and April was a 101 which is good because average is around 97. In May his fastball

was 98 stuff plus. In June it had a little resurgence to 103 and then in July 98 and in August he has an 89 stuff plus on his four seamer. His overall stuff plus is 82. This is the worst it's ever been. He's in a decline and it ports over directly to a decline in strikeout rate that you can just sort of graph over time and be like, wow, it's not something that happened all at once. He has been losing strikeout rates since his peak midseason last year. It's been going down. So I tend to think this is just what it looks like to age. I think I'm not sure that he's going to return to top elite status for me.

Yeah, I don't know if he comes back to elite. Maybe he can bounce back partially. Maybe he comes back to a three, eight year age projections, have them kind of in that range. The bats, the most skeptical down at four thirty eight and a one twenty four. If you're looking over at Van Graaff's, the bat suggests maybe it gets a little bit worse from an ERA perspective But yeah, you're right in the massive drop in strikeout rate

Swing strike rates come down with it and it started to come down last year the swing strike rate was the one thing you could See alongside the K rate where even though he was still missing a lot of bats a lot of guys to punch out He was not getting as many swings and misses. So that was maybe the first little yellow flag that something could be changing I'm surprised he lost this much this quickly. But that being said, it is aging and it's he's 33 already. So yeah, it comes quick sometimes. Well, side note, you mentioned the bats, the most negative bats, the most negative, I'm honest, every pitcher.

And what I noticed, I use the bat for this activity. And the median difference between projection and reality is minus 0.4 so the bats projected run environment was 0.4 runs of ERA too high and considering that we're still seeing this I'm wondering if maybe the run environment hasn't been adjusted over the season? Because if you take point four off of Kevin Gosman's the bat projection, he gets way more in line with everybody else. Yeah, it's still higher, but it's a three nine instead of a four three.

Yeah, so I don't know exactly. I could I'll try to ask Derek about this because we chat fairly often but It was something I noticed so so that's another thing when you look at that You know that list of underperforming pitchers When you say oh well he was projected for you know Kevin Goss was projected for a 3-8 And he has a 4-0-2 or whatever he has or for for one. What does he have? has a four or two or whatever he has or four, four one, what does he have? Four two. Yeah.

Got a four two right now. It was projected round like three eight going into the season or something. Three seven going into season as a four two. That's a worse difference than you, than you might have first think. Because the three seven or three eight projection that Kevin Gosman had was already 0.4 runs too high for the run environment. So really he was projected for a 3-4 in this run event and gave you a 4-2.

So anyway that was a little sidebar that has to do with projections and run environments. But what about Peralta? I mean I think we both love him and I keep putting him like in my top 15, top 20, and he's got the strikeout rate. The VLO is good. But it is now 300 innings of a 1.4 home runs per night. Yeah, I think that to me is explained in part by how he misses. I think his misses are more catastrophic misses a lot of times.

So I do think that's something that's a little bit baked into his approach and his pitch mix. It's purely observational. It's not a data supported argument. So I do think he's the kind of pitcher that runs a higher home run rate than say Pablo Lopez, right? And I know for a lot of his career being in Miami, the home ballpark was also a factor that helped Pablo Lopez

keep that number down. Where I think I have a little bit of optimism though is that I think there are things Freddie Peralta has done over time that show a pretty nice evolution for him as a pitcher, right? Like the usage of breaking it off speed stuff. Yeah, like the way he approaches hitters is a lot better than when he came into the league, which is true of many pitchers.

Like we've seen the kind of growth we wanna see and he still misses a lot of bats. So you take the chance on guys that strike out 28, 30% of the batters they face as a starter, you take the warts. The only thing that's a little bit tricky with Peralta is that his walk rate isn't great. It's not horrible. It's not double digits. Doesn't jump off the page like a like a Dylan Ceasewalk.

It's below average command, but it's not it's not terrible command. Right. It's just like one thing needs to be tweaked for Peralta to have that year. Like I think if you read the baseball forecaster at least once, maybe even more than once now, he's been one of those guys that has the upside, 200Ks, three ERA, and he's done the 200Ks. If he's ever gonna do a three ERA as a full season starter, it's probably because the home run rate comes down because he got lucky or because he commands the ball

a little better and brings the walk rate down. One of those things probably has to happen. If he keeps walking guys at close to a 9% clip where he's been for his career and he keeps struggling with the long ball, what you see is probably what you get. Or the ratios you saw in 23, a 386 ERA and a 112, that's as good as it's ever going to get unless he's able to make those adjustments. But that's fine, because the thing that Freddie Peralta has also done, much like Pablo Lopez, as he's now putting together

Two mostly healthy seasons. He said 300 innings over the last two years like that's great for a long time Lopez had that same kind of concern. Well, it's it's good when he's out there, but he's had some arm injuries Same has been true of Freddie But if he gets to the rest of the season without any sort of hiccup in the form of an arm injury I think you start to see a more encouraging workload grade on Freddie Peralta going into 2025. Yeah. And I also think this is a great place to go shopping is someone who strikes out a lot of people and doesn't walk that many people and, and gives up too many homers.

