Rates & Barrels - Statcast Bat Tracking, Struggling Starting Pitchers, and Pitching Model/Results Disagreements

Episode Date: July 25, 2022

Eno and DVR discuss the early applications of Statcast Bat Tracking data, as well as what they hope to learn as the dataset grows in the future before examining several struggling starting pitchers, and a few Pitching Model v. Results disagreements.  Rundown -- Statcast Bat Tracking -- Max Swing Speed & Max EV for Power, Barrel Precision for Hit Tool? -- A Closer Look at Astros & Dodgers -- Ian Anderson, We Were Warned, But Can He Be Fixed? -- Yusei Kikuchi: Any Reasons for Rebound Optimism? -- Aaron Ashby: Extended by Brewers, Big Breakout Looming? -- Daniel Lynch: Still Frustrating, Still Offers Potential -- Pitching Model v. Results -- Nathan Eovaldi's Brutal Weekend Start -- Prospect of the Week! Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first six months: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Related Reading: Mike Petriello 'What you need to know about Statcast bat tracking' https://www.mlb.com/news/what-you-need-to-know-about-statcast-bat-tracking Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Monday, July 25th. Derek Van Ryper here with half marathon finisher, Eno Saris. Eno, how are you feeling today? Oh, I got hardware. Yeah, baby. There you go. Yeah, baby. I told my kids this was because I got first place. Do you think they believe that even now?

Or will they soon find out that's not the case? No, and I told them I was just kidding. I did finish above the 50th percentile for men. So there's that. So slightly red dot on your stat cast half marathon time page. My got that dog in a hem slider has passed 50%. I'm sore in places I really didn't expect to be sore. I also apologize to anybody in the last sort of mile and a half of the race.

I was not yelling at you i was yelling at me uh i was yelling words of encouragement at myself things like only a mile left come on let's go let's let's f and go and i hope that anybody that was uh sort of finishing with the walk or or uh going slower than me at that point was not like god this a-hole that was me just trying to fire myself up for the last stretch which i miss i misread so i had i had a one last stretch where i sprinted past uh the ballpark and sprint is in relative terms here and then uh and then i realized oh no there's another sort of three tenths of a mile to go uh so i just sort of limped my way through that last bit but uh i don't know what to do next you

know like i i did i it was kind of cool to like get uh get something i think that sometimes you hear it from people that you know win an award or yeah win a cy young or something and you know win an award or you know win a cy young or something and you know or just like have some sort of accolades where they're like you know they say they don't know what to say about it it's i didn't do anything like huge but i did do something that i set out to do and so now it's like what's next like you know and a lot of i think athletes are just so wired they're like another one you know do better next time go faster go further so i guess i guess that's the answer is try to beat my time next year uh i don't want to think about that right now though so i just i hurt too much enjoy the soreness for a week and then you know think about what's next i i don't know

get into weightlifting you could do a weightlifting competition. No. That's for Britt. Yeah, that's true. That is her area of expertise on this show. Pickleball championship. Pickleball championship. We could try that.

We lost a very casual match. Beat Jeremy Lin. That's going to be my next goal. There you go. Beat Jeremy Lin in pickleball. All right. That's a noble goal. I think I can get on board with that.

You're my trainer for that one. Well, we may have to play doubles. If it's you and I playing Jeremy Lin in someone, who do you want that someone to be? Someone who's a lot worse than Jeremy Lin. I'm just assuming that a former NBA player is pretty good at pickleball. He's probably not slow and with NBA limbs, probably has pretty good court coverage. So yeah, I would say we need someone very bad to play with him. Like his mom or something.

No, she's probably good. She birthed him, right? If it had to be someone who played in the NBA, I'm going to go back another era and say Kurt Rambis. I want us to beat Jeremy Lin and Kurt Rambis in pickleball. That is my new goal. If you had somebody like Boban who's like 7'8 or something, you could just maybe just aim at his kneecaps all the time.

It's true. You could try. Yeah. So new goals in mind here on rates and barrels on this episode, we're going to dig into the StatCast bat tracking piece that Mike Petriello wrote a couple of weeks ago. Eno mentioned it kind of in passing last week. I figured it was worth bringing up again with a little bit more detail as far as what we're hoping to learn from it in the short term and what we're really hoping that the tool can offer it in the short term and what we're really hoping that the tool can offer us in the long run especially we'll talk about a few struggling starting pitchers we'll take a look at the pitching plus model against some results looking for some surprises really on both ends and i think it's about time for prospect of the

week which is kind of a prospect of the whenever we feel like talking about a prospect segment doesn't roll off the tongue quite as well, but we will talk a little bit about a couple prospects that we like later on in the show. Let's begin with the StatCast bat tracking, and I will try to put a link to the piece in the show description, as I occasionally do. That way, if you have not read it or if you want to read it again,

you can refer back to it very easily. But we have some tracking of what's happening with swings in two ball parks it's from dodger stadium and minute made park in houston and it started back in mid-may at the time the article was written i think the data stopped july 10th so it's a simple question to start like what what could we hope to learn from knowing how fast players are swinging the bat and having more detailed information about the quality of swings and the types of swings that players have yeah i mean the whole thing was that before we had uh we had a radar technology that couldn't tell the difference between the bat and the end of your arm you know so there wasn't

that ability to separate out limbs and separate out the bat now that we can do that with thanks to hawkeye um i think there's also all sorts of stuff we can say the beginning of what we're saying now and what mike petriello has has released in this piece is just how fast the bat is going but they did they touch on a little bit where they talk about you know also where on the like physically where on the bat is going but they did they touch on a little bit where they talk about you know also where on the like physically where on the bat would the the contact occur and so there is that whole idea of sweet spot the sweet spot you see on stat cast is more of a reverse engineered like sort of did they hit it flush because of what the results look like not did they actually hit it in

the sweet spot of the bat and i think in the future we'll have more of a true sweet spot which is like did they actually hit it in the right spot on the bat because these things are important because you know there's a couple guys on there the uh marlins catcher nick fortes uh he has some really good bat speed numbers, but not any good exit velo or max exit velo type numbers. Some of what you can surmise is perhaps that he's not squaring the ball up very well. So a barrel, obviously, is a combination of bat speed and anticipation, bat control, you know, whatever it is, hitting it flush.

