Rates & Barrels - Surprising First-Half Hitters & A Look at 'Best Speed'

Episode Date: June 28, 2023

Eno and DVR discuss Alek Manoah's return to the mound in the Florida Complex League before digging into some of the most surprising hitters from the first half of 2023, and considering the value of 'Best Speed' as a better snapshot of a player's quality of contact than average exit velocity. Rundown 0:56 Alek Manoah's Game Action Resumes in FCL 5:51 Jonah Heim and Elias Díaz 9:32 Josh Naylor: Will Supporting Cast Limit His ROS Value? 14:43 Yandy Díaz: Groundball Rate Back to 2022 Levels 20:32 Spencer Steer 29:07 Targeting "Obvious Buy-Low" Players 32:45 Luis Arraez 34:54 Bryson Stott: Further Room for Improvement? 41:20 Lane Thomas & Surprising Outfielders 45:03 Esteury Ruiz: Will He Top ROS Stolen-Base Projections? 53:46 Jake Fraley's Success in Cincinnati 55:30 Jorge Soler: Buying K% Improvements? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Check out these offers from our ad partners.... Right now, Nuts.com is offering new customers a free gift with purchase and free shipping on orders of $29 or more at Nuts.com/rates 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

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Stick around until the end of today's episode to hear the trailer for The Athletic's next narrative podcast, The Play Callers, where Jordan Rodrigue will take you inside the dynamics of the NFL's youngest coaching family, the Kyle Shanahan-Sean McVay coaching tree. The entire series will be released on The Athletic Football Show feed on Monday, July 10th. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Wednesday, June 28th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris on this episode. We'll take a look at some of the most pleasant surprises of the first half, try to set expectations for the second half of the season for those players. It's kind of funny that I saw that Al Melchior actually wrote about this same topic. I saw the story pop up on The Athletic this morning after I put this rundown together yesterday. And we did not have a conversation about it.

So we're just kind of thinking about the same things as the midway point of the season approaches. I've got a new metric that I saw in a Jay Jaffe column today over at Fangraphs. We'll talk about that. It's called best speed. Might find some hidden value using that as well. But we begin today with one news item. Alec Manoa had a very rough day in the Florida Complex League, and the Blue Jays' reactions to it are kind of what you'd expect. I mean, John Schneider, I guess, was asked about it and said, I obviously saw the line score and all that stuff, but I heard that things that we're talking about

in terms of strike throwing, delivery, tempo, velo were all positive. This was from a story in the Toronto Star by Gregor Chisholm. So the problem was against teenagers, Alec Manoa went two and two thirds and gave up 11 runs. He got hammered in a situation

where he should have just been able to come in and cruise through and get his work in. So if anything, it just gives us an idea that the timetable for his return is probably going to be the longer end of any ranges that we previously forecasted. Yeah, 100%. And for what it's worth, I think that the road to this moment is a little bit longer than people appreciate, because if you look at starting at his debut, if you take the sort of first five games that he pitched, and then you look at his stuff since, he's lost two ticks on his fastball, two ticks on his slider, two inches of horizontal movement. I mean, that didn't happen overnight and it was happening a little bit last

year and it happened a little bit more this year and so he's got a race like a year and a half of i don't know bad habits bad conditioning bad mechanics something and uh you know we looked at this before in terms of like how many people who've lost this kind this much slider stuff plus have regained it and it was about 50 50 and and if you're younger i think you're on the right side of that you know so maybe 60 40 is a you know for for manoa to figure it out especially without any sort of reported injury. But I did also do some snooping and found out that this was not a start

where he was supposed to be working on something specifically where sometimes in the minor leagues you'll get guys like, I remember Dan Straley told me at some point the A's had a rule that he had to throw 12 change-ups in every start. And I think that he said, one day I just went out there to throw 12 change-ups in every start and I think that he

said one day I just went out there and threw 12 change-ups in a row just to check that box and uh and so I was like well maybe you know they had very specific things that they wanted him to do in the start and that made it obvious like maybe he was just supposed to throw 10 sliders in the first inning or something and everyone's like oh he's just throwing sliders all right um but what i heard was that this was supposed to be a normal start so i would i would assume for like fantasy purposes and just Blue Jays fandom purposes and just real life baseball purposes that he's probably not coming back this year

in the shape or form that he was in the last two years. Yeah, and it's just so strange because we talked about it at the time that the demotion was announced. This is a player that even with the lost stuff soon after his career began, the results he was getting were so good.

He was finding a way to make it work in the AL East, no less. I don't know if this is like a Rick and Kiel sort of problem. I mean, the walk rate going just completely off the scale kind of points at that. off the scale kind of points at that. Unfortunately, those don't always end in a happy story. I think that's the concern you have right now. We'll see what the

next few weeks bring for Manoa. I actually picked him up over the weekend in a 15-team league because I had one spot that I could sort of play with and I said, I'll pick him up for a buck. If he comes out and he's dealing in his first rehab appearance and he starts moving through, I'll be really happy I did it. If something like this happens, he'll be a cut next week. And that is that's where I'm at. He's an easy cut for me coming up this weekend, given that we're going to be waiting a long, long time. It seems before he's back in any sort of prominent role for the Blue Jays. back in any sort of prominent role for the Blue Jays.

Our main topic today, first half pleasant surprises. You know, I kind of made a whole roster of these guys, and it's easy to argue some players on the margins that were good values in terms of where they were going in drafts. You could say Cattell Marte is a pleasant surprise this year, but Cattell Marte has been good before, right? Christian Walker is great this year. He's been very good before, so that's not as much of a surprise. We're looking more for the guys that are mostly $20-plus players that we really didn't see reaching that level, even over a half season.

We'll go through this roster and talk about expectations for these players going forward. Jonah Haim, who's the clear-cut leader, $22, actually leads all catchers in dollars earned so far this season based on the Roto-Wire earned values for a 15-team league. And then Elias Diaz, who at $12 is still a top five catcher year-to-date because the position's been such an underwhelming group so far. But of the two, I think Haim is the more interesting player to sort of break down. He's part of a great lineup. A lot of things have gone right for the Rangers. If you look at teams that have had players exceed projections, I think the Rangers have more hitters that have done that than any other club

in the league so far this season. I think that's probably the work of Donnie Ecker factoring in at least a little bit in all of that. But for Haim specifically, where do we go from here? It's nice to bank an amazing first half. Obviously, he's going to stay on rosters the rest of the way. He became single catcher league viable. Is he really a top five or top eight, top 10 catcher the rest of the way

after what he's put together so far? He's on my list of potential beneficiaries of the new shift rule so i do think that there's some uh aspect to that where here's a guy who you know pulls 50 of his balls and you know in the last three years had a combined babbitt around 230 now he has one at 312 jonah heim does so i you know i i think that um you know there's some aspect of that but also this year he's you know, I think that, you know, there's some aspect of that. But also this year he's, you know, hitting fewer ground balls and barreling better and accessing that good max EV. to me other than maybe that Babbitt comes back. But I think that given the change in rules, the projections are all pulling back on his old batting average on balls in play for Jonah Heim and sort of taking that into account and giving him 260 Babbitts going forward. And I think, you know, there's a rule change. He's a lefty. He pulls the ball a lot. Maybe his BABIP going forward is a little bit closer to where Zips has him. 285 for Jonah Heim for a 257 average. Maybe it's higher. Maybe he can manage a 300. Like, why not? He's not the

slowest catcher in the world. He makes a lot of contact. And it's mostly powerful contact. It's not really, he doesn't have a limp noodle of a bat. So I think if he slides to a 290 babbip and hits 260 from here on out, still a ton of value, still a guy who's going to end the season right around the 275, 280 average with 20 homers. He's going to be one of the top two catchers in the league this year. Yeah, so maybe a guy that sticks to the point

where he's an easy top 150 overall pick going forward. If you're playing second-half leagues, I think you can pretty well trust him. I think that's going to be the hardest thing about midseason trades and second-half leagues is the projections maybe not being as up to speed with all of the changes as they should be kind of pulling back on old data that doesn't necessarily apply to the current rules like the jonah heim and several other players we're going to talk about probably fit that sort of description as far as diaz goes just a catcher in colorado

right and now that jorge alfaro's there maybe playing time will be a little bit more of a problem for him in the second half of the season. So I don't know if I'm going out to go get Elias Diaz right now, but I think Jonah Heim, this is a pretty legitimate breakout. I'm with you on that one. Josh Naylor, a longtime favorite on this pod, up to $22. I slotted him in as the first baseman on this team because you've got a corner spot, you've got third, you've got UT. Naylor is one of the few things going right in Cleveland right now from a hitting perspective. And I just wonder, are we going to see some of the players

that stepped up in a big way last year find their way back around him? Because the limiting factor on Josh Naylor right now is a poor supporting cast. I'm not expecting a lot in terms of counting stats, even though he's been very good so far. 57 RBIs in 70 games in that lineup is good fortune. I'm very concerned he's not going to repeat that over what's left of the season.

Well, there's this aspect of the fact that Cleveland warms up and is supposedly a hitter's park that is cold for the first month and a half. And so there's some aspect of that that might affect all, rise all the ships in the Guardiansville, you know? So there may be higher scores in in cleveland going forward that may benefit his run production uh most of the projections say he'll get to 100 rbi so you're

looking at a guy who's going to hit 280 285 uh for the year with 20 homers 10 steals and 100 rbi it's uh i'm not sure how much it pushes him up in the future you know what i mean like it'll push 20 homers, 10 steals, and 100 RBI. I'm not sure how much it pushes him up in the future. You know what I mean? It'll push him up, but it's not the type of season where you're like, well, and now he's a top three rounder. You know what I mean? Right, yeah.

I mean, it's interesting that he's running a little bit, though, on pace to maybe steal 10 bases. That's a very pleasant surprise from Josh Naylor. Part of the anyone and everyone can steal bases now if they want to. Find your spot and go. If he hits a ball 115 this year, I know that's like a sort of reductive thing, but if Josh Naylor hits another ball 115 this year, I think it does describe a potential for a tiny bit more upside.

You're saying if he's something like that, you could put the ceiling closer to 30 home runs instead of the low 20s or mid 20s yeah i think so right now the 112 max ev that's like 60th percentile 70th percentile you know that's not it's not uh somebody you'd expect to hit 30 homers and and the barrel rate you know 8.6 last year, 9.7 this year, that's also good but not great. And so, I mean, maybe that's who he wants to be because he comes with a 16% strikeout rate, really nice average, which inflates his OBP despite Naylor not walking a ton. I think it could be good all around. His approach could be the best for him uh for fantasy purposes it'd be great if he could strike out 16 of the time and barrel 12 to 13 of

the time uh that would be another level but i'm not sure that's in there for him but maybe he'll just be um you know eddie rosario for a really long time for some reason was just uh was kind of metronomy was like worth you know was a good pick in fantasy even though he was never like a you know a top end guy he was just always a a guy worth spending a couple dollars on in mixed leagues and a little bit more in monoligues maybe nailer will just settle into someone who's kind of perennially underrated yeah that could happen i could see that um and i think the the general question that would apply thinking about heim and Naylor, seeing the BABIP also being up for Naylor right now,

career 288, last season 268, up at 314 right now if you're watching the fluctuations there. As a group, how much do you think the league has increased on BABIP? What's the normal adjustment that you should give everybody compared to their previous norms? There's a really good piece about this and based off respect us and it turns out that the people benefiting the most from the shift rules are the three true outcome lefty all or nothing sluggers and you know one thing that might surprise people is that the BABIP on pulled grounders for lefties has gone from like 145 to 155. Those aren't exact numbers, but it's really about a 10 point increase.

So it's really not that big a deal. And we may fall into the trap, even with Haim and Naylor, of ascribing some luck to the rule changes. Yeah, okay. I think that could happen. Naylor of ascribing some luck to the rule changes. Yeah. Okay. I think that could happen. Like for example, Naylor's not a big pool guy, 38%.

Right. Well, he's always been able to use the entire field. And the question was always, will he get to the power consistently enough to be an everyday first base DH type? And he's answering that question. I think he's done that. Interesting that he ended the season with a projection that kind of suggested this was the player he's answering that question i think he's done that interesting that he entered

the season with a projection that kind of suggested this was the player he's going to be he's actually moved that up a little bit plus five on his wrc plus compared to what he's done so far for his rest of season projection so pretty safe player to go out and get via trade if you're looking for some help on the corner i don't know if that same label applies to the next player i wanted to bring to the conversation yandi diaz remember the beginning of the season, Yandy Diaz was lifting the ball more often. The numbers overall still look really good. He belongs in this conversation. Definitely someone we should be talking about today, but we're now back to a point where the ground ball rate this season, 49.8% is identical to the ground ball rate from a year ago.

And very close to his career number at 52.4%. So who is the real Yandy Diaz? Can we put up an impromptu visual? Maybe. How easy is that for you? Yeah, I'll try. Okay, but just describe what i'm looking at i did the rolling graphs for his fly ball rate which is a proxy here for his launch angle and you know i think it could

be there's there's like this you could see the narrative building where from the beginning of 2022 to the beginning of 2023 it just oh he's just adding just adding oh it's so exciting yandy diaz lifting the ball and then as soon as everyone fell for it and it's so exciting yandy diaz lifting the ball and then as soon as everyone fell for it and wrote the pieces about yandy diaz was finally lifting the ball off a cliff just i mean it's a this is a cliff dude i don't know it's just like he went from 50 fly ball rate which is just like bonkers for Yanni Diaz. He has done it before. And the last time he had 50% fly ball rate, which was in 2021, late 2021, he also hit a cliff.

And his rolling fly ball rate right now is 20%. It's comical, really. I think that the idea in Tampa, and I'm going to write this up someday, and I've got some beginning quotes about it, but I think the idea in Tampa is just get a guy with a good hit tool, good sense of the zone, and this applies for a lot of the guys they've gotten, which is get a guy with a good sense of the zone,

a good hit tool who hits the ball hard. And they're going to be a good player when they lift the ball and when they don't. And there are years when Yandy does not lift the ball at all during the season. He had a 66% ground ball rate in 2020 in the short season. He still had a 139 WRC plus because he hit the ball wicked hard

you know so like you know i think it's a good approach where they're like you know we don't really want the all or nothings we don't really want the the three two three two outcome sluggers we we want guys who have a hit tool and hit the ball hard and then you know we'll try to coach him up in terms of launch angle maybe they think they can you know they've had some some successes yeah it's it's very hard with a player this age to finally buy into that skills change and then tell yourself six weeks later like no no it wasn't real wasn't real wasn't real i get tricked it's exactly what it was last year except at one point this year was 50 it was a 50 fly ball rate and now it's a 20 fly ball rate i mean the good news is more

hard contact more barrels always has controlled the zone really well so yeah the baseline the baseline i think last year is this baseline 296 average 401 ovp uh nine homers you know for the season that's his baseline and that's why he's i think he's always kind of a better mono league player yeah because that's that baseline is not necessarily mixedly valuable well here's the problem though so so much of our game is being able to find value or players that are incorrectly valued back during draft season and then mid season. And I wonder how many takes on Yanni Diaz are going to be same guy. He's always been,

it's not going to hit, not going to hit more than five home runs in the second half. And I think that might be wrong. Look at, look at the projections. The bad X has a metal 11 for the rest of the season with a two 91 average. If that's who he is for the rest of the season and everyone in your leagues treats him, that is mixed league valuable

because the average is so high, the run production is so good. Is he still somehow incorrectly valued even though we've got all this information? That's to me where I'm still intrigued. What if he continues at this 20% fly ball rate for the whole second half? I don't know.

He's a roller coaster yeah i think that i mean if he's dropped it's an easy one because i think you know especially if you need batting average because i think the batting average is the safest thing about him and he's now on a team that is the best offense in baseball and i think he's completely platoon free really he seems to be clear of all that yes so i think you know when you look at we're on day 81 right for a lot of places so you can just double things we're looking at 102 runs and uh 76 rbi those are career highs and that'd be 24 home runs if he doubled up on the homers but even you want to go pessimistic and just five more even if you just give him five more i think that would be still be mixedly valuable five homers 50 runs

40 rbi and a 300 average i mean it will hurt you a little bit in home run power, but then there's like this, but what if, what if he has another sort of fly ball spike and he actually hits 10 or 15, then you're like, then you did the right thing. And the baseline is so, so, so useful. debates about Yanni Diaz if he does hit 12 more home runs. It's going to be intense if he gets up into the low to mid-20s. There's going to be a lot of folks taking a stand on that. 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.

Best Western made booking our family beach vacation a breeze. And it felt a little like... life's a trip make the most of it at best western i'm the other corner player that i want to put in here actually there's two because of the ut spot but spencer steer has been excellent so far not necessarily a guy that we thought had a clear and obvious long-term role in cincinnati it was like, let's just see what you can do this year. And if you hit enough and play well, then you're part of the plan. And if you don't, you're going to get passed by other players. Now, it's a lower barrel rate, 6.6% so far,

but he's got the K rate down under 20% for the half. There's power. That's a really nice play to approach, yeah. Yeah, there's power. There's some speed. The park obviously helps him a little bit. I the park is actually a an underrated part of this because i think you could take this entire package of skills and and put it in seattle and he'd have a 240 average with six homers so far i mean seven homers i mean i'm not saying

that necessarily the park is stealing five homers. I mean, you start to change your approach a little bit too. Right now he's a 47% fly ball rate and only a 7% barrel rate. If you're in Seattle and you have a 47% fly ball rate, I think a lot of those things are dying in the

outfield. And you don't continue to do that. And you start hitting more grounders or start trying to hit more line drives. I mean, exactly what alex gordon told me is he came up and he was a guy who hit fly balls and he was in kaufman he was like oh my god all my fly balls are dying and so he went he went back to the minors and when he came back he was in line drive hitters so you know there's this interesting thing that happens where player development meshes with what your home park looks like at the mid-league level. And I think Stier just scooped perfectly into that.

Where he's a guy with a great approach, not necessarily the best batted ball quality. 110.6 max EV is 60th percentile raw power. 6.6 barrel rate is technically above average it's above average but among like everyday players it's pretty close to average so i think spencer steer could be our entry point into the metric i teased at the beginning of the show so i was reading the jordan walker piece that j jaffe wrote at fangraphs and he had a note in there about best speed as a stat cast metric that Tom Tango uses to basically get a better version of average exit velocity, right? When you look at all the player pages, average EV is everywhere. I think we've talked on this show before, and we've

certainly seen other conversations around on Twitter, other stories about this. There are limitations of average exit velocity, and the big part of the reason is you get a lot of noise the soft contact noise can really mess with that with that overall number with that average number it's probably not even read all that well like you think about if you hit a ball like 15 miles an hour or something like did you really was that really maybe more like a 40 and it read as 15 and if you add that up into your average, you're like, well, it's reading as a 15. And so it's going to put in your average as a 15. And really, we don't maybe know for sure that it was a 15 or a 40, you know?

Yeah. So what this does, this best speed number, which you can get to from the piece, there's a link in there and you can get it on the custom leaderboards over at Baseball Savant. It is the 50% of your hardest, your 50% of the hardest hit balls.

It's the average EV of those. So the consistently hard hit balls in your profile, what do those look like? And that gives you a pretty good snapshot because I think what you will find, and we've talked about this, Alex Bregman is a good example of a player that doesn't strike out a lot and then as a result has some pretty ugly stat cast numbers because the denominator, the balls in play ends up being very high. Spencer

Steer is a little bit more like that. If you look he's got by the best speed metric average velocity numbers on his 50% hardest hit balls. I think that's what you're looking at. Maybe even slightly below average. Yeah, like 50th percentile I think is where he came in looking at it right even slightly below average. Yeah, like 50th percentile is where he came in,

looking at it right now. 99.9 is what he's got for his half, the hardest hit balls. So interesting sort of thing to look at. If I did a leaderboard based off of this where I kept the strikeout rate under 24% and the launch angle above 10 just to get rid of the worm burners. And it's immediately

like the best hitters in baseball. Sho Yotani is first, Corey Seager is second, Jordan Alvarez is third, Rafael Devers is fourth, Sean Murphy, Jock Peterson, Paul Goldschmidt, Wilson Contreras is the only name on this list that isn't right now raking. Ozuna, Fernando Tatis, Austin Riley, Randy Orozarena, Pete Alonso, Hunter Renfro, CJ Krohn, Horsey Lair, Corbin Carroll,

Bobby Witt Jr., Brian Reynolds. Those are the guys that all have a best speed above 102, a barrel above 10%, and a strikeout rate under 24. So this led to some stuff that's not on the rundown. That is a digression, but are we all going to be wrong on Wilson Contreras? It's like, you can look at Wilson Contreras from 80 different angles, and you're going to come up with him as a buy low. Yeah. I bet if you read everybody's mid-season trade targets

or second half rebounds column, he's the first guy in all of them. No matter what method you use, it's going to point you back to Wilson Contreras. And the question I put to you before we started recording, I said, we know this has been a weird year for Wilson Contreras. He's in a new place on a new contract. And for a brief time, his new organization said he wasn't a catcher anymore. And then they went back on that. So there's just a lot of unusual circumstances here.

Not an easy year at all. There is a human component to playing the game. Does that all just get pushed aside? You say, no, no, the numbers are so good you definitely want to go get wilson contreras right now i mean i i get it because all the things i care about in the offensive profile are things that he has continued to do very well this season in terms of underlying numbers looks a lot like last season with the cubs so i think there is a big second half coming the only reason why I think it wouldn't

happen is because of all the other stuff that was happening that certainly is not part of the calculations throughout the first half in St. Louis. Yeah. I think there's also, I think it was in a Katie Wu column or something, but just like a moment where all the expectations that were on you to begin the season disappear. Yeah. Maybe that's happened where you kind of hit rock bottom quote unquote, and you're just like, all right, it's a lost season. You know, we may not make it. Let's just breathe and like, you know, play some baseball, you know? know uh i think that could happen also i think that the i hope this is true that the problems are so pervasive in in st louis that there's

nobody that could say like can anybody say with a straight face still like oh yeah it was wilson contrast no they couldn't say it even when they were trying to move them out from behind the place so but like you know like could you still say it now? Like, I don't, I don't think so. So, so there's gotta be in Wilson Contreras' mind, some like, look, guys, I mean, look around. It's not all on me. This is a complete failure of, for, for a year for, for us. Like, it's not, It's not all me. I think at some point, you do get to that sort of blood

letting, this moment where you're just like, ah, okay, the bat is out, and now we're just going to play some ball and get our numbers right and be spoilers or whatever it is. I guess. But I also think that

this speaks a little bit to our Lodum stuff, where it's like, imagine trying to buy low on Wilson Contreras in a trade offer right now. Right. Because the person that has him is looking at the same thing you see. The other guy's going to see you coming from a mile away. It's just like a big, like, this guy's a buy low with a big honking light. And you're like, I'd like to give you.

I would like to give you a player that I didn't draft in the top 200 that's still not very good for Wilson Contreras. And you're like, why would I do that? I think the types of players you're trading, if you're going after a player who's underperformed his projection as much as Wilson Contreras has, the obvious bylaws, we'll call them. If you're going after those players, you're probably moving someone like the players we're talking about on this episode. You're probably taking someone who has exceeded expectations in a way and done it long enough where now people are willing to buy in because there's a lot more evidence that the skills are real, that the situation is stable from a playing time perspective. So that's what it becomes, more of a challenge trade of, this has been happening this year for the first half, and it looks legit.

I'll give you this guy for the guy that's struggling, and we'll both be happy. That's probably the best path in for the obvious buy lows. Trade Austin Hayes with his 392 Babbitt. Something like that contraris yeah spencer steer though who is he as a player is he the good version of ian happ as a hitter as long as he's in seattle in cincinnati uh i'm willing to bet on you know like a 260 270 i don't think he'll continue stealing a ton of bases but i think he'll have that like five stolen base like you know five to ten where he's you know smart about

it and does it you know for two or three more years and then he'll settle in as a 260 batting average but good obp um and you know 25 homer type guy that maybe he peaks with a 30 homer season, but I don't really see a 35, 40 homer season. Granted, he could make an advancement with barrel rates and max DVs and stuff like that, but given the battle ball quality, given the fact he's 25,

another thing that's interesting about Steer is that he debuted close to his peak so this could very well be his peak i think i trust spencer steer more than jake fraley i'm trying to look at a guy that made this team in the outfield i think fraley is also older fraley being a lefty also losing time against lefties i think that kind of factors in here as well. I know Steer could lose occasional turns against righties. That's just part of being on a crowded depth chart. But Steer has played everywhere. He can slot into any position. And then that plate approach is just so pristine, man. 10% walk rate,

18% strikeout rate. Everybody wants a guy like that on their team. I threw one more corner in at the ut justin turner i didn't see this season coming from justin turner i think there could be some still think he's toast i'm getting questions that people still think he's toast and i'm like no he's you know i'm trying to acquire him in in in places where i just need a rental bat for this year and i'm not concerned about the future he's like an ideal guy to acquire in dynasty leagues because there's no value in dynasty leagues. He's 38 years old.

Any season could just be the one where he's like, yeah, I'm good. I'm done. Yeah, exactly. Even if he's not a bad player, he could just choose to retire. He's still out here doing his 280-20 thing. Still doing it.

Yep, helping you in batting average, doing pretty well with run production. Could see him ending up in another contending roster if the red sox fall far enough away from a playoff spot between now and the deadline yeah it wouldn't be that hard to trade somebody with a 10 million dollar trade uh player option i don't think no no i don't think it would be and power looks pretty steady i mean so long as he's healthy i think it is 20 home run power so just a really nice season that i I don't know, I don't remember a lot of people getting excited about Justin Turner

back during draft season. The middle infielders. Oatmeal, man. Three middle infielders here. Bryson Stott, who has out-earned Trey Turner by $1 so far this season. Not sure I'd bet on that to continue. Tyro Estrada, we've talked a lot on this pod about.

Gave him a spot. And then Luis Arias, who is just... What's left to say about Luis Arias? He's such an unusual player for our purposes. He's so much more valuable in real life than he is in fantasy, even though he is plenty valuable

in fantasy. I mean, this is a 399, 450, 495 line on pace for six homers. The place I've got him, I'm first in batting average and middle of the pack or worse in homers and stolen bases.

I keep trying to be like, I'll play him here, I'll play him here, and I'll sit him against lefties. I don't know what I'm... I'm just trying to get more homers and stolen bases in the lineup. It's really unusual. I mean, this is... Is he at 1-1 still?

1-1? He's at 3-1. Three homers now? Three homers and one steal. For what it's worth, I don't know that I'm investing a lot more in him next year. I do think there's a bit of magic to what he's doing,

and I think it's good for a 300 average most seasons, but I just look at his rest of season projections for most things, like 311 to 330. That's where I would peg him for next year. And how much do I want to pay next year for a guy who could hit three 11 with five homers and two stolen bases? You have to build your team completely differently to do it. And I don't want to do that. It's just not, it's not how I like to play. It's exciting to watch. It's it's, you know, I am rooting for him. If we could see a guy hit 400 again, that be great i was on a radio show where they they wanted me to sort of wax poetic about

arise and i'm like yeah he's a pretty good player he's not probably gonna hit 400 and you know it's a lot of it's just singles a lot of singles the more interesting player to talk about here though is bryson stott yes i was hoping you were gonna go there because i i i vacillate is he a lodum guy or is he in a like a a total cell high i mean it's it's bad batted ball quality and and for all the like what we talk about here like batted ball like if i have anything that's that's like that i'm weird and maybe too far gone on and like maybe i'm wrong but i think i'm right is that i think that batted ball quality is important for every type of player even for luis arias even for bryson stott and i think it

describes your upside and that it's very very hard to play in the league if you can't hit the ball hard and i have evidence for this slugging percentage is more tied to team win percentage than obp uh barrel percentage better predicts a player's uh like wrc plus than than than strikeout rate you know like these these are little facts but they lead to my conclusion that like i want you to hit the ball hard if you want to be in the big leagues i think you got to hit the ball hard if you want to be in the big leagues i think you got to hit the ball hard and bryson stott does not hit the ball hard do we have him on our on our best on our best best speed yes you want to know where he is in terms of his percentile he's in the 15th percentile in best yeah so he goes he's worse if you look at average ev he's

29th percentile look at best speed he's 15th percentile so it does not help him by best speed. He's worse. If you look at average EV, he's 29th percentile. If you look at best speed, he's 15th percentile. It does not help him. By best speed, he's hanging out with Nick Maton, Owen Miller, John Birdie, Austin Hedges. I don't even know who Blake Perkins is. Blake Perkins plays for the Brewers, sir.

I'll have you know. Otherwise, I wouldn't know who he was. That's probably true. I watched some blake perkins i've watched blake perkins running this amounts on the base paths recently nico horner's right here though nico horner's in there i think it depends on the type of player you're trying to be and that's that's what so i stopped in my notes column tomorrow and that's what stott was saying to some extent, because this is the best I can be. He's going to be the kind of guy that when he hits home runs, he's going to pull them. He's not going to spray.

He called them accidents. Yeah, he's going to turn on something and pull it. That's what's going to happen when he's home runs. Be too early on something, but just not too early enough. Just barely too early. So then the question is, if he's a lower quality of contact player, what is the ceiling? It's low, but it doesn't mean he has no useful floor. If he's a good defender up the middle, if he can steal bases for us, and he's not a liability in batting average,

then he becomes dependent upon just staying in the lineup every day and making sure that he's good in the counting stats. If he's good and runs in RBIs and he pops 10, 12 homers in a typical year, Park might help him a little bit, but he could steal 25 or 30 bases. That's a pretty good player. He's also not very far from another guy you listed, which we won't talk about because we've talked about him a lot, but Tyro. Yeah, there's a little bit of Tyro there. I think Tyro makes slightly better contact though, right?

332 out of 438. Oh, yeah, 20th percentile and 8th percentile for average. It's actually very similar to that. Yeah, so, I mean, I don't want to not take Bryson Stott just because the barrel rate is poor, the best speed is poor, all this stuff is poor so I you know like that's why I try to self-examine a lot more it's like this is this thing I believe am I too far out on it am I gonna miss players because of it and Bryson Stott is totally the

type of player that I would miss because of it I traded him away in my keeper league uh last year uh i don't have any shares at all this year and i think next year i probably won't buy him a lot but he might just do another tyra strata next season i mean the projections are for a guy that in a full season would do 260 12 14 are stolen base projections kind of wonky, though, too? Yeah, maybe. I mean, for his career, he's 25 or 30 in 201 games. And if he does 260, 12, 25 next year, he's Tyra Estrada almost. You know what the other tug of war is going to be,

thinking about controlling the running game, is that teams are going to try and counteract this over the course of the offseason. They're going to have a whole season of seeing, here are the guys we had, here's what worked, here's what didn't, here's what worked for teams that had other players. How can we find ways to reduce the number of stolen bases

that we allow? I think that's going to be a thing that teams think a lot about. They're thinking about it now, but I think you'll see bigger shifts in action. You may see it be a bigger part of the pitchers you sign. Could be. Like, we're not going to assign Noah S cinder guard because he's just going to allow everyone to run and other reasons when it was harder to get on base against noah cinder guard that was okay right when he was thor when he was thor he's just noah cinder guard now yeah

name's kind of a pain to spell i uh yeah i mean this is totally the type of player i miss on i like it are there are there other prospects where i'm gonna do the same kind of missing like back in this best speed are there some some real should i lower the sample size who who's down here you know who this uh brito this Bryson Stott is right now that we talked about on Monday? Or I hope is like this player. CJ Abrams. Oh, you bastard.

This is a positive outcome that CJ Abrams is capable of. It's funny because Steven Nesbitt had a bold prediction that Abrams was going to steal like 40 bases. This is the week of you versus me on C.J. Abrams. It's hilarious. It's happening.

Oh, my God. Don't convince me you're right again. If Bryson Stott can do this and Tyrell Estrada can do this, you're telling me C.J. Abrams can't? Oh, my God. He could, I guess. Again, you don't have to like him. He hits the ball harder than Stott, Aaron. It is guess. Again, you don't have to like him. He hits the ball harder than Stadion.

It is better for me if you don't like him and if you present cases to everyone for why they shouldn't like him either. That gives me a path. That's what this is all about. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one. Just start moving with the

Peloton Bike, Bike Plus, Tread, Row, Guide, or App. There are thousands of classes and over 50 Peloton instructors ready to support you from the beginning. Remember, doing something is everything. Rent the Peloton Bike or Bike Plus today at onepeloton.ca slash bike slash rentals. All access memberships separate. Terms apply. Let's go to the outfield. I don't know if we've talked about Lane Thomas on the pod at all this season, and he's been excellent. He's going to the all-star game. That is going to happen. Lane Thomas is an all-star. Top four BABIP in the big leagues. Top five BABIP in the big leagues. $28 so far by the Roto-Wire earned values. And looking at my sheet of players who have exceeded their preseason projection the most so far, he's among the leaders in that.

Big difference, like well, well beyond his projection. He's kind of like a league average, slightly below league average projection coming into the year. And he's been like 32% better than league average so far, 31%. And going forward, the bad X has him right at the league average. Simple 100. Because a lot on the underlying numbers really hasn't changed. He still strikes out quite a bit. He's not walking as much as he did earlier in his career with the everyday role.

The speed is fine. It's kind of like almost league average best speed i mean his barrel rate's a little better than last year but yeah it's a better barrel rate than spencer steer but it's worse plate skills and a similar power speed combo and i think this is a really tough player than steer of course i mean he's also 27. Mm-hmm. You know, doesn't have the defensive versatility of Spencer Steer, doesn't have the plate skills. And also, if you think about who's more likely to leave where they are,

because, you know, Washington is a nice place to hit. And I think Thomas is one of the... I was looking around because I thought, put Tatis in center for the Padres. Go get a corner outfielder. And I was looking around for corner outfielders that are available, and Lane Thomas is maybe the most available okay corner outfielder. There's no reason for Washington to hold on to him.

Is Lane Thomas the inverse of Wilson Contreras for all the mid-season trade podcasts and stories? The most obvious. The player you must get away from is Lane Thomas, which means then you have to be someone who wants to trade for Lane Thomas, theoretically. Yeah. I think it would be a stretch. If any of you listening,

see Lane Thomas for Wilson Contreras, please tell us. Someone out there is proposing it right now. Like, I would never say that it won't happen because we have so many people in the world and so many people playing fantasy. Like, there's all these ping pong balls bouncing around in one league, probably somewhere it's going to happen. But it's so obvious that I would really almost bet against it ever happening, actually.

Is it fair value? If you had Wilson Contreras, you wouldn't do it? No, Wilson Contreras 99 times out of 100. I mean, I do too. What do the numbers say? Numbers say Lane Thomas is about a $5 player the rest of the way. The only thing that I would say about Lane thomas is that he's a sneaky interesting acquisition

on a sort of buy high where you're like no i don't expect him to hit another 14 homers or hit 299 or steal another seven bases but if he hits 250 and hits 10 homers and steals five bases that's actually still super valuable for my team. Yeah, and I think you'll have a willing trade partner in most cases because he's not a prospect. They have six or seven outfielders, and you have four, and you just need to get that last guy. Another former Cardinals outfielder

getting it done somewhere else. Oh, God. Another one. Josh Lowe, we've talked a lot about him so far this season we don't have to rehash anything there i think yeah he's been discussed enough astree ruiz still popping uh much to our chagrin i mean good for him it's just it's the it's another profile that instead of being an extreme average player like luis arias it's an extreme steals player and i have in the last few years, really tried to avoid

building around players like this. It is absolutely fine to do it where Ruiz ended up going in drafts this year. This is a hit. This is a win. If you drafted him, you're right. I wonder about the future, you know? Well, right.

When the price ticks up, what do you think Estreira Ruiz's ADP is going to be in the second half drafts? How early do you think teams are going to be willing to draft him? Third, fourth round? That early? I'm nowhere close at round three, round four. I guess there's so many more. There are way more steals in the game.

Yeah, you don't have to get them all from one player. He's on pace for 80. But how, like, is it impossible for him to do what he did before? You could still look at the valuations for the first half and be like, oh, like, what does $27 put him at for the first half? Top 30?

Yeah, probably top 30. Top 20? Top 25? What's going to keep him from stealing 40 more bases this season? Nothing. Except for maybe getting on base less than he has so far. But even still, if he gets on base at a 270 clip the rest of the way, he'll steal 30 instead of 40? I mean, that's what I'm saying.

I'm saying the projections are wrong on his stolen base rest of season, I think. They're low. I watch him a lot. Every time he gets on base, he's trying to steal. I think he just got caught. Did he get caught? He's got caught eight times. So he gets caught sometimes.

But they don't care. Everybody in Oakland knows this is the only player that moves the needle nationally. This is the only player on the team that anybody cares about in the national media. And they barely do because they keep talking about other players like leading. I saw some tweet being like, you know,

Acuna leading in stolen bases. And people in Oakland were like, Reese does still Acuna leading in stolen bases, and people in Oak Ridge were like, Reese does still exist. Did they do the NL thing again? Is that what they did? I hate the cherry-picked leaderboards. League means NL. It's one league.

I'm sorry. It's split into two parts. Especially now. AFC, NFC. He leads the AFC in passing yards this year. I don't care. I play in a game where they're all together. Oh, it's like the Aaron Judge thing, right?

He's going for the American League home run record. Oh yeah? This is something we care about? Gross. Great season. Just talk about it for what it is. You don't have to find this perfect little box for it to fit in. I think he's the MVP.

I think it's almost consensus already yeah uh shohei by the way has it pretty much locked up for this year i know i we could vote for mvp right now like i color me wrong if it if something happens from here on out but like like i unanimous i could almost see unanimous mvps right now otani and okunya yep that's where we're headed right now history leads the league in projected stolen bases, the entire league, not just the American League, from the Bad X, 25 the rest of the year. Acuna, 24, Jazz, 23, Mullins, 21, and Witt, 20

are the other guys inside the top five. I'm giving 35 to Ruiz at least. The closest player to Ruiz in terms of the stolen base projection when you look at steals and then you look at the WRC plus column. It's Miles Straw. It's Jorge Mateo.

Oh, God. We can't get away from Jorge Mateo. It doesn't matter how many miles you run. Jorge Mateo is right there. Rename this podcast the Jorge Mateo podcast. He's right over your shoulder. He's faster than you, so he's not even running that hard. He's just there in this podcast the Jorge Mateo he's like right over your shoulder he's faster than you so he's not even running that hard he's just he's just there laughing at you the whole time I mean that's why next year that's why I don't like to build around these

guys and that's why next year I don't know that I'm you know it takes a kind of confluence of a bad enough team. Right? Like, there are other teams where next year he could lose his job. I don't know if necessarily on Oakland's team he loses the job next year. Nope, he won't. He shouldn't. But he could also hit, like, 220 next year. He's where I start talking again about you have to hit the ball hard. Even worse

than Bryson Stott, he does not hit the ball hard. Where is he on his best speed? This is going to make people sad. Oh my god! He's the bottom. I have a, I have 50 plate appearances.

If I took that off, he'd be bottom because it's a story. He's Henry Ramos, Mike Brosseau. And that's it. Yeah. Okay. I used a hundred for the cutoff.

So he's last. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I think it matters. I mean, should, should,

I'm just going to do this quickly. Really? You know, I have the matters. I mean, I'm just going to do this quickly. You know, I have the 51 on. Stephen Kwan. But Stephen Kwan, like what I was saying around, you know, the clubhouse and to people that I talked to that have something to do with the A's, like I think Estoril Ruiz needs to be Stephen Kwan. And so the 17% strikeout rate versus 12% doesn't seem like a big difference, but I think it is.

It's a lot more ducks on the pond. And for Ruiz, I think, you know, leaning in and doing the Stephen Kwan thing is probably the best way to do things. But the rest of the players around them are not good. Henry Ramos, Mike Brousseau, Geraldo Perdomo, I just, I don't believe in the level of play that he's got. Nicky Lopez, Alan Trejo, Jonathan Daza, Bubba Thompson. These are

all the players that I've slagged over the years. The not-Eno's. I have the spray chart on the screen for Esther Ruiz. If you're watching on YouTube, if you are not driving a car, feel free to pull it up and view it for yourself. See, if he was Luis Urias and he had a 3% strikeout rate, this spray chart could work. Right, because it just becomes difficult.

Because it would just get crowded around 200, right? And it would be singles. What's going on with that little purple dot out in left center field that's beyond the wall but only a double? Can we explain that? Yeah, it must have hit the wall first. Or this is overlaid on home. Yeah, that's got to be it. So it was in some other park, probably.

Probably in Fenway. It's probably a double off the Monster. That's the wrong side. No, the Monster's on the left. Oh, you're talking about that double. Yeah, yeah. We're looking at a different... I was talking about the 330 down the line.

All right, we'll stop talking about dots on the screen. The one that went 392? Yeah, that's Boston, I'm sure. Yeah. Gotta be Boston. Yeah. This kind of works because he hits it all over the place, right? But he just doesn't doesn't drive it

nearly enough he's 24 you see him all the time can he get stronger how many how many success stories do we have guys that don't hit the ball hard when they enter the league who at least up that enough to be a little more dangerous it seems like very few players do it, but it doesn't seem impossible either. That's why I'm saying, like, I think lean the other way. Just go for contact. Yeah. You know, it's just, you know, what are you going to do? I mean, the other way is like weighted balls, like a swing, you know, so you're like, you know, maybe some some bat path stuff. Then you start getting maybe a 22% strikeout rate

and you can maybe push your barrel rate up to 3-4%. He did 3.6 last year. Maybe you have a 4% barrel rate, a 110 max EV. That is also not a great player. That's like Bryson Stott with a 23% strikeout rate. Yeah, which I don you know that's like bryson stott with a 23 strikeout rate yeah which i don't i don't think that's what bryson stott should do either so i would lean the other way and just be like you know how can we coach the contact up and you know that's that's a some people believe in that some people don't but i think you know he only has a 38 pull rate like i think you know he's letting the travel and I've seen

him go the other way and you can coach up uh contact so I would I would lean into the contact and be like you know let's not worry about the a swing let's just keep putting this ball in play another red made this group Jake Fraley made the cut for me going back to last season it's got basically a full year now in Cincinnati, 129 games played. Because he platoons, it's more like 450, 475 played appearances. 23 homers, 16 steals, only caught four times, averaging the low 260s. He's lowered his K rate this year, barrel rates up a tick, chasing a little more outside the strike zone. This is pretty good.

I don't know if there's another level here. Chasing a little more outside the strike zone. This is pretty good. I don't know if there's another level here. It's a peak season. He's 28 years old. He's only once in his career passed 300 plate appearances in a single season. Yeah, there are some injury issues. Make it 350 once in his career. Looking at his road splits real quick.

461 slug away, 491 at home this year, 511 at home last year, 435. Yeah, he's getting the boost. By the way, Spencer Steer has more home runs on the road than at home so far this year. Take that, you know, you're such an idiot. That's where I was going

with that. No, I mean, Fraley's perfectly fine acquisition for power speed in the short term i think i just started uh an auto new uh a thing for him i'm hoping to win him for like a buck because i think most people see the 28 part-time player in an outfield where it's gonna maybe get crowded soon you know somebody's gonna lose a job in the Cincinnati outfield soon. I'm hoping to squeeze him by for a buck and just use him for

one year and maybe not even keep him. I think in terms of really counting on him going forward, I'm not sure I would. One more player to get to before we go. Jorge Soler. I put him on this team because even though we've seen some big-time

power seasons in the past, we're talking 48 home runs in the year of the Rabbit Ball, he played every single game that year for the Royals. Had 48 homers, 117 RBIs, and 95 runs. Shortened season wasn't nearly as good. 2021, split between two teams.

Big-time power and run production, but the slash line took a hit. Barrel rate was still good, even though it wasn't as good as it was in that peak season. He's barreling the ball the same way he did back in 2019. And here he is tracking toward another 40 home run season. Is there a lesson to be learned here with Jorge Soler? I don't know. I mean, I think that as a player, he has a good sense of where the zone is. And you can see that by his chase rates, his walk rates, and so on.

But he doesn't have a real good sense of what the pitch type is. And so he's been a guy that you can pitch spin inside the zone to for a long time. And you'll see that his slider rates just go up every single year. that like his slider rates just go up every single year um but uh you know he's just comfortable also you know just swinging at pitches inside the zone missing a ton of sliders uh you know when when that happens and that's where the strikeout rate comes from and then if it's not a slider or if it's a if it's a cement mixer slider then Jorge Soler is gonna hit it out and he's also the type of guy that I think when you see that 117 115 max EV when you see those plus plus max EVs you realize this guy has really like great raw power and it doesn't actually matter if he's playing in

Miami right you know what I mean he's not a he's not a guy who hits just enoughs no no though Soler hits the some of the most exciting home runs in the game actually i mean you remember that that one the houston one still hasn't landed yeah so uh you know does is he a good bet year to year is he a good bet next year when he's 31 i don't know this because this is the type of profile where i could see it maybe falling apart quickly uh but is he a good bet for the rest of this year to hit 15 17 more homers maybe even 20 more homers yeah I don't know why not yeah I think if you're looking for power compared to the star level players that hit for this much power you'll get a relative discount you're not going to get him cheaper than he was on

draft day of course he's a great bargain for people to draft. I feel like I have him absolutely nowhere. But some see that 207 average last year and maybe he'll go in the tank and only hit 210 the rest of the way. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think I would worry too much about it, even though we've seen some of those downsides before. Really interesting to see the K rate

down at 22.6% this year for Solaire. Projections will split the difference between this year and last year, rightfully so. I want to see where that number ends at the end of the season. If he stays this low, the average could actually go up from 250.

That's a possibility if he keeps it at 22%. He's trending towards the second best season of his career, for sure. A guy that will actually be able to opt out of that deal with the Marlins and probably go back into free agency i think if he does it'll be good for them i mean they'll be happy because you know he's he's part of it's interesting in miami they like went for contact you know got a rise and there were some other moves but you know solaire is a big part of why they have an offense this year and why they're

second in the AL East. Nice to see jazz back healthy too. Hopefully that holds up over the course of the second half. I want to see the Marlins make a little run this year. I'm excited, but they already have made more than a little run 46 and 34. I mean, yeah,

but I want to see them actually one wild card right now. Still meaning like playing meaningful games late in September. It just sounds like you don't believe in the Marlins. I think other people don't. I believe pretty quickly on this team. I think they have to find a way to keep the pitching healthy. That's always the question with that group of pitchers they've got. Maybe Sandy turned a corner too.

Last time out looked a little bit better. That'd be huge for them, especially with having to play it carefully with Uri Perez, as we've talked about many, many times on this show. I bet you Edwin Cabrera comes back and Uri Perez goes on a Phantom IO. Yeah, that could happen. You mentioned Geraldo Perdomo, someone you don't really believe in. He's earned $14 so far this season. You shut your mouth.

The D-backs have a bunch of guys doing it. mentioned you actually called you you at some point were like in on perdomo i think it was the end of last year in the off season we were doing some shortstop preview and you said why not perdomo draft season early draft season for draft and hold i said you know he's basically free you need shortstop depth. They're probably going to play him until Lawler's ready. So why not? And part of the reason I liked Perdomo a little bit for those purposes, I don't have him in any mixed 12-team, 15-team leagues or anything like that. He's always had good plate discipline.

Everywhere he's been. And he's been young for the level. Yeah, it's not the sexy profile that we tend to like from a shortstop where it's 20-20. It's even better plate skills, honestly, than Stott, but it's even worse batted ball quality than Stott. It's very, very poor batted ball quality, like suspiciously bad.

He's not small. We must be missing something here. Stott's not small either, though. He's hit five homers somehow, even though his max EV is 1029.29 it's the maybe it's the stott approach though it's like occasionally i'm just gonna do it i'm just gonna just pull one and that's gonna be that someone's gonna make a mistake and i'm gonna get out in front although it's more pull than stott 45 46 percent for for for domo see that and that would give me a little bit of pause be like well you're already pulling the ball that much

and you're still not hitting it harder? There's no way to hit for more power if you're already at 46% pull rate. Whereas with Stott, you're like,

well, if you tried to pull it more, maybe you would get to the power more consistently. Right. So, I don't know. I want to mention him

because I think other people would say, he should be in there. He's a pleasant surprise. He is. Oh, for sure. I just have very,

very significant concerns. It's like the Lane Thomas of the infield. Nobody believes it just have very very significant it's like the lane thomas of the infield nobody believes it oh man it's even it's a notch below whatever lane thomas is it's true i mean the bad x projection is for 233 316 329 with three homers i would love to be wrong and i think the the best facet of his game for fantasy purposes would be taking more green lights because he gets on base enough, he runs well enough. If he wants to be a really efficient base stealer and push 25 or 30 bags in his peak seasons, that would help.

But I don't see a lot of evidence for power, even though that slug is up at 452. That's the best slugging percentage Perdomo has had at any stop since short season ball back in 2018 uh jordan lawler update he's up to a 109 wrc plus which is i think the best number i've seen this year yeah he started kind of in the hole right so he's been yeah clawing his 10 homers 20 stolen bases 245 340 459 for lawler and it's repeating double a I mean he's so uh he's so young at 20 that like if he gets that number to like 120 WRC plus I think he could see the big leagues I mean

Perdomo could be uh an extra piece for them you know it could be kind of like the gunner promotion last year in Baltimore you just you just bring up hey we're like we're better than people thought and we got to hold off the dodgers somehow and what's the best way for us to maybe like induce like you know inject this team with a little more offense is oh well let's put lawler at short and and perdomo you know and Longoria and Rivera and Lawler all share the left side. Yep. I think that's definitely a possibility. I love it.

I love how that bold prediction is starting to come together for me. Still a long way to go. Time was on my side before. Now it's working against me a little bit that things are falling into place. The Dodgers are in third, and the Giants have got the mojo. It's not the even year mojo, but it's the mojo. I feel really strange

that I have to root for a Giants team that confuses me all the time and I still don't believe in. Still doesn't look good. Every time you look at the Giants on paper, you're like, this team is about 500? You're right.

It's like, I believe in your processes, but I don't think you've built enough here for those processes to work. And yet they're working. So here I am, egg on my face once again. I would take it to the value of coaching. I think it's really good coaching. It's great.

I mean, I'd love to see it. I'd hope more organizations invest in that area. Yeah, but where was that coaching last year when they stunk? Why was I wrong last year when I believed in them? It's just kind of like, I'm not going to talk about the Giants anymore. I'll read the news about the Giants. I'm not going to analyze them anymore.

Taking a pause. I just don't know. My shrug emoji is up. If you've got questions for a future episode, send those our way, ratesandbarrels at gmail.com. You can also leave them under this video on YouTube. Hit the like button on this video if you're watching us there. Be sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel if you haven't done so already. On Twitter,

Eno is at Eno Saris. I'm at Derek Van Ryper. If you'd like to check out all the written work at The Athletic, we have a summer special going on right now. Theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. We'll get you a subscription for a dollar a month if you are a new subscriber. That runs for the first year. So get that while you can because that offer will not be up forever that's gonna do it for this

episode of rates and barrels we're back with you on friday thanks for listening In a game that constantly repeats itself, innovation is everything. It's all cyclical. Some of the best inventions come out of necessity. Okay, these are the problems. What are those solves? The NFL is constantly changing. Its coaches are constantly scheming. I always joke around. I say it's 32 offensive coordinators versus one defensive coordinator every week because they all watch each other's tapes. They go through the explosive reel and they're like, oh, this looks good. Let's do it. Sometimes bright minds are in the right place with the right collaborators at the right time. Yeah, Kyle barking at Matt LaFleur. Kyle's getting irritated to the point that he finally gives up and they find a way to get away from each other until they

come back and come up with a solution. But I'm a glutton for punishment, as some of those guys probably told you along the way. I'm Jordan Rodrigue from The Athletic. I'm the host of a new narrative podcast called The Play Callers, a series about innovation, competition, and sometimes even self-destruction within the NFL's youngest coaching family. You lose that Super Bowl, you know, the lies that I told myself were, you won't be happy until you win a Super Bowl. Hear from these coaches like you've never heard them before with exclusive interviews with head coaches Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan, Matt LaFleur, Mike McDaniel, and many more of the

brightest minds in football. That's why when people say like I learned someone's offense, are you coaching that somewhere? What are you, the water boy guy who left his yellow book somewhere and now we have all your secret plays? Like that's not how it works. My biggest fear, if you talk to me as a 14-year-old, would be the life of an 80s rock star to achieve success and then be on that downward trend. The coaches who knew each other the best also became each other's biggest competitors in the race to find new ideas. Sean and Kyle are so extremely competitive. I feel like it's like they love each other so much that they hate each other.

The entire series will be out on Monday, July 10th, on The Athletic Football Show podcast feed. Find it wherever you get your podcasts.