Rates & Barrels - Strange Times in St. Louis, Opportunity for Ortiz & Morel, Mailbag Monday

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

Eno and DVR discuss the Cardinals' unusual decision to move Willson Contreras out of the catcher rotation (at least temporarily), the struggles of Jack Flaherty, a return to the big leagues for Christopher Morel and Luis Ortiz, and several mailbag questions.  Rundown 1:14 Willson Conteras: Moving Off Catcher, For Now? 7:59 Failures in Logic 12:44 Jack Flaherty's Ongoing Struggles 20:31 Luis Ortiz Back in the Pirates' Rotation 23:41 Christopher Morel is Back with the Cubs 28:02 Matt Strahm to the Bullpen? 30:09 Jack Suwinski Comp? 32:46 Cody Bellinger's Rebound; Statcast Numbers 36:47 Brandon Woodruff Injury Update 40:33 Jarren Duran: Post-Hype Sleeper? 44:45 Drew Rasmussen: Model Numbers v. Ranking 48:28 Falling Behind Season IP Pace 52:25 Aaron Judge is Coming Back on Tuesday Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Offers from our partners... Right now, Nuts.com is offering new customers a free gift with purchase and free shipping on orders of $29 or more at Nuts.com/rates Right now, you can try LinkedIn Sales Navigator and get a sixty-day free trial at LinkedIn.com/rates23 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Best Western made booking our family beach vacation a breeze. And it felt a little like... Come on kids, back to the hotel room. Good night kids. Good night mama. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at best western Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Monday, May 8th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we will discuss the very strange situation that started to play out over the weekend in St. Louis. Wilson Contreras isn't going to be a catcher for a little while, a long while. It's kind of hard to tell because for a moment, it looked like he was going to be an outfielder slash DH. And then a day later, he wasn't going to play in the outfield at all.

I don't know if the Cardinals know for sure what Wilson Contreras is going to do, but we're going to talk about that situation. We've got a few other roster moves. Luis Ortiz, a favorite of Eno, is going to be up this week. He's going to take the place of the injured Vince Velasquez in the Pirates rotation, so that's pretty exciting.

Christopher Murrell, looks like he's coming back up for the Cubs. And then we have a ton of great mailbag questions, trying to catch up with the mailbag. Mailbag Monday, I guess we'll call it, since it's May 8th and we needed some content, which is always nice. Nice to be able to fall back on that when the current of the game doesn't just throw us into the topics that we're going to talk about. But we'll begin with Wilson Contreras. In year one of a five-year deal, in month two of year one We'll be right back. time being, they're going to have him sit in a meeting and still try and sort some things out. And the main issue is apparently game calling. That's the problem the Cardinals have. And, you know, they've got a few folks quoted as saying he's not the reason things are going this way.

There are other problems with the team, which, yeah, we know. But the thing that doesn't make any sense is I saw a Ken Rosenthal story back in February where John Moselock acknowledged the issues that the Cubs had with Wilson Contreras' game calling, and yet they signed out of this five-year deal anyway. So this seems like another bizarro move by the Cardinals front office that could have been avoided, much like their logjam in the outfield. There could have been things done prior to the start of the season that would have enabled them to shuffle things around a bit more easily. I think the big question I have for you, you know, is, is Wilson Gutierrez going to hit enough to just be a DH for the foreseeable future for the Cardinals? Do we trust the bat enough for him to be productive and be an above-average option for them. I mean, for fantasy purposes, he's already catcher eligible,

so it doesn't hurt anytime soon, but this is a really unusual development. Yeah, I think he's good enough. The barrels have fallen off a little bit, but the raw power is still there, and it's a pretty good combination of barrels and strikeout rate. I mean, there's not a lot of people who can barrel over 10% and strike out less than league average.

So he's on a good list of players. It's a little bit of a short start for him, but if you actually look, it's something that's been sort of endemic to the rest of the offense. If you look under the hood, St. Louis is top 10 in WRC+. They're top 10 in barrels. They don't chase that much. They're doing the right things, and then they're 20th in runs scored.

To some extent, I think this is panicking when they should have stayed the course. Yes, he definitely has a negative impact on the pitching staff, at least compared to Yadier Molina. But the impact is such that if they were to continue, if the trends were to continue in framing, Contreras would cost the Cardinals about one win over Yadier Molina for the whole season. So that's one win over Yadier Molina for the whole season. So that's one win.

Where are the other 10 that they're missing, right? And I put the blame pretty squarely on a starting rotation that many public analysts, not just ourselves here on this podcast and Katie and I's preseason article, on this podcast and Katie and I's article, you know, preseason article. Many public analysts had this pegged as a real problem for the Cardinals, was a pitch-to-contact staff and philosophy at a time when the shift rules were changing.

Can't put that on Contreras. Now, game calling. There was once a game-calling piece by Harry Pavlidis and company on ESPN but I don't know I'm gonna try and I'm gonna try to get it up but it's it's it's hard to find but they found a way to sort of measure game callers and they found that the best were pretty valuable AJ Ellis was the leader in total runs saved by game calling from 2012 to 2014 and he had 38 runs saved now that's 38 runs saved over three seasons right and that's the very best guy so

38 runs over three seasons is uh more like 13 over one season and 13 runs is class class one win so the very best game caller was worth a win. Going from Yachty to Wilson Contreras is worth another win. So those are two wins that are missing. This team is missing a lot more than two wins. And if you think about it, the best idea would have been to leave Contreras behind the plate for two reasons. How is he going to learn game calling?

I guess the idea is he's going to stand next to coaches and learn how to game call from the dugout. This is something I've heard. Maybe that works. But really, if you think about it in terms of a fantasy team, let's say you have a fantasy team, the offense is scuffling. And you have this idea, oh'm gonna i'm gonna make some changes you know i'm gonna drop some guys the very worst thing you can do is be like i'm gonna drop nolan arenado you know what i mean the player that's most likely to dig you out of the hole is the

one who's the furthest nolan arenado right even if you adjust the breast to season projection based on what's happened so far there is a very good chance that he is clearly better than any and all players that have been available on your waiver wire so far yeah and if you need this team to slug going forward then you knizer nizer and you say isn't there huh isn't it kisner kisner it's it's tricky but it's i think it's Kisner. Kisner is not the answer in terms of how much upside. If you really truly think that it's all game calling, then yeah, make the choice. But it does reek to me of scapegoating. It certainly looks that way.