You could, like we've known for a while, you know, Cabrian Hayes hits the ball really hard, so he must have pretty good bat speed. The question is, can he change his bat angle? Can he change his approach in order to make the most out of the bat speed? I think that we've been looking at these sort of things through Max Exavilo as a way of sort of, that guy must have pretty good bat speed when he has his A swing going, because he can hit it 120 or 115. But this is now more directly measuring that, and then we can sort of suss through, is it approach?

Is it having three different swings and going to the B and C swing a lot? Or is it just not hitting the ball flush? I think this early thing is really fun. You know, one thing to remember, even on the bat speed one, the top of the list, they were putting this in Houston and L.A. So all the people that you see on this list that are not playing for Houston and L.A. probably had very few swings. And if you repeat the sort of small type, minimum three batted ball contacts so uh they basically you know julio rodriguez has a 96 mile an hour bat speed and he's a number top the top of this list it was on three swings you know who knows um what it looks like when you start factoring a swing b swing c swing miss it things like that although we did

see at the at the home run derby that he had a pretty sweet uh bat speed but otherwise you got luis robert as second and i think that's a really good um sign that you know he the the questions for him are not about power they're're about making contact and having the right approach and squaring it up. I've seen some sort of buy lows in fantasy. And I say buy low sort of loosely. This is a guy who could be a Mike Trout type player.

This is a guy who could go 30-30. I don't know if he'd do 300-30-30, but like 30-30 with a pretty good batting average. So if you are looking for like a rebuild situation, you're like, I want to throw everything I have and get one player, he's like high on that list, I would say. And I think this is a good,

Giancarlo Stanton being third, duh. Franmil Reyes being fourth, I think is like a good example of, well, what about all the other stuff right because i i think the the raw swing speed leaderboard is going to be similar in function to what we use max exit velocity for now okay when you swing the bat as hard as you can you swing the bat harder than most people that gives us an idea of your raw power potential if you are going to swing and miss often that doesn't help you as much you you would benefit from having more barrel control and i think we're going to get to the point where once we're seeing where precisely guys are hitting hitting the ball with the bat we're going to see who has better

barrel control i think we're going to quantify hit tool in ways that we couldn't before. Now I think we're quantifying hit tool a lot of times looking at low strikeout rates, different things you do around the zone. This will, I think, really unlock a lot of possible answers that we've been wondering about for a long time. And what are the real differences in players that have an average hit tool, an above average hit tool, a well above average hit tool or an excellent hit tool like defining that with

more precision i think will be really good and which things are more important right and which things are more trainable uh what types of do are there players that do uh like nick fortes are there a lot of nick fortes is out there that have great bat speed that do figure out how to put the barrel on the ball better or are there more guys that put the barrel they hit on the sweet spot a lot that can maybe use weighted bat training to up their bat swing their their swing speed so which which was the place that we want to look more often. In fact, this might not be the best place for us to look, uh, for breakouts, uh, because maybe it's just not that often that someone cuts their strikeout rate by a lot, you know, just to make it simple.

Like, you know, it's nice that Fran Milreis swings the bat really hard, but how likely is it that he gets that strikeout rate under 30% again? Uh, Jesus Sanchez is high on this list. He has the same sort of issues. In fact, what we may be wanting to look for is guys who have a really high sweet spot percentage, and I'm talking about the real one, that could benefit from some weighted bat training in the offseason.

It's the same question, I think, as sort of, do I want a guy with great velocity who can't find the zone, or maybe doesn't have great shape on his fastball, or do I want a guy who has great shapes and may be able to add a couple ticks? I think I know where I stand on that for pitchers. I think I would rather find a guy with a lot of pitches and some command that was young in the minor leagues and could add a couple of ticks i'm thinking sort of kirby-esque right um i like that uh profile a little better than i'm trying to think maybe like carlos hernandez

who had good velo and some good secondaries but just awful command yeah um these are just two examples two archetypes and of course they serve my purpose in telling the story but these are things you can study better um i think it's a couple things are interesting rodolfo castro uh is on this list mj melendez uh those are some uh sort of you know i think in rodolfo castro's case if you're in a deep dynasty maybe you just find a place for him on your roster based on this little tidbit i mean we're all looking for breakouts and breakouts come from all different directions and if you have an extra roster space and you're just playing around with it you you know, I like Rodolfo Castro's body.

He's got, like, this kind of fire plug. You know, he's really strong, really kind of compact, and he has the same question as a lot of other guys is, can you make more contact? And maybe an additional one of sort of where you're going to play defensively. But there is a possibility that he's the second baseman, and I know that there were people around the team last year that thought he he's the second baseman and i know that there were people around the team last year that thought he would be the second baseman in the future there so it's a guy to keep an eye on i'll cheat to answer your hitter related question assuming

that there's enough raw bat speed to catch up to big league fastballs generally right there's a certain point where you just don't swing the bat fast enough to be to big league fastballs generally right there's a certain point where you just don't swing the bat fast enough to be a big league hitter assuming you have that threshold met i would rather have the player with the great barrel control who needs to add a little more bat speed because i think that can be a function of strength and probably some mechanical adjustments. Whereas I think the barrel control, I think that's a harder skill to hone in on. I don't think this is a case where you can't learn it. I just think it's harder to learn. I feel like feats of brute strength are easier to go train for.

