Rates & Barrels - The Mets' blame game, 2021 team disappointments, and finding future speed

Episode Date: August 18, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss the blame game in the Big Apple -- including the hope of potential rebounds at the plate from a few key Mets bats -- before attempting to find paths to the future sources of stolen bases in 2022 and beyond.  Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels presented by Topps. Check out Topps Project 70 celebrating 70 years of Topps baseball cards, Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. It is Wednesday, August 18th. And we have a lot to talk about because finger pointing is happening. And it's happening around the Mets. So we're going to talk about the Mets and their recent slide and figure out who's really to blame or what is really to blame for their disappointing season. But we're also going to pull back and take a look and see if there are other teams that are actually bigger disappointments than the Mets. I know they had lofty expectations, but we're going to try and quantify this and dig into that a bit. We're also going to take a look at a really good question we got from a listener about elite speed and the development of hitters, trying to figure out where we can find viable speed sources in the future.

We had a follow-up question. We were talking about top players for 2022. From a fantasy perspective on our last show, there was had a follow-up question. We were talking about top players for 2022. From a fantasy perspective on our last show, there was a good follow-up question on Twitter about Shohei Otani. So we'll kind of set some expectations where we think he might go looking ahead to drafts for next year. So all those topics and probably

a few more along the way. You know, I don't think I've been this happy about a furniture delivery in my entire life. I have a couch now in my new place. It only took about two weeks from the time we got here to get it, which is actually pretty fast given the state of the world. So I'm very grateful that it got here as quickly as it did. You got a couch.

You have a TV stand. You put that together. TV stand is built. The TV is on it and functioning. It is hooked up. Obviously, I've got the internet. Do you have a bed frame yet? Are you sleeping on the ground still?

No bed frame, which Hazel loves. We still have the guest mattress on the floor right now. So a smaller bed on the floor. Dog loves it. Steph and I are less happy about it. And then the camping stuff. All right. And the camping stuff.

And you can see behind me. Slowly gathering steam. If you're watching on YouTube, I got the big back chair. I got the big and tall, big comfy chair nice got that and i have a desk i got on amazon from the great brand petorsen actually it's a nice desk so far it's held up for the first week of its lifespan some things are coming together like this is this is happening i'm i'm happy you'll have something on the wall behind you. Someday, yeah. The Brewers are playing well. We're not talking about them among the most disappointing teams.

They've been one of the best teams in the league. You had to shoehorn them in, though. I had to mention them. Things are looking up. I don't have any cups yet, so I still have the cups left here. Red Solo cups. It's like a college party all over again. Yeah.

Did you wash Red Solo cups in college to keep them in circulation longer yes we did because i lived in the enchanted broccoli forest which was a co-op that was based on sustainability and embracing all sorts of different uh sort of vegan and and vegetarian uh eating options so yes and also we were the party dorm. So we were cheap. We had a Hobart and we would sanitize those solar cups and use them again. Yeah.

Enchanted Broccoli Forest, a real thing, verified actually recently by my wife who actually happened to see it. I met my wife in the Enchanted Broccoli Forest. See, it's a magical place. Best thing broccoli's ever done for anybody. So let's start with the Mets,

just because they are kind of the focal point of baseball Twitter, I would say, over the last only about eight hours or so. It's been pretty raucous on Mets Twitter today. Steve Cohen took it to Twitter while I was asleep and you were asleep. He got on the old Twitter machine. If Cohen took it to Twitter while I was asleep and you were asleep. He got on the old Twitter machine. If you're watching us on YouTube, I will be kind enough to put the tweet on the screen. He tweeted the following.

It's hard to understand how professional hitters can be this unproductive. The best teams have a more disciplined approach. The slugging and OPS numbers don't lie. There's a lot of ways we can go with this. And I think anytime the Mets are a dumpster fire's a lot of ways we can go with this. And I think anytime the Mets are a dumpster fire,

a lot of people who just like dumpster fires come out and do the Nelson months. Ha ha. And it's just, you know, it's just how things go. But the Mets don't score runs. And I think rather than say, well, they don't score runs, so end rant. Why aren't they scoring runs, I think, is kind of the better question. Where did it go wrong? Because I think everyone loved the Lindor trade when it happened.

Most people liked the collection of moves they were making coming into the season, and it looked like they had good depth. It looked like they were well-protected for the very scenario that has unfolded on them. Derek Rhodes over at Baseball Prospectus has the great injury trackers. And he had it. It was a graphic that ESPN put up on a broadcast just the other day. The Mets have lost more win value due to injuries than any other team in the league. They've lost like 10 wins this season, I think, based on his calculations, which makes a lot of sense, right? Tack 10 wins on to the Mets pace and they'd be winning the NL East

and things would be perfect right now. But focusing first on the offense, why has it gone so wrong for this team? Because it didn't look like they were going to have any issue scoring runs back in the spring. Well, I think the injury thing goes in there, and I think it's worth pointing out that this is like a veteran team that you'd kind of expect some injuries to happen. I think the Yankees, you know, were a similar team. In fact, if you look at projected outcomes, like sort of if you look at how many runs these teams are projected to score going forward and how much they've scored to date, the two biggest outliers are the Mets and the Yankees.

The two biggest outliers are the Mets and the Yankees. The Mets have scored the second least runs in baseball and are projected in the bottom 10 are projected to have the best run scored going forward. That's 3.7 so far this year, and they're supposed to score 4.5 a game. That's a huge gap. The Yankees have a similar gap and a similar team, a veteran team that got hurt, right? A lot of injuries. And they had to rely on their depth. I think the Yankees' little scuttling period was that their depth wasn't as good as they'd hoped.

And some of their depth got injured with Clinton Frazier and so on. So I think that some of this is the natural ebb and flow of a veteran team. Older guys get hurt more often. There's a little whiff of not great luck. If you look at their expected outcomes by StatCast and what they've actually done, they're 11th. I mean, there's a lot less lucky. There's teams that are way less lucky.

