Rates & Barrels - Surprise Pitching Contributors for the Stretch Run

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

Eno and DVR discuss several increasingly important pitchers for the stretch run of the 2023 fantasy baseball season -- including Cole Ragans, whose increased velocity and new slider have put him on the fast-track to a place among the league's Top 40 Starting Pitchers.  Rundown 0:43 The Rapid Emergence of Cole Ragans 10:04 Any Changes for Aaron Civale in Tampa Bay? 15:09 Cristopher Sánchez's Arrival in Philly 18:02 Seth Lugo's Renaissance with the Padres 27:28 Zach Eflin and Escaping The Glob 29:57 Kodai Senga's Improved Second-Half Walk Rate 35:58 Brandon Williamson: Lower Walk Rate in MLB than Double-A and Triple-A? 42:38 Adbert Alzolay's Move Toward the Circle of Trust 45:45 A Longer List of Reliable Closers Looking Toward 2024? 55:10 Tyler Wells' Shift to the Bullpen in the Minors Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow R&B on Twitter: @ratesandbarrels e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Check out this offer from our sponsors: Give ZBiotics a try for yourself. Go to zbiotics.com/RATES to get 15% off your first order when you use RATES at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Monday, August 28th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris on this episode. We're going to take a look at some players who are surprisingly meaningful at the end of this season. Maybe it was guys that were drafted that have become critically important to our rosters, but in a few cases, it's players that were nowhere near our roster back when the season started, and here they are holding down important roles as the final month of the season approaches. And this was really inspired, you know, by a comment, I think, that was on your chat about Cole Reagans.

Because Cole Reagans looks like he is going to be a late season difference maker. I believe it was Steve G who made a request that we spend some time assessing Reagans and what he brings to the table and trying to project out what the final five or six starts of this season might look like from him. And just from a, how did he get to Kansas city perspective? I'm, I'm still surprised the Rangers flipped him for three months of a role as

Chapman, if only because Reagan's is a big arm from the left side that could do at least the basic things that Chapman does out of the bullpen. But as we're seeing with him as a starter in Kansas city, there's probably a lot more that Cole Reagans can do. Yeah, it's really kind of amazing. I can't think

really of a transformation this ridiculous in one season. I mean, when was the last time, we talk about velo bumps and stuff, when was the last time four miles an hour like that's never happened like I can't that's like ridiculous right like Mitch Keller we were

like talking about him just this beginning of this season getting more velo and wasn't it like one I think his was like incremental over a couple of off seasons. If he's increased, I don't think it was four altogether, which is just absurd. But yes, this, this is a big bump for Reagan's, but it's not just the Velo, right?

He's got a good slider. And I think that's something that's changed quite a bit from the pitch mix that he was throwing during his time in Texas. I was going back and watching old videos. I was just on Savant clicking strikeout videos. And there were a bunch of strikeouts that were from just a mop-up appearance against Atlanta. They were down eight, down nine, down ten, and there he was striking out the clutch key hitters in the Atlanta lineup, and it's like, oh, this is actually kind of interesting. There were little flashes of this on a very granular

level if you looked real closely, but I i mean come on like part of it's that there's little faith in the royals being able to properly identify and or then like develop pitching to its highest level so to see this happening in kansas city is also surprising for me given our frustrations over the years with daniel lyn Brady Singer and Brad Keller and a bunch of guys that have been kind of up and down, but mostly down trying to break through for the Royals. So that's the other part of this that I just didn't see coming at all. When I see these surprising pitchers, usually it comes from a more expected place. Yeah, well, don't pat the Royals too hard on the back. I think

that this is a combination of Cole himself and Tread is the pitching lab that Cole went to in the offseason, worked with Tyler Zombrow, who's a pretty cool cat. You can follow him on Twitter. I've talked to him a little bit.

And, you know, I give Cole credit not only because it's the pitcher that has to do the work, but he came up with the idea for the slider that he mentioned. Because he said he had two starts in the minors this year where he was just getting blasted

by left-handed hitters. And he's like, this doesn't make any sense. I'm supposed to get lefties out. But his two other pitches, the changeup and the curve, you know i'm i'm supposed to get lefties out but his two other pitches the change up and the curve you know they can have reverse platoon splits and so he was getting righties out but he was having trouble getting lefties out and so he talked a little bit to tyler and uh came up with uh this this curveball that he throws this new slider that he throws, this new slider that he throws. And he throws it 87, and it's kind of a, it's a gyro slider,

so it's a harder gyro slider. But he doesn't need a lot of movement because his curveball is big. His changeup gets a lot of movement. And he has a cutter as well at 91, so he just needed something with a little bit of depth to get lefties out you know i think the slider and the cutter are ones that he kind of uh he throws the slider more

against lefties and the cutter more against righties and otherwise forcing him change curve i mean this is really nice it's five pitches all of them have pretty interesting movement patterns his foreseam we talked about the fact that he does not get great inverted induced uh vertical break on that um foreseam but you know he was like i think he hit a hundred with like one of his final fastballs in his last start so he was like yeah let me just throw it hard and and place it well and sometimes i get 17s and sometimes i get 14s and uh that's not going to be you know my best foot forward either way it's not going to be i'm not going to be a guy who's all about vertical movement in place of that he has good stuff good velo uh you know good stuff on the rest of his pitches and decent command so um i'm pretty excited there were some would you rathers that

came through on cole raggins reagan sorry that um that uh i wasn't quite ready to i don't know how far to push him let me see i've got one in my mentions today um did you could you have any would you rathers for Cole Reagans? Would you rather? For the rest of this season or are we even thinking about 2024 too? The rest of this season I think.