Feats of very precise athletic ability ability that elite hand-eye coordination that i think is a lot more difficult to teach people at this sort of level so it's the same kind of answer as the pitching question like i think it i'd rather have the the great barrel control first and then add power i'd rather have the finesse if i could only have one of those things be above average, and I'll try and make the power above average with training and heavier bats and different things like that. Yeah. There's kind of a different organizational approach here,

I think, that's peeking out from underneath the numbers. The Astros and the Dodgers, they had the setup in their park, so their numbers are the most robust. And if you look at their regulars, so that you can kind of look away from the guys who maybe, because they still have a minimum three batter ball contacts, but if you look to their regulars, you'll have more than three. And so the Astros, Jordan Alvarez, he's on the top 10 leaderboard.

He's got nearly 90 mile an hour bat speed, averages around 80, so he's on the top 10 leaderboard. He's got nearly 90 mile an hour bat speed, averages around 80. So he's good. Kyle Tucker, 84. Alex Bregman, 82. Even Martin Maldonado, 81. Jeremy Pena, just up 80. And their only real regular players that are below average bat speed are Jose Altuve at 78, who I just think leverages all of his body and pitches pretty well. Jake Myers, I guess, but there's an injury question there, you know, just coming off the shoulder issue. And then Michael Brantley, 76, who has probably one of those finesse type profiles where he can really put the sweet spot on the ball a lot. Now, you flip over to the Dodgers and it looks very, very different. You're going to ignore the top three guys in bat speed are not regulars on that team.

So the number one regular in bat speed is Max Muncy, who is a surprise to us all, I think, given his injury history. And he's got about an 84. Mookie Betts has an 82. Chris Taylor an 81. And that's it. Those are the only guys on the Dodgers that have above average swing speeds. You've got Lux pretty close at 79.6.

Turner, 79.5. Will Smith, 79. Freddie Freeman.7, Cody Ballinger 78.4, Justin Turner 74.8. But I think that the Dodgers probably feel like if you have a good hit tool and a good approach at the plate and can swing the bat near 80 miles an hour then we're happy with you you know what i mean like you're probably going to do good stuff at the plate um whereas uh the astros seem to put a little bit more priority on bat speed more maybe they train for it or um they've uh they they scout for it, picking these guys up because of those bat speeds in the minors. But I think there's a little bit of a different approach here. Yeah, really interesting stuff.

And it'll be nice to get more information, of course, having this in all parks eventually and getting the robust data set for every team as opposed to just the two teams that were at home and the players that came through on the road. I think we'll make this a lot more interesting in the years ahead, really. It's not really going to happen this year. There's also a really cool little section about Bat Path that is related to we've had a couple people write in um that the sort of 50 fly ball rate um guys uh you know there's been some research done and and uh sorry i don't have

the names right in front of me uh but i have shouted them out before but you know there's research uh that shows that at 50 percent uh fly balls your batting average goes down however uh that same research does not have as clear of a result when it comes to wobah or ops because what they're doing is replacing signals with homers right um but here in statcast what they did was not by fly ball rate, but by uppercut swing and flat swing, and the flat swing had the best or at least second-best batting averages. And part of what we might be missing is just the batting average. Babbitt batting average on balls in play does not include homers.

So if you look at the uppercut swing, probably close to the 50% fly ball guys, if you do batting average on contact, they have a.348, and the flat guys have a.331. If you look at batting average on balls in play, they have a.236 for the uppercut swing and a.326 for the flat swingers. So generally, the uppercut swing is good, but I think if you start, all of these numbers are BA on contact and WOBA on contact,

and I think what you're missing with this is strikeouts, because I think the uppercut swings are the easiest to strike out. So I like the sort of, there's groups between uppercut and flat and I like group two the best which is a slight uppercut and I think if you look across the numbers there's a lot of reason to like that especially if you add strikeouts back in and thanks to Ethan one of our listeners for sending us a really good email about the high fly ball race. We'll probably dissect that a bit in greater detail at some point in the near future. Try Tim's new sweet chili chicken loaded wraps and bowls today.

Take your taste buds on an exciting new adventure for lunch or dinner with our delicious new sweet chili sauce. It's time for sweet chili chicken. It's time for Tim's at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. Let's move on to some pitching stuff. I was looking at some struggling starting pitchers this morning, you know, one in particular. I think I mentioned maybe, I don't know, two months ago or so. I bet against the model with Ian Anderson in one league and he is still struggling. I mean, it's a deep enough league.

He had a real bad one recently too yeah and i it's that's that's kind of why i wanted to come back around to him it's just like okay it's it's not getting better for ian anderson at this point and the model appropriately warned me in this case this was my own doing but it's a low strikeout rate it's a high walk rate era for the season now well above 5 at 531. We've reached the point with Ian Anderson, there's no guarantee he stays in the Atlanta rotation. The trade deadline could shake things up.

They've got internal candidates that could probably push him. The bigger question that I think people would want to know for multi-year purposes or if you're a fan in Atlanta, can Ian Anderson be fixed? Can you take some of the things he does and keep those things then overhaul other parts of his pitch mix and his approach and get something back that resembles the successful pitcher he was prior to this season?

