Rates & Barrels - Surprising Park Factor Changes, Recent Barrel Rates & Two Ways to Lock In a Speeding Ticket

Episode Date: June 17, 2022

Eno and DVR are back to discuss a few major shifts in park factors thanks to a myriad of changes for 2022, why trusting smaller volumes of park data can be risky, and how it might be effectively leveraged despite limitations going forward. Plus, questions about rolling barrel rates, Corey Seager's lagging slash line, Freddie Freeman's missing homers, Ranger Suárez, Logan Gilbert, and more. Rundown -- Park Factor Changes  -- St. Louis is Completely Different; Will It Last? -- How Might We Take Advantage of Parks Playing Differently? -- Rolling Barrel Rates; Recent Standouts -- Corey Seager's Disappointing Slash Line -- Freddie Freeman's Missing Homers -- Want to Make Sure You Get a Speed Ticket? Do This! -- Ranger Suárez & Logan Gilbert Mailbag Questions Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] (Query referenced during show: https://atmlb.com/3QurM63) Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first six months: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Friday, June 17th. I told everybody we would get the cover all. We would record an episode of this podcast every day of the week at some point this season. And I think we are one day away. Friday on the bingo card. Friday. If it wasn't covered already, Friday is covered. Saturday, we're coming for you. Not this week, but at some point this season.

It's going to happen. Live from the COVID cabana. Woo! Yeah. How are you feeling feeling can't take me down uh tired mostly mostly tired that's been the number one symptom for me tired tired tired also can't uh can't like can't separate it from the jet lag so but uh we waited uh we waited a week uh we had we had actually a covet cabana we were out in the pool house uh trying to sequester from our family uh to keep them from getting it unfortunately that was in vain they all got it the day we left so you're like

see you guys sorry you were those people yeah yeah terrible terrible house guests uh it could have been worse we got it on the last day so i guess we got it while we were in hawaii uh we didn't bring it um and we got a regular vacation and then we got a little bonus uh i wouldn't quite call it a vacation we were like they're a worse place to be stuck when you're sick you're kind of like it's not like you're like oh hawaii you. When you're sick, you're kind of like, it's not like you're like, ooh, Hawaii. You're not in the pool. You're not at the beach. You're kind of... And then you'd rather have all the sort of amenities

and your comforts of your own house. So I was much rather that I'd been home. But all's fair in love and war, and we are back. I'm glad everyone's feeling better. That's really good, and glad you're back.

And we've got a lot to get to on this episode. We had some questions trickling in about park factors, and those are always tricky when we're talking about even a full season. We've got less than a half season. They're more complicated than usual right now. We'll talk about why. We had a question about trying to use rolling barrel rates which sounds amazing since barrels can roll of course and then we get some questions about cory seager and whether or not the rangers might have some

regrets about that long-term contract a few months in some other questions about freddie freeman and ryan mcmahon the pursuit of stolen bases ranger su Suarez, Logan Gilbert, if we have time, we'll cover all of those. And the other factor, of course, wreaking havoc on our schedule, there's construction happening on the building where I live, which is wonderful. And I said this to Al Melkier on the Waver show this week, if I have learned anything

in the last three years, it's that I gotta be flexible. You just can't be mad when something out of your control happens. That's just life these days. So serenity. Now, if a loud hounding begins during this podcast and we suddenly stop,

it is construction on the windows. It was planned and we're just trying our best to work around it. So that's the boring stuff going on in our lives. Let's try to be fun and entertaining for the next hour or so. Let's start with those park factors. And you have written a lot about the humidor in all 30 ballparks. And that is the complicating factor that while I would ordinarily not really want to look at park factors this early in the season, I actually think there can be some value in it but the same pitfalls that always apply with very small samples and variables that would happen in a normal year

that could cause those park factors to look out of whack in one direction or another those are still there as well so how do you separate fact from fiction when it comes to changes in ballparks that we're seeing through the first half of this season yeah we just had a doozy of a little adventure here just trying to figure this out for pre-show we were just uh working through our show notes and what we were going to do and uh come along come along on the adventure with us. You know, like, won't you be my neighbor? You know, here's a fun adventure. So pick, get the ESPN Park Factors up. They're very interesting because they do one-year Park Factors,

which normally I would say is folly. One-year Park Factors, what you're trying to do with park factors the way that most sites do it is you take, say, Brady Anderson and you say, you know, how many homers does Brady Anderson have in Camden Yards and how many homers does Brady Anderson have

in other parks? And then you weight it by how many plate appearances Brady Anderson has. And you do that for all the different players on the team. Then you do it for other players that come in. And you get an idea of like, oh, it's 80%. It's 10% or 20% harder here or easier here. And the reason that's folly in one year is you could just have that year

that Brady Anderson hit 50 homers. And, you know, how many did he hit in Baltimore? Should that change Baltimore's park factor one year just because Brady Anderson had this crazy year and hit all his homers at home? And so I do prefer there's a stat cast, a park factor that kind of does what I want. You have to go to the park factors on StatCast and then click on the stadium. So if you click on Bush Stadium and then scroll down, you'll see speed and angle park factors. And that's basically saying given a certain launch angle

and a certain launch vector, you know do these balls how do these balls fare and um and so that i like that better and that could actually i think be useful on a one-year level because um you're not asking what the name on the back of the jersey is you know you're just saying all balls hit at 25 degrees at 105 miles an hour how do they do in bush and how do they do somewhere else um and so i like that uh they probably should be corrected for spray angle which is horizontal you know side pull that sort of stuff which i don't think it is so i i do think there is work left to be done uh when it comes to stack cast park factors but anyway back to the one-year Park Factors.

There is noise, but this year they're incredibly interesting because, for example, Baltimore's park is now the 26th easiest place to hit a homer. 26th easiest would also be, you like the most difficult i think if you're flipping the other way around yeah so uh baltimore has gone from being you know fifth easiest to like actually i think it was probably in the past let homer so they changed those walls uh and they it was really drastic it's really crazy they are now uh the fifth hardest place to hit homer i don't know i don't know if i believe... What do you think? Do you think...

