Rates & Barrels - The Angels’ Rough Week and The Yankees’ Callups

Episode Date: August 25, 2023

DVR and Al discuss the fallout from Shohei Ohtani’s torn UCL and Mike Trout’s return to the IL, and they also look into the fantasy appeal of several recently-promoted players, including Oswald Peraza, Everson Pereira, Wilyer Abreu and Korey Lee. On the pitching side, DVR and Al consider the types of leagues that Cole Ragans and Ryan Pepiot should be added to, and they talk about the potential for saves in the Athletics’ bullpen. Rundown 1:27 Bad news for the Angels 9:46 The rest of the week’s big news 24:06 Other hitters of note 35;09 Pitchers to consider 43:24 Closer corner Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Al on Twitter: @almelchiorBB e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Nuts.com is offering new customers a free gift with purchase and free shipping on orders of $29 or more at Nuts.com/rates. Get 20% OFF with our code RATES at calderalab.com/RATES to unlock your youthful glow with Caldera + Lab! #teamcaldera Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it is Friday, August 25th, and Derek Van Ryper here with Alan Melchior, digging into the big stories of the week as they impact the fantasy world. Trying to figure out what's going to happen going into this weekend as we prepare for another week of fab. And Al, it's kind of fun. We're flipping the calendar to September next week. Like I am, I'm closing in the end of my season. I have another stretch of paternity leave coming up. It's not a second child. It's just the remaining paternity leave for the first one.

So I've got one more week of shows before I'm in that world again. And then I'm flipping the calendar 2024. I'll be back in October. So it'll be more for the recapping of the whole season and then starting to look ahead to next season. Hard to believe that only,

you can count the weekly fabs remaining on one hand in many leagues. So we've covered a lot of ground. That we have. Yeah. And the column I wrote this week, I had to make a reference to somebody for rest of season as like over the season's last five weeks. When did that happen? So, yeah, I mean, the playoffs in one league already a head to head league.

So it's yeah, it's whizzed by this year. Really has. Now, we've got a lot of time for stuff to go wrong, as we learned this week. I feel like I somehow jinxed Shohei Otani when Eno and I talked earlier in the week. We were talking about the too-early meatball draft that Rob DiPietro started, the first seven rounds of that draft. early meatball draft that Rob DiPietro started the first seven rounds of that draft. And I said something to the effect of Acuna and Otani are going to be one, two on a lot of boards as it stands right now, barring injuries. Right.

And it happened. Unfortunately, Shohei Otani suffered a torn UCL in his pitching elbow. So he's done pitching for 2023. That's what we know as of today. This is lunchtime on the East Coast on Friday as we're having this conversation. We still don't know the severity of the tear, but for now, he's still expected to hit. And I think that's a very slippery slope, if only because if we find out in the next few days or in the coming weeks that a surgery of some kind, be that internal brace or Tommy John surgery, which Otani has had before, in that instance, there might be some temptation to say, let's shut it down completely, have surgery now,

and begin the rehab process a bit sooner instead of pushing through the final month of the season. Because I think with pending free agency being maybe the most exciting free agent ever and the most challenging player to evaluate from a long-term perspective that we've ever seen in all the most exciting ways now we have this unfortunate variable of working around it from an injury perspective and there's a whole bunch of fantasy angles here there's like well if he keeps hitting the rest of the season great you still get what he does with his bat. If he stops hitting, that opens up playing time for somebody else on the Angels depth chart. And now that he stopped pitching, that opens up innings for somebody else in that depth chart. But I'm not necessarily excited about the depth in the Angels organization.

And then, of course, there are keeper and dynasty implications, but I think in many long-term leagues, most long-term leagues, you should take a lot of comfort in what happened the last time Shohei Otani went through Tommy John surgery. He was able to hit in the year immediately after having Tommy John. He had a slightly delayed start to the season, had surgery in October, and was hitting in games by May. Played over 100 games that year and performed very well. I think the longer-term questions about pitching are more challenging because if it's the second Tommy John, outcomes are not as good as they are for the first, and then how he's eased back in. It took him a little longer, it seemed, to get right as a pitcher.

He pitched in 2020, but barely. It was two appearances. The command wasn't there. And he came back in 2021, two years removed from surgery, and started to become the pitcher that we've seen over the last three seasons now. So a ton to unpack here. It's brutal news just for anyone who loves baseball, no matter how you slice it, Angels fan,

fantasy player, general baseball fan. We're just hoping for the best for Otani, and I think if there's anybody you'd bet on to make it all the way back, no matter what the final plan to heal is, he would be that guy.