I don't have any good news when it comes to how he's looked over the course of the season uh his peak stuff plus this year uh you know came about a month ago around 89 uh and his nadir uh has come pretty uh come came a couple starts before that at 73 so he's been hovering between poor to below like really below average stuff the location numbers uh kind of come and go but are generally below average um and then when i look over at uh his his pitches his curveball rates as his best pitch and it's uh 91 92 um the four seam fastball uh he locates all right um and then the change up you know the model could be missing on the change up and uh you know he does locate it fairly well

so i would be looking i think for either a a cutter or a velo jump. Or like a movement change on his foreseam. At this point in his career, I don't know how likely that is. But you could hear it in the spring. I just wouldn't want to trade for him now, hoping that next spring I hear that he's added a cutter or you know added two ticks yeah it's a it's a long way I guess the the reason for optimism a reason for optimism is look at the transformation of Kyle Wright Kyle Wright's two and a half years older he picked up a couple

of ticks and really just kind of came back a completely different pitcher this year in a lot of ways right increased the curveball it's a totally different pitch too i think by velo and even the movement it seems like it's totally different with kyle right so maybe maybe there's a blueprint there within the organization of someone that you could say hey look we did this with right we can do something similar with Ian Anderson. So I guess evidence is always nice. We saw the evidence with Kyle Wright pretty early on this season, probably even in the spring if you were watching him closely.

He's a little bit more likely as the guy that I would jump on in the early season if his stuff numbers changed radically, you know, than somebody I would bet on. I mean, the, it'd be one thing if all of his location numbers were above a hundred and he had three pitches, right?

Because then you'd be like, okay, he could be like a Tyler Anderson, right? That just, uh, that makes a tiny tweak to his change up and boom. Uh, he has a Tyler Anderson-esque season.

But he does not have good command, and we've known that since the minor leagues. Yeah, that has been an ongoing concern for Ian Anderson. Let's get to Yusei Kikuchi. Goes to Toronto. Another guy with no command. No command, career-best strikeout rate so far this season, career worst walk rate, and a pretty bloated home run rate too.

He actually was slightly worse in his debut season, Year of the Rabbit Ball, back in 2019 in Seattle, but within arm's reach of the same terrible home run rate he had back then. When I see Kikuchi, when he's good, you watch him and you think, okay, there has to be another level here. At the very least, he should be the passable but below average ratios with a great strikeout rate sort of pitcher that on a good team often ends up being a net positive in value. Clearly, he's not doing that right now. Only three wins on the season.

Unfortunately, we still care about wins. You say Kikuchi's's not getting wins he's not getting very deep into his starts very often what's going wrong here i mean this is the team that helped really get robbie ray's career up to this new sort of level that i don't think anyone really expected and i thought they could maybe work some similar magic with kikuchi and just has not worked out so far for him in his first season with the Jays. There was some hope. You know, he started out fairly well. And then, you know, there's a three-start stretch in early May where he just, he was very good.

You know, 20 strikeouts in three starts with three earned runs in like uh 17 innings or something so that was good what uh happened since then is that both numbers his stuff and his location have fallen off and his location was pretty pretty back then, too. Some high 90s and some 100s. One game. Two games with the 104, 103. That's right in the middle of that good stretch. But his stuff has fallen off since then, too.

You know, in terms of things just as basic as velocity. You know, he was pumping some high 94s and he had to start with 96 one some 95s and then right before uh he went on the il it was 93 7 94 6 94 7 like you know there's something something there i just think that he has adapted to the American style of pitching in the very worst way, which is he's just throwing as hard as he can all the time. And that's made, it's exacerbated his command issues. So I don't, there's a little bit more hope, I guess, than the Ian Anderson profile,

which is could he relax and not throw as hard sometimes and and get that strike um or could he just get back to at least he has a stretch this year where you're like that was good do that what you were doing in early may can you do that again uh so i think in uh situations with like nfbc or in situations like NFBC or in 12, I'm not sure about, but like 15 team leagues where you see a good stretch coming up in terms of matchups. He's coming up and you can actually play the schedule game. You're like, ooh, I like this week or this week. Maybe he could be a cheap acquisition for you.

It almost looks like he dusted off an old slider this year too. If you look at the numbers from 2019 in terms of the vertical movement on that pitch, the velo, and you compare 19 and 22, they look really similar. And then the two seasons between 2020 and 2021 look very different. I wonder if there's anything going on there

where maybe the command of that pitch just hasn't come back, and that's part of the struggle. I mean, clearly, it seems like the Jays liked that slider better, given the similarities and everything. They pushed him back in that direction. It just hasn't worked so far. Yeah, and the slider rates well. In fact, by the model,ates it average it's his best pitch

um the four seamer great stuff really poor location and that's i think that's just what i've seen i've seen him live he came here uh to oakland i think he was out in the second or third um and he just couldn't locate the four seamer and you know maybe if he throws the cutter and the slider uh but the it says here that he can he can locate the cutter worse so he basically has one pitch he can command so i don't know if he needs to take something off that four seamer so you can he can put it somewhere where he wants it but that's it's all about forcing command for him forcing locations at least maybe if you can for him, foreseeing locations at least. Maybe if you can't change the command,

maybe you can at least have him aim somewhere differently. Slider results include a.322 batting average against and a.632 slugging percentage against. It just doesn't make sense for that pitch with that level of command. Shouldn't get hit as hard as Yusei Kikuchi has been hit to this point. How about Aaron Ashby? Kind of feels a little different than the other two, maybe because we haven't seen quite as much of him in the big leagues.