If you just look at people who have cut their home run rate big time this year, which, you know, it's a little bit different if you're talking dynasty because you kind of want them for multiple seasons. And so if they do have a home run flaw, then, you know, you don't you don't care that much if like, oh, one of those three seasons was a saiyang season if you have to roster and for all four seasons to get that. But in a year to year thing, any player that strikes out a lot of people and doesn't walk a lot of people

and has a home run rate has the chance to just have a career year. And if you look at the home run improvers this year, there's a lot of sort of pop up guys. Brandon Fats on this list. Christopher Sanchez probably actually has a home run suppression as a skill. But Hunter Green is on this list. Brian Wu is on this list. Renell Blanco is on this list.

You know, Reese Olsen, Taj Bradley. You know, a lot of these guys are guys that you could have bought at a cheaper price in an auction or wherever, because people thought maybe they had a home run issue and then they cut it. So, you know, with him, it's a little bit more established because 300 innings, but it is still only 300 innings over two seasons. So we don't even actually know exactly what his true talent home run rate is when it comes to Freddie Peralta. Yeah, it's still like not quite there.

We're kind of honing in on what we think it should be, but it's not clear to us just yet because that work goes a little on the smaller side. I look at the percentile rankings, the sliders, the popsicles as people call them on chase and whiff. And I see, you know, Freddie gets a lot of whiffs. Like that's clear. You can see that when you watch him.

He doesn't get as much chase as you'd think, but I think that speaks to the. That's a command stat I think. It's the command thing, right? It's like, it's missing in a non-competitive way. It's, it's, or, or being occasionally predictable. I think it's more the former than the latter. I think it's the non-competitive misses. Yeah. He gets, I think he gets away with some of those

middle middle misses too, just as he serves up some home runs on, on those misses. I think a lot of times it'd be 95, 96 and yeah, with that extendo ball that he throws. Do you think at this point though, that what we see is what we get for chase? Because I think he's been below 50th percentile in Chase every year since 2021. Yeah, I don't think I don't think he has good, great command. And I think, you know, one thing that Nick Pollock, you know, brings up a lot about him is about Freddie Peralta, is that he's a little bit cross body. So if you do want to kind of.

Watch out for this on a mechanical level, I think it's possible that being cross body is is tough on on it. The the biggest sort of cross body guy that I that I always think of is Jake Arietta. And he did have some good seasons where he cut and he had good walk rates. But I do wonder what his location pluses were, because he came into the league with the walk problem, you know, and left with a with a poor walk rate. And so I wonder, you know, do you just

figure out how to miss in the middle or what it was? But you know, he was he was a little bit up and down over his career and and so maybe maybe Nick is right that you know these cross-body guys and what I mean by that is like you kind of your foot lands, you know, in a place like watch Adam, a lot of, you know, to your foot lands in a place that you're sort of throwing over your foot. Like almost like, is there a good way to describe that? No, you know what I mean? Coming over your plant leg.

Yeah, you're coming over your plant. Yeah. Yeah, that it's you your plant leg. Yeah. Yeah, it's... You can just think about it, like mechanically. It's a little bit weird. You would seemingly fall off balance more easily. I mean, because you're comfortable with it. I know that's not true, but it just seems like you're creating something to trip over almost. You're putting more pressure on your plant leg and your mechanics to be true when

you're like the worst example I could think of something that just fell off was Willie Peralta back in the day, extreme fall off towards first base. Like, I wondered, like, how could you ever command anything like that? But one last thought here, like, how could you ever command anything like that? But one last thought here, Arietta got away with some kind of improved walk rate for exactly two seasons where he went from guy that was kind of in the high sevens, low eight range. He was in double digits earlier in his career, got down under 7% for those two amazing years with the Cubs. And as age 28 and 29, I just wonder like, is there a peak age for command?

You know, we've seen probably a similar amount of Freddie in the big leagues that we saw of Arietta up to that point in their respective careers, maybe a slightly higher workload for Freddie, but I don't know, like, are we comfortable saying that as a command grade or as a command score, like we wouldn't comfortable saying that as a as a command grade or as a command score, like we wouldn't want to project more on a picture once we've seen X number of innings or once they've reached a certain age?