Tarek Scooble versus Cole Reagans? Yeah, that's good. It might be Scooble just because we've seen it for a little longer yeah that's true i think the thing about reagan's that you mentioned before we started recording that's really important is he's had two elbow surgeries right it was tommy john surgery and then i'd have another tommy john working his way back so that's the the medical red flag that's going to be there that will probably keep the value from skyrocketing too high.

Especially the sort of dynasty. Yeah, dynasty. I mean, that's why the royals were able to get him for a rental reliever. Right. Because if you think about, I mean, Drew Rasmussen had two. His were more spread out. It's really unusual to hear of the setback in recovery. Yeah, I wonder if it was a revision or something.

On Wiki, it wasn't labeled a revision. But with the fact that he never fully came back, that's one of the reasons I do like buying on a Tommy John pitcher. I want him to even have pitched two or three games in the major leagues. First of all, I get to see some of the stuff. And then second of all, he made it all the way back. Like Regan's didn't make it all the way back. Rasmussen had something similar-ish. So I would say that's an interesting comp, especially with the velo bump like this, you have to feel like, ooh, you know what I mean? Like a little bit nervous,

but for the rest of this season, um, yeah. Number one with the bullet, like something top 40 ish. Yeah. So that'd be, if you looked at some other guys that go in that range,

Reagan's versus, we talk about Mitch Keller all the time. I mean, Reagan's versus Mitch Keller all the time. Is Reagans versus Mitch Keller a fair toss-up? Keller's been riding ship a little bit after some struggles. Yep, and I think his

rest-of-season projections and Reagans' rest-of-season projections by ratios are pretty close by pretty much all the public-facing projections I'm looking at. Yeah, I think that's a fair would you rather. Yeah, it's actually kind of tough. I think I'd take

would Reagan's competition actually be easier? For just the rest of season schedule? Yeah. The Fangraph's rest of season strength of schedule has Royals 500 for strength of schedule,

Pirates 494. So pretty negligible. Both have nice home parks. Both have a, you know, the sliders are really a good pitch for Cole. The fastball, the foreseeing fastball is good for him. I'd say Stuff Plus doesn't like Regan quite as much as Keller. But Keller has also underperformed with Stuff Plus in the past.

They're right at each other. I don't know. Pick one. Pick the other. I don't know. Okay. But we found the approximate value. Top 40 starting pitcher is not out of bounds for someone who's popped up midseason.

It explains why when you have him, you feel like he's a set it and forget it pitcher right now. That's just amazing for someone that was an afterthought until four weeks ago, six weeks ago. That trade was an earlier trade. I guess that was a late June trade.

Really good story here so far for Cole Reagans. I think Aaron Savali is one of those guys, you know, when I look at my lineup right now, I'd lean pretty heavily towards keeping him in, in most matchups. But I was curious if we've seen any noticeable changes in location strategy or pitch mix with his time in Tampa Bay so far. with his time in Tampa Bay so far. Yeah, it's tempting to point out that he just had the first two games in a row with 10 plus percent slider usage this season

with Tampa. So, you know, maybe they're bringing that slider back. I will point out that he's had plenty of times when he was featuring the slider more. 2021 early, he was throwing it a lot. He's thrown that slider a lot in the past. And the only thing that I would also say is that sometimes the differentiation

on that slider and that curveball is not huge. He throws the slider 80, 81, 82 and he throws the curveball 78, 79, 80. In terms of vertical movement, that's where the biggest difference lies. Maybe about 8 inches difference there, but horizontally they're about the same pitch so um you know i wonder if it's hard for him to command or if it has had injury concerns for him but for whatever reason he has featured this slider more in the past um and uh he is has sort of gone away from it earlier this season.

Maybe it's coming back. I think sometimes we overrate how much new teams do. I was trying to look at Lance Lynn, right, for the Dodgers. And I was going on my show with Chris Townsend on the on ace cast and he wanted to give the the uh dodgers a lot of credit for for lance lynn and i was like you know sometimes i think you just get a good picture and you have some small tweaks and um you know especially if you get like a bounce back picture like lynn like some of it's just the luck turning the other way and then you get a lot of credit for it because uh they're not doing anything in fact he's using the cutter a little bit less uh using the four seam and the curve a little bit more it's not if you're looking

at lance lynn before and after the trade it's not it's not actually that huge of a difference um and so i don't know uh i think there might be some real small things about like, you know, where to put certain pitches and how often the one thing I saw is, for example, he's throwing more low four seamers, which is a weird thing to say is a good thing. But I think what it is, it sets up the curve ball. it's like always high always high you know if you're if you're a lefty i guess it's easier to to prepare for that if he also throws the low four seam then you can't say you know uh look for the fastball high you know there's going to be times when and then you start swinging over the curveball right you swing more at the curveball because you see the low four seam so i mean that's a tiny little thing it's really not it's like you know a few pitches here and there and that's it so what you know especially with aaron saval it's similar it's like's like a few pitches here and there, and that's it. Especially with Aaron Savala, it's similar. In terms of raw pitches, he's thrown three or four more sliders a game

than you'd expect with Tampa Bay. Yeah, that shouldn't completely change everything about a pitcher. There's still questions about the K rate. I think it's just that they've had so much success this year with Zach Eflin where they've made, I think, a lot more changes. I think you can tell yourself a story that they're able

to get a lot more out of Savali or get the good version more consistently than we've seen in the past. But Cleveland's a good organization with pitching too, and they couldn't do it. So I think there's still some reason to be skeptical as well. It's an extreme example but look at the noah syndigard's fate over you know the last few years it's two smart

organizations couldn't fix them yeah i feel like every team was like i'll try um yeah so well i have noticed that and this happened before uh civali came to Tampa, was that the vertical movement on his foreseam, he used to get two inches less than he's getting now. This started happening with Cleveland, so it's not all for Tampa, but the vertical movement on his foreseam is the best it's ever been, Aaron Savali. So that's another thing that you'll see with Tampa, he's thrown the foreseam more. It's a surprising thing to tell Aaron Savali to do.

He's supposedly the bad fastball guy. But a few more foreseamers, a few more sliders, a few more k's but i don't know some of it was already happening before he got there here's one for you i didn't put this name on the rundown but it was a question that name that came our way before we started recording at rates and barrels on twitter christopher sanchez has become important for a lot of people right 333 era 101 whip 64 k's and and 73 innings. 13 starts this year. The only category from a roto perspective where he's been light

is the wins department. Just two wins so far. Not really his fault. He's on a good team. Pitches deep enough into games now where I think that's very much in play. How sustainable is this? Because in a lot of ways, it's as much of a surprising pop-up as the first time that ranger suarez was

effective in the phillies rotation where i think my longer term view of that ballpark has always been hitter friendly be careful with back-end starters and you know sanchez doesn't have eye-popping velocity but he's got three pitches and he seems to have a pretty good location strategy that works and doing a good job of not beating himself with walks too. Yeah, I wonder if Ranger Suarez is a decent place to take this. Stuff Plus hates his sinker. It has really good raw movement though, so I'm a little surprised that it hates it.

And then the changeup looks exactly like uh his sinker but it's 11 miles an hour slower um if i didn't look at stuff plus i would say this is uh a real east to west guy with some good sink uh funky release i like the slider 83 uh basically an 83 mile an hour gyro slider with a little bit of a little bit of a cuttery look to it and in terms of outcomes and you know what people are doing they are they are hitting the sinker well they have 11 homers on it this year and a 494 slugging but the change up which has a really poor stuff plus they're not hitting and so i'm willingging. But the changeup, which has a really poor stuff plus, they're not hitting, and so I'm willing to give him the changeup and the slider

and say he's a mediocre fastball, good change, good slider guy, and that's not too far from where I have Ranger Suarez. Not the greatest fastball, but some good secondaries, good command. These are the types of pitchers I don't mind taking advantage of in the short run. I don't know. For example, even with Reagans' injury history, I think I would prefer Reagans season to season and in keeper situations. Right.

It's just that the ceiling is higher because of the stuff, the velo, the quality of the pitches, the number of pitches. all of those things favor someone like Reagan's. But I think someone like Sanchez can be a little bit overlooked. And maybe in terms of ratios and expectations, is it a different side of throwing from the right side and everything. Seth Lugo, a forgotten man that lands in San Diego this year. It's a deeper arsenal than Sanchez. Throws five pitches. He's thrown five different pitches this year. Throws his curveball more than anything else. It's a different kind of approach, but I think the medium ceiling pitchers that continue to do well are this sort of soft spot in our game.

They're inexpensive when you pick them up in fab. So they're usually pretty easy to get. I think there's a lot of skepticism about this group of players in general in keeper and dynasty leagues. And if you can find one, that's a tick better than the pack. If we sort of wrongly lump these guys together, that creates a pretty big opportunity because it's hard to get pitching and high end pitching, especially in long term leagues.

But you need kind of mid-level pitching to the difference here. Lugo Lugo's had a lot of injuries. He's 33. Sanchez being much younger, you could see more keeper and dynasty appeal with him by comparison. But still, I do think if you got Zach Gallen in a keeper or dynasty league, it's pretty easy to value him. You're like, okay, this is a top-end guy, good command, good secondaries. I got that. If you have Christopher Sanchez and Reagans, it's a lot harder to value them because you may not get great offers for them. You may get people trying to just poach them and be like, oh, you just got that guy off the wire.

He's got no value. And I'm tempted to say that they probably have less value than you think. You're super excited you got cole reagan's he's doing great but it's the kind of pop-up pitcher that you might be able to find again next year in your league and i don't know an example of that is in uh my devil's rejects this is a 20 team league uh that we traded away justin verlander this year uh for and it took forever and even he didn't get much value back we had to take george springer which is is a good i think in the end was a good trade for us uh we're now in third but um you know that does you know that isn't uh we were thinking we were trying to get zach nito for him or netto for him earlier you know, that does, you know, that isn't, uh, we were thinking we were trying to get

Zach Nito from or Neto for him earlier. You know, we were trying to get younger and try to get a middle infielder, but, uh, we took the veteran in, in, instead. Um, and my line, my roster is Zach Gall at the top. That was easy. Uh, we kept Charlie Morton. Uh, that was easy, even though he had no trade value you know but charlie morton was like here's an old guy we're going to keep him this is the rest of my rotation

cutter crawford for this week cutter crawford dean kramer uh cole reagans and zach thompson and michael lorenzen um you know we've had some injuries we We lost Tyler Malley. Hyunjin Ryu is against Colorado, so he's on the bench. We had Tyler Wells. So there's been other guys, but all of those guys you could have picked up this year. In fact, I think we did. We picked up Kramer. We picked up Crawford. We picked up Lorenzen. We picked up Regas. Yeah, we picked up all those guys this year. picked up lorenzen we picked up reagan's we picked up yeah we picked up all those guys this year and this is the third place in a 20 teamer so you know yes you need those guys but also they're there for you well i think that's yeah for me it's they have more value as holds than they do as players to trade you know they give you yeah flexibility to move someone

because you did well on the wire trading verlander has not hurt you that much or at all you've been fine that was that was the thinking you know we're that's why i'm just willing to generally trade pitching for hitting is you know i just feel like there's more of it on the wire what do you think about lugo is this another kind of ross stripling sort of thing when it's good, you're really happy. When it goes bad, it can go bad pretty quickly. Health complicates things. Again, it's a curveball-first arsenal

for Lugo right now. Look at the pitch mix compared to previous years. It's really the same stuff that he's got in the arsenal. Curveball, four-seamer, sinker, slider, occasional change-up. I guess he throws fewer change-ups now than he did five years ago, but how is he doing this, and what do you think the future holds for him

as he's now past his previous MLB high in innings thrown this year? I am developing a theory about elite curveballs and aging. My exhibits are Charlie Morton, Jill Musgrove, Adam Wainwright, Rich Hill, even throw in a little Merrill Kelly. And my theory is just that a plus or elite level curveball is somehow more beneficial to aging

than even an elite level fastball i think a lot of the elite level fastballs have 99 you know have big mphs attached to it which is a fair amount of injury risk just by throwing that hard you know and it's a kind of this funny thing where i think you know maybe conventional wisdom was was wrong about this one about oh you know don't throw too many curveballs you'll hurt your arm like in this case the curveball you know is usually around 80 81 maybe it's just less stressful maybe uh maybe there's something about curveballs you know people don't swing at curveballs right for generally and so maybe if you have a plus curveball by stuff that you can also land in the zone maybe that's just like a really good pitch because you think about it if they're taking it

they're not swinging at it then you land in the zone if they are swinging at it then you land it outside of the zone it's a it's a pretty good pitch and in terms of um platoon splits often is very close to neutral or reverse so you take a guy with a plus curveball you give him a little cutter you give him you know just you know add to it around a little bit and then you've seen with rich hill and ada wainwright the very extreme cases of guys throwing 80 poo and still getting by with just a big old curveball. So I take this as a little pro-Lugo screed here because I think he does have a curveball on the level with those guys.

Just by stuff plus, Lugo sits there right with Merrill Kelly in the top 25 and not too far from the corpse of Adam Wainwright. Well, I think with Lugo, yeah, I mean, it's still, from a Velo perspective, it's fine. 93.5, you can live with 93.5. It's not awful. It's not great, but it's not in the Wainwright-Rich Hill territory, right? So he still has a little

bit of cushion with that throwing other stuff around that for a bit longer maybe helps another season or two along in a rotation he's got a player option this offseason I assume he'll decline it and go into free agency and shoot for like a two probably a two year deal again I don't know if

a team would go much more than two years for Lugo but back end starting pitching it's nice to have. And I think he could actually pull this trick again because I don't think the question was ever about Lugo's talent. It was just kind of staying on the field. He's got a career.352 ERA and a.118 whip. He's over a strikeout per inning. It's just been lack of availability because of all the the time lost over the years

i think you'd almost get the zach efflin deal uh three for 40 wow maybe yeah maybe i think you could get that i mean there's a question i guess the question that's different from efflin but it's actually the same as efflin which is just how many innings you're gonna get right and efflin had that same question hanging over him yeah efflin turned 29 in apr April so there's about a four-year age difference I think okay yeah all right I had started with sort of three and 30. yeah Lugo will be 34 in November yeah but the aging aging with starting pitchers pitchers in general I think is a little bit more tied to stuff like your stuff plus number more than what your actual age is you know what i mean if you're if your stuff has receded to the fact that it's below

average and it doesn't matter if you're 27 like isn't noah syndergard not even well yeah that's the fair fair point and syndergard was dfa'd over the weekend if you uh you hear us keep mentioning it that's the reason why who's next who's the next team that's going to try and see if they can fix Noah Cinderguard on the fly it just seems like it's going to take another offseason in a lab if it's

going to happen at all for him but yeah I mean I think two years for Lugo is what I'm expecting a third year maybe it's in play for all the reasons that you're mentioning I think that Efl Lugo is what I'm expecting. A third year, maybe it's in play for all the reasons that you're mentioning. I think that Eflin is also a decent comp for Howard to think about his value year to year. He's in the established pitchers. I think he's a little bit above, if you're talking about keeper and dynasty,

I think he's a little bit above some of the guys we've been mentioning. Yeah, Eflin's tough to value from a long-term perspective because i think for a while he was a lot more like a like a christopher sanchez or a you know a ranger suarez or those guys cutter crawford like for years like available any year you know just pitch him in the good years and and don't pitch him in the bad years kind of idea. Right, so then he has his career best year and his first year with the Rays, and the K rate is up. It's a career high other than 2020, 25% K rate this year.

Nice low walk rate, like he's done in his best seasons before. He's just consolidated all of the skills together. Changing his pitch mix, changing his fastball mix, changing his breaking mix you know change his fastball mix changes his breaking ball mix like can you spend five years in that that vast middle the glob as our friend paul sporer has called it can you live in the glob for five years and emerge from the glob as a trusted

top 30 top 40 type starter because that's the that's the break before the glob right it's that kind of pick 100 to 125 range and then it's just like now the pitchers are all pretty much the same that's that's the way most draft boards tend to go reagan's with good health i think is the one that could just like immediately free himself of the glob i think he hasn't even been in there that long he's just gonna run right run right through it. He's just going to say, screw this, I don't want to be in the glob. I mean, the health is a fairly big asterisk. Lugo, yes.

Lugo's above it. Eflin, maybe, maybe not. I love it. I love it. He still hasn't convinced you. That's the best part. He's right there. He's right there. I think the market in general will be skeptical because

there's been so much underperformance relative to expectations prior to this season and also just not many innings either yeah no tons of innings risk i think that's the other part of it uh it's the i think innings risk when you're getting an elite strikeout rate is a lot easier to tolerate because you can convince yourself, oh, it's only going to be 140 innings, but it's going to be 175 or 180 Ks, and that's going to be awesome. Lugo's closer to that. I mean, he's not quite an elite strikeout rate as a starter, but it's not bad. What do you think about Kodai Senga?

I was looking at his walk rate in the second half, and it's better than when the season started. I think a lot of times when pitchers come to Major League Baseball from a foreign league, we wonder if it just takes some time to adjust to the baseball because it's different. It's not the pre-tech ball that they use in Japan. So are you buying the walk rate improvements that we've seen from Senga over the course of the second half as a skill level that he might actually possess going into 2024 I don't know he's pretty borderline I'm just looking at

second half location plus and that's a pretty good proxy for you know command in my opinion and it's 96 and 96 is fairly borderline i mean it might be weird to say it but like 97 98 is it's much more like oh that's uh show tani or like you know even blake snell you know i think they're in that 97 to 98 a territory 96 is where you start usually finding more relievers. I'm not sure about the command. I will say that I don't think the Stuff Plus fully encapsulates Kodai Senga's greatness

because the forkball is not rated super highly but it is a really good pitch. I'm not going to go full model on this one. I'm just going to say that I think we're going to see walk rates that start with a 4 full model on this one. I'm just going to say that I think we're going to see walk rates that start with a 4 most years from this guy. Follow-up question then is, are we

going to see K rates most years that start with a 10? Or at least start with a 1? Is like 11, 12 Ks per 9 actually in range with his stuff and his pitch mix? 29% strikeout rate, a four-seam fastball with good shape, a cutter that's pretty good, and then a forkball that plays past its movement metrics. Yeah, I believe in that. I also think that the forkball is a little hard. you know it's not a curveball that he can just land in the zone you know it's not a pitch that i think he has great command over and i think that's just going to be the the fuel for for these higher walk rates and these higher walk rates

are totally tenable i think for a starting pitcher but i do think that maybe some years he has more like a 3-7 or a 4-1 era depending on how many of those walks score for example right now he has more like a 3-7 or a 4-1 ERA, depending on how many of those walks score. For example, right now he has a 77% strand rate. League average is anywhere from 70 to 72. Some people project that more stickily. Zips has him with a 71% strand rate going forward, and Steamer has them with a 75% strand rate going forward. That's meaningful. That'll mean something for your whip, for your ERA. And I think there'll be some years where that number kind of oscillates a little bit

and more of those walks score. So my eyes were quickly scanning through the meatball draft that we discussed last week, those first seven rounds. Did Kodai Senga go in the first seven rounds of the meatball draft? You might be wondering. He did not. I would say no. He did not.

And that's a group, remember, that included Joe Ryan in the sixth got in there. We didn't really talk about some of the later picks. Eflin was the very last pick to our friend Ryan Bloomfield at pick 105. Joe Musgrove was in there. Bobby Miller was in there. Walker Bueller was in there. Hasn't even made it all the way back from Tommy John. He was inside the top seven rounds. Justin Steele, as I mentioned before.

That later group, I mean, I think you could argue Kodai Senga against probably anybody for next year out of that group. Yeah, I think I'd have him over Steele. Who else did you mention? Joe Ryan was the earliest of that bunch yeah i don't know if you if you start looking at logan webb and fromber i don't know if you're

pushing saying that quite that high but that's not out of bounds either webb and fromber just have so much uh floor they're just so solid yeah the. The host, Rob DiPietro, had Grayson Rodriguez in the fifth. Kind of a later fifth round pick. So Grayson versus Senga? Senga? Unless like, you know, I'm putting a little bit of a TBD on that

just because Grayson's in the midst of a bit of a transformation. So I would love to see what this next few starts even would mean a lot for Grayson's in the midst of a bit of a transformation. So I would love to see what this next few starts even would mean a lot for Grayson. But right now, I'd take Kodai. The highest name in this draft that I think is still up for grabs

for a toss-up would be Pablo Lopez. Pablo Lopez versus Kodai Singa would be one I would stare at for a long time. Yeah. I'm calling up Pablo Lopez's page. Without looking, I would have taken Pablo Lopez. Yeah, I'm taking Pablo Lopez. Are you trusting that Pablo Lopez holds the K percentage gains?

We've seen a level close to this before. Right. Hardest he's ever thrown. Right. He's up to 29.3% with the K rate. It's almost 5 percentage points over the career mark, but just about 2 percentage points over what he did in

2021. I think he has better natural command than Kodai. Alright. So you're Pablo Lopez over Kodai Senga. I think... Yeah, I am. I think I'm tempted to take Senga. Especially now that we're going to get maybe two straight years of 180 innings pitched from Pablo Lopez, too. Yeah, it's a fun debate, though, because I think you could realistically see Senga even one notch higher in K-rate than he is right now, and it wouldn't faze me at all.

And you could see Pablo Lopez losing a little bit of K-rate because he's had lower ones in the past. How about this name for some of the people are relying on? Brandon Williamson. He has a lower walk rate with the Reds than he had at AA and AAA. What's going on there? I know we had a mailbag question about the automated balls and strike system at AAA. That was a Royce Lewis question we'll probably get to in a little bit. balls and strike system at AAA?

That was a Royce Lewis question we'll probably get to in a little bit, but do you think we're overlooking that in a few facets? Most notably, what it's done to some control numbers for pitchers in the upper levels? Because it's not just the AAA automated balls and strikes. It's stuff like the

tack balls they were using at AA earlier this season. Wreaking all sorts of havoc you know increasing spin rates and helping some guys with their k rates causing some control issues for others what what else could there be to explain brandon williamson's walk rate coming down this much against top level competition the other thing that i would point out is that Hunter Brown mentioned that when he got to the major leagues, working with Martin Maldonado, who not only is a plus framer, but works with the major league coaching staff in terms of trying to win tonight's game,

where can we put pitches when we need to put them somewhere um coaching and framing will be better in the major leagues for you than it was in the minor leagues for almost everybody so that part maybe you could almost say universally pitchers should have slightly lower walk rates due to those two effects. The other effects, of course, are these hitters are better, so now you're going to nibble more, right? That's why it would normally go up. Normally, walk rates would go in the other direction. So there are these kind of competing forces in every direction. I would say that this year, in particular, AAA walk rates are a little tough to read and take as gospel because of what you're saying. It's not only that it's ABS, but it's like ABS Monday through Friday, and then you switch to non-ABS, the challenge system, or you challenge at the beginning, and then you switch to the ABS. And so I think it's got to be pretty hard.

Kyle Harrison just came up. He had a 103 location plus despite terrible command grades. And I don't think that he struggled against the Phillies. Kyle Harrison's the Giants hurler. I don't think he struggled against the Phillies due to command necessarily. I think it was a good lineup, and he pitched decently. 103 location plus. Brandon Williamson in the second half is a similar 103-104.

Kyle Harrison said, ABS made me be in the zone more and improve my command. So, you know, I don't't know there's something there maybe uh i don't know that i want to turn this into like a if you see x then do y you know like there's i don't know that this is like everybody with a 12 walk rate in triple a this year could have a nine percent in the big leagues i don't know if I want to go that far. And then the last thing on Brandon Williamson in particular is that he didn't throw the cutter all season at AAA last year and not even this year. I think he sort of, when I was questioning why they would even bring him up, someone pointed out that he just started throwing the cutter like

two or three starts before they called him up so you know the cutter has made him a different pitcher um you know and it is uh for brandon williamson the cutter is you know his primary pitch now and uh it's the pitch that he commands the best out of all his pitches so um that's part of the picture too for brandon williamson yeah i think what's really kind of messed up though about the issues that are popping up in the upper levels of the minor leagues is that that will still get baked into projections those results will still get baked into projections because of MLEs and looking back at what you have. So I think you're going to have this lag with a guy like Williamson, anybody else who's been promoted and has only been in the big leagues for a partial season, where projected performance the rest of the way is pretty far away from the current level.

from the current level. The bat has Brandon Williamson at a 553 ERA and a 148 whip the rest of the way. He's been at a 418 and a 125 so far, which is why for deeper leagues, he's been more in than out of your lineups. That's not something we expected when he got called up because of these skills flaws. I wonder how long it's going to take to fully adjust or find a way to work through and get projections that more properly reflect the goofiness of the upper levels of the minor leagues right now it seems like that's a very tall order yeah my comp for williamson is wade miley okay that's you know it's not exciting but

it's it's still it's competent big league starter. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the reason I say this is because it's a cutter for first, uh, thing for the most part, um,

as the establishment pitch, um, uh, foreseeing that's, uh, often hit or used, uh, for,

uh, whiffs, um, and, uh, a really good change that right now has a 500 slugging against it's a really tough Park Wade Miley pitched in some really tough parks. So, you know, I think that's, that's where I think Brandon Williamson will be, you know, he's had a lower ER way away from home. I would expect that to continue. He'd be somebody that I would use maybe 60% to 70% of the time away from home and like 20% to 30% of the time at home. Even in deeper leagues, I think. Yeah, I think that's probably the appropriate usage for Williams.

So that's an interesting comp, though, on Miley. I mean, we're talking about a guy that spent more than a decade in the big leagues. He's had prolonged runs of success. He's had prolonged runs of struggles. It's been plenty of ups and downs, but that he's still in the big leagues at 36 and pitching for contending teams says a lot about how teams evaluate him at this stage of his career. One closer I want to throw at you, Albert Alzalea. I have not thought about taking Edward Alzalea out of my lineup in about two

months because he has been phenomenal really since the Cubs just gave him the closer role. He leads major league baseball and saves going back to July 1st. Is he an elite closer going into next season? We just unfortunately maybe lost one over the weekend with Felix Bautista's injury, but Alzalea's pitching like someone we would

really want as possibly a closer one over the last few months now. And as long as the Cubs aren't going to mess around with that role, I kind of like him as a top 10 closer. Yeah, he seems to have the temperament for it too. A nice excited young man that uh that uh likes to come in in these in these tough moments and throw hard um i will say that uh you know 95 5 for a closer these days is this is getting close to average it's so stupid ridiculous

i can't even say it out loud 95 fans vlans is kind of average it's not really that impressive um and uh well i mean also like a 27 strikeout rate like if you if you want to talk elite relievers like you know what felix batista's strikeout rate is, right? Oh, it's 48% or something? 46%. Yeah. He's striking out half the people he sees, basically. And Adbert's down at 27%, which is still good,

but a little bit lesser than some of the other closers out there. So I don't know. Five is my magic number in terms of the circle of trust, and I'm not sure if he ascends all the way to five next year. But with Felix out of the mix, it might be easier to do. Do we want to do it? Do we dare try this? Do we dare try this? I mean, where do we do we want to do we want to do it do we dare try this do we dare try this i mean do we where do we put edwin diaz diaz i think sight unseen goes right back in because

it wasn't his shoulder yeah it wasn't his elbow he's just right back there that's where i'm at with him no hesitation so and we got fel out. That sucks. That's just brutal. Using the auction calculator, we've got Oh, this is an interesting one. I bet you wouldn't guess who the number one reliever is according to

the auction calculator. Devin Williams? John Durant. Is it? Yeah We gotta check that math again 23 saves, 2 wins I was looking for a big number in the wins column I thought maybe he vultured 6 or 7 wins

or something and that would make him pop 71 Ks and 52 to 30, I don't understand I don't, I think I disagree with the calculator. I don't really like disagreeing with calculators, but here we are. Well, I've got. Oh, is this rest of season? I bet you got rest of season going there.

It's rest of season. Yep. Yeah, because Jordan Romano has more saves. The same ratio is only a few fewer Ks. I would imagine Jordan Romano is just as valuable. To this season, Felix Bautista, number one. Devin Williams, number two. Alexis Diaz, number three.

Hader, number four. Camilo Duval, number five. Then you got Kimbrel, Phillips, Bednar, Romano. So next year, let's just replace Bautista with Edwin Diaz. Yeah, I guess Devin Williams is in there. I just get a little whiff of injury risk from him that makes me nervous. I'll leave Alexis Diaz in there. Hayter, a little bit older.

I'll just finish it with Hayter Doval. Who are we missing out on? Romano in a year where his back doesn't hurt. I don't think Azulay jumps in there. Klasse we're missing if he has a bounce back. Yeah, Klasse is down a little bit, but I kind of feel like there's two tiers within that group that you mentioned,

and if you put Azulay in either of those groups, it has to be the second one right now because of the strikeout rate. But that's certainly fine. Closer, really closer to... Alzalea, Romano, what, Diaz? Are you taking Jordan Romano over

Emmanuel Classe if you're choosing right now, or if you're making a late-season trade for a reliever and you could make the deal for either one of them? Because Cl A... They are. And Class A has been filthy in terms of velo and movement, but this is

who he is. We're now at 224 and two-thirds career innings where it's been like a strikeout per inning. 25.6%. That's what you're going to get. He made up for some of the lower rates in strikeout rates by you know having large ip numbers but i i would submit to you that 70 is something that a innings pitch is something that a young

closer does and that uh you stop doing at some. So I wouldn't be surprised if he does not get to 70 this year, although the rest of the season production says he'll do it again. Even if he does, I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't do it the next year. You know what I mean? I just don't think that 70 is a number you want a guy throwing every year. And in fact, one of the reasons that I think Camilo Doval has been run into a little bit of a wall and I think of Doval as sort of similar to Klasse just a little bit more strikeouts a little bit better

slider you know they used him pretty heavily here in San Francisco Doval and he might not even get to 70 innings and he's already had a little bit of a downturn in performance due to, I think, fatigue. So I would take Romano over him is a long-winded way of saying that. So you're Romano over Klasse. Are you Deval over Klasse too?

We're taking a first tier of Diaz, Williams, Hayter. Both Diazes maybe? Probably both Diaz's maybe probably both Diaz's haters probably in there even if you want to put them last because of the k rate or the walk rate rather being at an all-time high 13.5 percent he's just getting away with that right now because he's not giving up homers it's a huge part and he's still missing him almost lose jobs because we've seen a role as Chapman despite league league leading stuff, lose his job over walks. And that's.

It's a weird comp. They're not the same, but. But that's sort of how I think of hater is as a late career oldest Chapman has been. Harder to be to prognosticate and harder to know when it'll all just fall apart i feel the same way about hater so uh haters really borderline for me i could put him in the second group but if i put him in the second group i still think i'd want you know a fifth one in the first group and that maybe that's duval there's i like bednar like romano could be one of those guys yeah i'm a little bit overzealous with the the alzalee right now but do you think that this this seems like a pretty good group do you think that there

there has to be a such a hard uh circle of trust next year uh i feel like maybe you could wait on closer a little bit and like what if you got the sixth best closer in the draft next year and it was camilla Doval? You know what I mean? I think you could live with that. I don't think there's as much urgency for me right now as there was two or three years ago to aggressively try and even get two that I liked out of that top ten. I think I'm skewing even further to the,

eh, wait and see. Get someone in that seven to ten range because the floor is good enough. That's where I'm falling right now. wait and see get someone in that 7 to 10 range because the the floor is good enough that's there's a little bit more i think of a of an aggressive downturn after sort of like 10 you know 11 like that's pretty typical though yeah i mean i just i'm looking at the names right now 11th best reliever this year is joel pyams yeah 13th is kevin ginkle oh duran is is 20th and paul seawald is 21st like we don't mention him those guys could actually be in my circle of trust so i i may i may try to do two out of the top 10 next year as opposed to one in the top five i see so may waiting until like round six

seven and eight and maybe trying to sneak two in two out of three in those rounds and maybe like if i left those rounds romano bednar like what why would i i wouldn't feel bad at all yeah i wonder if you'll have a shot at one of them at least in that range because there's it's all it takes is one i mean i think and all it takes is one run right yeah and i think i think joe and duran's probably in the right around that hater line for a lot of people i think you'd look at them very similar circle of trust he's either he's one of the last guys in the first group or he's the top guy in the second group he's right in that conversation as kind of a top six seven eight closer i think the the only real question with him same kind of thing as we've always had is

how many save opportunities does he lose based on the way the twins want to handle their bullpen is that still going to be a concern going into next season he's got a shot at 30 maybe with a good good september it's a little bit of uh just a growing concern every year with every team. Yeah. It's actually sort of surprising that the Giants have been so conventional at the closer role when they've done everything else to destroy convention

in pitching. That's one of the things I really like about what the Brewers have done over the years. Once they decided Hayter was just a closer and ever since devin williams replaced him he's just been the guy that's it devin williams is the closer devin williams gets the saves unless the game goes extras or unless he's not available because they've had three consecutive days of the save chance or recent workloads somehow steer him

away from the game plan that day and that sort of predictability is it is increasingly rare as you said and i think that's that's something that, it is increasingly rare, as you said. And I think that's, that's something that jumps off the page to me as a, something I really like. Now, I guess the downside of Williams is that high walk rate. He is a higher walk rate guy.

That's, that's how guys reach against him. It's one of the ways they get on against Devin Williams. Yeah, it's possible. Just we're reading this all wrong. And Edwin Diaz won't, we'll have an injury, um, a discount and and edwin diaz won't will have an injury

um a discount and devin williams and josh hater will have walk rate discounts and the number one reliever taken next year will be alexis diaz well meatball draft just one last time bringing that up what was number one batista was first was first. Oh, well, that's... Just brutal, right? Yeah. Klasse was the second closer before the end of round two. He had some staying power up there. Yeah, that was our buddy James Anderson.

It's just knowing he's the guy. In this early, that makes sense. Hayter was third. And we don't know where Hayter's going to pitch in 2024. He's a free agent, so he's probably going to cash in. He'll be a closer, though. Rysel Iglesias was up there. I don't know if I'm as high on Iglesias.

I think he's a little lower for me. Doval and Devin Williams were also within the first three rounds. And then Alexis and Edwin Diaz went back-to-back early in round four. Nice. Before you got to Duran and Jordan Romano. And then coming back through in the fifth. No closers in the fifth. And then all the way down to Ryan Presley in the back part of the sixth.

I could have taken. You had choices in the fifth. You could have had your choice of any one of these guys is the order they were drafted in. Ryan Presley, David Bednar, Kenley Jansen, Paul Seawald,

Andres Munoz. Those are the only other closers that were dropped. Not bad, dude. I take Bednar and then maybe even double up on the way back. Yeah, and Elzelai went in there too. Elzelai joined at the end of the sixth, so he was part of that. Maybe a fifth round closer for me next year. All right.

See, we're always thinking about the future while we think about the present, but I love the way the Cubs have been using Albertbert Alzelie. We've got some hitters that we'll save for later in the week, and if you've got other hitters you want us to talk about that are just surprisingly important to your teams the rest of the way, just tweet at us, at Rates and Barrels. We're happy to fold a few more names into the rundown. I had one more pitching question to get to before we go. This one came in over the weekend, I believe. And it's basically what to do with Tyler Wells in a deeper league because he's been shifted to the bullpen and he's still pitching at AAA.

A few weeks ago, it looked like someone that might come back and be a member of that rotation down the stretch. And they're maybe managing his innings by just sending him down for a little while. But in a 15-team league at this point, is Wells someone you're still stashing away or are you using that roster spot on somebody else? I wrote the blurb on Bautista being out and brought up the fact that D.L. Hall was brought up to the big leagues and could figure into the mix. Shintaro

Fujinami, both behind Cano. Tyler Wells in the minors this year or in AAA this year is not striking out a ton of hitters, has never really struck out a ton of hitters. I know he's been a closer in the past in you know in in baseball but i don't see him filling that role when put up against the other people that are in that pen they just have more strikeout stuff more kind of closery stuff and i and notice i included fujinami so right right i think they want wells for bulk i think he's a he's a bridge on their short starters. They're just trying to keep him fresh enough in the minors

to have him still have something left in the tank once the playoffs get here. But it's not a very fantasy-friendly role at all. It's a brutal role for fantasy purposes. Yeah, yeah. I almost dropped him off my 20-team league just because I think he's too close to that glob and I'm

trying to finish in the money. Yeah. I think in the case of this question came from Sean. Thanks for sending this question in, Sean. I think it's a cut. Try to find someone that can help you a bit more than Tyler Wells at this point. A few weeks ago, I was on board. I know Al on the pod said he was a hold.

I thought the same thing I thought it was going to be a quick turnaround and I thought maybe we'd even see him piggybacking off of Flaherty if Flaherty was having problems getting deep into starts and you could see you know four inning outings again that's something to watch I mean he's had two appearances in triple a and two innings so right now that's more of a bullpen role but if the next one is two innings then maybe all they were trying to do was slow him down and then bring him back up again because of innings totals because you know his career high was 2022 was 105 he's already at 115 123 this year so if they wanted him at all later on at some point they had to do something where they throttle him back and then move him

forward so there's still, I think it's still an open question about like how many innings he pitches in his next appearance in AAA. Yeah. Well, it seems like that's very much up in the air at this point. Thanks again for that question, Sean. We are going to sign off on our way out the door.

We could have a special on subscriptions right now. It's down to $1 a month for the first year. You can get that by going to the athleticletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. It gets you everything that Eno writes, fantasy football coverage, everything else we've got on the site for one low price. You can find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris. You can find me at Derek Van Ryper. The pod itself is at ratesandbarrels.

Feel free to tweet at the pod. The pod is very happy when people tweet at it. Stroke the pod's ego if you don't mind, that's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. We're back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening. Thank you.