Rates & Barrels - The end for Albert Pujols in Anaheim, John Means business, and digging into pitcher injuries

Episode Date: May 7, 2021

Eno, Britt & DVR discuss a tough exit for Albert Pujols in Anaheim, his dominant decade upon arriving in the league in 2001, John Means' ascent to the top of the Baltimore rotation, pitcher injuries as a result of sitting too close to max velocity, and DVR faces the music in the wake of V*ctor Robles' slow start.  Rundown 1:15 Albert Pujols Doesn't Really Fit on Another Team 5:37 On Deserving a League-Wide Parade into the Sunset 11:07 The Machine's Greatness & Humble Beginnings 15:49 John Means Business 20:54 Pitcher Injuries & Sitting Too Close to Max Velocity 36:53 DVR Eats Crow 41:27 Who/What Do We Collect? 49:19 Congrats, Britt! Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Britt on Twitter: @Britt_Ghiroli Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Subscribe to The Athletic for just $3.99/mo to start: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels 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, Bridger Oli, Eno Saris here with you on this Friday. And on this episode, we will discuss the possible end of a great career for Albert Pujols as he was designated for assignment by the Los Angeles

Angels of Anaheim on Thursday. See, I'm going to be very proper with this name. John Means threw a no-hitter earlier this week, so we'll talk about what he has done to reach this point. A little bit of a victory lap, I think, for Eno on this one as probably the biggest John Means fan that I know outside of John Means' actual family. We had a great question come in about pitching at max effort and injuries in the wake of what happened to Dustin May, so we'll tackle that. We got a few other questions we'll get to as well,

and I'll probably eat some crow about the slow start of Victor Robles again, which is becoming sort of a daily thing on this show. So really excited to get the milk out, pour it all over the crow and shovel in some more crow. But let's start with Albert Pujols because the first thing people started to do yesterday when that news came out that he was getting designated for assignment by the Angels was let's jam Albert Pujols on another another team and i just thought no let's not he's just not he's not albert anymore he's not the machine anymore and it was really cool when he was but he's not that player anymore he wants to play first base doesn't want to be a dh which narrows down the number of teams to like one or two maybe, and those teams shouldn't do it.

So can we please, please, please just celebrate Albert Pujols, the amazing player, the most feared hitter of the decade, pretty much from the day he entered the league in 2001 until about the time he went to Anaheim. He was still good for a little while there. Can we just celebrate that guy for being a first ballot Hall of Famer and just being awesome? Yes, except he's two hits shy of the most ever for a first baseman, right?

Like, two hits. Play again. And also, selfishly, I don't know about you guys, he was my late father's favorite player. I've always had a soft spot for him. I want to see him go out in like this better fashion than getting released and then the Angels playing a game that night I want to see the packed stadium giving him an ovation I want him to get the Derek Jeter treatment the retirement tour David Ortiz

got a better send-off than Albert Pujols this I know he's not a good player anymore I know Eno wrote years ago they should have cut ties. This is rightfully so. However, I don't know. Don't you guys kind of want like that emotional farewell? Doesn't he deserve a better farewell than a press release and a press conference that he wasn't even on? I mean, there's like the human being and the player. I think the player, I don't know, has been below replacement for three years or so. So this was like a long time coming. But yeah, I mean, for the human being, I think they probably could have come up with some better way of doing it. One thing that they can still do, though,

is bring him back. He's got a 10-year, $10 million personal services contract with the Angels when he stops playing. So he's going to be around and they can do the whole thing where it's albert puhol's day at the ballpark and everyone gives him the big uh the big hurrah the big send-off he won't get that necessarily in a visiting park like that's what you're kind of talking about was like kind of the farewell tour where everybody the other fans get to to serenade him um So I guess, but I also think it would be weird for him to end up anywhere else. I think of like, he would actually, the places that people were talking about, the A's and the White Sox, he would complete a trifecta of sorts. The A's had Piazza and Frank Thomas at the end of their careers.

So you could put that Pujols picture right up next to them. And I think, I'm trying to remember now, the White Sox had Griffey. They did. And Andrew Jones. And Andrew Jones. And there was one more. So it might be a four. But anyway, let's do that as the trifecta.

Andrew Jones, Griffey, and Pujols. The problem with the white socks is, um, I mean, the thing with pools is just so slow. And we've talked about this with like Gary Sanchez and other people before where people can play him, uh,

infielders can play him on the outfield grass and that's going to steal doubles. That's going to steal singles. So the only thing you have them in there for is, and he doesn't even walk anymore. So the only thing that you have them in there for is a home run. Um, and, or like a no doubt double. So it's just hard to play him. He wants to play defense. He's not, he's like one of the worst defenders in the league. So, uh, White Sox, I don't think it's a great fit because you're going to push a Brayu, uh, to DH.

I think that's a bad move. Uh, he also can't play center field. And I don't even know if the A's are that great of a fit. I mean, you have Matt Olsen. He's not going to play first base over Matt Olsen. Is he going to DH over Mitch Moreland? Maybe, but is it... Are you going to platoon at DH with Mitch Moreland and Albert Pujols? I don't think that's a

great use of a roster spot. No, if you're a contending team, unfortunately he just doesn't make sense. And the Angels, I think rightfully despite their slow start, fancy themselves contenders. They should be contenders with the roster that they have. It's awful. It's an awful

development because I think a player of this caliber, if anyone deserves the league-wide parade and the confetti, it's someone like Pujols for sure. He's more deserving of it than Jeter was. It's not even a debate. Pujols is a better player than Jeter.

Let's not even delay on that at all. But the problem with this, the reason this happens is because of the goofy way contracts work. A player like Pujols gets the mega deal. We know the mega deal at the end of the deal probably won't be a good deal anymore, even though for the player, it's obviously a ton of money. It's great. We love that. We love players getting paid. At the end of the deal, the team finally has to make a move like, hey, look, this guy's actually not helping us at all. We can't justify our roster spot. We've got younger guys who are better. The weird thing here, though, Brandon Marsh is hurt right now, and Joe Adele has only been playing AAA games for like a day,

and they want him to get the K rate down before they bring him up. So it wasn't like they made their lineup immediately better with one of those guys coming up to play right, because now Jared Walsh plays first. What was the corresponding move? They're bringing up John Jay. So the timing is silly in that regard. Could you have

done it a week from now, two weeks from now, whenever Marsh is healthy or Adele's ready? It would be a lot nicer if you bring up Joe Adele. You'd be like, sorry Pujols, but we have this star that's coming up. And you've got to understand you would have made room for you in St. Louis. Somebody would have made room for you you know like in st louis or

something like somebody had to make room for you somebody had to be dfa'd for you to to get your shot so but john jay that was the corresponding move ouch yes it was almost like here's the lie we'll feed you even though no one really believes. We'll all kind of pretend it's a baseball operation. Well, maybe it is. I mean, he's so bad. But it's clearly not. No, it's not. They still have to pay him.

No, but I mean, like, John Jay does give them better defense, and their defense is pretty bad. I saw Ken Rosenthal had a great column this morning about how bad their defense was. Also, though, does anybody think that, like, just dumping Albert Pujols all of a sudden, oh, yay, here go the Angels on a run. Like, their pitching's atrocious. Let's focus on the real issue here. The real issue is their pitching. They're starting pitching in their bullpen is atrocious. And that's the reason they're in the position they're in. Now, if Albert Pujols did say, and there is some of this going around, I want to play first base every day. I don't want to be the bench guy. I don't want to

be the veteran who takes these guys under his wing. Then I guess, you know, you got to do what you got to do. I keep thinking about Orioles manager Buck Showalter used to always say that Billy Martin always told him, like, don't ever let a star fall on you. And I was thinking about that a lot yesterday because the Angels let a star fall on them. And the Orioles had Vlad Guerrero Sr. And I remember, God, this guy is so past his prime, but he wanted to keep playing. They were not very good, so it was fine. He could keep playing. But it's a really uncomfortable situation for the player and the team when you have a star fall on

you like Albert Pujols has. And that just comes down to not overextending on the contract, right? If it's a seven or eight-year deal instead of a a 10 year deal, it's a little easier to say goodbye at the end of year seven or year eight instead of pushing into that ninth or 10th year, which for pools, you know, those come in as 40s. It's so hard to expect any player to be productive at that age.

But think about like Bryce Harper's deal and stuff. Like for average annual, like it's actually kind of a cap problem because the reason why they gave Bryce Harper But for average annual, it's actually kind of a cap problem. Because the reason why they gave Bryce Harper 12 or 13 or whatever god amount of years it was, is that the average annual value was actually, I think it was comparable to Ryan Howard's deal. Yeah, it's $25.4 million. Which is lovely if you're worried about getting to $200 million and going over.

It's not going to be lovely when Bryce Harper is your DH and still below replacement for the last three years of the deal. Bryce Harper is going to get this treatment at some point. Yeah, Miguel Cabrera is next if we're looking for players that have similar deals. You kind of almost just hope that your team is so bad at the end of the contract that you're just bad with him for a while. And then you can do the whole, like, you can try to get fans to part and be like, Bryce Harper, this is last year.

Finally. Finally. No, it's true, though. I think that's what happened with Vlad. It was like, ah, just keep talking about it. We're not good anyway. It's not going to be good. Yeah. Otherwise, it's true though. That I think that's what happened with Vlad. It was like, we're not good anyway. Yeah. It, otherwise it's really awkward.

And who's telling Albert pool hosts like, Hey man, we can't, we can't just have you be a bet. Like, it's just weird because you respect the guy and you respect the hell out of what he's done, but he's not that player anymore.

So you can't keep running them out there to your detriment. So again, I think it's, it's an uncomfortable position for Perry. Man Maniason as a first year GM to have inherited. It's uncomfortable for Angel's ownership who gave out that kind of a deal. And it's uncomfortable for Albor Pujols who, for whatever reason,

still wants to play first base, still believes he can be that guy. Though every sign points to that's not right. I actually have a lot of respect for like Trevor Ploof because I think he's pretty, pretty honest about like, nah, like I don't think I think I think I had my chance. But like a lot of people like near the end are like, no, man, I just I just see regular A.B.s or just throw me out there. And you're just like, oh, man. Yeah, I think I think someday I'll dunk still too. My favorite Pujols stat is for his career.

If this is it, he has walked more than he struck out. And that is ridiculous. A 10.5% K rate, over 12,486 plate appearances, 667 home runs. Again, remember this dude as the machine who was just hitting the ball as hard as anybody was hitting the ball at that time. If we had StatCast back then, it would have been the deep red ink that we see on Giancarlo Stanton's page right now. That's the way that guy used to hit the ball. In fact, I saw a good comparison by Rob Silver saying that Giancarlo Stanton is hitting the ball really hard, doing really well this year. And his Woba is the same as the one that Pujols had for like eight years.

There was like an eight year stretch in St. Louis where Albert Pujols had the same Woba as an on fire Giancarlo Stanton in the first month of this season. So, yeah, it was pretty amazing. You know what, too, guys, that doesn't get brought up enough about why does Pujols still think he can play? Why hasn't he retired? This guy wasn't heralded. He played at a JUCO. I remember I was working for minor league baseball at the time and I was doing like

a little bit of a throwback as to how he got here. He wasn't. It was a different time, right? You didn't get to see all these guys at bats they weren't hyped up before they came up nobody even when he came up and did well Tony LaRusso was like oh I guess I should keep playing him he keeps playing well like he wasn't this Boba Shedd or Vlad Guerrero Jr. or you know he wasn't this huge touted guy so I think you almost never forget that as a player right you always have that chip And maybe that's what made him the machine.

Maybe that's what made him so good. And maybe that's what also now is taking him so long to let go. Yeah, that's a good point. And he also kind of reminds me from a skill set point of view to another unheralded guy that came up. It might be a weird comparison because they're not at all the same kind of athletically. But Mookie Betts at the plate is a guy who walks more than he strikes out, had more power than people expected, and kind of played his way into stardom

as opposed to having it handed to him. Like, say, Bryce Harper. I don't know why. I'm not here to poop on Bryce Harper. He just keeps coming up. Aren't you, though? That's what I'm doing. I'm sorry. I'm not here to poop on Bryce Harper. He just keeps coming out. Aren't you, though? That's not what I'm doing. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I mean, we saw Bryce Harper's high school home run derbies. Yeah. On ESPN. Yeah. It's kind of weird. It's LeBron-esque. It is.

And there hasn't really been a player since Harper to get attention like that. I thought that was kind of the beginning of this new era of, hey, high school baseball prospects are going to start getting hype now. Okay. There's too much failure, though. There's too much failure. Like, they were almost lucky that Harper, it was such a standout that they were like,

this guy is going to make it, right? But, you know, there are people that are standout high school players and standout college players that, you know, don't make it to the pros. i just also think it's really hard to be like this guy's gonna be really good but you gotta wait four years like with harper you know like they don't get drafted right in but you know with the the trends is in aging curves is that they hit the ground running i think that like high schools and colleges are are better player development now than they used to be um and and then we have all these like labs like driveline that are player developing too High schools and colleges are better player development now than they used to be. And then we have all these, like, labs, like, driveline that are player developing, too.

Player developing? Is that it? Sure. Developing players. How about that? Yeah, that works, too. And so, I didn't sleep well last night. So, you could.

I had someone, like, talk to me about, like, how you could change the draft and make it more exciting and they were talking about do it in the off season like everybody else um and uh and then uh basically have an invite to triple uh to a camp invite like a major league camp invite for like first rounders or maybe first three rounders or something um and assign them to triple a and if you did that with a little bit of something in the cba where you're like you have them for eight years after you draft them full stop you might actually start to be like hey we drafted this guy last year he's in the big leagues this year that might be like a more normal thing to start happening well i do hope we've shortened the time it takes to turn a high school prospect into a big leaguer in the last 10 to 15 years that four plus year wait seems a little excessive it shouldn't take that long and maybe maybe one of the few good things of a smaller minor league system will be

instead of players spending that first year at short season or rookie ball maybe they'll actually move players along a little faster and get this process moving i tried to get this to trend by the way on john means day on wednesday and i don't think it did people were retweeting it anyway so i appreciate the love for people who did but john means business as you can see on the youtube screen john means business or john means business i don't really know which one let's not have another trash pandas episode love the trash pandas love the john means did it he threw a no hitter and uh it could have been a perfect game if not for a drop third strike which i think maybe we have some feelings about the drop third strike rule but this is a victory lap for you,

not for, for, you know, because I, I don't think victory laps are appropriate this early in the season, but John means looks really, really good. He,

even before the no hitter, he looked like he was taking another step forward. And this is also a development success story for the Orioles too. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I, I'm not going to take a victory lap on this year. In fact,

uh, other people, I think some people had them ranked higher than I did going into this year. Uh, it's more that I saw that straight change early and thought he had a decent career coming. Um, and so even without this hot start to this year, he's, he looks like a major leaguer, you know, like, you know, like Disco Fonny, that was one that like, people were like, he's not going to be a major league starter. And I'm like, I beg to differ. So I'll take a victory lap on the he is a major leaguer, not the he threw a no hitter. I don't think I even saw that coming because, you know, there's something about a changeup.

It's, you know, it's it about a changeup. It's, you know, it's, it's usually about soft contact. And so a lot of times it won't, it doesn't, his changeup doesn't actually show up well on our stuff metric. And it's been the improvement of the curve ball this year that I think has allowed him to take another step forward. So I didn't really see that coming to he, he, we used to be a fastball slider guy who kind of learned Marco Stratus change up. But now he's kind of change up curve guy. Yeah, I, I agree with you. I don't, I always thought he was kind of underrated. I mean, if you're paying attention, he was an all star in 19. His father passed away in August. And pretty much after that, from September on, he's been on a tear. It's not just like a

out of nowhere, you know, we get those right, a tear. It's not just like out of nowhere. You know, we get those, right? The guy who's got a six ERA throws a no-hitter with seven walks. This wasn't that. This was like a totally dominant 26 of 27 first pitch strikes. Just an absolutely dominant effort. And as far as the drop third strike goes, I can't think of a worse way to lose a perfect game. I'd rather hit a guy because at least you controlled that, right?

And I asked Max Scherzer yesterday about this because he's long been a proponent that's the dumbest rule in baseball. He, of course, bought in and said it is the dumbest rule in baseball. He also said, you know, if you think about it logically, I threw a pitch that's so bad, that fools this guy so badly, the catcher can't even catch it. And this guy gets to take first base. And, of course, fair. And it's Max Scherzer. Now, Max is on, like, the players. He's a big player rep guy.

He's heavily involved. So I said to him, is this rule going to change? Like, is there some, like some undercurrent of change this rule? And he's like, no, we got enough problems that we're fighting over at the table. So basically like, nope, hope someday Rob Manford wakes up and just unilaterally changes it. But otherwise, they've got this huge laundry list

of things they want to get done. And bargaining for that just seems like very small potatoes. Yeah, they could just call it the John Means rule. I mean, I don't think this is something they have to really fight over. I think we'd all just say, maybe throwing down to first on the drop third strike is kind of stupid.

I think it could go away with the robo-umps because without the robo-umps, you're going to have catchers that are more focused on blocking, right? They may even back up a little bit. You might not have many pass balls or drop pitches anymore.

It might just go away with a robo-lump. Hopefully, by one method or another, it's gone. I'm not going to use the means puns. I'm better than that. I'm not going to do it. You seized the means of run production from the Mariners. Any more? Do you guys want to do any more puns before we...

Go ahead, Terry. I'll leave the floor open. He means tested the Mariners and they lost. Is that it? That the last one? I don't know, but there is a pun in there about the Mariners lineup because I usually am like,

oh, the snow hitter's not going to happen. But then I looked at the lineup and I'm like, Oh, it's no hitter can actually. Yeah. He was, he was very mean to the Mariners. Yeah.

Okay. What does it mean? I'm going to go ahead and just move us on along. Let's click. Use the cry on, change it up. The hard segue, the cry on segue. it up. The hard segue. The cryon segue.

What do you mean, Derek? This isn't fun? I'm going to shut this down right now. All right, so we got a question from Kyle. Dustin May, of course, got hurt and will undergo Tommy John surgery. And the email reads as follows. Dustin May has been handled with kid gloves his whole way up. He threw more than 95 pitches one time, ironically in his MLB debut,

and threw 90 or more pitches just four times in 19 starts, and he still got hurt. It doesn't seem like monitoring the amount of pitches on these young arms is leading to better long-term health. It actually seems to me that it's making it worse. These kids are going all out on 80 to 90 pitches and getting through five innings and then coming down with elbow and shoulder injuries. Is there a scenario where players stand up for themselves and go against the 100% max effort mentality? I mean, not only do these injuries

affect their physical health for the rest of their life, but I imagine they make less money in arbitration and get fewer years in dollars when they become free agents. So some good stuff there from Kyle. Britt, I know you have some feelings on this. Max effort with pitching. Are we breaking pitchers at a higher rate with more guys pitching closer to their max? Yes, of course we are. I was talking to a longtime big league pitching coach a couple days ago,

and he said basically we're breeding relief pitchers, which I thought was an interesting way to put it, but it's true. We are breeding the throw as hard as you can for five innings, and then we'll bring in a bullpen. Well, they'll all throw as hard as they can for one inning each, and if you break, we'll get somebody else in here. And that's kind of what is going on. And I was speaking to someone else who works in the player development field, and they said, you wouldn't believe how obsessed middle school kids are with

velocity now. So the trickle down effect is kids that are in middle school, kids that are in high school, kids that are in college, they are obsessed with these videos of guys throwing with high velocity so it's not as easy as saying well just throw a little less hard Dustin May like this was a guy with elite stuff who threw really hard who could command it this was an elite talent this wasn't a guy just throwing as hard as he can and like hitting the backstop so I think it's a problem but I think it's not as easy as just hey hey, don't throw as hard, Dustin May. This is a huge problem, not just in pro ball, but like I said, it trickles all the way down to Little League. And I wish there was an easy solution, but there's not.

And I look at a guy like Jacob deGrom, who's throwing 93 pretty much when the Mets drafted him, didn't throw more than like 140 innings until he was, I want to say, 24, maybe, right around there. Where's the next Jacob deGrom? Where's the next guy who slowly adds velocity and gets better instead of blowing it out as a 13, 14-year-old getting fixed and then blowing it out again in the big leagues as a 21, 22-year-old? Yeah, I've heard from some team officials that one of the reasons that high school arms are such a bad bet in the draft is because a lot of them are maxing out super early. Remember Riley Pint? Early pick for the Rockies. Dude was throwing hundreds up on the board in high school and hasn't been able to stay healthy since.

So there is something about maybe maxing out too early. And yet you get drafted. The first three rounds, you have to have touched 96 miles an hour to get drafted in the first three rounds. That is a rule. It doesn't matter where you sit. So if I was advising a young kid these days, I would say show Velo. Work up to that, but sit off of it. Sit off of it.

The better teams will know. That kid who's sitting 91-92, we've seen him hit 96-97, and he's going to be healthier for it. I think the better teams know that. So there is an incentive there. I disagree with the fact that there's a financial incentive against getting hurt. In fact, I think the financial incentive is actually to pitch as hard as you can, throw as hard as you can, get hurt.

Because a lot of times, I think arbitration will just give you what you had the year before. Like if you're in arbitration and you have a Tommy John year, they basically are just like, okay, well you got to pay him. You paid him $5 million last year. You're going to pay him $5 million again. You don't get to like advance, but you still get your money.

You still get the money. You like you got the year before. So I think the financial, and then look at, you know, somebody like Bauer, you know, he's like,

he's betting that I'm going to take a one year, $40 million deal. If my arm blows out, I'll get a two year, $10 million deal. And then I got another one year, $40 million deal after that. And I'll be able to make almost as much money as Garrett Cole, even though Garrett Cole is a better pitcher. Um, so, so I think that the financial structure is not going to do this, but the last thing I want to say is that i've been doing this research on stuff and uh velocity keeps dropping as importance uh every time we kind of work on this and velocity itself is uh like the 10th most important facet of a pitch in stuff plus the velocity of a breaking ball however is super important so you can throw 90 like clayton kershaw

and throw an 89 mile an hour slider and be very effective uh but that can also be stressful on your arm so there's no good answer i think that's that was really long-winded sorry sorry sorry sorry but that but that that was that's. But that's the thing. There's no easy way to be like, oh, yeah, this team was going to see this and figure it out. I guess I agree with you, Eno, on the throw less hard and touch the 96. But who do you know that's sitting 90-92 that's getting drafted in the first round? Right? Isn't the – I had a scout tell me the other day that basically the pace of the game dictates that if you're below 92, you're below playing speed.

You're below out speed. So who do you know that's making... Average VLO is getting up to 94. So if you're not at 94, then the team has to build you up and see it. Okay, well, that was a bit of an extreme example but i would say this the the average the distance between your sitting velo and your max velo in major leagues is getting smaller and smaller every year and it's actually now below two so as a as a as a kid you could sit 93 and touch 97 and be healthier than the average major leaguer like be better for. Because that's the source of stress. This person is completely correct.

Glenn Fleissig looked at it at ASMI. And the closer you pitch to your maximum, the more stress you're putting on your elbow. I mean, that makes sense with any type of exercise. If Britt can squat 500 pounds as a max and she squats 480 for a dozen reps every day, she's going to hurt herself. Oh my God. Yes. I don't know how much. You don't even know if those numbers are good or not.

Those are really good numbers. Those are like 300 pound linemen. Okay. So I'm thinking of NFL draft stuff in my head. So you wouldn't squat 480 and do that a dozen times every set and do that day after day or every other day like on a high volume routine you would break you'd hurt you'd hurt yourself anyone would so it's the same sort of concept we're just throwing a baseball and

not getting too close to the max too often seems like a thing that has to be learned. That takes a certain amount of discipline. When do you reach back for those extra ticks? When do you not? And I think once you learn how to get to that max more often, there's probably a temptation, at least there would be for a dummy like me, I'd want to throw the ball as hard as I could every single time because I'm dumb like that. Watch me break my own record.

Previous max velo 97.5, I'm going for 97. Watch me break my own record. Previous max VLO 97.5. I'm going for 97.6 right now. That's terrible. It's not a carnival game. Yeah. Look at Justin Verlander's career. He used to actually sit pretty far off of his maximum and still be throwing 94, 95.

Then as he got older, remember how Justin Verlander, his fastball VLO would go up over the course of a game? Yes. He had a no-hitter against the Brewers a long time ago where he was touching 100 in the ninth inning, but he wasn't throwing 100 the entire start. Yeah. But then he got older, his max came down, and in order to still throw 94, 95, he had

to throw basically his maximum, and he got hurt. Then came the Tommy John. Yes. So I think a lot of this is solved by two things one the pitch clock that we've talked about before bring all below down a little bit you're bringing all the velo down a little bit and also to use the squat analogy if i have an hour between reps of of 400 pounds okay i've got time to recover if you shorten that to half an hour if you shorten that to 20 minutes all of a sudden i can't do it so i've got to to go down. The weight's got to come off. So the VLO has got to come down.

I think that helps. I also think the way, and you know, you touched on this, the arbitration, you need to stop. We need to start paying guys who stay healthy, who pitch innings, who go deeper into games. That needs to be a bigger deal on social media. There needs to be a bigger deal in arbitration over strikeouts, right? Over these huge gifts of, oh my God, not smoke. Here's 100 miles an hour, blow by this guy. We need to kind of adjust that because we have fueled the media and the arbitration and the game in general has fueled this, let's throw as hard as we can. We have supported the high velo that is happening. Do you think part of the reason we don't get a lot of messaging about arm care is because it's still not really fully perfected? I mean, we're still, look what's happening at the highest level where the stakes

are as high as they can possibly be. We're blowing pitchers out there. So how could they possibly tell younger pitchers what they should really be doing to stay healthy? I'm excited for some work by Casey Mulholland out of Connecticut Crow in Florida. One thing that he's doing that I think maybe the better teams are doing, but in some ways he has the ability to do it better than maybe because he has kids from different organizations working for him, playing, developing, player developing in his, in his, in his spot is that he's trying to have them wear like, you know,

that little ring you can wear that like, like tells you how much, like how well you're sleeping and like, it checks your heart rate over the day. So you, your whoop, like a whoop. Yeah. Is that what it's it's called you guys heard of this have you guys heard of a whoop it's like a bracelet that you wear yeah it tells you what your strain is how much you've recovered i own one i mean i'm a fitness right so i own one so you've heard of a catapult too then right so a catapult

yeah is is more something you wear like when you're working out that kind of tells you about how you're working out. But he basically is trying to put all of this into like a neural network so that he can kind of be like, I know how you slept last night. And, you know, I know what you ate. And I know what kind of weightlifting you did. And I know how many throws you did. And I know if you did the weighted balls. And I'm throwing all of that in. And we're going to try and find something predictive about health.

And I will say that he hasn't figured it out yet because one of his biggest clients is Nate Pearson. It's hard. It's hard. Nate Pearson throws really hard. It's hard to keep him healthy. He's a big It's hard. Nate Pearson throws really hard. It's hard to keep him healthy. He's a big boy. Yeah.

I mean, there are a ton of variables in play here that make keeping pitchers healthy a very difficult task. So we're not trying to say, like, the three of us have the answer. We do not. We hope that they find the answer because it will be more fun to see all these great pitchers staying healthy. answer because it will be more fun to see all these great pictures staying healthy the one thing i didn't even mention that does maybe have some some hope too is um there's this thing called like pro play ai and there's some other things where um you can just use your phone and take a video of somebody and then you reduce them to kind of angles and lines have you seen those things on twitter um and by doing that you can then say you know now you have

some more data even which is like the angle between his humorous and his other bone not a doctor I have a question Dr. Nick this is what really bothers me though we have

all this data all these funky contraptions all this stuff that we never had and injuries are a, have never been bigger. So Claire, is data actually helping or is what we're doing with these guys? Like they mentioned with Dustin May at the kid gloves, is that the real issue here? And it doesn't matter what angle your humorous is at because the way you're being taught and developed and brought along now, you're babied, you're babied, you're babied, throw as hard as you can for five innings. Is the system broken? Because we get all this data, right?

And we don't see, if we're so much smarter than we were 10 years ago, 20 years ago, shouldn't we see, and we have these athletes who are training year round now. They're no longer like working winter jobs. They're not like in a grocery store because they don't make enough money. So if we are smarter and richer and so much more advanced, why even a little bit have these injuries not gone down? I would say that to me, the most hopeful things are a lot of this like biomechanical stuff, I think is in its infancy, you know, because before we had a lot of guys on Twitter that would take like a 2D picture and then like draw a line on it and be like, you know, like, look, look, inverted W. And that was like the height of the science for a while. But the problem is a 2D picture does not really help you at all.

We had to get into the 3D space. We had to start modeling in a 3D space. That's one thing uh the other thing is i think that some of the stuff that the rays are doing could be hopeful for for injuries too which is instead of sorting guys into six inning and one inning buckets maybe we can do a better job of sorting guys into two three four six inning buckets right and maybe that will help people stay healthy because we're monitoring them

and we're keeping them from going too deep into the game. Maybe Dustin May is actually a three-inning guy. That sucks, though. Like, what sport is this? Where's the seven-inning bucket? Where's the eight-inning bucket? Who's going to throw a no-hitter if everybody's being sorted into two- to six- i i don't like these buckets but maybe that's where like so john means

who's not very interesting on paper in terms of the stuff that he brings to the table like it's a good change up it's a pretty average fastball he's not throwing that hard right maybe but maybe that works maybe he's the the six-inning bucket guy that doesn't wow you with stuff, but actually gives you six innings that are better than average innings for a long time. Maybe that's a bigger success story than we think it is, but because it's not as gif-able as some of the other guys that can do it, we don't get as excited about it. Yeah. I actually asked John about that one time and he said, I don't think Pitching Ninja will ever put me up. But if you throw a no-hitter, Pitching Ninja is going to put you up.

Of course. And we love Pitching Ninja. It's true. Everyone loves Pitching Ninja, but it's just in my mind, I'm like, John Means is boring. It's like, what if boring actually stays healthy? What if boring is an above-average pitcher for 10 years in the big leagues? That's good.

That's what you should be developing. You've done something correct. Yeah, for me, I look at somebody like Zach Gallin and I say, command, many pitches, doesn't throw extremely hard. That's the kind of pitcher I'd bet on. Yeah, maybe that's the longer term prototype the team should be building for. I am now doomed Zach Gallin to Tommy John next year. Thanks for that. We all liked him quite a bit too.

So really, really appreciate that from you. As I mentioned earlier, several questions about Victor Robles. Today's Victor Robles update is similar to the last Victor Robles update. He's walking more. He's striking out less. He's not stealing bases yet. He's been caught several times. He's walking more. He's striking out less. He's not stealing bases yet. He's been caught several times. He's not hitting the ball hard.

He's never going to hit the ball very hard. So lower that expectation. If you thought Victor Robles is going to hit the ball a lot harder this year, I never told you he was going to do that. You set that expectation yourself. I can't help you there. But he's hitting 228.

A little defensive. I thought he'd be pretty good. I thought he was going there. But he's hitting.228. A little defensive. I thought he'd be pretty good. I thought he was going to hit.260,.270. Steel bases. Be a pretty good player this year. And he still could be. But I'm going to be a stubborn idiot and say, hold on. It's going to get better. Use your bench. Reserve him. Don't keep in your active lineup if you have the luxury

of starting someone else instead. But don't cut him yet. Now, Britt, you know, they may feel differently. They may say cut him. If they both say cut him, then maybe you should cut him. But I am being patient. I am holding on. I'm sorry that it has not been a fast start for Victor Robles.

I mean, I don't know how Eno feels. I would have not taken him. But I covered the Nationals. I saw him up close. I think part of the issue with him is he's maddening. He'll make a terrific play. And then you're like, oh, Victor Robles. Like, why did I ever doubt this guy? And then he'll make some bonehead, you know, move on the base paths.

And that's kind of him in a nutshell. And he's not Juan Soto. He's never going to be Juan Soto. And I think in his head last year, he tried to be Juan Soto, at least with his approach, gaining all that weight, trying to drive the ball and it backfired. I don't know if he's ever going to be the player

that people want him to be. So, and again, I'm not an avid fantasy player. If you get points for him getting better, then maybe you stash them. Maybe you keep them somewhere. But you guys have heard me on this show before. I just don't see it with him. He's not young. He's had enough time in the big leagues to move past some of these mistakes, and he hasn't.

And that, to me, is the most concerning part. Not that he's making these mistakes, but that he's still repeating these mistakes. Yeah, it's pretty borderline. I mean, one of the things that kind of sticks out is a 650 OPS is about where you need to be if you're a defensive guy. Like if you fall below a 650 OPS, you become a backup defensive guy.

A 650 OPS is just kind of the least you can do. And he's at 630. So, I mean, it does suggest that if things get a little bit better, he can climb over that line. I mean, if he's at 630 now, he could still finish the season at 700. If he can have, like like a 350 obp and a 350 slugging that's uh not super exciting to me but uh if it comes to the defense and he and he shores that up a little bit um you know the defensive metrics are okay to him so i'd say it's pretty borderline i'm holding in a couple places where it's a deeper

league but uh i can you know i i can understand anybody dropping him because uh i would never have drafted leoti taveras and if leotis taveras had a 630 ops right now i'd be dropping him so i like rose a little bit better than some of the ilk. But I can understand it. I mean, it's a very borderline thing. And it points to a failure in fantasy baseball right now or just a disconnect between fantasy baseball and real baseball, which is that we're so desperate for steals that are basically out of the game

that we hold on to these marginal players. And we have to sometimes because we're just hoping they steal some bases. Like, I have Adam Engel on a team, and I haven't even dropped him on AL Labor because I hope he comes back and steals, like, seven bases for me. Can I get seven bases? So that's just a weird thing.

Maybe, like, Theo's whole thing about making the bags bigger and maybe we have 85 feet baselines. Then maybe the stolen base will come back and then we don't have to roster these kind of players anymore. All right. You guys are both against me. Two to one.

Understandably, people in the email, not happy either. We'll talk about some other players we've been too stubborn about in future episodes but had a question come in about baseball cards actually which is funny since the the tops ads started up this week but uh people want to know who do we collect if we're buying cards or who would we collect if we haven't bought any cards and obviously it's pretty clear at this point right right? You guys know I'm collecting Victor Robles. I mean, not like excessively, but let's see. Do I have a Robles here?

And I do. Look at that right there. Victor Robles, little 1983 throwback looking thing there. So pretty sweet, right? Wow. Yeah. So if he becomes good, this is going to buy a dinner or something for me someday. But you know who I want to collect and haven't

been able to collect because of cost is Willie Mays. I think the old Willie Mays cards are some of my favorite cards. And I think you go back and look at some of the stuff from the 50s, it's like buying art in some ways. And I think just because so much of that was lost over time, that just adds so much appeal to me. A lot of stuff I grew up collecting in the late 80s and early 90s was way over or anything. Couldn't afford it as a kid. Finally bought one. I was like, you know, this is cool. But these are actually pretty easy to get. But you start getting back into Willie Mays and Hank Aaron and the all-time greats from really from the 50s especially. There's so much less of their stuff out there.

And those designs are just iconic. So I feel like you'll never go wrong having a vintage player, Inner Circle Hall of Fame or all-time great that you want to collect. Yeah. I'm just so glad it's back because, God, I was such a weird little kid. I'm sure my mom at some point was like, why? My sisters and I would walk to the card shop that was at the center of our town. It was like a 10-minute walk from where we lived. And we'd spend hours agonizing over the packs because they were wrapped so you weren't sure what you were going to get, right? So we would just agonize over it. And then we would trade around depending on our favorite players. And we did that for hockey. We did that for baseball. Those were the two big sports that we collected. And then I just kind of stopped.

And this past year during COVID, I looked at my collection and it turns out I've got a lot of really great cards. And I think if I had to go out and get them now, I would make sure I had a Mike Trout card. Because I think he's that generational player that you're going to be like, I got to see Mike Trout. So I think I would definitely make sure I had him. I think some of these young guys, this is the time to buy their like limited edition cards, right? So that hopefully you go down to spring training and you'd get it signed. That would be like the ideal thing that you would want to do. So I'm not a huge card person now. I can't remember the last time I bought them. But I do think that

one of the nice things about COVID and the quarantine was that all of a sudden people are paying attention to the card industry again which was such a nostalgic thing right derek for you and me and so many people such a big part of growing up and seeing like oh i have this guy's card or i'll trade you that guy's card and trying to not bend the edges you know that was such a big deal like nobody wants that card now because it's not in mint condition uh so i just think it's a great thing to pick back up honestly i should probably go find a card shop near me but that's just such a great memory of like using our allowance and again my parents were probably like why why do our four daughters do this why don't they play with dolls uh but we just loved it it was

awesome yeah you know what the thing now is it's, it's rabid in a, in a way that I don't really remember as a kid. Um, and it's, uh, all about, um, these like really high price sets now, um, you know, NBA top shot has done this thing where maybe hasn't done it. Maybe it's just part of an ongoing thing, but like, uh, even the, the, the top stuff, um, you know, some of them are pretty really like expensive. It's not something that like a six year old or an eight year old is like saving up their, their allowance for anymore. I saw a thing where you can buy for $5,000, you can buy a box of football cards and, uh, it's guaranteed to have a couple autographs in it but you might just get

like a lineman for the uh for the marlins the dolphins um and i remember you know a lot of these like most of these i actually pulled out a pack sometimes i would save up to buy an old pack um and i'm my favorite cards have really cool uh hair. Oh, there you go. Yeah. You got Ozzie Smith there. That's a rookie, I think. And then here's another rookie. He's just smooth, smooth as can be.

Dave Winfield. Nice. And then look at this stache, dude. Look at that stache. The Maddox. Yeah, that 87 Maddox is a nice one. And the mustache, I think, is part of the reason why the card's kind of hilarious. But one of my friends did get more into card collecting. I was advising him during COVID. to give, and this was before the season started, to give him a list of rookies or prospects

that'd be maybe underrated versus everybody else. And so, Sixto Sanchez, a lot of those guys, their rookie cards, especially if it's like a special rookie or an auto rookie or whatever, those can get really, really expensive to the point where um they'll be more expensive than current stars rookie cards going back like you like the chris bryant auto

that came out just like you know 10 years or whatever years ago is going to be less than the sexto sanchez auto that came out this year which is a little bit weird for me uh but the way that i would respond the way that i would respond, the way that I advised him was to get the, instead of getting the very most expensive guys, and this is kind of how I work in fantasy too, instead of getting the very most expensive prospects to try and identify the undervalued guys. So I told him to buy Alec Baum, Dylan Carlson, and Joe Adele, and Cabrian Hayes cards in this offseason. And I think some of those were getting close to top five status, but some of those were not. I mean, Carlson and Adele had struggled.

And so the bloom had come off the rose. Carlson cards were going down. So that's the kind of guy I want to get. Someone who maybe struggled, because even Mike Trout struggled in his first year, his first taste of the big leagues. So what I would do is try and get a prospect that

you still really like that just struggled a little bit at first. Yeah, it's a good group of players to target. Definitely works across fantasy and collecting too. I've obviously got some Freddy Peralta though, but I didn't throw that up there got some Freddy Peralta, though. If I didn't throw that up there before, I got a Freddy Peralta auto rookie.

You guys didn't tell me! Mine are downstairs. I have all these binders. I didn't know we were showing our cards today. I mean, I think I got my hockey cards up here, if you want to see the Ray Bork autographed one I have. Camp Neely. I was a big Bruins fan, so I used to

trade with my sisters for the Bruins cards. Adam Oates. I didn't know we were doing cards today on YouTube, but show and tell. You dropped that bomb on us. You got all the 90s Bruins. I do make a rundown. This is my room gold.

You could look at it. I'm better off the cuff. If it's working for you, that's fine. You know what? You know, Derek, I like to be authentic to our listeners. I don't want to reverse what I'm about to say. Whatever idiot thing I say, I want to be able to know it's off the top of my head. It comes from a place of love.

And on that note, I will congratulate you for the award that you won for the Mo Gaba story from the APSE, which is pretty awesome. So congratulations to you and Jeff Zubik for the piece. It was the Mo Gaba piece, as we've referred to it on this show. I've said it's a great piece to read anytime, but if you ever have those days where you're just kind of feeling bad about yourself, you read that story and you'll just feel better about life in general. So highly recommend people read that if they haven't had a chance to do that. But yeah, congrats. It's an awesome award. Well, thank you. And thank both of you guys for all the support. Hopefully we get to a place where we can interview people in person again. But this was really cool to do and to do

over the phone and to be able to just to share that little boy's story with so many people. You're right. It's really tough to read that and then complain about your own problems. So if nothing else, it's a good slap in the face for all of us, right, about reality. It's good to get those wake-up calls. They really kind of keep us all grounded. But if you have questions, anything that's not about Victor Robles, please email us, ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com. Several questions.

That was one of the better cry-ons I've seen. Several questions about Victor Robles. Yeah, no more Robles questions, please. I'll just apologize now, even if he turns it around. Just sorry. It's my fault. You can subscribe to The Athletic for $3.99 a month at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels on twitter you can find brit at brit underscore droly enos at enos saris i am at derrick van riper that is going to wrap things up for this episode of rates and

barrels we are back with you on monday thanks for listening and watching Thank you.