And with Contreras, I mean, he's a 30-year-old veteran catcher. This seems like something you would do with a rookie. Yeah, and also you knew this stuff. You knew all this coming in. Maybe they signed him thinking, well, worst case scenario, he's an outfielder for us. Well, that lasted no days. I don't think he would be a good outfielder, though.

I mean. It's not like he's going to play first base for you. Maybe they just thought he would DH. They were signing a catcher who would catch for them for a year or two and then DH the rest of the contract. But then that's sort of incongruent with the idea that Nolan Gorman was going to play a lot. There just seems like, yeah, there seems planning.

Poor planning. It seems like poor planning. I know I dunk on the Rockies and some of the low-hanging fruit out there, and I don't make fun of these teams because I think I'm smarter than everybody in the front office. I think the things that bother me are the elementary logic failures, and that's what this is. This is just basic common sense of if we do this, these things need to be right, and I think that's where the Cardinals have really been making some pretty big mistakes. Now, I'm with you on the bat with Contreras. I mean, you look at some of the projections for him.

The bat X, in particular, has a pretty aggressive, positive projection for Wilson Contreras as a hitter. And if you start to think about him as more of an everyday guy, as opposed to someone that needs to take days off because he's catching, you can scale that up. Yeah, it might actually be good for his fantasy value they're serious about it 20 homers and five stolen bases here on out that that's not a number that a lot of people are going to catch no and i think if you think about it in the context of how much playing time most catchers get he'd be an exceed on that side and he's caught more than 20 games already this season so he's already catcher eligible for he has to push gorman into the field and their defense has fallen from sort of top three to five to top 10 and that might cost you just as much as you save in game calling and framing and everything else behind the plate so it's the scene from vegas vacation when clark starts to break the

the hoover dam and he just he takes the piece of gum and he covers one hole and then starts to break the Hoover Dam, and he takes the piece of gum, and he covers one hole, and then starts leaking somewhere else. That's what the Cardinals are doing right now. I mean, you still got these pitchers pitching to this catcher, right? Yeah, did you change anything? Did you even bring up Matthew Libertor?

No. Oh, okay. What buttons are you going to... What's the next button you're going to push? It's probably the Libertor button. I'm not sure that that button is saving anybody's butt, though. Well, that's not going to save everything.

If Libertor is replacing Jake Woodford, yes, that's an upgrade. By the way, the Zach Thompson thing is hilarious. They took a lefty that was doing okay in the bullpen and sent him down to stretch him out. And the idea is maybe stretch him out to start this year or maybe next year um anyway this is also a guy with a really poor fastball and the worst uh stuff plus in the uh in the uh in the in the whole cardinals like staff. So I, uh, I don't really understand what's going on there. Um, and I don't think that, uh, they're doing the right things over there.

I did want to give a quick shout out, uh, to my mom. She just finished, uh, one leg of an ultra marathon on sunday wow so she seeded see she did 36 miles uh in 19 hours uh and okay that's a lot has some bruises and and muscle spasms to show for it but uh uh sent me a picture uh of a sign literally said, only one marathon to go. Not kidding, is what the sign says. That's quite the accomplishment. And I think the relevancy for baseball is this thing is a marathon, and the Cardinals are acting like they can sprint their way out of it, I feel like. It's a five-year deal. You wanted to catch for some of it.

And changing this right now just creates more problems later. I think this ends with some sort of trade where Wilson Contreras and a big pile of cash goes back to the Rockies. This is a chance for the Rockies to swoop in and right the wrong of the Nolan Arnauto trade. The Cubs can get them back. The Cubs just brought up Miguel Amaya.

Do you think it's for good or was the corresponding move an injury? Jan Gomes is hurt right now. Gomes and Barnhart are clearly just the kinds of veterans you use until someone like Amaya is ready. Amaya is a good defender. He's healthy again.

He was striking out a lot at AA to begin this season. There's always been some swing and miss. I like him. I think he's a pretty interesting player from a fantasy perspective. Actually, I just had a monthly supplemental draft with Ryan Bloomfield last night where

he took Miguel Amaya because we're playing for the future. I don't think he's up for good unless he hits a ton, but he could be back up again later this season. I think he's a good longer term add in leagues where especially we got to start two catch again later this season. I think he's a good longer-term add in leagues, especially if he's going to start two catchers. I don't know if he's going to be a short-term single catcher league guy.

I think he's a little more borderline for that. It's like 230, 240 with maybe just a tick under league average power, maybe league average power. Right, but the glove should keep him in the lineup a lot when he's up. I think that's part of what I like about Miguel Amaya. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one. Just start moving with the Peloton Bike, Bike Plus,

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ford.ca with the cardinals in the pitching jack flaherty i finally was cutting jack flaherty in some leagues you know and i was looking back and what made jack flaherty good between 2018 and 2021 back when he had those four straight years with a sub four sierra and had good swinging strike rates had a strikeout rate in the upper 20% range and good enough control. Even though he had some home run issues, it all worked, right? And of course, the Cardinals defense did a good job helping the whole staff at that time. The Velo is only down slightly, but he is just not the same guy. And it's amazing to me, the pitching model does not think that Jack Flaherty has a good pitch and that makes him droppable at least

in shallow leagues 12 team leagues if you find something better go ahead make a move is there a case to drop him in deeper leagues and is there a chance that a different organization could fix Jack Flaherty because if you're the Cardinals and this season turns into a lost season Flaherty is probably on the list of names that other teams would be asking about. Yeah, I wonder. The model never really loved him, and so I wonder if there is something missing about him. Get the sort of shades of Robbie Ray, where it's like a good fastball slider combo,