St. Louis is number one. Rangers, Minnesota is number three. Oakland is number four. The Yankees are number six. So maybe a little bit of bad luck, a little bit of injury luck, and then a little bit of truth in what Cohen is saying, I think, because if you look at reach rate, the top teams in reach rate, meaning they don't swing at balls, Padres are number one, Dodgers are number two,

Giants are number three. Yankees are number four. Houston is number six. Oakland is number seven. Milwaukee is number eight. I mean, Cohen's right. The disciplined teams are good. And at the bottom, the Mets at 23rd

are surrounded by the Rangers, the Tigers, the Rockies, the Angels, the Marlins. The only good team around them is the White Sox. And they just have a super powerful team with a great pitching staff. So I don't know. I'm not saying that Cohen is 100% right. I also don't know if what he's doing is productive. I don't know.

I mean, now the media has to go to Hugh Quattlebaum, and I've seen already that Hugh Quattlebaum is the hitting coach there. They have to go to him and ask him what he thinks, and so he has to give a quote. Then they have to go to Pete Alonzo, and did you hear what the owner said? And Pete Alonzo has to give a quote. I mean, it's not like these guys don't know. It's not like they're not working on having play discipline.

And I just talked to Brandon Nimmo last night. He's got the best reach rate in baseball, like maybe fourth best. So I would say that if they got their A list together and some of those guys got it back together again, this isn't a team that would have a bottom five reach rate going forward. And so I think it still comes back to a little bit of bad luck and a little bit of injury. All right.

So a little bit of a few different things. Funny that they added Javier Baez at the trade deadline, though, as many people pointed out, since he would take their biggest flaw and make that biggest flaw even bigger. So not necessarily an ideal acquisition from that perspective, even if he's a net positive, an upgrade overall to what you had on the infield playing second base most days. The Cohen thing, it's like the players definitely know. days the cohen thing it's like the players definitely know i i think the the other question though is does it is it good for the game because it riles up the fan base in a more like human sort of way the interaction between ownership and the fan base is more comparable to i don't know mark cuban and basketball when you have an owner communicating on a platform

that many fans actually use, right? Being a fan of the team when you own the team is not a bad thing. It's actually a really good thing, I would argue. And I think in his way, he's showing that and proving that. And I think he's saying the things that a lot of people who call into New York radio are saying, right?

So it's kind of like, okay, so he's kind of showing his fan base. I'm one of you. That's engaging, I guess. In as much of a way as an owner can reasonably engage a fan base, I think that's what he's doing. But is it productive?

I would say it's a big fat eye roll for everybody in the organization. Yeah, it's like, well, yeah, boss, we know what the problem is, and we're going to have to take some time to fix it. And I think the bigger questions for Steve Cohen are, what are you going to do in the front office? What are you going to change there? What steps are you taking next this offseason?

People want fire and brimstone. People want heads to roll all the time. It's the same way people react when a manager gets ejected. Have you ever really listened to that subtle roar of the crowd when the manager gets tossed? The moment that the umpire actually makes the signal that someone's gone, the crowd roars every single time. I think people have a similar kind of visceral response to big changes in the front office and big changes with the roster and big changes with coaches and managers right like it's coming it's going to happen this

this season is not what they expected it to be and there will be people that pay the consequences for that i'm not sure that i have the confidence the right decisions will be made one of the reasons one of the the things i don't like are um zach scott getting the interim gm level uh low and not really um necessarily getting to hire the people he needs and and the the owner sort of uh saying that he might hire someone above zach scott it's like okay so zach scott's not the guy running the guy okay so sandy so Sandy Oleson is. Oh, Sandy put his kid in the leadership position that people are grumbling that he doesn't deserve, right? Ooh, this sounds like the beginning of a mess. And I think it's a little unfortunate that Steve Cohen came in and clean house and then brought back Sandy.

Unfortunately, you had to turn the page. I think that's not the greatest move. He turned the page back. Mm-hmm. He should have just hired. I don't know. Maybe there was some pressure from baseball or maybe he was just worried that he didn't want to jump into a new space and then hire a bunch of new people and not know what he was doing.

And so he went with the sort of tried and true. But I think it was a missed opportunity to kind of go in there. I think maybe he shouldn't have fired anybody. Maybe not fire anybody the first year. I mean, you don't know who's good and who's bad. You didn't go in there and talk to people. I mean, maybe they had a month, but how long do you think it would take you

to go into an organization and really know who in the organization stay and who should go? I don't think it would happen in like a week or two, six months probably is a year. Yeah. If you're aggressive about it and you're really good at getting to know people and you can understand how something works faster than most people, six months would be pretty aggressive.

So giving it a season to see and putting your stamp on it as an owner by saying, Hey, go out and make some moves. Let's, let's go get Lindor. Let's spend some money. Let's be players for an agency. That's step one of eight.

That's the thing. If you're a Mets fan and you're mad today, did you really think it was going to happen overnight? Maybe, because it looked like there was at least a chance. Yeah, it was a shiny Cohen new owner comes in, cleans house. We're not in year five of more of the same. We're in year

one, and I think there were pretty clear efforts up front with the roster to try and reshape things in a meaningful way. There's a lot of stuff behind the scenes that needs to be done that might be being done. I'm not saying it's not being done, but those are things that take a little bit while longer.

Just look at how different, and this is not an ownership situation, but just look at how different it was when Farhan took over in San Francisco, right? There was no like, you know, big free agent acquisition. There was no, you know, I don't think he even cleaned house. Like he fired some people in the first row, and then he fired some people in the second year, and he fired some people in the third year. So like, yes, over time, he's gotten everybody that he wants into the places he wants. But I don't think it was like I landed here and everyone's fired. You know?

So, and, and I'm going to immediately trade for the biggest name on the market and, you know what I mean? Like, and give him $300 million. Like, I think it was a very different sort of changing of the guard here in San

Francisco. And I, I hope that behind the scenes in New York, they're working on getting the out to out of date analytic systems up to, up to speed that the player development is being goosed that the, you know, that they're doing the right, right,

making the right decisions downstream so that as they do this activity up top, that like they're improving their processes to produce, you know, produce major league pitchers and hitters on the backend. So I don't know, maybe, maybe it's happening.

