Rates & Barrels - Statcast Bat Tracking, Blake Snell's Big Misses, Spencer Strider's Curveball & Cutter Deep Dive

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

Eno, Trevor and DVR discuss Statcast's new Bat Tracking technology and the potential benefits of having that information as it becomes publicly available in 2024. Plus, they discuss Blake Snell as a free agent still available in March in a league desperate for quality starting pitchers, the importance of Spencer Strider's developing curveball, the challenges of getting ready for an earlier Opening Day, and take a deep dive into the cutter. Rundown 1:10 Trevor's Takeaways From Oakland's Fans Fest 7:38 Coming Soon! Statcast's Bat Tracking Leaderboards 15:20 Blake Snell's Big-Miss Dominance 21:56 League-Wide Similarities in Contract Offers & Player Valuations 29:37 The Clear Need for Snell in San Francisco 32:28 The Importance of Spencer Strider's Developing Curveball 38:26 Challenges for the Dodgers and Padres Ramping Up for Early Opening Day in Korea 42:48 Cutter Deep Dive 54:09 Live Q&A: Camilo Doval's Unusual Cutter Movement, Mo's Cutter v. Maddux's Two-Seamer to Lefties, Evaluating Pitchers Coming Back from Tommy John surgery Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Trevor on Twitter: @IamTrevorMay Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic for just $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Raids and Barrels. It is Friday, March 1st. Derek Van Ryper, Eno Saris, Trevor May here with you on this Friday. Welcome to March. This is amazing. We're less than four weeks away from opening day. It's coming up quick. We've got the series in Korea happening a week ahead of that. So on this episode, we're going to cover a lot of ground again. We have a new StatCast metric that's going to measure misses for individual pitches. It's almost like Trevor wished for it a couple weeks ago, and it happened. So we're going to talk about that, how we might use that information as it becomes publicly available over the course of this season. Spencer Strider working on a curveball. We'll talk about the importance of that pitch for him.

We'll talk about the difficulty of preparing for that early start in Korea for the Dodgers and Padres. And our deep dive this week will be into the cutter. So everything you ever want to know about cutters, we're going to try and cover that at some point during the show now trevor you had a big weekend last week and you were at the a's fan fest and you said of all the fan fest you've ever been to that may have been the biggest one ever yeah at least uh you know the ones i've been to use with the twins uh aside from the first one when i was there and i think it was 2013 when it was still in the Metrodome before they tore it down.

In Target Field, you can't see that many people together all in one place, but it was pretty crazy. It was pretty crazy, and it was standing room only and for like a city block. So if that puts it into perspective for you, it was pretty impressive. You said they ran out of beer? They ran out of beer, but right at the right time. Literally, got to like right in the end and then like and now go home and over see you later so i think all the the vendors because they got a bunch of vendors last uh last minute uh people aren't familiar with that they had someone drop out and then it kind of rallied a bunch of other smaller breweries to join in so um they actually got a bunch of people participating right at the last minute for that too and it just worked out

really well the people who put it together were were very very very excited and happy with how it went yeah i like those guys last dive bar great job kind of an organization that puts out you know t-shirts merch and uh tries to keep like fandom separate from team ownership you know, T-shirts, merch, and tries to keep, like, fandom separate from team ownership. You know, it's like this line they were walking. Like, I talked to the fieldwork owner about the situation because Drake dropped out. Drake Brewing dropped out, and they serve beers in the Coliseum. They have some sort of contract with the Coliseum.

So, you know, there was speculation that was never confirmed that, you know, that had something to do with it, that the A's had leveraged it or that that's why they weren't there. But Barry from Fieldwork was pretty funny because he's like, this is the line that A's fans have to walk. He was like, I'm a fan of the A's as an idea and their roots in this community, but I'm not a fan of the A's right now because of ownership. And it was just, it was, it was interesting to see that all laid out. That's how difficult it is to be an A's fan right now. I've seen that a lot too. It was, it was, you know, I was asked that question, like, what do we, what would you like to see out of this day?

Because, you know, you don't want it to turn into like a, like a rally, you know, where, where it's just like, you know, cursing the names of the people making the decisions. Cause it's just like not productive and it's not as, you're not enjoying hanging out with the people that like the same things as you as much. So, so it was, it definitely was a celebration and stayed a celebration the whole time. And it was just a lot. I was actually blown away with how supportive and nice everyone was being. Because you get big groups of people together.

Sometimes people don't get along very well. But there was none of that. It was genuinely the most positive, happy place under the circumstances. I knew there was going to be a little bit. I thought there was going to be a little bit of thought there was gonna be like a little bit of negativity going around but there wasn't that much it was just like a lot of people enjoying um like sharing off their you know their weird A's merch because man has the A's had some weird merch over the years I signed some weird stuff weird stuff a lot of first it was a lot of fun though and I was just really fun seeing everyone's like that the

joy on everyone's face especially the guys put it together. They were, they were literally blown away. I just kept getting a kick out of it over and over again. Just watching their, like they got a new piece of information, then their face would light up and they get all excited again. So,

uh, it was, it was a really, really cool, cool thing to be a part of. Well, now I have to ask, what was the weirdest thing you signed last weekend?

A clock that is half of a bowling pin with an ace clock in the middle it was signed by like like over the last 15 years by a bunch of uh a's i was like where did you get this and the guy's like no idea i mean it still works and i hang it up when i take it home so i'm like he hangs it up i mean his wife loves it i don't know i don't know i just want to know how the idea happened and then like what the process was to get it made. I don't know when. It looked like something made like the 80s or something had to be. So someone saw it off the top of a bowling pin?

No, no. It was like a plastic bowling pin. So it was bigger than a bowling pin. Oh, half the other direction. It was in the shape of like for someone's bowling alley that wanted A's merch, I guess. I don't know. It's in a man cave now. I just like how the person who has it doesn't even know where it came from. He's like, I guess. I don't know. It's in a man cave now. I just like how the person who has

it doesn't even know where it came from. He's like, ah. It's cool though, isn't it? I'm like, yeah. I bet you I could not find another one. He's like, I bet you couldn't. I bet you this might be the only one. That reminds me of my weirdest piece of merch which is this giant's nesting doll.

That's pretty weird. This is supposedly Buster Posey. And as you open it This is supposedly Buster Posey. Whoa. That's Buster Posey. And then this is Brandon Belt. That looks even less like Brandon Belt than the outside. The funniest thing is you open them all up

and the smallest one is Brandon Crawford. Yeah. Maybe this came out at a time when Crawford was still the young guy or something. Maybe the youngin'. Not anymore. My family found this in Czechoslovakia. Okay.

