Rates & Barrels - The Halos Waive a Trade Deadline Haul & Late-Season Rebound Potential

Episode Date: August 30, 2023

Eno and DVR discuss the group of players placed on waivers Tuesday -- including five members of the Angels -- and try to determine if there is a need to alter the timing of the Trade Deadline, or if a return to the 'waiver trade deadline' era is necessary. Plus, they discuss causes for the recent struggles of Lucas Giolito, Alex Cobb's brush with a no-hitter, and the potential for a final month rebound in the face of disappointing 2023 performances at the plate.  Rundown 1:25 The Angels Trade Deadline Additions Get Placed on Waivers 8:03 Is a Roster Rules Refresher Needed? 10:57 What's Causing Lucas Giolito's Recent Struggles? 17:45 Finding Viable Contributors Among Other Waived Players 32:50 Alex Cobb's Brush with a No-Hitter 40:48 Evaluating Potential September Rebounds (Hitters) 55:09 Join Us in Arizona for Baseball HQ's First Pitch Event in November! Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow R&B on Twitter: @ratesandbarrels e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Check out this offer from our sponsors: Give ZBiotics a try for yourself. Go to zbiotics.com/RATES to get 15% off your first order when you use RATES at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Wednesday, August 30th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we will discuss the many players that popped up on waivers. About half of them were actually from the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. We'll dig into what value those players might have, where they might end up as a result of the waiver system, and whether this might be a problem in the future that needs to be addressed.

We had some other stuff that happened on Wednesday, including Alex Cobbs brushed with a no-hitter. Eno wrote an article last week that we really didn't talk about on the show about late turnarounds. What are the odds of players who have struggled up to this point actually coming back and playing really well during the final month of the season? So we got that, plus a few other things. Maybe even some Jay Cuda tweets along the way. Although, the worst thing you can do on a podcast is describe someone's timeline. Especially a visual artist like Jay Kuda.

Yeah, just follow Jay Kuda on Twitter if you don't already. He's got more followers than I do. I think he's got as many followers as Eno and I put together. So chances are if you're following one of us, you're probably already following Jay, but you'll get some chuckles out of that. Let's start with the Angels. The Angels put their trade deadline additions on waivers. That means Lucas Gilito, Ronaldo Lopez, Randall Gritchick can be claimed by any other club, and their salary comes off the books for the Angels.

And it wasn't just those three players. It was also Hunter Renfro and Matt Moore. And I know people were generally bothered by the Angels putting this many players out there, I think in part because they don't get necessarily distributed in a way that gives every team a fair shot. The way the waiver system works is the teams with the worst record get priority at those players. And as we all know, the teams that aren't going to the playoffs this year, the clear

bottom feeders that have that first priority, they're not going to claim any of these guys because they're not going to spend money for no reason, right? All these guys are free agents at the end of the season, so there's no value add for those teams. But what's going to happen is the teams that are in the thick of the wildcard race, and maybe even like the Twins leading the AL Central. Those teams are kind of ideally positioned to get maybe multiple players from this group

and a group that also includes Harrison Bader, Josh Donaldson, Mike Clevenger, Carlos Carrasco, and I think the Tigers reliever Jose Cisneros is also part of this as well. So you get about 10 players out there that other teams are looking at, and the teams at the very top of the standings, Jose Cisneros is also part of this as well. So you've got about 10 players out there that other teams are looking at. And the teams at the very top of the standings, Atlanta, Dodgers, they have no shot at these players.

And I think that's probably a frustrating system to work within because every team loses players after the non-waiver trade deadline. So is this going to push us back in the direction of having a waiver trade deadline period throughout august like we used to have this used to be a thing there was a deadline on august 31st and players that were placed on waivers if they cleared they could be traded if they were claimed by a team you could wear out trade with them but now that system is gone and this seems problematic in some ways i just don't think that you can put a moratorium on roster moves during the season. There are going to be teams that make moves and they have to drop players. And with guaranteed contracts, you have to go through the waiver system. So I don't think there can be a moment where you say,

after this moment, no more waivers. So then what happens to the players that people wave you know i mean like there has to there has to be a waiver system in place uh there can be a toggle of the trade deadline where it's to later to um maybe help sort the teams better so teams know their buyers or sellers um you know a little bit more definitively uh you could toggle the uh deadline for the postseason for how you can be on the roster we all know from k-rod that that can be played with too because as long as the guy you're picking up off of waivers replaces an injured player they can be on the postseason roster replaces an injured player they can be on the postseason roster so you just have to you know put someone on the 60 day il and boom you know lucas giolito is on the postseason roster no

matter when you pick him up if i understand the rules correctly so uh you know the they're they're they're kind of stuck here i think uh one thing that does suck about this is maybe not the idea that teams will put guys on waivers um you know at the end of the season i i don't know how much of a pandemic this is right now or if it'll become endemic because um we have the angels doing it and then we have like three or four other teams just releasing one guy it's not like it was not it felt like the floodgates when the angels did it but i don't i don't know there's still plenty of uh players being paid on on teams and we're also talking about it's only something that'll happen for rentals right and rentals change hands at the

trade deadline pretty easily what it will do is further depress the selling price of rentals change hands at the trade deadline pretty easily what it will do is further depress the selling price of rentals which was already in the basement um it'll further depress it because you could say as a buyer especially if you're not a top of the uh the division buyer let's say you're a person going for the wild card you could say why should i pay you any prospects for paul de young when i could wait uh two weeks and wait for you to release them and just claim them so you know there'll be some sort of haves and have-nots where the braves are like well okay we have to pay a prospect because we're not in a good spot in the waiver orders we'll never get any of these waiver players so you know even if we want to rental we have to pay a prospect because we're not in a good spot in the waiver orders. We'll never get any of these waiver players. So even if we want to rental, we have to pay a prospect. But for everybody else