I think the followup question here, again, a lot of this focused on underperforming offense players. What's next for Francisco Lindor? What's next for JD Davis and Jeff McNeil? We can kind of go through those guys. And Michael Conforto probably too. And Dominic Smith. I would say those five guys in some form or another are getting a lot of criticism for this offense underperforming.

I didn't see this coming from Lindor at all. I was expecting all season long that he'd come back and be the above average, do everything really well sort of player that we've been so used to seeing. I mean, three consecutive 30 home run seasons prior to the shortened year. Maybe last year was more of a warning than we wanted to believe. A 258, 335, 415 line was a pretty big step down for him, but I think it was so easy to give anybody a pass for a downturn in performance last season for so many different reasons.

Now that we see it over another 88 games, if you're looking at a past calendar year leaderboard right now, he's been a three and a half win player over the past calendar year. Certainly not bad and the kind of player that could bounce back. But what does he bounce back to? Do we get another 30 home run season from Francisco Lindor at some point, whether that's 2022 or even further into the future? I think they have to look into that park. The park is playing weird. It's also playing super pitcher friendly right now.

And that's part of your answer, I think, for Francisco Lindor. I think he's more like a 275-25 guy going forward. 22-25, like, you know, he may not even hit 25 every year. That's partially the park and partially age. But I think there's enough rebound potential in that group. I think that Conforto in particular is going to be better going forward, but they've got one more year of him. I think that just with one more year of Conforto and one more year of Thor,

your biggest choice is to re-rack. You just re-rack. You'd make some changes around the edges. Unfortunately, I think the world of Hugh Quattlebaum, and I think that he's a good hitting coach, but I think unfortunately what they'll end up doing is hiring a new hitting coach, signing a couple periphery free agents, some pitching depth, maybe changing something about the park, and coming back on a

re-rack, and hoping that Conforto is better, DeGrom's health is better, and Thor comes back with a full season. In fact, I think those things could break differently next year and they could look amazing. Yeah, mostly the same core could come back and do what it was supposed to do this season and it wouldn't be that big of a surprise. But if that's going to happen, it is a lot of individual rebounds.

I would say Lindor, of everybody who's underperformed, is probably, for me, the most likely to bounce back all the way to previous levels. Even if I'm not expecting that, I think it's more likely for him than anybody else because Conforto was coming off of a career best season in the shortened season, right? 322, 412, 515. No one was expecting that to happen again. But I do think what we saw probably in 2017, 2019, like the best versions of Confortordo there when the slugging percentage was near or above 500 you know talking about a guy that hit 257 at the low end 279 at the high end good obps

good power good middle of the order run producer i believe that's who he is the projections point in that direction as well i mean 340 7 obp from theP from the bat, or the bat X, and then a 431 slug the rest of the way seems a tad low to me. I think there's a compelling reason to believe there's still at least one more very good season in his bat. Here's one thing that I don't like about

Cohen's comments. And it fits in with this negotiation in public that happens with the Mets that's happened for a really long time that's still happening. And the way I talk about that is, was it Zach Short that was there? That's not his name. Zach Scott, who came out and said, the players aren't following our injury plans for them? What are you doing?

If that's true, that's an indictment on your process, your communication with the players, and now you're communicating with us about this instead of communicating with them or your coaches. Then on top of that, maybe the players are right not to follow your things because the Mets have terrible injury outcomes, and they have for a really long time. And whenever a player gets traded away from New York, all the stuff shows up in the media about how bad they were, this or that, or, you know, their bad seed or whatever. Right. And you're starting to see it happen this year. We're starting to figure out who we're going to scapegoat.

That's how I read a little bit was going on with tim healy uh today also on meds twitter which is he had this tweet uh that around a story that he wrote and he says marcus stroman's numbers last night seven innings three runs 114 pitches nine retweets of personal highlights within 25 minutes of the game ending and that's that was his frame for a start in which stroman did all that he's supposed to do you know kept the first place giants to three runs yeah and i don't think marcus stroman if you made a list of the five things that have gone wrong that have caused the metsy to turn out this way stroman's not even in conversation for that but i guess like you know it's a little

bit of maybe frustration on healy's part because you know our access is difficult right now and you're you're just getting them on the field and certain pr for certain teams is not very helpful in getting players uh i've even heard writers say that pr has told them you know that's not my job right now it is i'm sorry in this situation it is maybe that's not my job. Right now it is. I'm sorry. In this situation, it is. Maybe it's not always, but in this situation it kind of is because otherwise your players don't talk to anybody,

and there's a CBA thing where we negotiated the media and the players talk. So anyway, there's a little bit of frustration there. Then you get – so Marcus Stroman probably doesn't come out on the field. A lot of starting pitchers don't. So you don't get him when he comes out on the field. So then you get him after the game. That's your only chance to ask any questions. And then I guess Marcus Stroman was not super into the questions in the Zoom at the end,

which is a little bit different, a little stilted anyway, because it's a Zoom and it's a press conference style instead of actually being able to look him in the eye and talk to him and ask him a question and he I guess he maybe either ended it early or he sort of expressed disrespect for the questions he was answering in some way and so Healy felt frustrated and you know expressed his frustration with maybe the disconnect between Stroman's social media presence and the Mets performance as a team which I guess that could be an emotional response. I don't know that it's great for a writer to kind of bring that into his story, but a little bit of frustration all around.

But then there was a little bit of it that was like, oh, how are we going to scapegoat Stroman for this season? Like, that doesn't make any sense unless he's just decided that stroman's not going to be here next year and that can be a good story for him i don't know i there's i'm ascribing a lot of uh potential motivations to to tim that i don't know uh for certain which one it is but none of them really read that good and they do kind of go feed into this lol mets thing and that's where the ownership comments i don't think help because then the timing yeah because then it just seems like oh everyone's just crapping on the team

and scapegoating and not taking responsibility for their part in it and just sort of backbiting. And, oh, this feels a lot like LOL Mets and all the stuff that's happened before. So 59-60 is the record entering play on Wednesday. They're playing the Giants as we record this. 10.7% chance of making the playoffs, according to Fangraphs. The related question I had for you for today was just, are they the biggest disappointment in baseball as a team?