What do you think will happen in three years? It'll sit there the whole time? I mean, I also think about the personnel on this Baltimore team, and I'm like, they're not very good batters. No, but this is supposed to generally kind of remove some of that, right? Like you're not. Well, the ESPN one is, yes, you are matching home and away. So if, you know, if Jorge Mateo can't hit a homer at home,

he can't hit a homer on the road, it doesn't change the park factor much. Right. I don't think it's necessarily going to play this extreme in the long run. That's how I feel. It seems too much. Even when we get a brand new ballpark, I think Truist Field, whatever they call the ballpark in Atlanta, when that one first opened and then we got more years of information, we're like, oh, wait a minute, it's not what we thought in year one. It was crazy home run friendly at first,

right? And I think it was more for lefties than for righties by a pretty big margin if my memory serves me right all i remember is year one of that park versus the years since year one looked totally different it's exactly average now yeah i mean at least by the espn one year yeah and even the one year home run park factor i'm looking at for savant has it 16th out of 30 for the home run park factor so yeah plays in the middle of the it 16th out of 30 for the home run park factor so yeah plays in the middle of the road now that's for hitters on both sides all mashed into one it's not separated out by by lefties and righties but to your point okay so yeah camden yards clearly

the changes they made have done something and it might be something significant but we shouldn't in june the middle of june say yep this is what the ballpark is like yet. But that other complicating factor, too, how has the humidor impacted that? How much of this is the dimension changes? How much of this is having a humidor they didn't previously have? I think that makes this even more complicated. It would make me more inclined. So if you're going to try and split the difference and say, all right, it's not the park it used to be. It's the park it is now.

It's going to play more like a league average park. I'd push back on that and say, no, I think it's going to be more like the midpoint between average and where it is now. If I had to approximate what I expect to happen because of that extra variable. And St. Louis at the other end of this i mean what we were looking at before we started recording with st louis is really interesting because as you start to look into the specs of the humidor and some of the specific examples of where production is coming from for the cardinals the puzzle pieces actually make a little bit of sense. It all starts to come into focus. I mean, this is pretty remarkable.

Like, St. Louis is not a place you expect to see near the top of a home run Park Factors leaderboard. It's fourth on the ESPN Park Factors page. It's third on the StatCast one-year page. That's way out of bounds. Just as out of bounds, really really as Baltimore is being near the bottom of the list. You know, and so here, now we're beginning our really wild ride because this is St. Louis. This is nuts. I mean, St. Louis used to be a pitcher's park on the level of San Francisco, which is not off the bottom now in terms of homers. They changed their park dimensions.

They're 25th now in home run park factor in the one year uh version but that's that's been happening for a little bit but st louis used to be there it used to be 25th 26 27th one of the hardest places to hit a homer to be fourth in the one year park factor is amazing so you know i said well let's let's look at the splits uh and and let's see uh you know what's going on here home and away because if the way that I lined it out, if somebody just randomly hit a ton of homers at home and had a lot of plate appearances, they would weight

the entire park factor. So Paul Goldschmidt has 13 homers at home. It's a lot. He has three away? For June 17th, it's a lot of home home runs. He has 13 homers at home and three homers away. He alone is changing the traditional park factors.

He by himself. Because Nolan Arnotto has seven homers at home and four away. Between the two of them, they have more plate appearances at home and away than probably anybody else in the sample maybe tommy edmund who himself is not going to change a home run power park factor so you can say all right well that's just random paul gulchin has 13 homers at home he's just been on a hot streak he's you know what did you say he faced a lot of pirates and yeah, he's got four home-home runs against the Pirates. He's got a series against the Diamondbacks. He homered in that.

He homered against the Royals at least once in that series. So there's a little bit of a strength of schedule thing in play here. But even that is not a complete explanation. And that's the part that I think is so interesting about all of it. You go over to the StatCast speed and angle factors for Busch Stadium, as I outlined earlier. You look at home runs, and it's almost the same as the regular park factor. This park has gone... So on home runs, given a certain speed and angle,

they're 30% more likely to be home runs in in uh bush than any other stadium right now and in the past it's been from 80 to 90 percent you know what i'm saying like 10 to you know uh 10 to 20 percent less likely to be a homer in bush stadium that is a wild ass swing if you ask me dude and and yes we're going to come back to the the humidor here because the humidor uh per my story with uh with ken rosenthal and uh per meredith dr meredith will's excellent um breakdown the humidor is set to a 50 to 53 degree dew point. The average dew point in St. Louis in April is 42. Guess how many home home runs Paul Goldschmidt had in April in St. Louis? I know the answer and I'll play along.

One. One. Okay. The dew point in St. Louis in May, the average is 53. But that means at the beginning, probably it's a little bit lower than 53, which is right around where the humidor is set. And that means near the end of May, it's going to be over 53, which means the humidor starts removing water from the ball.

In June, the dew point in St. Louis is 62 degrees, which means the humidor is now voraciously removing water from the ball when compared to last year i i wish i could be like it's 20 this and 80 this and i know exactly what's gonna happen i don't i don't i i know that it's some part it's gotta be some part some part noise. There's some part is like Paul Goldschmidt just went ham. Sure. That's in the data and it's a confounding factor in his noise. But some part of it is the humidor. Some part of it is definitely the humidor.