and he really focuses on those and pitches them a ton. And so even though it looks league average-ish, it works. But there some degrading of stuff even from when he was really good like when he was at his best his slider was almost 85 it was 85 miles an hour and now it's under 84 and that is the kind of on off switch a little bit for breaking balls 85 is a magic number for sliders um so dropping underneath it uh reduces the effectiveness there and then we we knew that he wasn't um someone that had uh plus wiggle i mean this is the the worst uh sideways movement he's ever had on his fastballs uh but he also never had plus ride you know and this is the worst ride he's ever had on his fastball so the movement and velo changes seem subtle but they're all in the category of worst you know i mean like so whatever you thought of jack flaherty before you should

think less of him now uh there's nothing really pointing to under the hood saying oh well at least he's doing this right and that's weird because the strikeout rate is okay. The swinging strike rate is okay. The K-BB is not, though. And I think that there's enough in that walk rate, enough in that stuff model for me to say I'm not interested. And it's pretty wild. Zips says he can do a 3-7-3 ERA with more than a strikeout per inning. And the bat says, no, he's a 4-7 guy with a 1-3-8 whip

and less than a strikeout per inning. And I will lean much closer to the bat projection for Jack Flaherty. I rarely see ranges that big. It's got to be one of the biggest. It gives you an idea that teams will probably be interested, though, in some capacity, whether the Cardinals keep him all year. He's a free agent at be one of the biggest it gives you an idea that teams will probably be interested though in some capacity whether the cardinals keep him all year he's a free agent at the end of the season so i think he would thrive if you put him into short relief even a two inning thing because if you could just push that slider above 85 and just make him purely fastball slider uh

and probably push i think any other team would probably push the slider percentage to 35-40%. There's something to be done with what he can do. That goes beyond even game calling. That's an organizational decision. That's not a thing you just decide in the moment, but that is surprising. We had a former Cardinals pitcher on Twitter telling stories about how he got competing directives from his coaches. You know, the local, the director of player development would come in and say, oh, throw down the middle. We're trying to, we're pitching efficiency and command and get through the inning.

And then his pitching coach would pull him aside and say, no, no, no. The nerds tell us that we want to strike out people, and I agree with them, and let's work on strikeout stuff. So competing directives is not good. He said also that he had coaches that had no idea how to use TrackMan and the tech that they had. So that's something I've heard before. Throw down the middle, I'm agnostic on that, actually,

because if you have good stuff, throwing down the middle is a great plan. You know, there's a ton of coaches out there who are stuffists, quote-unquote, who believe in throwing great stuff down the middle and letting batters get themselves out and also just having, you know, because they don't believe that command is that fine, they say, you know, aim for the middle of the zone, and your stuff will basically take it to the edges. You know what I mean?

So I'm agnostic about that part, but it's never good to hear competing directives, and it's never good to hear that. And, you know, actually the tech thing is another competing directive, right? That's the player development guy being like, put track man everywhere. And the coach is being like, I don't know what this thing is. That's a competing directive in a way so um you know i think there's and this was maybe information that's maybe two or three years old he's out of baseball now this pitcher um and uh

and so i think there's just organizational inertia when you're trying to turn a ship around you know uh they have they have with the cardinals way they have this tanker this huge tanker and to turn uh that tanker around is going to take some time so um i don't really see great evidence libertor has been better but he still has sub 100 stuff lost in the minors and you know my first conversation ever with Libertor was about how he quote unquote said, you have to take your career into your own hands. And so he was more about, you know, what does my private lab tell me about what I should be doing with my pitches more than so I don't think Zach Thompson is the answer. I don't think Jake Woodford is the answer. Maybe a healthy Steven Matz and a healthy Jordan Montgomery gives them two kind of middle-of-the-rotation pitchers. Miles Michaelis has always been a command guy

that can have a poor year or have a good year. I don't think Wainwright is really the answer, but he still has an elite pitch so i would say that they have one number three and three number fives and that's the problem yeah and i think with yadi maybe you could round all those guys up a spot and without yadi they're gonna pitch to their true talent level or maybe a shade worse but I don't think I need to even go

there. I think just being even their true talent themselves is part of the problem for the Cardinals right now. They've got to give Libertor another shot. 22.6% K-B percentage so far at AAA this year. Just sounds like the stuff is up a little better. The cost of Woodford shoulder inflammation this year. It just sounds like the stuff is up a little better. At the cost of Woodford shoulder inflammation this weekend.

But the corresponding move for that, I guess, was Wainwright coming up. So right now it's Wainwright. It's going to be Matts, I guess. And Matts just had a decent start, right? Matts allowed one run. Five and a third. Two straight counts. Against the Tigers counts Against the Tigers

Against the Tigers Who would you demo? Mats Woodford is the one with options but he's hurt You already made the room for Woodford With the Wainwright swap But I think Mats is the next one out And it's a longer term deal right?

It's awful I didn't like that deal either. No, that was not one of my favorites. A couple other news-related things to get to here real quick. Luis Ortiz coming up Tuesday, stepping in for Vince Velasquez. And I guess the only question is, does everything look as good so far with Ortiz at AAA as it did late last season when he was really popping as someone we were going to be interested in for this season no and I can't figure out why it's very strange I know it's very strange I am I am I would love to have him on my bench not pitching for the first

start I want to get some major league stuff plus numbers there are some issues with the data in the minor leagues that makes it less reliable right now he has a 97 stuff plus with a 96 location us we knew the locations weren't great for him but I had real hope that this is a guy who would out stuff it because he had really good stuff numbers last year um and you can see in his numbers really nice swing strike rates you know uh and pretty pretty good strikeout rates too i mean he had a a 30 in a ball uh 29 in triple a like those are good those are really good strikeout rates so um i'm uh i'm betting on him but i don don't necessarily want to start him until I figure out why he has a 97 stuff plus in AAA this year. And I'm pretty sure it's right.

It says Luis L. Ortiz, and this guy's Luis L. Ortiz. There's like five Luis Ortiz's. It's really awful. Yeah, it's a challenge. But, yeah, I think I have my eye on him. And he's somebody I liked better than Oviedo going in. Interestingly, Oviedo seemed to regress towards what the model said he was as soon as I thought maybe I had him wrong.