it might depress the selling price of a rental player. We're starting to get separation in the playoff view a little bit just in terms of odds. The Padres have sunk down to a 1.8% chance of making the playoffs according to Fangraphs as we begin play on Wednesday. The Reds are down to a 1.8 percent chance of making the playoffs according to fan graphs as we begin play on wednesday uh the reds are down to a 10.9 chance the marlins are down to 12.9 those teams are still trying the marlins and reds even the padres right because anything can happen i think it's strange to me and maybe this is also partially the result of having expanded playoffs like maybe the the rules around late season roster transactions just are out of step with the number of teams that are

trying and you're right about the just moving the the regular trade deadline the non-waiver trade trade deadline back what if you moved it halfway into august instead of august 1st or july 31st what if you said it's august 15th august 16th yeah or if it was today or tomorrow the last day of august like those would all be reasonable outcomes like do you feel do you feel this is the current system do you feel this is worse than just pushing that whole deadline back because the thing that i worry about is that the trade deadline can be a bust some years anyway. We were in complete disagreement about how good this year's deadline was, but if you push it back further, does that keep many teams just waiting and waiting and waiting until the last possible minute to swoop

in and make changes? Could we actually make the trade deadline even worse by pushing it back two or four weeks? because then the some of the calculus is why should i pay at all for even a high profile acquisition if it's just for four weeks that's four weeks so the return for the teams that are trading players away goes down even further so i don't know like i think i think we might be at a point where baseball's roster rules need a refresher. I don't have a complete solution. I think it's like a constitution for a fantasy league that started 30 years ago that's been amended year over year over year for 30 years. And it's just so tangled up that if you were starting from scratch, there's no way it would look the way that it does right now.

If you were starting from scratch, there's no way it would look the way that it does right now. But untangling it and preserving the things you like without wrecking it is really complicated without without actually starting over and starting over in this case requires things that are in the collective bargaining agreement. So that becomes extremely complicated. I just don't I don't know how bad this is. You know, like we're talking about. Ten players, but, you know, uh we're talking about 10 players but you know impact players are we are we talking about two or three you know um and in terms of unfairness uh it's not that unfair and i actually i don't expect the padres with their bloated payrollated payroll to claim a lot of these guys and block them from other players teams. I don't know. I don't get that sense. I think it'd be

almost more likely for them to drop a bunch of their players on waivers and try to get under. They're at 280 by fangraphs and 273 is an apron. The Angels are going to save $8 million with their drops. So the Padres could get under that 273 apron if they did it. But they'd have to drop... A lot of the rentals are big names, so they'd have to drop Snell and Hader and stuff.

And maybe they're just... I think they'll get stuck in inertia and just be like, well, we're not at zero, so let's just keep playing. But that doesn't mean that they're going to add lucas giolito so i uh assume that the giants d-backs cubs and twins uh will eat up most of the i don't even know if the guardians will do it you know like spend money and there's seven games under 500 so uh i would say that the twins d, D-backs, and Cubs and Giants, and maybe the Reds, those are the teams that are going to claim most of these players.

Yeah, I saw Zach Meisel indicate that he thinks that Carlos Carrasco wants to finish his career in Cleveland, and Carrasco might just clear waivers, be released, and then sign for the minimum. And that leaves the Mets on the hook for the balance of the salary. That's part of the outcome for some of these players. The players are not all going to get, like Cisnero, like, I don't know if he moves the needle. So yeah, it depends. I mean, who knows, who knows if someone sees something in there that they can, they can tweak quickly, right? Relievers are always kind of interesting when they pop up. I mean, What's wrong with Giolito right now? Like Giolito has been horrible since the trade.

I thought that was a good trade. Rehashing this again for 30 seconds. I like that the Angels tried. It didn't work out. Here we are. Lucas Giolito. ERA was close to seven during his brief time with the Angels. Walk rate ticked up a little bit.

Home run rate went through the roof. his brief time with the angels walk rate ticked up a little bit home run rate went through the roof but looking at the actual the pitch mix and the stuff what actually happened why was he so bad results wise during this brief time with the angels now he's a little amped i mean his fastball velo went up a tick and weirdly his change up velo went up a tick and a half which means that the separation was smaller than it was before and he's he throws a straight change so uh maybe being amped uh did not serve him well it's the kind of stuff that you would look at and say in a small sample yes this dude has a home run problem over his his history but 2.8 home runs per nine is is just noise so i i would i would think generally it's mostly noise some of it you know

just being amped and that not necessarily helping his pitch mix um and then you know that stadium is is trending more in the hitter direction than it used to be after the alterations they made to the fences maybe there is a specific spot in those fences uh that doesn't play well for Giolito. So I still think he's a decent player. You know, if you go back to full season numbers, 25% strikeout rate, 8.7% walk rate. Those are above average numbers for a starting pitcher. And so I think, I don't know that I'd call him an ace, but I'd say he's comfortably above average.

And if you're the Giants and you're running out, you know, openers and bullpen games twice a week, or, you know, what's the back end of the Diamondbacks rotation look like, the Reds rotation, I think there's no way that he gets past the Reds, Giants, and D-backs. One of those three teams is going to claim Lucas Gilito. Yeah, I mean, you think he's pretty easily the highest ceiling of the pitchers available for sure. Lopez is an impact arm.