Bibi per nine looks like it does. Peak the aging curves that Bill Petty did are from 2012, so it's a little bit old now, but it does look like they kind of they peak definitely later than strikeout rates and later than velocity. And it does look kind of like 28, 29. So that might be your other exception to the, okay, like I'm going to take a chance on these guys up until they turn 30. Like Dylan Cease is in that right now. He's 28 and having the best walk rate season of his career,

8.5%. I mean, it's. Yeah. But what's he going to look like in three years? That's an interesting question. Right. But maybe it was a very smart idea to be all, I mean, once he got traded to San Diego, it changed a lot about how much we liked the team contacts, the home park.

A lot of things were different. Yeah. He's been consistently, I think in my top 15 all year or so. Yeah. But I think maybe there is that one extra level Freddie can reach. There's just a couple of different things that have to happen. If he's going to get there. Let's take a look at where the money went this weekend.

Kind of a funny group of bids, of course. Zebby Matthews was popular in the many leagues where he was available. We discussed them a lot last week. He's got a two-step coming through this week too, so it'll be fun to see how that plays out at the Padres and home against the Cardinals. But I saw some interest in Matthew Boyd who is back and part of that guardians rotation. He pitched well against the Cubs in his first start of 2024, six Ks, no walks, five in a third innings, one earned run. And he's got a two step. I had no interest in Matthew Boyd this weekend because the first

start is at the Yankees and I don't want to even, even in the league where my ratios are banged up and there's a few of those, I didn't think it was going to be worth the risk to take that first start in order to get one home against Texas. That might be kind of closer to average in terms of difficulty right now. He's, he's done pretty well. Um, you know, with poor stuff, plus numbers in the past. Um, but you know, for his career, four nine two ERA and a one 32 whip is not. So I'm not gonna sort of reach in for it to go into Yankee Stadium one little note on On stuff plus so one of the things that we are gonna do is Maybe adjust a little bit for left-handers and give them some credit

Because what we did do this last offseason was in terms of stuff. We told the machine when it was a same-handed we told the machine when it was a same-handed interaction. Like we told the machine this is same-handed this is opposite-handed in order to get out the idea that some shapes are like a sweeper you know and that reduced some of the stuff plus on sweepers because you're like oh well you can't really throw them to as a righty to lefties because they'll beat you up And so we thought I thought that would capture a lot of it What we what some people found recently Matan Kay on Twitter? Found recently was that if you just graph stuff plus for left-handers and right-handers the graphs don't line up

and handers, the graphs don't line up. And, um, so it's possible that left handers are still being undervalued a little bit. And I think the source of it is they're just fewer left-handers. So you just see them less often. So they get a little bit of that sort of scarcity boost, you know? So, uh, plenty of models just put their finger on the scale. We haven't done that yet, but I think we will to just sort of make those two graphs line up

in some sort of adjustment. So that's probably part of what's probably going to be a fairly major adjustment to stuff plus this offseason. That it looks like Max Bay and I are going to present at first pitch. Very cool. Yeah. And if you hadn't, I've been signed up already. You can do that at baseball HQ dot com.

Join us in the desert October 31st through November 3rd. Always a good time watching fall league games, presentations, just hanging out, talking baseball, drafting teams if you want to. If you like drafting teams in November, you can do it. We'll have a live pod while we're there I believe as well. So Boyd is to me sort of like just a guy for now. I'm curious to see what happens down the stretch. He could end up being important for the Guardians. Like that's possible just based on the way that rotation is built right now and has had a couple guys

like Tristan McKenzie really underperform and create this sort of void for at least a playoff caliber starter to possibly emerge for this team. Yeah, you know, the slider, despite the stuff numbers, I think is a pretty good pitch. And he's he's always been sort of pushing the slider ahead. So, you know, I think that Cleveland needs Matthew Boyd more than our fancy teams did. I had somebody like Luis LRT's ahead of him, uh, who's got a two step.

Um, I forget what my exact two step rankings were. Maybe if I do my FAB results and show me really quickly, um, because now this is going to show you who you want. It's not going to show you who you bid on. Anyway, I got, uh, I got, you know, I got Luis LRT's in that league. And then I think another two started was Joey Estes. I had Joey Estes at a mad boy. Joey Estes has two starts at home against Tampa.

And I forget who the second start is, but he's home all week. He's got good command. He's got he's got a decent slider. I think they're probably more similar than you'd like them to be. I thought Martin Perez also had a two step, both at Petco. He's got a 21 to three strikeout to walk ratio in his last three starts.

