Rates & Barrels - Taking L’s: Players we were wrong about in 2021

Episode Date: September 1, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss the players they were wrong about in 2021 -- and several others than the fantasy community in general misjudged including Gleyber Torres, Yoán Moncada, Blake Snell, and several others.  This is the episode where DVR officially takes the 'L' for his Victor Robles calls.  Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels presented by Topps. Check out Topps Project 70 celebrating 70 years of Topps baseball cards. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris with you on this Wednesday. Hey, it's September. We have flipped the page on the calendar. The last month-ish of the season. The season does run into the first couple days of October. I think you were telling me yesterday that World Series can run into the first couple days of November. So that'd be pretty exciting if everything played out that long. But on this episode, it is time to take an L for me. Victor Robles' option to AAA, which has inspired an entire show about players that either we as a show were wrong about,

as individuals, or possibly just the fantasy community at large based on where players were going back in the spring and what they've done to this point in the season. Obviously, a month can help turn things around, but at this point, I think all of these guys we're going to talk about are still going to be clear underperformers for 2021 relative to expectations. How's it going for you on this Wednesday? It's good. I'm not taking the Robles L.

I'm also not red in the face. If you're watching on YouTube, Derek has taken on the hue of his shirt. Yeah, I think it's the lighting in here that needs some work. So my apologies to our viewers on YouTube. But it kind of looks like I ate the Willy Wonka gum. And instead of turning into a blueberry, I'm turning into a tomato. Or had some ghost pepper hot sauce or something. Yeah, I can assure you I'm not in pain.

I did not eat a ghost pepper. I am comfortable. Things are good. Even the wall, which is white, looks sort of pink. So, yes. You should also be feeling okay. You got to see. Was that your first game at Oracle or whatever it's called?

Yeah. San Francisco Park? Yeah. First game at Oracle yesterday. Woodruff shoved. Looked real good. Yeah. I mean, he was hitting like 99 at the top of the zone at some point late in the game.

Yeah, that was nasty. I mean, the last two nights uh the brewers have really uh given it to the giants yeah we were talking about this on the the way back from the game we're saying you know there are probably two kinds of playoff teams the kinds you believe are legitimately title contenders and then the other teams just get in the playoffs and obviously a team from that latter group can win the world series anybody who gets in the playoffs can get there and win it but i would say the giants are tracking more towards that that second group of playoff teams and the brewers have sort of convinced some people more recently that they absolutely do belong in that first group that should be taken a bit more seriously

yeah i just uh it's hard if it's like, it's just recency bias. And like, maybe that's just maybe like, you know, in three games, the Giants are shoving again. But what you see or what we saw in these last couple of games, I feel like are like the top end talent that the Brewers have, you know. And that seems to be shine brighter than the Giants depth. The Giants like remind me of kind of the A's where it's just like, we're going to depth you to 100 wins, but then when we line up for the postseason, you're going to be like, okay, it's Gossman against Woodruff, and

Burns against Alex Wood. Burns against Wood and Peralta against Discofani and who's the better closer, Hayter or McGee? You know, it kind of yeah, I think it kind of to me sort of brought out the reason why people thought the Giants would regress and not necessarily even win the division. think it kind of to me sort of brought out the reason why people thought the Giants would would

regress and not necessarily even win the division that said I think they can still win the division but I don't think that I put them in that like World Series contender bucket it just I'm looking for standout names in the peak of their careers and I've kind of left wanting yeah I mean Chris Bryant you could probably even say is post peak, but still closer to peak than a lot of the other players that have come through in a big way this year. Of course, Posey and Crawford,

the turnaround seasons they've had that we've talked about. Those are amazing. But I think where I, I was kind of left wanting more from that giants team yesterday. It was just kind of looking at their defense. They didn't have a great defensive game, and Chris Bryant threw a ball away. Defense was sloppy. In the first inning, Johnny Cueto got Babbitt pretty

good. That was not the fault of the defense. But seeing Mike Ustremsky playing center field, that's just to me a championship caliber team has a good defender in center field. I just don't think that's really how I would describe Mike Ustremsky. He's taken a step back as a hitter. They play defender in center field and i just don't think that's really how i would describe mike yastrzemski

and he's taking a step back as a hitter they play alex dickerson a lot i think dickerson's more of a first guy off the bench than someone who plays on the big side of platoon just looks really shaky on defense too like he almost ran into chris bryant he did run into mike yastrzemski the other day uh just looks and he like, body language-wise, just looks kind of nervous out there. Actually, the guy that I think would be at the front of the rotation for the postseason behind Gossman is probably Logan Webb, based on how he's pitched recently.

That's right. I think that does make them a little more dangerous. It narrows it a little bit. But, I mean, who are you taking, Burns or Webb? Well, yeah, still taking Burns. But at least Webb, to to me gives them a shot like i think they're especially if he continues shoving like he has right like he's found another level here in these last few weeks i think i comped him to like a right-handed dallas keitel

which is you know it's fun because peak dallas keitel was really good like it's hard to remember that right now uh but all right i'm i'm delaying I'm stalling. I'm trying not to take the L. I'm just getting it out of the way right now. And I was a little bit facetious yesterday when I tweeted with a beer in front of me that I was planning a 12-minute speech about Victor Robles. I think it kind of all boils down to a couple things. boils down to a couple things. The first being part of the reason why I still believed in Robles going into this season, despite, you know, ice cold stat cast numbers is that I didn't think the things we want Robles to do require you to hit the ball hard on a regular basis. It is better to hit the ball hard than not hit the ball hard. I'm not trying to make some sort of galaxy brain

argument that exit velocities don't matter. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying for this type of player, for a guy who, because of his defense, was supposed to play every day, and with his projected hit tool, a guy that would put a lot of balls in play, I didn't care that the average exit velocity wasn't very good. I didn't care that he wasn't going to barrel the ball that much because I was targeting him for 30 plus steals and hoping for 10 to 12 home runs right i think the type of production i was expecting was more like a starling marte sort of production clearly not even close i mean there was i don't know how much of this is a health thing i don't know how much of this is a coaching thing i don't know if there are any excuses to be made at all i was just flat out

wrong but i think i i was hoping that robles would be a starling marty type fantasy player and i guess my proof of how it could work is the underlying numbers you see for a guy like whit merrifield in terms of exit velocity and the lack of barrels like like whit merrifield doesn't pop as a good stack cast player at all and even still his average exit velocities are better than robles is i will readily say that and point that out right now, but you don't get a lot of barrels, you don't get a lot of hard contact, and yet because he keeps his K rate really low, much lower than what Robles has done so far, he does pretty well. And because he runs well, he does well on balls in play. And I kind of thought

that was the script that Robles could follow. So that was my thinking. Am I wrong by process or am I wrong by result or am I just wrong by both in this case? I don't know, man. You still look at his projections and he's still projected for a 320 OBP and nearly a 400 slugging by something like the Bad X. That should play. He just never played to that projection.

And in terms of what he actually did, now we have his last 500 plate appearances, he has an OPS under 650. The reason I bring that up was that Jeff Zimmerman had that whole thing. We did a whole show about the 650, about how many guys who would steal bases that um that had were projected for better than 650 because people don't keep their jobs if they don't have a 650 ops victor robles lost his job because he didn't have a 650 ops so i thought i'd just look at the leader

boards real quick and there's only one player with more than 10 stolen bases this year that has less than a 650 OPS. I bet you can almost guess it. Miles Straw? No. I won't take another guess. Who is it? Ellis Andrews. Okay.

Yeah. Makes sense. taking up the guess who is it uh elvis andrews okay yeah makes sense and and that's the that's where that's where we fall down the rabbit hole and start making excuses for the players because we say oh elvis andrews still a shortstop victor robles center field mile straw center field their defense will keep them on the field i just don't know if that's true anymore. Look at what the Reds did at shortstop. The other closest person is Isaiah Kiner-Falefa. And even he had more than the 650 OPS. I feel like teams feel like they can run an offensive contributor out at every position in today's game. Like there's enough of a supply of players that they don't have to have anybody out there that's just out there for defense. I think that's kind of gone the way of the Dodo bird. So I think the 650 OPS line is real.

I think it's something that we should pay real attention to. And I understand that like Victor Robles still projected for rather than 650 OPS, but he's actually not projected for much better than a 650 OPS, especially if you're looking at like Steamer, he's projected for a 690 basically, right? And so below 650 then becomes a possibility. So I would like to, going forward, get my steals from guys that are projected for a 700 OPS or better.

That's a good rule to follow. At least if I'm paying real money for these guys. Right. Because a little different at the end of a draft Champions League or in real baseball terms, It's a little different at the end of a draft Champions League. In real baseball terms, it's a little bit different if it's a waiver wire claim for the stretch run. That's a little different. What is the other guy that was close?

Michael Taylor is close. He's a center fielder, but I don't know that he's going to have a job next year. Well, and the Nats saw the Michael Taylor movie for a long time. Yeah, and that might have had something to do with the Robles decision-making process. Maybe. I mean, I just wonder if he needs a fresh start, new organization. A couple things that did go right for him, did hit the ball a little harder than he has the last two years, just in terms of average exit velocity. I think more importantly, though, K-rate was down from where it was in the shortened season, walk rate at a career-best 9%. Now, you could always look at something like that and say, well, was he being too passive relative to his strengths, right? Because this is a guy that was

projected to have an above-average hit tool. If he's taking a lot of walks and not doing damage in situations where he could have done some damage to get those walks then that's a missed opportunity again it for me merits further exploration but it's a frustrating turn for me it's been obviously a bad season there are plenty of places where i had to cut him and reserve him and move on earlier this year but it all comes back to one question will i be in in 2022 and if the path looks like it's clear for regular playing time again in deeper leagues, yes, I will be because the price is going to bottom out. No one wants anything to do with the Robles. He's pretty much going to be a dollar type player.

He's going to be free. Last round type guy. Yep. And he can still do enough stuff. I think there's just a little glimmer of hope in the projection. That's where my sort of 650, 700 OPS thing kind of goes out the door. I don't care as much in that situation. But it would apply to the mid-round price tag.

If Robles is a pick 100 to pick 150 guy over the course of draft season, which is what he was in 2021, that's a lot of risk in the profile based on that particular metric. And I think that's a fair line to draw. I think the other guy that I want to take the L on, since I'm just going to humiliate myself for the entire show, Gavin Lux, because I thought Gavin Lux was this year's Kyle Tucker.

I said it time and time again on this show, on the athletic fantasy baseball podcast. I said it anywhere people would listen. If I wasn't talking about, I didn't say it. I'm not taking this out either. That's why it's on my side of the screen. It's because the graphics come in from that side.

I'm sure I won't get away with not taking an L on this show. We'll find them. They're out there. I mean, I just, you know, for him, it's bad at ball quality and I hate to come back to that.

That's what's missing with robles too um and uh you're just you're looking for for something um with gavin lux i mean he did hit one ball uh close to 110 miles an hour um he had a below average uh barrel rate the hard hit rate was the best of his career. His expected slugging is higher than his slugging, but it's still only 381. So I think this is a guy that I personally expect more like a 250, 310, 400 going forward,

which is not necessarily starting material in most leagues that's that's like kind of a deeper league player yeah the projections are very close to that range so not a surprise that that's kind of where you're at with them and you look at it and you say that's a league average bat that's not a difference maker based on wrc plus so unless you think there's still further growth here and i think that's always the question with younger players. I would still say that applies to Lux and Robles. Yeah, he's 23. He could get stronger, could get bigger, could unlock something at a plate. 500 career plate appearances?

I mean, not even there yet? Yeah, it's not all writ. But in terms of batted ball events, 307. I mean, that's a fair amount. Yeah. So expectations have cratered for Lux. I wonder if he's the kind of guy they'll actually trade in the offseason. And if the Dodgers are willing to trade him away, that kind of tells

you that the ceiling that we thought he had probably isn't quite as high. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I bet you they would have traded him instead of Kybert Ruiz. So I'm guessing that the Nationals weren't that interested. That's interesting. I never really thought

about that. I thought the Nats had a greater organizational need behind the plate than they did out in the middle because of Garcia. Do you know what Lux looks like right now? What does he look like? I'm sorry to say this. Oh, no. Carter Keboom.

Oh, that would be bad. Right? That'd be very bad. I mean, look. I did this without looking at Carterter bughum's page it just occurred to me when i was thinking about the nationals so about a four percent barrel rate for lux uh key boom has uh fewer battle ball events but also has a four percent four point five percent barrel rate um max ev it goes to Lux by 2 though

so that's meaningful Keyboom's doing a little better this year so far I kind of see them as being very similar actually look at those projections in fact the projections like Keyboom to have a better OVP that's not a place you want to be if you are still a Gavin Lux truther.

Lux should steal, I guess, a couple more. Well, here's the thing. So the only thing I would throw at you about the projection for Lux is that it has some absolutely horrid 2020 numbers jammed into it. Hit 175 with a 246 OVP and a 349

slug in the shortened season. That's horrible. That's factored in. How much of that do we even want to account for anybody when it was a complete disaster? You can remove that and then his career line is like 230,

300, 370. Right. A little better. The projection would be a little better anyway it's still an l i i thought he was going to thrive especially once cory secret got hurt i just thought this is it this is the moment well all right here's my l that i think it provides us a little bit of a segue glaber torres Torres? Gleyber Torres? Oh, yeah. And I wonder, so the projections still favor him over Lux. About

260, 340, 450. So an edge in every category. He stole 12 bases this year. So I guess, I was going to ask Torres or Lux next year. But that's still pretty easily Torres, right? Safer playing time, I think, is a big part of that. But is it safer playing time?

The Yankees get crowded quick. But I guess the options for them have been like Andrew Velasquez and Tyler Wade. So yes, probably safer playing time. Yeah, see, I'm taking the L on Torres as well. If you're watching on YouTube, I flipped the video, so it was under Eno's name, but I deserve it too. He's another player that I was wrong about.

I think with Torres, I just didn't see what he did in 2018 as a 21 year old. I didn't see that as something he would be unable to repeat. I saw 2019 as the year of the rabbit ball and of course he's not going to hit 38 home runs again. Like, come on. No, no. Stop talking. I'm going to take this L again. I'm in on the laboratories next year.

I'm in on him. Dude, look at this. Let's's just okay let's not look at 2019 I don't care I'm not buying 38 homers I don't I don't need to and there's value here all over the place check this out in 2018 his walk rate was 8.7 percent in 2021 it was 10 percent that's supported by a reach rate that went from 34 to 23 so he's improved his reach rate he's he's got a better eye than he used to he had a k rate of 25 that's gone down every year well it went up a little bit last year but it's gone down and it's now underneath 20 so okay here's a guy who makes good contact has a good eye at the plate that has improved uh and then now let's

compare his max ev in 2018 109 to 2021 112 his barrel rate in 2018 9 to 20 2021 7%. I can't tell you what's wrong and why he only hit six homers this year, but I can tell you that I don't think he'll have as much trouble with power next year. I'm going to buy again. In fact, he's so attractive to me, he might be part of... I always try to have a second base strategy.

Well, does he have second base eligibility? Yes. No, no he have second base eligibility? Yes. No, no, he doesn't. Anyway, he could be part of a real cheap at shortstop thing. You're giving me back the L because I'm going to take it again. I'm back in on him. He's like, I can't quit you. Yeah, there's a ton to like because the lineup that he's in, the park that he's in, I mean, the plate skills getting better.

That to me will always be something that can pull me back in. That's part of the reason why I'm not giving up forever on Victor Robles, even though there's growing evidence that it'd probably be a good idea for me to go ahead and move on. But, I mean,avin lux has i think pretty good plate skills too and i i think it's not on the torres level but it he's not clueless up there that gives me that glimmer of hope that he will in fact figure it out at some point but another year of up and down playing time would be a problem i don't think that's going to happen with torres i do think they're going to change positions for him though. They're going to try and get one of the shortstops in free agency, move him off

short and move him back over to second base. You're going to get that eligibility that you want. A week or two into the season, he should be eligible at both. Yeah, they could do that. The problem is that shortstop's a young position. Brandon Crawford and everybody else has been moved off the position.

The Yankees did kind of do an older shortstop before with Didi. Yes, they did. So I'm with you, though. I'm in on Torres. And I'm guessing, trying to predict the ADP for next year, outside the top 100 for sure. I mean, his ADP this year I thought was a good bargain. He was at 65 during the last week of March.

If he's at like 125 going into december that wouldn't surprise me at all he still steals bases so it won't go too far down because he'll still pop as someone who stole you know 12 15 bases this year he's below uh he's not even below the 650 threshold man like i i don't think he's a danger of losing his job he's a guy who has defensive ability played skills and the power underlying power numbers are better than the uh than the noisy slugging and iso or noisy uh and the underlying power numbers are better yeah i would say that slash line is actually pretty encouraging in the projections for as bad as this season has been to see 260s even a 274

from zips in the batting average up to a 353 obp and slugging percentages in the mid 400 range it's actually really solid for a guy that's had basically 141 games now where he's been a 250, 330, 360 guy. I, man, I can't explain it, dude. I have no idea where that power has gone. Let's talk about some other early round misses, though, among bats. I think it's important to set some ground rules here. Do we count Christian Jelic and Cody Bellinger as early round misses, or do they get an injury pass? With Jelic, I'm just concerned it's chronic.

So if you give him an injury pass, that sort of suggests that an offseason will clear it up. And one of the problems with back is that the outcomes on back surgeries are pretty terrible from what I gather. When they discussed it with some of my friends, they said, we can do back surgery, but it's like 50-50 that it'll do anything. It's like, ooh, that sounds like it sucks.

I mean, imagine if they said that for Tommy John. We can do Tommy John, but it's 50-50 if it works out. It's like, I'm just going to let this heal for a while. Yeah, so I'm not saying that I know that Yelich needs back surgery, but we do know that he has a back problem. And that seems

a little bit more worrisome, actually, than with Bellinger, even though I know it's terrible that he's now a platoon player. You can do 162 game splits. You can do everything and say that Bellinger is useless. I'm not trading away in my dynasty league. I'm going to hold on to my shares.

I'm going to buy next year, provided that I hear he had some surgery, the recovery went well, and he's coming to spring training on time that's the kind of stuff i want to hear from bellinger from yellow i'm just not sure what if you give someone an injury pass what you're suggesting is they're dealing with an injury that injury will be cleared up at some point and they will be good again later and i just don't know what that process looks like for yellow it's right right? It's like, okay, even if they say he had back surgery, I'm still in the dark about whether or not that worked, right? Yeah, of course.

And then he shows up, let's say he shows up in spring on time, I still might be reading between the lines waiting for some sort of he played three games in a row sort of deal. I would just be more nervous going forward. I imagine the market will handle Yelich and probably Bellinger pretty coupled the way that it handled Chris Bryant going into this season.

They're similar age, two pretty significant injuries for those guys. With Bryant, it was the shoulder. Maybe Stanton? Yeah, maybe like that. Where they dropped to like the fifth and sixth round, right? It's a pretty good discount for both for those guys. With Bryant, it was the shoulder. Maybe Stanton? Yeah, maybe like that. Where they dropped to like the fifth and sixth round, right? It's a pretty good discount for both of those guys because they have a lot of ways to get there.

The word of caution I threw out there, I was talking to Al Melkier about Jelich yesterday on the Athletic Fantasy Baseball podcast. The stolen bases, those are going to continue to go away. He's at that age where that fades, even for a really good player. So I think with bellinger i'm wondering what signs we need to see to know that he's really back the shoulder is healthy

again like he had obviously the surgery going this off season so i think just going through a normal off season and being completely healthy for an off season getting strength right he's already even had the surgery i kind of think like that's what he needs more than like another procedure like another procedure would probably steer me away whereas like hey i was able to shut it down for a couple weeks at the end of the season started getting after it right away i went through a completely normal off season yeah i guess what you're looking for almost from him is like i i put on you know 15 pounds of muscle or something right because i'm looking i mean the max exit velocity for Bellinger

is down four miles per hour. That just speaks to me of poor fitness, man. It just said something. He's just not as strong this year. And I don't think it's just going to go away for him unless that was a worse shoulder injury even with surgery than realized. Yeah, he should be able to bounce back

in a pretty big way so if you said i'm buying him more than yelich is what i'm saying yeah i would too because of their respective ages i mean i i think there's probably a little more floor with yelich but there's still i think a higher ceiling from bellinger because he's younger yeah and i think when you're but when you're buying one of these guys in the fifth or sixth, you're doing the Stanton play. You're buying ceiling, actually. Because you bought high floor and high ceiling with your first three or four picks, right? The fifth round is often a place where you see people pick up Nelson Cruz.

Pick up fairly high-risk players that have high ceiling. Because if you lose your fifth-round pick, it doesn't really tank your season. In fact, what's been interesting to me is that I have Jelic and Lindor on teams that will win it all this year. That's pretty good. So, I don't know. I don't know what that means.

You did a lot of other things right. Yeah, but I don't think there's a top-line takeaway where you're like, just don't X. There's almost not anything like that in fantasy, right? No. Is there a thing I could say? Just don't ever X. Just don't take a reliever in the first round i guess that's probably a good rule someone out there's like i won this year i

took you know took hater in the first yeah it's not it's not a good idea you mentioned lindor we've talked about him before he seems like such an obvious bounce back candidate kind of fits into the glaber torres bucket of like from going into into this year. I know that what he did at his peak might not be something he ever does again, but I don't expect him to be a bad player. I'll echo that again. I think Lindor is still good as an early round bounce back candidate next year.

DJ LeMayhew, we talked about Torres. The other Yankee that's really let them down relative to the expectations is DJ LeMayhew. He was being drafted as a top 30 overall player back in late March. And if you told me, yeah, the power is going to go away. Also not taking this one. Well, I didn't have it.

Zero shares. Yeah, I didn't have it. This is an easy player for me to avoid because I couldn't get on board with it. Kind of like a batting average only guy. But where the hell is the batting average? He's hitting 266 this year. That's weird to me. Nine homers in 125 games?

Okay, sure, he's back to being pre-2019 DJ LeMayhew. That's fine. Why is he hitting.266? The K rate's still pretty good, 14.4%. I can't really... The XBA, the expected batting average based on StatCast stats is only.274. It's not like he's been massively unlucky yeah the projections is for future guidance 283 351 406 according to the bat x

that's like world are you drafting that player anywhere near the top 30 yeah yeah because he's not going to steal you many bags nope he could be a uh he could be an elite runs an rbi guy if he even if he gets back to that i mean that that that lineup is pretty murderers row yeah so i guess you're getting average in runs it's nice but i think he falls like 100 spots off his 2021 ADP, at least. And if I buy him, I might be buying him to be a guy that I can shuttle between CI and MI. He becomes kind of like a best ball type player. I think like a good underrated best ball type player because he will have eligibility at

first second and third next year and i know that's why people a lot of people bottom high in in best ball this year but i think he'll drop so far and the best sort of the best format for him going forward would be best ball because then he, if he has one of those high batting average weeks, he can slot in for you at three different places. Yeah, I think that all makes sense. Or five different places, really. You look at the underlying numbers, still hitting the ball as hard as he did in the past. Like it just, it doesn't add up to me.

Like I can't figure out how things turned this much on him, even though I wasn't that interested back in March. Well, it is kind of weird that he used to run babbitts that we basically say don't exist you know like his career babbitt is 341 he had 370 last year he's had a 388 before and a lot of those were floated by colorado which is a babbitt floating machine. So, you know, look at his Babbitt now. It's 3-0-1. What do we expect him to do in Yankee Stadium? The projections all say 3-19, which is why they're kind of a little bit bland. Yeah, I would say of all the players we've talked about so far, he's the least likely that I would go get next year.

I'm not out completely. I'm more, tell me the price and I'll think about it. Right. Wow. I didn't see that coming from him. I thought if the power went away, he'd still hit 300. He'd still pile up the runs. It'd still be a good season, even if it wasn't

what you paid for. That was definitely a surprise to me. I wonder if he's... He must be getting pitched a little differently. Because his... definitely a surprise to me. He must be getting pitched a little differently because his I see his What am I seeing here? He's not hitting fastballs the same way. Check out his splits against fastballs.

Last year, he hit 385 and slugged 624 against fastballs. This year, he's hitting 265 and slugging 351 against fastballs. He's still getting fewer of them. He's seeing the most sliders of his career. I bet you he's falling into a little bit of a trap with the sliders for strikes and then the

fastballs for whiffs. But yeah, there's something else going on here. It's not super easy to diagnose. And on top of that, we're talking about a 33 year old player that if you remove uh 19 and 20 basically has like a 100 iso yeah and now he's well past the wrong side of 30 he'll be 33 next season turns 34 next july so just just not a lot to get excited about for me with

DJ LeMayhew at this point. One more hitter I want to talk about before we move on to some pitchers. Yohan Mankata. What the heck happened here? I think there was a lot of questions to be asked about him coming out of 2019 because that was such

a massive step forward for him as a hitter right the stat cast numbers were off the charts good got the 25 homers looked maybe like a 30 home run guy if he could stay healthy for a full season here he is hitting 265 nice 375 obp only slugging 400 kind of showing us the same limited power that we saw in the shortened season. And I kind of chalked it all up to COVID because he mentioned it as a COVID long hauler. He just didn't feel good last year for most of the season. I thought the bounce back was going to be a pretty easy one where at least 20

home runs were on the way. And you think about all the things that have gone right for the white socks and getting healthier in the lineup too. I just expected more from him given that so many things have changed for the White Sox getting healthier in the lineup too. I just expected more from him given that so many things have changed for the better over the time that he's been in Chicago. Yeah, you know, I might be in on him. I might be in on him next year

because the strikeout rate was the best of his career. The swinging strike rate is the best of his career. His max EV did bounce back, so there was a health bounce back. It didn't bounce back to the 113 and 115 or 116 he had in 18 and 19, but at 111, it's still over that 108 threshold where we expect the person to have power.

His barrel rate at 8.4 is not the 11% he showed in 2019, but it's still pretty good. So I still see a guy who has pretty good power and 136 iso is not pretty good power so i think next year he could hit uh 260 um it's mostly we're reading off for projections here but i'm going to be a little bit more aggressive with the power because his park is nice and it's going to make his power play up and i think the the strikeout reigns maybe maybe real at 26 he i think he might have a peak season in them and so a peak season for him might be 275 you know like a 360 obp and like uh you know like a maybe near a 500 slugging again i think that's still in it man

and i think it would you would probably come with like five steals. So you're looking at something close to a repeat of 2019 with a different ball. And I think that's still in him. It's wild that the season that Mankata is having, in part because of the 375 OBP, it's a 120 WRC+. That just doesn't seem as good as it is. And that gives me hope too that he's become a better hitter. This is the second best season by WRC+. It's not by fantasy. It's definitely not a good fantasy season.

No, I guess the other related question here is, do you see any underlying indicators that are good proof that the raw power is still there? I think for me, the max exit VLO is not. The max EV is pretty good. Yeah, it's not where it used to be, but it's up from where it was last year, so it's not a Bellinger situation. It's also better than average. The 108 is the

benchmark for kind of when you start noticing max EVs, and he's at 111. 8.4% barrel rate. Does he just have a bunch of doubles that should have been home runs or something? I mean, 8.4% is not great. You know, like Shohei Itani has like 23%. But he's the league leader.

So it's kind of, yeah, it's an unfair benchmark. I don't know. He does, let's see what his doubles rate is. He has 23 this year. You know, 28. I don't know. It's not like his X slugging is expected slugging based on stack house numbers is that much better it's 412

to 400 I'm just kind of reading between the lines about it like a young player you know who's still within his peak that the underlying numbers aren't as devastatingly bad as the 136 ISO suggests they should be

each thing I check doesn't lead me to an answer either. I'm like, well, maybe he's hitting the ball on the ground too much. Look at his ground ball, right? Nope, that hasn't changed either. It's like, come on, man. He's not hitting fly balls. That's the one thing that stands out. Right, a lot of line drives. Yeah, so there's something going on there.

That's why he has a .355 Babov. He's kind of traded some homers for line drives, which is not amazing. Trying to think of ADP and relative cost. If Mankata and Torres are carrying a similar price, and you can only get one because you're sure that either I or someone else in the room is going to take whoever you don't take.

Torres makes better contact, has better eye at the plate, should have a better batting average, will steal more bases. That's a good snap answer there, but I bet they'll be somewhat similar in terms of how they're treated based on where they were going into this season and what they've done over the course of this year. If I pick Torres and three rounds later, I'm on condo still around, I don't know that I'm that scared to put them both on the same team. It shouldn't be too much of a concern, given where they're going. It's not like they're early-round building blocks at this point. What do you think they go for in AL labor?

You could probably get the two of them for under $15. I was thinking you're going to pay at least $30 for the pair, and maybe as much as $35, because if there are zero playing time questions, thinking about the quality of those lineups the park for torres decent park for mancada all those factors so in if i get them both for 30 bucks i think i think you have to go to 35 i think you have to go like 18 17 or 19 16 or something like that players have really worked for me they really worked for me this year that

was like adamez for me this year I don't think I even paid that much. I paid like $12,000. But I like those players, man. They're going to play. There are reasons to think they could play better. File that prediction away in the vault. $35 combined price on Torres. There's my infield.

There's my AL labor infield. I told everybody now. They're just not listening because I'm not talking about pitching. Well, let's give the people what they want. Let's talk about some pitching. Some early round pitching misses. Again, less for us, I think, than for the market as a whole in this case. But I put my mistakes right up front today, so I'm not running from anything right now.

Lucas Giolito kind of caught my eye. I don't think he's a massive bust. If you took him early round two, you're not sitting there and say, I'm not winning my league because of Giolito. But you're looking at it and saying, huh, I guess I took him a little too early. Probably is going to finish somewhere in the back of the top 20 among starting pitchers that are being a possible top five guy. Is this more indicative of the Giolito that you expect going forward, or do you think there's the sort of bounce-back potential where, yeah, you can get him a discount now in 2022, and you could still get a guy that finishes top five among starting pitchers?

You know, I always thought that his command regression would come in the walk rate, and I wonder if it just came in the home run rate instead this year. I mean, the major difference between this year and last year, I mean, he's lost a few strikeouts, but other than that, the major difference between last year and this year is his home run rate. It was 1 per 9 last year, and it's 1.4 this year. What's interesting is I've seen some research just recently that the ball that we ended up playing with this year is performing mostly like the 2018 ball and in 2018 G Alito had a 1.4 home

run for nine and this year he has a 1.4 home run for nine I don't know I think he's a really good pitcher. I would take him as my first pitcher next year, but I would not take him as my first pitcher in that top two to three tier, where people buy him in the first two rounds, those types. Okay, so yeah. So if you're playing the wait a little on starting pitching game,

get a couple bats, two bats maybe to to start round three of a 15 team or you're okay with giolito as your your sort of wait on an ace it's not even waiting that long but i mean it is these days yeah for for high stakes it's waiting a long time for more typical leagues it's probably even a tinge on the early side. Projections are better than pitching plus. Or about the same. But he still rates really highly by pitching plus. And only the curveball is not an above average pitch. He's not throwing it that often either. Yeah, I think –

One thing that's just annoying when I think about a guy like this is just what ball are we going to play with next year? We don't even know what ball we're actually playing with this year, do we? Yeah, right. with next year. We don't even know what ball we're actually playing with this year, do we? So, I mean, what chance do we have of knowing what we're going to use next year? He's home run risky. That's the main thing with him. He's home run risky. It could go up or it could go down. If it goes down, he could be

a top three pitcher next year. All right. But not a massive drop. So basically, the player he's been this year is a solid expectation for the player he could be next year with room for a bit more uh aaron nola has a 430 era but a good whip plenty of k's not getting wins so in terms of like dollars earned he looks like a bust but i don't know if you did anything wrong if you were taking nola late in round two early in round three of drafts back during draft

season yeah um one interesting finding uh from the validation for pitching plus was that uh stuff plus is stickier year to year um and uh location plus uh is more meaningful in season in some ways. That makes it a little bit harder for me to think about someone like Aaron Nola who makes his bones on location more than stuff. In terms of stuff plus, his knuckle curve is well above average. His changeup is average. His cutter, which I think he started throwing this year. He didn't throw very much.

The foreseam is below average. And the sinker is even more below average than that. So it's all about location for him. And it's good enough to get him kind of close to lucas giolito and overall pitching plus but i think that location is more finicky next year to year so look at kyle hendricks you know i know that kyle hendricks is the example of like uh oh you know command matters more and this guy's been doing it forever and blah blah blah but he he didn't do it. He didn't do it this year.

I mean he's been alright but he didn't do vintage Kyle Hendricks. So I kind of think that the command artists are iffier year to year. I'm going to put this one on the screen if you're on YouTube you can see it already there but I'll read it out loud. What the heck happened

to Kyle Hendricks because I didn't have any reason to believe that he would fall apart like this i mean there's something about stuff that you can fall here's the thing you know if you miss your location uh but you miss with stuff you're good like you can still get a whiff you can get away with it and i think at some point everybody misses the location and at some point everybody's arm slot drops a you know an inch or moves close to their head an inch like kyle hendricks did or you know something little is barking that they you know they don't want to go on the il for it but there's there's something going on there's you know something in the back or something in the

shoulder or whatever and i think those little things add up to worse command outcomes so i mean it's not like when you look at hendrix you say oh well you know he lost a full mile an hour off his fastball or, you know, his whiffs cratered or whatever, like his whiffs did go down, but he had a 7.1% one canine last year and he had a 6.7 this year. But you look at that home run rate, I think the home run rate is often an indicator of where the command was that year. And he's had a home run rate of less than 1 per game, 1 per 9 his whole career, and then 1.6 this

year. I think it's all in the misses. Looking back, last season he had a 107 on both the curveball and the changeup for a Stuff Plus number. This year those pitches are both a tick below 100. The changeup's at 99.4, and the curveball's at 97.6. The changeup, I think, suffers in stuff metrics because he has two changeups. And it kind of melts away to looking like one average changeup

or below average changeup when it's actually, I think, two-plus change-ups that go in different directions. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. But, yeah, I mean, he's not a stuff guy. 94 stuff-plus overall, he's not a stuff guy. Location 107 is one of the best location numbers I've seen. So he's still up there,

and it makes him an average pitcher overall this year. So I guess what you're hoping for is uh just a little bit better health from from him next year i think there's got to be something sort of underlying there the rest of season projection from the bat is easily the best of all the fan graphs options right now 395 for the era 120 whip That would be the worst ratios of his career other than 2021. So that sort of decline is already sort of built into the projection for next year. And I think because he's not overpowering, because he doesn't rack up a lot of Ks, I think he's going to come out really cheap in 2022 drafts. I'd like to buy him in a place where i can do stream him on my team so i'd like to buy him as one of my last two pitchers maybe doable where i don't have to throw him in colorado or you know what

i mean like i like i've built in oh i have kyle hendricks for good matchups and i have i don't know jt brewbaker or something you know like a bench bench arm that's like him Hendricks for good matchups and I have JT Brubaker or something, you know, like a bench arm that's like him. Brubaker's very similar actually to Hendricks. It's mostly command. The stuff isn't really there. So if I had two of those guys at the bottom,

I could also drop one. I think if a guy like that isn't going well, you drop him. I was thinking more in NL-only leagues where the benchmark to get in those leagues, low, right? Waver wire guys are usually running high fours ERAs, horrible rips. He should beat that consistently. Yeah, if he gives you a 3.95 ERA in an NL-only, then you're all over it.

Yeah, with plenty of innings, he has a bad team, so wins might be a little hard to come by, but even this year on that bad team, 14 wins for Kyle Hendricks. So it hasn't been all bad from a pure Roto standpoint, even though he just hasn't looked at all like himself. I've streamed him. I've used him.

I'm trying to think if there's any other big early-round misses. We talked a lot about Blake Snell, and I guess the adjustment lately is he's really shortened up that arsenal. Do you just think he's better off sticking with the shorter arsenal to maintain his more recent effectiveness? I mean, there's a straight line you can draw between putting away the change-up and his success. About five starts ago, he put away the changeup, or at least over

his last five starts, he put up the way to change up. It's his best five starts in a row by Stuff Plus, best five starts in a row by Location Plus. I like that he's brought the curve back a little bit because I do think he needs it. It's not an amazing pitch by the metrics. It's a 99 stuff plus, 92 location plus. Not a really amazing pitch, but I do think that he needs to have a third pitch, especially if they're going to pitch him into the 6th and 7th, to keep turning that lineup over to give them a different look.

I've always looked at him and thought he should be a four-seam slider curveball guy. And I think maybe leaning into that may even help him improve those breaking balls. And you could see a better season from him. And the nice thing about buying Blake Snell is that by the traditional metrics that are sticky year to year and determine success, better season from him. And the nice thing about buying Blake Snell is that by the traditional metrics that are sticky year to year and determine success, like he's still pretty good.

Like in terms of strikeout rate, he's still there. Um, and, uh, you know, it's, it's not a bad bet to just bet on a guy who had a good strikeout rate and his

walk rate popped one year. You know, that's kind of what you would do with Hugh Darvish in a given season. Yeah, I agree with that sort of comp. I mean, the August numbers, a 172 ERA over his last six starts, 54 Ks and 36 and two-thirds innings, only 12 walks and four home runs allowed. Tinkering and getting that third pitch back in the offseason is still pretty doable. I don't get the sense that third pitch back in the off season is still pretty

doable i don't i don't get the sense that blake snell is the kind of guy that's going to sit there and go yeah i'm good with two pitches i'm just going to play video games i think he probably realizes gonna need that third pitch i got free agency coming up again soon getting closer you know you get as you get closer to free agency uh you know the the carrot is there. You come off of, you know, it may end up looking like his worst season of his career. He's won a Cy Young. So there is that kind of like, man, you know, I can do better than this. Yeah.

I just, I don't get the sense that he is the kind of person that doesn't care. I think they're going to keep tinkering away. We'll see what the Padres do as an organization with pitching in general this offseason because there could be some pretty big wholesale changes around there. Were there any other early round pitchers that you feel like were either big misses by the group or guys that you had early, even middle rounds,

that really just let you down this season? Let me see. I'm calling up the pitcher ranks. Going to find my mistakes. calling up the pitcher ranks. Going to find my mistakes. Calling up the pitcher ranks. Going to find my mistakes. Well, Jacob deGrom was kind of... I mean, it's a joke,

but I do remember there were people in the industry that were like, Jacob deGrom is an injury risk. Yeah, but I don't think that's a thing. I don't think declaring a pitcher to be an injury risk is a real skill of any kind. I'm not trying to pick on people that say that.

They're pitchers. They break all the damn time. Until we have better ways of predicting pitchers staying healthy, I feel like we can't make blanket statements about pitcher injury risk. Oh, yeah, he's likely to get hurt. They all are. I did try to have some sort of injury risk flag, didn't I? DeGrom did have elevated risk the way you calculated it,

if I recall correctly. He came up with like, I don't know if it was a red sort of score, right? This is my May one already. Yeah, I had a flag one. I need to go back to March or something. But I wonder how many of the guys that had similar health grades, how many of those guys ended up staying completely healthy

this year too. Okay, here we go. I've got my ranks. DeGrom, 80% injury list percentile injured. But, okay, so you're like, woo, the model, great job. Shane Bieber, my number two pitcher 23 percent 23rd percentile injury list oh so you're an idiot garrett cole 78th percentile

injury list why was he even 78th what the hell walker buehler 47 okay brandon woodruff 61 Walker Bueller, 47. Okay. Brandon Woodruff, 61. Aaron Nola, 49. Luis Castillo, 50. Jack Flaherty, 14th percentile injury risk. Hey, this next one, actually, Hugh Darvish, 93rd percentile. He has been hurt this year, right? Well, yeah, but I mean, I'm laughing because it's so hard to predict this. Yeah, is there really a pattern here? I mean, there's the faintest of patterns, but not a really great one. Max Serzer, little bit of injury.

Clayton Kershaw, 71st percentile, was hurt. Ken Tameida, 39th percentile. There is a failure in the model there to not pick up on the fact that his UCL was already partially torn. Yeah, how about Glassnow? What was his number at? 79th. See, he had elevated risk even before the sticky stuff change based on the model. Again, I just think this is almost – I'm not saying we shouldn't try.

I just think this is almost, I'm not saying we shouldn't try. I'm saying it's almost impossible right now to, with accuracy, predict pitcher health. Almost impossible. I think it's, in general, I think it's worth it. I'm going to do the flags again because here's Strasburg, 88th percentile. Pablo Lopez, who people probably didn't think

had much injury risk, was 60th percentile. I don't know. Zach Wheeler being 90th. Lance McCullers, was he hurt at all this year? I think he's been pretty healthy. I think I remember him having a vaccine-related absence, but I don't remember any injuries. Carrasco was 95th percentile, though.

I don't know. Denilson-Lamette was 95th percentile though um i don't know denilson lamette 86 percentile at least the the red flags uh seem to have produced a fair amount of injured players uh but anyway early round misses uh you know the shape of the season louise let's see here's another thing early round misses tend to be injuries, right? So Bieber, early round miss, injury. Jack Flaherty, early round miss, mostly due to injury. He's good when he's been out there. Right. Kershaw, early round miss, mostly injury.

Kenta Maeda was an early round miss based on play and on injury. And then we talked about Hendricks. We've talked about Snell. I guess the only sort of top 20 guy that pops that wasn't injury that we may want to talk about is Luis Castillo, but he's obviously had like two seasons. Yeah, he looks like he's back. The second one was a lot better.

Looks like he fixed it. I mean, you go a little further down, Paddock, I think, was an overdraft. Plesak was an overdraft. Yeah. And I knew it. I knew it. God, I hated my rank for Plesak. I really hated the ranking in there.

113 whip, though, this season. Yeah, I mean, he still has good command. There's something weird about those Indians pitchers, man. I don't think that Quantrill's a great bet for next year. I've been mostly selling him. There's something weird. I think they're well prepared. They have a good game caller.

I saw some analysis that said that Roberto Perez is like the second best game caller in baseball. I think they prepare really well for games, but they have huge blow-up games, especially against whenever they run into a good offense, don't they? Like, why do you think the Yankees destroy the Indians? Well, because they have a really good offense. Makes sense. Is there

an Angels pitcher, I mean, is there an Indians pitcher, healthy right now, so take Beaver out, that you would throw against the Yankees? I'd feel good about it. Yeah? No. No. That's somewhat meaningful

to me. I don't want that to be my don't draft him test, but maybe don't put him in your top 20 if you don't think you can throw him against the Yankees. Tristan McKenzie in the second half before the injury maybe started to pitch like a guy that you'd think about it with, but I would say generally no. No cigar. I don't think I'll have an Indian in my top 20 next year.

Yeah. Otherwise, you know where I really feel good? There's this interesting, in the 20s, there's Burns, Lynn, Lopezopez urias or kitty uh that's a decent place to go shopping yeah it turned out pretty good mccullers is right there but i'm also not mentioning zach gallon i i i think you could call it a miss, but it's a little bit like Laboratorians where I'm like, I'm going to make that mistake

again. Gallin had an arm injury early in the season. He's pitched enough, I think, you could say. It is a miss, but injuries were a factor in that miss for sure yeah i'm trying to call up his uh pitching plus thing we one of the things we want to go live with this uh partially because uh right now it's on shiny apps uh the the the stuff plus thing that i am using um and so it like re reloads a lot so i'm actually stalling

so that i can get that gallons page up because it still hasn't happened and it's gonna happen soon i'll race but i i mean i you're racing me it's probably making yours go slower stealing your bandwidth right now It's probably making yours go slower. Stealing your bandwidth right now. Anyway, I still see a guy with multiple really good pitches and command of those pitches. I'm going to chalk it up mostly to injury, like you said. He's got five pitches that are better than 100 on Stuff+.

Yes! And four of them have at least average location plus. I love him. I love him still. Yeah. I'm all in. It's going to be fun to get a discount on him temporarily. Yeah.

I'm going to have him next year. I think it'll be hard to rank like Carlos Carrasco. Oh, miserably difficult. I think because of his age and the injuries, he's going to fall a ton, though. I think ranking Kyle Hendricks is going to be pretty tough. I think ranking Jack Flaherty will be pretty tough because there were some metrics that didn't like him as much either.

Yeah. I think Flaherty, I would say, goes in the round four round five range pretty consistently by the time we get to march maybe he's a little cheaper before that because of the injuries but i think there's gonna be a realization that what he was doing this year when he was healthy was still pretty good so that sounds like uh 18th to 20th ranked pitcher yeah i think that's about where he'll fall but i mean i'm still in on flarity still like him great place to pitch yeah it's a huge part of it and uh the k rate looking at that

just real quick yeah it's it's still lower than you'd like it to be he does he does have the look of pitch pitcher too like a like a clearly solid sp2 that may never be a year over year ace even though in that 2019 season in the year of the rabbit ball looked like a hey i'm an ace i'm maybe a top five guy sort of ceiling a good two or a winner logan webb's not gonna have that much healing is he logan webber jack flarity jack flarity flarity flarity yeah yeah logan predicting Logan Webb or Jack Flaherty? Flaherty. Predicting Logan Webb's 2022 ADP. It's a topic for another day because I don't have a good feel for that situation. Flaherty might strike out four more guys per nine than Webb. The reason I brought it up is because I think sometimes you just have to give the Cardinal pitchers like a fairly sizable park boost.

San Francisco and St. Louis are the best places to pitch. Yeah, I think with Flaherty, oh man, the Babbitt began this year at 229. It jumps off the page, not because I think Babbitt's awesome, but that's really, really low. It's like, is the defense that good? But for his career, it's 252. Yeah.

I don't think you'd hit him as hard as you'd hit a lot of other guys that have that. But, man, that's remarkable. That's so low. Yeah. Lowest of his career so far. He was at 242 in that 2019 season, though. I'm sure that was a reason people were betting against him. Career, 332 ERA., career 382 FIP.

His FIP has been over four the last two years. I will say this. FIP is really bad at being projected. FIP is not a good thing. It does not help. It does not help in season. It does not help season to season. FIP is mostly useless.

I'm going to race it off my dashboard. I can do that. You can take FIP away and never look at it again. Bye-bye. It's happening right here on the radio. Bam. No more FIP.

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