Yes, I really like Ronaldo Lopez. I think if the d if he gets past the d backs i don't understand baseball yeah right they've had a need in that bullpen all season he immediately comes in and it could be at least their second best reliever probably behind paul seawald that would be totally a big boost for them i'm with the ng alito i'm really curious to see where he ends up in the off season too because i think someone's going to get a potential bargain if they can work with him make a few tweaks and get him back on track my prediction was he gets the mania deal and he goes to san francisco yeah well he might get a head start on seeing how much he likes being in san

francisco depending on how this all plays out think about what who he is now as a pitcher like i think let's say he had he had like an ace like season he would have put himself into see into like ray and gossman territory where here's the guy who's been up and down but he had he's coming off a great season maybe he's figured something out we'll give him you know what was what were gossman and and ray like 150 million and at least at least 100 gossman was 120 million over six or something five for 110 which feels like a bargain now five and 110 i think ray was very similar so i think he could have been in that territory but if you don't make that territory the next territory is like oft injured guy coming off an okay season so james jameson tyon i think was like 4 and 60 yeah close to 4 and 64 and 68

yeah so there's that uh tier but i don't know that a team is going to give uh gilito 4 and 60 and what he could say is if i got a one-year deal like he would have actually probably taken the the uh franchise of the franchise tag the uh qualifying offer pitched for 19 million and hoped that he could come back out and still get the gossman and ray deal you know what i mean oh yeah so i think he'd still i think you if you're a pitcher you don't take like four and four like i don't even know if he gets the 4 and 60 so let's say someone's offering you like 3 and 35 or three and 40. You know, do you take that or you take one and 18, which is like half of that 40 almost and take a shot at coming out and maybe still getting the a hundred million.

I think you'd look at something similar to what Robbie Ray did with that brief stop in Toronto, right? Before Robbie Ray got the five year deal, it was a one year deal. Like you pick your spot and you say, I want to go here. I like this organization. I like these pitching

coaches. I like the way these things happen here. There's opportunity. They're offering me a one-year $15 million deal or $18 million deal. Somebody will offer him something like that. Giglio is going to be 30 next July. He would enter free agency

looking for a multi-year deal as a 30-year-old if he waits in offseason. So I think he has the luxury of choosing that short deal if he feels that's his best long-term path. Age is on his side, the track record being good enough.

I think if he took the multi-year deal this winter, the tie-on deal is the right comp. Same kind of thing. Up and down performance flashes of being really good you could probably make pretty clear arguments that the best versions of giolito were even better than the best versions of jamison tie-on so i think that's probably where you end up as far as what teams would likely offer just based on how difficult

the last two seasons but four and 60 i feel like that's interesting because you could be like, well, could I get a third of that in one year and then still come out and take the 4-60 the next year? Well, yeah, it really depends because you think about even Noah Sindergaard's one-year deal with the Angels two years ago. That was a bigger number, right? That was close to a qualifying offer amount of money, and they had to pony up a amount of money and they had to be on the table for giolito for sure like 1 and 18 1 and 20 will

be out there for him and i think teams will be really interested because he will not have the qualifying offer attached so you don't have to give up the draft pick compensation to go get him by the way part of the other reason it's not just saving money because arty moreno wants to be cheap there's actually the competitive balance tax threshold that they're trying to get underneath. If they get under the $233 million mark, it improves the draft pick compensation they'll get when Shohei Otani leaves, which is just like Angel's fans are like, oh, we're going to get something? It's like, well, you're going to get something a little better when Shohei Otani leaves. 60 picks. Yeah.

60 picks difference. Fourth round to second round, sure, it's better than being the fourth. It's a big deal. It's a big deal. If you're an Angels fan, you're losing Shohei Otani. It's not really. Brutal. Not Otani.

It's not that great. Yeah, that's true. Brutal outcome, for sure. As far as the rest of this group of players that were let go, right? I mean, you mentioned you like Lopez quite a bit. Do you have faith that Matt Moore contributes as part of an A bullpen for a contending club? I do. You know, when you get these conversions from starter to reliever, you add a bunch of years on to the end of your career

so you know he's only been a reliever a full-time reliever really uh for two years uh he looks like a strong reliever to me um and uh you know left-handed on top of that i'm sure there's going to be a need i don't i don't necessarily know off the top of my head which of these bullpens needs a lefty the most, but Matt Moore will be claimed for 100% sure. Absolutely, yeah. It's just a question of how far down the order can he go. I don't know that he holds and will he be that fantasy relevant. I don't know that he'll immediately slot in as someone's setup man,

and I doubt he'd close. So he'd be more like a seventh-inning you know yeah no i'm with you there i mean the other angels that were let go randall gritchick maybe ends up in another familiar place but he ends up back in toronto i've seen some speculation about that um hunter renfro i i like renfro more than gritchick i think there's just a little more value all around there he has cooled. He was playing really well in the first half, and the second half has dragged his season numbers down to a 237-300-422. It's the worst full season line he's had since his final year in San Diego in 2019. He's just one of those players, up and down all the time, barrel rates way down this year. Usually that's sort of the underlying consistency that you get from Hunter Renfro.