That might be the bowling pin clock. It's pretty strange. About as random as it gets. At least where you found it, that's bizarre, given where you live and where that thing actually came from. But yes, I did miss the backwards hat email if you're watching us

live on YouTube. The Live Hive. We need to nickname people that watch us live. Shout out to everybody who's actually out there watching us live, dropping us comments. I like the Live Hive. Stream team belongs to the No Dunks guys, so we need something of our own. But Live Hive is the clubhouse leader for us right now. I have a lot of anxiety now about what i wear on the show after on the first episode i think it was people thought i was wearing a collar so you're wearing a collared shirt on the

show i was like no cold not wearing a jacket i got i got northern california always hoodie constant stress now when i think about this live stream and what I'm actually going to wear on it. But let's get to some topics. Let's get to some stuff that's really of broad appeal. The bat tracking leaderboards. These are going to come soon to Baseball Savant. And what they're going to look at with bat tracking technology is the distance by which hitters are missing pitches, which is really interesting. Because when Trevor was talking about this two weeks ago, I thought, oh, that's a few years away.

We're not going to see anything like that. So the first question I have is how do you want to utilize this information? We don't know what exactly will be on the leaderboards just yet. There's a couple pieces they wrote. Both David Adler and Mike Petriello wrote about it within the last week. What would you like to do with this type of information? How would it make you a better analyst? What would it tell you about a pitcher's arsenal?

I want to know what stat Eno's going to make up first. I want to know. Nasty plus or something? That'd be really cool. Yeah, for me, I just think, you know, you kind of break down, like, what is, like, the distance that a ball is being missed by? What does that represent?

And I think there's a couple big things. One is that can be, you know, guys deciding to swing is by what they're perceiving. So you can say it moved way more than they thought it was going to move. So they had a beat on it at the beginning, and then it just went, like, three, four or five inches farther out or in or up or down that they thought it was going to. So then they missed because of that. Or is it they didn't actually have a beat on it at any given time and they just guessed. So like those those two things are, I think, both a function of nastiness. But one is like, how much is the pitch moving in a vacuum?

So like attaching it to that would be a thing. And then I think like maybe even attaching it to because I know a lot of people are are working on, you know, release point, you know, x axis y axis, like differences in there and like how that creates, you know, deception and things or even like extension. So there's something in there too, I think attaching extension and all those things to also how much is being missed by where you can say that how deceiving somebody is or not. I just think there's something interesting in those two. I think this is a deception stat. When you look at the names that Petriello came up with in the piece, the biggest misses are not people you'd expect. The very biggest miss was Sam Hentges. It was 4.7 feet.

Trey Turner missed a Sam Hentges breaking ball by 4.7 feet. I remember that. That's crazy. It has to do with the fact that basically Trey Turner gave his fastball swing. And then Sam Hentges throws, you know, throws 95, but he also throws a 75 mile an hour curveball. So Turner missed not only in terms of location, but also just timing. That's how it's for an F7P. And so, you know, that's what I think is being measured here a little bit is, you know, sort

of what happens when you sequencing and deception is sort of what's going on here i think tunneling maybe to some extent but if trey turn a swing like a fastball on that curveball he just couldn't tell that was a curveball at any moment right no no no no point did he see it was a curveball and yeah that's why i think it's deception it's about like your release points being similar your body points being similar, your body movements being similar, like the hitter not being able to catch any sort of clue of what's coming. But that makes it a really difficult stat for me

because it's not going to be a stat that's about that pitch in a vacuum, even though it might be presented as such. You know, you have to attach that miss to something so you attach that miss to that pitch but really it's that pitch and the pitch before it yeah or several pitches for one thing i think it's going to be a better indicator of trends for guys i think like big sample sizes will give you an idea of the type of maybe it's a potential or a predictive stat a little bit and then also if i were a pitcher i would look at hitters and their types of pitches

and how much their misses are of those pitches. That might indicate their ability to see that pitch. For a guy like Javi Baez, for example, who swings at, well, everything, he guesses a lot. And you could learn a lot about which pitch is he missing by the most often. That might signify a a big yeah yeah you could learn about the hitters almost exactly exactly where are they guessing the most that would be something interesting to know if i were going in a face a guy i think it's going to be more valuable the more context you're at yeah like if you start talking about counts and pitch types and what came before it,

maybe you'd be able to find stuff that Stuff Plus is finding about if you double up fastballs. This is the guy who got the biggest misses on a double-up fastball. That's a trend. He very clearly looks for that breaking ball after a fastball. And there's a lot of those. Guys get into patterns like that, even the best hitters. There's so much value finding little things like that

where you have a count and a pitch that you can latch onto and remember. And then when that comes up, you feel the confidence in throwing that. It skyrockets. And so that's really the name of the game. The more of those you can find as a pitcher, the more often you can leverage that in the proper situations. It spells success a lot. It's really interesting.

But again, like you said, there's just a lot that needs to go into it, I think, before you can really, you know, narrow some of that stuff down. It'll tell us something about the pitcher's deception. And it'll tell us something about the hitter's mindset, which I think those are the two areas that I would be most most interested in it. Because then what I would look for is maybe correlating the biggest misses with certain characteristics of releases. Like we've talked about how Bryce Miller has a very over-the-top release for his fastball. And then you can see his sweeper release kind of because since he's such an over-the-top guy, when he releases the sweeper.

Oh, it's your birthday today. We still can't figure that out, guys. So that's probably going to go for the same the same thing yeah didn't happen that time since his release is out the side nobody swings at that pitch so i would assume that he would have like low swings and misses people would be like either swing at it because they know what's coming and they want to hit it or don't swing at it because he can't command that that thing's gonna go flying out the zone anyway. So he tried to use it for freeze takes and stuff,

but maybe the stat would tell you, hey, dude, they see this thing. If you have a really small swing and miss a number on it versus other pitch types like that, I would feel like that would tell you that they can see it. Right, especially if you compare that to a stuff number. If you can look at the characteristics of a pitch that way. and so this is nasty because bryce miller's stuff plus on his sweeper is great but he can't use it yeah exactly so then you go so why can't i use it and then maybe this gives another layer of context so that you can make it's not very deceptive or

they're seeing it or it's not tunneling or whatever that can point you in that direction to make that adjustment that's i'm i'm so i'm so. Hey, all you spreadsheet nerds out there, you're about to have a lot of fun. Yeah, this should be a good addition to things. One of my favorite stats from the David Adler story about this was that Blake Snell had 109 of his 234 strikeouts were finished with his curveball. 80% of those were below the zone. And Snell led the league last season of whiffs that were by more than one and a half feet. They tried to use that as kind of like a big miss cutoff. He had 27 swings and misses that were off by a foot and a half or more.

In order to set that up, though, he had to throw enough two-strike fastballs, right? So if he throws a two-strike fastball to somebody and then the next batter comes up, he's like, hmm, I'm going to get the fastball curveball. He's dialed in with it. So what can you do? But kind of guess at that point. But he's got a perfect tunnel with his fastball, too. That's also very helpful. If we're speaking things into existence here, then I would love more details about the bats movement through space, because I know that teams have bat path grades for hitters.