Right. Obviously, we rooted for him. the last time uh you know you want to have this you know two-way player unique sensation in the game uh performing as well as he possibly can uh yeah i i if you've got him in a keeper league dynasty league it's obviously a huge disappointment but i just don't conceive of the situation where you don't stash him for however long it takes. Obviously, if he's shut down as a hitter, and I would think that would make sense. And having him as a utility hitter on one of my teams,

there's a part of me that would like to see him keep hitting. I'm not sure what the argument would be for the angels to keep running them out there. So I think you've got to be, be prepared for that. And that, that circles us back to a week ago when we talked about Nolan Shanual. And I said,

and now I feel like maybe I jinxed it or something. Cause I said, well, he's definitely not going to be DHing, but maybe that is the solution for, for filling that vacancy when, and if it occurs and also for keeping Shanwell in the lineup. Because I'm not under the impression that Krohn's absence is necessarily a long-term thing. But if it isn't, then that would be a way to keep them both in the lineup.

Yeah, and I think what's even worse for the Angels, I mean, their playoff hopes have gone basically to zero just in this stretch since the trade deadline, despite going all in. Sometimes you go all in and it doesn't work out. We've talked about that a lot on the Athletic Baseball Show. Mike Trout went back on the IL, too. I mean, it's hard to imagine a potential season-ending injury for Mike Trout being overshadowed this way, but went back on the IL just one day after being activated. I think it was an attempt to try and play through the pain. And unfortunately for Trout, it doesn't look like that's something he's able to do. So I don't know if we're going to see him again this year. I think there's going to be some questions that bubble up about his long-term future with the Angels. I mean,

there's obviously a lot of time and money left in his contract but if they if they lose otani in free agency i would wonder if they start fielding calls on mike trout even though it would have seemed unthinkable three or four years ago to possibly trade him away but i was looking at the the outfield depth compared to the infield depth i think if we're going to see you know less mike trout we're probably going to see more mickey moniak over what's left of the season because with the gritchick addition with with Renfro holding down a regular spot, Moniak at least against righties and maybe even against some lefties is probably their fallback plan at this point. Yeah, I took that same look at the depth chart and he seems like the clear playing time beneficiary. So he fared well,, he fared well hitting with power,

striking out a lot. And, you know, I sort of looked at his line and thought, I know this is going to be sort of a weird comp, but, and actually, okay.

For a second, I blanked on, on the cop I was going to make, but sort of like the Jorge Alfaro of, of outfielders. But I think that's kind of plate skills. Yeah. But I think it's kind of plate skills. Yeah. But I think it's working out better for Moniak than it,

than it has for Alfaro. So, you know, there's, there's definitely more power there, but somehow defies the potential damage of a really high strikeout rate. Yeah. I think with Moniak,

what you're, what you're looking at is you try and map out his future. He's probably a fourth outfielder with as much swing and miss as he's showing. That makes sense, at least with the skills being with the out right now. A 35% K rate over nearly 300 plate appearances this year and a 48.6% O swing percentage. We talked a lot about chase rates last week. percentage. We talked a lot about chase rates last week. It's not everything, but when you are extreme in that regard and you have the negative result of that elevated K rate, there's a pretty big limitation on what you can do as a player with both of those things. You can be aggressive

and strike out 27% of the time and continue to play a ton. So I think unless we see better plate skills from Moniak down the stretch in the beginning of 2024. I just think fourth outfielder with pop and speed is what he is. It's a nice big league player. It's just not necessarily a fantasy player for the bulk of leagues out there. He'd be more of a temporary fill-in when someone's hurt. A monoleague sort of consideration. Again, not the outcome you want.

13.6% barrel rate is there with the positives, but just so many things working against him right now in this season. A 401 BABIP too, right? So you normalize the BABIP, take 50 or 60 points off that, and suddenly he goes from being a 280 hitter to a 220 or 230 hitter. So you're lagging in average and OBP. That's the problem that you're looking at with Mickey Moniak. But the Otani replacements, if he stops hitting at some point, it's just infield depth, right? It's guys like Luis Ranjifo and Eduardo Escobar.

You just stabilize that entire group. Anybody who was getting an 80% share probably gets bumped up. I'm not sure any one player pops into a full-time role as a result of a change in their plans for Otani. We did see some news break this week that JD Martinez will be down two to three weeks with a groin strain. And then we saw Michael Bush get the call from the Dodgers. Is this finally the opportunity for Michael Bush to find consistent playing time, at least

in the short term at the big league level. It seems like he's been languishing in the upper levels of the Dodgers system for a long time, putting up good power numbers at AAA. This year, he's cut the strikeout rate down under 20%, making a lot of hard contact. He's popped 24 homers in 88 games. Yes, it's the PCL. Yes, he's 25, but that's pretty impressive despite that context. So how much do you think we'll see Michael Bush in the absence of JD Martinez?

Well, this, you know, this being the Dodgers, I don't even know that you can necessarily count on Bush to get all the starts against righties, probably the bulk of those. But I think, you know, my expectation is probably about 60% of the starts, including the ones against left-handers. So just a total starts probably about 60, maybe 65%. And again, that's over probably just a two to three week period. So he has to overcome the level of performance that he's had prior times that he's come up for the Dodgers. I think this is his third time this season, and the first two times didn't go all that well.

So he's really got to take advantage of this particular stint, I think, to earn a longer look on the Major League roster. So it's asking a lot, but like you say, you look at the minor league track record and you think, okay, if anybody can achieve that, Bush should be able to, but it just raises the question of why has he had such a tough time adjusting the previous times that he's come up? So I think he's got to really hit the ground running and even then there's no guarantee that he stays up. Yeah. A lot of moving parts,

of course, on that depth chart. I saw Quique Hernandez made a start at third base on Wednesday when Bush wasn't in the lineup. So they used Max Muncy as the DH. Bush has started two of three games since Martinez went on the IL and since Bush came back up to the big league level on Tuesday. So watch him through the weekend series. I think if he plays, if he starts every game over the weekend series, I might be tempted to say in a 15-team league that I actually want to add Michael Bush this weekend. But if you see more sporadic playing time in this weekend series, you probably have to temper expectations down to the point where it's got to be a deep keeper league or some kind of monolingue format to actually roster him in any sort of expectation of enough value. The Reds placed Joey Votto on the IL,

and I think this is another situation where because of the depth that the Reds have brought up to the big league roster over the course of this season, especially on the infield, I'm not sure there's any one singular winner, but maybe it does take the playing time floor for a player or two and kind of nudge it to the point where you feel good in 15 team leagues about playing someone that might have been a little more borderline if Votto were still healthy. So do you see any clear upgrades or winners in the short term while Votto is on the shelf? I think probably the player that's got the best chance of really solidifying their playing time is Noel V. Marte.

Because when the Reds brought him up, I mean, my first reaction was sort of like, okay, this is kind of exciting, but why are they doing this? We spent how many weeks wondering, okay, where is the playing time going to be for Christian Encarnacion-Strand? And they figured that out. And granted, there've also been some injuries.

But then I didn't foresee Marte as being a part of this crowded roster mix in 2023. I thought maybe that's next year's problem. So he's gotten a decent amount of playing time in the short time he has been up. And I think with Votto out, then maybe we are looking at Marte getting at least five starts a week. I was stunned to see Nick Martini as the DH and cleanup hitter for the Reds on Thursday against Arizona. That doesn't make sense to me at all. Of all the players you could play, with the flexibility they've got built into that roster, why go that direction? We'll see what happens.

It's another situation to watch during the weekend, but I think you're probably right that if Marte had a 50%, 60% starter share before the Votto injury, he could push that number up to the point where he's more viable in our weekly leagues. I guess the case for Nick Martini, even though he's 33 at AAA, was having a nice season at that level, a lot of hard contact, getting to that power a little more consistently than he did earlier in his career. A nice story, but just not the guy that I expected to see in that spot for Cincinnati.

Well, now you have another player to consider on the grid when Oakland and Cincinnati come up. Yes, yes. That's the beauty of Immaculate Grid, right? You can pull those Nick Martinis out there and end up with a 0.5%. I love those low usage plays for the grid. Jose Abreu is back for the Astros. You wrote about Yainer Diaz in the waiver wire column this week. So I'm curious if you have any concerns about the playing time volume for Diaz,

given that Diaz was playing quite a bit at first in Abreu's absence? Yeah, maybe it does have a slight impact on that. But the argument that I was making in the column about Diaz is that he is, since late May, he's been the number one fantasy catcher. At least that's what the CBS custom rankings tool spit out when I put in a date in late May when Diaz started to get hot. So number one catcher and by a good margin. And I just don't see the Astros taking somebody who's been not just one of the best catchers, but actually one of the best hitters in the major leagues

over the last three months and taking him out of the lineup for somebody like Abreu who's struggled. And I'm not suggesting that Abreu doesn't play at all, but I'm saying maybe Abreu sits a couple times a week and that clears enough time. Because as it is between catching and occasional DHing, Diaz was pretty close to everyday play anyway. So you sit Abreu a couple times a week, and I think that basically takes care of the playing time for Diaz was pretty close to everyday play anyway. So you said Abreu a couple of times a week. And I think that basically takes care of the playing time for Diaz. And I'd be actually really surprised that the Astros didn't do that. Yeah. I think it's interesting too. When you look at the approach of Yainer Diaz, we talked about Mickey Moniak and the high O-swing percentage. Yainer Diaz has a 47.1% O-swing percentage, only an 18.2%

strikeout rate. That comes back to the hit tool. How good is the hit tool? When you swing at pitches outside the zone, can you get to the high fastballs? Can you get to stuff that's away? Can you get to stuff that's in on your hands? Clearly, Yainer Diaz can do that.

There's a massive difference in the swing and miss, and that's been part of his profile all the way through his time in the minor leagues. He's not, not always the most patient hitter. We're seeing that this year too. We haven't seen a ton of,

of even good walk rates from him in the minors, but when you can hit like that, why would you walk? I'm with you on, I'm just a single catcher league usage still being there. Even if it's a slight drop in playing time, I think the bigger question long-term is will Diaz's defense get to a point where he can catch more? That's been the question for me all season long,

and I don't know if we're even going to have clarity on that with one big league season in the books. Let's go to a former member of the Astros organization who's now getting an opportunity to play with the White Sox, Corey Lee, who was also part of that catcher depth chart at one time in Houston. He is up, and Yasmany Grandal is still there. The White Sox didn't find a taker for Grandal at the trade deadline, but they have no incentive to play Grandal down the stretch.