Yeah, his strikeout rate has really jumped with San Diego. What is he doing differently? Well, last three starts were against the Pirates, Marlins and Rockies. So. That might help a little. I mean, that's, I think he may have tweaked something also

in terms of pitch mix, but the schedule has helped. Yeah. Let me see, partial seasons, pitches. He is throwing his sinker less. Oh, he's just throwing a sinker less and throws a curveball more. Yeah. He's just throwing a few pass balls.

He's a little tweak. There you go. That was kind of fun. What about, he doesn't have two this week. He's only got one. Osvaldo Bito, home matchup against the Rays, 17 to six strikeout to walk ratio over 18 innings in his last three starts.

Got a couple of wins sprinkled in there as well. Found back end useful starter in Oakland or someone who's just running a little bit hot right now. I mean, the pitch mix change here is replacing sinkers with cutters. So that must be what he's doing against left handers instead of or to right. He's got a four seam cutter. he's really reduced the sinker, he's increased the change-up usage. Stuff Plus says, amazingly, that he's got two above-average fastballs, maybe even three, with a plus slider.

Wow. That's pretty good. I had him on my trees, so I had been looking at him, but I did not think that would be true that he had that pitch mix. So anyway, I would say that he's definitely a home home start. I would definitely start him at home. I'd be a little bit nervous about starting on the road until I got a little bit more information about how he's getting lefties out. He was cheap. He was single digits in even 15 team leagues for me this weekend.

So I felt it was just worth the risk because if I don't like what I see against the Rays or if I like something better this coming weekend, move on and just kind of let someone else decide if it's all going to work. But yeah, multiple fastballs that are good in a slider. Like I think there could actually be a little something there for BDO. Good, good sign. I got pretty excited about this. I got Jace Young in three leagues. And in one of my leagues is the main event league

where I have $50 out of 1000 left for the rest of the season. And we didn't, we were thinking about maybe just taking the whole week off. And I said, you know what, why don't I just put a dollar on all the kind of dollar or two on all the hot bids this week? Like what if people forget about Zeby Matthews and we just get Zeby Matthews for $2. And so we got Jason Young for $2 because I was like, you know, somebody's going to bid more than this and nobody did.

And I don't really know why because he looks pretty solid in terms of walks, strikeouts, max EV, hard hit rate, NAAA, power. I think they're just gonna play him. I mean, are people really worried that they wouldn't play him? But why would they call him up and not play him? So I don't understand I have him You know I did look and see that rasball has him projected in the 200 So maybe it's just that projections are bad But you have to remember that projections are going to be bad for every rookie and his projections are not even actually that bad like Zips has him with a 97 WRC plus for a rookie. That's pretty impressive because you know The way that projection works that they're gonna they're gonna regress all rookies down to

Rookies what rookies usually do not league average. They're gonna regress into what rookies usually do So I think you know I think, you know, I think the rookie average is like 80 WRC plus because there's a lot of people who come up and aren't any good. But I think he's going to be good. So I'm happy with him. He's been playing and he's just gave him third base and they sent Justin Henry Malloy down and Jay Zung is going to get a shot. So I'm really happy that I got him in even though I in TGFBI and this is so annoying. I paid $31 and nobody else put a bit on him.

And that annoys me. But otherwise, Seranthan Dominguez, Michael Kopec were big wins, big wins for people. I think they're both the closers for their teams. And I'm just happy that in my main event, I had COPEC ahead of time. And a lot of places I've had COPEC for awhile. And I think I hope I've been telling you guys. Yeah. Have I been telling people to get COPEC? Yeah. Little bit. Yeah. Okay. I hope so. So Anthony Dominguez, I think that, you know, they just got three guys with plus stuff and we're just hoping one of them wouldn't be as wild as normal.

And it's Serentheny Dominguez. What's amazing though is Craig Kimbrell does not have a save since July 7th. Dude, it's August 19th. Like, it's a long time to go without getting a save. I mean, I'll draft him as my third closer next year, just hoping to get 15, 20 saves out of him in the first half and knowing that I'll probably drop him at some point. Cause this is not the first time he's had this type of year. Not at all. I mean, that seems almost to be what he does now. Yeah. Yeah. It's fades, fades late. Um, I think it's interesting too with San Anthony Dominguez, we're seeing an improved walk rate

this year. I mean, that's always been a lingering flaw for him. Really interested to see if there's anything else the Orioles change about him. Home runs been a problem throughout the year, both stops so far, but I think the park will help reduce the concerns about that with Dominguez too. So there's a chance that he's the guy for the rest of the year. Felix Bautista comes back next year and he'll be their closer for 2025, assuming no hiccups. But at least for the short term, that was a pretty inexpensive bid. There was one leg I