And we can quantify that. Can we actually come up with a good way to say, yeah, they are or drum roll, please. We took the current playoff odds and subtracted the april 1st playoff odds and the biggest difference at 72 percent are the mets the mets went from 82 likely to make the playoffs when the season started to 10 now uh and uh i don't know why my numbers are slightly different

than yours but uh because we were just talking to each other, maybe they're changing as things happen. Anyway, 72%, the other biggest in order, Twins, number two, going from 60 to zero. Padres, number three, going from 93.5 to 50.7. They're kind of a coin flip right now. Anybody watching the Padres knows there's a bit of a tinge of disappointment, maybe not in the whole season, but in how it's going

right now. The pitching is falling apart and just it's been tough. I mean, if Jake Arrieta is starting for your team in Coors, you know things aren't going that well. Angels, four, going from 41 to zero. Blue Jays were 55% likely to make the postseason and are now 21% likely. It's a little weird for me to call that a disappointing season. I think it's just like a function of the numbers. It's not, they were somewhat likely to make the playoffs and they're still somewhat likely to make playoffs it's not i wouldn't call that a big disappointment no but a lot has changed just in the past week i think last friday their playoff odds were almost

identical to the yankees and now the yankees are sitting up at 70.7 percent so a big shift just these last couple of games that has really kind of changed the way that that playoff race looks. Yeah. So these numbers are always in flux. But I think that there's more flux around the sort of 20s and 50s, right? Padres win five or six games against the right opponents. They could be back at 90%. You know what I mean?

So, like, I think that's in fluctuation. The Cardinals are next, going from 32% to 6.9%. I think that would be a disappointment, especially for people after they got the Arenado trade, felt like they were the easy favorites in that division. Cleveland is next. I think that counts as a disappointment. Nationals next.

Cubs, those are three teams that had some possibility of making the postseason that nobody was calling a favorite, but all kind of went in the tank. And then the Yankees are the 10th biggest disappointment, and I think that just goes back to that Blue Jays number, where it's like they were 89% to begin the season. They could be 89% tomorrow or in a week. So there were some people that were disappointed by the yankee season in between but it's going to end up in the playoffs most likely just like

the preseason numbers said they would yeah so it's not just the mets but by that measure they actually are the biggest disappointment in baseball and and again frustration actually seems pretty warranted this time around. Let's get to our other big topic for today because I really like this question. This one came in from Owen. And Owen wrote, Finding speed seems to be harder than ever these days. Only two players on pace to steal more than 30 bags this season.

With interest in Adalberto Mondesi quickly falling due to injuries and the Royals stating that it's unlikely he will play more than 100 games in 2022. The fantasy community will likely turn to the next source of elite stolen base production. The obvious candidate in line is Vidal Brujan with his near generational speed. My question is what tools or minor league

indicators can we look at to project Brujan's bat development? We seem to get these elite speedsters every so often, and it is often the case that their bat never develops to the major league quality, and they lose playing time as well as their fantasy viability. Examples like Billy Hamilton and Malik Smith. Wondering what you think about projecting bat development and how highly you value Brujan as a future Dynasty League player. Kind regards, Owen.

So let's start with Brujan first before we sort of pull back and get into what we might use to find other hitters that could have a lot of success. Brujan has done something that I think will make him very affordable in redraft leagues in 2022. It's that he has debuted and he did not look good in that debut right it was 10 awful games it was a 30 k rate really didn't draw any buying opportunity yes he created a great buying opportunity because just that little sliver of time in the big leagues if he doesn't get anything else down the stretch this year

that's going to turn the projections down quite a bit from where they would have been if he'd come up and had some success, even if he hadn't come up at all. This is something we get to in every draft season. So I already think there's a good chance Brujan's going to be a little undervalued, at least in the early part of draft season. But what do we expect from him as a hitter because a lot of what we saw from him at triple a this year was a level of power that really hadn't been there in the past we saw a flash of it at high a a few years ago but level to level not as much power as we saw during this run with dur Durham prior to his initial promotion to the big leagues. Can we believe that? Can we believe that that sort of power growth is real in his profile?

I think so. The reasons that I have are that the power growth is steady all the way from his 102 ISO in rookie ball in his first attempt all the way to 189 in AAA. You can see it's not a stepping stone where every year was a little bit more ISO, but it's a gradual improvement in his isolated slugging, which is slugging minus batting average. And then that's supported by a gradual improvement in ground ball rate. That one ground ball rate kind of went in fits and lurches. So it's not surprising to me that he hit the major leagues with a 56% ground ball rate,

even though it's such a small sample that I'm not saying that that's anything written in stone. That didn't surprise me when I first saw it. However, I do think he has the opportunity to, within the first two or three years, to get that under 50%, which to me suggests that he has a chance at league average-ish power. I wouldn't project that in his first year, but given these improvements in ground ball rate and ISO over time, I'm comfortable saying that I don't think he's a zero in power. I think there's one other thing that Brujan does really well that not all speedsters do.

He controls the strike zone really well. I know the 10 games I mentioned, a 30% K rate is alarming, but it's a very small sample. Vidal Brujan has never struck out more than 15% of the time at any minor league stop. And he's been young for the level everywhere he's played. He also draws walks too. It's not just a case where it's all contact, low walk rate.

These are good walk, double digit walk rates everywhere up until I think his second run at high A. He's still at 8.7% there. He was at 11.9% AAA this year. I think Vidal Brujan is a good player. I think maybe the other questions about him would be is he going to play for the Rays in 2022,

or is he a guy that gets traded and ends up breaking in somewhere else? Regardless, he's ready to play in the big leagues, and I think part of the reason he's not playing in the big leagues right now is because he's on a team that is fighting to win its division, and they've got so much depth that they think he's better served right now, getting more everyday playing time at AAA. Yeah, one reason that controlling the plate really matters is, here's a weird name for you, Jed Lowry.