It's just funny because if you look at the game log, look at his home runs. I mean, he really started hitting in the middle of May. Home run on May 13th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 23rd, 26th, 27th, 28th, 30th, June 3rd. June 14th, he hit three home runs that day because they played a double header with the Pirates. It's almost like as soon as the weather changed and the balls were being dried out by the humidor, he started mashing. Or not always hitting before that for whatever. I mean, so it's not like the whole team

started hitting at that time. So that's where I think this is also just a hot streak is part of the explanation. But I'm fully with you. I have no sense of 10% hot streak, 90% weather, 90% weather, 10%. I don't know. I don't know i don't know and i think what i've wondered is how actionable is all of this going forward philadelphia's in

the park that's playing very differently early on this season compared to how it's played in the past does that mean i should be more aggressive streaming pitchers that get opportunities in that rotation should i be trading for guys who are underperforming in that rotation because the ballpark is not as hitter friendly as it's been in the past? Should I be more willing to stream upper middle average type guys against the Phillies? If the lineup is missing a few guys and they're at Philly, because at Philly is one of those places,

the little light bulb in my head goes off when i sit in the schedule yeah i don't really want to throw a mediocre pitcher there maybe i should make those sorts of 19th and home run perfect right now but but but baltimore to return to baltimore uh the dew point in may was actually a little bit lower than St. Louis, 51. And then in June, it's still a little bit lower than St. Louis, but it's above that 53, it's 60. So what if Baltimore gets, like what if Baltimore had a Paul Goldschmidt? Yeah, they got a Ryan Mountcastle.

It's not a Paul Goldschmidt, but it's a guy that hits dingers at least. He started to, right? He just had a two homer game yesterday? The day before? Usually right around the time I start to throw shade at a player, that's about the time he starts to hit.

But it's also like, Baltimore is definitely one of the ones where you're just like, don't throw anyone there. And the, you know, the, the pitching plus model has loved Tyler Wells.

And, uh, in some places I had to throw him, uh, against Toronto and at Toronto. And I was like, I don't, I don't,

you know, in places where I could not, I did not, but in places where I had to, I just sort of chucked and ducked. I was happy, happy with the outcome. I think Tyler Wells,

you know, this is a seg, this is an off topic, but I'm just saying if Tyler Wells was at home against Toronto, I would have been like, I might have even dropped him, you know, just to be like, not play that. But then, you know,

you look at these and you say, whoa, maybe I should be targeting Baltimore? I can't believe it, dude. I can't, I think that, I think if you did start targeting Baltimore, you could get in some real trouble in the next couple of months. Targeting seems like reacting a hundred percent to what you're seeing.

Exactly. Right. We're talking about these, these percentages, but you can't ignore it. That's the problem. Right, right.

This is the middle ground. This is gray area. This is nuance. This is, this is's the problem. Right, right. This is the middle ground. This is gray area. This is nuance. This is why the game is fun and challenging. And this is just the unexpected extra challenge that, I mean, maybe experts in weather and physics were able to more accurately predict what was going to happen. And I was not smart enough to seek them out going into the season but I think we're gonna see some pretty strange twists in these next couple of months and then we're gonna see things change again as the weather cools late in the season bark's gonna change again for the last 30 or 40 games when things start to finally cool off and in September

in the beginning of October so all of this this is just, it's almost impossible, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Right. And there's also, I think there's some folly in what the league did. To set this, the humidor to one number all season is to create the stagnant level of ball storage around changing temperatures. And I think it's going to create an almost

exacerbated april august split in the future i think april's will be more cold offensively than they have been in the past what they already are cold offensively because batters come out of spring training behind pitchers right we can see that in swing rates batters swing less often in april because they're they're still gauging what what pitchers are doing they're not comfortable with everything and and and pitchers take advantage of it offense peaks in august but offense already peaked in august now we're drying the balls out so we're i think we're going to see a larger difference between April and August in the future. And that, I think, is something that you could kind of try to game.

Maybe not this year so much, but next year it may be really interesting to think about should I maximize innings, especially if you have an innings limit? Should I get as much out of my pitchers as I could early and trade away pitching for hitting or drop pitchers for hitters and become more of a reliever-centric strategy for the latter part of the season? That's an interesting thing to think about.

But I think this year we'll find a more drastic August toil split than we'll ever have seen in the past in baseball the dew point today in st louis is 69 degrees what is you look the other thing we don't know this is another variable the way the human doors are set for this year that's not necessarily the way they're gonna be set for next year the league's gonna see this and say're going to be set for next year. The league's going to see this and say, you know what? Yeah, we don't want that much of a difference all the time. So let's set it by month or let's set it conditionally by market. I mean, there's so many ways they can change this. There already is a difference.

There is one humidor that's set differently. Not Colorado? It is Colorado. Yeah, because they were the famous original humidor yeah and they and they're set they're set to an even more extreme so to give it more water to to try and help offset the offensive boost that that park provides so so the door is open right yeah this this is it's it's fun and challenging and frustrating it's everything all at once that's yeah that's how i feel about it anyway and yes i'm interested in let us know how you are going to try and take advantage of this or and think about ways that you might take

advantage of it in the future because i think it's it's an open conversation at this point let's get to some other questions though that came in you know we talked about some rolling graphs a few weeks back and kevin wanted to know if there's actually a way to get rolling barrel rates is that something that is possible to grab anywhere and and how valuable could that be? Yeah, it is an interesting idea when you talk about rates stabilizing and you talk about a stat being useful in small samples and you say, oh, you know, swing rate is useful after a month. So what happens if you're three months into the season

and the last month has been drastically different than the first two months? There's a question there. It's like, so what do I believe, the last month or the full season? Because there's been this change, and this is supposedly a stat that stabilizes quickly. I don't have a great answer for that, except that I know that, for example, in Pitching Plus, the last 400 pitches are slightly more predictable predictive than the full season of pitches um and so there are stats where

things are slightly more predictive recently and i think it's really reactive stats so i think that it is an interesting idea um you know for okay so for one guy i think one guy popped on this list we did a list here where i did a query for um barrels since may 1st and uh i think we can put that up on the screen for youtube users i can put the url up and then yeah i can actually up on the screen for YouTube users. I can put the URL up and then, yeah, I can actually probably share the screen with the actual list. So let me sneak that on here in just a minute. Maybe we can put something in the show notes. But if you follow this link,

you'll get a query for barrels since May 1st, over the last six weeks or so. And, you know, the problem, one problem is that that isn't exactly what I did, is it? I like how I tried to share the screen, by the way. This is another fun thing about uh doing things on the fly sometimes is my browser updated and i no longer have permission to share the screen so i'm trying to while you talk i'm trying to open up that permission so i can actually share the screen uh well um i'm not sure that the one you shared was incredibly correct. That was the one you sent me.