Trust your model, I guess, is the real answer. Oviedo has decent swinging strike rates, but just can't seem to put it together. Yeah, what's strange is with Oviedo has decent swinging strike rates, but just can't seem to put it together. Yeah, what's strange is with Oviedo, I would guess many people, well, I think it was maybe part of a two-start week, but at Colorado may have been missed if you had the option to.

Home against the Dodgers, you probably avoided that. That was four earned over five and a third. At Washington, though, was a streaming spot. Anyone and everyone who was interested would have used him there, and he got smoked. And then home against Toronto might have been one where he would have pulled back,

especially after he got hit with the Nationals. But it's been a bumpy ride here these last couple of weeks for Oviedo. Even though the strikeouts have been there overall, just below a K per inning. Only three homers allowed in 37 innings, but it's really just the inconsistency with the control that seems to be a problem. Yeah, and the last three starts, though, even the strikeouts aren't there,

although you can lose strikeouts because of control as well. Yeah, so that could be it. But ever since that one game at St. Louis where we all sort of declared him arrived, he has, and that that game of colorado so the week the week everyone picked him up since then he's given up 17 runs in 12 innings uh with eight strikeouts it's very strange other promotions it sounds like christopher morel's on his way back up and yeah i think that's confirmed now by Jesse Rogers of ESPN.com.

Murrell has been carrying the cover on the ball. Do we know what the corresponding move is yet? I've not seen it yet. So I know we're waiting to see if maybe Eric Hosmer gets the goodbye from the Cubs. Which is, there's been pressure on him anyway because uh because matt mervis came up so there's you know what i like about what the cubs are doing i feel like is um is it panic is it panic to you i don't know it it's it maybe it's panic but i think it's it's a little bit more like like okay we banked some. We're a little bit better than people thought.

And let's continue to make this team better, right? That's how I see it. I know that they've hit a skid where they started losing some games. So you could read this as just a similar panic to the Cardinals. But they're not that panicky to me. It's like we're calling up two young kids that we think are good. Is that super panicky? I don't know. It seems like a good idea. We're releasing some old guys that weren't as good as we thought they might be. I think it's very reasonable. I think what's

interesting here with Murrell is he's still striking out a lot, 30.6% of the time. That gets always to be part of his profile. Do we trust the barrel rate from the debut last year? 13.4%. If he's going to barrel the ball as much as he did last year he can live with that high k rate because he walks a bit he's got speed he has lots of ways of providing value that's what i'm saying if you're going to have somebody who uh might be below league average uh you know with the overall, have somebody that can play you, you know, any position and run into a homer and steal you a bag, right?

It's like, you know, Morel and Hosmer, the projections might actually be kind of similar in terms of just at the plate, but Morel's going to do something, everything better for you. And I'm speaking here as if I know what the corresponding move is. I don't know exactly, but, you, but that would make some sense to me

is just to have a way more flexible roster, right? Because with Mantini and Mervis, you've got first base covered. So you want really to have somebody who can help you on defense, on the field, and stuff like that. Well, and Murrell, too. He fits into our conversation from about two weeks ago with the tools. You look at the Fangraph scouting grades. 55 present,

future 60 raw power, 60 speed. The problem is the hit tool, but if you give him more and more opportunity, especially as your team in the middle trying to find your way back into the postseason, maybe you get more mileage out of that hit tool. This is the sort of guy you do give the extra development

time to because if it clicks, the payoff is huge, and even if it doesn't, it's still probably close by projection to those lower ceiling older guys that you're talking about. And look at the WRC Pluses projected. They're all actually pretty close.

96 to 98 is the range from steamer to the bad X and, and to the ATC system. So that's fine. That works for a guy that can play all over a league average player. I mean, last year he was very similar to that a little bit over a 100 and WRC plus, but, and the defense wasn't great, but they also asked him to play short,

you know, and he doesn't necessarily need to play short anymore when they've got Nico Horner and Dancy Swanson on this team. So I think the defensive numbers will be a positive at third and second and center or outfield or wherever they put them. So yeah, it's just going to be more helpful and give them more flexibility

than having three first basemen on the roster. He's basically the backup at six positions. He doesn't have a spot to call his own. Horner's a starter at second. Patrick Wisdom's a starter at third. Dansby Swanson's the shortstop. Hatt Bellinger and Suzuki are all locked in across the outfield. The DH could be open.

That could float depending on how much they want to play Mancini. The DH could be open. That could float depending on how much they want to play Mancini. Six or seven spots could be one start per week across each of those different spots playing the matchups. It's four or five starts per week in total for Morel pretty easily. I'm curious to see if he can continue the positive momentum that he had at AAA. One other note I saw as we were getting ready for the show today, Matt Strom, who's now, at least for the time being, in the bullpen for the Phillies, had a two-inning save. They used Jose Alvarado in the seventh inning of that game. I think with Strom, the lack of heavy workloads in the past make him

a bit of a challenging player. There also is some schedule stuff going on this week. The Phillies are among the teams that have two off days. They don't play on Monday, they won't play on thursday and they're off again next thursday so you pair the schedule with ranger suarez coming back with the past workload concerns i think that kind of gets you the answer to why is matt strom not starting i don't know if they're really going to use bailey falter over matt strom in their rotation very long. That seems like a very temporary thing. Yeah, I think this is a managing innings thing, trying to win games and keep people healthy for later.

They're an interesting spot to be 16-19, but just getting Bryce Harper back still doesn't solve... There's still the question, can Bryce Harper pitch sort of deal? They would have been a lot better off if they'd been able to go to Andrew Painter here but if you were going to ask me which one is more likely to stay in the rotation I'm definitely going with Matt Strom over Bailey Felder

got a dog chewing away on her paws in the background it's very distracting to hear a dog just gnawing away over your headphones you can't see her you can't hear her on the show show. If you hear me clicking in the background, it's just fighting Hazel. I'm trying to tell her to stop. I'm trying to get her to stop without kicking her out of the room because the rest of the house is peaceful right now. Everyone's happy. I don't want to introduce any variable. My little dogs jump up into the bed

and sometimes they decide they need to do that shake that dogs do. Sometimes that happens maybe a foot from my face. And it's like the first thing I encounter in the morning is a dog violently shaking itself by my face. At least your dog is small. Yeah, that's true. That helps. Up your health game with Sun Life and the Toronto Raptors health experts. Access nutritional tips, mental health coaching, and advice on overall wellness. That helps.

