Rates & Barrels - The Greatness of Willie Mays, Gerrit Cole Returns & Another Surprise in Cleveland

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss the greatness of Willie Mays following his passing at the age of 93 earlier this week. Plus, they take a look around the league at key injury news, including an opportunity in the Houston rotation with Justin Verlander's move to the IL, before checking in on minor-league news and notes, and a few early waiver-wire considerations for the weekend. Rundown 5:31 Willie Mays Passes Away at 93 13:41 Gerrit Cole Returns From the IL 19:25 Kyle Bradish Undergoes Tommy John Surgery with Internal Brace 24:02 Max Scherzer Returning Saturday Against the Royals 30:56 Jake Bloss Getting a Call to Houston 35:42 Jordan Lawlar On Minor-League IL with Hamstring Strain 39:45 Dylan Crews Joins James Wood at Triple-A 43:15 Other Prospect News & Notes 51:47 Daniel Schneeman Getting a Look in Cleveland 56:35 Ben Rice and Other Bats to Consider 1:01:45 Tobias Myers Roster Rates on the Rise Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To support sustainable food production, BHP is building one of the world's most sustainable potash mines in Canada. Essential resources responsibly produced. It's happening now at BHP, a future resources company. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Thursday, June 20th. Derek Van Riper, you know, Saris here with you on this episode. We dig into some recent news, a lot of star players coming back from injuries, a couple guys going down with new injuries, so we'll get into that. Project Prospect, as we have each and every week

on Thursday, digging into some Prospect related news and a few names that might be of interest to you in various formats. We're also gonna have our weekend waiver wire preview where it looks like the Guardians might be up to something again, you know. They're always up to something. I deserve to be shamed for writing them off because I watch a team

that does it in a similar way on an everyday basis. So for me to be a skeptical of the guardians of all people, I deserve extra shame. Well, I mean, there's a lot going on there. We've talked about the ballpark dimensions changing and how it's become more offensive friendly and I saw a really interesting graphic from at Brooks gate this week that showed the square footage of the field of like fair ground in each park and Cleveland was the second smallest. Surprise.

So the smallest was Cincinnati? I think Fenway. Fenway is a little smaller. And when I was looking at that and just thinking about park factors and it's an interesting idea to be known for churning out pitching and then all of a sudden change your park. There's something to this maybe that smart teams are making park changes at certain times in their organizational development process. Just think of the Orioles and Mount Baltimore. That seems like very much like a planned thing. You know, it's like we've got these guys coming up.

This is what we have right now. We want we don't want Chris Rodriguez to, you know, have's like we've got these guys coming up. This is what we have right now. We want, we don't want Chris and Rodriguez to, you know, have every mistake be blasted. We got some young pitchers coming up and we want it to be a little bit more pitcher friendly. And like, I don't know, it seemed like it really worked for them and maybe this Cleveland thing, it will work similarly. And some of it, of course, yeah, it's simple redesign.

Let's plan to do this. Other things we've talked about in the past, adjacent construction, making changes to ballpark factors might even be in the team's control in some cases in Toronto Was that on purpose for anything how the game played because then that doesn't seem to have worked in their favor Whereas it was probably just a thing that they wanted to do to make more money Because they were they made them into like little bar spaces or something that we lauded before, you know, this week. Right. So I don't know, it seems like high it seems like a lot like high stakes sort of playing

around to like, think like you're going to change something about your ballpark to help your team. It really could go either way. I think the Mount Baltimore example makes a lot more sense in that you had a long window of that being a difficult place to pitch. And regardless of what you have as an organizational strength, you don't want your ballpark to feel unfair. Like, that's probably not a good feeling because it it's going to burn you as much as it's going to help you.

That's like neutralizing. It seemed like a good move, bringing in the walls and triples out a little bit, you know, like, yes, they said it was for to take the bullpens off the field and that's a safety issue and that's, that's a good idea. But also it worked to kind of make it a slightly more fair park. So yeah, I think some of those changes longterm by design, I think if you're tweaking your ballpark every year, which no one's done that, I think you've gone too far.

Oh, the walls are going back out. No, they're coming back in. Just make them like the bleachers, like in high school. You can just push a few rows back and just set up the wall five, 10 feet further back, depending on who's pitching that. Yeah, exactly. Or like if you have a Davis Schneider

that continues to pull the ball, you have like, you put the Crawford boxes out in there where you just have like some weird overhang. Or can you imagine just like taking the wall and you have this one player that for some reason hits the ball in one place all the time. make a little circular cut out that like captures his heat map where he's like the balls are like and that T's it's another double to the Tatees circle. I feel like that's a future for baseball that I don't quite want. No, what? I don't know. Wild.

It was so wild. I wonder if the commissioner would step in and be like, you can't cut circles into your outfield wall. Yeah. No Swiss cheese. I mean, we don't want to turn it into a carnival out there. We're all about having fun. But that that might be a notch too far on the dial. Well, we used to have a park with a flagpole in it.

Right. Well, we used to have a park with a flagpole in it. Right, well, Tals Hill. I mean, look. So the big news in the baseball world was the passing of Willie Mays on Tuesday at the age of 93. And I've seen the catch on the highlight reels for my entire life. As long as I've been watching baseball, the catch comes up. And that game was being played at the polo grounds and you want to talk about ballparks with unusual dimensions.

That's part of why the catch exists because he he was running to like, I don't know, it's like 500 feet out there. Almost 500 feet to dead center like 489 I think is the number they had on it. But when you watch the highlights, the other thing you notice as you start to re-watch it is how quickly Mays gets rid of the ball after making the over the shoulder catch. Because what they said about the polo grounds

was that runners would often tag up from second and score on deep fly outs because it was so far away. And May is going full speed with his back towards home play to know it's a catch. And he has to get it back in. Fires it back in. The runner on second base also was kind of caught in between like, is this gonna get over his head?

Is he gonna catch it? You can kind of see when you rewatch it too that there's a little bit of indecision, but regardless, just an amazing play and an amazing life for Willie Mays. There were a lot of great tributes that have come in in the last 36 hours and the facts of his career are just unbelievable. Jason Stark articulated those really well in a piece today and this is the one that I think just jumps off the page to me. Willie Mays led National League position

players in war 10 times. He only won two MVP awards but he led position players in war 10 times. That is impossible. We'll never see a player do that again. My contention is he's the best player of all time and the reason and I got a little push back from it and I just didn't want to engage in an intellectual debate on the passing of somebody but I do think it's worth making my case which is that if you look at something like Fangrass War he's behind a player that played in pre-integration baseball and that's of no fault of Babe Ruth's but he did not play the best player pool.

He did not play the most diverse best player pool with players from all over. And then second place is Barry Bonds and I don't really have to get into all that for you to know that like you know maybe some of those war should be docked from his total you know we don't know how much but and then lastly even if you just look at the players themselves that are in the top three, Bonds, Ruth, and Mays. Mays is very obviously the best all around player. Ruth didn't play center field. Barry Bonds moved off of center field. Mays played center field front to back.

And maybe our defensive numbers don't capture his defensive brilliance as much as they could. Like, how could they? The defensive stats now aren't amazing. They're even worse the further back you go. So that's my case. And the last little bit that on top of that is he absolutely had the flair and the sort of energize. I mean, people people have tried to to get at this.

Tyler Kepner had a piece about this about how he just sort of energized baseball that he was. He was a star star like he really was he was it was everything I mean he was the highlight reel on the base pass you know hitting. Fielding just everything I mean just the just think that like he had a play that we call The Catch. You know what I mean? Like, that's amazing. Like, we we know what you're talking about. It's like there's nobody does anybody have the hit? I think the closest thing to it is Babe Ruth calling a shot. Right. OK. Those are the two plays in baseball history that are there's right there.

Yeah. The plays. There's those two. And there are a thousand great moments, thousands of great moments in baseball history. But those two, they just rise above to the top of baseball lore. I think also Michael Salfino was talking about Willie Mays's, the year, one year he had like a 10 war year and the and the Giants won the World Series. Yeah, I think it was 54. And the best other player on this team was Hank Thompson, who was like a four win player,

Alvin Dark, and then Don Mueller and like for low replacement guys. So basically he put that team on his back and was the player on this team. And this was during a time when you know, I think it was the Yankees winning a lot. Right. So that's kind of, you know, Sal Finos point was like, that's like, like the MVP of MVP. Like, you know, the way that we think of value and like winning and stuff, like he,

he was the best player in the league and also on his team and so much better than everybody else on his team that he was just like, here, I'll win it for us, and they won it all. So it's like, Willie Mays is just, he was great. And then locally, really cool personality. There's this weird thing where apparently he was a greeter at Bally's.

He was like involved with casinos. Like he was, that was what some of what he did after he played was he was paid by casinos to sort of hang out. And was he was paid by casinos to sort of Hang out and because he was paid by casinos baseball didn't let him Back in or something there was he was like ten years. He wasn't really supposed to be you know around baseball Because he was dealing with casinos That's in the face of what's happening currently. That's even more frustrating. Yeah, he was let back in once that was softened and currently, that's even more frustrating. Yeah, he was let back in once that was softened.

And thank God, because he was around a lot at San Francisco Giants games and just super cool. Like he like he would give little speeches and he would like, you know, be on the field a bunch. He just seemed like a really nice man, you know, a really engaging, cool dude. And he represented the Giants, you know, even as he was older. And Barry Bonds was his grandson. Like it was kind of like the lifeblood of the Giants, you know.

It's an icon, an American icon, and lost just a couple of days before the game at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, too, which was just it's going to change. It's going to change the tone of what we see Thursday night in Birmingham. It's going to be a night where the memories of Willie Mays gonna take over and understandably so, but it's just larger than life, I think,

is the way I think you would describe Willie Mays. And a player that I wish I could have seen play, and a person I just wish I could have met had one conversation with because I think it everybody that had that opportunity seems better for it happier for it more joyful for it and obviously someone that has had an influence in American history that is basically unmatched in we're gonna see a player have an impact on the game like this again. It's not going to happen. It's just different, different times, different era.

There's a long drive way back in. Way back. It is. Just brought this crowd to a speed where the catch would cost a minute optical illusion to a lot of people. Moving on to the usual

types of things we talk about on this show. It's not all bad. See the good news here is not just players getting hurt. It's some players coming back. Garrett Cole's back, you know, that's a good thing, right? We're happy to have Garrett Cole back in the play. Yeah, but is he all the way back?

He wasn't all the way back in terms of workload. He wasn't all the way back in terms of fastball view, though. 94-7 after he was 96-8 last year. Where do you draw the line in terms of it being a problem? Like, is it three starts, five starts? Given what we know about Garrett Cole, age, all the factors. When would you be really alarmed? I mean, you seem somewhat concerned already, but when is it really a problem?

I would say three starts is a good number because according to Jeff Zimmerman's research, three starts actually predicts rest of season fastball velocity like almost perfectly. You know, like it's there's just it's all signal almost at that point. That's the safest way to go about it. I would say that despite his VELO being down, he has he's always had good ride on his fastball, good shapes. He had a one oh seven stuff plus. And there is a chance that he's so good that even with a diminished fastball, he's still good, you know? But I think if I had to guess like how he would

perform if his velocity stayed where it is, is that I would guess that he would kind of return to those years where he had the higher home run rates, you know, and so we might see even a season like 2022, the 350 ERA and a one and a half homers per nine, you know, maybe a little bit reduced strikeout rates, so maybe like a 375 ERA, like no matter what, I think he'll be good. The question is, will he be the man? And I'm not sure he will be at 94.7.

At 94.7, it changes, changes I mean a lot about the ceiling, but he also wouldn't be bad at 94 7 I also think I'm saying you change up a lot of what you do I think if you lose that much velocity if that's how this unfolds for Garrett Cole I think like he threw 21 percent cutters like that's that's part of the story Yeah, yeah, and again, 62 pitches, so they kinda brought him back a little early just to get him going, get those innings in their rotation instead of having him make another rehab start or two.

So I think as long as he bounces back physically, he's feeling good coming off this start, even though the velocity is down, it's a smaller amount of panic for me than it would ordinarily be given the circumstances. Yeah, I agree. Given my trust in the secondaries. Speaking of Yankees news though,

Aaron Judge was not in the lineup Wednesday after getting hit by a pitch in the hand. Good news I think was that the X-rays and CT scans Tuesday night after he got hit by a pitch were negative. So probably not more than a day-to-day situation unless something's changed. That's the scariest play in baseball for me. If he's like on your teams, if he's on your the team that you root for

or just generally the ball that's like coming up on them towards the hands. I'm just like, oh, God, there here comes a broken hand. I mean, it's we just saw with Mookie Betts, right? It's it's millimeters sometimes the difference between a major fracture and something that's painful, but not gonna cost you more than a couple of games. And it looks like Judge fits more into that ladder groove.

It's not very costal at the time. I guess Aronato escaped injury? Yeah, he's supposed to be back Saturday. Part of why I think he went down so bad was, I'm pretty sure that ball hit him in the elbow and then hit him in the nuts. Oh, to get the double. If you watch the video, it like hits him in the elbow and then it goes straight down to

his crotch and then he crumples in a heap and everyone's like, oh, his arm's broken. I was like, when they watched the replay, they're like, oh, maybe it's not his arm that's hurting right now. It's both, but yeah, one of those things dropped him to the ground, and one of those things will cost him a couple games at the end of the week, right? That's the difference. But he says he expects to return on Saturday.

And I mean, I don't know if that's good news. I've detailed that. I don't think he's going to get back to where he once was. Still a little bit light in terms of power output. Popped for homers in May and 23 games has won so far in 17 games in June. Yeah, it doesn't seem like he's comfortable. That's the main takeaway. I don't know if it's the back or if it's timing or if it's a combination of factors

or something that we just don't know about yet with Nolan Aronado. But he does not have the obvious bounce back feel to him right now. A reduction in bat speed. I mean, the nice thing about knowing that maximum exit velocity is the thing that is closest, the closest tied to bat speed that we know among the different outcome metrics gives you a nice little one look at like, you know, I can compare Nolan Aronato's bat speed to his previous ones just by looking at his Max CV and he's got the worst Max CV of his career.

We also know from some of the aging curves on bat speed that, you know, it does go down pretty precipitously in your mid thirties. The Kyle Bradish news was really sad, but I do think that it was headed towards that. I mean, I just think that like, if you have a spring injury for a guy, then they say like he has a small tear or he sprained his elbow. A sprain is a tear. So like, if you hear the word sprain and elbow, if they're not getting Tommy John right away, they're gonna get it sometime in the future soon. And I think that was sort of how I read

the Kyle Bradish situation as soon as he went down in the beginning. And I was happy to see him pitch a little bit, but I never thought he was gonna make it through the season. I was definitely concerned. I liked that they at least tried to go the rest in PRP route. And unfortunately, this turned out in a surgery. But with Bradish, it was Tommy John with internal brace,

according to Daniel Allentuck from the Baltimore banner. Yeah, they're kind of just combining them now. Yeah, I was going to say, we have to keep an eye on how these are reported. And I wonder if that's going to be the more normal or more common way to go. And I also wonder if that will either prolong the previously dubbed Tommy John honeymoon period. Like, will we go from four to five years to like eight?

The recovery time by two months or whatever. Yeah, and I think Mike Elias was quoted as saying he expects Bradish to still be down for 12 to 18 months. So it's not speeding it up if it's both, but if it increases the longevity coming back. If it was 12, that'd be actually better than most Tommy Johns, like most traditional Tommy Johns. So we could still be right, that it could shave time off and it could be 12 months

14 months I think it's about sort of your average for the old the old style of Tommy John 18 is would be a bad outcome But he'd miss all of next year, right? Yeah, he'd miss all of next year with 18 I would settle for better long-term outcomes even if it didn't speed up recovery time. I realize the goal is to have both of those things, get players back healthy faster and keep them healthy in the long run.

I'm hoping that the combination of the replacement with the brace ends up being a better version of Tommy John surgery, if you will, where we end up with guys that are not breaking a second or even a third time, which has become more of a concern in recent years. The news on Mike Trout is disappointing. Sam Blum from The Athletic had a report that there's still not really a timeline and things are going more slowly than expected. What was the injury a calf tear or?iscus? No, meniscus surgery. Yeah.

He has not started a running program yet and still looking for exercises that allow him to progress with minimal soreness. And there was uncertainty about the timetable. Basically at the time it was more like he should be back this year. That was the general thinking. And a lot of times meniscus surgeries can be like six to eight week injuries but it really depends on what else is going on. In Trout's case, I have been in a situation

with no IL spots where holding onto Mike Trout made sense, thinking about six to eight weeks and looking at how well he was playing when he got hurt. Now I'm starting to have some reservations about grinding it out in the absence of IL spots. Yeah, because it might just be the longer end of normal. We're going to hold on to Mookie Bets in main event, I think.

And that's a six week timeline. Six to eight, yep. For the guys that are early rounders, six to eight weeks is usually the timetable I see and say, all right, I'm going to grind out this next stretch without a player. I'm going to be one short trout wasn't really a first two rounder anyway. So right. You got you got a trout discount this year. And I think for some people that was enough to say, yeah, I want to keep them, but I can't. It's a tough decision.

Yeah. But I think this update, if you were on the fence about it, might be enough for you to say, all right, I'll take my chances. I'll drop them. Maybe try to get them back in fab. Once we get some positive updates, once we get some progress toward a return, given the way things have trended so far for Mike Trout, uh, Max Scherzer is coming back. See, I told you there'd be a couple of players coming back.

Scherzer is going to start on Saturday against the Royals. We didn't get any model numbers from his rehab starts, did we? I know one of those starts at least was a couple of those starts were at AAA. So I thought maybe we'd get some numbers on that. Royals have been a little bit of a tough draw too. So it's not, it's not an immediate must activate in all situations but I got 105 pitches with a 78 stuff plus. It's hard to in the rehab sense we've talked about this with Walker Buehler. Yeah is he throwing as hard as he can? Is he airing

it out or is he just getting through it to get the work done to prepare himself? I tend to think veterans like Scherzer know what they're doing with arm care and know how to just get back and that's more where his focus is. I wouldn't sound the alarms until I saw, you know, major league radar guns readings and in fact one of the things that was, that separates sort of you know late career Scherzer from you know the the the excellent Scherzer was command of the breaking balls which he couldn't really do with the the back and now that he has like five breaking balls that's going to be something to watch for but you got to watch him on your bench But you got to watch him on your bench. There's no way you just wait for wait for leave him on the waiver wire unless he wasn't in your player pool and you have to wait.

And you have to wait for him to pitch anyway on Saturday before you do Sunday Fab. Scherzer is 77% rostered right now in the RotaWire Online Championship. 100% rostered in the main event. Makes sense. But in leagues where he's available, so one in four leagues roughly where he's out there, I think you would bid on Scherzer similar to a top pitching prospect. Even if he doesn't pitch well,

as long as things look pretty good, you'd say, hey, this is probably better than most of the other pitchers that were taking chances out on the waiver wire on a weekly basis. Yeah, he's probably worth $150, $200 out of a thousand. So I think you'll see some pretty aggressive bids in those leagues,

and those are kind of unique circumstances, we're sure there's out there, but he is out there in a few places. Do you think the Rangers should sell? I think the beauty of our calendar, as we talked about on Tuesday, is we have time. We still have a month and change, right? I mean, if you had to decide today,

I think you might still play it out. They have a 11% chance of making the playoffs today. Yeah, like if the trade deadline was tomorrow, I think you'd still consider playing it out, because Scherzer's coming back now. And de Grahm. De Grahm could come back later. Tyler Malley could be back.

You know, you've had Wyatt Langford injured and trying to adjust the big league pitching. You've had a've had Wyatt Langford injured and trying to adjust the big league pitching. You've had a stretch where Josh Young has barely been able to play because he's been hurt. Evan Carter's been hurt. Seeger's missed time. So you've weathered more than the normal share of injuries. And I think you could still look at the Rangers and say, yeah, they're about as good as they were last year. Maybe they're even going to be better once they get everybody healthy. The Verlander News was annoying to me because I wasn't able to change my lineups in time. It sort of came down at a weird time of the day.

And maybe I should have known, you know, because it was like, his neck hurts, he might make his next start, he's probably going to make his next start. Oh, he's on the aisle. I always find the neck strain, the neck hurts, he might make his next start, he's probably gonna make his next start. Oh, he's on the I.O. I always find the neck strain, the neck discomfort, those types of seemingly minor injuries to be challenging because a lot of times I feel like it's literally as simple as someone sleeping wrong and just being too tight to go out and make their start

and by the time the next turn rolls around, they're okay. Yeah. But it can be really bad. I thought it was, it can be really bad. I mean, basically Turnbull season last year was all the neck problems. Right, and Verlander kind of looks a slightly better version of the guy he was last year,

even though the ERA is a little higher. Has a bit of a home run problem though. 11 homers in 57 innings so far through 10 starts this season. Last couple turns against the Angels and Cardinals, only five innings, four earned allowed in both of those. So yeah, it's hard to know. Like is this the new Verlander? This version, the 41 year old version of Verlander, still good. Still rosterable, still usable. But now dealing with more of these nagging injuries and less, just less dominant.

It's more of like your third or fourth best starting pitcher when he's out there. I think so. I think, you know, the contract is up this year. He has a player option for next year. I think he uses that one, but I'm not sure how many more years. I mean, could be one or two more years. I mean, he's 41. Yeah. He's also at the point in his life where he's made more than enough money. He could just say, actually, my neck, my arm, whatever doesn't feel good. And if the Astros aren't playing that well.

That I'm just going to hang it up. He's made enough money where he doesn't have to exercise that option. He could very comfortably retire and would be no worse off for it. But I would love to see a pitch of the year if it if it's something he's able to do and hopefully it's only a short term stint on the IL for Verlander. But we've talked about this Astros rotation depth a few times. It's been it's been tested and tested again. The good news around all of this is that Hunter Brown has really got back on track lately. He's looked much more like the guy we hoped he'd be coming into the season. If you go back through, I think, May 22nd,

his last six starts or so, like basically the last month on a rolling basis, a 41 to eight strikeout to walk ratio, 170 ERA,.89 whip. He's not walking, guys. He's cut down on the home run problems. Really seems like Hunter Brown has made the adjustments, and that's been huge for the Astros.

Yeah, I think that his cutter is kind of a hard slider more than a cut fastball. And that means that he was kind of a one fastball guy and he didn't have great command of that one fastball. What you see is that he really turned it on and became a better pitcher when he threw the sinker in there. I think it just means like multiple looks from the hard pitches and the soft pitches.

All of the pitches were decent. You know, it was a matter of putting together in the right way. And I think he's doing that right now. This is the kind of round that I believe in. Yeah, I'm right there with you. Now the name that actually kind of gets us into project prospect today, Jake Bloss is coming up from the minors

to take over a spot in the rotation. A new name in the mix, really good numbers. Jake Bloss started the season with a handful of starts, four starts at high A. He's been pitching at double A, four starts at high A. He's been pitching at double A, getting great results by ratios. Strikeout rates come down a little bit with the promotion. That's not a huge surprise, but he's actually a bit of a prospect, someone that might be a tad underrated.

Fangraph's got some nice scouting grades on his arsenal overall at 55 fastball, 60 slider, 55 curve, 45 change and even 40 command, which for someone that started the year at high A is pretty good. I don't know if it's all going to fall into place right away, but we're talking about a guy who was a third round pick just last year getting pushed up into the big leagues a lot faster than expected as a result of these injuries, but someone that might be worth thinking about stashing in longer-term leagues especially. He'll play in keeper dynasty leagues, you know, auto-new situations where you need future pitching. Even if Blas is just temporarily here to cover

for Verlander, he could be a bigger part of the plan next season given their organizational needs. Yeah, and the write-up from Long and Hang does, uh, says something that's kind of interesting to me, that Bloss has different shapes on his different pitches. I do think there's a philosophical question there where you're defining pitches and you don't know if you should call that one pitch or two pitch. And like, what will that do to the stuff plus numbers, you know, as it aggregates them. Some pitch models out there do their own pitch classifications for this reason. Not necessarily that it would make a big difference in the actual class, like the stuff plus classification

on the per pitch level. But when you sum it all up, you might be missing the picture, right? He might have, if he has two curve balls and Eric Longinahank says he's basically two curve balls and two sliders, and you're saying he has one slider, one curve ball, but if you split it up, you see, oh, one of these is much better than the other. There's actually two curve balls in here, one's much better than the other.

At least as a pitching coach, it'd be easy to be like, hey, stop throwing that other one. You know what I mean? Or it might be harder to face them as a hitter because you say, he has a slight of a curve and then you get up there and you're like, what, that curve was totally different than the other curve, you know?

That was something that Seth Lugo said in our long conversation this week was, he has two arm slots, Seth Lugo. And so he throws all of his pitches from each arm slot and they're different from each arm slot. So not only does he have eight pitches, he almost has 16 pitches. I like this, I like this idea.

I like this approach because it's like being your own reliever. Yeah. It's like, hey, first time to the order, you got me up here. Second time to the order, you got me down a little bit lower. Oh, and everything you thought you saw

is actually gonna be a little bit different. And it's like trying to hit in a fun house. Like it'd be awful. You're really hard to hit in those situations. Bloss, the only thing that bothers me about Bloss specifically though, statistically, is these high strikeout rate numbers in the low minors, and then he gets to double A and it's 21% all of a

sudden. Yeah, it's big dip. I don't know. I don't know that I am rushing to get him. And even though Longin Hagan was into him, he put him 99th overall in the top 100. So he's barely a top prospect. But it's less than a year to being drafted, right? Like he doesn't have a lot of time to move up.

So I think that's kind of an opportunity, but it's just like, well, let's see what he does. Tough debut, he's got the Orioles first time out. Nice challenge right away. So we'll get a look at him before the weekend, but if you're like seeing names that are unfamiliar on the waiver wire, Jake Beloss is probably one of them in most cases. And there might be a little something there. I mean, Spencer Arrighetti has struggled. The door is open if he

pitches well. There is a spot available even after Verlander returns if Jake Bloss pitches well. And there's a chance that his fastball is better than Arrighetti's. Arrighetti had a 72 stuff plus on the fastball. I think that's part of why he's up and down with results. He does have really good breaking balls, but Blas is supposedly 93 to 96 with great carry. So if he does have good IVB, he does have good shape on that fastball, then he could leapfrog Arrogati pretty quickly. Other prospect related news, more from the stashing horizon and redraw purposes because Jordan Lawler is rostered in every keeper in Dynasty League imaginable,

four to six weeks with a hamstring strain is the timetable for Jordan Lawler. It's another setback for him physically. I believe he was playing a little bit of third base in between IL stints, so they're trying to figure out a way to get him into the mix. I wonder if we're gonna see the Jordan Lawler timeline line up with what the Diamondbacks did with Corbin Carroll when

Carroll debuted a couple of years back if it's like a late August sort of promotion and Lawler gets that window to really establish himself at the end of this season and possibly go into 2025 as a fixture in that lineup health permitting. Yeah they're obviously itching to do something different at third base you know they're putting Blaze Alexander there against lefties. So they're already doing a platoon there. Suarez is just, could be near the end. And so, you know, that would be the, you know, he's 32 and he is projected to bounce back from a 75 WRC plus plus but those projections at 32 start

to become less reliable. His bat speed is down as evidenced by his max EV, his barrel rate is half of what it has been in the past and his hard hit rate is the lowest it's been since 2017. I don't know how much me as a fancy player I'm waiting around for it and then to see that the team is already like, you know, doing things with Blaze Alexander and taking time away from him suggests. And then Lawler is taking. So I think, you know, I don't know who's going to win it, but I think somebody other than Suarez is going to be the second half.

There's Baseman. Yeah, I think Suarez has about as much time as Lawler has hurt to try and claw his way back but those underlying power drop-offs there are very concerning. That was his carrying tool recently, was being able to just barrel up the ball at a 12, 13, 14 percent rate and get to that power and that just has not been the case for Suarez so far this year. Hurston Waldrop hit the aisle on Monday, had another rough start against the Rays on Sunday, and it sounds like he'll be optioned to triple A once he's healthy. Good news, just inflammation for now.

Nothing structurally showing up for Waldrop, but it has not gone the way I had hoped for Waldrop in these first couple big league starts. He's a near identical statistical match in terms of pitch movements to Keaton win. So I would treat him as I do Keaton win, which is, you know, I'm excited, somewhat excited to pick him up for good matchups. I would like to have him today. I think he might pitch well today. What I have learned actually about Rickwood is that it's very large

and it's actually at Pitchers Park. One thing that is weird about it, very large and it's actually a pictures park. One thing that is weird about it though, if you've seen the pictures, like the seats behind home plate, some of them are pointing down the lines. Oh, they're angled. The seats are angled. Yeah. It's like, like this, there's very, there are very little home plate where you're sitting like straight to the home plate. There's a lot of this diagonally sort of sitting behind. So that was a little bit jarring for me to see that.

But that has nothing to do with anything. Keaton Wynn, Hurston Waldrop, put them in the same part of your brain and treat them similarly, which is to say, you know, nice when you got them. And probably time to go ahead and give Spencer Schwellenbach that little love for. Yes. Yeah. Give him the love. He has a good fastball, a good slider. He has other pitches he's learning how to mix in.

I like Spencer Schwellenbach. I picked him up in my 12 team or even 7K is just one earned run. Six innings last time out on Tuesday against the Tigers. So hopefully Schwellenbach can take the opportunity and run with it in the Atlanta rotation. Dylan Cruz got bumped up to triple A earlier this week, did a lot better this time around a double A. He finished that level last year, was 20 games, didn't go particularly well. Some people were a little impatient because they thought Dylan Cruz right out of LSU was just going to be almost ready to go in the big leagues.

Already at triple A, though, less than a year after being drafted, things are still going pretty well overall. We've seen some power, seen a lot more speed. Interesting, though, he's now teammates with James Wood at Rochester. They're playing crews in centerfield, James Wood playing in left. So looks like that's the arrangement for now. I don't think it's all good news because, you know, a 121 WRC plus from a 22 year old double A, I don't think he would adjust that very much.

And it's not sort of outstanding. It's just like sort of above average. And then the thing that really bothers me is he had a 27% pull rate this year in double A, Dylan Cruz did. Like a 27% pull rate is, that is, I mean, nobody's doing that in the big leagues. At least nobody with power.

Let me find the smallest pull rate this year. Yandy Diaz? I mean, is he going to be a Yandy Diaz? Bryce Turang, Beau Bichette, Brendan Rodgers, Leodi Tavares, Blake Perkins, Luis Garcia Jr.? Am I talking about power hitters here? I don't think he's like those players, but my reasoning is trusting what other people have observed about him.

And he has power. Yeah. I wonder if there's something about Harrisburg. Even James Wood last year, there was plenty of power from James Wood. 18 homers in 87 games, younger for the level. But the offensive performance was down compared to expectations, even though it was a big bump up age to level for Wood. And of course we've seen what he's done at AAA this year.

So I just want to see what happens at AAA. Give me 40 or 50 games at AAA from Dylan Cruz. And if something looks off there, maybe then I'll start to dial back expectations a little bit. He's definitely playing with that contact point with the poll versus push. I mean, in AA in 2023, he had a 54% poll rate. And of course he had a terrible, terrible time,

but it may not be, it's not in stone. You know, 27% of the poll rate is not in stone. You know, 27% pull rate is not in stone. That's not necessarily who he is, but he was an all fields guy with oppo power in college. So it's just something that bothers me a little bit. When you're very oppo, you just sapping your power to some extent. And that's why I'm like everybody else.

This is a super hot take. I like James Wood better than Dylan Cruz. Yeah, but I think you can like James Wood better than Dylan Cruz and still like Dylan Cruz too. Like it's possible. It's just weird to like, okay, so he comes out of college and everyone says he's got 60 power and 60 eye at the plate. And this year he hits five home runs at double A

with a 7.6% walk rate and a 27% pull rate and I'm kind of like, why isn't it showing up? I understand, I understand where the concerns come from. But just floated out there, there might be something else going on in Harrisburg. Some promotion news here, Orelvis Martinez is up for the Blue Jays. He hasn't played yet.

He's been up since Tuesday. Hits 16 homers in 63 games at Buffalo. He's just 22 years old. Feels like he's been around forever because he was on the radars of being international signing, geez, four or five years ago now. But he's shortstop eligible, more likely to fit in at second base in the long run. I'm thinking because they're not really playing him in the middle of the week that he's more of a up-and-down guy in the short term

Even though longer term there could be an opportunity there. They're playing barger. They're playing Spencer Horowitz It seems like or Elvis Martinez may have to wait just a little bit longer to get that opportunity with the Jays Yeah, that's three starts four games No barger hasn't played a short yet. Yeah, Barger's playing third and right. Who's playing short? Bowe's hurt, and then they're probably playing Kynar Falefa short right now, right? That's it.

Yeah, they're definitely playing Kynar Falefa at short because the SS was tacked onto his last name because his last name's a little bit long and people were making jokes about that. Falefa-ass. Yeah. Here we go. Yes. IKF has played four or five straight

games a short stop, so he seems to be the option. I mean, I guess the the idea for the Blue Jays is that they are scratching and clawing and, you know, they're not necessarily in the turn it over to the kids portion of the schedule yet.

No, but I do like they're giving Barger and Horowitz the chance that we talked about before instead of running the same veterans up and down in the lineup the way they had been for a little while to at least a mild shakeup trying to find something that works. Here's one that might be of interest in some deeper leagues. If you noticed, Sebastian Walcott, one of the top prospects

in the Rangers organization, was not doing a ton to begin the season. There's some context here. He's very young. He's 18. He was assigned to high A, which is a very aggressive promotion. Things have been much better for him in June. You can still look at that overall slash line and say, Oh, why are we excited about a guy

that's hitting 234 with a 342, 380 high A right now? It's because he's 18 and he's getting better month by month Kenny Landry from MLB comm I had a quote from Ross Fenstermaker You might remember that name because Ross was kind enough to join us during the winter meetings on the show and Ross said that Walcott has the mental capacity and ability to acclimate to the level and grow and progress He's done exactly that every month has been better than the last and they've been playing him a little bit at third base too. So playing both spots on the left side of the infield. So Walcott's one of those players that if you're in a rebuilding situation in the keeper league and you want to take a chance on someone that could just take off and vault up prospect lists if it all clips, he meets that kind

of description. Yeah he's an interesting guy. Where was he drafted? Why don't, why don't I? Walcott? Yeah, the new Fangrass player pages don't have the where he was drafted at the top. International free agent signing, it would have been I think before 2023 because he was playing in the Dominican Summer League that year. So it would have probably been like the winter before that. Yeah, the K issues, you know, that's what that's what I'd probably be watching the most even the scouting report says you know the power's there the the defense is there it's all about can you make contact so getting that swing strike right down to 12% that's manageable it was higher than that before.

I was tooling around on some of the pages looking for fun guys at different levels. One thing was that Roman Anthony is just jumping up the boards in double A. He has come to, as a 20-year-old, he's 45% better than league average in double A so you know the last update we have is a 15 overall ranking from fan graphs and you know you've heard about Roman Anthony here you know for a while so I was like you know kind of trying to find the next Roman Anthony and I've forgotten his name I told you it earlier you've had him and you've had Josue DiPaola. Oh, Josue DiPaola, but, but you know, the time is up on that one too.

You know, like you're gonna get to, you're gonna run out of time on DiPaola too. And one thing that we got in the news was that it was 114 exit below. That's something that Longin Hagen was reporting, max exit below. And I looked at the major leaguers that have hit the ball 114 or more this year. And the worst one was Jorge Soler.

De Paula has speed though too. He's not necessarily a Soler player. But if he turned out to be like a Soler with speed, you have to remember how many good seasons Solerre had for fantasy. That would be a pretty good outcome. So I think DePaul is already almost not a great pick for the next Roman Anthony because I think Keith Law had him 11th. So then I was trying to go further down. Didn't I have one more name for you? Let's see. You threw at me.

You didn't say Felny and Celestin, but he's in the Mariners organization. He's a big riser At the lower levels. I'm forgetting the name to back. Who did I was talking about me as the Luke Keishel? You know, I think that he's he's now in double a and he's raking still I think he's gonna jump up on the list and I did mention Carson Williams has cut some of the strikeouts So those are you know, Carson Williams is a shortstop in the Rays organization. And I think that Caballero and Walls is probably where they'll go the rest of the season. They've been fine.

You know, they're good enough close enough to the average. But I don't think that Caballero has hit a second level. So I think shortstop is still an area of concern for them organizationally going forward. Like they would like to find a better player, probably, than someone they just sort of picked up and put in there that can be close to the average. And Carson Williams might still be that guy. Carson Williams has more of a star ceiling. I think you could imagine a scenario in the not so distant future where a combination of Carson Williams

and Junior Caminero are holding down the spots on the left side of that infield in Tampa Bay. And that would change a lot about that raise lineup very quickly once those guys are up. But I think Caballero to me just looks like a nice bench player. Just the guy you'd have as a capable option between mostly second and short. It's fine. It's got speed. K-Rate's a little high this year, too. I wonder if that's part of just having that that larger role and not necessarily being spot started as effectively as he was a year ago in Seattle. If that's part of the downside of playing him more,

is that you're going to get more swing and miss. I also just don't know. Like, you know, the the the Rays weren't playing him at short despite, you know, J.P. Crawford's numbers not being great at short defensively. So I just I wonder if he was if it's like they think he's internally the best defensive option at short. I mean, why is Taylor Walls coming on and taking time away from him? It's not necessarily from an offensive standpoint, I don't think. and taking time away from him, it's not necessarily from an offensive standpoint,

I don't think. No, I don't think so either, but I actually thought Walls at one point had more ceiling than he's shown so far. At least in the power department for sure. Yeah, I guess maybe a slightly higher OBP, we've seen consistent ability to draw walks, even though it's-

It's about it. Yeah, it's mostly that. That buoys things quite a bit for him. If he could hit a little more on top of drawing those walks, then we might have a passable regular at short. But I think versatility with the glove is a big part of why Taylor Walls continues to hang around when healthy is a part of that.

That Ray is playing time mix. Let's move over to the weekend waiver preview, which will still have a few more prospecty names in it but how about Daniel Schneeman? Another surprise in Cleveland as I sort of hinted at earlier, a guy that was not on the radar at all for me and has started five consecutive games throughout this week, going to go back to the weekend, he's playing all over the place. Schneeman has played just in the last five days, he's made starts in center field, third base, and short stop, and prior to that,

has made starts for the Guardians in right field and second base. So very versatile, is hitting the ball harder than he did last year, and we're using Fancraft's hard hit rate, just look at the difference between his numbers at Columbus a year ago versus numbers now. He's already 27 years old. So from the is he a prospect since the answers kind of well, no, he's been in the organization since 2018. And this is his first

opportunity. But there's power, there's speed, there's decent contact rates. There seems to be a pretty good handle on the zone. I almost wonder is Daniel Schneemann this year's Davis Schneider? Schneemann Schneider. Same initials. I don't know, I just, the age to level stuff is like, okay, not a prospect, but good enough to play and versatile enough to find his way into the lineup.

They're different in that, you know, Schneider is trying to pull everything in the air. And Schneemann's more of a balanced hitter, in that, you know, Schneider is trying to pull everything in the air and everything Schneeman's more of a balanced hitter, which I like, I guess that's that's sort of the guardians way is is an emphasis on contact. He has a 110.6 maxi V in AAA, she even does with a 49% hard hit like it's so hard with these Cleveland guys, man the answer for me this is the same on almost every Cleveland guy that's not named Josh Naylor or David Fry I guess is I don't know how much power they have I just love that I don't know much fry has already elevated himself to that level

Yeah, I mean he just he just like he has better batted ball stats than everybody else. I mean this this is the team with mediocre batted ball stats that still somehow is hitting homers this year. It's a great mystery and I'm coming around to just not questioning it. I want to understand how it's happening but I'm not doubting it. Boring. Yeah and I think we're gonna see especially this weekend is 15 team leagues are where Schneem is going to get scooped up, right? He's already rostered in 26% of main event leagues.

That number is going to go up. He's going to add position eligibility to a few spots in the next couple of weeks that they keep playing him and moving him around as much as they do. That always carries value. And because the underlying metrics are actually pretty solid, you can tell yourself a story that hey, you know, he's stolen bases at AAA before he was 17 for 20 last year, so he could run a little bit. He unlocked some more power this year, so maybe he'll actually be a nice balanced

player for us that is decent in all five categories. Those players are actually pretty hard to come by. And because of his O.B.P skills, maybe he actually has a prominent spot in the better than expected Cleveland lineup. You could just, you could tell yourself a whole bunch of stories that this could actually work out. To me, the big story here is that it's possible that Tyler Freeman is a drop. I still like the combination of swing strike rate, K-Rate, barrel rate. Like I think it should be, it should be better than it is. And my biases align with the Bat X. And the Bat X likes Tyler Freeman the best out of all of them and says he can be a 271

hitter with a 330 OBP, 407 slugging, the kind of guy that would put up 13, 14 homers and 18 stone bases over the course of a full season. But you have Schneemann and then you look at the game's log for Tyler Freeman and you realize it's missing games. Tyler Freeman is not starting every day. And if Tyler Freeman is not starting every day, again, sometimes the team in their usage is going to tell you more about how good a player is or how invested you should be in them.

And so the fact that the guardians are playing Schneemann so much, five straight starts and not playing Freeman tells me also that Freeman may be a drop. That's a good breakdown of where things stand. They're both versatile enough where if they're both hitting, there's a world in which they both play. But that's been the adjustment so far. A little less time for Freeman has been part of how they fit Daniel Schneemann into the mix. Other bats to consider. I'll leave this one a little less time for Freeman has been part of how they fit Daniel Schneeman into the mix.

Other bats to consider, I'll leave this one a little bit open. I'm sure people want us to talk a little more about Ben Rice, who's getting the first crack at filling in for Anthony Rizzo. And part of the appeal is that Ben Rice has catcher eligibility in a lot of leagues. So you're getting someone that could be a second catcher who's playing more than a second catcher typically does and catcher who's playing more than a second catcher typically does and somebody who's interesting by profile but also could actually be in a elite lineup for the time that he's playing. So you get that extra bump like I think the hard thing this time of year is to say what separates these guys that all have very similar modest projections but

they seem to project enough to play at least in a 15 team league possibly in a 12 team league. It's supporting cast. I think that can be the difference between a 12-team player and a 15-team player when skills might be otherwise equal. Yeah, and also, like, you know, what kind of a park are we uploading them into? You know, it's like, if Ben Rice was, you know, called up to start for the Marlins at first base, I might be a little bit less excited about him.

So, supporting cast. And then if you can get it, just like I've been harping on this episode is, is, you know, how often they play him. But it looks like he's just going to slot in for Rizzo. Two for two so far, at least we'll keep an eye on that leading to the weekend. But yeah, Ben Rice getting picked up in first come first serve leagues for good reasons. I mean, we talked about him, I think, when the Rizzo injury happened, like the production in the miners was very interesting. Putting up some nice power speed numbers between double A,

the very brief time he was a triple A getting on base, doing all the things you got to do to possibly win a job, at least temporarily, even on a good team. Tyler Black is back for the Brewers. I don't know if you should do anything with him. I think you gotta see, they have a four game series in San Diego, starting Thursday.

Watch the lineup for the next few days. See if they make a change. Jake Bowers still looks like the same guy he was last year. Jake Bowers looks like the same guy he was last time we talked about him. Last time we talked about him, we said, how could you possibly make this decision? Bowers got hot for a couple of weeks,

then cooled right back off. It's a 93 WRC plus, it's a 33% K rate. I think what you see is what you get. There's power, there's speed, there's swing and miss. If the Brewers think they can do better with Tyler Black, then they'll play him more. And I think we'll get just a little hint of that in this series against the Padres.

So if they play him four straight games, I'm in on Sunday. If they play them twice, I'm probably out. If they play them three times, I'm just gonna spin around a few times before I run fab, hit a random number, and run away from the computer. Yes. That'll be my bid.

That describes my process sometimes. In the fab on the donkey. That describes my process sometimes I in the fab on the donkey Combing around trying to do some prefab work myself and Just circle the name Otto Lopez in Miami. This is definitely a 15 team versus a 12 team situation because you know, he doesn't have a history of power, of great power, and his bat-a-ball stats aren't that great, but he did hit a ball 110.7 last year in AAA. So there may be a little bit more oomph in there.

It's 108.8 this year for Otto Lopez in terms of max. But both of those numbers are non-zero, so I'm thinking he can have at least like 120 ISO Lopez and he runs and he plays. So that can be just enough for streaming purposes and maybe you were playing bets at shortstop or second base. And so Otto Lopez is kind of, I would say, a sort of an emergency replacement that could give you a little bit of power and a little bit of speed. I don't think the schedule lines up amazingly this week, but he could be one of those midweek replacements where, you know, if you're looking, sometimes you look at full week projections for a player and you forget that you can actually change players, hitters in NFC formats midweek.

And so sometimes it's irrelevant what he's going to do the whole week if you just want to put him in for next weekend. You know, so I think that this type of player is useful to have on your roster You know, so I think that this type of player is useful to have on your roster in head to head leagues. You just put him into maybe like snatch a steal, you know, like for extra at bats when the other team's not playing. So he's a kind of a near replacement, but interesting versatility player that you can have on your roster. I think that's a good way to look at Lopez, similar to Schneeman in some ways in terms of expectations, a little different in terms of immediate eligibility where you can play them. But lots of opportunity.

I think he started eight of the last nine games for the Marlins, really has pushed Fidel Brujjan to the side. On the pitching side, I saw Tobias Meyers is the most added player on CBS again, first come first serve. Are they doing it again? Are the Brewers getting away with this? I think it was Matt Thompson in our Discord or on Twitter at one point, like a month or even six weeks ago before this recent stretch where Tobias Myers is

pitched well, he just put it out there. He's like, the Brewers are going to get away with it again with Tobias Myers, aren't they? And they've been getting away with it yet again with Tobias Myers at three twenty six year a one thirteen whip forty two K's and forty seven innings for a guy that's bounced around through a lot of organizations at one point Orioles, Rays, White Sox, Guardians, Giants. It's a sixth organization, but the first to give them a chance in the big leagues.

Yeah, I think it's what's wild is that he doesn't have a single pitch that rates above a 94 by Stuff Plus. God, I love this. This is so good. And I'm not rooting against you. I'd like Chaos, especially when Chaos works in my favor. Yeah, what I would say is that a 94 WRC Plus, 94 stuff plus on the four seam or 93 is actually pretty close to the average.

It's only a couple of ticks under and maybe for starters, maybe like right around the average. And that might explain why he throws it 41% of the time. It's a 92.6 mile an hour fastball for Tobias Meyers, but it obviously has good shape. And so I don't know. And then beyond that, he has a pretty equal mix of four other pitches.

So there's a little bit of the kitchen sink approach here. And then kitchen sink with good command, I guess. No one, this is a Lodum situation. Lodum is model spelled backwards incorrectly. In that, there's no number that says he's good. Perfect. That's exactly what I want. And here's the other.

K-minus-B is not good, Sierra's not good, FIP's not good. Here's my other tidbit for everybody. The thing that continues to help a team like Milwaukee get more mileage out of pitchers like Tobias Myers, like Colin Ray Myers like Colin Ray like Wade Miley when he was healthy it is their defense look at the rolling

one-year leaderboard for Babbitt allowed right there's second behind the Dodgers the Brewers defense turns more balls into outs it's not an accident and I think there's even it's not just the defense necessarily some of it could be the game calling or the pitch mixes or the shapes sequencing there's even it's not just the defense necessarily some of it could be the game calling or the pitch mixes or the shapes Sequencing there's something I don't think this is an accident. I don't think this is completely fluky I don't think this is a thing that you can look at and say add that can't continue because you look at multi-year trends On this and you do see a lot of the same teams doing really well in that particular area

So if you're going to be anti-model, I think you can more selectively pick spots where it's a good idea to try it because there's a few things working in your favor that might not be there for other organizations. Flip side, the Rockies, not surprisingly, 323 Babbitt last year. That's not all there.

That's the park, right? It's not just them. But the Giants, we've talked about the limitations of that team defensively and the dimensions of their home ballpark, how that would create more on balls and play. The Nationals, the Cardinals, the A's, the White Sox, the Marlins, all at the bottom.

And they're not a progressive data organization necessarily. And the Brewers are a team that have four or five center fielders on the roster, it feels like, all the time. The only outfielder they have that's not really a center fielder most of the time is Christian Jelic. Everybody else they could put in center field. Outfield shifts were more effective than infield shifts

in taking hits away over the recent history. So they could be outfield shifting more aggressively than some teams or more precisely than other teams with centerfielders and Tobias Myers. Forty three percent fly ball rate. Always been a fly ball. A pitcher might just play into his strengths as well. I'm just turning into something I never thought I'd be. Someone who's into Tobias Myers and Andrew Abbott.

And it's like fine, you like these pictures? Fine, I'm just gonna keep, I will use the outliers until they burn me. And I'm sure someday it'll burn me, but until other people care, I'm in. The other guy that I thought was kind of interesting might be Landon Nack, just because Walker Bueller went on the IL with some hip discomfort.

Apparently the hip was bothering him. Then he got hit by a comebacker in the hip on Tuesday, which is just, that's just lovely. Yeah. Isn't that great? Like this is already bothering me and now I got hit. So that's going to make it worse. But Bueller was also struggling in his first stretch back,

from the second Tommy John, a 584 ERA, 151 whip. You wrote about landing neck, I think it was maybe last week now, just as someone that did some interesting things while he was up, stands out a bit in the model and just based on need could get the opportunity. Maybe this Bueller injury opens that door back up for Knack. Yeah, it's a really strong fastball slider combination,

even though it's only 92.8 on the fastball, it rates highly. And so it's only 92.8 on the fastball, it rates highly. And so it's good movement profile. It's a good two-pitch foundation. And then what he's doing more in the major leagues is throwing the curve and change up more and making himself into a true four-pitch pitcher. That means his range is from 79 on the curve ball to 93 on the fastball. And so I think he's just kind of dancing around different VELO ranges with pretty good demonstrated command.

I don't know that he'll have great, great strikeout rates because in the minors, he kind of flipped around from like 26, even had a 20% of A in 2023 of landed enacted. But I generally just think he's probably a good matchups pitcher and somebody I want around. Yep. And the team context certainly helps. I mean, there's no, no shame in taking the chance. I need anybody that Dodgers are leaning on. We'll see if they end up bringing him back in. Yeah. The wind probabilities there.

Usage ends up being right. I think that's another part of the Tobias Myers, Colin Ray thing too, is that they're not going to overexpose guys. If the situation is right, if they're pitching well, sure, they can pitch deep into a game. If it's not, they go to the bullpen. They just they don't let those guys stay out there and just wear it because they they'd like their fourth, fifth, sixth reliever enough to go ahead and make those changes.

So that's the state of things. The early weekend waiver preview. Hopefully some of those names help you. I really want to go ahead and make those changes. So that's the state of things. The early weekend waiver preview. Hopefully some of those names help you. I really want to see Jake Bloss though. I just want to see what the stuff really looks like against big league pitchers will get a chance, big league hitters. We'll get a chance to see that on Friday night. We are on our way out the door.

Excited for Rickwood today too. Real excited for Rickwood. It's kind of a standalone game. There's a one late game Brewers Padres. It starts kind of at the end of that, but it's got its own nice window. Really's kind of a standalone game. There's a one-leg game, Brewers-Padres. It starts kind of at the end of that, but it's got its own nice window. Really looking forward to watching that game, seeing that ballpark, and taking in a bit of history

from afar as we watch that game between the Cardinals and Giants on Thursday night. Be sure to get a subscription to the Athletic, theathletic.com, slash rates and barrels. Lots of good stuff to read there. You can find it on Twitter. Big piece for Jason Stark tomorrow. It's tomorrow?

Yep. Awesome. Be sure to check that out, as well as the great coverage of Willie Mays' life. A lot of great tributes on the site and everywhere else, too. I've seen amazing stuff all over the place in the last day or so. You can find Eno on Twitter, EnoSarris.

Find me at Derek VanRyper. Find the pod at ratesandvaros. We're back with you on Friday, live, 1 o'clock Eastern, on our YouTube channel with Trevor May. Thanks for listening.