Rates & Barrels - Streaming Steals, Mondesi's ACL Injury, Early Fallers & Stabilization Points

Episode Date: April 28, 2022

Eno and DVR discuss a the idea of streaming stolen bases, Adalberto Mondesi's ACL injury, early fallers and subsequent shallow-league drop considerations, stabilization points, and the potential value of foul balls, and more.  Rundown Streaming Steals in Daily Leagues? Adalberto Mondesi Suffers a Torn ACL When Can You Determine a Player is Droppable Based on Statcast Numbers? Stuff+/Pitching+ Stabilizing Is Charlie Morton a Buy Low? Foul Balls & Hit Probability 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 Watch the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Braids and Barrels presented by Topps. Check out all the Series 1 baseball NFTs that have dropped over at ToppsNFTs.com. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we have a lot of great questions from our mailbag. We have one listener who sent us some ideas about streaming steals and wanted to know if that was something we would consider doing in leagues with daily moves especially. Obviously, a great idea if you can pull it off. So some interesting things to pull on there. A few drop questions and some questions that are kind of angling at how much to balance a very slow start through 15 to 20 games against a fast start.

So we'll have a few players that we look at under the microscope in that regard. I've got some stuff plus and pitching plus questions as well as a couple of questions about foul balls and the value of those and a new metric called grip plus proposed by one of our listeners as well you know how's it going for you on this thursday it's good i like thursdays i got my long run out of the way eight miles yesterday and we're looking straight at the weekend that's awesome yeah i need to get my run in later today i've got this show i got to record the athletic baseball show. I got to bring my wife to the airport. Oh, got to keep the dog fed, edit these shows, but I'm going to try and run. Days are nice and long now. There's so much more daylight now. It's so much easier to go for a run on a workday now than it was back in the winter when it was dark at 4.30, that nonsense. What do you do when your wife is away? I don't know. It's been so long, I've forgotten in the past.

The last time I can remember her taking a trip without me was a work trip pre-COVID pretty soon after we got Hazel. So that time, I just stayed home. We had a five-month-old puppy or six-month-old puppy. So I wasn't really going anywhere. I was on dog duty. So yeah, I don't really know. I mean, is this a situation you've been in before now where you have these limited windows

where you have the house to yourself or you have a couple of days to yourself? What should I be doing? It happens every once in a while. And usually what I do is watch a movie from beginning to the end with that interruption i don't have to get up i don't have to get make food for anyone i don't have to do anything i don't have to you know and and and you know my wife and i we have a little bit of time to put the kids to bed so a lot of times when we do see a movie we have to see it in like sort of like half hour hour increments i have to tell you those like long like snyder cut type movies when you have to see

it over like four nights you're like uh what are we still watching this i think we tried we i think we bailed on the third portion of tenantet because we were just like, whatever. And then later, she was out of town, and I watched Tenet all the way through. And I was like, well, that wasn't that bad, actually, when you watch it all the way through in one sitting. Just power through. Right. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense. I think that's probably why, in our home, we have the same kind of routine, not because we have children, but just because our work schedules are not perfectly in sync. we get to the end of the day 9 30 10 o'clock at night and we've got an hour hour

and a half before we go to sleep and we're watching a couple shows we don't really try to cram movies in i think both of us if not if not both of us at least one of us is kind of fried and we're like throwing something mindless so it's usually an show, something we've seen a million times before. We binge watched Is It Cake? Which, let me tell you, they are coming up with some amazing reality shows. Some very talented people. That's a whole show about whether or not it's cake. Extremely talented people. I think cooking shows and baking shows are awesome. And I think the format for Is It Cake actually got me kind of excited because it's part game show and it's part baking show. So I think I like that show more than most people did. But if you're wondering why I don't watch the classics, well, that's part of the reason why. Maybe that's what I'll do.

Maybe I'll follow your lead and just watch a movie because the calm, the having fewer things to do, it's surprisingly a nice break from the norm. But let's get into some topics here. Streaming steals is something I think we've touched on at least once over the lifespan of the show. But this is an email that came in. Long-time listener, first-time email. I'm going to date a daily 12-team head-to-head league with steals as a category. And like always, I find myself in need of some steals. I was wondering if you'd ever thought of trying to stream them.

This probably won't work in a weekly format, but if you have a rotating roster spot in a daily league, it could have some utility. What kinds of things do you think would be beneficial to look at if you were going to try this out? What kinds of things do you think would be beneficial to look at if you were going to try this out? And this particular listener actually sent us a worksheet that they've been trying to put together just to have some different things in there. I know they had a number of stolen bases per innings pitched, looking at pitchers who were on the mound for a lot of steals, trying to target catchers that are not good at controlling the running game. So, yeah. So what factors would you be interested in if you were going to try something like this? The stolen base is almost 100 stolen on the pitcher um we did a piece baggerly andrew baggerly and i about how the league is actually becoming much more efficient in stealing bases in terms of like stolen base percentage it's you know the highest it's ever been and that's

partially because everything's mathed out in today's league, but also partially because they've identified that the range, basically, in pop times and arm strength on catchers is smaller than the range in times to the plate for the pitcher. And so, basically, you know the pitcher's time to the plate. If it is over, I think it's 1.7 or something, then you steal bases. And if it's over i think it's 1.7 or something then you steal bases and if it's under and then for the pitcher it becomes like a very obvious target oh man i'm at 1.8 or 1.9

they keep stealing on me i forget was it yeah it was i think it was juan lopez uh that somebody got on first this juan lopez is is in the news for other reasons. He's everywhere right now. But I believe that he was pitching. Someone got on first. They stole second. And either they scored or they were gone. They were caught some other way, but not caught stealing. And then somebody got on first.

They stole second. So that's what it's like. Noah Syndergaard had this problem at some point. If you don't change your time to the plate, either vary them, vary your looks over, or cut that time to the plate down, you're a guy they steal on. So right now, the guy that everyone steals on is Sandy Alcantara.