I know. Yeah, but there's something wrong about it. Because if you see the total number of results, anyway, focus on the first number. Those are barrels. That's right. The second number is wrong. It's all pitches.

I did share a new link with you. I don't know if it's any different, if something's breaking off of it or whatever. But in any case, we'll get a link to you. And in that link, you will get barrels over balls in play. And most have, almost all of these on this list have more than 50 balls in play. And most have over 100. So 50 balls in play, barrel rate is supposed to become stable.

Players that you'll see that are different than their full season number, one that really pops off the list is Joey Votto, who is 29th on this list right between a Raphael Devers and Bryce Harper and and he's got a 14.3 percent barrel rate this is after he dropped the knob off the back off the side of his of his bat we had an email from a reader, Ani, who was pointing out that this, you know, this is a different Joey Votto. Now we have a piece of narrative

that he changed his equipment. And then we have a supposedly like stable statistics that changed. Put them two together and you think okay this is the joey vato going forward the one with a 14 percent barrel rate um but um you know otherwise the list is uh you know it's stanton and judge as it always is schwarber uh jake burger is fourth on this list uh and this is over balls in play. So you don't have to deal with his strikeout rate, which is, you know, the negative when it comes to Jake Berger, but he

always hit the ball really hard. And that's one of the reasons we've talked about him a lot on this podcast. Jack Sawinski is a similar type of player to Jake Berger in terms of being excited about his ability to barrel the ball and wondering just exactly how much contact he'll make. He is 12th on this barrel list, right behind Acuna and Jazz Chisholm and ahead of Pete Alonso and Jock Peterson. Christian Bettencourt is there. Peterson. Christian Bettencourt is there. I don't know how much I believe in him as a player overall because of contact and defensive questions. They've tried him at every position, it seems. I mean, he's pitched, he's played third, he's caught, I think he's played most season one game

at some point. So somehow he just feels like he's barely in baseball to me. I'm a little bit more excited about Swinsky and Berger, but those are names that pop if you look at barrel rates since May 1st. The only problem with this list, though, is you can't do it

over plate appearances. And so you have to do that mental arithmetic to think about strikeout rates because they do matter. Jack Sawinski might be really good in the long run. 31.1% K rate so far, but it's his first run against big league pitching. And I mean, there's a couple of things.

He's not swinging a lot of pitches outside the zone. So that bodes well, doing damage when he connects. And he's in the 86th percentile in sprint speed. So he's got a couple steals already. Might keep getting those green lights. I think he's very intriguing. So there might be some, probably some 12-team leagues where he's still out there. I think he's pretty much gone in 15s because he's been playing enough.

But I would not be surprised if things actually get a bit better for him than the current slash line. be surprised if things actually get a bit better for him than the current slash line. He's not a 209, 272, 417 guy with that approach and with the amount of damage he does. Yeah, the projections might even be missing something on the batting average side. I mean, I know he's had some low batting averages in the minor leagues, but he's also had some more decent ones. If he does hit the ball really hard, he could have better than a.290 Babbitt as a lot of these places are projecting. If he does get that Babbitt, he also doesn't have an extreme fly ball tendency. So if he gets that Babbitt to like.320 or.330, totally possible with a powerful approach like this.

Then you've got a guy who can hit.240 or.250 with, I would say, 30 home run type power. So definitely an intriguing guy. Also a kind of guy that there's a fair amount of supply of in modern baseball, it seems. Yeah, and they've got a few other young outfielders, but they're giving him that chance right now. And I think for the Pirates, I brought this up on the Athletic Baseball Show, Brian Reynolds, if he gets traded, that stabilizes playing time for someone

like Swinski quite a bit. Because it's one spot where they play a guy every single day that they would be moving someone out of. And the sprint speed is really interesting because the projections say that he's not going to be good defensively, but I kind of feel like that's a guess.

A defensive projection for a guy who hasn't played in the big leagues before. And if he does have top sprint speed, that speaks possibly to his ability to be an asset defensively. By the way, Brian Reynolds, we talked about him maybe a month or so ago as someone that looked like he was up to a brutal start. He's turned things back around. The overall season numbers are still like a little behind what we're used to but he's he's tracking back toward being the player the rest of season projections suggested he'd be the entire time and he got that strikeout rate under control although the swing strike rate is still going to

be the worst of his career yeah but, but I think the team situation could get a lot better. If he ends up on a contending team, maybe a more hitter-friendly ballpark, average isn't going to hurt you. Probably going to be good in batting average, more likely than not. So I think some of the warts we were seeing for Reynolds, they appear to be less of a

concern right now. His barrel rate has not changed. He's still down for the season. And it's not better in the last... It's not better since May 1st.

That's interesting. He's still not hitting the ball as hard as he used to. He's still not barreling the ball as well as he used to. He's still making less contact than he used to, but he's not striking out as much anymore and that alone has uh improved his his overall line i think yeah so he's definitely right at the ship the other part of the question that kevin sent us in what inspired the question

was rowdy telez his stack cast data has looked good it's pretty much been the same as it's been for his career throughout this season rowdy versus v Votto versus Christian Walker, I think, was the question back when Votto was struggling. And I think now that we've seen Votto make the adjustment and get healthy, I think he's the clear preference for us from the group. But Rowdy versus Christian Walker is actually a tougher decision to make if you're in a position where you have to choose between those two guys. Yeah, and Rowdy's barrel rate is down a little bit. He's at 11.7% for the season on Fangraphs, and since May 1, he's at 8%. But, I don't know, he has the same barrel rate in the last month as Anthony Rizzo, Randy Rosarena, Freddie Freeman, Sean Murphy.

I think he's still a good player. I just think maybe he's not a great player. He doesn't play against every lefty. And maybe he's subject to some of the ebbs and flows of which parks he's playing in. Is that possible? It's not like an every park, no doubter type power set. But he still makes pretty good contact he still

barrels the ball pretty well over overall he's still a decent player and the big debate for us i think we put vato ahead with this knobless bat now big debate for us was walker versus telez and we kind of hemmed and hawed. That one's a very difficult one. There's some evidence that Walker's fly ball rate will lead to a low BABIP, and that's what he has right now. But his fly ball rate is 48%, and Rowdy's is 45%.

Is that a meaningful difference? Not really, but I do think there are some differences that I didn't necessarily expect to see i mean we're seeing christian walker strike out just a little bit less and he's swinging a lot less at pitches outside the zone so that's kind of a big separator rowdy rowdy does not have a great eye at the plate yeah and for you know however much you want to put value on first base defense and how that can impact playing time a little bit. Christian Walker is not a big,

Christian Walker is grading as a great defender right now. Rowdy just isn't. We love Rowdy, but that's not his strength to put it very nicely. So I could see the case for Walker over Rowdy. The difference in the two lineups might be enough to kind of swing it back in Rowdy's favor, but that's a much closer toss-up than I would

have expected based on the way the season started for both of those players their first 25 games or so. Thanks a lot for that email, Kevin. Jake wants to know, with Corey Seager's OBP under 300, the average sitting in the 220s, walks are down slightly. He is still hitting for power. He's just curious if we're seeing anything in the batted ball profile that points to a rebound coming to the slash line overall. And he's also wondering if maybe this is a, just a case of a player in a new environment on a big contract, maybe pressing a little bit. I got an email question a couple of weeks ago.

Is this year he'll finally hit 30. He's got a shot at it. I think he will. I think he will. I think he will hit 30. I don't know. I just think he's an excellent, excellent hitter who makes a lot of contact, has a great eye at the plate, and barrels the ball well. I think his batting average is a mirage right now.

I think it was a great signing. How much do you think he is losing production wise being someone that does use the opposite field a bit 29.1 opposite field rates the highest of his career you wrote about that that going the other way is not as fruitful as it ordinarily is because of the changes to the ball uh that's interesting where are you getting that number from that's from the StatCast page oh slightly different from the Fangraphs one how does that number

vary highest of his career in on StatCast since 2016 he was the same 29.2% like 0.1% higher but that's yeah 29.1% opposite field percentage is the highest over on Fangraphs it's 26.1% higher. 29.1% opposite field percentage is the highest.

Over on Fangraphs, it's 26.6%. His career average is 27.1%. It's slightly below. Weird. For the career, he's up about 2 percentage points over his career mark based on the way it's calculated. He's never been a full pull guy.

I can say that. Even on fan graphs, that's true. Yeah. I mean, he's definitely a guy who's trying to hit the ball out of the park. If you look at his launch angles, and his launch angle is one of the highest it's ever been, his average launch angle. Now, that's a pretty noisy stat.

I'm not trying to make large conclusions off of that, but it is a launch angle of someone who's trying to hit the ball out of the park. And so that opposite field number, you'd want it actually to be lower. I guess the numerical follow-up question, the Bad X has him at 281, 353, 502 the rest of the season for Seager. 17 homers and 100 combined runs and RBIs. Are you in

on that projection? Yeah. Yeah. I'm a Seager believer. I have no reason to push back on it because I think the underlying numbers still look very good. The barrel rate is down a tick from where it was. Still double digits, 10.1%, 44.2% in the hard hit rates. That's down kind of in a similar sort of way.

If this is pressing, then watch out when he gets comfortable. Yeah, I would agree with that. He's a crazy one in terms of what he's like in the clubhouse and like around the field and stuff uh he's he doesn't i like i i've never really talked to him because he never seems available and the reason why he never seems available and i'm not saying that I've like asked him for interviews and said no he's always talking hitting anytime I've ever seen him he's talking hitting he usually sets his phone up and is talking to his his private instructor and I know he works with someone famous I don't know exactly it's not off the top of my head who it is he's on the phone he'll set the phone up and he'll be doing dry swings

and talking to his instructor i've seen him leave the clubhouse in oakland and find like a little like niche in the in the like in the bowels of that stadium where he's like trying to like talk to his hitting instructors so uh you know that can be good and bad sometimes when you are the hitting instructor for your team and you're like, Hey, can we talk? And he's like, no,

sorry, I got to go make a phone call. Uh, but at the same time, the results have been outstanding. Uh, and it does speak to a level of dedication. Um,

so I'm, I'm sure he's not happy with his batting average and he's currently discussing whatever mechanical aspect of his swing that he needs to improve upon so maybe I think when people hear Tinker sometimes they say

that's bad, that's good they hear that profile they say uncoachable I see that profile and think this person is dedicated this person is working very hard i would rather have that player is there uh any long-term regret if you're texas based on what you've seen so far i mean it's a pretty big contract of course it was a 10-year 325 million dollar deal that seager got this winter. At the time, I think I looked at it and said, he doesn't strike out a lot. He's got a good approach. The power seems stable. You're

not really expecting him to run. You're probably expecting him to play third base or play in the outfield maybe at some point before the end of the contract, but that's not really a problem. And if it weren't for, I think it was a hit by pitch last year that cost him some time with a wrist injury, he would have probably been a five war player again last year, which he was at the very beginning of his career too. So I, I wouldn't panic if I were a Rangers fan or if I were someone in the room that wanted to give him this money.

I think, I think he has a hitters profile that typically ages pretty gracefully. Yeah. He makes a lot of contact has a great eye at the plate and hits for power i mean yeah i i think i would have as much as i i said that the secret i like both signings uh i'd be a little bit more worried about the simeon signing because he didn't have the same long track record of power um he doesn't play as premium a defensive position and i know simeon's come around a little bit recently,

and I do believe in their character, you know, in the same way, I believe that Simeon's a very hard worker. But he's also older, you know, and doesn't have the same long track record. So you just get a little bit more nervous when the power outs that badly. And Seager's power hasn't outed in the same way. Yeah, I'm with you there we had another question come in this one's about Freddie Freeman and it goes back to some of the stuff you've written about about the ball and opposite field approaches maybe being less valued

should there be an urge to trade Freddie Freeman if you're in a league where you're desperate for power and you see a lot of the home runs that Freddie Freeman was hitting turning into doubles, do you try and move him now for an SP1? In this particular email, this email came from Andrew. He's wondering if he should flip Freeman for Carlos Rodon or

Zach Wheeler. Someone along those lines and sort of trade more based on a great long-term track record and some memories of a very high draft day price, anticipating that Freddie Freeman, while still very good, might not be the same Freddie Freeman we're accustomed to. Furiously checking the dew point in July. This is what we've been reduced to uh the dew point in

july in la is 65 it is 60 in june um there is the chance that that there's a human or effect in los angeles and that'll get going for him um on the other hand we do know the ball is deadened generally and we do know that he is hitting a lot of opposite field fly balls and one of the leaders in opposite field fly balls and that's been his approach for a long time and it's the most opposite field fly balls of his career on the other hand this guy has uh had multiple different approaches in his career and do you doubt uh freddie freeman's ability to turn on a ball and hit it out to the pull side i don't not really the reason if you were gonna say like i should i trade freddie freeman for vlad guerrero or something is that possible i mean you're talking about two first rounders

let's see what's vlad guerrero's uh batting average he says yeah you're probably not getting vlad for freddie no 270 batting average more homers yeah you're not no the the person with vlad is not making a challenge trade like that okay who's a who's got homers but not a great batting average at first base oh the challenge trade road is always a difficult one to go to i mean i'm not getting away with that either wait you're saying the person with schwarber wouldn't give you schwarber for fred. Wait, you're saying the person with Schwarber wouldn't give you Schwarber for Freddie Freeman? I'm saying the person with Freeman wouldn't even bother trying to make that move.

Austin Riley? That might be pretty fair. I might take Riley. I mean, the question is, you know, I need homers. I do think Austin Riley... I think Austin Riley will hit more homers than Freddie Freeman going forward. Okay, but then every other category still matters, right?

Freddie Freeman's going to be a great run producer. Probably going to be among the league leaders on average. I'm not saying that Freeman will have a lower overall value, but if you were really focused on homers, I could see making that sort of deal. Who's another player? And this question was looking for an ace. I mean, it's more about timing, I guess.

Are we going to look at the beginning of this season as the last peak of Freddie Freeman's value? Not that he's in massive decline, but are we going to put him in the Jose Abreu range in drafts? Is he going to return to where he was at the beginning of his career when he was like 318 homer hitter? Yeah. Again, very good player. A guy that people are excited to have on their teams. But if you can trade him for a player that's worth more than that, it's an opportunity to do it before people say, yeah, okay, we're all going to lower our expectations together because the power expectations from the projection system

sit between 14 and 18 home runs the rest of the season. Zips is the most optimistic, Bat-X kind of splitting the difference at 16, and that's with a 296 average, a 380 OBP, and as good accounting stats as you're probably going to find projected for almost anybody. About 120 combined runs and RBIs. That's fantastic in those categories.

Yeah, I wonder how much they include pole percentage and opposite field fly ball percentage and stuff like that in terms of projecting power. Even his shortened season pace. He played all 60 games in 2020. He had 13 home runs that year, which tracks to the 30-plus home runs that he hit a season ago and the 38 that he hit back in the year of the rabbit ball. So this is a significant decline in in-game power for Freeman, even though there's plenty of things to still like. Yeah, I'm surprised the projections are all still so high.

It's a, it's a tough one for me. I think he will end with, well, the over under is 20. What do you think? I would take the under, but I think it's a barely and it helps them staring at four sets of

projections that all say under four. He's got five homers plus Plus the five in the bank. I thought you said 20 for the rest of the season. Yeah, 20 for the season. Over. Well, then you hold on to him because you need power

and that's like a 30 homer pace. Is it fair value-wise if you're going to the pitching side, though, the way Andrew is to take Wheeler or Carlos Rodon back? Because those names, in my mind, just immediately felt light as one-for-one trades.

I would want a little something more back if I were giving Freeman in those deals. Well, I think one of the reasons that you take pitchers lower than hitters is because of health. And so once you're in season and you're demonstrating health, of health and so once you're in season uh and you're demonstrating health um i think that the the pitcher hitter sort of math changes a little bit so you're talking about uh if you knew that rodon and wheeler are going to be healthy for the season you would take them in the late first round right where you took freddie freeman if you. You know a little bit more now than you did at the beginning of the season about their health.

I don't disagree with that. There's something about someone being healthy in June that makes me think he's made it this far. But pitchers break all the time. They break in the middle of the season. They break late in the year. It's the guarantee on the box in Tommy Blake. Joe Doan's stuff is lower now in the last four starts than it was in his first four starts.

Right. I think current health in high injury risk pitchers makes us think that they are safer than they actually are. In the off season, all we can think about is the downside risk. Oh, if Rodon blows out in spring training or in his first couple starts, oh, my team's going to be ruined. And then we get to June and people are like,

he's number five in the earned value calculator. He's the best. I should trade a second round bat for him. It's like, no, you shouldn't. He was a great value where he was drafted. You should not buy high on the very scary arm injury history, elevated injury risk profile now i think it is the guarantee on the box and tommy boy that's exactly what it is it is a false sense of security i'm

gonna ask i'm gonna ask my boy jeff zimmerman to check into this this seems like just up his alley Well, let's formulate the question. Is a pitcher that has made it healthy to June 1 less likely to be injured going forward than a pitcher on March 1st? There's some sort of point in the season where the hypothesis is something along the lines of he's fully stretched out, he's gone max effort for a certain period of time, and it's a sign that he's going to be fine. I would say there is, I'd be stunned if there's anything that says that pitchers become safer after X date in a season. I'd be stunned by that. It'd be amazing to learn that. There is one data point that suggests exactly the opposite, which is that Russell Carlton found that every pitch

a pitcher throws makes them worse. Well, I guess if I try to think about it from a really basic sports science perspective, isn't every pitch just going to take a bunch of fibers and little micro tears in them, right? You're deteriorating every single time you perform the activity. That was what the piece was sort of about.

From a physical perspective. You're just taking a little bit. It's like taking a chisel and just chiseling, chisel, chisel, chisel. I guess. I guess, but there is the whole like, I talk about acute to chronic in terms of how people think about wear and tear. And the idea is that you build up chronic ability. So you build up a sort of day-to-day ability. Like if you want to run 26 miles at once, you have to be able to run 10 miles whenever you want yep right and you do a bunch of 10 and 5 and 13 and and 4 and you're like you you vary and you

and you get that you get that baseline up so that like anytime you wanted to you could just go out there and run 13 and have no problem and then your acute game day stress is i'm gonna go run throwing 26 right so i don't know every game pitch may be stressful in the way you're talking about so maybe this is a useless segue but in terms of like long toss and you know arm care and the training they do not every throw they do is bad for them is that a useful distinction i don't know but it may have something to do with stressful throws versus non uh in terms of maybe there's guys who are you know have that bigger separation between their max below and their sitting below and they're better able to manage their stress right but then i i don't think they're any more or less likely to get hurt based on the timing on the calendar they're just better at arm care and strengthening and doing the things

they need to do to keep their arm healthy in general and plus i mean this also are we talking about arm injuries only because i i feel like the an oblique or a hamstring or an ankle or all the other stuff, a back injury. Is that same category or is that kind of different than what you're really looking for? Because this almost seems like as you're putting it out there, it's like you get your arm loose in game situations over a fixed period of time like there's some like loose is kind of a funny word because whatever it just just run with it began yeah you get warmed up you get your arm to this comfortable level because you ramped up in spring training and off season you got through that and you got through the cold months of the season and you pushed yourself up to that max level of pitches with that max velo and you got

everything running at the highest possible level and because you got there then you're on the plateau then you're safe but it's that it's that build up where you break down that's that's sort of the suggestion here is that you could be you get hurt on the way but i i think you can just get hurt at any time and it's just once you get the car on the freeway it's it's usually okay just as likely to get into a wreck is he i mean still same same problem the wreck is not the right no no we're talking about like will the car stop working i've definitely had had cars. I've definitely had cars. I had this car. I had this car that once I got it to 75, it stopped making the noise. More stress on the car makes it seem more likely to me that you would break it.

So if I'm driving 20 miles an hour around the neighborhood, sorry if you're behind me. If I'm driving the speed limit around the neighborhood, stop and go traffic and something clanging around and then i get on the freeway and i'm gunning it whatever that's clanging around is to me is more likely to like break off who made noise until i got to 75 the engine got louder and you couldn't hear it anymore i i got pulled over and they gave me a ticket and i said i'm, sir. Kansas is very long and boring. And my car was making a noise. I had to go 75 to make it stop making the noise. I still got the ticket. You still got the ticket. Yeah. That went about as well as the time I wanted to use the cosine error for getting out of a speeding ticket. What's that?

Oh, I was Googling speeding ticket defenses when i was probably 19 years old and my dad just looked at me and goes you're not walking into court and using geometry to try and get out of your speeding ticket just go pay the fine oh you were gonna say you got me at the wrong angle and so then because i was gonna try and prove to a judge that the angle at which i was radared actually made it impossible for the radar to be completely accurate can you imagine you're a judge and there's a room full of people and you've got to just burn through these as quickly as possible and some smart mouth kid walks in and tries to present the cosine error defense to get out of a speeding ticket.

There's no chance that would have worked. I would have got the extra burn from the judge before he or she hit the gavel. Found you in contempt and thrown you in jail. Yeah. That's hilarious. How dumb was I back then? I'm not as dumb now, but my goodness, why would that work? So, yeah, the Kansas is boring defense.

I'm sure when you said that to someone who's probably lived in Kansas their entire life, I'm sure that was really well received. Yeah. No, he did not smile. No, I can't imagine. Can't imagine you would smile in that situation. A couple more real quick questions. Hoagie on Twitter, because it is almost lunchtime.

Are there any indications of why Ranger Suarez is struggling so far this season? Well, it's not that the ballpark is piling on. The ballpark should be helping right now. But what do you see when you look at Ranger Suarez? Because I entered the season as a skeptic, not that he was good, but just that there was any reason to draft him ahead of like the, I think it was John Means who got hurt, Jordan Montgomery, and Jin Ryu who also got hurt.

There are a bunch of similarly skilled players in my eyes that were going like 40 to 50 picks later and that just led me to bail completely on ranger and i i don't get a victory lap i i don't think this makes sense to me either because i thought the k rate would be a little higher than it's been to this point and the walk rate's gone the wrong direction as well so is there something in the underlying numbers with stuff breaking down that's causing him to struggle this much yeah i mean he was never a guy that had a good stuff metric um and this year it's even lower so it was like 95 last year um and he looked very much like an average uh pitcher in a bad ballpark situation this year the stuff is 87 he has he has good command um but uh in terms of uh you know his four seamer uh has less uh two inches less ride than it did last year

and is a half tick slower uh his uh his sinker has more drop, but less horizontal movement. And his changeup is still decent, but his slider, which was good last year, has left him. And he now throws. He used to throw an 84-mile-an-hour slider. Now he throws an 82-mile-an-hour slider. It has less drop, he used to throw an 84 mile an hour slider. Now he throws an 82 mile an hour slider. It has less drop than it used to and less side to side movement than it used to. It is a worse pitch than it was last year.

84 miles an hour is a really interesting thing. If you want a really simple way to look at breaking balls, remember this number, 85. Every breaking ball over 85 miles an hour is good no matter the shape. Almost every single one. And if you look at Ranger Suarez, 84 and a half last year, that means that half of his breaking balls were over 84 and a half. That means half his breaking balls were pretty good. And you don't even have to look at the shape uh now they're 82 they're just not as good look at thor in his good starts he's averaged 85 miles an hour on the slider and his bad starts he has not he's averaged 82 so uh breaking ball velocity is a hugely important thing and 85 is the threshold

that you can sort of it's a one number thing you can remember. Remember that, not the cosine angle defense, because one of those things will help you in life. The other will definitely, definitely get you in more trouble. One more question to get to before we go. This is about Logan Gilbert. This came from DM on Twitter. DM's looking for a deep dive when you're feeling better. I think you are feeling better. You seem to be mostly yourself today. The question, or I guess the tweet was, his performances really don't align

with model grades or even his called strike and whiff rate or his chase rates. I'm perplexed about who he really is, and those results have been very good. A.222 ERA, a.106 whip, 76 Ks in 77 innings. I am not surprised at all to see that the Sierra is sitting at.371. And it's kind of funny because Gilbert, to me, wasn't as bad as that.468 ERA last year would have led us to believe.

I don't think he's as good as a 222 right now would lead us to believe. I think Sierra is kind of pointing me in the same direction as the projections are for the rest of the season. I think that's probably a better reflection of what he's likely to do, barring a change where he maybe starts missing more bats. I think if he starts striking more guys out, then yeah, he can split the difference to the good side between what he's doing and what the projections say.

But even as someone who really liked Gilbert coming into the season, I'm hesitant to expect more than a 375 ERA and a 120 whip the rest of the way. Yeah, I think that's what the model says. I'm looking at what he's done recently. What's funny is that he's kind of been a little bit all over the place, but this is where he settled in in his last few appearances. He settled in as a guy with around 96 stuff plus, which for a starting pitcher is average um and a guy with uh good commands

commands um with good command and uh he's had a basically 105 to 110 location plus uh in his last seven to eight starts that is what he was supposed to be coming up isn't that amazing um and uh i think a guy with those numbers is better than league average and is is a pretty good pitcher so i believe basically in his walk rate, where it is. I'm not sure that his projected home run rates have to go all as far as they're saying. The projections say he's going to give up basically 1.2 homers per nine, he's getting at 0.6 per nine. I'll say more sort of in between 0.8 per nine. And I think if you give him basically a strikeout per inning the good walk rate he's got and a 0.8 homer per nine going forward you get like a 370 ra yeah i think if that home run rate stays a little lower than the projections where you have it then

i think the like a 335 340 era might be be possible. That becomes more in play. I wonder if the projections are hitting him with that higher home run rate because of his fly ball rates. He doesn't get a ton of outs on the ground. Also, I wonder how much the home run rate being higher in his big league debut compared to what it was at any level in the minor leagues,

how much that plays into that projection coming out where it does too. 119 innings of major league home run rate is probably the number one driver of his future home run rate. Yeah. So that, that could be the one area I guess I'm, I'm slightly more optimistic about him beating his home run rate projection

that I'm, but the K rate going way up based on what he's doing right now. And the one thing that really kind of scares me a little looking at the heat map, there was that four seamer a me a little looking at the heat map, throws that four-seamer a lot, 55% of the time. It's true. It's a pretty wide egg yolk on the heat map. I want a little more precision there, right?

He's getting just a little too much of the middle part of the plate with that pitch. I'd like to see him get the ball up a little more often. Could be just varying looks, part of the plate with that pitch. I'd like to see him get the ball up a little more often. Could be just varying looks because if he throws it so often, if he really honed in on just, if he only threw the

fastball high, it might be worse for him. But the good news, I think, is the new slider is excellent. It is his best pitch by the model. And it speaks to this fact.

It has a lot less movement than he used to have a sweeper slider. And that had more movement, but he couldn't command it. This one has a slightly lower stuff number, 104, but a 112 location plus. So he's able to locate it better and relevant to our last conversation it's an 87 mile an hour slider so it's an 87 mile an hour slider he can locate better he's got his second pitch now the change up has a 120

stuff plus and an 86 location plus so he still can't command that changeup. That's why if you're yelling at him on TV to throw the changeup more, that's why he's not throwing it more. He can't locate it. So either the location is going to have to improve on the changeup or the stuff is going to have to improve on the knuckle curve

because he's still slightly more two-pitcher than I would like, a two-pitcher than I would like, a two-pitch pitcher than I'd like. Yeah, that changeup, I'm pretty excited about that. If he can find a way to improve the location, maybe that's the key to getting the K rate up because then you get that pitch down that you can get guys to swing over if you can keep it down consistently and make it the kind of pitch that people will actually chase.

Really good player, not quite as good as it looks on the surface right now. I'm just hoping that he hangs on to make my bold prediction right. I said he'd be the best Mariners pitcher. Robbie Ray's helping you out with that too. Yeah, that was a little bit of a bet against Robbie Ray. Yeah, that's not always where we want to go, but it's always part of the bold prediction

is having another thing that you kind of think is going to happen also and having that come through. And so far, so good for you on that front. Before we go, quick reminder, you can drop us an email, ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com is the best way to email us.

You can leave questions under this video on YouTube. You can send us tweets. He's at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. If you don't already have a subscription to The Athletic, you can get one for this video on YouTube. You can send us tweets. He's at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. If you don't already have a subscription to The Athletic, you can get one for a dollar a month for the first six months at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you early next week. Thanks for listening. Thank you.