Let's get to a few mailbag questions. Andrew sent us a handful, and I think we talked about Jack Swinski last week. You said maybe a ceiling of a 30 homer, 10 steal guy. And I think the question from Andrew was, who does he compare to? Yeah, I think it's Tyler O'Neal. I think it's good Tyler O'Neal. If you say, what is his profile like?

It's that. Similar range of outcomes at the top. Maybe a similar range of outcomes toward the bottom, too, though, if the swing and miss, you know, gets elevated for a prolonged stretch. Yeah, there's definitely that sort of risk because of the strikeout rate. And I want to look at this rolling strikeout rate. Oh man, he had really done some good work keeping the rolling strikeout rate close to 25% early in the season, which he's had stretches like that. And in fact, last year, from games sort of 50 through 80 last year,

he did a lot of work cutting his strikeout rate and had the rolling strikeout rate close to 20% at one point. But he's a streaky guy, as you often are with a big strikeout rate close to 20% at one point. But he's a streaky guy. He's as you often are with a big strikeout rate like this. And right now, the strikeout rate is going in the wrong direction. The rolling strikeout rate is approaching 40%. So as much as I'd hoped that he was really making some good progress at making more contact, I think he is just a three true outcome athlete if that makes sense. He's a three true outcome guy who can steal bases. You're just never sure where the batting average is going to end up.

I think Tyler Neal is a good comp for that. When it works. That's a top 100 player though as you suggested last week. It's another weird one. It's one from back in the day. I'm going to see if I'm right on this. Yeah, Mike Cameron. Mike Cameron struck out less, but it was at a time when the league struck out less.

And older Mike Cameron was like 240, 25, and 15. He's probably not as fast as Mike Cameron was like 240, 25, and 15. He's probably not as fast as Mike Cameron was. Yeah, I would say Cameron almost certainly was faster at his peak. Yeah. If my memory serves me right, Mike Cameron had some pretty big stolen base numbers earlier in his career, especially. Yeah, he got 297 for his career,

and he had a year in Seattle, 267, 25 homers, 34 steals, 110 RBI. It was a really nice peak season there. The other questions that came in here, one was about Cody Bellinger producing despite some blue ink on his StatCast page. Look, I think if you're looking at Cody Bellinger right now, the first thing you look at is the strikeout rate. Where's the strikeout rate? It's actually good again. 19.1% entering play on Monday. The barrel rates actually are pretty close to his career norms.

9.9% is Cody Bellinger's career barrel rate. He's at 8.3% so far this season, so that's fine. I don't think I'm that worried about the average exit velocity, the hard hit percentage, those things being a little on the lower side because he's stealing bases. He's not striking out. He's still getting to the power anyway. It's mostly everything pull. I think out of his seven homers, six have been pulled to right field. So all this sort of works for me. Playing good defense in center field, that's fine. playing good defense in center field, that's fine. At this point, is it similar to what we were talking about with Nolan Arenado in the past,

where as long as the approach kind of works to get to the power, he doesn't have to scald everything and we can live with these light blue stat cast indicators? Yeah. You know, he had another year that I think provides

a little bit of a roadmap. 2018 that I think provides us a little bit of a roadmap. 2018. Struck out 24% of the time with a similar barrel rate as he has now. And hit 260 with 25 homers and 14 steals. He had different sliders back then, though. If you look back at what those hard hit rates and stuff looked like, they were better.

They were red. Yeah, it's true. He did hit the ball hard. I don't think he's all the way back. Maybe it's one of those things where he's just not going to get it all the way back. And so if there is any number on his line right now that I am a little nervous about, it's the power. But because I think you're right, though, you look at the strikeout rate

because that is going to be why he hits 260. That's why I brought up the 260, right? That's why he can hit 260 going forward, whereas the projections are saying more like 240. And so I'm going to take a 260 average going forward and maybe a 25 homer pace, even though he looks like he's on like a 42 homer pace or 38 homer pace.

I'm going to recalibrate that in my head to where he ends up around 25, 27 homers on the season. So 260, 20 homers from here on out and 10 to 12 stolen bases, maybe more. I mean, once you start taking off a lot and having success like he's having, nine stolen bases and 10 attempts, like why can't he steal 30 this year? He's been good for his career. He's 71 for 86 as a base dealer. If he doesn't have the same absurd power

that he had back at his peak, then this is the way to turn it around, make that value. I mean, he's on a one-year deal right now, has a shot to get paid. And when you have a shot to get paid, what do you see people do for some reason? Steal a lot of bases. I guess it's going to be part of the discussion. Aaron Judge stole the most bases in his contract year. There's definitely other players who've done that. I think it's Bellinger 2.0, but this works. This actually looks like a guy that has found something that is much

more sustainable. I don't think he's quite the batting average liability the projections would suggest because they've got so much of the 21 and 22 numbers just baked in there. This looks like it is a good step in the right direction for Bellinger to be a productive player for the next three to four years. Love that he can steal bases like that too.

I mean, I think he's got a shot at 25-30 steals. That's very realistic with nine in the bank already through 31 games. Yeah, I think it'll be a 25-25 season. The batting average may come and go a little bit. There are places you can pitch to him, and he has to adjust to those and adjust back and so on and so forth. He'll finish the season with a 280 average and 25 homers and 25 steals, I would say.

Maybe more steals. The other part of Andrew's question was an unrelated question about Brandon Woodruff. He was curious just where things stand, if we should be optimistic about him coming back and being himself. Woodruff has only made two starts this year. The last comments I saw were in an Adam McKelvey story.

Their general manager, Matt Arnold, described the MRI that Woodruff had in late April as very positive relative to what it could have been at the time this is the target date for return was the end of June. That's like the weirdest two things to say. Hey, it looks great. Yeah, he's still back in two months. Right. I guess it's better than, yeah, he

tore his labrum. He's having surgery. I think by simple necessity, they have to play this carefully because Woodruff is a guy they're going to have around for at least one more season, barring a trade. If they have designs on trading him, they need to get him back to full health anyway.

If they have designs on winning with him, got to get him back. You can't bring him back too soon. And one thing I saw, a quote from Woodruff, was about how if this injury had happened around the All-Star break, he'd be out for the season, right? So if you kind of take that timetable

and shift it to when the injury happened, that probably means he's out until after the All-Star break. Late June seems possible, but coming back out of the All-Star break seems a bit more likely if you had to forecast it right now. Especially because if it's all close, right, you're just like, you know, give him an extra. If you get him to the All-Star break,

then he gets an extra five days when nobody's playing games. Right. So why wouldn't you use that unless everything was feeling really good? Yeah. So I'm erring on the side of pessimism right now based on Matt Arnold's description, based on Woodruff's description. I actually cut him in one of my NFPC leagues two weeks ago now because I just felt like I couldn't wait. That roster was pretty squeezed.

I said, I'm going to err on the side of caution. I saw him get picked up in a couple leagues. Where he was cut for pretty significant fab bids already. That's a tough hold. I get it. We're talking about a possible top five starting pitcher. If he comes back and he's himself. But that's the other part of this.

Coming off a shoulder injury. What if the velo's down? What if the command's not there? Like that's always. A lingering problem problem when we're talking about guys coming off of arm injuries they may not be the players they were when they got hurt so i don't know um i'm worried but um hoping he gets back of course for for every possible reason yeah it's a tough one i uh i i felt like uh i got real horse vibes off him, but then he did have the Raynaud syndrome marker there, which we don't know.

It hasn't happened a lot, so we don't really have comps. I mean, so much of what we do in this is trying to find comps, trying to find what has happened before when this thing has happened. what has happened before when this thing has happened. And I don't think this is, you know, I may be speaking from a uninformed place, but I don't think this is something that I've heard of a lot, a lot before recently. And so if you're trying to comp it back to something else,

like, like who else have you heard that had this problem? I feel like it was him. I just heard Peter Fairbanks was dealing with it a little bit. Yeah. So I, what I wonder is I wonder if this has been misdiagnosed in the past, right?

Yeah, what is this thoracic outlet? That's what it's... The symptoms of this sounded like thoracic outlet initially and I still worry about stuff like that because it's an increasingly prevalent injury that we see pop up and it's career altering in many cases.

That's what we know right now about Woodruff, but the way that was described by Matt Arnold didn't exactly give me a lot of confidence that things were going to come in ahead of schedule for Brandon Woodruff. Got a question here about Jaron Duran. Is Jaron Duran a post-hype sleeper? Pete wrote in, writes, I was all over this guy in 2021 when his power started showing in the minors. He looked like a real dual threat, but after repeated poor showings at the big league level, I kind of forgot about him until last week when I saw some nice exit velocities and snapped him up again on a whim.

So is this potentially real? I mean, Duran, I think, has been scooped up in a lot of the mid-sized and deeper leagues. But even for shallow leagues, he is starting to look like someone that, if he's still out there, he might be rosterable in an 8-team league or a 10-team league because a lot of the indicators are really good. Yeah. There's obviously kind of an

injury component to this in that Adam Duvall was playing center field for them and fractured his wrist. Yeah, it was a wrist injury. Right? Yeah, on a catch, right?

Anyway, he's on the 60-day injured list. And so it's going to be a while that he gets back. But there is some question of what happens when they are fully healthy. And for me, I think Durant is my center fielder. I think Duvall was always a surprisingly good fielder, but not someone that I totally believe in. And Darren Durant has all the tools for it. I know he's run poor routes.

I know that we've seen there's like an iconic moment from last season where he's standing there, has no idea where the ball is, and the ball drops next to him i know all of that but i prefer to look a little bit more into the numbers and you know his outs above average are fine his tools uh are fine they would lead to good defense and center and then uh at the plate he finally uh really cut the swing and miss and swinging strike rate you know becomes stable before a lot of other things it's it's already showing us a lot of information and so to for him to cut his swinging strike rate almost 50 percent from last year is something that we should

keep an eye on and you know the tools just seem to be translating I think and this is a little bit like the story that we tell for like a Christopher Morrell, where it's like, you know, this is a guy who runs hard, throws hard, hits the ball hard. And, you know, maybe it didn't all come together the first two tries, but this time it kind of looks like it is. And so I think he's a buy in all formats. I don't know that I believe him. This is a, you know, 366 batting average on a 471 bat.

No one's saying that can happen. Do I think he can maybe have a 275 average and the kind of true talent that would give you 20, 22 homers and 25 steals on a season? Yeah, he's very exciting. Probably for me, just a half notch below what we were just talking about with Cody Bellinger I think there are some longer term playing time concerns at least big side platoon

concerns that would maybe cap them a little bit but I do think Duran is delivering a bit later than expected on the the potentially should really going back to the alternate site I always always remember Jaron Duran as a player that during the 2020 season made adjustments and we couldn't see it in games because there was no minor league season. And then we were waiting and waiting. And now a few years later, it finally seems like it is paying off for him. So easily rosterable in shallow leagues for now. And probably a guy that does stick on rosters for a while because of that power speed combo.

I do think it's speed over power. So if you said 25 steals and 15 15 homers i might be more on board with that probably like a 260 270 average to go along with it pretty good counting stats as well but you know good raw like good max ev so good raw power and you know this is the best barrel rate to show now obviously it's 80 plate appearances so it can regress but you know does does have the the sort of raw power aspect to it. His raw power grades were better than his game power grades. However, you're right.

The raw power grades were 45-45, so I'm just not sure that's completely correct. Yeah, I think the adjustments he made maybe have opened up another level in that area. Thanks a lot for that question, Pete. We've got a couple questions here from Daniel. And in the most recent starting pitcher ranks, Drew Rasmussen popped as the second best pitching plus at 115 compared to a 117 from Jacob DeGrom, but he's still ranked number 22 among pitchers.