They have more incentive to see where Corey Lee is at, give him a lot of looks against big league pitching, and get a sense for whether he could be their starter next year or if they may need to go out and get a veteran to share that workload with him. So I'm curious what your interest level is in Corey Lee. Is it two catcher leagues only? Is it mono leagues only? Because there have been some pretty interesting numbers from him in the minors, especially last season. It was a 25 homer, 12 steal season at AAA Sugarland

during his final full season in Houston. Yeah, and it's not been quite as productive a year for Lee this year, but you can see that ceiling there. So, yeah, I'm definitely interested in Lee. I think we are definitely looking at two catcher leagues because looking at Diaz yesterday and kind of just looking down the depth of catchers in terms of fantasy value.

And it really thins out after about the top 15 or 16 or so. And I think Lee, unless he hits that ceiling right away with the White Sox, I don't see him in that cohort. So I think he's probably pretty firmly outside the top 20 rest of season. And yeah, unless it's a super deep league, you're looking at him as a second catcher. Yeah, that's where I'm at too. But an intriguing second catcher nonetheless. Before we started recording, we started talking about the difficulty of finding pitching. It seems like so many pitchers, even in a 12-team league, when you look at a projected starters grid,

so many players that are lined up to start are already rostered. So if you're chasing pitching at the end of the season, it is absolutely brutal. I'm wondering if you see opportunity with the Cubs, Drew Smiley going back into the bullpen. Who do you see as the most likely candidate to step in and take over a starting role with that adjustment for Smiley? Well, I think probably a lot of people are going to assume or go to Hayden Wisniewski, and maybe it will be Wisniewski. But I do have to wonder if maybe they're just going to dip into AAA and call up Jordan Wicks, given that the struggles Wisniewski's had when starting this year.

And I think if they're going to go that route, that Wicks is the most obvious choice. I did read something fairly recently in The Athletic about Ben Brown that he may come up in September, but he still hasn't pitched since the end of July. So he's been dealing with a lat issue. So in terms of the very short term, I think Brown, as far as I know, is out of consideration. So I think that I would assume probably it's going to be Wicks. And then I've got to tip my hat to MLB trade rumors because I was not even aware that Shane Green was in the Cubs system now. But they, summarizing the situation, included his name there. That's kind of an intriguing possibility because he is getting stretched out.

He's pitched decently in a few starts for Iowa. And I'm not sure why they would necessarily go with Shane Green instead of Wicks. But maybe just something to... It would be a very interesting story for sure. And a name to tuck away. Yeah, I'm going to file the Shane Green is in the Cubs organization in the same folder as Amir Garrett getting released by the Guardians from their AAA affiliate this week. I saw that news break. Oh, that's where Amir Garrett was.

I sort of just lost track of the organization he was in. And I keep waiting. he was in. And I keep waiting, by the way, I keep waiting for Amir Garrett to land in a place like Tampa Bay or Los Angeles with the Dodgers or one of the orgs that does really well at pitching. The Brewers, I think, would also fit. I want to see some team get all of the good from Amir Garrett out of the bullpen because I think he could still be filthy in the right circumstances. But Cleveland is one of those organizations that had a lot of success with pitching and didn't seem like they were able to make any sort of progress with Garrett during the time. He was there only through four and two-thirds innings for them this year. So he's really had a rough go of it. Spent most of this year with the Royals and just didn't look like the guy that we saw a

few years ago in Cincinnati. But I guess that's neither here nor there. More just a, oh, that's where he is sort of moment. Had the same thing when I saw Shane Green's name on the rundown today. We have one closer thing to keep an eye on with Kenley Jansen. He's got a hamstring injury. The initial suggestion is that he should avoid the IL. I feel like they say that all the time with Kenley Jansen. Oh, this isn't that bad.

He should be okay. If he misses a few outings or if he does in fact land on the IL, who do you like in that Red Sox bullpen to possibly step in for save opportunities? I don't think there's any debate, any controversy here. I think we would all expect Chris Martin to step in and that would make him probably the top target in most leagues right now. He's widely available. He's got a little bit of closing experience. He's having an extremely good season doing what he does, not a ton of swing and miss, but a lot of very low grounders and getting the job done. So I think he'd be a good target if it looked like he was going to be in line for saves for a couple of weeks or more. Yeah, I think I'm with you good target if it looked like he was going to be in line for saves for a couple weeks or more.

Yeah, I think I'm with you on Martin being that next option up for the Red Sox if they decide to give Jansen a bit of a breather. I saw on the Roto-Wire news feed that O'Neal Cruz has actually been shut down in his running progression this week. He's not making the progress they were hoping with his surgically repaired left ankle. I think we're at the point now in the season where you probably don't expect to see O'Neal Cruz make it back this year, which is a bummer. I mean, more important, of course, is getting him healthy for the long term. But I kind of get the impression that you'd rather see him for three or four weeks than not see him at all, right? Test it out in games, get a little more development in. three or four weeks to not see him at all, right? Test it out in games, get a little more development in. But it's probably going to be 2024 before we see Cruz again,

barring a rapid improvement in his progression. Disappointing, of course, because we wanted to see him back before the end of the season. I mentioned earlier in this week that we'd have more updates on Wander Franco. The change for this week. He's been placed on administrative leave as the Rays basically are in a holding pattern. Major League Baseball and authorities in the Dominican Republic are continuing their investigation into multiple allegations of improper relationships Franco had with minors. So that's just the latest on him, not much else to share right now. We'll keep an eye on that

story. Moving back to some other potential changes around depth charts. The Yankees called a few players up. Oswald Peraza is back. Everson Pereira is up. You wrote about them in your column this week, Al. What are your interest levels in Peraza and Pereira in this final stretch of the season where the Yankees are really starting to look more to the future for good reason. They need to figure out how much young talent they can rely on in 2024. Yeah, I know it makes a lot of sense. Peraza's started a few games in a row where IKF had been starting at third base. So it makes a ton of sense to give Peraza a look there. And I put him sort of in the same bucket as Michael Bush because he's had some opportunities

before, none especially lengthy, but he never really made the most of them. And the minor league numbers for Peraza, which suggests that he could be a five category contributor, he's had trouble contributing really in any categories in the times that he's been up. So I like Peraza a little better than Bush right now, just because for Bush, I do see that as a very limited give him a chance to show both the power and the speed, as well as the contact skills and see if he can do something over the remainder of the season. Yeah, I think both players offer a little something. And I think the encouraging thing when you look at Peraza's numbers at AAA this year, yeah, there's power in their speed just in the form of homers and steals in the numbers. He has made a decent amount of hard contact. Fangraphs has hard hit rates for AAA. 36.1% is a pretty nice hard hit rate.

I think the biggest knock on Oswald Peraza that we've had on this show over the last couple of years is questions about the quality of the contact that he's going to make. If he's able to hit the ball hard at a clip like that against top-level pitching, hasn't happened so far, but if he's able to do that, it erases a lot of questions about his viability as an everyday player.

I think the more complicated question for the Yankees to figure out is what do you do if you're going to keep Gleyber Torres, Anthony Volpe, and Peraza? How do you play those guys around the infield? How do you configure that? But I think ultimately there's a lot to like with Peraza because of that power-speed combo. If the power's not there, he can fall back on the speed so long as he continues to show good judgment at the plate, and he was doing that throughout his time at AAA again this season. Walk rate close to 10%, K rate under 20%, so all good things for him.

Pereira's just got that unique approach that we talked about a few weeks ago on Project Prospect where he gets to the power, and he does it in a way where he has to really sell out to do it. It was a 27.8% K rate during his brief time at AAA this year, and even a 29.2% K rate during his brief time at AAA this year, and even a 29.2% K rate at AA. It's sort of age appropriate for what he likes to do. I think this is more of like the, if it goes right, it looks a lot like the Adelise Garcia performances in the long run. And remember, it took a little time for Garcia to get there. But I wonder if the Yankees

will be patient enough, if there's a steep learning curve, if there's too much swing and miss initially, will they continue to let Everson Pereira grow against big league pitching because of the pressure in that organization to win constantly? Yeah, yeah. And again, this is probably as good of an opportunity as they would have to look at somebody like Pereira because they're, they're clearly out of the playoff picture right now. And their alternatives are not great. I mean, I think in his absence, you'd probably be looking at Jake Bowers or, you know, at least in a platoon situation, but why, you know, at this point, why would you give him the playing time when you've got one of your better prospects up and give him an opportunity to see what he can do so

I yeah a lot of things that I said about Perez I think apply to Pereira in terms of the longer opportunity the the bigger window for them to get used to the major league environment to you know to become productive and as you highlighted I, he's got probably the higher power ceiling of the two players. He's more reliant on that for the fantasy value. Like I said, the strikeout rate is probably going to push his batting average floor down. Probably not going to steal nearly as many bases

as Peraza would, but the power itself, and again, hitting in Yankee Stadium, there's something to like there, certainly for 15-team leagues. Yeah, Pereira is a great what-could-go-right sort of player, despite his flaws, if you're chasing power in the final five weeks of the season. A possible sleeper emerging in Boston, Willier Abreu. Talk about a nice little trade that the Red Sox made with the Astros, getting Abreu and Emmanuel Valdez back from Houston in that Vasquez trade.

Abreu put together a really nice season at AAA before getting the call earlier this week. 22 homers, 8 steals in 86 games with a 391 OBP, 538 slug. That's a career high in the slugging percentage department. Showing improvements in his strikeout rate underlying hard hit rate numbers pretty good too got a 38.9 from him he's age appropriate for the level being a 24 year old playing at triple a but how much do you think the red socks will try to take a look at abreu here in these final weeks because he's definitely interesting if they want to let him at least play against righties since he could be on the big side of platoon yeah and there's an opportunity now because he's up because duran duran is uh is out

uh with a toe contusion and apparently he's that's not necessarily when i hear toe contusion i think oh that's that's a minimum stay but he's in a walking boot and that there there's an unclear timetable there so maybe abbreu does get a decent look. But the question is when Duran comes back, and I assume he'll be back at some point. It's a crowded situation without Duran in the picture. So I do think even as good of a season as Abreu's had at Worcester, that I just don't see where he fits in with one more outfielder in the picture. So I think it's a short-term play, 15-team leagues, and probably limited to 15-team leagues

because I think it's not necessarily a literal everyday assignment for Abreu right now. But watch the situation. I mean, if it takes Durant a while to come back, this could be an interesting player and maybe appeal broader than just the 50-teamers. Yeah, it looks like a one-for-one swap just in terms of the role, though, being on the big side of Platoon. You look at the schedule for the upcoming week,

it looks like the first series, home against the Astros, it's Christian Javier, Jose Urquidy, JP France, all righties, so it could be three at the beginning of the week and then a day off before a three-game series in Kansas City where it would be Jordan Lyles, Alec Marsh, and Zach Greinke. So all righties on the schedule for next week.

And then three more righties to begin the following week coming out of the Labor Day weekend. So this could be a very schedule-dependent opportunity, but a few ways for it to go right for Willier Abreu. We were talking about catchers a little bit earlier. Just in case he was dropped while he was hurt, Logan Ohapi is back. I didn't think he'd make it back this season, Al. Glad to see him out there again. Clearly a guy that fits in well for this Angels core. One of the most fun trades of a recent trade deadline when they acquired Ohapi from the Phillies for Brandon Marsh in 2022.

Do you think there's any concern just about extra days off just to make sure that Ohapi doesn't have a setback with that surgically repaired shoulder over the final five weeks? You know, you would think that there would be, and that maybe should be the approach that the Angels are taking, but he started four of the first five games back. Now, there was a doubleheader on Wednesday, so obviously he wasn't going to start both of those games. But it's actually been a pretty aggressive usage pattern right out of the gate, which really surprises me a little bit. So on the one hand, that could be seen as an encouraging thing,

and it's not that he's not doing anything positive offensively. He's actually hit a lot of hard hit balls since coming back. He's also swinging and missing a lot, including on pitches in the zone. So I think that's a bit of a red flag. And I understand we're talking about statistics that are going granular on an already really small sample. But given that, you would expect there'd be some adjustment period. That high swing and miss rate does concern me a little bit for Ohapi. But the fact that he is making a lot of hard contact despite that, to me, is a good sign. And certainly, if he's out there in two catcher leagues, and I imagine he is.

His roster rate is way down from where it was back in April. So he's probably out there in some two catcher leagues. In fact, I know he's out there in some of mine. So you should definitely check your waiver wire. I think you're looking at pretty deep one catcher leagues to pick him up. But in those kinds of situations, I think there's enough there to add him to your roster. Yeah. It might not be a case where you look at Logan Ahapi and expect him to have the complete ceiling down the stretch that he has going forward just because, again, coming off the major injury, that's a long layoff

and a significant injury that he's working his way back from. But 80% of that ceiling is worthwhile in a two-catcher league as we've seen throughout his performance, the upper levels of the minor leagues and the brief time that he was healthy for the Angels to begin this season. For deep, deep leagues, Jake Cave is playing a lot in Philly. I'm curious what it is about Cave that you like, Al. Well, the playing time, as you mentioned, and that surprised me. And just looking over rosters and batting orders preparing for the column I was really surprised by the amount of playing time that Cave has been getting with the Phillies and of course it's a platoon situation but he's on the fatter side of the platoon and just the fact

that this is somebody who when he was with the Twins showed a little bit of power and now he's with a team that plays in the home park that that's just going to amplify that power that Cave has. So he's got a decent amount of playing time. He's in a good situation, good lineup. I think it's about as positive of a situation as Cave could have, given his skill set, and almost completely unrostered. So certainly mono leagues, and I think, depending on the schedule, somebody to look at in 15-teamers.

Yeah, looking at the schedule, I think I'm keeping him off 15 team leagues unless I've got daily moves he's got a start against a lefty in each of the next three series for the Phillies so he'll get about a two thirds playing time share unless they want to use him against same-handed pitching based on the way that roster is built right now they don't necessarily have to do that but yeah deep leagues with daily moves I think you could actually do worse than Jake Cave at this point. Let's take a look at some pitchers to consider. Cole Reagans has been getting a lot of attention this week and he's gone in many mid-sized and deeper leagues because there were some signs of a possible second half breakout even a couple weeks ago.

Now it's kind of shifted to more of a question of should Cole Reagans be rostered in all formats? He's pumping 99 from the left side. He's got a slider that he's throwing now in Kansas City. This looks like a really nice trade that the Royals made when they flipped Aroldis Chapman to Texas back at the end of June. I mean, an amazing trade for the Royals. And it's amazing that in this very short time, he's made six starts for the Royals. He hasn't turned into a bad one. No more than three earned runs in any start.

Lots of strikeouts. Just good results overall. And it doesn't matter if you're looking at barrel rate, if you're looking at swinging strike rate, chase rate, every indicator for Reagan's is very good to exceptional. So after six starts, I feel pretty confident that, yeah, he should be starting everywhere, 18, 10 team, 12 team for sure. And he's out there in a lot of 12 teamers at this point, given what his roster rate is.

So it's time. It's the home stretch, and you have an opportunity still in some shallow to standard-sized leagues to pick up a pitcher who for the last month plus has been pitching as well as anybody. Yeah, he's showing an arsenal that could make him a top 30 to top 40 starting pitcher going into next season if he continues on this current trajectory, which is just a really impressive turnaround for a guy that really hadn't found much traction at the big league level previously, the upcoming matchup is going to be home against the Pirates. That's a good one. Looking at the week coming out of Labor Day weekend, it's a two-step where he'd get the

White Sox at home. Yep, that's good. And then a more difficult matchup on the road against the Jays. But given how well he's pitched, I think you would take that two-step based on where things stand today for Cole Reagans. Now, finding a widely available pitcher with a really high ceiling right now is a challenge. I present to you Ryan Pepeo. As a result of Tony Gonsolin's injury, we know Walker Buehler's trying to get back before the end of the season. He's still weeks away, if he even makes it back during the regular season at all. Ryan Peppio had a pretty bad oblique injury to start the year.

Didn't pitch in a game until July, but he has looked like a different pitcher between AAA and the big leagues. It's kind of a bulk role for him right now at the Dodgers. He's made two appearances, both out of the bullpen, but they were long relief appearances, four and five innings respectively. 11 Ks in nine innings, and the big number is the one that you see in the walks column. And at AAA this year at Oklahoma City, 26 walks or 26 strikeouts in 22 and two thirds innings, five walks. That is a complete turnaround from the biggest skills flaw that Ryan Pepeo has shown in the past. Do you trust it in about 30 or so innings? Because the talent has always been there.

And it's rare to find someone that can give you a lot of innings and potentially do it with excellent ratios this late in the year. Yeah, and it's really hard to say, well, I'm going to trust this change when you're looking at a pretty limited number of minor league innings and a very limited number of major league innings. But just a few moments ago, I was talking about both the encouraging and discouraging things that I was seeing from Logan Ohapi in a handful of games. So when you see things that are kind of at the extremes, even a small sample, it's kind of hard not to take them more seriously. So you're talking about the walk rate, which to me is that that was the biggest area of improvement for Pepeo, his chase rate in 2022, 29.5%, which actually isn't that bad. But when you don't throw a lot of strikes, you kind of have to elevate that stat. Well, this year so far, again, in limited innings, 35.2%, which is just a downright really good chase rate. He's got a CSW of 33.1%, which is outstanding. In the zone, contact rate of 77.3%.

Again, outstanding. So I don't want to overdo it because it's not that many innings. But that's just a really good profile that he's achieved. And again, it corresponds with what he did in Oklahoma City. So I had slept on this a bit. DVR, we talked about him a little bit beforehand. I was like, Ryan Pepeo, really? And then taking a closer look, I don't think I'm ready in 12-team leagues unless I just have a hole to fill. And he probably is the best available pitcher out there. But if he's out there in 15-teamers, Pepeo definitely needs to be added.

Yeah, it's two thumbs up in a 15 team league for sure. In 12, I might be in a spot where pitching is thin enough even there. I think some of the NFBC formats, those are the ones where I'm always looking at that projected starters grid tool over at Rotowire, just trying to find anybody I like. I think I'm trying to add Pepeo even in 12s that are in that sort of bucket. Now, if you're in an 8 or a 10 team league, maybe you want to play the matchups a little bit, but I think he pitched well enough in that bulk role coming out of that double header to justify a spot in this rotation. Because of the Gonsolin injury, they could go Kershaw, Urias, Lynn, Bobby Miller, and then Pepeo as the number five starter. If that happens, the start this week would be a home start against the Diamondbacks. He's stretched out enough to go five plus, so I think that's great.

The following week, if Pepeo is a member of this rotation, he could start at Miami and at Washington. So you get a good home matchup for this next one if it happens, plus a two-step the following week. There's a ton to like here. So I'm definitely in on Ryan Pepeo. week there's a ton to like here so i'm definitely in on ryan pepio and before we started recording i thought maybe i had a hot take on my hands i don't know if i actually do after seeing your response we saw kyle harrison debut this week and the way the giants broke him in and we're using him at triple a it's also kind of this bulk role that's not a traditional starter situation. I think Ryan Pepeo's path to a normal starter's workload is so much clearer that it's Pepeo over Harrison for me by a mile. I think the usage for Harrison is actually going to make it difficult to rely on

him in more shallow formats in the short term, even though the long-term outlook could still be good enough to make him relevant everywhere. In 2024 or 2025, we could be talking about Kyle Harrison as a top 30, top 40 starting pitcher. It just seems like it might take a little more time than we were hoping at the beginning of this season. Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And yeah, you were a little surprised that you said you'd take Pepe over Harrison.

I absolutely agree. And I think the number one reason is something that you pointed out, that Pepe was already stretched out. Harrison, I mean, we can't rightfully expect him to go five innings in any given outing. He did it once this year at AAA. So you're looking for somebody who can pitch three or four innings at a shot. And each time he goes out there, he's actually got an opportunity to get six or maybe seven strikeouts. shot. And each time he goes out there, he's actually got an opportunity to get six or maybe seven strikeouts. The debut against the Phillies was super encouraging. He got the swings and misses, he got the strikeouts. And I think he just walked one batter. I guess I could double check that, but I know that the walks and the components of the walks, like the strikes thrown and the chase rate all look better than I would have expected given his minor league numbers. the chase rate all look better than I would have expected given his minor league numbers.

So Harrison like Pepeo, maybe there's, there's some improvement there in terms of the walk rate, but just the, both the limitation in terms of the workload and the fact that Pepeo obviously is pitching for a much, much better team offensively that, that definitely for me makes it a,

just a no brainer. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, that's, for me, makes it just a no-brainer. Yeah, I think that's how I see it too, just a better workload ceiling in the short term. Even if it were a keeper in Dynasty, I could see staying firmly on the Kyle Harrison side if you're playing the long game, but I'm playing the short game in most cases. So Ryan Pepeo could be the big boost you might need to get through these final weeks. From a closer perspective, was there anything out there that you saw among relievers that caught your eye? Something I saw was just that Trevor May picked up another save, 14 saves.

It kind of feels like the last two months for Trevor May have been more in line with the optimistic hopes I had for him entering the season. I thought May could sneakily be a decent third closer, and I know he missed some time earlier in the year, so that's been part of the story. But you go back over his last 60 days, he's got a couple of wins, he's got 10 saves and 11 opportunities,

a.255 ERA and a.113 whip. There's probably some shadow leagues where May is still available. And I think with the A's calling up a lot of their young players, we talked about that position player core last week on the show. They're a little bit less of a pushover now than they were at the beginning of the season. So there could be a few more opportunities. If Trevor May ended up picking up five or six more saves between now and the end of the season, he'd finish with 20 for the year. And I think that would end up paying off in some deep leagues. But again, shorter term for a 10 team league where you need saves. I think he's pretty viable. Yeah, no, I think that's a, that's a very good point about

Trevor May. The A's have actually been fairly decent offensive team for the last few weeks. And he's definitely had the uptick and the rate at which he's getting saves. But it's kind of funny because I also saw that the, the A's called up Sean Newcomb. So you add him probably to the list of oh that's where that player is now exactly what i thought like oh sean sean newcomb this is around huh but i thought you know with the a's not really you know playing for much right now maybe they'd give him a shot or you know at least a matchup space thing against left-handed hitters um you know that's that's a very deep league play and we have to see what the usage pattern is going to be with him. There's no reason to assume they're going to start him off in high leverage, but I think that he just automatically becomes one of the higher ceiling

arms in that bullpen. Yeah. I've wondered if Newcomb will emerge as one of those guys that didn't quite make it as a starter, but ends up being electric out of the bullpen with fewer pitches, more velo, all the things that you tend to get with that role change. So interested to see what happens with him over the final few weeks of the season and 100% in that group of players I sort of forgot about. Just stopped following him because he fell off the depth chart for a little while and kind of fell off the fantasy radar completely. But it's changing slowly for the A's. A little more interesting now than they were back when the season began. Anything else in the bullpen world that caught your eye over the last few days? No, nothing actionable.

I mean, Camilo Duval has gone from being untouchable to really struggling, but I don't know that there's necessarily going to be a change there for the Giants. But no, I think at this point, the one actionable situation is the Red Sox, assuming that the Jansen goes on the IL. And if that is the case, I would expect that people will be pretty active in Fab trying to get Chris Martin. Yeah, you got to watch that, of course, over the weekend before committing. I did see Andrew Kittredge getting some pretty good leverage opportunities already for the Rays, so they're back on it.

They're working Kittredge back in. He's got one save already. I think he vultured a win. He's made three appearances so far, already making a dent in leagues that are a little bit deeper as far as the relievers that are viable, but we'll see if anything else changes on the closer front over the course of the weekend. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels.

As we go, a quick reminder, you can get a subscription to The Athletic for $2 a month for the first year at theathletic.com. With that, you can get Al's weekly waiver column, which is up for this week. You can get access to all the rest of season fantasy baseball, regular baseball stuff we've got. Fantasy football draft season is absolutely here. So if you play fantasy football, you want custom rankings and all sorts of analysis, we've got that for you. All under one roof, thealletic.com slash ratesandbarrels.

On Twitter, you can find me at DerekVanRiper. You can find Al at AlMilkierBB. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Monday.