Just got an extension from the Brewers over the weekend. Team control was going to keep him in Milwaukee for a long time anyway, so it's not that big of a commitment in the grand scheme of things, but to me, it's a signal that the Brewers are pretty optimistic that Ashby's going to keep getting better, and especially better than he's been so far this season. A.457 ERA and a.149 whip through 69 innings. Kays have been there, 83 strikeouts.

You see a lot of red ink on the stack cast page so it looks like there's a lot to like here one thing i noticed i was looking at the pitcher list page for ashby before we started recording each of his four pitches had a csw above 30 when i looked and that seems pretty unusual for someone with an arsenal that deep to get called strikes and whiffs with everything in the arsenal yeah i mean he's he's an absolute buy low he's an absolute buy i'm uh you know if he's available wherever you know you ever wherever you play i'd pick him up i don't uh he lights up any model you look at you look at stuff plus he's uh the slider the change up the curveball and sinker all above average and And the slider is standout pitch. The change up at 113 is actually for change ups.

That's really good. And the sinker 104 stuff plus sinker. That's hard to do. So, you know, his location numbers aren't great, but they aren't bad. You know,

Kikuchi has a location on the fastball of 90 and, and the spread in location plus is not large. You know, in terms of, you can see it. If you go on the spreadsheet, you know, and the spread in location plus is not large you know in terms of you can see it if you go on the spreadsheet you know and you look through it you're talking about like 110 to 85 is like can you know has all of the guys um whereas stuff plus has a larger range location plus is pretty pretty tight and uh so you know for a 90 uh a 90 stuff plus uh it's 90 location plus for kikuchi on the fastball is really bad uh ashby for example on the sinker below average but 98 so you know i think uh this is just a small sort of uh moment where he's got to figure out

you know command is a relative term what he can sort of put in decent places, what he can throw in the zone when he needs to for strikes, you know, what maybe he can mix it up. Maybe he's been too sinker heavy in the zone when he should be throwing some change-ups in the zone or some curveballs in the zone. So, you know, I think this is the type of profile I would buy in a second. It's not the profile we were talking about earlier

where finesse and a lot of pitches. It's a little bit more stuff, no command, but it's not Carlos Hernandez, you say Kikuchi, no command. This is like a guy who has either average command or slightly below average command and great stuff. So it's still something I would bet on. It's obviously something the Brewers are betting on.

There's no real trend in his numbers over the course of the season. I'm buying. One more name to throw at you here, another younger pitcher, one that I think back in early May you might have discussed as an available deep mixed league pitcher that should figure it out, and he really hasn't so far. Daniel Lynch.

Are we seeing any signs of adjustments or changes that would change the way his season could go once he's back from the IL? He's down with a hand injury right now, so he might have a couple couple rehab starts before he rejoins the royals but the the overall numbers from the model don't look good and the overall numbers just in terms of results don't look good either with a 505 era and a 158 whip despite strikeout per inning results to this point yeah you know if i was another team i I might consider acquiring him and wondering what my pitching coach is going to do with him. One of the things I liked about him and would be, I think, interesting to his next pitching coach is that he just has so many different pitches right uh and he's he's demonstrated some ability to to to shape those pitches and and place those pitches decent command uh of the slider and the fastball he just has poor shapes on all his pitches, and they haven't really gotten better.

He's got an 86 stuff plus on the slider now, and a 91 on the knuckle curve. None of his pitches now looks that standout, and I'm afraid that some of the changes they've made none of his pitches now looks that stand out. And I, I'm afraid that some of the changes they've made, I've made them worse. Like this year, his slider has two inches less vertical movement than it did last year, you know? And somehow is not,

he's not throwing it much harder and it has less horizontal movement. So it's just like, like like what what are you guys doing so uh i would he still is a guy who throws uh fairly hard uh and um i would if i was his future team i would say let's focus on the sinker again. Let's see if we can get, you know, let's shuffle through some of these seam shifted weight grips on the sinker. See if we can get you plus movement on the sinker. See if we can base this all off the sinker and see if your numbers improve. Because remember, all the stuff plus is all based off the primary fastball his foreseeing fastball is not very good what if everything changes when all these other pitches are being based off of his

sinker which is what he was before what he was when they drafted him so i you know it is one of those things where there's enough upside there where his team won't want to won't want to trade him so it may not happen for a while but i I would sit up and take more notice if he was traded for sure. Or if they made big changes in the pitching development program in Kansas City. I just wonder if there's any way to pry him loose right now. Because if you're the Royals, you're probably looking at those things and saying, no, we've got to get this right.

We need Daniel Lynch to be a good starter for us. We have to figure out why as an organization we don't turn guys like this into more productive starters more often. So if they were to trade him away, I feel like they'd be almost dunking on themselves in some ways. Yeah, I think they'd be more likely. They make a pitching coordinator and a major league pitching coach change before they do that.

Yeah, it seems like. If that doesn't work, then we're talking a year or two down the road. Then we're going down this road with Daniel Lynch getting an opportunity somewhere else. But if they do make a pitching coach change, let's say in the offseason, I'd say that is not impossible. I mean, you know, we're writing pieces about their organizational approach to the fastball, their, you know, almost historical ineptitude when it comes to the starting rotation. if they make a change there and then you hear,

you start hearing things about, you know, Lynch is doing this and Lynch is doing that. This is one, one place where the model won't help you, right? Because the model is not following him along in the off season. And they might be using elements of stuff plus to develop him better, but you won't have access to those

numbers you know uh so those are the times when i i look for a player like kikuchi um or ashby or you know in this case lynch he's going to be a long shot the model won't like him the projections won't like him but if you do hear stuff like his new pitching coach is getting him back on the sinker and has changed this or changed that or he's added a tick like all those things would become meaningful for lynch because he's demonstrated the ability to throw multiple pitches and he's on the cusp of being a productive big leaguer that's something that a pitching coach once told me. It was like, my favorite player to get is someone who's AAA to the majors back and forth because