And I also know that teams don't quite trust them yet. And this is like sort of leading edge stuff. This is like where stuff plus was like five years ago. It's like, people have it. Some people in the organization think it's bunk and they're like, don't listen to that bat path grade. Other people are like, let's draft on this.

This is important. And then every year they try to improve it. You know, they're trying to make it better. So it's sort of, I would say nation. And so I would like to play along with that. I would like to also have a bat path grade. You know, my, my idea was that like we have with stuff and location where you pull out how good the stuff is and you pull out how good location is for pitchers.

I would like to do the same thing for hitters where you basically have a path grade. So how good is their bat speed and how good is their loft? Basically, how good is their, maybe even their bat variability. Can they have a flat path and, and,

and, and a loft path. I would like to give them a grade. That's the stuff of the hitter. The stuff of the hitter is his loft path. I would like to give them a grade that's the stuff of the hitter. The stuff of the hitter is his bat path. And then I would like to separate out his plate discipline in much more granular fashion, like we're starting to see

some people do anyway, a location plus for hitters. That would be like selectivity plus. So you'd have like a path grade and a selectivity grade. And I think you could do some cool stuff with like you know what age is better what develops more you know what kind of hitters do you want like what can you coach up can you get a guy with a great path

and coach up his selectivity you know or is it you have to get a guy with selectivity and improve his his his bat path like what's natural what's not natural uh that actually starts to get you start to shed some light on a lot of those things then maybe we can finally put the put the rest of this debate with everyone who loves to just yell about aaron judges swing swing uh uh how we learn and panic because everyone's like that's not how you hit well when you're six seven you're Aaron judging. You're super strong. It is. And it works really well.

I just think, I think all of these things are valid and it's contextual based on the person. But once you start to get these ideas of what types of, like you said, what you're, how you're, you're grading bat pass. Then you start to get nuanced.

Like this type of bat path is you'd be graded higher because you're, you naturally do it. And you might pick this up same way. It's like a pitch grip or learning a new pitch. Some guys just naturally can pick it up faster because of the way that they already throw the ball. That same thing exists. I love it because as a pitcher too, I want to know all this stuff as well.

If I know a guy's bad, but he can't loft, but he can block off high heaters, I might throw him way more breaking balls. I might, knowing that his natural ability to, even if he sees it, he can't swing correctly in order to hit this, to do a lot of damage against me. I might just throw it a bunch of times.

If even if it's my fourth pitch, because it doesn't really matter. There's, there's a lot of that inefficiencies like that. You can learn. The flip side was that Matt Olson telling me that like, once I learned about ride from pitchers, like as a concept and what those numbers meant in the scouting report, then I developed a way to hit the high fastball.

You know, it's the same thing that I think he got it from Simeon, who was like, you know, you have to hit the top half of the ball. It's like kind of that Alex Bregman thing. But it required some knowledge. He had to like know what it meant when somebody had 20 IVB and what that meant for him in terms of what his approach would be so i mean i i think all this stuff is valuable i can't i can't imagine uh obviously that's my bias but i can't imagine as a player being like no i don't want to know that like i'd just be like well then you're you're behind most of the time they don't want to do the they don't do the work to process it but if it becomes easy then they'll do it. There's going to be a pretty wide range of players

that can make an adjustment like the one you just described with Olsen. That seems very focused, very intense. I hear some guys that just figure it out and don't do it

with the detailed process. They just realize with an adjustment, they can't even fully articulate it necessarily because people are just different. Some people just learn by doing and figure something out.

Other people break down the process in great detail come up with a new plan build on that plan and do what matt olsen did and everyone was like stunned when the k rate came down and he unlocked this this new level right matt olsen turned into a superstar he was a really good player with power for a long time but that's really cool that that was the adjustment that he made kind of thinking about it more from what pitchers are trying to do well then i asked him you know why is that strikeout rate creeping back up because you had it that was such a great adjustment you had like a 16 strikeout rate that year what happened after that and he's like well you know i get so good at targeting those those heaters with ride that it does open up the bottom of the

zone for the pitcher because they know now that i can spank that that four seamer up you know then they're going to be trying to you know pepper me in low you know that breaking ball but you know he used to be pretty good at that too you know so if he has both tricks in his bag you know there could be a season there could be another better season for metals he guesses right every time on the slider and puts his loft swing on the sliders and guesses right on the foreseam every time. Just a little bit more lucky. He hits like 300 with 50 homers.

He has that ability. Yeah, he does. 100%. What he just did last season was absurd. 54 homers at 283 with a 389 OBP and slugged 604. Just bonkers what he was able to do. Get better than that for sure. Yeah, if there's another level with Matt Olsen,

holy smokes. Blake Snell, just kind of going back to him for a minute, still a free agent on March 1st. And there's a handful of reasons why I think this is the case, but Trevor, I was going to ask you about this. Do teams generally present offers that are very similar?

Are the processes in most front offices for offering up contracts and free agency so similar that if you're millions of dollars apart, it takes forever to actually get to a contract you'd want? Is that what's happening with Snell, where the collection of teams that are interested are all just way under what he's actually worth compared to what he and his agent think he's worth? Yes, that is very common. So here's an example. We got, when I went into free agency in 21,

we got asked like, what's he looking for? And that was the first question by about 18 teams. And we kind of gave them general, general, like around this range, around this guy, and then they kind of came up with a number and then yeah like three years 10 a year or whatever or 80 year 324 or whatever it was and i think it was like two for 16 kind of what we were looking for i'll just say i know what i'm retired uh and then suddenly we got nine teams calling back two for 12 all of them now now like there's not a lot of wiggle room

there like that's kind of a logical right they're like okay you want two for six and two for 12 like that's a let's start to move these things meet in the middle yeah see where you guys come back from come back at and uh and the way it happened was uh everyone did that but you know what team didn't the mets the mets go two for one sure and we're like we're already way ahead so yeah and they were just ready to go and that it happened on on Thanksgiving so it just happened that day like just boom back and forth about an hour over and that's kind of how it happens when one team separates himself from a pack you go but when you're in the dollar amounts that Blake Snell is is is asking for and should probably command somewhere fairly close,

if three teams are all like, you know, we're going to go, you want six years, you know, 180 or whatever it is, and we want to give you four years, 120, and then three teams like four years, 120. It's kind of hard to be like, hmm. They're not supposed to, but like they know. Everyone's like, yeah, we're offering them to wink. And then it's, you know, they're kind of like, have a general idea. And, and then they get