What are you seeing that leads to the low rank relative to the model? Now, I think I have a guess. My guess is that Drew Rasmussen is a guy that's had two Tommy John surgeries, and there is an extremely high amount of risk in his profile because of his injury history. But is there more to it than that? The earlier you have Tommy John surgery, the shorter your career is,

the more likely you are to have it again. The second time you have a Tommy John surgery, the failure rates are worse. And the likelihood of you being injured again is more. That's a big part of it. But then also part of it is usage. I know that they're not quite babying him like they did last year. But in his last four starts, the furthest he's gone is five and two-thirds so he's not useful in quality start leagues I know that my

rankings aren't explicitly for quality start leagues but there are enough people looking at them to play those and there's enough reason to want to want wins that you know that kind of dinged him So it's a little bit of how it's kind of a raised wide, uh, dampening that happens sometimes, um, in terms of how they use their pitchers and then, uh, yeah, injury risk. But if you look, you know, he's pitched really well and, uh, he, you know, he got those three wins off the bat, but you know, two of those wins, he pitched seven innings and six innings. So since those first two starts where he pitched that much, he's averaged under five innings an outing and had one win.

He has destroyed a few bad teams along the way. Those first two starts were on the road against the Nats and then home against the A's. A ton of value. He just destroyed the Yankees. What are you saying about the Yankees? The Yankees, sans judge are you saying about the Yankees? The Yankees? Sands Judge?

Nothing to scare them anyway. I think we're putting J.P. Sears into our lineup for the two-tap at New York and then home against somebody. Oh, he's already in. I'm not even... You don't even see me reaching for the computer. He's already in. I'm on.

I'm on board with J.P. Sears right now. So hopefully I'm not eating my words. I'm also hoping for the revenge narrative for J.P. Sears. That's right. That could work. That could work. Just get him through that start without giving up a lot of runs. You know, also lefties in that park are not as susceptible to the home runs as righties

because of the way it's configured. not as susceptible to the home runs as righties because of the way it's configured. I know I brought this up when JP Sears was first getting a chance in Oakland's rotation, but the numbers he posted at triple a from 2021 through 2022 were a really good, a sub one whip. He had a two ERA or sub two ERA last year and a sub three ERA his first run

at Scranton back in 2021. So I just hope that JP Sears thinksRA in his first run at Scranton back in 2021. I just hope that J.P. Sears thinks about every night he spent in Scranton instead of with the big club and just takes it all out on the current version of the Yankees lineup. That's what I'm hoping for. A very vengeful J.P. Sears. You traded me away.

You traded me to Oakland? You sent me to Oakland? Not because Oakland itself is bad. You sent me to the A's. You sent me to the A's. Come on. You sent me to Oakland? Not because Oakland itself is bad. You sent me to the A's. Yeah. You sent me to the A's. Come on.

You sent me to a team that's just nowhere close. I could have helped you. That's the rage I want to see JPCers tap into. Thanks a lot for that question, Daniel. I'll get one more from Daniel for tomorrow's rundown. It's more of a dynasty question, so we'll save that for Project Prospect. I had a question

here from Paul. Paul wanted to know, with innings pitched, if you are falling behind the pace because you've got a few injured pitchers, so if you've got Woodruff, Glass now, and you're just cobbling it together with waiver wire pitchers, and you start to fall behind in Ks especially, when do you start to worry about that? And how do you stay on track when you're waiting for aces to come back? What's the move? Do you still stay conservative with some of your streaming decisions this early in the season, thinking that if you need to make up that ground later,

you can kind of push more two-start pitchers at that time? How do you want to handle that, especially in leagues that have an innings cap too? That's the other trick is that you need innings by the end of the season. You're not getting enough innings now, but can you trust that you'll get enough innings between now and August before guys start getting shut down to still hit those targets?

And should you be wasting innings in an innings cap situation on streamers and suboptimal players when you have these other players that will come back and give you better innings. Yeah, I think it's okay. I think it's okay to fall behind a little bit. I think you can make up innings when people are healthy. I think you can make up innings when people are healthy. But I wouldn't want to fall behind.

I don't know. I should have a mathed out number for this. But there's got to be just a feel for it too. I wouldn't want to fall behind 100 innings behind or 200. I was just in Auto New, I was looking and they have a really cool thing that says at the bottom what you're on pace for. And they have an innings cap of 1500

and I was on pace for 1380. And that was the first time that I said, okay, I need to go get somebody. And I got JP Sears. So, I mean, that's how I would do it is once it starts to be 100 or 200 behind pace that's a little bit harder to make up but if you're in that sort of 50 to 75 off of pace that's that's what you'd get when those guys come back right because the difference between the aces

you're holding on to and the jp sears types it's maybe one-ish ending per start. Realistically, how much of a workload is Glasnow going to have on a per-start basis for most of his starts? He's probably going to be six or less the majority of the time. Woodruff, if he gets back healthy, by late July or August,

could be going seven on occasion, but it's not going to be every start. It's not how that's going to go. It will be pitchers on your roster that are not pitching at all that will start pitching. You will start to pick up against pace. You'll go over pace when they're back

if you can stay anywhere close to pace with them out. Right, because you'll have that ability to keep an auto-new, especially with daily moves. Daily moves leagues, it's much easier to make up that ground weekly leagues. I find it to be a lot harder if you're falling behind in those counting stats.

That's a good point. In fact, in weekly leaks, I think that's a big part of why Jeff Zimmerman and a lot of the NFBC players that do well, they mostly do well in the counting stats and they do that because they maximize playing time and they will drop a brandon woodruff immediately and they will be pretty cutthroat about these things uh because

in a weekly lineup it is hard yeah you have to put a certain amount of pitchers you can't just be like oh this week i'm putting in 10 pitchers you know there's no way to sort of like pick up the pace you know no the thing you can do the only lever you can pull is to use fewer relievers so then you have to have enough saves or feel good about saves or be bad enough in saves where you can't move up in saves and you've tanked the category so it's another clark griswold example stuck in the the hoover dam plugging one leak but causing another one breaking news breaking news breaking news 44 seconds in laura albany says aaron judge says causing another one. Breaking news. Breaking news. Breaking news. 44 seconds in. Laura Albanese says, Aaron Judge says

he hasn't felt anything in the hip for five days. I hope it's still there. Just a bad joke. And will be activated tomorrow. My hip feels dead inside. Aaron Judge is back. Oh no. Oh no.