Jed Lowry has maybe the opposite of Vidal Brujan speed, whatever that is. But if you look at his max exit velocities and his barrel rates, Jed Lowry has never been a guy that I don't think he has plus power. In fact, if you want to look at Brujan from a scouting standpoint, Fangrass put a 4550 on the raw power for Vidal Brujan. And I would say that Jed Lowry's game power is probably around a 4550, right? But the way that Jed Lowry does it is by controlling the strike zone, is by only swinging at good pitches, basically.

So there's a lot of power to be had just by connecting on middle-middle, basically, and not swinging at pitches outside the zone. So if that can produce 10 to 15 homers a year for Jed Lowry, then I don't see why I can't for Vidal Brujan. It's just going to come also hopefully with 30 to 40 steals. So a little bit of Jose Altuve in here. And I think that's a really important one because I went back and looked at the last 10 years.

I didn't want to go back further because baseball changes a lot. And if I went back 40 or 50 years, I'd find guys that stole a ton of bases and didn't have any power. But I wanted to look back just the last 10 years. And I wanted to find guys who had multiple 30-steal seasons. Jose Altuve is number one with six. and Starling Marte is number two with five but I've got about 20 guys that have done it and of the 20 guys that have done it the only ones that have an ISO an isolated second under under 100 are Dee Gordon, Ben Revere, Billy Hamilton, Alcides Escobar, and Elvis Andrews. Now, the thing that you have in common are, you know,

Sterling defensive positions in center and short. However, another thing that you have in common is that none of these guys have done it recently. And I kind of feel like the game is moving away from, I think the closest was Dee Gordon, maybe Billy Hamilton. Just watching their struggles staying in the game suggests to me that baseball does not want to give at-bats to anybody with no power at all. And so if you look at you know this year the guys that have more than 15 stolen bases the only guys that have a sub 100 iso are mile straw and rimel tapia okay a little bit of defense up the middle

for straw tapia is actually projected to have better than 100 iso so now you're down to one guy with more than 15 stolen bases that has a sub 100 iso so to me that's a meaningful benchmark for people to to to get over yeah i think it's become clear in the last few years the speedsters of tomorrow are going to be more than just speedsters we're going to see more guys like trey turner and bo bichette Kyle Tucker and Tatis and Acuna and Betts at the very top of the board. Even Kyle Tucker, right? More guys like that who give us the bulk of our stolen bases than the hits two homers a year but steals 30 bases. The Dysons, the Malik Smiths. Those guys are increasingly going to be difficult to find.

Straw was doing fine. He got traded. Houston was like, eh. Right? On to the next one. Yeah. So I think that my basic thing that I would be looking for is, like in the case of Vidal Brujan,

for guys that are like, ooh, does he have 100 ISO or not, is looking at ground ball rates and looking at progression, but then also more highly valuing, perhaps, minor leaguers that show you some power already along with their speed. Do you think it's fair to say

that we need, at a bare minimum, one other obvious standout tool to go with top-end speed for a player to be a clear big league regular. I mean, that's probably always been true based on the scouting scale, right? I think it might be more than one. Like Terrence Gore was probably an 80-speed guy that didn't have any other even average tools. But I think it has to be more than one is my point.

Right. I mean, because Billy Hamilton has 80 speed and 80 defense and didn't really carve out. He carved out three years. So you could put elite speed and elite defense with any one of playing a great position or some power or a hit tool, like something. Like you could have a below average hit tool, but above average power with those two things. That'll play. You could have below average power and above average hit tool with those things. That'll play too.

So you think it's really three tools all together that you have to have if speed is really the main carrying tool. One toolers are just not – there's almost no one toolers in baseball. You could pick any one tool. I mean, the one, the one, one tool that might exist is like a, just a hit tool guy. Like, uh, maybe Tommy La Stella. Tommy La Stella has almost no other tools,

but he even improved his, his power. Right. Yeah. Long path for him to get as much playing time as he's had to write for years. What's another one tooler. No,

they don't, they don't really exist. Even the only power guys that didn't have great plate discipline and didn't, like Chris Carter types, they're not in the game anymore either. Yeah, it seems like people come up with a way to beat you,

and then you don't have anything else to fall back on, and you're done, and that's just how it goes. I wonder also if the speedsters of the future are guys who aren't going to show us that they're fast in the box score necessarily before their arrival like they're going to steal six eight ten bags whatever level to level as they move through the minor league system but they're going to be so focused on the rest part of their games right they'll add that last they'll say hey you know what i got speed and i've got top line coaching so now i can actually work on this part of my game

because everything else that carries me to the big leagues is taken care of. Like it's the extra thing you add. Because there are no, like I can't imagine that there's a lot of minor leaguers that think if I steal a bunch of bases, that's going to get the attention of my coaches or my front office, right?

Right. If you're making major league four, they already make Major League Four, Willie Mays Hayes doesn't make any sense anymore as a character. So for somebody like, and he's going to be on our list, but down list, so we wouldn't talk about him normally, but we're going to talk about a list in a second. But Alec Thomas scratches a lot of box. People are excited about him normally, but we're going to talk about this in a second. Alec Thomas scratches a lot of box. People are excited about him. He's showing basically all the skills. He's in AAA. He's an

outfielder for the Diamondbacks. He's one of my favorite prospects. I've tried to hold on to him in places where I've sold a bunch of prospects. He's a guy I have my eye on. I talked to him at the Futures game, and he just seemed to have a really good approach. Look at this. He has eight triples. Now, he has nine stolen bases against five caught stealings. He wouldn't pop at you for having great speed, and he wouldn't pop if you did a sort by just stolen bases,

and that was your only thing you looked at. But think of Alec Thomas a guy who hit eight triples and has power and has defensive value and has played skills think about that guy in the major leagues maybe not in year one but maybe in year one think about Acuna when he got to the big leagues and was just like I'm gonna be a 30-30 candidate you know what I mean like Alec Thomas may get to the major leagues and steal more bases than we expect. Yeah, I think a lot of it's going to be

searching for guys we think are going to steal 15 or 20 someday as opposed to getting 30 or 40 in one shot. The Brujan types are going to be increasingly difficult to find. Alec Thomas is my future Kyle Tucker kind of guy. Yeah, and that definitely plays really well. There's a couple of potential sleepers here. We put together some leaderboards before we started recording. We were looking at a combination of things.