And it's fairly obvious. He's got five stolen bases. The second place person has third. It's Kyle Hendricks. And then there's a whole bunch of people with one. So, you know, I might be looking at qualified. I'll change that leaderboard here. Let's see if it changes things.

Oh, yeah. Noah Syndergaard. Number one. Seven stolen bases. He just wasn't there because he wasn't qualified. So, and it's not always lefty righty. Matt Moore is third with four. He's just slow to the plate.

Tyler, I think it's mally mally i think i've heard it as mally over time i thought it was molly originally i think it's tyler malley tyler malley is fourth uh you can't stream against like adovino uh or hunter strickland or heath hembree that are also on this list but kyle Hendricks is there. So, you know, I think if you're going to get super granular, you do this. You go over to fan graphs, you click the fielding tab, pitchers, standard, and then you can sort by stolen bases. And then you can just look and see if anybody, you know, is on your list for this weekend. You know, it's hard. It's like, it's a little bit much.

What I usually end up doing is just, because there's also relievers on there, right? So it's like, what am I doing here? So one thing that I have done, because I have Jorge Mateo on some leagues, and I think he's a terrible hitter. Apologies to Ian Kahn. I don't know if Ian ever said he's a terrible hitter. Apologies to Ian Kahn. I don't know if Ian ever said he was a good hitter,

but I just think the value's been there. He believes in him. I don't want to play him as a hitter that often, but I do want the stolen bases. So what I have done with him is a slightly different version of this. Would you just click over to team stats. Fielding, stone bases allowed. And you still have a pretty good spread

because you have the Angels with 16, of course, seven of those are North Syndergaards, and you have the A's with three. But it's like the A's with three, like the Yankees with three, I think I don't want to run Mateo against the Yankees over the weekend, especially when you have those Friday, Saturday, Sunday things

that you have in MSBC. I'm not going to necessarily try to get Mateo in there for the weekend series against the Yankees. You know what I mean? So I normally, if I am doing this and I do this from time to time, I will look at the team fielding tab and just say, ooh, looks like Angels, Reds, Rangers, and Braves are the teams to steal against.

But Guardians and Marlins, I think those are your six that you kind of want to steal against. Everybody else, they're more in the pack together. That's a big enough pool, though, where if you are streaming one spot, there's probably someone playing against one of those six teams that's available that you can move into an outfield spot usually or possibly the ut spot depending on the shape of your roster and you know that might be an effective way to do well in the category i think the only drawback i can think of and this is this email came from nick nick's league is a 12 team league i think that's probably right at the threshold of not being too deep where you're getting completely buried in the other categories.

15 and 20, what are you looking at on 20-team leagues? You're hoping some fourth outfielder plays enough to steal you a base. Or like, yeah, Roman Quinn gets a start and he gets on base against Sandy Alcantara. Well, great. That's fine. He steals a base, but what else is Roman Quinn going to do

for you? That, that might be it for the weekend. One stolen base. Which, you know, in some instances, that's all you need. But generally, I think this is possible.

I think it does work more in daily leagues than in weekly leagues. And I think, yeah, knowing that it's more on the pitchers than on the catchers, that does help you

narrow it down a little bit as far as what you're looking for. And I think targeting the worst of the worst starters is a good strategy. The team approach is a good general approach, but if you know who those three or four horrible starters are controlling the running game, you're going to get multiple cracks at those guys for anybody you put in the lineup on any particular day. Yeah, I think it's, I mean, especially in a tent teamer, you know, there is a, this is the kind of elbow grease, the effort that you can put into to, is that, I don't even

know if I used that right. No, that's correct usage. Sometimes my German. No. Sometimes my German sits, that comes out. Elbow grease sounds like a thing that you would make up accidentally, but that's a real one. All right, good. Anyway,

it is the kind of effort you can put in to separate yourself from other people. You can stream hitters. I think people don't do enough of that in 10-team leagues. I'm kind of staring at our 10-team league and just being like, man, I want to activate Jonathan India.

And I'm just like, who do I drop? They're all pretty good. Or you could just look at it and be like, they're all meh. So should I just cycle through some spots? I'm looking at Spencer Torkelson, right? Do I hold on to Spencer Torkelson in a 10-team league? I mean, yeah, probably going to hit like 230, 240 with 25 homers. Yeah, that's pretty good, pretty good.

But in a 10-team league, you're like, hmm, I'm going to maybe get more than that out of that spot. Yeah, Jared Kelnick in a 10-team league, is he a must-hold? Probably not, right? And I think that's where a few of the other questions from the rundown come from, is these more shallow formats and some of these difficult decisions you have to make early in the year and trying to decide, did I just make a mistake and should I accept it as a sunk cost? Thanks a lot again for that email, Nick. The next couple of questions are about Jonathan India and the other player,

Adalberto Mondesi, who's hurt right now, which I think adds a layer of difficulty. Dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-de adalberto mondesi has ripped his acl oh okay well that sucks and provides some clarity puts a hole in our rundown so that's a season ending tear it's not like a small tear right it's a season ending injury yeah i i mean i actually think i i don't know that i have more details than that he says he has an acl tear There are non-incomplete tears and there are like, you, you can do something to your MCL. Like for example, I was just talking to John Gray and he has, uh, an MCL issue and he said, you know, it's a small sprain or something, but the sprain is a tear. So he has a small tear in his MCL, but it's like a side to side thing

for a pitcher. It's not as big a deal. And he says he's going to be back in a week or two. So there could be a chance where it's a smaller tear and he comes back, you know, that stuff's coming out. I still think he's a drop in shallow release because he's a guy you have for steals and it's going to be at least a couple of months. And if you have any sort of backlog in your IL situation,

which most of us do at this point, or you don't even have an IL, then I think he's a drop. It didn't take long for the IL spots to fill up in the leagues where we have those available. I mean, I would say in general, if we didn't have an injury for Mondesi right now, what you spent to get him on your team doesn't necessarily matter. It's more about the format.