I think that they're one thing away. One little tweak. Let's focus on this pitch. Let's do this. They're one little piece away because they've demonstrated that. They've gotten all the way to AAA. They've gotten all the way to the big leagues, and they just need one push over the finish line. So any pitcher that is like that is interesting when you're talking about end games, dollar days, long shot pickups. Yeah. I mean, I think if you're stashing in a deep dynasty league right now,

Lynch would still be on that list of pictures you just don't want to start them unless you want to be last well yeah if you're just you just look into 2023 and you want a chance at someone that could take that step there's still enough in the profile to justify that sort of stash had a question come in about model versus results looking at the pitching plus model this comes up a lot on the show just as something that we, looking at the pitching plus model. This comes up a lot on the show, just as something that we're looking at where we're surprised that someone is pitching really well because the model doesn't like the characteristics

of their pitches, and sometimes we get the opposite, where someone has great stuff and just isn't getting the results that are expected. So Rob sent us this question. I think it was sent about a reliever, Jacob Barnes, that was out of alignment in terms of model versus results. I think there's some broader names here that are pretty interesting.

And I was starting to look at a few of the starting pitchers that have exceeded expectations this year. Martin Perez, who has some of the worst stuff in the model that you can imagine. He's got a 75 stuff plus number. And he's been very good so far. I think most of us know the expectation for him can't be anywhere close to what he did up to this point. But when you're trying to reconcile the differences for someone like Perez,

it tends to be good location, bad stuff that allows some starters to, for three, four, maybe even a full season, like three to four months or a full season could just, they can exceed expectations, right? They can get a little bit lucky on balls and play, avoid catastrophic mistakes. Like, is there anything else that you've noticed in the model that leads to these discrepancies that can sometimes, I don't know if they're even fooling us as much as it's just like, it's disappointing us that we can't get it right every time. Yeah, it's just the, I think the idea is multiple pitches.

That's why I brought up the multiple pitches with Lynch, you know. Multiple pitches and above average command, I think, can pop at any time. I don't think that Paul Blackburn is, you know, really doing anything that's that much different than last year. I've looked at the numbers. There's a little bit of a tick of velo, some very slight movement changes. But mostly, it's just that a pitcher like Paul Blackburn can throw in a stretch like Paul Blackburn just

did at any time. One of the things I remember is JT Brubaker's great beginning to his career, really, where here's a guy with a lot of pitches, pretty good command on all those pitches. At some point, he got figured out. It's not something

that I would bet on long-term for Martin Perez, and we've seen him totally fall apart and be left off the playoff roster just last year. So it's not something that I bet on a lot, but I do try to keep a toe in the water with those pitchers. Like, you know, I do have a couple Tyler Anderson shares, for example, for this year,

because Tyler Anderson is kind of the patron saint, almost, of that package of skills, don't you think? Yeah, I think so. He's almost like, you know, if you look at any one of his pitches, not that great. Who are some other guys? I see here Tyler Anderson, 25th by results, and one of the five pitchers with a sub-100 pitching plus that's in the top 25. So Tyler Anderson belongs exactly where we're talking about. And then if you just scroll a tiny bit down, you get a bunch more.

Merrill Kelly. Oh, if there ever was a Tyler Anderson, it was Merrill Kelly. Logan Gilbert. it was a Tyler Anderson it was Merrill Kelly uh Logan Gilbert uh little bit strange you know given the velo numbers but not if you watch him I think it's just a really good fastball he can command well a slider that's not that stuff heavy um that he can command well Nestor Cortez oh exactly this guy uh and usually pitching plus will capture it so that's the one thing that I Nestor Cortez. Oh, exactly. This guy. And usually Pitching Plus will capture it. So that's the one thing that I think early on when I debuted this model,

I think I was very Stuff Plus. I was all about the Stuff Plus. And it's great to find a guy like Kyle Wright because he's a 109 Stuff Plus. Love it. That's going to happen. These guys are going to pop. Spencer Strider. Thank you for that's gonna happen these guys are gonna pop spencer strider you know thank you for that very much model you know you if you're if you're watching this you'll catch all those high stuff guys really early on and and be a first mover on those guys but pitching plus comes

online a little bit later and it's meaningful you know and so you can start to believe what nestor cortez is doing uh after four five six starts it takes a little bit longer and i think that's a good thing to do because remember jt brew breaker you know um so you know and remember martin perez last year but some other guys that follow that profile collars Carrasco is now in that profile. He used to have better stuff, but that's who he is now. Ross Stripling. Alex Wood. Alex Cobb, to some extent. Pablo Lopez.

Chris Bassett. You know. And JT Brubaker himself. Still here. Still here. 86 stuff plus, 102 command, 96 pitching plus. And then the last thing is that anybody who can manage a 98 and up pitching plus is basically like can be in a rotation in big leagues.

And anybody who can be in a rotation in big leagues can put together a good stretch. A lot of times i think it means uh who they're up against that's what i think of a little bit when i see tony gonsolin now tony gonsolin has actually made some improvements in the model itself because his location is better i think his shoulder is healthier his command his at once was god awful is is now average um and even his stuff is now average. So he seems average across the board. But that's my point.