they glean some information from the agent. So like, yeah, that is what happens. They don't like it when another team is forcing them into a bidding war. Like they don't want to do that to each other, because they're kind of all in this together to keep costs down. So like, they're not happy with, for example, Steve Cohen, who's over there just like i'll take him then change the market they don't like that so everyone's kind of tightening their belt right now and uh they're kind of doing it together a little bit but i think that eventually blake we're gonna get to a point where teams are like feeling the pressure to make their team a little better he's just too it's just too good of a prize i think to add to your he's just too good so eventually like i don't think it's going to be that much longer i wouldn't be surprised if he might be the next one the monty

one is the one that's i don't have any clue what's going on there i have no idea it's a it's an enigma enrique hernandez came out and was basically he's like more in your in your bucket where you know like he only he knows what he he wants one year he's gonna only get one year you know at this point is is and he's not asking for like snow money and so that's why he came out and said yeah i got all the same offers and he's like he basically he didn't use the word collusion because it's such like a that's such a loaded word but he did reference it and said you you know, use a capital C. The thing that I think is interesting is that player valuation, to a certain extent, has come to a place where it's the same in most teams. And even Enrique talked about that, where he's like, yes, they're all running the same programs. They're all running, you know, you may not like Winslow Replacement. they're all running, you know, you may not like Winslow replacement and there are some difference between, you know, different teams about what they put into their version of Winslow replacement,

but it's a very similar construct where every team is trying to boil down all the things you do on the field into runs and then turn that into runs above some sort of baseline. And so, and then turn that into a value. So this, the, the structure is similar for almost every team. So my question has always been, is it collusion if the machines did it? They're not necessarily talking to each other because if they talk to each other and there's some record of it,

then they know there's really big ramifications for that. So there's no GM calling another GM and be like, what you offering this guy? I don't think that's happening. No, that's true. That's what they used to do and they got busted and it was a big big deal and the players have not trusted you know owners and gm since that day but what's how different is it i mean i i don't know this is like i'm not trying to put you on the spot but like how different is it if the machines do it than if if if the the the

people are doing it like if they all turn to the machines but the machine spit out one and five that's that's what we're offering you i mean like from your perspective it sounds like from the player's perspective it just feels like collusion either way you know it's like okay you guys all offer the same deal i think you're right and it's just the connotation that comes along with collusion i think the intent is part of that word um and being on the nose is kind of important like you're telling someone else something because you first know it's going to benefit you, but also long-term it's going to benefit all of you combined. That's collusion when it's conscious, I guess.

But then like, you know, teams are building their teams based on war a lot. Like it's just kind of a general term, but yeah, everyone does some level of that. You're right. And which sucks for relievers. Let me just point that out. Yeah. It doesn't matter't matter who relieves we're gonna win the same number of games and now the playoffs the way they are that number has gone down so those are all going to affect the

markets as well but there always has been a level of like setting a baseline and sometimes the player sets that too so like it's logical for them to all start like for example for me like you know like what other two for 12 just sounds kind of like a bottom range of that. It just kind of does. And the way that they work also is off comps, right? Like, yeah, Trace works off comps. There are standards that every team's going off of. Didn't you say in your thing, you said, like this guy?

Yeah. No. Yeah. A hundred percent. Like that contract. We want like the the the whatever the the contract the blobby blog got yeah that's how markets are set you're compared to other guys just the same way the arbitration works so yes there's there's all these like you kind of

you have to agree on standards a little bit to get your negotiation over so like if you're agreeing on the same standards a bunch of different teams of course they're going to be similar so like there's that too then you know some word can be said or something that like alludes that another that everyone else is also doing that you're like huh again and they're like oh everyone must be offering this and is that collusion no because they're not talking to each other that was on you like so it's it's a delicate dance it feels silly at times but uh yeah it's borderline there's a lot of gray area there a lot let's make predictions where does snail end up after all this i keep saying the giants it just makes the most sense to me they're desperate there's two things that

make them desperate they're the number five starter just went down with an elbow injury injury the number four starter his elbow hurts keaton win tristan beck is having surgery today at stanford and their gm is on a one-year extension. Yeah, you should probably go get Blake. Yeah. If it's a problem, it's a problem for the next GM. Yeah, they're trying to do the Bellinger. They're like, please, just opt out after every year. You know, like, please. And that's the kind of deal that the Giants like to sign.

They signed Rodon to that. You know, they signed. They would rather. The Dodgers love that, too. So I wonder if the Dodgers are back in. But they spent so much. I mean, at this point, they got love that too. I wonder if the Dodgers are back in. They spent so much. It's crazy they got Snell too. We're over the lunch. We're over some more money on there.

Just do it. Go up. Get in the Cohen range and just wear it. You still got Japan. Remember you got Japan? You got Japan. Just sign the whole country. You have the whole country behind you now. The company in Yamamoto. Just think about how much they whole country behind you now. Yeah, everyone. Just think about how much they'll love Blake Snell.

That's all I'm saying. It's huge. It's just so strange to see a two-time Cy Young Award winner as a free agent in March and the lack of enthusiasm about adding someone that could be an impact starter when there is such a lack of starting pitching available every offseason. It's so bizarre. I'm with you guys on the Giants, too. That's where I've been the entire winter. They need the impact

because they've done the older veteran after 30, lots of injuries, but doesn't have that high ceiling, and it doesn't quite work. They need that ceiling starter. I mean, they got one with Logan Webb. Maybe they developed another with Kyle Harrison, but Webb, Snell, Harrison,

that's a lot better. Yeah, it changes that team so much. And just the back-to-back look of him and Webb. It's like they could not be different, more different. And I love that. I think that's really under-talked about is how big of it, like those guys back-to-back, same teams playing them both. It's so hard to make the adjustments day-to-day.

I'm a little surprised that he can't. We were just talking about this comp game, right? Like why can't he just be like, y'all just gave Carlos Rodon $170 million. You can't give me $170 million? Like, how functionally different is Blake Snow from Carlos Rodon? Really big arm, really big upside,

lefty, lots of strikeouts, not like, you know, some flaws and some health risks. I mean, it just seems like, just give me, just give me the Rodon unless he wants more than the Rodon. Huh? I don't see him wanting more than Rodon. I really don't. Cause he's, I think he would take 180 million, right? I think he would. Yeah. I think he'd be okay. The Giants just make too much sense though for Blake Snell. Let's move on. We, I was looking at the leaderboard in that story I was talking about earlier, the other leaders in whiffs of more than one and a half feet. Spencer Strider

is number two on that list. Eno and I have talked about Strider before, you know, the fastball slider heavy combo. He gets away with more middle middle fastballs than anybody because his fastball is so good. It's crazy. Now, he's developing a curveball. He's been using it in a couple of outings this spring. Trevor, you said something during our meeting earlier this week that made my ears perk up. You think this is a really important pitch for Strider, probably not even just in the long run, but also in the short run. Why is this third pitch so important for him as a guy that has been able to have so much success with two great pitches with that fastball slider combo one big reason this is something that i learned about being a very heavy four-seam fastball guy i actually just did a

little bit of a deep dive on strider as a as a breaking down his four-seam as one of the better ones that'll come out soon so you'll see that but uh like i think he has 244 strikeouts on fastballs in his career and 100 190 of them are swinging and missing but then now his slider was his best pitch last year when his forcing fastball year before he had a 20 run value on it in 2022 and then it went to a two run value the next year that literal same thing happened to me from 19 to 20 where i went to heavy slider in 20 and that raised my strikeout rate because i had such a reputation for fastballs so the problem is is when you throw four seam fastballs only, and you don't have a sinker or a cutter or something that gets off of barrels, but it's hit more often, you tend to get, it's a

high risk, high reward. So lots of swings and misses, but also at higher, highest, higher XCV lows, more home runs, easier to lift. You're up in the zone. So when it's one of two options, you're, you're, you're getting hurt by guessing more often than other people are, even though your stuff is great. So there is a, there is a point of like deception and keeping guys guessing a little bit in their head. You just, there's only so much you can do with patterns and with sequencing with two pitches, no matter how good they are. Jake DeGrom only gets hurt by home runs. That's it. So like when he gets hit around he gives up three home runs he always says this too he's like why does this i'm like because you throw

these two pitches and you throw a fastball up and you throw very hard so when guys are on you or you're not feeling as good look at strider and at the end of the year in the playoffs like last couple years down a tick or something he doesn't he's down a tick it's not zipping quite that much like what movement pinch do you have because technically you tend to when you lose your fastball zip your slider gets a little bit not sharp they're related it's arm speed and all this kind of stuff they're like similar pitches uh in order to get them to move the way you want them to miss move so like having a change up where you can just like lollipop stuff in it just moves a bunch it looks completely different everything else is so

important in those situations and i will say this i went and looked at that he had like a 17 run value on his slider he had a two run value on his change up so it's the same as this fastball so we had a really really successful change up last year he just didn't throw it very often so like it's not that he doesn't have a good one i just think now he's established it to where he can still throw his change up a straight change he throws or his two seam change whatever it is he can throw that now more and more and more i think and he'll have more and more success on it because where he can still throw his change up a straight change he throws or his two seam change whatever it is he can throw that now more and more and more i think and he'll have more and more success on it because now he's established that he's successful the other two now it's a time to add that third pitch i think that's why he's right for it it's just so interesting to the location so

if you look at where he throws the slider and the change up those locations are so much better than the four seam location the four seam location like, no, not, not there. It's such a good force, but it gets away with it. I think the big key is somewhere between that four seam and slider location. Matt that we're looking at right now is where the curve is going to go. So the curve, I think people will, if they can see it at all, they'll say, Oh, slider don't swing. You know, that's headed for down out of the zone and i saw

uh him throw so alex fast shared a curveball from from spencer strider and it was down and in for a swing and a miss and that's we tend to like share you know moving images of swing and misses you know if we want to be like oh look how nasty this pitch is. He got this whiff. I chose to share a 3-2 curveball from Strider that went to the middle of the zone. That was a called strike. Because I was like, this is how I think he's going to use it the most. He's going to throw this curveball closer to the middle of the zone. And they're going to see slider. They hold off.

And especially if there's like two strikes, they're going to're gonna think oh that's a slider low out of the zone like i better i'm gonna hold up and then it could you know pop in so i think he's gonna use it for freeze takes you know he's gonna use it for takes yeah or first first pitch yeah and you got a ground ball with one too so like he'll use it for takes and ground balls it he's he's like when you talk to him he's like every pitch needs to have a purpose. And the reason he doesn't like the changeup is that he thinks whiffs are the best purpose. But after a season in which he gave up so many home runs, I think now he's like, there's another purpose, which is ground balls and called strikes.

And that's what this curveball's purpose will be, I think. Especially with the changeup, too. He's going to get really, he's going to start, this happened to me, and I just see a lot of parallels with him and i frankly uh how we pitch i mean he's got better stuff but like he's going through the same process and he's doing it earlier in his career but he's gonna start getting really he's gonna start feeling really good about like change-ups that are yanked foul like he throws one that kind of runs in a little bit and i'll play guys went for it because they saw something straight and they thought they could turn on it.

That just, and then he's like, ooh, now everything's open. So like it wasn't a miss, but now I get more, maybe I'll get more misses. But I also got a free strike too, you know? And it's strike. So like not everything needs to be, but again, I'm, trust me,

I am with him with misses are key. Got to get those or I suck. Like I definitely thought that before, for sure. We want to talk about the unique challenges of ramping up for an early start right we know the series in korea between the dodgers and padres one week ahead of opening day my assumption trevor has been it's always been more difficult for a starting pitcher to get ready for the early series when these come around than it is for just about anybody else on the roster is that a fair assumption or are there

other challenges for other guys in the roster to be ready a week or so ahead of the regular schedule? A close second would be probably your day-to-day position players, you know, the middle of your lineup, especially the guys that like hit for power and try to like get that swing back without like something being. So you're trying to like have a good nice swing and then letting the power come so you kind of let that develop you don't want to just go into spring and just start hitting balls all over the place like really far because sometimes you will change your swing in the off season in order to get that so like guys would try to be really purposeful with their swings and having less than a week i mean to be honest

april's usually pitcher you know pitcher heaven anyways because guys are still kind of getting used to it the weather changes it's cold in certain places whatever so uh yeah getting your swing is I think that's like the slow the thing that comes back the slowest and for starting pitchers it's stretching out and it's just having endurance but it's also like getting in the mindset of competing again because you're kind of just filling up innings to get kind of passively your body in shape but then having to switch flip the switch bit these games matter now and now i can't like just go out and hit my pitch limit that's tough to do and but the longer the the farther into your program you are if you're

able to throw five innings it's easier to flip that switch but if you're at three you're still in that mode like i'm not even ready to i can't even get a win. So why would I compete? Not that I'm not competing, but why would I, you know, because it's like a different, you ease into it. So the older guys, too, go a little slower. So yeah, it's going to be challenging, I think, for those two groups. Relievers, though, I need it for like seven times. And then I'm like, it's the same thing. It's life or death for me every day.

It doesn't matter if it's spring or summer. So let's get out there. We do pride our ability to just like phone rings, roll out of a whatever daydream i was in and just go so i wouldn't worry about too much about them bf stitch players right behind starters i think i'm expecting that those soul games to be very mix and match that the starters actually don't go that deep um and that they use all their relievers especially since all the relievers have a ton of rest after that it's just two games in the middle of nowhere you

know then everybody goes home you know so no i'm not saying that korea's middle of nowhere i just mean in middle of nowhere in the schedule schedule yeah you have you have all this time afterwards so i feel the worst for joe musgrove he's kind of in a lot of what you're talking about in terms of he's a veteran he's used to like you know i'm gonna just ramp up slowly and then opening day i'll be fine you know and he's coming off of injury he gets he has a horrible first start but you know he has to just get back out there like you know on a regular schedule like five days later so he's already he's already had two starts where some people haven't even had one start you know and you know this is coming off a season which he was injured but he has to do it in order to even do maybe three or four innings in Korea. And it hasn't gone well for him.

I'm not saying that, like, it's not going to go well for him this season. I still think he's a really good pitcher and he'll be fine. But, like, you know, in his mind, there's a little bit of doubt right now because it's been two really bad outings, and he's got to get ready in, like, two weeks. Probably not super fun for him right now mentally. Both him and Darvish. I'm looking at both of those guys.

I'm like, all right, it's so important for the Padres that they are themselves all season, given the number of young arms they're going to try and lean on. Right, you don't want to push them and get them injured. Yeah, so you need them to be healthy, and you need them to be effective if you're going to be a team that hangs around and tries to compete for a wildcard spot, which seems possible. Everyone's down in the Padres because they're cutting back on spending.

They traded away Soto. But making sure Musgrove and Darmish get through the spring healthy is actually really, really important for them. Let's move on to our cutter deep dive. And we're going to start by taking a look at the stuff plus model here you know this is a manual class a in the stuff plus model with his cutter as it was one of the game's best pitches yeah and you'll see with him is he doesn't have the most cut of anybody uh but you will see that cut generally helps you that's where the red is on that side of the graph. That's all a good cut. This is normalized for hands. So the more cuts you have, the better your cutter is. Also, the more velo you have. The very best

ones, that class A ones, those are 98, 99. That's Camilo Doval. That's Emmanuel Class A. Those are some of the best in the business. But I wanted to show you this graph because that shows you on the bottom is cut, on the side is speed, and it shows you that generally the two most important things for a cutter are cut and velocity. Yeah. So the first thing I think of when we think of a cutter is Mariano Rivera, right? That's the example. He perfected it, right? So let's watch Mo here for just a second. This is classic, unhittable, dominant pitch.

You knew it was coming. No one could do anything about it. There's his grip. There's his grip. We'll look at the grip compared to Kenley Jansen's grip here in just a minute. But what's amazing to me, we were talking about this earlier in the week during the meeting. People have tried to replicate that pitch and they can't. It's been a long time since Mariano Rivera broke into the league and dominated with that pitch.

Trevor, what's so difficult about throwing the cutter the way that Mariano Rivera threw the cutter? We were talking about this. One thing interesting about him that no one's been able to replicate is the amount his cutter rides um he's still above average even in today's game in ride with his cutter and then you add that to the fact that he has the most cut out of a lot of guys and that could be a little bit of a different velo right like colossus was 99 mario so. You're going to get more time to move. But the ability to make a ball both cut and ride is unheard of. I think guys have been trying to do it all over the place. Kenley, we're going to see in a moment, Kenley throws the same grip.

Robertson throws the same grip. These guys have all learned the Mariano grip. Anyone who throws a cutter throws the same grip that Mariano threw. That's mariano with the blue shirt and kenley over there on the on the look how big kenley's hands are that thing looks like a golf ball and mo's hands too mo's are huge too but like kenley's got bigger hands mo and that i don't know so that's crazy like just kind of a side anecdote people say this all about also about kofax's curveball it's because his hands were just massive and he was able to like straddle the ball almost like fully all the way you had a

detail about the fingers to the finger length yeah so oh yeah the interesting thing about the fingers if you notice uh the difference in the length of the middle finger and the uh the index finger is usually kind of drastic with guys who can throw these things uh kenley's is pretty crazy it's almost a full knuckle. Yeah, look how much smaller his index is compared to that one. But it kind of moves that index finger out of the way of the middle finger in order to create extra pressure to get that slight spin axis to get it to spin sideways, just slightly, just so you can catch the air correctly and get it to move in a cut action.

So these two guys throw the same pitch but the reason that mariano can can cut can can get that right is because of how where he where the ball is in his hand when he releases it and it's all like release height and extension all these things are into it um but guys who kind of throw underneath the ball like i threw underneath the ball strider throws underneath the ball just that's how you get right a lot that's how you get right that's like a natural indicator of natural ride but to get a ball to cut while you're underneath the ball strider throws underneath the ball just that's how you get right a lot that's how you get right that's like a natural indicator of natural ride but to get a ball to cut while you're underneath the ball it's so like it's millimeters in difference in in how to get it to cut effectively because at the end of the day you're going to get more you're the spin's going

to get off a little bit and then you're going to get it's going to catch the air weird it's going to go down so i have a bunch of depth i really struggle to get anything going sideways uh strider kind of does too a little bit. So I wouldn't be surprised if that's a similar thing, but in order to get underneath the ball and get it to cut, it has to be so perfect every time. I think that's what makes Mariano Rivera so much of a unicorn. He really is.

Even those guys with great cutters, they don't throw the cutter that Mariano did. So speaking statistically, we did a little bit of a dive where we actually have some pitch tracking numbers in Savant on Mariano Rivera. So right now, this, what we're looking at, the leaderboard, this is the hardest cutter. So those are the cutters that you'll see in that big red blob that we saw. That's Duval, Classe, Ashcraft, Bruised Jar Graterol. They have some similarities in terms of velo, but you'll see a lot of differences in terms of vertical movement and horizontal movement. And Ashcraft is more like a baby slider. If you look at that, that's, you know,

if it goes 96 and has six inches less vertical movement than Camilo Duval's cutter, I would say that's almost like a baby slider. Whereas those ones with, you'll see 10s and 11s and 13s and vertical movement and IVB there, those are your typical cutters, you know, that have a little bit of depth and a little bit of horizontal movement. And then you see Kenley Jansen has that 18 vertical movement, that 18 IVB, that really sticks out on this chart as he's one of the hardest cutters at 94, but he also has the most ride. And so if you sort this list by ride,

what you find is that Kenley Jansen has the most ride with 18 IVB and David Robertson has the second most with 16 IVB. Well, the math that we did was a little janky, but we tried to come up with like what Mariano's IVB would be. And I think we basically said 19 or 20. So these two guys that you were saying, like they wanted to, you know, throw Mariano's cutter. They learned his grip. They thought their mechanics would be somewhat similar. they got plus ride and they didn't make it all the way to where mo was so it's still a unicorn and i and sometimes i love stats for that

reason it's like another way to describe how you know how unique a pitch is you know you can just look at mariano's cutter and you can look at the results and you know that he threw it like so often 80 of the time 90 of the time and yet still had all the success and you know that he threw it like so often, 80% of the time, 90% of the time, and yet still had all the success. So, you know, from a results standpoint, it was great. You know, from when you're looking at it, that it was an interesting pitch, but I would say looking at it, it's not always, it's not always obvious why it was so unique. And then you can say it's probably the cutter that had the most ride in the history of cutters. That's what the evidence is pointing. And here's Kenley's too, just for a visual comparison.

I know we were looking at Moe's before. Somewhat similar. It looks a little bit like a straight four seam because of the camera angle. But you can see that it has, that's like, that's a lot of ride. Like that's, that's kind of a seed of a cutter. His horizontal is much less than Moe's too though, right? We looked at Mo mose was closer to devol so he was getting like the 19 right and then like the negative six yes with more's cut too yeah

both things really well yeah they've been trying to get the ride they got the ride but then they couldn't get the cut at that level even though like two three four inches of cut with that much ride still very very effective obviously hall of fame closer yeah robertson and kenley both have two inches horizontal and i think we said four or five for mo so there's not really anybody uh there's nobody that that has that vert yeah you have some guys that have 13 verts that have uh you know four or five inches of sideways ty Tyler Wells' cutter has 12 and 4. Martin Perez's is 12 and 3. But nobody's done it. Camilo Duvall is 13 and 7. So that's a pretty good one. That's as close as you get, but still six inches below the ride. Yeah, it doesn't have a ride.

Over 99. That also is kind of adding to the value of that pitch for sure. What's the drawback of throwing a cutter? Are there any downsides? Anything that becomes less effective if you throw a cutter sometimes? Kind of like a sinker to a... So, cutter to a righty from a righty is like a sinker to a lefty from a righty, if that makes sense. So, it loses effectiveness, unless you can Phil Hughes it and just throw them front door all the time, which is what was his big thing when he had that he had that year uh he got his extension so uh but

that just front door cutters todd bradley's cutters right he's got spanked yeah but again the margin for error that is just super small so like you have to have an elite command to pull that off why do you think that is his he's throwing it alone away like a slider is it because people are used to bigger movement from sliders down and away? And when it's a cutter, like younger guys, I said, think about the way pitches when you're making the decision. If you're throwing a pitch that breaks really big off the plate and then you try to bring a slider back over the plate, like, and it gets smaller.

If you're getting less, if it's moving back towards the middle of the zone and the break is less, the chances that that gets spanked are very high, especially if it's close proximity to you doing it before. So wasting a slider way off the plate where like nobody even gets near it and they look out there it's almost better to go do something that's a different look first cleanse the palette and then try to go back to it don't try to just make that adjustment get it back over it's not a bullpen

it's not even about them looking out there it's literally just about how bat paths work it'll look a little bit crappier than the last one or whatever. You don't want to like lessen movement and then throw it in the same, same spot because the miss might be closer to the middle of the plate. You know, we also saw that, you know, we've had Garrett Cole has told me he's very nervous about his foreseam fastball movement and doesn't want to throw too many cutters and lose that.

We saw Chris Paddock lose his his four seam ride with the cutter so there are some people that are did you even say that you were a little bit worried about your foreseeing movement when you started throwing the cutter i would say that it's a little different like taj bradley's been throwing the cutter with the four seam through most of his development so he's comfortable with it but if you're taking a guy who's thrown a four seam forever and be like, let's add a cutter. That's a little different. Cause now he's like,

well, I'm used to this. I'm used to this. And now I'm doing this. Oh God, I've lost both of them. You know what I mean? Whereas,

you know, some guys come up with a cutter. Like I wouldn't tell Todd's brother to put it away. Now, like use it against lefties, you know, be careful where you use it against righties. It's not going to screw up your four seam.

Cause you've been doing this for a while. It's fine. But, but when you're talking talking about if you hear somebody say i'm adding a cutter and they have really good riding foreseam i guess i might be a little nervous something to pay attention to yeah that's right doval's movement i was looking at that it looked like it's from a lefty but it's from a righty so that he he it's like a sinker cutter yeah the question came from saul on the stream is doval's cutter's arm side movement generally seen as a bad thing? Maybe it's just a sinker. Maybe it's a two seam.

Maybe we just labeled it wrong. It's so funny because I always thought it was for a long time. But again, their angle also on TV is a little funky and makes it look weirder. But it's so funny. Backup cutters are just called like seam shifted sinkers now you've gone past where it's cutting and now you're catching the wind the other way and it's and it's pushing the other way technically i when i move my change up grip it's spinning like a cutter it looks like a cutter it looks britain held his sinker in a cutter grip zach britain

yeah exactly and that's why everyone's like i don't understand why this works and he didn't really know either it's because now we know how the physics are working on the seams there so sometimes yeah he does that who's the uh there's the there's a reliever for the pirates that does this on purpose with the slurry moretta moretta yeah his slider has change up movement so people see that spin and it's just hard to be like this is going to come into me when you everything you've done for the last 25 years of your life has told you that's going the other way it spins like this will go like this yeah yeah and so guys try to do that too i don't know if that's what meal is doing but he does pronate a little bit or no sorry he

supinates he turns in outside his end outside when he throws but that's why on the other side of the plate it cuts so like sometimes it matters slightly where the angle is if you're trying to put away a variety it cuts and you throw it in it goes and it moves in that's a that's like an effectively wild type thing going on but it can be helpful the question though is like is it a bad thing like generally i'm not sure that i would train a pitcher to do this on purpose but it is one of those things that sometimes you know you just fall on this and you're like well i'm not going to tell him to stop doing that exactly what he's doing like you know hitters can't handle it so the common one for that too is to talk about right on right sliders that are up and in so if you can throw a slider up and into

a righty it never gets hit hard ever Like the run value in that is super low, but no one on their right mind would ever try to do that on purpose because it's very hard to do. And nobody practices it, so they're not very good at it. And because you don't want to practice it because it's a bad habit because it makes everything else worse. Like you still-

And the mechanics of it are iffy. Like you're trying to make a slider slide up there. But the data says literally like you're untouched. That's the flip side. That's like people, the analysts trying to tell you to do something where you're like, come on, have you ever really seen somebody do this? Yes, it shows up good on your chart. But like, do you want to see what mine looks like?

I've had a real conversation like that before. No. Sorry, dude. I know it's blue. I know it's blue. But classic Arsenal toss up question from Adam here. Mo's cutter or Maddox's two seamer to lefties. I would take Mo's cutter because once you swing, you're still screwed.

Whereas with Maddox, he is he's trying to get you to not swing because he's throwing those front doors. he's trying to get you to not swing because he's throwing those front doors so i feel like you know i don't have the data on this but i feel like you know once you're swinging you'd rather be swinging at max the two seam because you've decided you know where it's going you know it's going into the strike zone and i think it's probably theoretically easier for a lefty to hit the two seam yeah and it's also traveling towards the barrel which is so like you have the other one right on your hands you now only have your the handle left and that happens quite often that doesn't happen anymore but that happened quite often the most so like that's not like just imagine not wearing batting gloves you know guys are like guys don't like being blown up

either so i i guarantee people would take maddox's uh sinker and also sinkers are hit more often so like yeah you'd like to put it in play too that'd be nice i know when you're younger and your kid you watch things and your memory plays some tricks on you but i feel like mo was breaking bats every single outing like in my memory like every time you pitched someone's bat was going to get broken like that's just how it was and i would agree that's a great way to think about it there's a much better chance of actually doing something with that Maddox two seamer. If you get a swing off on it, uh, we've got a couple other questions here. Let's see. This looks like a pretty good one here from PJ three 22.

What do you concentrate on when evaluating pitchers returning from TJ? Is it Velo? Max Meyer sat 95 in his first two innings post TJ. Does that pass the test? Meyer looked really good last night against the Yankees. I think that's a really good sign for the Marlins overall. But what should we be looking for for these guys coming off of major injuries who are just getting some of their first competitive innings back? Yeah, analytically, I would just say like fastball command comes back second. So I think that's something you'd look for.

You might not see it right away, but that would be the best case scenario for guys he's hitting his velo and he's hitting his spots but you know i'll take velo if you know as a good indicator though especially in the first outing yeah i think the first outing too you just want to know that like they feel good but they're also feeling good up here and they're not worried about it and that's that's usually a pretty good sign you can tell when someone's robotic and like worried about still thinking about it immediately cole reagan's that like coming back his first time coming back that was the issue he would be doing so much flat ground

that he had like a flat ground like throwing mechanics like a pushing you know like let's just keep everything nice and yeah nice and easy he had that going and then tread was like no you need to throw that thing as hard as you can now yeah competitiveness kind of comes but if it's there immediately it's usually a good sign uh the only thing you got to worry about those guys is like all right let's you know again we're still easing our way back and sometimes guys get go the other way they get really overzealous and that can that can cause it just like setbacks that avoidable, like soreness and things. But yeah, if guys thrown hard right out the gate, then now you don't have to worry about like,

did the surgery work? And is he going to be a version of himself? You can be check that box. Now let's worry about pitching and getting the command back and the stuff and the stuff and like looking, now you can just be a pitcher again. So that's a good sign. Always, always good to see that.

I'd also be interested in how many breaking balls he threw, because, you know, a lot of times teams say you can't throw your breaking ball when you're coming back from TJ or you have to like wait for a while. You do your fastballs for a long time. And so if he was mixing in breaking balls, too, then that's a great sign, too. That means he's at the point of rehab where they're not telling him you can't throw a pitch. Got a question here from Philip.

Do teams have their own proprietary statistical languages or do they use things like fip woba or all the things we see on savant and fan graphs i got a kick out of hearing all the different names for stuff plus there are definitely a bunch of different names yeah everyone's got a stuff plus everybody got it's not really not some of them are called stuff plus a lot of them are different names raw you know acronyms for different things like like you know we've got pakoda and seagirl the projection systems seem like they're almost all acronyms is that what it is for stuff models too maybe among among analysts they'll talk to each other using those acronyms but if you're talking analyst to player i don't think a lot

of those have any use those aren't player development statistics they'll talk ivb they'll talk ivb and velo and spin you know and and you know movement numbers and those are fairly constant from team to team like i think most pitchers now know what ivb is yeah and everyone uses trackman too and like all the teams everybody uses the same technology so it's giving you the same information but yeah there's a lot of internal stuff i trust me i have i asked so many questions this is my favorite thing to do asking them analysts and it's so funny because they're always they always like you can see they're doing the math like how long are you on contract for and what can i tell you you gotta take this away but like also not too much to where you're gonna take it somewhere else yeah uh which is i i understand everyone needs to everyone's

trying to get their you know their edges that But yeah, it's usually all those stats you mentioned with a bunch of other stuff, all kind of weighted differently. That's usually tried to be built around a team philosophy like this is the type of things we look for. We weight this thing a little bit more than maybe another team does because this is the way we play baseball.

And then they try to go from... That's kind of the process. And then everyone is in different... Along that, some teams have it really... They're just tinkering with the thing they have, go from like that's kind of the process and then everyone is in different different like along that some some teams have it really they're just tinkering with the thing they have like the teams that are doing it well and there's some teams that are like just opened up the textbook and they're starting to be able to build their own ways that things are processed um in turn there's also a question of how much you've invest in your player development and your analytics by a team because there's a very real question so stat cast has all this data

right and it's so much data like every five minutes of a game is like a terabyte or it might even be like a minute as a terabyte because it's like people pieces of paper flying by and the ump is doing this and you know the bad boy is doing this that's all in there you know and so for the teams that have the computing power and the money they like give us all of it and we will clean it up and we will come up with our own stats and then there are teams that just take the pre chewed stuff that we see and they'll be like okay barrel rate and they will actually use the word barrel rate and they will analyze players using barrel rate whereas the team that had all the computing power and put they they don't call barrel rate or if they do it's their own and it's it's even spicier and more you know got more more stuff going into it so uh there is a divide there I'm pretty much 100 sure that like you know a team

like the A's is not spending the money on computing power to get the raw stack cast feed and like, you know, get really deep in there. And then there's like a little halfway point, there's a there's a sort of pre chewed, but a little bit more information stack cast feed. So there's a little bit different levels, there's two or three different levels you can get in there. But some teams are like, no, just give me the big tube of everything. And we will process it up on our own. And other teams are like, a Fangraphs membership costs $60 a year? That's steep.

Is that what it's like in Oakland? Can we get that login from someone else? No comment. Right. Can we share one login? Pay for your Fangraphs people support fan graphs they're good we are gonna go on our way out the door reminder you can also support the athletic athletic.com slash rates and barrels two dollars a month for the first year gets you in the door

it's a great deal lots of great coverage of course with the opening day being less than a month away cover other sports here as well got our fantasy baseball draft kit up. You can find us all on Twitter. You can find Trevor at IamTrevorMay. Find Eno at EnoSaras. Find me at DerekVanRiper. The pod itself is at RatesAndBarrels. Join our Discord. We got the link in the show description.

And join us live March 20th and March 21st. Other half brewing Domino Park location. Two live shows. One on each of those nights. It's going to be kind of around the cities in Korea. Trivia. Yeah. All sorts of stuff.

It's going to be fun. It should be really fun live shows. If you've got a question for a future episode, send those our way through the Discord or ratesandbarrels at gmail.com. If you enjoyed the show, hit the like button in this video. Leave us a nice rating review. Have a great weekend. We are back with you on Monday.

Thanks for listening.