It's more about who you'd pick up to replace him if you're going to drop him and who else you could consider dropping to get that replacement. All of those things that usually go into an add-drop decision are all in play here. I mean, he still has those five stolen bases. add drop decision are all in play here. I mean, he still has those five stolen bases. Like, if he was still playing and it was anything deeper than 15 or deeper, I'd probably hold on to him just for the stolen bases. I still think even in leagues more shallow than that,

there would have been a better case to wait it out a little bit longer than to just drop him 15 games in. But a 37% K rate is the worst we'd seen so far. Power hasn't been there to this point. I mean, there were definitely some concerns, a ton of ground balls. Highest ground ball rate of Mondesi's career so far too. So now with this injury and assuming a very lengthy absence, even in a 10-team or 12-team keeper league where you're keeping 10 players, now the question is, is Mondesi a top 100 sort of player looking to the future?

The answer might be no. What's the case for him as staying in the top 100 given this ongoing issue with injuries? It's not totally unlike Byron Buxton's career arc from an injury perspective, but we're not seeing the underlying growth. Yeah, it's worse from a player production standpoint in terms of player skills like he has not cut his strikeout rate it's only gotten worse he's not cut his swing strike rate it's only gotten worse uh this is his best year

for uh chase rate but it's traditionally been very bad and uh it's not necessarily helping his game right now other than having a slightly better walk rate i you know sometimes chase rate is not something that people should chase you know just because a guy improved a chase rate by itself like it doesn't really isn't good because he obviously does not have a good sense of the zone so if he's not chasing he's not swinging that means he's looking at strike three more often, which is why strikeout rate went up. And not swinging is correlated with production.

However, it is correlated with a higher strikeout rate. So ideally, you'd have somebody with a lower strikeout rate that starts chasing less. That could lead to power. That could lead to maybe slightly more Ks, but more walks and more power. So that's the story of Chase Raitt. So yeah, in this case, I would look at this

and be disappointed in his skills growth. The Bat-X rest-of-season projection for Mondesi at the time of this injury is one of the most unusual projections I think I've ever seen for a player. It's a.215 average, a 260 OBP, a 358 slugging percentage, 13 homers in

516 plate appearances, and 39 steals, which I mean, you can't you almost can't make up a better fantasy player whose real-life offensive value lags so far behind what he brings for our game.

Rougenet Odor. Yeah, it's kind of like that and runs more. When Odor had like a 280 OBP and was going 30-20 with terrible defense at second. Had like a zero war and had an amazing season for fantasy. Yeah, I mean, he looks like a below-average player, and he's only even close to average because he has great defense. Because that line that you just read out, it leads to a 64 WRC+. Not normally something that anybody plays on their real-life baseball team.

No, so to answer my own previous question, I don't see him as a top 100 keeper. I don't know if I see him as a top 150 keeper. I think he's a surprisingly difficult player to hold. If you're in a multi-year league and you're playing for now and someone else clearly isn't, I'm sure there's still something you can get back in a trade if you're holding more than 10 players.

But I think it's probably like an old reliever. It's probably like an Anthony Bver. It's probably like an Anthony Bender. It's not exciting. No, it's a sell low. But also, we know that based on the comments they were making, at least the Royals were beginning to reduce expectations for Adalberto Mondesi. Not even consider him a full-time player,

as they were saying. It's unfortunate because there are very interesting tools here that just have not developed into the player that many of us had hoped. There are harder decisions, though, and I appreciate this one. But the keeper aspect does make it a little bit tougher because steals are why you have young keepers.

Steals are why you have modesty. Steals are difficult. If you do a fade youngster strategy, as I often do in my dynasty leagues, and you go after mid-career veterans, it's harder to find steals. It's a lot harder to have

Jose Altuve his first five years than it is to trade for Jose Altuve and get tons of value out of him the next five years, but not many stolen bases. You know what I mean? Like, that's why you have to have young players or, you know, what I'm trying right now in my 20-team dynasty is, you know, just have a lot of guys that are going to steal 10, which is, you know, obviously, if you've been listening to this, that's the theory. That's the way I've been trying to cobble together my steals this year.

I would say returns so far are I'm not last in steals anywhere. However, I'm not first in steals anywhere. I don't think you expected to be first in steals with that strategy, though. In leagues where I did that, I thought maybe I'll be fourth in steals and that'll be good enough. And if I'm sixth or seventh because I did other, I thought maybe I'll be fourth in steals and that'll be good enough. And if I'm sixth or seventh because I did other things well and didn't overpay here,

I'll have better balance elsewhere. I'll have enough saves and I'll have better ratios. And instead of being mid-pack in a bunch of other categories, maybe I'm top three in everything else. Yeah, I actually nailed it. Almost exactly what I wanted to do in labor right now where i'm first

by like 30 points yeah early early lead you're the mets of al labor right now shush uh but uh oh yeah i thought you meant like historically yeah i'll just be like right now that's that's the spot you're i'll take being the mets right now, yeah. There's like first has 18 steals and second has like 17 steals and then I have 11 steals, I'm third. And I'm in the pack. So there's another guy who has 10 and another guy has nine.