Tony Gonsolin, I still think, is pretty much an average Major League starting pitcher. He has put together an amazing stretch. And I think if you kind of play the, you know, game log game, we need like a, we've had different names for this this start don't start start don't start or whatever you know um i don't know i see so he yes he's had some good starts at cincy at uh atlanta but the cubs the angels um you know the mets are kind of a there

or not their uh team offensively aly, Arizona three times in this run. That helps a lot at Pittsburgh. So, you know, I think to some extent he's been helped by the schedule. And then to some extent, he's just been improving his health, his command. You know, for example,

he's throwing his splitter now uh in the zone it's something he told me at the all-star game which i don't think is something he was doing a lot of before this is the highest zone rate on his uh splitter that he's had in the big leagues so there's some approach changes there's some health changes so anybody who is anywhere close, like Justin Steele, 94 stuff plus, 98 location, 97 pitching plus, the model doesn't love him, but he's interesting. And if he has the right select group of opponents in the next few weeks, he can make it work. Thinking about some underperformers with good numbers across the board,

Nathan Evaldi coming off of a brutal start against the Blue Jays. I mean, the Toronto offense has been kind of at its expected form recently. They've really come to life. But Evaldi across the board, stuff number looks good, location number looks good, pitching plus number looks good location number looks good pitching plus number looks good results have been brutal up to a 430 era for the season the under like the basic peripherals we care about other than the home run rate are all very good too it just seems like some home run issues have really caused his overall struggles this season but that most recent

start especially has really pushed those season-long numbers of whack yeah um i you know i think one of the dangers also is that none of this is park adjusted you know so i i think of that when i look at tyler molly matt mally mally sorry that's so hard for me there's an A and then there's an H. That's ah. Yeah. Malley. Tyler Malley, 100 stuff, 103 location. He's deceptively sort of part of the kind of Tyler Anderson situation

where he's had multiple pitches over his career, and he's tweaked them, but he's always had good command. And by this, it says he's a he's he's tweaked them but he's always had good command um and by this it says he's a 104 uh pitching plus should be good 448 era 331 x era 379 fip i think it's the ballpark man i think the ballpark just doesn't do him any favors it just does not allow him to kind of get on a good stretch um but uh there's also an element of you know some of these guys that are down there lower down that have good model numbers are smaller uh smaller samples like woodruff uh you know is way low for for what his what the model says he should be doing um and he has many fewer innings than most of his compatriots.

Yeah, yeah. We talked about Woodruff, I think, when he got healthy, and it was just like, well, if you can go trade for him, you're getting a still elite pitcher based on everything we're seeing in the model. And the results just haven't been there yet. He has pitched really well since coming off of the IL so far, so good as he's been able to manage the Renaud's syndrome that he was dealing with at the end of that IL stint as well.

Evaldi, I think, is also interesting, though, because the Red Sox are sliding to the point where they're one bad week away from possibly trading players away. I mean, they've got a couple injuries piling up now. Devers just went on the IL. So Evaldi could become a nice trade ship at the deadline for the Red Sox if they want to make him one of the, I think, above average starting pitchers that you can go out and actually acquire.

They still have a 26% chance of making the playoffs, according to Fang graphs but i mean the next one up from them is the guardians who have two wins on them and 31 and both of those guys would be out of the playoffs right now right so the next one up is the mariners who would be in they have a 62%. So that's a pretty big drop. And if you're just looking around, you're the Red Sox, and you're like, us are the Guardians, and what's their schedule going to look like?

Who are they going to play? Are they going to play a bunch of Royals and Tigers when we have to play the Blue Jays and Yankees? Then I think, yeah, you can go over to the roster resource payroll thing for the Red Sox and take a look at who they have that's expiring in terms of deals that they won't have next year. You've got J.D. Martinez, free agent next year. Nathan Ivaldi, free agent next year. Christian Vasquez, Enrique Hernandez.

And Michael Wacca, Rich Hill, Matt Strom. I think it's maybe easier to let Rich Hill go for very little, but it's somebody like J.D. Martinez or Nathan Evaldi that might actually get you a prospect of note. Yeah, it's one of those scenarios. i had not thought much about it until recently but now with the injuries piling up and current state of things it might make some sense for them to flip a few players that are not going to be around next season they're going to be very active in the free agency market next year. Have to be, right? They have $107 million under contract next year.

Yeah, so there'll be something of interest. I bet you they extend Xander. They did say extend Xander. Well, he's got an opt-out. Oh, I bet you they shore that up. I was like, why are people talking about signing? But the Cubs, everyone's signing the Cubs. They're going to sign him. It's very interesting.

Everyone's assuming that Carlos Correa opts out and goes back into free agency, so he could be an option for those teams too. Maybe they just switch Sander to Correa. It'd be amazing to have Correa's story up the middle. Let's get to our prospect of the week segment. I'm going to go against the grain and i am going to recommend a player who had season-ending knee surgery just over a month ago

really that's exciting really great great player to feature dvr way to dig deep uh this is a stash play this is the this is a guy that you want to consider picking up in your deep dynasty or keeper leagues because you're obviously playing for the long-term future anyway. You would be even if this player were healthy right now. It's Emmanuel Rodriguez, an outfielder in the Twins organization. Shows power, shows speed, was walking more than he was striking out this season. 57 walks against 52Ks as a 19-year-old at Fort Myers. walks against 52ks as a 19 year old at fort myers he had a 272 492 551 line 47 games at the time that he got hurt and i think there was a pretty good underlying number in terms of the hard hit rate

too he was making a lot of hard contact at high a rotowire's got some hard hit data on their player pages for minor leaguers and this is just one of those profiles that I think because the season was cut short, we didn't get that next bit of information. We didn't get to see if the K rate would come down a little bit. We didn't get to see if you'd get a promotion to up another level to see how he'd perform against more advanced competition. And I think there's enough here tools wise that if you're in a league where

200 prospects are rostered, I think Rodriguez should be one of those 200 players that are rostered. That's a great pull, although I'm going to wait around for the recovery on that one. Here's one that will possibly poop or get off the potty quicker. He's 24 and in AAA already, and he plays for a team that I think still has a need at his position, even though they've been cycling through first baseman.