partnered up with our buddy, J.H. 15-14 was the winning bid on Dominguez with Kelvin Fauche as the drop. And I thought that's great because the Orioles win a lot more than the Marlins do. And I like Dominguez's skills a bit more than Kelvin Fosch's as well. So a little bit of a nudge in both directions there. Anybody else you're excited to get this weekend? In one league, I just revamped my entire bench in one fell swoop, getting Jace Young, dropping Addison Barger. He's just not playing. You know, he's kind of playing against lefties, I think he's not playing enough. And I picked

up Will Wagner dropping Dylan Moore, the the I think that JP Crawford is getting closer to coming home. And I just noticed that they've they've got somebody they're playing over Dylan Moore at shortstop. So Dylan Moore is not necessarily playing every day anymore. And he's not playing at shortstop. I thought they would just install him at shortstop and that has not been the case. So I picked up Will Wagner for Dylan Moore.

Just hoping for some batting average really. Will Wagner is the son of Billy Wagner. He's 26 years old and I think the reason he has taken so long to get here is that if you take his WRC plus and adjust it for his age you get a lot closer to 100. So in 2024 if he's at AAA with Houston with a 122 WRC+, at 24, I think you might actually adjust that down 20 points to basically league average. Because he's a little bit on the older side. So 26 years old, though, the flip side of that is he's in his peak age range, so this

is going to, you know, athletically and in terms of baseball skills, this should be the best time of his life. And the one of the reasons why I like picking him up is he makes contact. So I I don't know what the true talent power is. That's been all over the place, but he makes contact, has a decent approach to the plate. You know, I'm this is a hits play for me. You know, when I put him in, I'm looking for some weak offenses,

putting him in a sort of backup in my position. And the last one that I did was Ramon Larianno dropping Mitch Hanniger. Mitch Hanniger is just dealing with some some nagging injuries. And I saw Ramon and and he's always a pleasure to see him. He says, put me in the line of every day and everything's gonna be fine. Of course every player says that but he said that one of the things that was tough in Cleveland was the sporadic playing time. He's been playing you know very often in Atlanta. It's a nice home

park for home runs. He's got the best barrel rate of his career and I think it's not gonna give me a lot in batting average but I'm hoping three, four homers and a couple stolen bases. I mean that's that's what you're looking for at this point of the season. So those are some deep league guys I think all of them. Although Jace Young I think is pick-uppable in any league. If you have that sort of spot where it's like I'm trying to catch lightning in a bottle You know if you don't necessarily have to like pick them up and start them in your 10 teamer Then yeah, put them on your bench in a 10 teamer. I

Had to pick up Gavin Lux in a 12 teamer Inexpensively had to drop Jordan Westberg We still have a timetable from to come back from that hand injury but just needed an MI eligible player to have at the ready. And I just wanted to bring it up because I figured now that I have Gavin Lux on another roster, there's a very good chance that the heater he's been on, kind of going back to early July, will come to a screeching halt because I have been a long-term believer in Gavin Lux and much like my fated belief in Victor Robles, I just,

I can't benefit from this. This looks like a completely different player though. If you go back to July 1st, 311, 384, 541 for Gavin Lux, six homers during that span. That's the Gavin Lux I was hoping for three years ago. That's the Bruce Batspeed guy. Yeah, more Batspeed and playing in prominent spots in that lineup. I mean, look at where he's been hitting the last, geez, three-ish weeks now, between third and fifth in the Dodgers lineup.

Who saw that coming? I gave up on it. This is why they didn't trade him, I guess. I guess. Good for them for, for riding it out, but we'll see, we'll see if it continues. Like I just wanted to say, I'm warning everybody right now. I have a luck on more teams. So if it ends, it is my fault and I apologize in advance for that. We're going to head out on our way out the door.

A reminder, you can get a subscription to the athletic for $2 a month for the first year at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. You can find Eno on Twitter at EnoSarris, find me at Derek VanRiper, find the pod at rates and barrels. And again, you can join the discord using the link in the show description. Oh, one last thing. I'm gonna be at the Saber seminar on Friday.

I'll tell it at a different time in a different podcast, but I'm gonna have to say it a couple of times. I'm gonna be at Saber seminar this weekend in Chicago. Friday night, this Friday night, we're gonna do a meetup at the Beer Temple, six o'clock, Beer Temple, Chicago, this Friday. Be there, be there, be there. Thanks for watching!