So like, you know, I'm in the pack, but I didn't want to be 18 and 17. That just, that cost too much to me. You know, there was, there was too much opportunity costs, too much actual sort of auction costs. I just, I didn't want to spend it on that. So if I end up third in steals this year, I'll be ecstatic. Yeah. I think that would be things working out really well based on how you put the roster together in the first place. The other question that was related to early drops

was also a general question. The question came from Jack. Jack wanted to know, in general, what would be the statistically significant number of at-bats and stat cast events to determine that a player just isn't cutting it this year? He's looking at Jonathan India specifically and bad stat cast numbers for India in a very limited number of events, 15 at the time of this writing, but also with a hamstring injury that's cost him some time. So he's considering cutting his losses. So as he was watching projections drop in real time and in a shallow league, is this enough to make a decision on a player like India,

who I think finished pretty consistently inside the top 100 overall in terms of where he was going at the end of draft season. Yeah, the difficult thing about stabilization is that it's not like you get to the point and then the magic happens and that's what you have the rest of the year. What's happening at the stabilization point is that you now take more information for what they're doing currently than you do from league average or that player's personal average. So that doesn't mean more like 90%. It means more like 51%. Once you get to 50 balls in play, you can take 51% of their current barrel rate and then 49% of either league average or their personal average going backwards, right? So you'd still be regressing it, right?

So if somebody had a barrel rate up into the season of 5% and this season they had 20 when they got to 50 balls in play you would project them going forward for um why did i do this now i gotta do math on the fly i screwed that's so bad half of 20 you would take you would take 10 and then you'd add five percent you'd have their five percent for four so you actually you'd know half of it would be 20 and half of it would be five percent yeah so you would actually end up with of it would be 20 and half of it would be five percent yeah so you would actually end up with 12 and a half percent projection going forward right so you so improvement but not quite as much improvement as you had this point right so the regression from the new level but improvement from the old one yeah so uh you know with india

right now he's got 28 events He's halfway to the halfway point. He had a 10% barrel rate or 9.6% barrel rate last year, 3.6% this year. I would be looking mostly at a 9% barrel rate going forward. That's not amazing, but it is a good enough number to hit the projections. Like, for example, the Bat-X does all this for you and is, you know, very sort of stat cast forward. And it's still projection for 17 homers going forward. Now, it's a little bit down off his preseason projections, but it's still 17 homers.

I'm a little concerned he has a hamstring injury and it hasn't taken off. And I think the Bat-X includes a lot of that because attempts, I mentioned before, are sticky. Like attempts are meaningful early. So the Bad X has him for the fewest amount of stolen bases going forward, eight. So, you know, that's why I really like the Bad X. It does a lot of this work for you, right? But it does get even harder.

I think with India, there's enough talent, and he's coming back, and I would wait at least a couple more weeks. He's not even at 50 balls in play. So 50 balls in play, and we could take India here and double it. 50 balls in play is about 20, 25 games. 50 balls in play is about 20-25 games so for the people who played all month

you're almost getting there let me look at leaders in batting stat cast yes so like Giancarlo Stanton has 45 balls in play and a 24% barrel rate that's insane

a 24% barrel rate what a 24 24 barrel rate uh that's insane 24 percent yeah what a 24 barrel rate sure yeah that's i mean for him it's not that far off i mean 17 career uh 24 45 batted balls i would say that he's like he might have a pretty good year this year and his iso right now is 150 so he would be a buy low you know i think that that's the kind of analysis you can do but he's at 45 balls in play uh most most people train mancini's at 50 balls in play has a 12 barrel rate that's good news uh but even like i said even at 50 you would be still looking at half of what they're doing now and half of what they did before. And, you know, there's other things that are slightly faster. I know that we were looking, you know, I don't know if this is,

it's not officially on the rundown, so I'm going to throw this in there. I had someone talking with me about the decision between Brian Reynolds and Taylor Ward. And Brian Reynolds' StatCast page, he's doing everything wrong. You know, it's all terrible. And Taylor Ward is doing everything right. It's all beautiful. You can still use the Bad X

rest of season projection as a guide and it says $14 for Brian Reynolds and $1 for Taylor Ward. Now there's some playing time stuff there. So what if you say they get equal playing time going forward? I think that is where the assumption falls apart a little bit. Because in order to give Taylor Ward full playing time, who are you docking on the Angels? Joe Adele.

And the question with Joe Adele, we talked about the strikeout rate kind of being elevated mostly against the Astros. Still looks bad for the season at 38.9%. I mean, he's gone back to 2020 Joe Adele strikeout rate levels so far this season. He'd be the guy that loses time if Ward's going to play more. And Brandon Marsh would probably lose a little bit too. But they're leading off Taylor Ward. Clearly, there's some sort of internal like or belief in what he's doing. It almost looks like there's a fair amount of Marsh-Adele platooning.

Yeah. Where Adele's getting the short side of it. So if that's the plan, and Ward has a spot to call his own most days or almost every day, and he's leading off for that lineup, which is healthy right now. Then it gets closer because the Bad Axe projection is for 430 plate appearances for him. And for Brian Reynolds, it's for 580. So let's bump Ward just on playing time.

Let's bump him to $3 versus $14, right? Okay. I'm giving Ward a lot more playing time. Yeah, so... Maybe even $5. Five versus the 14. Okay, so you still want Reynolds. But I look at players like Taylor Ward,

and I look at shallow leagues, and I think this is what makes shallow leagues hard. And the people that knock shallow leagues are wrong to do so, because if we get to the end of the season and Taylor Ward's a $20 player and Brian Reynolds is a $10 player is it really that surprising even though the projections right now are so different when we start to look at how he's being used the playing time's no longer a question the gap between between the lineups, the underlying skills. Part of what's messed up with Taylor Ward's projections is the lack of productive big league seasons prior to this one. I mean, he was pretty decent last year as a part-time player, right?

He was a 111 WRC plus guy. So there's some evidence that he can be a good, steady contributor and have a good enough OBP to be in the leadoff spot. Killing the minor leagues in the meantime. Yeah, I know it's been a long road, but the baseline projection is still a little bit light because of pre 2021 numbers. And we just haven't seen it as an everyday player at the big league level before. But I don't think this is totally unheard of. Look at his O-swing percentage. 18.1% right now in these first 11 games,

walking more than he's striking out, striking out less than ever so far. And swing strike rate, so here's one place where Reynolds is probably going to beat, I mean, Ward is probably going to beat Reynolds. Swing strike rate takes, I think it was like 150 pitches for hitters. We're pretty close to that already, aren't we?

Oh, we're past that. Yeah, that's like 12 games. You can take about four pitches. Yeah, so that happens in a couple weeks. That's quick. Let me see here. Let me make sure I've got that right. So swing strike, right? I like this. There's a post called long needed update on reliability on fan graphs. It's a little bit old from 2016. But what's cool about it is it has a interactive graph where you can kind of look at things so um you can look you can change the

denominator and i think the denominator is all pitches and swinging strike rate and then you look for where it passes over 0.75 that's the reliability rate and it does so at about 260 pitches so divide 260 by four, and you're talking about 70 plate appearances. Did I do that right? Close, 65, I think. Yeah. So he's close, but Reynolds has passed it, right?

Yeah. Yeah, Reynolds has passed it and has the highest swing strike rate of his career. So I think it strikeout rate is a problem for Reynolds. I think he's going to end up with like a – I know the projections say 20%, 21%, but I would lean more towards like a 25% strikeout rate the rest of the way, which means that I don't then believe his.275 batting average. If he has a 25% strikeout rate, I would believe way which means i don't then believe his 275 batting average if he has a 25 strikeout rate i would believe more of a 240 250 now we're taking money away

from fryan reynolds right now here's a guy who's 14 if he's gonna hit 250 he's more like a 10 dollar player like you're saying right 10 or even less potentially i think a good bit of that value comes from his average. Right. And he's had those high 300s averages in his full seasons, and that's why it looks like that's what he'll do. But he also had better strikeout rates back then. The bail rates for him, he's at 43 events with a 7% bail rate. And he's had 8.8% for his career,

10% the last couple of years. I would say going forward, I'd project him for basically his career barrel rate, like an 8.5 or something. That's less power than he's had in the past. I think the Bad X shows that. It has the lowest power projection for him, 17 homers. So basically, if you think Taylor Ward can hit better than 260 and hit more than 17 homers and steal more than four bags, man.

I think he could do those things. That's very reasonable to me. At the very least, I think you've talked to me for 248 14 5 so you've talked to me out of brian reynolds as an early season by low to go target and trade so at least that is clear whether i would actually it's harder with drops right because you're just like man you're just gonna drop this guy he could have value but this the person who was asking me also had like jesus sanchez right he's up right now too and it's like oh so you're in the kind of league where you know am i gonna take this am i keep this hot thing or am i gonna go and i told him in my defense i at least told him not to use a waiver

claim of brian reynolds right because he's in this 10 or 12 team league he's a high waiver and i said don't use the waiver claim because there's nothing like really compelling about Brian Reynolds. You don't want to spend extra resources to get him. Now, the second question is, do you drop Taylor Ward or Jesus Sanchez for him? And I've, I hemmed and hawed with him as we sort of looked at the different things on Twitter, I would say that I lean towards keeping Sanchez and Ward over Reynolds. Sanchez is still on a 30 home run pace, which is more or less what he was on last year at the big league level at 14 and 64 games. He does have worse strikeout rates, but his strikeout rates might be very similar to Reynolds

going forward. So you might actually have a similar 250 uh batting average projection for both of those guys going forward and yet you would project Sanchez for a lot more homers better max exit velo better barrels bet you know close to being you know better hard hit close to being where he was last year with barrels so that now you have 200 batted ball events for him with like a 12 barrel rate so now you can sort of believe the whole track record with Sanchez. So the power is real. Unfortunately, maybe not the 277 batting average right now, but this looks like a guy who can hit 250 with 30 homers this year.

This game is fun. It really is. And it's hard every single year. Brian Reynolds is the kind of guy that four weeks ago you would have said he's one of the more stable, middle-of-the-order guys around. Even though he's not a big power guy, not an early rounder, he does everything well. There's so many ways for it to go right, and there still are a lot of ways for it to go right. But just that little drop compared to some guys that were going even 100 picks later, the case of Ward, a guy that wasn't even being drafted at all,

can put him into a coin flip scenario less than a month into the season. That, to me, just seems like the makings of a very difficult game to play. Yeah, yeah. It's funny. I don't have any shares of Ryan Reynolds, and it's not that I meant it or that I was fading him. Um, he just, you know, he didn't fit any needs for me where I was like, Oh, he can be a stolen base guy later in the draft. I was like, I don't, not really, you know? Um, and you know, I guess he could, I could have ended up with him as a batting average, uh, you know, guy, but he just, uh, I don't know. He just didn't go where I needed or where I was looking for outfielders.

It's a little bit more difficult because I don't have any personal stakeholder in this argument. I'm kind of like, yeah, let him go or I don't care. I do think the most worrisome part of his line is the swing strike rate and the strikeout rate. Let me look at the strikeout rate reliability. That's just all at bats or is that plate appearances? Plate appearances, strikeout rate. You're looking at, okay, so you're looking at 135 plate appearances for strikeouts. So he's not quite there yet, but the swing strike rate is an indicator that it's going to be bad. It is an early concern, to be sure. Thanks a lot for that question, Jack.

Let's get back to a few more questions here. There's another question from Jack about Stuff Plus and Pitching Plus. He just wanted to know, what's the corollary to the hitting question? What's the statistically significant number for stuff plus numbers? I know you've talked about

three starts being really important as we look at stuff plus and pitching plus and at roughly how many pitches thrown should we start to read those numbers as either red flags or green flags?

An example, Tyler Wells putting up great stuff plus and pitching plus numbers so far, but the results have not followed. Yeah, I mean, just looking at pitching plus, that's where we did a lot of the validation. Pitching plus beats ERA after like 50 pitches. So ERA is not very good.

We all know that uh it beats uh dra um shortly after that fip at about uh 200 pitches so already there you know you're looking at fip some people will look at fip and say oh he has a you know five eight five p or whatever you already want to rather look at pitching plus over FIP at 200 pitches. So that's like three early starts this year or two starts for guys who had more bulk. So I've got the – it's actually sorted for pitches right now, I believe. Hey.

Hey. So, you know, Gordonbin Burns, 382 pitches with an excellent 108 pitching plus. Bing, bang, boom. Chris Bassett, you could focus too much on his 95 stuff plus, but you'd be missing a 102 pitching plus and a great home park.

So, you know, I think that should help you understand. Like, Chris Paddock at this point, you know, I think that should help you understand. Like Chris Paddock at this point, you know, if you're too, like, zoomed in on the stuff plus, which is a 93, it's been 94 for the last two starts, then you'll miss the fact that he has a 108 location plus, 109 location plus, 108 pitching plus. So I think one of the things that the twins did were just like let's put you throwing these pitches in better locations you

know i think that's been the big difference because it's a little bit harder to like affect pitch movement change in two weeks with a new pitcher you just got right so it's a little bit easier just be like hey we want you aiming your fastball a little bit higher, or this or that. Right? So I think that's been the big thing for him. And he's at 231 pitches. So I would look at his pitching plus over his FIP right now. So that helps answer your question.

I do hew closer to stuff plus earlier in the season. I think it becomes meaningful a little bit quicker, and it's a little bit more stable over the course in the season. I think it becomes meaningful a little bit quicker and it's a little bit more stable over the course of the season. But for basically the top 10 pitchers and pitches thrown, they're already at the point where their pitching plus is amazing. I guess that would make it a little bit worrisome for Logan Gilbert, who's got a 98 pitching plus with a 100 stuff plus. He's a little bit over his head. As much as it pains me to say that because I predicted him to be the best pitcher on the Mariners,

I do think he's a decent sell high. I mean, right now you could probably get a lot for Logan Gilbert and you might even be able to get a struggling pitcher with good pitching plus back. You know what I mean? So you might be able to trade Logan Gilbert for even for a hot start, like a Mackenzie Gore plus a bat you really need. You know? That might actually make sense. Or for, I'm looking for a struggler up here. Kyle Wright, if you got Kyle Wright,

I mean, I guess you probably wouldn't. He's too hot right now. What are Tarek Skubal's overall numbers look like? He's got a 102 pitching plus. Skubal's overall numbers I don't think are bad because I know he had at least one start that maybe fixed some things. That was really good.

He is sitting at a 230 ERA 109 whip right now. So you're not getting a deal with Scooble. Well, all the guys right now with good high pitching plus. You have to call. I'll throw the update on the Google Doc. The Google Doc right now is the link. The way to find the link is to look at my last piece about stuff and look in the comments. I know that's super inelegant, but I can tell you behind the scenes, we are actually moving towards something better than a stupid Google Doc link.

Do you have a bit.ly link at least? We could do that. We could put that in the show notes. I'm keeping it for subscribers only right now okay all right fair enough but but i i you know the smaller the sample the more i look at stuff plus to answer that um and then once you know you get past uh 300 and 400 pitches pitching plus is uh the most is the powerful tool because in the way this works is on a given single pitch, this is the weirdest thing.

On a given single pitch, location matters more than stuff. Like on just one pitch. The whole problem is the implication of that. You could say, oh, then command matters more. The problem is it's harder to replicate a given location than it is to replicate a given shape. Okay.

Yeah, that makes sense. It's harder to put the ball on a tee than it is to just have 10 inches of drop on your curveball every time. Yeah, it's like hitting the driver really far and doing that consistently. That part's easier, but getting the ball to go exactly where you want it to go, that is harder. But the drives where you do get it exactly where you want it to go, those are the best. But which aspect are you going to chase?

Which one is easier to chase? That's a little bit of what's going on in baseball writ large. That actually is part of my hit-by-pitch piece today with Britt Giroli is that you can blame the ball if you want for the the offense being down i think that's a big part of it but when it comes to hit

by pitches there are lots of long-term stuff going on in baseball that have to do with hit by pitches that have nothing to do with the ball and this is this conversation we just had is a little bit hard of it. But, yeah, so for guys that have, you know, fewer pitches, maybe, you know, who's a guy with fewer pitches that has standard, like, you know, a Spencer Strider or whatever. There I'm really excited. Mitch Keller is a really interesting one because he's got 300 pitches thrown. He's got a 109 stuff plus, a 102 location plus, and a 102 pitching plus. Yeah. I know he's got 300 pitches thrown he's got a 109 stuff plus a 102 location plus and a 102

pitching plus yeah i know he's been struggling and i know he's not a perfect pitcher but if you know i think this week was a good time to pick him up for the double tap at home right wasn't it milwaukee yeah it was a two-start week. I was watching the start against the Brewers, and I'm still frustrated watching him, even though the underlying numbers are good and pointing in the right direction. It's not good command. It's okay locations, but it's not good command.

There's no reason for the Pirates to give up on him now. He's showing enough improvement where they are fully justified to just keep throwing him out there every fifth day and seeing what happens. Why? Why do you think he insists or they insist on having him throw his fastball as much as he does? It's so much

fastball. Well, right now he loves it because it's 98-99. I know, but with the added velo, I know it's better than it was he also just does he doesn't have great natural command so i don't think he has a great command of the secondaries you know i guess i mean i guess that's it but it just makes him too predictable you just sit fastball yeah i still think tony gonsolin is just a fascinating case i don't i don't i'm not that in on him he's got a a 91 stuff plus, 97 pitching plus. His last start was the first one over 100 pitching plus.

He's like Drew Rasmussen in that he throws like 70 to 80 pitches a start, so he's going to be tough on quality start and wins leagues, but he's unlike Drew Rasmussen in that Drew Rasmussen's pitching plus line, even with his diminished stuff this year, is better across the board. We just had his's pitching plus line, even with his diminished stuff this year, is better across the board. And we just had his best pitching plus stuff numbers for this season. I do have numbers by appearance here. Gonsolin, in his best appearance, his last one, had a 94 stuff plus.