His name is Matt Mervis on the Chicago Cubs, and I know his name thanks to James Anderson from Roto-Wire, who co-manages the team with me and picked him up today. Thank you, James Anderson. from rotowire who co-manages the team with me uh and picked him up today at least i gave him credit right i could have just pretended that was mine uh but this is amazing now that i'm looking at it here's a guy with the fan graphs gave a 40 hit tool however uh he had a 20 strike strikeout rate in AA this year. So even if it maybe jumps up in the major leagues, he's had other strikeout, higher strikeout rates than minors. I think it's a possibility this guy will strike out less than 25% of the time in the major leagues.

And the other thing that's interesting is he's had a major swing change. He used to hit many ground balls, and then this year he has flipped it basically from 50% ground balls to 50% fly balls. And I know that's a number that scares people. However, he's managed to hit 300 and 350 at high A and double A this year with that profile. I think it's a pretty intriguing profile and I would say that I think the Cubs current selection of first baseman leaves you wanting Rivas is interesting but does not have the power you normally expect from a first baseman and there are no underlying numbers that say he should have it max exit velocity is bad the barrel rate is bad uh he just and in the past he's made contact but

he's not making contact schwindel is like 30 uh so i you know i think there's a there's an opportunity here for maybe they uh maybe they release schwindel i mean like like i don't i'm not calling for that but schwindel has you know been released before and been picked up by other teams and he's almost a full win under replacement this year and there's not a lot going for him other than his strikeout rate which is good you know maybe they're just like hey we need to look to next year and this 23 year old that's tearing out the minor leagues uh is a little bit more into 24 year old is a little bit more interesting to us yeah matt mervis m-e-r-v-i-s if you're looking for him on any

league site that you're playing on interesting name if they do want to give him a look. So a good selection. Hat tip to James for putting that one on the radar for you. One prospect question before we go. This came in via email from Jody. Which prospect would you rather have between Daniel Espino in the Guardians organization or Kyle Harrison? Can have my choice in a trade and not sure who I want to get out of the two. So curious how you would decide between those two

if that was a problem you were looking at. Yeah, and I gave her a total king of waffles answer. I'm going to try and be better. I just explained to her that I thought that Daniel Espino had the better breaking ball and Kyle Harrison had the better fastball. And I don't think I made a decision for her. I just sort of told her those two things. I'm going to go with the breaking ball guy. I think I'm going to take Daniel Espino. I think there's a chance he has a very special breaking ball and i i know fastballs are important but i i think this is a breaking ball league so i'm gonna i'm gonna go with the breaking ball

i'm gonna take daniel espino yeah i think for me i lean pretty heavily on people like james for decisions like this too he's got espino ahead of Harrison. I think part of it for me is also with Espino, I think it's even more polished. Both of these guys are high ceiling players, but I think Espino has a safer floor. I think that's the difference for me. Both could be frontline type starters in the long run, but Espino just continues to put up video game numbers I'm disappointed that because of injuries we've seen so little of him this year I think there's a good chance Espino ends up in the fall league just to make up ground innings wise which is pretty exciting for us that'd be fun we'd like to see in there that would be very good so edge to Espino for me it's it's really

just a little more confidence in the floor but both very good pitching prospects and hopefully not that far away from contributing yeah now that Meyer's up you know there's Ronzi uh Ronzi's down I guess Patino Ronzi Contreras Patino Luis Patino um the I guess the two guys in Baltimore um in D.L. Hall and Grayson Rodriguez, I think that Harrison and Espino belong in that group near the top. D.L. Hall is probably near the bottom. I guess Patino is near the bottom in that group. Those are my favorite pitching prospects in baseball right now.

I think if you said you could have any current prospect in baseball via trade or you're drafting from scratch, Uri Perez would probably be number one for me. Let's throw him in that mix. I mean, 6'8", four pitches with command at 19 years old, sky's the limit. So I've elevated Perez even one

notch above where our friends that handle the prospect rankings have him. That's the guy. That's the guy I want. All in. I am in the Uri Perez fan club now. Didn't take much. Took 10 pitches in the Futures game and I was like, yep. Sign me up.

Send me the membership card. I am in. That's why I fell in love with Shane Boz, so I'm not holding that against you. Oh, I guess he's... I don't know what he counts as. Technically still a prospect, I think. Still has eligibility because of all the missed time. Don't forget about him.

But sprained UCL, so... Yeah, it's not good. Could be a Tommy John situation, unfortunately. We'll see if we get some more information on Boz here in the next few weeks. Before we go, I will let everyone know you can get a subscription to The Athletic for just a dollar a month at theathletic.com slash ratesinbarrels. Eno, did you say you get some new ranks coming out in the relative near future? Yeah, I think I'll do them this week, Thursday or Friday, pitching ranks.

Very nice. So be sure to get that. Quote, unquote, second half, second, third. Final third. Third period. It's the fantasy baseball season. It's just like a hockey game. On Twitter, you can find Eno at Eno Saris.

You can find me at DerekVanRyber. You can always ask us questions via email, ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com, or be sure to drop a comment on this video on YouTube. If you're not watching our YouTube channel already, be sure to subscribe and like this video. And if you're listening to us on a platform that allows you to rate and review the podcast, like Spotify or Apple Podcasts,

we'd greatly appreciate it if you took the time to do that. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Thursday. Thanks for listening.