Aaron Judge is back just in time for my JV Sears start get him out get him out where's my laptop dang it yeah that's uh that that might be a this is actually a hard thing your idea about a two-start I mean I like it because it's a two-start, and one of the starts is in Oakland. And I'm just hoping that Sears basically survives the first one with a bunch of Ks or enough of Ks, and that's about all I'm hoping for. I really want the second game. Is it really that much of a difference having him back versus... It matters. It 100% 100 matters but as far as not

playing a guy he has to be right on the borderline of your lineup i mean other people have to get on base for him to matter right so like he could like he could hit a homer tomorrow jp sears can still win yes but if if uh if he hits a homer and three guys are on base then that's a different story we talked about this with the Astros too, right? Altuve is not there. That's not the reason why the Astros are below average offensively. Other guys are also slumping. And with the Yankees, you can put Judge back in the lineup.

Clearly, that makes them better. There's no argument against that. But Stanton's still missing. That matters on a per-game basis. Are they 90% of the lineup they're projected to be with Judge coming back, and without him, they were 70% or 75%? Quantifying these things matters. I think one area that I've said for a few years that I still don't feel great about is in-season projections. I know there's lots of places that do them. I still feel like I don't use them enough or I don't use them correctly. And measuring the quality of a lineup

with or without certain players is probably that area that I'm looking to improve the most. Because this matters. This should be quantified. And especially with Sears is very borderline in a non two-start week. The two-start week probably keeps him in my lineup, even though I like that matchup against the Yankees a lot less with Judge coming back. What did I say about Ross Stripping last week when we didn't pitch him for the two-star week? We didn't pitch him because we were worried about Houston. If we were going to pitch him, we were going to pitch him and hope he just survived the Houston start

and then thrived with Milwaukee at home. And guess what he did? Shut down Houston and gave up five runs and five innings to Milwaukee at home. So if that was the model for Sears, he's going to shut down the Yankees and get blown up at home. Well, yeah, that's if that if that was the model for sears he's gonna shut down the yankees and get blown up at home well yeah that's how it goes that's part of the reason why you take two start weeks more often than not right you don't know exactly when someone's gonna have their best day or their worst day and you gotta take your chances so play the ball game even though it's the a's in a two-start week probably takes win probability from like from.25 and bumps it up

to.5. Most starters, they get two starts. You expect one win. I think you're still looking at a half win sort of projection for Sears because that bullpen is so bad. He almost got them their first win. He was close. He was really close.

If anyone's going to do it, it's either him or Mason Miller, I think, based on what we've seen so far. I had one more question for today's episode. This one came in from Darren, and Darren wants to know if you can elaborate a bit on how bad a pitch must be to register a negative value in the Stuff Plus model. A few examples, and this maybe is a sample size thing. Steven Wilson and Gregory Santos have negative grades on their change-ups. a few examples and this maybe is a sample size thing steven wilson and gregory santos have negative grades on their change-ups shintaro fujinami at one point had a negative 46 on his cutter how does that happen uh it's just uh yeah it's usually a pitch that's been thrown one or two or three times and just really did not look good according to the model.

But the people that get the most negatives are the position players. Yeah, the position players up there, which kind of gets to the last part of Darren's email. Is this what it's like for an adult batting against a six-year-old in the backyard? When the position players come out, it kind of is like that. I brought the pocket radar to Little League batting practice yesterday and was trying to get them exit velocities and see what the machine was throwing.

I think the machine was throwing 40. I think I did get that. I got a couple exit velocities in the 50s which is possible with the stronger players um and then uh i was trying to get i was trying to do it behind the mound uh for one of the kids and it said he threw 112 and the kids were like oh miller threw 112 oh my god, yeah. Most of them were like whatever. Your thing sucks. I always think it's kind of fun

when they have the Little League World Series broadcast on ESPN. Of course, the mound to home plate distance is shorter and they adjust the VLO, like the effective velocity of what it's like when a kid is throwing 65 or 70 or whatever they top out at in the Little League World Series. That's basically guys throwing 95 because the mound's so close

to the plate as far as your reaction time goes. So that's kind of a fun twist. So yeah, I don't know. Maybe you can fudge the numbers that way to get the kids really excited about how hard they're throwing. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, they've got another game tonight. Let's go all house. They're in the playoffs. They had a walk-off win in their first playoff game. And so tonight they've got another playoff game today and rooting for my kids. Walk-offs are fun at every single level. It was a walk-off pop fly.

Oh, well, it's a little less fun. Still fun for them. You're supposed to leave those details out. Yeah, right. No, it was hit hard just straight up we did have a kid i i moved away i was gonna i think i was gonna be on the little league all-star team the year i had to move away like that kind of sucked bad timing the team i would have been on a kid hit a walk-off grand slam so that was pretty cool like a real one or like an actual walk off grand slam like an over the fence yeah that's pretty cool so if i had been on that team that might not have happened because i might

have struck out enough times where it wouldn't have happened you know who knows who knows my kids are in the in the pcl so uh nobody's i think the the max distance on a fly ball so far is probably like 150. The PCL. The ball doesn't fly that much out here where we are. Yeah, it's pretty cold, actually. It's pretty cold. And there are park factors, even in Little Lake. You should provide those to the parents to give them more context to what their kids are doing.

Speaking of negative stuff plus. On that note, before you shatter anyone's dreams at the age of 10, we're going to go, if you'd like a subscription to The Athletic, a dollar a month, theathletic.com slash rates and barrels for $2 a month. You can send us an email and we'll tell you how terrible your kids are at baseball. It's going to cost you an extra dollar though. Reverse cameos.

Reverse cameos. On Twitter, you know, is that, you know, Saris, I'm at Derek Van Ryper. If you've got a question for a future episode,

rates and barrels at the athletic.com. Actually send it to the other one rates and barrels at gmail.com. Or you can ask in the comment section under this video on YouTube. That's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. We're back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening.