Rates & Barrels - Stretch Run Value Targets, Stashes to Consider & Warming to Combined Saves and Holds?

Episode Date: August 11, 2022

Eno and DVR discuss several second-half standouts that they are optimistic about beyond 2022, factors to consider when looking for deep pitching stashes late in the season, the possibility of two massive contracts for Juan Soto given his age, and whether it's time to shift more leagues to a combined 'Saves + Holds' stat to remedy closer inflation.  Rundown -- Bullish On Young KC Bats? -- Targeting Jose Barrero Despite Elevated K%? -- J.D. Davis' New Opportunity in San Francisco -- Holding Out Hope for Luis Rengifo? -- Interest in JJ Bleday? -- What to Consider with Keeper/Dynasty Pitcher Stashes? -- Two Massive Deals for Juan Soto? -- Why Hasn't There Been a Shift to More Saves+Holds Leagues? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe for $1/mo for the first six months: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You've always wanted to be part of something bigger than yourself. You live for experience and lead by example. You want the most out of life and realize what you're looking for is already in you. This is for you. The Canadian Armed Forces. A message from the Government of Canada. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Thursday, August 11th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris on this episode. We'll discuss some recent pickups that we believe in, players that we think can make a difference down the stretch and possibly into 2023.

We'll have some hitters, we'll have some pitchers as part of that group. Got a lot of good mailbag questions to get to, including one about the possibility of Juan Soto aiming for two mega contracts instead of just one. I think that's a pretty interesting kernel to put in the popcorn popper. What else do you do with a kernel, Eno? Pretty good thread to pull on. There you go. Not sure why I was thinking about corn a little early for that,

but had some questions also about why more leagues haven't shifted to saves plus holds and the pros and cons of using salaries if you're going to set up a dynasty league. up in the last few weeks it could be from this post-deadline fab run that we just had or even from the last month or so guys that you've picked up during the second half that you think are going to be very productive the rest of the way and possibly more impactful in the future than we previously expected well i kind of took this a different way uh not necessarily the larger group of all pickups, but was thinking about kind of young players that have come into more time since the trade deadline or just recently. And, you know, I think that one person

that's really turning the corner right now, and I think, you know, I think that one person that's really turning the corner right now, and I think, you know, in keeper leagues and stuff, he's probably gone already. But in redrafts, Vinny Pascantino is, I think, turning the corner. You know, I think we've been watching him, and we like a lot of the process stuff. But now the results are starting to match the process. And it's a really interesting situation there in Kansas City because they have a group of young players now that are playing more than they used to be. And, you know, we rag on them a little bit for their development of pitching, but when it comes to hitters, they're doing pretty good. I think the credit to Zumwalt and crew over there.

So when I looked at, I made a leaderboard that we can share with people that I chatted to you that's basically young players on bad teams that are playing a lot, sorted by plate appearances in the last week, and MJ Melendez is number two because he's now playing in left field yeah um and i faded him a little bit early on um just because i thought that uh you know he was a catcher sal perez is still there uh I didn't think he necessarily had, he didn't have a great minor league season this year, and I wasn't sure what the standout would be.

I thought he would be kind of one of these catchers that strikes out, you know, 27, 28% of the time, has good power. I thought he'd be like a 220 guy who could hit you 20 bombs as a catcher. I think he's showing a little bit more than that. You know, I think the chase rate is not that bad. You know, the contact rate is actually a little better than I thought.

And the power has definitely come with him to the major leagues. And this added usage of having him play in left field uh is really interesting to me especially for teams that just looking for plate appearances runs rbi from anywhere you know if you're in a 12 team or melendez is still out there you can add him and and benefit from those runs in rbi and then the last royal that i thought was super interesting um was massey who just came up uh and you know they even have a prado uh playing so they have nick prado michael massey uh uh vinnie pascantino and mj valenda is playing very regularly massey is the guy that you want to pick up if you're chasing batting average and

want to get lucky. Because this is a guy who's going to make a lot of contact, put the ball in play. He's had really high BABIPs in his stops in the minor leagues. He sprays the ball around, and not necessarily one that's going to make a lot of contact or steal a bunch of bases. But if you're chasing batting average there are worse places to go so anyway between the that group i i think you know pascantino still my favorite uh prado looks like a low batting average slugger melendez is second uh but prado and massive are playing a lot and have their own interesting aspects i wonder if the royals end up trading a young hitter for a young pitcher, given some of their pitching development issues.

It certainly looks like they've got enough depth to possibly do that. And how they decide which of these guys they trade, I really don't know. Because I think Melendez, the quality of the contact is really high. I think the adjustments he made, the lost 2020 season especially, makes the improved strikeout rate from high A to double A even more impressive. MJ Melendez struck out 39.4% of the time at high A. He was young for the level. He was a 20-year-old for, I think, most of that season.

Got it down to 21.9% with the promotion to double A in 2021. And again, swing change unlocked even more power. 41 combined home runs between AA and AAA. Very age appropriate too, even a bit young for AA and AAA a season ago. So it's a big development win

to get that much out of a player who at one point, like I was going to just swing and miss too much to be more than a part-time player. So they deserve a lot of credit for that. But I think when you look at the barrel rates, the swing decisions that you mentioned, all

of those things point in the right direction. Unfortunately, Melendez is a player I had to trade to try and make a run in one of my keeper leagues. Me too. I don't think I'm going to win that league either. So it happens sometimes. The cost of trying to get better in a keeper league sometimes is that you give up young talent and you don't get the reward.

You don't finish in the money. You don't finish the money. You don't win the league. And yeah, you can't be deterred by that. I mean, give yourself credit for having a prospect people wanted in the first place, even if you ended up trading that player away before getting to reap the benefits of what he can do. As you can tell from the through line on all those Royals, strikeout rate is such an interesting aspect of a young player's development because, as aging curves tell us, you're going to improve your strikeout rate until about 26, 27 years old. And some of these guys come in.

I remember Stanton coming in coming in oh he strikes out too much he strikes out too much he improved that strikeout rate you know to his peak seasons and some of his peak seasons were amazing and it's still a thing that we look through we we just spoke on the last show about you know good strikeout good walk guys, and how they can pop in homers. It's a bias I have, but it's interesting to think about these breakout guys with high strikeout rates because, you know, we have Riley Green, J.J. Bledel, Joe Waddell, and O'Ne cruz as guys on the other end of the spectrum more stantonian in that they have the potential for prodigious power i think um they've shown it at different times in minor leagues and yet they also come with this price tag this this strikeout rate and i wonder if there's

one of that group that stands out for you you can throw nick prado in there really but if there's one of that group that stands out for you. You can throw Nick Prado in there, really. But if there's one of those guys that stands out, Jose Barrero striking out 56% of the time, it's early going. Yeah, mind reader, because I just opened the Barrero fan graphs page too. I saw him on that leaderboard, and I've wondered. He missed time with a wrist injury this year so aside from the possible implications of not feeling 100 and the impact that could have on your bat speed the swing and miss has been atrocious so there's rust there's a possible lingering injury he is getting that chance right now this is but it was bad in the

minor leagues too it's not just the short sample in the major leagues. Right. And we've talked about AAA last year being so diluted in terms of quality pitching that holding your own or having a good strikeout rate at AAA doesn't necessarily mean that you don't have a strikeout problem. 22% last season, over about 200 plate appearances at that level. I guess that's what I'm clinging to. There's two things I'm clinging to. There was a good strikeout rate both at AA and AAA last year for Jose Barrero.

And he's not just a power guy. He's also a speed guy. He was 16 for 20 as a base stealer last year. Even if, let's say he's a true talent 30% strikeout rate player in the big leagues. If he can walk

a little, we're talking 4-5% of the time, strikeout about 30% strikeout rate player in the big leagues. If you can walk a little, like we're talking four to 5% of the time, strike out about 30% of the time, but does damage and steal some bases. I think there's actually kind of an Adelise Garcia sort of a profile here. And I think players like that in the past have been blind spots for me because I would look at them and get upset about the things they couldn't do instead of looking at them and saying, hey, you know, as great as that red system is,

Noel V. Marte and Edwin Arroyo and those young players that are coming, there's a whole year before they're probably going to start playing in Cincinnati. They're more 2024 than 2023. So Barrero might have this long runway for playing time next year. So I don't know if there's a whole lot Barrero might have this long runway for playing time next year. So I don't know if

there's a whole lot Barrero can do to help you in these final two months of this season. It might just be too much swing and miss in the short term. Might be a 35 or 40% K rate while he figures it out because of all the injury issues and the rust. But I think if he does enough to at least give himself a chance to compete for a starting job next year. I can see myself being surprisingly interested in him as a bottom of the roster player in a great hitter's park who has a lot of ways of making value, even if that batting average is always lower than we'd like it to be. Yeah, I see him as a pretty good draft and hold,

like third shortstop type deal. Yeah. And that's a useful player to identify even now because I think there are deep enough dynasties where you might roster that guy just on your bench just in case he breaks out. And identifying draft and hold guys early just means that when you're drafting in January or December or whatever,

you can put some Barreros on your squads in the back, and maybe you profit for it. But, you know, O'Neal Cruz, I think he's striking out more than I'd like. But for him, I don't see the same narrative in terms of it's a one-year blip. You know, what I see with O'ill cruz is just struggling with a new level you know like his his uh strikeout rates have been consistently sort of 22 to 25 in the minor leagues um you know some of his contact rates have been up and down but those are i feel like they're measured differently like rookie ball uh strikeout rates swing strike rates are always

like crazy you know what I mean? I think they must include fouls or something. I don't know. Like it's just, it's like just a totally different thing. So I don't, I don't actually look at like low A rookie ball swinging strike that much, but you know, since then he's been sort of 13 to 18. Right now he's on the sort of upper end of the swing strike rate, but really I think he can get that strikeout rate below 30, and I think O'Neal Cruz is still my favorite in this group. I know that he's striking out a bit much right now. Sometimes it looks like some of it's something that he can't do anything about

because he's so tall. He gets some bad calls low in the strike zone, a little bit like Judge, where because he's so tall, it looks like a strike, but it really isn't. Not for him. And he doesn't have necessarily top-end restraint when it comes to chasing balls, but I see top-end tools across the board,

and I'm going to be in the tank for him again next year i mean 118 max ev this guy can really wallop the ball and uh i just think i just think you know use that aging curve philosophy and say he's 23 he's got three more years of improving his strikeout rate i think one of those years is going to be a, you know, top. I think he has first round upside. And I think, I still think that to this day. Yeah. And it might take a year or two for him to unlock all of it.

But I think the thing with O'Neill Cruz is yeah, he's got the big strike zonks. He's so tall. He gets the pitches that other guys can't get to. It kind of works both ways. Like, yeah, there's maybe more space that a pitcher can try and exploit against him,

but they can they could miss down and o'neill cruz can hit a ball at his ankles really hard which is a pretty odd thing to be able to do i think we should look at an older player who got a new opportunity at the trade deadline when we found out about the swap that sent darren ruff to the mets and jd davis with some prospects back with the giants that we both had the same sort of, hey, what are the Giants going to do with J.D. Davis? Because there's always been a pretty interesting hitter there, even with some flaws, right? A pretty good eye at the plate in terms of drawing walks, even though there's a little more swing and miss going back to last season than we would like to see. But before last season, J.D. Davis didn't strike out an alarming amount. He's usually in that low to mid 20% range, which is very acceptable for a player with that much power.

We've already seen three homers in seven games from him as a member of the Giants, so he had four in 66 games to start the season. I know there was an injury mixed in there as well. This is not the typical player that I'm trying to pick up in a keeper or dynasty league age-wise ordinarily, but I actually think J.D. Davis might be a good late season pickup for redraft leagues and a surprisingly good deep dynasty pickup as well. Yeah, I think maybe a little bit more towards OBP leagues than batting average leagues. He's a little bit more of a risk there with that strikeout rate, but he still walks, he still hits for power. And for me the the reason I made this list is I

wanted to see who played the most over the last seven days you know that was one of the things that I sorted for when I when I shared it with you in the first place and Davis you know comes to the top a little bit when you do that he's not necessarily the first or second but you you just look at usage, and Evan LaGoria is healthy. And J.D. Davis is a right-hander. And Evan LaGoria has a club option next year for $16 million. I'm reading between the lines here. I think what they're doing is auditioning J.D. Davis to take over for Evan LaGoria.

Yeah. Because I think Evan LaGoria can be like a two-win guy. And so theoretically, like sort of by the numbers, you know, eight million per win is a decent number to spend. But it also is just spending the market rate on an older player that may not have any upside beyond that when you have a replacement player who will cost half as much or actually about a quarter as much so uh i really do think that jd davis might be the starting third baseman for the giants next year so

you put those things together and all of a sudden he is uh he is a pretty good stash and he reminds me a little bit of luke voight in washington where voight had been kind of falling away uh from you know playing every day in in san diego and had been struggling and i think just frankly was um you know closer to being a part-time player uh than you expected going into the season, right? In the last week, the most played appearances in this group that we've been talking about went to Luis Rengifo in Anaheim, who we can talk about in a second. I know you like him a little bit. MJ Melendez, second. Luke Voigt, third. 20 played appearances in a week is full-time playing time, and he's cheap. The Nationals don't

really have anybody else. It's one of the better parks he's played in. I mean, it's not New York, but it's a pretty good park for power. I think Voight's stock went up with that trade, I think Voight's stock went up with that trade. Him and Davis are not quite the sort of young player that you would normally think about in these leagues, but I think they became way more playable in the last couple weeks. I still like them. They're guys who hit the ball hard. That's something we like here.

It's in the name. It definitely is. I think part of my interest in Luis Ranjifo, yeah, the Angels don't have a lot to push him right now. There's a power and speed combo. He's now five or six as a base dealer this year, so he's taken off a little bit. So you get that bottom of the roster speed.

K-rate's down at the lowest mark it's ever been at before. I think what we're seeing right now is the type of profile that you're very likely to get going forward. I'm a little surprised he's swinging as many pitches outside the zone as he has this season, but maybe that's the way. But he has a pretty good hit tool if he's striking out this much and doing that, you know? Yeah, this is kind of a slightly better than league average player that runs a little, and guys like that tend to be good players for us in fantasy so i don't know if it's a high ceiling sort of thing but he's exactly the

kind of do a little bit of everything player who also has the ah doesn't walk doesn't have that that sabermetrically appealing uh slash line that gets people to be drawn to him it's just kind of a decent accumulator that also offers some speed. It's probably the best summary I could put on Luis Ranjifo right now. And they never put him atop any one position on their depth chart, the Angels. And it's a little bit annoying, but he is a switch hitter. The name that I was thinking about a little bit was, I think Ranjifo is a good AL only player next year because

I thought of Chad Pinder a guy who plays all over the field who's obviously going to be important for his team Chad Pinder is a righty though as a switch hitter I think Ranjifo just has more pathways to playing and I know right now

he's sort of playing you know, playing third and they're going to have a third baseman next year. And, you know, if they come into the season fully healthy, he's probably not their starting shortstop or second baseman. But they don't really have a starting shortstop, you know, and if they put Fletcher over at shortstop, then Ranfifo could find his way to starting at second base. And even if he doesn't, he can play the outfield, he can play the infield, he's a switch hitter. So I think he's...

Another place where he is is that draft and hold type idea. Because he'll probably be eligible at a few places, he'll probably play, and people few places. He'll probably play. And people might not be in love with him. But late in a draft, you might be able to pick him up and back up two or three different positions for you. So draft and hold, AL only. I'm in on it. And I think, you know, watch him closely the rest of the season.

Because he hasn't really had a season other than maybe his rookie season where he got a lot of plate appearances. And in that rookie season, his chase rate was much better. So if you look at a seasonal graph by game of his reach rate, it took a real dive recently. And I wonder if that's just more playing time and that's when he's had the best wobba of the season too so there's like for him i think there's just one more tweak that could unlock another level where he's definitively a starter and that's if he stops chasing stuff i would think his barrel rate could go up to about 6%. And then you'd have a guy who might have a 7% walk rate, 17% strikeout rate, 160, 170.

He'd be basically average everywhere with speed. I think he would basically find his way to a starting position. Right. So even if he's not necessarily more than a late round pick outside of those draft and hold scenarios, he could still, if he's the starting second baseman, be good enough to play at least in 15 team mixed leagues. Ranjifo has also started every single game since June 15th. Every single game. Second base is mostly where he plays,

but as you said, they do move him around a bit. Rendon's going to come back healthy next year, hopefully stay healthy for a full season or close to it. But I think second base is really where you can see Ranjifo fitting in. And how many games is that? Jeez, I mean, we're talking 50 games probably now for that stretch. He's started about 50 in a row.

Well, in the last sort of 30, his reach rate has really changed. So, I don't know. I think there's something about that everyday playing time that just gets you more used to seeing pitches and seeing what teams are trying to do to you

and trying to lay off that stuff. So, you know, I mean, being atop the leaderboard for plate appearances in the last week among a bunch of guys who are really exciting is by itself, you know, makes Voight, Davis, and Renifo kind of interesting. Even if guys like Alec Thomas, Vinny Pascantino, MJ Melendez. How do you feel about J.J. Blede? We haven't talked about him much on this show.

Yeah, I look at Jj bladet and i i totally understand how the marlins were the team that that drafted him in that spot for overall strikeout race well uh i guess i didn't mean that to sound as mean as it is it does i i i think he's going to be a good hitter it's just it's power over everything else and i think given their park especially like they need guys that hit for real power it's a difficult place to hit i think it's the problem i have with the pick looking back on it is that this is the type of profile that i always see as being easier to find in free agency these are guys that frequently get non-tendered or traded in year two of arbitration, year three of arbitration. Teams never want to pay these guys

$8, $10, $12, $15 million at their peak. They always want to just move on to the next one. And maybe Blue Day has a higher ceiling than we're giving them credit for, but I see kind of a 25 homer, 240, 250, pretty good walk rate. It's a solid player. What's that, two, maybe a three-win player most years?

I don't know if defensively he's going to offer enough to add positive value there, but maybe he's good enough to not hurt you. He looks like a good, solid hitter and a guy that because he doesn't run a lot, or at least I don't expect him to run a lot, that we're going to just see him as kind of a highly replaceable fantasy player in most leagues as well I mean is there anything you've seen so far that makes it seem like he's more than that well in real life terms he's playing center field yeah I just don't know how long that's really going to last yeah it's interesting he's already in minus one by outs above average um the other numbers like

him but it's an impossibly small sample but uh and and he's already started playing left field too it's not like uh they installed him in center and said this is our center fielder of the future it's a little trepidation there as well um what i do like is a 10% or 11% swinging strike rate and a 30% strikeout rate I don't think actually are married correctly. So I actually, I think, you know, Zips says he's going to strike out 24% of the time, and I think that's completely possible. Now, Steamer says 27%, the bat says 28%, and I know where that comes from, too. I mean, he had a 27% strikeout rate in AAA, but I think a 24% strikeout rate is possible. Now, if you take that 24% strikeout rate and you give him his 207 ISO, now you're talking about a player that's harder to find, right? I mean, right i mean uh if we do that if we just do that this way uh 200 iso and

uh a 24 strikeout rate who's a comp let me do a quick comp here that would be uh matt olson seth brown that's a wide range. They have similar ISOs in strikeout rates. Oh, but Seth Brown has a 7% walk rate. Matt Olson has an 11% walk rate. I think Bleday is headed more towards the 11 than the 7. But other names that also have similar defensive value, maybe Randy Orozarena. That's Not really a good comp there. Randall

Gritchick. Ooh. Is Bleday right-handed? He's a lefty, so he's at least a big-side platoon guy. I think the floor is big-side platoon guy that pops homers. That's not a bad player at all. David Peralta. More power, less average yeah um marcelo zuna on the screen recent pickups we believe in and we're very skeptical of jj bladay no i'm i'm making the argument that i like him a little more than you i think that's that's fine you can you can have the jj bladay shares i'll i'll see how it goes i'll. I'll sit that one out for 2023 and reevaluate at the end of next season.

Yeah. Ryan Mountcastle. I've never been that into Mountcastle either, which might be a blind spot. Yeah. That's an interesting grouping because if you go to the higher strikeout rates, then you can get the higher power.

It's kind of an interesting grouping there at 24 and 200. It's not an amazing group. We'll see what happens over the final two months with J.J. Bleday too. I think that'll help really shape how much we like him or dislike him going into 2023. Try Tim's new Sweet Chili

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Plus, eligible Ford owners get a $1,000 bonus. For details, visit your local Ford store or Ford.ca. We should talk about some pictures, because people ask about pitchers all the time in the mailbag reds and four sent us an email and wrote i have a question for you regarding what to do in dynasty scenarios where you have a pitcher who has great stuff pops an enos model and has plenty of opportunity in front of him but is stuck in an organization that doesn't seem like it's able to develop or properly utilize its pitching. Some personal examples that come to mind include Dylan Coleman in Kansas City, Chase Silseth for the Angels, and even to a lesser extent, Jansen Junk also with the Angels.

All three pitchers have stuff that seems to pop in Eno's model and have had stretches this year where they've been successful, but their orgs just don't seem to be ones that can be trusted. So what do you do in this scenario? Do you hold, if possible, and bank on the front offices adopting new ways of thinking, or are you better off taking flyers on pitchers in more trustworthy organizations? So what do you think?

I think the big variable here that is true for almost everybody is in the offseason, they go somewhere else um and so in season we you know we might uh look hard at the angels and say you know what have they done for jansen junk lately or you know are they screwing up chase silthus but in the offseason chase is going to go somewhere else right and um that's i think what's made it really difficult sometimes to study player development and to study player development outcomes is our places like driveline but also p3 in st louis and

uh there's all sorts of places um and so i i don't know where these people train and even if they sit trained at say driveline you know having a list of all the pitchers that trained a driveline would not give you the golden list of who's going to be great next year and I think that's a lesson for for even for the organizations is you know pick players that you like don't pick organizations i don't think um you know i know that the rays seem to put their players in positions to succeed um there are people who have a different opinion of raised player development and think that you know i just just talking to a pitcher the other day who thought that they actively hindered their pitchers

coming up in the minor leagues and they're not good at player development. And I think that, you know, I have a note in my notes column that I think is coming out tomorrow, which I think explains a little bit of the Ray's situation almost more than anything. There's some research that says that after 80 pitches,

your command starts to go away, and that command goes away in a start quicker than stuff. Stuff can stick around for 100 pitches, but command starts to fall away. Location values start to fall away after 80 pitches. away location values start to fall away after 80 pitches and um lo and behold the rays bottom of the league and pitches per start at 75 they don't even get to 80 you know cory kluber has pretty you know decent command they don't let him go to 90 you know he's he's around 83 85 so it's just that those some organizations put their pitchers in a

position to succeed prepare them well take them out early you know that sort of deal don't let them see a third time through the order that that sort of deal so some of that magic where you say oh the rays are great at player development some of that is picking the right players you know they're really good at trading for players i think and then you know not letting them embarrass themselves basically taking them out early so right uh that you know it's not always that they're that they're amazing at developing the guys scouting and managing the roster that might be their number one those are not the same as player development. Player development is taking good stuff and making it great, taking average command and making it better.

It's those types of things, right? I almost think they might be better on the player development side with bats. They're the ones getting more out of hitter swings than other organizations. Rosarena, maybe to some lesser extent, Isaacak Paredes, I know it's not looking as good now. Yu Chang is doing the same thing as Paredes. He's turning and burning on pitches up and in. He's got more power with the Rays than he ever had before.

Then I wonder, after they get you to make that adjustment and teams realize that's what you're doing, do you have another thing you can do when teams pitch you differently? That probably is the wide range of outcomes between you know players like you chang and someone like randy or rosarena rosarena is like everything working really well even though we've talked about the flaws in his approach

before but yeah it's easy to confuse those things and you've talked about this before where pitchers increasingly are realizing i think this probably applies to hitters too, but they know that they have to take their career into their own hands. This is something that younger pitchers know as well as any group of pitchers that have ever been a part of the game. That in the offseason, investing in themselves, going to these facilities, doing the things that can actually make them better, that benefits them in the long run. The financial payoff of throwing harder, adding the right secondary pitches being better does pay so there's a huge incentive in this and it's not fairy dust it's definitely not fairy dust it's not as simple as i i showed up but i did the work and threw in front of the machines now my slider is great yeah it's like well you still if you can't locate it, it's still not going to matter.

Yeah. And then there's the change within organizations. Sadev Sharma has a really good piece about the changes within the Cubs organization in terms of pitching development. And, you know, I don't think that we traditionally think of the Cubs as being a good player development system for pitchers.

But now you can look at Keegan Thompson and for the year, 101 stuff, 98 location, 98-7 pitching plus is not the most exciting line you've ever read. But it is a guy with a bunch of pitches. The slider is coming on recently. He's throwing it more, and that has the potential to increase his stuff number. With a team that's getting more out of their pitchers,

you look at Steele. I would say in the past, I would say, well, I don't know what the Cubs are looking at because my numbers don't look like theirs. And, you know, Steele, why is that doing that? That's weird. Steele's been getting good results for the better part of the last six weeks. 95 stuff plus, 98 location, 97 stuff.

Like, yeah. So one thing I would say is if you are looking for stashes and you are using the model to identify them, you know, I was thinking about this with Sears going to Oakland. Like the A said, you know, stuff is too expensive on the open market. So we're going to get guys who don't have great stuff but have a bunch of pitches and that's something i've said on this podcast is like if you're looking for someone to pop it might not always be the guy that has great stuff in small in small sample like louise heel always had great stuff in small samples he's a fastball slider guy he's maxed out in a way right what more can he do other than maybe go four or five be like a glass now in type if he's like at the very top of end

or just be a reliever um and uh i mean spencer strider is like the very best outcome you can have for a high stuff guy that has two pitches right like he's he's he's just so great at both of those two pitches he's a a glass now, you know? But those things are harder to find. So if you instead look, you know, around average stuff, and you look at a guy like Bailey Falter, you know, 98 stuff, 105 location, he has a lot of pitches. And there's some evidence that he's not throwing necessarily the best mix that he could throw.

That's a guy. And the Phillies aren't known as a great pitching development organization necessarily. People don't put them on the list. But Falter is a guy. Chase, I think, Silted is an interesting guy. 98 stuff, 98 location. Definitely three pitches.

Glenn Otto, 98 stuff. More than a Brad Keller who's in 98 stuff but is kind of definitively a two-pitch guy by now. So I would look for multiple pitches. And also remember that 98 stuff plus is about average for a starting pitcher. It seems like it's below average, but that includes all the relievers. So you're still shopping it.

Like Tucker Davidson, 97 stuff plus, 97 location, definitively three pitches at least. New organization, new lease on life. I think that's a stash you know even if he if he struggles the first time out so that's that's something i would look for uh beyond just the high stuff guys because the high stuff guys like is there is there a high stuff guy that's under-owned that nobody knows about anymore? Nick Lodolo, Roenze Contreras, Aaron Ashby. You're not going to surprise anybody with that. You're not going to like, oh, just throw a little Aaron Ashby in this deal. Like, oh, I'm just going to go pick up Aaron Ashby off the wire.

Probably not in most leagues. Maybe shallow leagues that these are available. But yeah, in a typical league, the person that has Ashby believes in Ashby. I'd love to know why we haven't seen Ruanzi Contreras back in the minors. They're kind of easing him back into a full starter's workload. He came back on July 26, went two innings, went three the next start, and went four the next. So they're really being careful with him. Managing his innings. But you could do that in the big leagues.

Let him do it again. How much does it really hurt your big league team to let him do that in the big leagues? That's always the thing that confuses me. But I think the JPCer's example is a good one because I think when you're talking about players who were sort of blocked on their old team, even if they're going to an organization

that doesn't have as strong of a reputation for player development, he spent years in that system where they have the player development. He's got good results in the minor leagues. And now he's in a pitcher-friendly spot with job security. So the organization doesn't matter as much to me from a, what can the organization do perspective as it matters from the,

what kind of opportunity does this guy have? J.P. Sears could be another, another Nestor Cortez type. Cole Irvin even. Or Cole Irvin, right. Like there's,

those guys come through, they deliver great ratios and then we're skeptical and we're skeptical and we're skeptical some more because they never really popped as great prospects. And it turns out they ended up being valuable for a few years. I think John means at first when he broke in was like that for me, no one, no one wanted John means I'm going to, it was on a 20 team dynasty league.

When John means broke through, that guy picked him up for a buck and he ended up being an easy keeper. And some of it's like, some of this is just opportunity who was going to have an opportunity to have that more prominent role? I think with Silseth, I can see it for next year. With Dylan Coleman, I have a harder time seeing it because Dylan Coleman, to me, I thought was just a simple, good short reliever. Barlow's pitched well enough where I have a harder time talking myself into wanting to hold Dylan Coleman right now than I do Sears and Silseth and a lot of the other names that people have thrown out there. One thing I have done on my own documents for Pitching Plus is add another column that is pitches per appearance. And I think that's a little bit more of a fine tooth, a fine...

It's not a kernel. It's a kernel. It's more of a fine tool than just games started or games not started. You know what I mean? Like, there are people who are in relief that are throwing more pitches than other pitchers are in relief, right?

So, you know to in order to kind of sort this for this i just did everybody over 50 pitches per appearance and um you know that that way you get a sense of who has some length but there is something interesting that happens between uh 50 and 45 uh you know in 40 where you do get some of these pitchers that are in between. Paolo Espino for the year has 40 pitches per appearance. But we know that that's been trending towards starting. Alec Mills is in this group where he's in between. And he still has that excellent command and he still pops to someone who is above average

by pitching plus with really bad command. I don't know. There's some other pitchers here that look kind of interesting, like Corey Abbott and even Luis Patino still. So Andre Palante, not interesting, but in this range. You know, it's funny, Patino, I think Patino has a strong case to become the next Jose Urquidy on this podcast. If Urquidy graduates and becomes the good pitcher we thought he could be for the last three years, Luis Patino is the new chair of that committee.

The pitcher we really like who should be good but hasn't had a chance to do it over a long period of time or had the chance and didn't do it for some reason. And we don't know why, much like the Derek Zoolander school for kids who don't read very good, but want to learn how to do other things. Good too. It's really interesting though, because, um, you know, he's had a stretch of, uh, pitching at home and he has a stretch of pitching at home. And he has a large split between his stuff plus at home versus on the road.

It's 115 at home and 105 on the road. Luis Garcia is like 105 at home and 95 on the road. And everybody else on the Astros is fine. So it's not a team-wide thing. I'm not suggesting they're cheating. Somebody thought I was tweeting about that because they're cheating. I have asked the modeler to give me home road splits for everybody, for the league, so I can kind of go into this deeper.

But it is interesting that Urquidy's good stretch recently has been mostly home starts. So I would be more careful with Urquidy and Luis Garcia at home and away than I would somebody else that just had weird home road splits but didn't have weird home road stuff splits. You know what I mean? There's something. Why would his stuff be different on the home versus the road? I guess comfort is some level. There is a dome uh aspect to this domes uh foster more vertical movement it looks like uh chris langan from driveline did a

little bit of poking at that uh so maybe you can trust orkity and garcia more in domes than out in the wild uh but that's something i want to uh to poke out a little bit further and if anybody wants to on the google doc i did put uh stuff plus and pitching plus by appearance i didn't uh say if it's home or away see you have to do some some extra math sorry about that but any aspiring sabers out there uh that want to do that work um uh you know have at it i think there's uh something there for uh home road uh splits and um looking at what happens to stuff in different uh locations let's get to a few mailbag questions we'll go rapid fire on these could juan soto, given his age, he'll be 24 in October, actually consider going for two mega deals?

Tony sent us this email suggesting that maybe he gets an extension for seven years and $300 million. And then once that contract is over, he goes back onto the market as an early 30-year-old that could, because of the money being different at that time, maybe get another seven plus year deal for 350 or more. Do you think it's possible or do you think Soto's aiming for just the one giant contract? You know, there's a lot of different reasons for this. This comp for me, Miguel Cabrera and Juan Soto are comped by their opposite field approach, by their power, by some of their early numbers, by their early starts. And so I wanted to look at his deal. I'm not seeing it, he signed a big deal with the Tigers when he got there um and then he signed a big extension so he had an eight year 248 million that's what he's on right now that was

the that was the extension he signed that at 33 yeah so i think miguel cabrera is the uh the problem the only problem with using Miguel Cabrera as the um model for Juan Soto is Miguel Cabrera I just mean like there's a big difference though I just mean like how it's ending you know I think a lot of people look at Pujols how it ended and Cabrera how it ended and be like I just don't want to be uh the tigers on the hook for uh you know what what have they been paying him they've been paying him 30 million a year and they've been getting uh replacement level sure yeah replacement level for five years six years so like that that was not a good contract uh by the numbers by war by all that he can go for it but i don't know that necessarily the market will give it to him i think more likely he'd want an opt-out around age 29 30 31 and then

if things are going really well he can read the market opt out and either get more years from his current team or go to free agency a second time that to, to me, seems like the deal that Soto and his agent would want. He definitely wants the high AV. That was one of the reasons he was rejecting the deals that the Nationals offered. Right, and that leaves the door open for a shorter deal. But I think the opt-out is that I get security, but I also have the option if I want to go out and test the market again.

I think a team might be willing to do that because that might be the difference in getting him versus not getting him. Especially a team like the Dodgers. Yes, exactly. They love higher AV, shorter contracts. They would love to do that. Got a question here from Dave. Dave wants to know,

why hasn't there been a shift away from saves and towards saves plus holds leagues? I think this has come up occasionally during draft season. I don't plan any saves plus holds leagues. I didn't like holds initially because i felt like it was another garbage stat and as i once said under the radar a garbage stat saves plus another garbage stat just means more garbage the truth is it does actually balance things out i've looked at some leagues more recently that play this way you get some you get a better distribution within the category and it softens some of the issues that we talked about on the last episode

where you have this hyperinflated closer pool that kind of, I don't know, it puts an unnecessary strain on the decision-making process to try and chase those players early or to play the waiting game. So saves plus holds definitely helps eliminate that. I've got a couple leagues where I play with it. Usually I play with saves and holds um and what that does is it does something very similar but it's not exactly the same because saves and holds uh just means that there's a wider market of players that everyone's

interested in right now people are interested in setup men that uh that helps saves plus holds i i think you still actually want to have a high-end closer as your number one because saves in terms of in terms of uh who teams give saves to over the season um they give it to fewer pitchers. They will give saves to two pitchers largely over the season or maybe three. But holds, they'll give a lot of holds to two or three pitchers for a little bit of time and then they'll switch and it'll be a whole new two or three pitchers. You just think about guys who've pitched the seventh and eighth 8th for good teams all this year, and they go up, they go down, they go away, they get hurt. Jonathan Loizaga, Chad Green.

Just think about the Yankees, who've been amazing. They've cycled through a lot of different players in the hold spot. And I would have said to begin the season, oh, a guy I can really bet on for holds? Chad Green, baby. Love Chad Green. I buy Chad Green in all my holds leagues. I did get Michael King,

and then he got hurt. So I just feel like the holds part comes and goes even. Holds are like lesser saves. They're even worse. They're worse. They shouldn't be their own category. That's the change I don't want. I'm fine with them as a combined category now,

and it didn't used to be. I do not want holds as a sixth pitching category because it's awful standalone. It's pretty bad. And what I end up doing, I have one league where I have six SP slots and six RP slots. Six RP slots.

That's a lot. Six. And we have saves and we have holds as separate categories. I end up trying to fill my rp slots mostly with closers um and then i do a lot of sp eligible guys because that actually is where you can get holes and you know john duran tanner how a lot of these guys that were starting pitchers before filter through the back end of the bullpen towards the ninth inning right and so you can get holds griffin jacks there's a lot of guys that uh that i in and pitching plus can help you really the back end of the bullpen towards the ninth inning, right? And so you can get holds, Griffin Jacks.

There's a lot of guys that I, and Pitching Plus can help you really identify them. Generally, Pitching Plus is really solid with relievers. And if you are in a saves and holds league, I would be looking at that as a destination for who's a good reliever and who's going to pitch a lot in high leverage. So I think generally, I don't mind it, though.

It's just another rule. I can win. I figure out how to win. People are slow to change. That's why it's not happening in more leagues. I'm guilty of this. Sometimes I go kicking and screaming on things like that. I shouldn't really care quite that much.

And you're right, though. The holds are kind of garbage. I mean, it's like saves, but even worse. But I think adding them to saves at least opens up that pool of players a little bit more, and then you get to the point where the most high-leverage relievers on the best teams

end up getting rewarded a bit better that way. It's a slight improvement, I think, and I didn't think I'd be at that point. More players in the pool is better. I mean, I like that. I like that there's a place. I mean, there's a lot of, like Michael King should have been owned.

Yeah. Great players should be rostered. Yeah. That's the way fantasy should work. We'll have more questions on pretty much all the episodes for the rest of the season. It's that time of year

where the mailbag opens up a lot. We try to help people out. We'll have more Dynasty on pretty much all the episodes for the rest of the season. It's that time of year where the mailbag opens up a lot. We try to help people out. We'll have more dynasty and keeper questions, but anything that you want to send our way, you can send to us via email rates and barrels at the athletic.com on Twitter. You can find Eno at Eno Saris. You can find me at Derek Van Ryper. You can also leave questions under this video on YouTube as well. Be sure to hit the like button and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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