You found that the ISO over 100, especially at the big league level, was important to the sustained success of a base dealer. We decided to use 150, looking at AA and AAA hitters currently just to find some guys that have some pop. We put the K rate filter at 24%. We wanted to start it at 20. Looking at AA and AAA hitters currently, just to find some guys that have some pop, we put the K rate filter at 24%. We wanted to start it at 20, and it turns out-

It was like one player. It was Fidel Brujan. It thinned things out. Yeah. It thinned it down a little too much, and we kept the age to 24 or younger since we're looking at AA and AAA, and coming off of the pandemic year, especially being a little more flexible on that age was probably a good idea. Brujan, of course, was the player that popped the most. He's 26 for 31 as a base dealer this year.

We talked about him just now. Great. Everyone loves Vidal Brujan. Good buy low for next year. Kyle Isbell is still on that list. And I think because he debuted and also didn't play particularly well and got sent back down and hasn't really had a lot of chances to come back up and show what he could do people sort of stopped paying attention to him and i'd be hesitant to write him off as a future useful fantasy player given what we saw this year at triple a he was skipping from high a to the big leagues when he debuted because of the lost year which was a pretty aggressive promotion and i don't think that should be held against him as we look at him in the future. Yeah, no. One thing that just bothers me is that I don't know where he came from,

but that's just on me, right? I remember being in drafts at the beginning of the season and people were drafting him in NFPC formats and stuff and being like, who? But he does fit our filters and I think he actually fits your sort of Brujan description where the 41% K rate just leaps off the page. In the minor leagues, the last few stops he was at 20 or below. The swinging

strike rates weren't that high. So I would expect him to strike out less than 25% of the time, and the walk rate is the big variable. If he walks 5% of the time, then he might be a part-timer, and then he'll have a hard time breaking into that lineup.

But he has walked 10% of the time before, and that's what he's doing right now in AAA. into that lineup. But he has walked 10% of the time before, and that's what he's doing right now in AAA. So if he comes back up, walks 10% of the time, strikes out 25% of the time, and has a 150 ISO, I think that plays. Yeah, I think he might be a better fantasy player than a real-life player because of the speed. And I see the fan graphs as a 60-grade on his defense.

That's huge. You need that extra lift to keep the playing time steady. So I'd put Isbell definitely in our bounce back folder for the 2022 season as well. Bobby Witt Jr., I'm an elite prospect. He pops. Nothing bad to say about him. Nothing to dig into there. Jose Barrero just came up.

He's on this list. And I'm just kind of curious, what do you see in him? Because this was a name we really didn't hear at all prior to this season. Well, we literally didn't because he used to be called something else. What was he called before? Was he Jose Garcia? Yeah, it was Jose Garcia. He changed his name to honor his mother, I think.

One thing that I have heard about him behind the scenes from other evaluators is difficulty with the wiggle as in he can murder the fastball, but has some difficulty with with things that break. may lead to a higher strikeout rate than you'd expect. You know, we've talked about this on the show, about the sort of variability. He's right at that 22% strikeout rate, which could either graduate to the major leagues at 23% or 30%. And that's going to be the big one that I just don't know. I can't decide that. I don't know that for sure myself.

I will say that he's been really impressive at double a and triple a this year uh blowing the doors off of basically I mean we're talking about a 33 wrc plus and double a 50 you know 53 above average 133 153 so 30 to 50 better than league average at double a and triple a at 23 years old with already a taste two tastes of the major leagues and a super need of his position and plus defense like i think it's about the time that they just set it and forget it there um it's really interesting that he if you look at his minor league line nothing will pop because there's like 13 steals here, eight steals here, seven steals here. Uh, but if you add it all up, uh, he's in the sort of top 10 of interesting

speedsters. And so he could come up, I think, and hit two 50, uh, hit, uh, 18 to 20 homers, even if he doesn't hit the wiggle, and steal you 15 bags. And it's not a package that we see a ton. It's a little bit like Freddy Galvez with speed or I don't know. It's not one that I have an immediate comp for in my head. But I just think given their need, given the fact that Cal Farmer was playing there before, it's about to be set it and forget it time for the Reds with Jose Barrero and just give him two or three years and see what he can do and that's a pretty ideal situation for uh people

to to to cat to try and capture him yeah i think when we were back at the beginning of the season it was well can garcia be the guy that is not ready for the big leagues but he just plays shortstop because i don't have anybody else and It would sacrifice his development as a hitter. Instead of doing that, instead of pushing him out of the roster, they gave him the year in the minors, and it's paying off in a big way. I think it's interesting that there is still that concern with the swing and miss. He's on my Raz Slam cut line, my Raz Slam best ball,

that I'm in the finals. I made it. Nice. I'm in the top 15. That I'm in the finals. I made it. Nice. I'm in the top 15.

And he didn't give me any value all year, but it'd be really funny if he gave me just some crazy-ass weeks in the end and helped me win that thing. It could totally happen. And I would say he has a lot of ways to make value. So I think that's what makes Barrero so exciting. A little deeper. I wanted to go one deeper. So I think Barrero,

I think all the guys we've talked about so far, I think Isbell is a redraft or sort of reclamation project for Dynasty and an interesting redraft, late round, best ball type pick next year. Brujan and Witt are top of the line. You're going to have to pay up next year if you want them, and maybe the play is to pay up a little bit less for Brujan than for Witt.

And then Barrero, I think, is somebody that could be drafted in most deep leagues next year. Someone who hit 17 homers and 15 stolen bases in the minor leagues last year that probably has that set and forget a job. I think these guys are all draftable in most leagues. The next name I'm going to give, I don't know if he's draftable. He's more of a deep league, deep cut, possible sleeper. Jiwon Bae, 22-year-old shortstop in the Pirates organization. I just see them as now being sort

of weak up the middle. I think Rodolfo Castro is a guy I like, but I think Newman could be a non-tender candidate next year. Bay is a little bit iffy on the ISO. We're in rookie ball. He was under 100, but then A ball over 100, and AA at 150 right now with the ground ball rates going down, projected for a 115 ISO. Strikeout rate looks okay. Walk rates look good. I think this could be an interesting player. I know the WRC Plus in AA right now is 98.

That's not amazing. That's going to keep him off lists. 45 future value at Fangraph is going to keep them off lists uh 45 future value at fangraphs going to keep them off lists but interesting look at this 50 present 70 future hit tool it's a lot of hit tool yeah that's a lot of hit tool combine that with uh with good defense um and some emerging power uh and then you have these wheels underneath, 65 wheels according to Fangraphs. If that name sounds familiar, Jiwon Bae has a really interesting backstory.

It's not all good. He was one of the Braves prospects that John Capolella put together pretty much illegally and was required to let loose back into the wild. So then he signed a nearly, I think it's an over a million dollar bonus with the Pirates, where he's been playing pretty well. He also had to serve a 30-game suspension for domestic violence after being found guilty of slapping and kicking his girlfriend in Korea. So it's not all good news there.

And certainly, even his profile as a player is not all great. But I think there's some potential there and hopefully some potential for getting his life back together again and being a quality middle infielder for the Pirates. Yeah, I think he's definitely got a path to at least get an opportunity in the not-so-distant future in Pittsburgh. I think you might be right, though. It's going to be tough to draft him outside of maybe NL-only leagues as a reserve going into next season. The other guy that I think is kind of interesting is Kevin Smith in Toronto, and I don't really know how they're going to fit him into their plan. So maybe he's another guy that actually needs a trade. I mean, he can play shortstop. Marcus Simeon's there on a one-year

deal though. I imagine Simeon's going to get a boatload of money and deservedly so as a free agent this winter. So if they can't keep Simeon, maybe Kevin Smith actually gets a chance to break through with the Jays as part of the mixed second base. I just can't imagine that's the plan from day one, though. You know what I mean? I think maybe it changes their plan for day one, and they say, you know, we'll do a soft rental situation again at second base, like sign Cesar Hernandez, you you know for one and five because

we think kevin smith might take over for him um but i do and then and the strikeout rate has some softness to it i mean he had a 32 percent strikeout rate in 2019 at double a so there's there's a chance he strikes out too much but i mean definitely somebody i would i would also want to remember yeah has it back in check, though, at AAA. Career-high walk rate, 11.4% to go along with it. 19 homers, and he's 16 for 19 as a base dealer in 82 games for the Jays this year at the AAA level. Just another guy that doesn't get any of the prospect hype similar to the other names we talked about, but could actually find some playing time next year for those of you in really deep leagues.

Thanks a lot for that question, Owen. I think there was a lot of interesting stuff to kind of pick away at there as we were looking for some future sources of speed. We had a follow-up question come in about Shohei Otani. The question was whether Otani is actually omitted from our conversation by design as a top five player for next season, we were both looking at it from a weekly sort of league, an NFPC sort of perspective where...

I would say, no, I did it by accident, man. Yeah. My excuse is that sometimes I think of things from a weekly perspective and I'm not sure. I'm interested to see what your perspective is. I'm not sure where to draft him next year in a weekly league. Yeah, I didn't leave him out because I didn't think he was deserving. I didn't put him in there in my head because I still have to get past the block of the two-way player and the weekly league mindset for sure.

So would I take him in the top five of a weekly league draft? I still have a hard time doing that. And I feel like picking Nitz and Shohei Otani is not a business that I want to be in because it's like, why? He's awesome. Like, why would we want to do that? Here's the thing. Yeah, yeah.

Look at his playing time for this year. It's very comparable to other players who play every day. It's not like if you look at a leaderboard for plate appearances, right? He's got 467 plate appearances. How many players do you think have more plate appearances than Shohei Otani so far this season? More than 467. 15? 20?

45. Okay. Only 45. And a bunch of those guys are you know virtual every day because i mean the problem is that nobody's every day right like the problem is we're kind of doing load management everywhere and everyone's everyone's taking days off yeah so can you accept that can you accept that slightly reduced workload built in. There's injury risk with any player, but there's elevated injury risk for him as someone who's had Tommy John surgery before. A little bit of production risk. He has a 31%

strikeout rate, right? I don't think we would typically draft a guy with a K rate that high in the top five. Yeah. Tatis was close. Tatis was close. You're getting power. You're getting speed. You have an average that probably could tick up pretty easily.

If the K rate comes down a little, suddenly the average pushes into that 280, 290 range, and you're kicking yourself for not taking him. So he belongs in that conversation. I would say the omission was not purposeful, but I don't think I'm going to take him with a top five pick at this point it's early enough where that could obviously change with some further evaluation and some further research extrapolating his the bat projection over a full year and instead of taking you know on pace for stuff with his current numbers um you would expect him to hit 275 with like about 40 homers

and 18 stolen bases next year. Juice. I think almost the pitching stuff is irrelevant. I think you just stick that guy in as a bat. Well, that's how I'd play it. I mean, in the league where I got him, it's a twice-weekly lineup to change format. I don't think I've pitched him in months. I've maybe pitched him once all season

because I have not been able to justify not using his bat in that UT spot. He's that good of a hitter. But we should have talked about him because I would say this. I think that in the league's daily leagues where you can get both of them, I think he's the number one player next year.