But I have to think there's going to be plenty of interest in him too as a right-handed bat that adds some power. I just wonder if his value ends up taking a hit because on a better team, he probably won't play every single day. He may end up in a 50% to 60% share on a contending club. Yeah, I'm looking at needs and by uh projections uh one team that popped surprisingly was the phillies uh it's just the projections don't like nick castellanos really nick castellanos's defense in particular uh drags down those projected war numbers too yeah i mean that's that's basically it but um you know could the phillies claim an outfielder and push kosh over to dh more often uh i think that they'd actually maybe prefer

renfro because gritchick's defense has gotten pretty terrible um other teams that sort of pop when you look at good teams with iffy corner outfield situations, I'm a little surprised. Reds are kind of bottom 10th in both left field and right field by projections. And by the way, Christian Encarnacion-Strand, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some sort of injury update with him because he dove really awkwardly and fell on his wrist and was flexing it the rest of the game. And it contributed to two errors at first base for him. So I don't know what's going on there. But then also they're running out a lot of Stuart Fairchild, uh, in the outfield right now. And Nick Martini is up. Uh, what's the injury?

Fraley's coming off the IL soon. So that's part of it. You know, Votto being on the IL, uh, Matt McLean and Jonathan India. They're thin. They're a lot thinner around the infield than they were just a few weeks ago. And the outfield mixes, even with Fraley in it, you could argue there's room for one more. Especially since Benson's a lefty, I don't know, you could still just basically claim one of Gritchuk or Renfro

as a right-handed platoon mate for Benson. Those outcomes are not good for Renfro and gritchick is there a place where there's a starting uh a starting role waiting for one of those outfielders or is this the sort of death knell for their value in most leagues i think it's generally the latter. I think Bader remains frustratingly interesting. On the cusp. Yeah. Frustratingly somewhere between interesting and not. Right.

Two years running now where there just hasn't been as much power as we saw. I think you can start to look at Harrison Bader now and take that longer range view and say he's a great defensive center fielder. He has so few complete seasons he's never topped 427 plate appearances we talked about that during draft season you have to treat him like a fourth outfielder but because he's a great defensive center fielder there's always going to be interest until that facet of his game takes a noticeable drop there will always be teams interested in having a guy like that on their roster. Contenders with the worst situations defensively in center field. Red Sox are worst in

baseball in center field. They did just call up Sedano Raffaello though. Yeah, I think that probably keeps them out of the mix. Reds. reds again okay second worst and outs above average in center field that's interesting uh and then uh giants 25th now i think the giants see the one problem with the giants though and this has been mentioned is the giants 40 man roster oh yes that's the that's the thing that would keep you from going hog wild and and this has been mentioned is the Giants 40-man roster. Oh, yes. That's the thing that would keep you from going hog wild and claiming four players, right?

You have to think about the players that you're letting go to make the pieces fit. Yeah. So, I mean, I can look at the active roster and I could probably pick out like hey uh let's uh demote tristan beck and pick up lucas giolito right feck has options giolito is probably better than him bam that's good enough uh they don't have a lot of relievers with options beyond that so are you going to try and claim lopez and giolito and uh then if you pick up a bat and you say well we have four outfielders and six infielders

on the infield on the on the active roster let's demote case Schmidt who has options and we now have Paul DeYoung and Tyra Estrada they can play short this is without uh Crawford being on there you could say active roster wise we'll demote Casey Schmidt we'll demote uh Tristan Beck and that makes enough room for the for the people we want or we demote Wade Meckler. There's that. But on the 40-man, you'd have to drop somebody off the 40-man to do this. They've got Jose Cruz as a pitcher. Sean Higeli. Randy Rodriguez. They could move Ross Stripling to the 60-day IL.

I don't even know what's wrong with him. A back issue. You have to convince somebody that it was a 60-day IL. I don't think they want to release Keaton Wynn. I don't think they want to release Joey Bart. Roberto Perez is on the 60-day IL. Marco Luciano not releasing. David Villar.

There's one. I think you could actually release David Villar. There's one. I think you could actually release David Villar. That's one, though. That's one. And then Elliot Ramos is close, too, I would say. Yeah. I mean, you run the risk of losing those guys, but they could clear waivers. Maybe somebody who's on the IL goes to 60 IL.

And AJ Pollock. Honestly, you could just release AJ Pollock. So if you wanted one of those righty outfielders, you release AJ Pollock, honestly, you could just release AJ Pollock. So if you wanted one of those righty outfielders, you release AJ Pollock. If you want Bader, yeah, if you want Bader and a righty outfielder, you could release Pollock and Ramos. I bet you Pollock gets released. So I bet you they put a claim on Bader for Pollock

and Giolito for Beck and Lopez, uh, for maybe back to, cause they just figured they, they won't have to do both. Those are the machinations of making a decision like this. That's why it's, it's not as easy as claiming everyone.

And, and that could be a full-time job. It could actually, that that's one of the situations where you could say, actually value is just as good as it was. Park is harder, but roll is still good enough where in deeper leagues he might still do enough to be your last outfielder. Josh Donaldson seems like he's done. Verducci had a whole piece about how he's done.

They put a clickbait headline on it on Twitter where they said, Of course. Was this a shot against him? A cautionary tale against analytics, I think Twitter where they said this is you know was this a cautionary tale against analytics I think is what they said something to that effect anybody listening to this podcast knows that Donaldson is too old to believe a projected

bounce back that's something we talk about a lot at 37 and we also don't talk about average exit velocity that much on this podcast because it's full of noise, so I don't know that you would have come away from us thinking that he's been amazing. He does barrel the ball, but you always have to put barreling the ball in context with strikeout rate, which has just been ballooning, so I don't know.

And also just generally, you have to be aware that anybody 37 can fall off a cliff and his projections right now are so close to league average that if you say i can get you a player that's projected to be league average and has like a very little reliability in those projections well he definitely won't be claimed because it's the prorated portion north of $20 million. He's going to be a guy that clears and then signs for the minimum if he gets another opportunity.

I agree with that. And it'll be an edge case, maybe an injury, maybe just need a right-handed third baseman, right-handed DH first baseman, something where he fits a need uh for somebody and he's uh the minimum but um yeah i don't i don't know that he will be he don't he won't be claimed and and in terms of fancy value i don't think we've been talking

about him as having fancy value for a long time no no i I don't really see it. Mono leagues only, of course, at this stage. The White Sox waving Mike Clevenger. He's more complicated anyway. There were the allegations of the domestic violence and child abuse that surfaced during the winter. The league investigated that, opted not to suspend him. Clevenger denied any wrongdoing related to that incident. But I got to think it's not as simple as just saying we need pitching like that's a conversation that a few front offices might be having but i don't know i i wouldn't go down that road if it were me making the decision somebody probably will just given how desperate the league is there are secondary concerns you know just like with donaldson they're not like that not the same but you know just like how is this going to fit into my clubhouse? Do my guys like him? That sort of deal.

Yeah, that's always a consideration, adding players to the deadline, and this is obviously a case unto itself. Another thing that's interesting about Clevenger is that if you just looked at surface stats, you would say, this is one of the top pitchers available um and i don't think that's necessarily the case i'm not i'm not making that case i'm saying you know they're releasing a guy uh that uh has like a 3era you know 332 era like what's up with that but then you look over the Sierra 498 Sierra uh you look at his stuff and you know it's league average uh you know I do think I do think somebody will claim him actually I do think

someone will claim him uh because league average stuff uh is better than that 498 Sierra and so somebody will say you know my stuff model says he's still got something left. He's not really expensive. At $12 million a year, you're talking about spending $2 million for the last month. I think

Carrasco follows the same arc we mentioned with Donaldson, though, where he has to clear and then sign just to chew up innings at the end of the season. And then Cisnero. Cisnero is interesting to me because at a glance, he's made some improvements. The walk rate's down again this year, having some issues with homers compared to past years. He's shown the ability to miss bats, not at an elite level, but at an acceptable level. So do you see anything in that pitch mix? Do you see a good enough pitch

or something that a team might want to change with Cisnero to just make him even a sixth inning guy, right? Because some teams are just looking for that fourth best reliever. Do you think he has anything that could be tweaked? I actually think there's something there. 122

stuff plus slider, 107 stuff plus four seamer for the season. Now let me see if there's been something that's uh hurt him recently um so i'm looking at the last 14 days uh for since this is narrow oh 82 stuff plus on the four seamer in his last three outings so maybe some sloughing off of the fastball's quality. But, you know, one thing that it doesn't look like they've tried with Cisnero yet is, let's throw the slider 40% of the time. So, you know, maybe there's an aggressive pitch mix thing that they weren't willing to do in Detroit.

Anybody that struck out 25% of the batters he's seen for the full season has some interesting pitches by Stuff Plus and is available for free will probably be claimed. I mean, he only costs almost nothing. He's a $2.3 million player, so the prorated portion of that is pennies. He might be the kind of guy that slips a little further into that list, so one of the lower priority teams could actually have a shot at getting a bullpen upgrade.

Memorial's just lost a prominent reliever. It's not like you're saying he's going to replace Felix Bautista. You're saying, hopefully, he's better than our sixth reliever, who used to be our seventh reliever but now is our sixth reliever because of batista or whatever you know yep that's the exact right way to look at it as far as jose cisnero and how he goes let's talk about alex cobb for a bit mentioned up top had a brush with a no hitter you were on hand for that on tuesday night you said this is the closest you've been to seeing a no-hitter in person?

I will admit this. I might as well, but I left the Mike Fires no-hitter early in Oakland. In my defense, I left it early because there'd been a thing with the lights that had delayed the game an hour. And at that time,

my kids were still waking up at like 6, 630 and waking me up along with it. And so I was like, I just saw the morning coming. And I said, you know what? Mike fires. I don't care. I'm out of here. And then on the way home, I'm listening in the car.

I'm like, ah, I've never seen a no hitter. I could have stayed. This one I stayed for and stayed to the very end, eight and two thirds for Cobb before he gave up a hit. And I was a little sad for him, but then I, you know, I had the opportunity to talk to him in the clubhouse after, and I realized why am I sad for this guy? He just pitched one of the best games of his life and he's flying high when he came into the clubhouse we were waiting outside they had smoke machines it looked like a strip club in there it was crazy they had they have one of those like um

you know there's a car wash uh like blow-up dolls like those those car wash things the air goes through it inflatable yes inflatable yes I knowflatable, yes. Inflatable, like... Kind of like a bounce house. Dude bounce house. More like an arch. Yeah, they had like lasers going. They had like lasers going. It's an inflatable dude and like real loud music

and a fog machine, I think. Jeremy Giambi was in the league just too soon, man. He just showed up 20 years too early. They open up the door and we see we we see cob running through and we see there's all the smoke coming out of the door and we hear this and they all like you know they like threw gatorade at him and i don't know i didn't see it but uh everyone was super happy for him because yeah super happy for him because he's been uh the guy who's shouldered uh along with logan webb they've been the guy who's shouldered along with Logan Webb.

They've been the ones who've made the Giants' attack plan for pitching possible. You can't do what the Giants have done with these two- and three- and four-inning pitchers unless somebody goes seven. And Cobb and Webb have been the Giants that have put so many innings on their shoulders to help rest the bullpens. Cobb did that in a big way with a complete game. And so everyone was super appreciative. Also for a guy who has had so many surgeries that he ranked them for me. I think A, well, it's not like babying him kept him out of surgery.

So might as well let him go yeah he's also 36 and like what are we what are we what are we saving him for you know um and uh he you know i think kudos to capler just being like hey you know you had a no-hitter going and we just we want to let him try it you know it's like if Kyle Harrison is on his 135th pitch in his debut. Right. Different situation. And you're trying to nurse him through to the ninth. So I'm on board with what they did.

Cobb was amazingly a two-pitch pitcher mostly that night and has been recently throwing a lot of fastball splitter games. But in the wet air in San Francisco, Cobb's sinker and splitter both have more movement. And he really enjoys pitching in San Francisco. It's really good for his movement it's really good for his pitches so this doesn't surprise me uh that he got close and um i think he's been in

fantasy i think he's been an underrated pitcher for a while uh we've got now even back to anaheim uh we've got three years with a 3-6 ERA. Not a great whip, but a strikeout per inning. Not like he costs anybody anything on draft days most years. I think the best versions of Alex Cobb seem to be when he's got the ground ball rate up in the mid-to-high 50% range. He's got that going right now. K-rate's down a little bit this year, so I do wonder if you flip the calendar and he's 36 next year,

we'll see if he stays in San Francisco, if they have a club option on him. He's probably still a stream-at-home sort of guy, even though the ERA is a tick on the good side compared to a league-average ERA. The whip is a little bit problematic. He's a little bit hittable because he's a ground ball pitcher. He's part of it. The defense is a little bit problematic. He's a little bit hittable because he's a ground ball pitcher.

The defense behind him is not great. If the defense got better, is it going to get better in one offseason? I think they could. I don't think Brandon Crawford's coming back.

I don't think his defense at his age was necessarily a huge strength at short. I think they may just go full-time with Marco Luciano. But if they go with Casey Schmidt and some Marco Luciano, I think that's an upgrade at short. And we may see some movement where... Let me see here. What's Wilmer Flores' contract situation?

Oh, I'm sure it's like an option of some kind for next year. Because every Giants contract is option, option, option. Actually, this one's interesting. Three for 16 and a half? That was covering 23 and 24. 2025 player options? They already have them. So Flores is still there.

Very, very inexpensively. So it could just be in his last year again i don't yeah okay i think that the defense at short could improve a little but second base um and actually a healthy year of tyra strata so let's say you have a full year of luciano schmidt and tyra strata at second tyra strata has really good outs above average numbers at second so i think if you're talking about luciano strata of the middle i think that is an improvement uh for his defense yeah i think there's plenty of folks out there who are skeptical about Luciano being a good defensive shortstop some are even skeptical he's a shortstop at all um so that could be a bit of a problem but you know they could but he's also like 12 years younger than Brandon Crawford so oh this yeah that wasn't a case for

Brandon Crawford that's uh yeah but Schmidt maybe that's probably curtains for Brandon Crawford at this point. Maybe you do Schmidt at short, Luciano at third, and Davis and Flores and Wade all do first in DH and you don't re-sign Jock. Yeah. Yeah, maybe that's the way they go. That's $19 million for DH. I don't think that was a great idea. I still don't. And I think that they still want to attract a big name guy. And, you know, one of the big name guys out there plays DH.

So there's they're always going to piece it together defensively in San Francisco. But they also I think they coach defense better than anybody. So I could say I would say there's a chance that the defense is better behind Cobb next year. I think that's the part of Marco Luciano being at shortstop longer that you would say you could be optimistic about. Like look at what they did with JD Davis at third, right? If you can take a C or D grade sort of defender and make that player even a

B, that's pretty good. So if you could do that with Luciano, that buys you more time to find a true defensive wizard at shortstop that could be the next great player at that position in San Francisco. Let's talk about the late turnarounds. You wrote an article last week looking at hitters that could potentially rebound back to their previous levels. You kind of took a look back at the last couple seasons to see what happens with these players who are underperforming all season who have a great track record do they actually come back in september or are the projections just sort of pointing you to a player that they simply can't be this year for one reason

or another usually injuries are a major factor in why someone underperforms this much, but what makes a player more likely to salvage a good final month amidst a brutal season? Did you find any characteristics that made it like a better bet to look at a guy that has been horrible and think he actually might be okay the rest of the way, or he might even be good the rest of the way? Yeah. One of the ones that's super obvious, I think, is that the ones that did better the rest of the way were like a year and a half younger than the ones that were older. That didn't play up to their projections. Something we've been saying here for a while, right? We just talked about Donaldson, you know? So if you're talking about an older player that's struggling this far into the season, it's less likely they'll bounce back in the last month than if you're talking about a younger player.

So Jose Breu is somebody that comes to mind, and he was on the bad end of that where he's an older player. And the other stuff that also wouldn't surprise anybody here is that the players that got better hit the ball harder in terms of hard hit rate. They had a 45% hard hit rate versus a 42. And they had a 10% bail rate versus an 8.6 for the ones that continue to struggle. So hitting the ball harder and being younger is a part of it. The one part that was kind of hard to read was the ones that got better in the last month had a 22% strikeout rate versus a 19.5%. I do think that speaks to something we talk about here sometimes is volatility. So I think that if you've got a high strikeout guy,

sometimes you just have to be like, hey, he's a high strikeout guy. He's in the bad part of the schedule. And know just look at how anthony volpe has been this year like every time you're like i mean i saw somebody tweet last night uh oh man anthony volpe's in the tank again because he had three strikeouts and in his fourth appearance he hit a homer and you know that's the anthony volpe experience right now and so for some of our strugglers, you know, we've got that, you know, that streakiness kind of goes in their favor a little bit. Yeah, I think we talked about Eugenio Suarez maybe end of June, early July as someone that had really disappointed up to that point in the season. And our takeaway was really that he's had

freakishly good months before because part of his approach is being a free swinger. When he runs hot, he's like the best power hitter in the game for a stretch, which is really pretty wild because when he's not on those tears, he's very much like an

average or even slightly below average offensive player at this stage of his career and even with this kind of good run since july 1st he's popped 10 homers he's still striking out a third of the time right he's 29 better than league average during that span but i think the high k rate players tend to have those higher highs and lower lows just based on their approach. Yeah. And if they're, if they're still hitting the ball while they're hitting like hard while

they're hitting it and they're still young enough, like this, just an adjustment away. It's, it's something they'll be like, Oh, all right. You know,

they're trying to feed me high fastballs and they do some sort of something clicks and then they, they go hot for a month. So, um, I, you know, uh uh i think it's interesting like if i told you that someone had struggled for five months it's kind of almost like a litmus test for analytics and and and reliance on it and what people think about projections because if i tell you that someone has struggled for five months and um and then i tell you oh but he's still projected to be good for the last month there's a certain type of analyst player whatever that'd

be like uh you're crazy tim anderson is toast there's no way that he can he's going to be good in the last month and then if i but if i also told you hey there's still a 50 50 chance uh that they would make that they'll be good uh some of the projection east does like myself would be like uh oh that's a little lower than i expected yeah you think 50 50 is low based on a five-year track record of some kind of level of success yeah yeah um so but i think that it kind of comes to that age and yeah yeah i think it's about right because this is just the way my brain works so i could have a completely flawed bit of logic here this is how i think of it if you're two or three months into a season to me there's there's a better chance that over two or three months that it is just statistical noise or a slump, right? It's something that something significant has not changed with that player in two or three months.

For some reason, once you get to four or five months, especially five. Some part of your brain is like, no way that guy's going to be good. He sucked for five months. He's toast. There were opportunities for IL stints. There was an all-star break there were there were enough other like little off ramps that could have helped the player get back on track by now where i'm not betting on that bounce back in most cases it doesn't mean look we're at the point in the season from a fantasy perspective you're just

trying to max out games in some cases. You look at the weekly schedule, you lose somebody, the available player list is a mess. Some teams are giving guys auditions, so you're not even getting full shares. And Tim Anderson or Jose Abreu, they could be the best middle or corner guy available. And you might just say, I actually don't even think this guy's good right now. I think he's broken, but he's going to play. And because of the track record, he's slightly better than this other guy that we've never seen in the big leagues before. So you might make the decision based more on that and less on the projections are clearly better for Tim Anderson versus this new shortstop that's getting some opportunities somewhere. That's probably the way I would look at it because if you're deciding entirely based on projections right now,

I think you're discounting too much relevant information that might not be fully captured in that projection. The shallower your league is, the more things change. You might actually have Tim Anderson and another viable shortstop, like maybe Tyra Estrada that can fit in there. I don't know who's... Let me look at projections

and get someone that's actually a 12-team. We look at VAT, ROS, generate projections. Here we go. So short short stops that are projected near tim anderson the rest of the way uh you have vulpe like you could be in a 12 team league and you could have vulpe kim and anderson all on the same team or orlando arcia is right behind him right tyra strata is actually behind him so you could have your choice of two of these guys or three of these guys and the projections keep saying hey play tim anderson you're just like dude dude i can't do it and uh and so i would say

you know even though tim anderson's not someone who lives on his hard hit data if you've listened to us you know that i am the i care about batted ball quality a lot. And this was just another sort of, hey, batted ball quality matters, even if you're Tim Anderson. So I picked the six biggest strugglers that qualified for the batting title were Tim Anderson, Fernando Tatis Jr., Jose Abreu, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Javier Baez, and Trey Turner. And in fact, that's a great list because the 50-50 should be extremely obvious to you. It should be so clear

i saw i saw them in the column was like well i know which were those guys i'd bet on everybody that read it had the same reaction like obviously it's the young good guys not the old crappy guys but it's still worth doing the research and like seeing it you know what i mean no i know i just looking at the names like well yeah of course of course trey turnrey Turner and Vlad Jr. are the guys I want to bet on. And Abreu and Baez are the guys I'm scared of. And Anderson's the one everyone's flip-flopping on. Like, maybe, maybe not. Tatis was the other one.

Yeah, so Tatis in, Anderson's being out. That was my immediate takeaway. But also just look at what Turner's done. If you want to be the guy who says he struggled for five months and he's going to be crap for the six months, I don't care what your projections say. Well, look at what Turner's done. If you want to be the guy who says he struggled for five months and he's going to be crap for the six months, I don't care what your projections say. Well, look at what Turner's done.

Turner's Turner again. Turner's fine. And I think Tatis and grow junior could turn that switch any day. You know, I think that's, they, they've also been good enough where you're not really necessarily taking them out of the lineup anyway.

So what are you talking about? You know what I mean? But well, Anderson to me is the most interesting one and i would uh i have him on my main event team and we have been leaving him on the bench for like the last three or four weeks and this is a 15 team deep league we're not yet to the point where we'll drop him but every week we talk about dropping tim anderson but this is where that that extra information really matters to me like Like the mid-season point, as I'll call it,

even the end of June, Trey Turner, 249, 302, 380 slash line. Yeah, you were worried for sure. We all were. Eight homers, 18 steals, not the season you signed up for, but you'd look at it and say, that's still like 15 plus homers and high 30 steals with a low average. Still playing him, yeah. That's going to work.

They're not going to bench him. The team's still good. All of those things are fine. He could him, yeah. That's going to work. They're not going to bench him. The team's still good. All of those things are fine. He could just double up what he's done so far. He really had injury concerns that we knew about. Yeah, and you just live with it, and that's fine. But even just since then, he started to play better in July and August, whereas with Anderson, there's no evidence.

And there's been injury concerns, so I think it is not out of the realm of possibility to get shut down for these injuries. I mean, there's notes in May where he's talking about his knee. Right. And the ground ball rate's been through the roof all season, 62.2%. He's not the same guy right now. And I'm not sure the projections, at least earlier in the year, I don't know if the projections were able to pull that information in right injury information left out now he's been bad enough long enough

where the rest of season projections finally steer you away from tim anderson and to be clear i was talking about when i talk projections in this piece i was talking about pre-season projections uh the projection uh people that run the projections did not have daily ones logged in a way that we could like look at their rest of season projections on august 1st or on september 1st you know looking back so i wasn't able to do that some of this stuff is totally baked into the rest of season projections but i would say i don't know if they go far enough because yes uh tim anderson's uh the rest of season projection has dropped from like 750 to 700 lps i don't know if he's gonna make it 700 man he's got a 570 so far this year like

i think 600 would be surprising the rest of the way so sometimes i think you you can uh use some of this and your brain and kind of move ahead of the projections because the projections are going to you know factor in that edge case where tim anderson you know other tim anderson's in the multiverse uh went on the il for the knee injury came back fully healthy and you know put together a normal last month you know there are situations like that. Tim Anderson's not, in this universe, I don't think is going to even have a 600 OPS the rest of the way. I think this is a clear case where if there's a rebound, it takes an offseason of getting healthy and coming back with a clean slate. Rock Bottom

happened, unfortunately. Maybe even with a new team. Rock Bottom was the brawl with the guardians when jose ramirez punched tim anderson in the face like that that was the ultimate low point for him i think you need an off season to reset from that and especially since i didn't look like uh a lot of his teammates necessarily had his back no no i really really didn't i mean that's a that team is just such a disaster it's been heavily discussed on this pod and on the athletic baseball show throughout the year and change is maybe coming but tatis and tatis and guerrero are like you know those are guys that

people say are struggling but they both have over a 50 hard hit rate and basically a 12 barrel rate like if they fall out of the second round next year, I'm buying, buying, buying. I think Tatis, we said, was still a first rounder. I'd love getting him in late first round. I would be all over that next year. And Vlad Guerrero in the late second, early third, give me. There's some way that I can come out of a 15 team draft next year and i've got tatis and i love and vlad just both of them somehow tatis what if i could come out of the first three

rounds of tatis vlad and an ace that would be good like like who's an ace that might fall a little bit alcantara in the third or like somebody like that. I think Woodruff is going to fall further. You're thinking end of the first round then. 15-16. Where are you going to get sidetracked? I would try to get Tatis, Pitcher, and then hope that

Vlad falls to me in the beginning of the third. You got to be a little bit off the end, I think. I think Vlad, I feel like mid-third round is about the furthest he'd fall. Like pick 40. There are going to be plenty of people that believe in him. Pick seven, take Tatis, take a pitcher, and then take Vlad in the middle of the third. Okay.

All right. I like that. That could be a million-dollar maker, I feel like. Just to get talent like that with high floors coming off and they're young still. be a million dollar maker, I feel like. Just to get talent like that with high floors coming off and they're young still. Yeah. I'm pumped because I know

they have drafts every year at First Pitch Arizona. I'm going back this year. You're going to be there. We've got a lot to look forward to and still another month to play, of course, in the current season but if you are interested in joining many of us in arizona for first pitch arizona go to baseball hq.com for all the details get that registration in i know the price goes up at some point in

september i don't remember off the top of my head it's really fun you we go to uh an arizona fall league game we go to the uh the arizona fall league now has a home run derby we go to the all-star game that's on sunday night uh paul spore always has uh like a little fantasy game we play called paul stars uh at the all-star game where we do like a quick two-round draft and we get points it's almost like a little mini dfs game uh where you pick two guys and we all just put like 20 bucks in the pot and uh it's that kind of stuff there's poker at night uh usually some beer sharing um and lots of great presentations during the day about uh how to win at fancy baseball so it's a good time come watch me chain drink iced coffee for 18 hours a day while watching baseball.

It's being around a lot of friends. People haven't seen it in a few years, right? I missed a couple because of the pandemic year. It was canceled. 2021. It was just all sorts of family stuff going on the last couple of years for me, so I'm excited to get back out there. It is honestly one of the best trips of the year.

That Sunday night futures game, just be aware of that try to book your trip so you can actually see that because that's like the best opportunity to see as many of the good players who are in the league all in one shot so try to make it like a thursday to monday if you can yeah if you can't if you can't make thursday i mean that's there's like a there's always like a welcome you know uh at the game on Thursday night. If you had to miss one on Thursday or Sunday, like miss Thursday, I guess. Try to get them both. Because Sunday's fun.

Yeah. Take the time. You will enjoy it. We are going to go on our way out the door. Reminder, we got a special going right now. $1 a month gets you in the door for the first year at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels on that social media platform now called X. You can find Eno at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels on that social media platform now called x you can find eno at enoceros you can find me at derrick and riper you can find

the pod at rates and barrels it's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels we are back with you on friday thanks for listening Thank you.