His first time with an above 100 location plus, 102 pitching plus. But every time before that, he was well below average in all those. Rasmussen has been developing a two breaking ball approach, and in his last start, he was able to differentiate them well, but pitching plus still doesn't like the shape of his fastball, his four-seam fastball. But if you were comparing the two, I would rather have Rasmussen than Gonsolin.

And part of that is the Pitching Plus model. Did I answer the questions? I mean... I think you did. The big numbers are 250 when it beats FIP, and then 300 to 400 is when it beats preseason projections. Is Charlie Morton a buy low for you? Ooh, yes, that's a good one.

That was actually the name I was going to come up with, like Gilbert for Morton Plus. Right. Doable now wasn't doable a month ago. Yeah. 106 Stuff Plus says the stuff is not, it's below where it used to be, but it's not terrible. 98 Location is not great.

99 Pitching Plus is not, it's below where it used to be, but it's not terrible. 98 location is not great. 99 pitching plus is not great. But I still look at that 106 stuff plus and say, man, this is a guy who still has above average stuff. And he's made it work. And what's missing right now are his locations. And it's not like he has a reputation for being a wild child with terrible command. So I think Charlie Morton is a buy low. I figured he would be, but wanted to throw it out there. I think he's one of those

guys, because he's a little older especially, I think you have people more willing to move on and deal him a little bit low. I think that's at least an attainable sort of buy low target. A lot of times the buy lows that you want to go get, the person that has that player is not necessarily

interested. I think that could be a little bit different, mostly because of Morton's age. And injury, but, I mean, he pitched on that injury. I'm still in. I think he'll drop in my rankings, but I think, I don't think I'll push Gilbert

as much as people expect me to, because I had him in the top 40 right so i think that morton will drop to you know the the 30s somewhere and maybe gilbert will jump to the 30s somewhere but then they'll be like surprisingly equivalent and so you could pull that move where you're like i'm not really dropping that much in pitching and i might get this extra bat or something I need, you know? No, I think that's a really good point. Thanks a lot for that question, by the way, Jack, let's get to another question. This one came in from Robert. Robert was curious if there's any correlation between teams that follow off more pitches and thus see more pitches

and having higher OBP or OPS is following up pitches, a skill that could lead to better results for a player or a team, or is it more of a byproduct than a true skill? So I started to look at the Sabre site, digging in to see if anyone had researched this before. Yeah, because I saw it at a Sabre seminar, yeah. Right. I found a study, maybe this is the one that you

either saw a presentation on or read before. This one was from Dr. Jeffrey Howard. He was looking at foul ball accumulation relative to hit probability. So his particular study split everything out like this. There was inside-the-count situations, which were the first two strikes accumulated were foul balls, and that would be like a poor pitching situation.

The hitter was almost on it but not quite on it. And then there was outside-the-count. The first two strikes were a combination of called or swinging strikes good pitching right and you get some foul balls in their hybrids that were anything where foul balls in the middle were in the good pitching scenario the foul balls are maybe an indication of a two strike approach yes where the batter is like sort of you know not taking his a swing and just trying to trying to get make contact right and then in this study the hybrid stuff was thrown out right because not every sequence is going to be completely inside or outside the count with the foul balls you could have one foul ball among the first two strikes those were were just discarded to try and hone in so he's kind of

looking only at the extremes a little bit right just to figure out what happens here so oh andrew mccutcheon has his first home run ding ding ding ding i was gonna play i was gonna make a dfs lineup and i got busy getting ready for the show and he was gonna be in it because it was a righty lefty matchup and he was leading off he was cheap that's right oh i'm sure he was popular lead off the game he got a homer off the kintana that's money you could have had the dfs lineups I didn't play, a paper that no one wants to read. All right, so what happened with the inside out? Inside was, what was inside again real quick?

Inside the count with the first two strikes accumulated were foul balls. Outside the count with the first two strikes were a combination of called or swinging strikes. Okay, so hybrids thrown out. The key findings, which also included a link back to some previous work, I guess there was a study from William Giuliano that showed that hitting a foul ball for the first strike did not provide conclusive data when it comes to predicting hitting success via batting average. So the paper that came from Dr. Howard put forth the argument the foul ball is a ubiquitous data event that should garner more serious consideration in the pitching change process. Foul balls are far more than simply a drag upon game flow. They are data rich events that when assessed cumulatively and in tandem with knowledge of the historical data on hit probabilities

can provide valuable insight into pitcher fatigue and batter hit success. So there was a big difference in outcomes, whether it was the inside the count accumulation or outside the count if it was inside the count batting averages hit probabilities ended up being much higher than if it was outside the count so it really the answer to the original question that was so the pitcher gives up a lot of foul balls and hitters hit and hitting foul balls that's likely to end up in a hit yeah if you're fouling off pitches early in the count that led to more hits at the end but the two-strike approach yeah that two-striker person is battling right and so that that's not

as good a situation yeah so does make it difficult to just look at a batter and say, oh, this batter fouls off a lot of balls. I want him. I remember when I looked at it, the types of batters that fouled off a lot of balls were Pablo Sandoval types. And you may want one or two. I think of Eddie Rosario, Pablo Sandoval types, right?

They don't have a great sense of the zone they have good bat to ball and they swing a lot and so that lends it lends itself to foul balls but it's not something you necessarily want to you know you know depend on long term because as you start to age you can't make as much contact and this turn into strikeouts pretty quickly you know just missing like you're just missing the ball. Do you really want to bet on someone who's just missing the ball? Generally, no.

That turns to, over time, to more missing the ball, to completely missing the ball. So I came away from this particular study thinking it was more about pitching performance than hitting performance, just the way it was studied here. I still think I would consider someone fouling pitches off

early in the count. I would consider that to be better than taking called strikes or swinging and missing, right? So there is some value in fouling pitches off relative to the other outcomes for a hitter.

I think it's really difficult to nail down what exactly they are and how we should value it, at least at this time it is. Yeah. And then, you know, when we last looked at foul ball rates, didn't we look at sort of cumulative foul, like just how many pitchers gave up foul balls? Like we looked at number, not rate, right? Right, yeah. right yeah and so work thing how many extra pitches do you have to throw because of foul balls but also like that we had a list of pitchers that like seem like pretty good pitchers

but if you're gonna do anything by by bulk rather than rate then pretty good pitchers are gonna get to the top because they're the ones that are allowed to pitch more and they get more bulky like um so i've got it right now by percentage i need to maybe change the minimum number of results uh to see if i can get a better all right so here are the leaders among pitchers in foul ball uh percentage rather than rate rather than bulk phoenix sanders do you know that you just make that player up no ethan roberts continue uh yeah taylor clark i think i've heard of taylor clark okay we're off to a we're diamondbacks okay oh yeah that, yeah. That's right. Yeah. Tanner Banks. What is this list?

Is this a joke? Are you just making up players? Are these MLB The Show players that I've never... These are the guys who are giving up 30% of their pitches are foul balls. Okay. There is a good name on here, Justin Verlander. However, one thing that's interesting about Justin Verlander is that he has lost ride on his four-seam fastball. And so this may be a little bit of an interaction between where he's aiming the ball and what kind of ride he's getting compared in the past. The next name, Robert Suarez, has good stuff, but really, really bad command.

but really, really bad command. And A.J. Minter is also next on that list. I think he's in that sort of bucket. Pretty bad command, good stuff. Jonathan Loizaga is eighth. His stuff has diminished this year. He's struggling early. Not quite where he used to be.

The most interesting young name on here is mackenzie gore at 10th when i look at his per pitch uh stuff numbers i i i i find it very important really interesting and because mackenzie gore is a name that people are kind of wondering right now if they've gotten if they've got a star on their hands you know um or you know what's going on with him. I do want to kind of run through his per pitch numbers because I find them really interesting. Mackenzie Gore's slider has a 131 stuff plus. So that is a legit pitch. Mackenzie Gore's forcing fastball has a 104 stuff plus, which is pretty good. So that's a pretty good two pitch combo. But his change up is 90 and his curveball is 75. And he still throws him a fair amount so uh it's a really interesting isn't that interesting for a young pitcher to have like

this kind of elite two pitch uh situation or not elite but like above average good two pitch situation but be constantly throwing these subpar pitches still overall you'd say it's a okay sign though right because it's like well he has these four pitches right he's got four and you want him to throw two a lot more than the others and he throws the fastball quite a bit i think he was over 60 fastball usage when i looked at it last and it's and it's good to have a good fastball i mean that's that's where gilbert started right gilbert's gilbert has a good fastball and the other pitches are not as good and i wondered if the if the arc for gilbert is one that we have to be mindful of with Gore, where we're going to have a run where he looks really good,

and the league's going to start to figure out the two-pitch mix a little bit, and if the other stuff doesn't come around, maybe as teams get second and third looks at him, especially in division, they're going to start to hit him a little bit more than they're hitting him right now. But if you said, hey, you found a top 40, top 50 starting pitcher on the waiver wire after the first week of the season, that's still good, even if he's not an immediate star. And there's still a possibility that it does click, but he's probably more of a good matchup pitcher right now than a set it and forgetup pitcher right now than a set-it-and-forget-it pitcher right now.

Yeah, and I think there's a little bit of risk with what happens when everyone's healthy, right? I mean, he has options. They do have five good— Nick Martinez probably doesn't have options. And so even if Nick Martinez is not pitching amazingly, I think it would take a fair amount to push him out of the rotation and gore in. Yeah if Nick Martinez is not pitching amazingly, I think it would take a fair amount to push him out of the rotation and gore in. Yeah, Nick Martinez does not have options left.

I was just going to make sure we didn't have a Grizzly Adams did have a beard moment. No, I don't think Nick, I mean, he exhausted his options and went to Japan and came back. I'm not saying this to be rude or anything. I think it's a generally safe assumption that if a player in North America ends up playing overseas, it's probably because he's out of minor league options and there's just a better deal in a different league.

I think that's a generally fair assumption to make. I think a generally fair assumption to make. To compare like to like, Nick Martinez's curveball is a 130 stuff plus. His sinker is an 89, four seam 87. And that changeup, which looks really beautiful, is an 80. But he locates it well and is an overall pitch, an above average overall pitch by Pitching Plus. But so Nick Martinez is a much less exciting pitcher by Pitching Plus.

And you could see them making the change. But the risk that they don't is probably going to keep him out of the top 50 for me. You could pretty easily justify Nick Martinez as your long reliever too. If Mackenzie Gore has two good pitches, Martinez really only has one. If Martinez is still struggling with walks, you could do that. It's not going to ruin your team. It's more of a starter's repertoire though where it's like four mad pitches and an out pitch. And an out pitch.

But, no, I was really impressed with Nick Martinez because he took a pitch design course at Driveline and taught himself. So I do, I'm really impressed with him as a person. I don't know exactly what will happen going forward with him and Gore. I hope to get you guys access to per pitch stuff. We're talking on the level. I don't want to

make hard level promises, but we're talking two or three weeks. I know it's way into the season and it's upsetting, but what can you do? Things move slowly sometimes. I promise very little most of the time because people can be pleasantly surprised instead of consistently disappointed. I find that's a safer place to live.

So, uh, consider that as a possibility. Uh, if you've got a question for us for a future episode, rates and barrels at the athletic.com is a great way to reach us. You can also drop a question underneath this video in the comment section on YouTube. Be sure to hit the like button and subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already.

Get a subscription to The Athletic for $1 a month at TheAthletic.com slash Rates and Barrels. Find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris. Find me at Derek Van Ryper. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Monday. Thanks for listening.