Yeah, I think he will go 1-1 in a lot of those drafts, and rightfully so, because he doesn't have the immediate major injury concerns that a lot of those other guys that would have been in that spot currently have. And then there's also more of an opportunity to capture the floor that he provides. It's like, well well what if he does get injured in pitching he'll probably still hit or what if his hitting takes a step back then you can use him as a pitcher right like he there's so many different ways to use him that it creates floor uh which is kind of what you like you you want high floor but you do want some floor out

of your first round picks you want them to hit so you, you know, there's a – you look at Tatis, right? You drafted him really high. He did not play all year. He did not give it you wanted. And yet he still is returning super value, right? Because you bought super high floor. Trout didn't work out that way this year maybe. I know the per- game power output probably has

to come down but he can afford to give back a little and still be a 1-1 player especially the k rate comes down a little bit yeah and i think the other thing that i'm i won't want to keep in mind with otani is that a healthier anthony rendon and a healthier Mike Trout, which both seem pretty likely. They both should play more than they did this year when we look ahead to next year. That's a good thing for Otani's value as well. One thing I have to say is unless they built that stadium on Indian grounds. Oh, geez.

Did they do that? I'm just saying, man. It's like, oh, man, they can't put it together, man. It's so sad. They're going to go into next year with two of the top 10 players in baseball and maybe three of the top 15, 20. Yeah. They are a true disappointment.

We talked about disappointments earlier. I had much higher expectations. Very soul-saddening. For the Angels with the star power they have but thank you to Chris for tweeting at us with that question about Otani last question for today this one came in via email from Clinton I think we're all doing this to varying degrees at this point in the season there's a question about end of season roto strategy I know we're at the point where you should be focusing on categories where we can realistically make up ground.

The problem is I have a couple of these that are in opposition to each other. For example, adding 10 more wins relative to other teams would net me 7.5 points, while adding 10 saves would add 4 points. My current strategy has been to try and chase both simultaneously. This is a weekly league, so he's going with 5 starters and 4 relievers. Should I ditch that and just go after wins at this point? I have two viable starters I could put in if I decide to stop chasing saves. Thanks, Clinton. How do you make a decision like this?

When do you pull the string to just go down that path with that more imbalanced sort of lineup to lock in? I can't recommend my strategy. My strategy is to try to get both until the last two or three weeks and then go real hard at one. So I'm not sure that's the best strategy. But the reason that you could do it for a little bit while longer is two start weeks.

So you have these extra pitchers. You could just make sure that you always put in the guys that have two starts, you know, make sure that you kind of get as much as you can out of what you, what you've got, maybe even stream a little in one of those spots to keep getting two start pitchers in there.

The one thing I will have to say though, is that I think saves are maybe more projectable than wins wins i find chasing wins to be impossible i like i and i do it every year because i don't draft for wins and i feel like every year i'm like oh it's time to chase wins and uh it's terrible so i would say uh there might come a time when you have to make the other decision and go hard after saves. I think in this case, seeing there's almost twice as many points to be gained in the wins category, I'd flip the switch now. I'd go more aggressive with the starters right away. I'd go seven and two on the starters. And I know you can pick up the occasional win from the relievers.

So it's not the worst thing in the world if you stay more balanced the occasional win from the relievers. So it's not the worst thing in the world. If you stay more balanced a bit longer, because you're right, it's hard to predict wins. Uh, but I'd rather try and get every one of those seven and a half points than maybe get the four points by getting the 10 saves by having that more balanced approach. Like you're guaranteeing, you're almost guaranteeing yourself that you're not going to close that seven and a half point gap down by splitting things up but if you max out the volume of starts two start weeks are huge especially this time of year i think you get a better chance of at least getting everything you can and wins even if you only get

a little or don't get anything in terms of made up ground and saves yeah i'm trying to internalize that i'm gonna have a i need a little dvr next to me on my shoulder i'm trying to internalize that i'm gonna have a i need a little dvr next to me on my shoulder i'm trying to internalize that that feeling i i was a little bit more aggressive in a few leagues this year with with certain trades like i traded uh joey gallo for whit maryfield uh in barf um because i knew that the auction calculator said that gallo was better going forward but i was really strong in obp and homers. Another stolen base threat could give me a lot of points. Guess what happened? I got six points in steals and lost

four points in OBP. I got hurt by Grundahl and some other things. I'm hoping I can get some of those points back in OBP. Every time you make a decision somewhere, you're shooting yourself in the face. It's like the fingers in the dike, man. Oh, yeah.

Vegas vacation? Yeah, because you're saying right now, oh, well, switch over to that. What we also don't know is how many points he could lose in saves. That is an important thing to keep in mind. I kind of dumbly, dumbly? Yeah, dumbly is the right word in this case.

Assumes that like maybe there weren't as many points to lose there. That's what I figured. He looked at it and said, I got a little bit of a cliff here so I can choose my path. That's the main thing I think is looking for those cliffs and looking about like do I have a cushion here? And then that allows you also to kind of play it week to week a little bit. All right, like now I'm going to go hard after wins

and watch that gap between me and the next person in saves dwindle away, dwindle away. Okay, I've got to put one of these closers back in. Yeah, thank you for the question, Clinton. I think that's a very common question this time of year, and it's tough even with a lot of experience to always know exactly when you want to make those changes. I know for people who are even more numbers-driven than I am, I'm sure that it's very easy for them to calculate it. I would imagine that Ariel Cohen doesn't sweat this quite the same way that I do or Jeff Zimmerman probably doesn't sweat it quite the same way I do.

It doesn't always turn out the way you project either. do or Jeff Zimmerman probably doesn't sweat it quite the same way I do. It doesn't always turn out the way you project either. No, but I have a little more of a feel approach, comparatively speaking, to the way that they solve that problem. I don't project out every category for every player, every team in my league. I'm in something like 18 leagues. I cannot. I don't have the headspace. I should do those things, but thank you for the question, Clinton. And because I used the word, the non-word, dumbly about 90 seconds ago, it's time for us to go. It's time for me to eat some lunch very, very clearly. If you'd like to drop us an email, you can do that at ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com.

Get a subscription for 30% off at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. It gets you everything we have on the site, Eno's writing, all the fantasy football stuff we've got up now, all the stretch run coverage, all the Mets coverage that you can shake your fist at if you're an angry Mets fan right now. So be sure to sign up if you don't have a subscription already on Twitter. He is at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening.