Rates & Barrels - The Search for Innings, A New Early-Season Hitting Metric & Situational Velocity as a Sweet Spot?

Episode Date: April 21, 2022

Eno and DVR discuss their ongoing search for quality innings, how to adjust if you're already looking to make up ground in pitching categories, a new early-season hitting metric to consider, reaching maximum velocities on a situational basis, and more.  Rundown - Finding Starting Pitchers Early in the Season - Beyond the Streamers - Regrets About an Early Tyler Wells Drop? - Prospect of the Week is Back! - A New Early Sample Hitting Metric (From Dorsey) - Situational Max Velocity? - An Exercise in Pickup Decisions Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic at $1/month for the first six months: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Thursday, April 21st. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we will discuss the problem of finding starting pitching in season, already an issue for me in more than a couple of leagues, and it looks like the waiver wire is already pretty thin. So digging a little deeper, looking for some help on that front. Got an email sent to Eno about a new early sample hitting metric, so we'll dig into that and talk about what that might mean and how that might steer us to a few players to either trade for or possibly even pick up in a few cases, a handful of names on there that might actually be available in some more shallow formats.

Had a good follow-up email to Max Velocity that we talked about on the last episode with Jacob deGrom. So we'll try to get to that today as well. And if there's time, we'll go through a pickup process example, because there was a request for us to kind of walk through step-by-step how we would look at a situation if we were thinking about picking up two different hitters. How would we go about doing that? So, let's begin, Eno, with finding pitching in season.

A common problem, not just a Derek problem. This is not just me having therapy on the podcast. not just a Derek problem. This is not just me having therapy on the podcast. There is a league where I am doing great with my bats. I am among the league leaders in hitting points, and I am currently dead last in pitching points. And my concern about that is that I'm dead last in strikeouts, not that I'm dead last in ERA and second to last in whip, because I think the pitchers I have are not as bad ratio wise as they've been to their first two turns in the rotation. That's an easy thing to talk myself out of. But I do think if you're sitting in the position I am, where you're underperforming in strikeouts through two weeks you need to make adjustments now and that led me to the waiver wire I look at the wires

it's a 15 team league in this case I said this is not good there's not a lot of pitching help out here so I need to start formulating a plan to get more volume and to help close down that gap as quickly as possible because the longer we go where I'm lagging, the harder it's going to be to make up that ground later on. Yeah, that's true. And I'm last in the strikeouts with my main, so I better get going on it. I was just furiously checking my standings. Yeah, I mean, I think that there are things you could do.

For example, if you've been using a spot on your bench for saves prospecting maybe now that's uh gotta switch over to a starting pitcher you know you gotta that's a sort of nfc thing where you've got that limited small bench but it's an important thing to think about is like your allocation of resources on that bench uh maybe it's time if you have your hitting's doing fine then maybe it's time to have one less hitter on your bench uh i for example have now cobbled together a stonemont bednar soto uh three-headed monster and monsters in quotation marks uh for for my bullpen so maybe it's time as much as i like john duran to to drop him uh for the next two-start pitcher and then it's time probably to start thinking about two-start pitching a lot that's why the ras ball tool is very useful you can kind

of look at all of your options uh on the on the waiver wire uh to pick up uh you know something that's going to be heavy in case yeah i think the two good points that you made there along the way do not at this point feel compelled to hold that third reliever who's not getting you saves, right? That player, if it hasn't happened in the first two weeks and there's no change in terms of injuries or someone else in the pen really underperforming, move on. You can find someone else like that at any time. And yeah, you may have to pay a little more in fab leagues to get those players if they start to pop before a fab run, but you're going to lag in important stats and you're not getting the one stat you need from

those players to make them valuable. And I do have at least one too many position players for an offense. It's loaded. I have three guys that I think I've combined used in my lineup one time in about six lineup periods. So that to me is a roster structure problem as well. Sorting out which one I drop might be as simple as dropping the injured one because I'm lucky enough to have that. That already decided for me. But two-start pitchers, I think the fear people have when they look at two-start pitchers is that they're going to hurt their ratios. What could go wrong is sort of the mindset people go into it with because they're often looking at pitchers they ordinarily didn't want to even draft in the first place. And I guess I'm curious, how do you push yourself past that? How do you convince yourself it's going to be fine if I go after these two-star pitchers,

if I have the right matchups? I'm not saying go out there and throw Zach Davies, a very low K-rate pitcher against the Dodgers and the Cardinals. That's probably not quite where you want to go in April, but you do need to choose your spots and find maybe it's Reaver San Martin for a two-star week, although he's got the Rockies for a second one next week, so that's probably not the sweet spot. How do you tell yourself that the ratios aren't going to be a total disaster when you go to the back of a rotation and push someone in there for two turns? Well, I think that you just have to think about matchups. Think about how the spread and Think about how much a matchup can mean. Cole Irvin, for example, this week,

had the Orioles at home and the Rangers at home. So he's not a good pitcher. I mean, good, that's mean. He's not a great pitcher. I mean, he's not a strikeout guy. He doesn't have good stuff. He has a lot of pitches that he can command. And in the right situation, he can be good.

And in this situation, he's in a cold ballpark with huge foul ground against two of the worst offenses. He doesn't get much better than that. In fact, Ras Ball Raider had him 11th this week. So I think that you have to think about the spread in offenses right now. The Angels have scored 65 runs. The Orioles have scored 24. Like, if you can target the Diamondbacks with 33,

the Tigers with 33, the Royals with 31, Baltimore with 24, then you are good and if if and i think the hardest thing is that you never it's very rare to get like for example the rangers have actually scored 53 runs they're not they're they're middle of the pack offense you you like that urban matchup because it's at home, right? In Oakland. But it's very rare to have two matchups that you're like, oh, I love both these matchups.

And if they are, then you might have to pay a little bit more because everyone's like, ooh, I love this guy. So I think the hardest is on the margins when you have one good start and one start where you're like, hmm, do I really want that one? But then you're just hoping that between the two, you get average-ish ratios and you get more Ks. I think if one start is amazing and the other start is not in Colorado,

then I'd lean towards taking it. Yeah, I think Joan Adon is a name that if we're going to see it picked up this week and there's, there are little things to like in his profile. It's a home start against Miami and then a road start against San Francisco. Just good enough, probably in, in 15s and 12s, I could see maybe passing, but I think he's going to be popular in some of the deeper leagues that we play in, in part because a few of the other two-star pitchers actually have two tough matchups. Mitch Keller's out there again in some leagues. He's at home twice against the Brewers and Padres.

That's probably a go if you're in a situation like the one you and I are describing. Yeah, the stuff is better. He had a good start. Seems to be figuring out a way to pitch past the straightness of his fastball. And it's home. It's home, Pittsburgh. Dallas Keuchel. I don't think I can.

Maybe a contingency. Home against the Royals, but then also home against the Angels. So is the bad start. And then off of one of the worst starts I've seen in a long time. That would take a bit of cojones for me. Do you have any other names? Kyle Freeland at Philly, home against the Reds. I don't think I want that. We've got Reaver, home against the Padres, road against the Rockies.

I don't know if I want to do that. Also an argument, I think in my main, I might want to switch the hitter and the Durant spot to starters. And here's why. You can't afford to stream every week. And some of those names that you'll mention will be owned. Like Mitch Keller will be owned, right? So by having four or

five starting pitchers on my bench i start creating streaming options on my own team right you're not paying every single time you do it right so uh so i think the mate one of the i think the major decisions will be duran for like in this in this i i know nobody cares about my fantasy team but it's at least it's a high-level fantasy team. I think these are examples that other people might be struggling with. The struggle for me would be Duran and Ronzi Contreras. Because how long do I wait? I mean, he seems like he's almost in there,

but could he be like this forever? Or how long will it be? And then somebody like Seth Beer or Mike Yastrzemski, one of these bats that I'm not playing a lot. I think looking beyond the streamers, not playing a lot. I think, looking beyond the streamers, I do think Rowanze Contreras is a little more

likely to become a starter than Duran. I mean, way more likely. Duran is a I'm hoping for a safes. Yeah, and that's possible, but that still reeks of a future committee, even if he's

a part of it. How long can i wait for it and how desperate is it for me if i have three that are that are closing games right now yeah i i don't think you can wait much longer than you already have for that particular role and then the if you have deeper benches and so streaming is almost uh really tough right like because if you have deeper benches then all those streamers are on people's rosters already like mitch keller's already gone you know maybe even kyle freeland is gone if you're in a deep enough league with deep enough benches then you have to start looking at depth charts right and you have to start looking for six starters this conversation came up a little bit

online because he was talking with uh rob silver and vlad sedler about um about tony gonsolin and like you know i don't uh i don't think tony gonsolin's that good um you know i i think that the the stuff numbers aren't great um you know the velocity's gone down and then the command is is bottom shell you know it's reliever command. We've talked about this since the beginning he started. We've seen it fall apart in the postseason. He has a walk rate of 10% for his career, which only one qualified pitcher had last year. That was Lance McCullers.

Does he have stuff like Lance McCullers? I don't think so. I don't think he will become a qualified starter. I don't think he's the first choice for them in the long term at a starter position. I think he's thrust into the role when Andrew Haney has to take two weeks off, that sort of deal. But Rob Silver had a good point, which is that he didn't think that the Dodgers had a lot of other options, and the schedule is okay going forward, and at least in the short term, he's going to be really good. okay, going forward and at least in the short term, he's going to be really good.

Maybe, but when I look at the depth charts, as I would for the Dodgers, I see some options I really like and some that aren't even listed on the Fangraphs depth chart, which is like Bobby and Mitch White as possibilities if something happens long-term to Andrew Haney or to another starter. And I could think that both of those guys could possibly push Gonsolin out of the rotation, which Gonsolin's projected for an ERA near five, projected for a strikeout rate under one per inning and a walk rate of nearly one every two innings.

That's just not a recipe for success. So a home run a half per inning. I can't really argue with those projections. So anyway, this is an exercise of one particular depth chart, but the deeper your league is, the more you want to think about, do I want to bet on Tyler Anderson over Tony Gonsolin to keep his spot? Do I want to start to roster Bobby Miller or Mitch White now

to get ahead of it? And I wonder if you've got some of your favorite. I know one in Arizona that you've got your eye on that's kind of a sixth starter, and we talked about Ronzi Contreras. I think this guy in Arizona and Ronzi Contreras are among the best sixth starters to kind of get on your roster now. Yeah, Corbin Martin is still, I can't quit Corbin Martin. And I think almost what you're trying to do,

if we're talking about a 15 team, you're trying to find the next Tyler Anderson. You're trying to find the next guy who's going to get bumped in when someone gets hurt, who's already stretched out. So when he gets the opportunity, you're also not waiting a week or two for him to be pitching deep enough into the game to get a win. Exactly. Someone who's already pitching longer innings. And do you want that guy to be in the minors like Bobby Miller or Mitch White?

Or do you want him to be in the majors pitching three innings? Kind of tough to decide that because the guy who's pitching in the majors three innings maybe might need to stretch out a little bit more or maybe they like him in his role or maybe they're trying to keep his innings down. I got some feedback that some people are having a hard time keeping Drew Rasmussen, especially in a quality start league, and I get it. But sometimes innings are innings. So if you're not in a quality start league, Rasmussen is going to get some wins.

He's going to get you four innings at a time, four or five innings at a time. He's going to be useful. That's the question about do I want to keep Corbin Martin on my roster or do I want to instead have somebody like Bobby Miller, who's more of a long shot? But if he does come up, would be likely to be a full-time starter. Yeah, I think you could look at Grayson Rodriguez probably the same way, too, in the leagues where he's available. And I think both Miller and Rodriguez are going to bring you to the questions about in-start workloads, at least initially. And then how long does it take for them to get

those opportunities? I think it's a guessing game that it's really tough to play because that's another person that you can't stream in. It tightens up the bench and it forces you to spend more on the other pitchers that everybody else is going after. So I find this exercise to be very frustrating to see that Tyler Anderson was already rostered in this league where I need pitching is frustrating because he's the kind of guy that I would have probably overpaid for given my needs and given the chance that, you know,

what's what's ailing Heaney actually hangs on a bit longer than expected or that one of the other starters goes down with an injury and Heaney comes back. But Anderson stays in as a result of that because we've talked about this before with that that starting five is that there's elevated injury risk with guys like clayton kershaw and even walker bueller having had tommy john surgery a few years back his ride and velo are down as a little aside like he does not he's not the same player stuff wise he was last year yeah that's a definite cause for concern. I mean, other names that sort of fit into this conversation,

you almost have to hunt on the particularly good teams. Bad teams already have pitching problems. Well, here, I've got some names for you. You know, Aaron Ashby in more shallow leagues. I think in deeper, maybe it just depends on the structure of your league. But Christian Javier, I think with Jake Odorizzi's really horrible start against the Angels, Christian Javier could step in to his spot in the rotation. You know, Ross Stripling might be worth a bet.

You know, based on some of the same characteristics that Hyunjin Ryu has given that Ryu's out because he has multiple pitches in command. He's a little bit like a Tyler Anderson stepping in there. I think the Braves rotation has a spot right now that they haven't really... I guess it's one spot it's the wascary noah spot because they sent him down now they've been they've been using bryce elder but elders had some command issues we're all hoping it's spencer strider i think but it could be kyle muller

or tucker davidson so you know there's a bit of a bet and I'm sorry, I can't necessarily help you and tell you exactly who it's going to be. Like if it were my team, I think I would do Spencer Strider. He had a hundred innings in last year. He's got the best stuff numbers. He's already doing really well. However, Spencer Strider has been pitching mostly in one inning stints, you know? And so maybe you think this is the reliever that gets me to the, the, the world series again, you know? So I, do you have, do you have an opinion on who you think is going the reliever that gets me to the World Series again. So do you have an opinion on who you think is going to step into you know his role?

I've been expecting to be Strider because I think the second time he pitched, the pitch count was basically that of a starter working out of the bullpen. So I thought, okay, this is an easy switch to flip, I think, compared to Elder who's more about a deep arsenal. Yeah's right he's been pitching longer since so yeah you're right that that last one was uh was three and two thirds and it was like 70 plus pitches if i remember right too well he wasn't even it wasn't efficient i wish he wasn't walking guys like he was but the stuff is so excellent oh and and a note um you know when you're looking at stuff and location pitching plus uh stuff plus does not consider uh platoon splits

and so and pitching plus does so if you see somebody with a really high stuff plus and not that great of a pitching plus sometimes that's because they're a two pitch pitcher or they just have a slider that lefties can maybe hit so that's a little bit relevant for strider that might be why the walk rate is high maybe he's just walking all the lefties but i still would be super excited to see him in the rotation what about ross stripling he's kind of one of the original names that for for our purposes, a few years back. I didn't hear you say him. Ryu's hurt, so you've got Stripling in this situation. Didn't pitch well last year.

I mean, had strikeouts last year, 94 Ks and 101 in the third innings, but a 480 ERA, 127 whip, major home run issue, 23 homers allowed. With a deadened ball in the conditions we're dealing with right now, though, I'm more optimistic than pessimistic about Stripling being pretty useful for us. Yeah, he's a little bit tougher in leagues where you have to put him in every week, right? I mean, I would be a little bit worried about throwing him in New York or maybe even home against New York or home against Boston. Some of those matchups are a little bit tough. It's a tough division.

But I do think stripling is, is worth taking a look at. I don't know. I I'm, I'm scrolling through here. And, uh, once you get to the bad rotations,

there's a lot of pictures you don't want. Yeah. Um, I don't think I'd want, uh, Oh, here's a guy. Um,

there was a big discussion cause I had, uh, a want... Oh, here's a guy. There was a big discussion because I had a... Let me see here. I guess he's already in the rotation. I think he's bad enough that he could be on your wire. He's performed poorly enough that he could be on your wire. Daniel Lynch is a little bit interesting to me. I just wrote a piece that was uh extremely um critical of the royals pitching development right now i wrote that with alec lewis it's up

there right now there's a fastball problem in the royals rotation but the only picture that i really see maybe emerging from this group of starters brad keller has an interesting cut fastball right now he has actually the cut fastball right now. He has actually the best fastball stuff of any pitcher in that rotation, which is kind of hard to believe because Carlos Hernandez throws 95, but Hernandez's pitches don't have that great shape.

So Brad Keller, I think, is an interesting, fringy starter. And then Daniel Lynch is the guy that I do think among their sort of including like jackson kowar among those sort of six guys seven guys that they that they've been starting i think daniel lynch has the best upside long term uh there's a thread from kyle bode about some of the problems that lynch has had which is that his fastball has a little bit of carry but he's been aiming low and away because that's what the organizational philosophy is.

And that's a bad place to aim your fastball with carry. Because if you aim low and away, it comes up to the heart of the zone. And if you look at the heat maps for where Daniel Lynch is throwing his fastball, he's throwing it hard at the heart of the zone. So I would be preaching a lot of high fastballs with Daniel Lynch. He has a really good slider. And if he makes any advancements on the shape of his fastball, I think he could break out. So I think Lynch is an interesting guy, especially given home park. I think it'd be a guy I would like to have on my bench in deeper leagues because in the home park,

you have some teams come back. Detroit comes through at home. I think that's a start you would love to have Daniel Lynch on your bench for that you would put him into your starting rotation for there's one that got away from me I had him on my roster for saves in some of the drafts that we did probably back more like in early March and prior but Tyler Wells I mean if I was looking back at the O swing leaderboards from last year set it to just a minimum of 50 innings and he had a 39.1% O swing percentage, which ranked eighth out of 338 pitchers. You can get guys to chase stuff out of the zone. You're doing something right. And I, I guess I should have been more open-minded to the possibility that someone with his minor league track record and that success, even in a relief role last year could actually be

useful to us as a starter instead of saying oh he's not getting saves and he's got to deal with the al east i'm out i should have said this could be some found money in terms of a streaming pitcher if everything carries over so i i think i played that a little bit wrong and i'm seeing he's rostered in a decent number of 15 team leagues already. Yeah, I like him a lot. I talked to him when he came to town this week, and he just said all the right things that lined up with what the stuff numbers say, which is his fastball has a lot of carry. He says, I just throw it with conviction,

and I've always had a lot of carry on my fastball. This guy could be low. He's a hoss. If you could see him, he's a large human being um and i think that that matters a little bit because you're talking about can he have this can he have the length can he have the stability will he start getting five innings he also was a starter for all you know he was a starter all the way through the twins organization um you know he was only kind of a reliever last year because of some injury issues and and the way that they were trying to bring him back so i do think he's kind of a reliever last year because of some injury issues and the way

that they were trying to bring him back. So I do think he's kind of a 3-4 guy. He's in that Rasmussen group right now where it's a little bit rough, but I think he's a little bit closer to Contreras et al. and Corbin Martin in terms of they could ramp up the innings uh whereas Rasmussen may be stuck at 80 to 90 pitches all season so uh that's something I like about Wells uh I was scrolling through here Glenn Otto is a name that I like the Rangers are already have already used an opener in Matt Bush and uh Spencer Howard did not perform that well. I could see Glenn Otto coming up. Glenn Otto has been doing well in the minor leagues in two starts. He has given up zero runs. His stuff plus last year was pretty decent and his command is pretty good. So Glenn Otto is

a guy that I could see coming up fairly soon, actually. And I like him better than AJ Alexey. Yeah, he had some pretty interesting numbers in the upper levels of the minor leagues. He was old for the level in 2021 when he started at AA. 103 Ks and 65 in the third innings against 14 walks. I don't care how old you are. That's still interesting, and they have a clear need. And plus, I'm always willing to roster someone who had

an ERA over 7 last year. Glenn Otto had a 926 ERA in his 6 starts with the Rangers, but it was a 28-8 KWB, only two homers allowed. It wasn't nearly as bad as it looks when you just look at those ratios. I like that Glenn Otto call, especially

if he also was popping in the model with the stuff. If we revive an old segment, prospect of the week, prospect of the week. Kyle Bradish is a guy that I just want to throw out there because he has pretty awesome strikeout rates in the minor leagues. And the command has come and gone right now. The command looks like it's doing decent. And as I talked to people around the Orioles yesterday or Tuesday,

there seemed to be a sense that maybe Bradish is the first arm up, not the one everyone's waiting for. So if Bradish comes up, you know, I also, as a guy that has not performed well in the past and people might be scared of and they might not be realizing how the rotation in baltimore is actually pretty good right now they are doing some really interesting things with their pitchers and they have improved keegan aiken greatly or keegan aiken actually uh did this maybe a little bit on his own during the lockout he added 11 inches of drop to his curve ball it's a lot of drop 11 inches so he thinks he has a usable curveball now he also added an inch

of drop to his slider he also added an inch of ride to his foreseam like basically anything you would want from somebody keegan aiken went and did it on all of his pitches uh interestingly enough he says it's mostly from long toss that's's his personal philosophy, which I love hearing from people that do things a little bit differently. Long toss is well accepted now, but there were times when people were not into it. Keegan Aitken is only pitching about two to three innings per appearance right now, but I think he'll take a role eventually. And if you look at, you know, who's starting games, the fact that John Means is hurt, Chris Ellis came up, but is he the long-term situation? Is he the long-term choice there? I think that we could see Aitken step into a role

here pretty quickly. You know, I'm not spencer watkins is that great and in the past uh bruce zimmerman has not been that awesome so there is a possibility there for two uh you know so i like keeping an eye on bradish and uh and maybe even rostering aiken as a possibility in the future i'll throw clark schmidt's name out there as prospect of the week. Oh my gosh, I can't believe I forgot him. I don't know if he solves our problem if we're looking for innings in the relative near future. I think there's more John Duran in how he's going to be used than Ruanzi Contreras. At least that's my fear right now. Am I right to look at Schmidt that way or should i consider him as someone that could sneak into the back of the rotation and work five innings at a time in the

not so distant future i mean he's got this uh really weird uses pattern i mean the last time he went out it was three and a third after that garrett cold stinker of uh you know one and two thirds or something to begin with. That was on Tuesday. In the spring, I think he was being used closer to a starter's role. And then in our spring stuff leaders, he was in the top ten for starters for stuff. So, yes, that number will change if you're asked to go five or six. And can Clark Schmidt, can he be asked to go five or six right now?

I think these are all really great questions. And then lastly, what role, whose role is he taking? Like what spot in the rotation is he taking? I don't see one that is obvious right now. You're playing the Tyler Anderson game there, where it's just like someone's going to break for a little while at some point, and he's possibly the next guy. Yeah, because I like Michael King a lot too,

but I think Michael King could stay in this weird, neither here nor there, kind of interesting role. He got a save the other day, right? He seems to be the guy that they keep in case of extra innings sometimes or a guy that might jump in if a starter had a bad start. But Schmidt seems maybe he's the guy who will. I don't think that King is. Well, I mean, when you look at their game logs,

it's kind of hard to distinguish, but I would just guess, given that Schmidt was the guy that they called for that three innings after Cole, that Schmidt is the sixth starter and King is the rover. I'm intrigued by Schmidt. I'm trying to find places where I could use him.

I guess if I have to choose between Clark Schmidt at a min bid versus someone like an Art Warren who I've got on my roster right now, at everybody in that regard, because it's been an uphill battle early and it's an uphill battle. It seems like each and every year as we try to do this, I want to talk about this new early sample hitting metric. You received an email. So I don't know if this is just a reader of you named Dorsey or if Dorsey also listens to the show. But the metric is pretty interesting. It takes hard hit percentage and barrel percentage and takes away called strikes and whiffs. And it's similar to something you had thrown out there. I think it was on Monday's episode of Rates and Barrels. The shows are blurring together for me if you haven't been able to tell. But nevertheless, curious what you think about combining those metrics and and using it in the way that that dorsey's using it no i like it i

like it and what i had suggested was just that my my list of of early sample metrics that i like the the the stats that i look at early in the season included barrel rate and then hard hit rate only because we haven't gotten to the 50 ball sample that you really want for barrel rate so you know hard hit rate tells you at least who's hitting the ball hard and then i'd like to look at things like oh swing and swinging strike and oh swing or a chase rate i'll do i'll do it eventually i'll call chase rate. Nobody needs to call it reach rate, I guess. And chase rate and swinging strike rate give me a sense of if they're changing their approach at the plate. Now what I like about this approach from

what was his name? Dorsey. Yeah, from Dorsey is that it combines the idea of reach rate and swing strike rate in that CSW stat. So I like that sort of combination in one stat. Makes it easier for somebody to maybe do the work themselves, you know, without having so many columns. What I like a little better about using reach chase rate and swing strike rate is that you're more directly looking at per pitch metrics. And you're giving yourself a bigger sample. CSW, call strikes, and whiffs is a per plate appearance metric. So there's gives and takes.

per plate appearance metric so you know there's gives and takes uh but uh hard to argue with some of the leaderboards he gave us some of the the looks at the leaderboards he gave us yeah so this was back tested also for last april versus the rest of the season just to kind of get a feel for how effective it was and i think the the summary was uh 28 of 36 bats who finished the season qualified after starting in the top 50 either stay within one standard deviation of their initial OPS or positively regressed. It's pretty good. Yeah, good way to spot a good bat. So we've got two separate lists that were sent in. Some of the top players whose top 50 ranks don't match their current OPS, which suggests positive regression, includes Jose Abreu, Christian Yelich, Dalton Varshow, Aaron Judge, Christian Walker, who you mentioned before we started recording, is showing up on all sorts of leaderboards right now. He'd be one of those players.

He's like definitely, every time you do a little query, it's like, oh, Christian Walker. every time you do a little query, it's like, oh, Christian Walker. Yeah, there's some shallow leagues where he might still be available, and there's plenty of leagues where you can trade where I don't think it would take all that much to get him from a team that has him. Joey Gallo, Joe Adele, Brian Hayes,

Luis Robert, and Kyle Tucker. So a good mix of players in there. I think some of the younger guys especially are the names that are probably the most interesting to me. And Joe Adele, we know the early strikeout issues, especially in that series against the Astros, really started to shape some of the perception of him at the beginning of the season. And I think after what you could call a disastrous start, it still looks pretty rough on paper. 20 Ks in 44 plate appearances appearances he is starting to push

things back in the right direction yeah i mean he did have a three strikeout game uh on the 18th so it's not like it's totally changed but you know going from like 3-2-2 in that opening series where he had uh uh where he had like seven strikeouts in three games, that'll, in a small sample, that'll change everything, right? Then he went back to sort of one strikeout a game before a little bit of a problem against Houston. But it's Houston again, right? It's Houston, yeah.

He's faced Houston six times. Maybe they have a good game plan against him. I would expect him to strike out less, but it also is an important decision you have to make when you're looking at this sort of stuff. If you want to look at barrels per ball in play, where Adele looks amazing, or barrels per plate appearance, where he doesn't look quite as amazing because he's striking out basically half the time.

In a smaller sample, I could see looking at balls in play because you're saying, hey, this 45% strikeout rate is not going to hold and then he's going to make more out of what his balls in play as he goes forward and he'll have more balls in play but I do just I like the quality of contact a lot

and maybe he has a 33% strikeout rate this year but still manages to hit 230 and if they give him full playing time, I'm saying more like a 25 homer bat. If you can handle the bad batting average, I think Joe Adele is a guy to roster. Kyle Tucker, I mentioned, is absolutely somebody I would buy low on if it's possible.

Somebody I would not worry about at all if you're roster if you're rostering him so i like that list uh the other side of the list i think is it's it's a little bit more problematic because when you have a long track record of success then you know i don't want to drop somebody just because they're on the wrong side of this list. I'll just give the list, and then I'm going to bring out some names that I'm not so worried about despite their being on this list.

These are the bottom of the list, the guys who are not good at barrels and called strikes and all those. Carlson, second worst, Dylan Carlson. Jose Altuve, Mookie Betts, Starling Marte, Joey Votto, Kevin Kwan, Marcus Simeon, Miles Straw, Randy Orozarena,

Kyle Bryant? Chris Bryant? I think they call him Stephen Kwan, too i said i said kevin kwan nice i'm on fire today uh bobby witt jr so i'm gonna pull out some names i'm not as worried about mookie betts i'm just not as worried about because of the long track record joey vato same deal like yes he's reaching a lot right now do you think that joey vato can't just turn on the switch and be like yeah i know what the strike zone is all right you know i'm not gonna reach so much right like he has years and years of not swinging at balls outside the zone and now he's gonna i did say reach a bunch of times um and uh i think guys like uh miles straw and uh steven kwan don't bother me as much

that they're on this because i'm not rostering them for power and they kind of have like near i mean in kwan's case elite bat to ball right so i just feel like yes they're not going to pop on any, like, great hitter list, but they do have value in fantasy. You know what I mean? Like, this, for example, this metric does not consider a stolen base. Right? So, like, Marte and Straw and even Orazorana, it's like, I'm going to hold these guys because they're going to steal some bases.

Maybe they're only going to hit 240 with 25 homers this year, or in Marte's case, 15 or something. But they're still going to steal bases, so I'm going to hold these guys. But there are some names that do worry me on this list, and I think I have those in common with you. I think it'll be interesting to see just where we go 10 days, two weeks from now, because that'll be a full month. Some of these guys will probably play their way off of the top end or the bottom end of the list. I wonder with these younger guys, with Jared Kalnick and Bobby Witt Jr. and Dylan Carlson, how quickly are people going to make a decision to drop them in more shallow formats? I don't think you're going to see people in 15-team leagues

cut them at any point because of what it took on draft day to get them, which eventually becomes more of a sunk cost fallacy. I'm not saying you should cut them now. If this goes on, if they were to get demoted to AAA, if any of those guys were to go to AAA, I think they'd be cuttable in some redraft mixed leagues as a result. I think Bobby Wood's kind of interesting in the NFPC idea. So you pay like a fifth-round pick.

He's got power and speed. He's playing. I would actually treat him like O'Neal Cruz right now where he'd be on my bench, near cutting if I really had to, but a guy I would like to keep as long as possible because there could be a breakout on the other side. At least he's

playing in the major leagues and there is so much upside. But I wouldn't want to be playing a guy that shows up on this list and is young like that. Right. Well, I just think it's given what we saw with a lot of young hitters last year, I don't think we should be surprised that the first 10 or 20 or 30 games even from Bobby Witt Jr. are an adjustment phase. And I just think it's a question of how patient are the Royals going to be? How patient should we be? How patient should we be? Did they see enough last year at AAA in half a season

to say he's not going back down there? He figured out AAA. He can't figure out his problems against big league pitching going down. This is my adamant, at a certain point, the best thing you can do for a player's development is just let them stay. The results overall might look bad all year,

but you might see some of that improvement like we saw from Kalanick in September last year. So the plate discipline get a little bit better as he was up. I think September ended up being his best overall month. So I don't want to look at 11 games this year from Kelnick and 10 games from Witt and say, okay, yeah, if you liked him, you were wrong.

Because you're not. It could still be an early slump. It's anybody we're talking about at this point. I'm more disappointed in Kelnick and Carlson. And that sounds like a parent or something. I don't know. I mean it that way. I just mean like... parent or something. I don't know. I mean it that way. But you mean like.

Because they've seen it before. Right. They shouldn't. This shouldn't. Especially Carlson. Carlson's had a little more experience even than Kelnick. But both of them. I'm advising my projections down for both.

And we already have like a bet on Kelnick. Which I'm starting to think I might win. What was our bet on Kelnick? It's like something like career OBP. Some like doddering old men. I told you. I told you. Yeah.

What did you say? Like a 330 career OBP or something? I took the over? Yeah. Yeah, time is still on my side here. But I'm revising Dylan Carlson's power expectation down. Absolutely. I think you should.

I think you have to. This is about moving fast. You have to move fast on the people. My expectation for Dylan Carlson's home runs this year is more like 18 now. I had hoped before the season, before I saw some of these numbers, that maybe he could take the progression to 25, 27. Now I think we'd be lucky if he had 20 frustrating uh to say the least but definitely an interesting metric good way to to look at players and i like the success rate that was

outlined last year so i'm curious to see if it holds up again here in 2022. So thanks a lot for sending in that email, Dorsey. Let's go to a follow-up question about situational max velocity for pitchers. We were talking about Jacob deGrom and maybe a need for him to change his approach in order to stay healthy, in order to be the best, most durable version of Jacob deGrom that maybe sitting not as close to his max velocity would be a good thing.

And apparently there was a graphic on screen during an Angels game when Shohei Otani made his most recent start that broke down his average fastball velocity by situation. Nobody on, runner on first, runner in scoring position, and there were noticeable ticks up in velocity as the situation became more dire for Otani. So I'm really curious if you think that this might be sort of the happy medium between sitting at your max all the time and kind of reaching back and using the extra velo when you should. That kind of seems like the appropriate risk-reward balance to me. I wonder if this is something you've noticed looking at situational velocities with other pitchers in the past. I think the name that comes to mind is Justin Verlander.

He was a guy that could sit 94, and then all of a sudden in the last inning you'd see 99. Another name that occurred to me and so i i just hurriedly opened his brooks baseball page is carlos rodon and the reason why uh it occurred to me was that in the past he's been a guy who was more like verlander where you would see a certain velo and then sometimes in the sixth you would see the 99 to to get something to get an important out and i've even talked to him where he's like yeah i'd like to keep you know a couple ticks um in in in my bag you know it's for the end of the game is is cosmo don not doing that anymore um i'm looking at his max speed, his max velo right now.

And his max velo right now this season is 99.4, according to Brooks. Last season, it was higher than that most of the time. He had a bunch of hundreds. He had three months with the hundreds. Basically, four months with the hundreds once you round. So that's true, but his average this year is higher than it was in every month last year except for one. So is Carlos Rodon treating this year like a contract year?

And does that have ramifications for his injuries? Like we're all excited and he looks healthy and it looks amazing, but is he maybe not doing the very best thing right now? I don't know if there's going to be a definitive answer to this question, but I just find it to be a more appropriate use of your ability. You know, you shouldn't throw 90 max effort pitches in a game based on what we know about your max velo and how dangerous it is to sit there but maybe throwing 15 pitches at max effort is is okay because you're you're you're not you're

not overdoing it you're not burning uh too far into the red on the meter, I guess, if you kind of thought of it that way, where you're just exhausting yourself every time out there. That does seem very problematic. So something I think we can hopefully dig into a bit more in the future. Did you notice that Tyler McGill's velocity was down? I did not. So is the working theory that he was

pushing too close to his max those first couple times out and then created some fatigue that maybe reduced the velo the third time out? Well, here's his average velo. In his first start, 95.9. In his second start, 97.5. And then

against the Giants on Tuesday, it was 94 97 so basically 95 uh last year he was 94 95 um so it was a little surprising to see him come out of the gate now i want to look at his max well his max changed his max was 99 in those two starts but his max last time i was 97 it's not it's not as easy to read this chart says the doctor because when he was pitching when his max was 99 uh his average was 97 so he's two miles off of it and his last one his max was 95 his average was 96.7

so yeah I think he's trying to pitch closer to his max a little bit I mean he's just trying to give it full effort but it is interesting that his maximum VLO dropped almost three ticks from one start to the next how much could weather have played a role in something like that? It did look a little cold.

Yeah. But still, that's a pretty big drop even with a weather change. But just one of the things that I know is on our minds a lot more, a lot more now than it probably was even just 10 years ago. I've got one more question to get to. It's an exercise in pickup decisions. I've got one more question to get to. It's an exercise in pickup decisions. Tom, on the know, if we were looking at Jeremy Pena versus Anthony Santander

as options on the wire, what would we be thinking about? What would our process be in making decisions between those two players, kind of broadening it out to just really any two hitters as we make these adjustments to our rosters?

You know, I like like I said, strikeout rate, swinging strike rate. I look at the projections. I look at the barrel rate. I will look at the max EV. I look at the reach rate. It is interesting because Pena is not showing great reach rate numbers, but he is barreling the ball well, has hit the ball really hard, and has the

power to show for it, but you know, I like that he's projected for 7-10 steals, but he hasn't taken off yet. And then when I look over at Santander, he's showing the best plate discipline of his career,

but he's not barreling the ball, and he's not projected for any steals. So I think given those two, I'd rather roster the guys projected for steals, even if his reach rate is a little aggressive right now. Chase rate, Eno. Chase rate. We're trying. We're trying to get there. I think the thing I'm looking at when I'm looking at two players

that are just available in a 10 or 12-team league like this, I'm looking at playing time. I'm looking at who's actually getting more played appearances. This is one of those cases where they both play every day, but because the Astros are better and turn their lineup over more often, you get more playing time from Peña, even if santander hits higher in the order most days so that's a factor for me as well and i think the other pena is

hitting lower in the lineup isn't he yeah for now i mean it's i don't know two days on the il we mentioned earlier so maybe he could move around yeah he could slide to the top i mean he's showing good obp right now although he doesn't have the walk rate and the minors to support at least not the high minors but i i mean just look at the counting stats differences 11 games for for jamie payne so far he's already scored seven runs driven in four you look at santander two runs scored one rbi like that lineup is not is not doing well right now i mean it's basic baseball card stats but those are the stats we we use and we care about and it kind of highlights just the the obvious difference in quality between the two lineups would you rather hit fifth for the orioles

or bottom third of the lineup for the astros i think that's a pretty easy question to answer especially now that camden yards isn't the the hitter friendly environment that we were accustomed to for the last 20 plus years and i come back to those steals man i know he hasn't shown us one yet but as he gets acclimated and especially if he stays lower in the lineup i think it's easier to steal some bases down there uh you know if you're not stealing right in front of jordan Alvarez, maybe you get the green light more often. There's some positive aspects for him to staying lower in the lineup too. I've wondered too for players that can run a little

if they tend to wait until a certain point in their big league career after debuting before they start running because you don't want to make mistakes. You don't want to do something that's going to... You don't want to piss off Dusty Baker who loves his veterans. Right. You feel like after 40 or 50 games, okay, yeah, I'm able to run now. I've stabilized my hold on the starting job at shortstop, and I'm in a situation where I want to take off. I'll start running. And maybe you get a guy who's projected for 10 steals to get to you six, because for the first third of the season,

he's not worried about stealing bases he's just worried about not making mistakes i think there could be something to that mike trout stole four bases in his rookie season 135 plate appearances now it's near the end of the season he might have been tired but and but it was he was a top uh he was a top prospect and uh he was supposed to have speed and he did not take off a lot until he in the next season was given the job and just sort of ran with it yeah i wonder i don't remember writing anything specifically about trout after that 2011 season but i bet you could find stuff out there that's like might pop 20 homers and steal a dozen bases and you can hold playing time

and going to come with a disappointing batting average if he doesn't bring his K rate down or things like that. Listen, I think that's also part of the discussion in Peña versus Santander, right? Like age and potential for breakout has to be considered, right? Like if their projections are going to be wrong, Peña could be wrong in the wrong direction. Breakout chance is higher for Peña

than it is for Santander. Yeah, I don't disagree with that. I mean, with Santander, we've got almost 1,200 career plate appearances, and he's been just a tick below at league average hitter for that. That's a lot to say. Okay, he's fine.

And as long as the playing time's there, he's still pretty useful, but Pena, Pena can exceed those projections because there's an age to level component, a development component of where he's at, that he could just take a big leap. And suddenly he's 15% better than a league average hitter, even though projections think he's probably not quite that good yet.

Look how good he's been in his first week in the big leagues you know like his first two weeks in the big leagues like imagine if he hasn't been super comfortable well yeah in in the face of of you know a more highly regarded player bobby witt jr struggling during that same time and there's a there's a big age difference here i i wonder how much that softens things being a 24 year old rookie versus being a 20- or 21-year-old rookie, how much of a difference does that make for a player? Yeah, it's true. But thanks a lot for that question, Tom.

Hopefully that sheds a little bit of light onto the types of things we're looking for as we make a decision like that, and hopefully that's applicable to other waiver decisions as the weekend approaches before we go i will let everyone know you can get a subscription to the athletic for a dollar a month for the first six months at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels if you don't have that subscription this is a good time to get in and do that on twitter you can find eno at eno saris you can find me at derek van riper as always you can drop us an email rates and barrels at the athletic or drop us a comment under this video on YouTube.

Be sure to smash that like button if you're watching us there, and subscribe to the channel. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Monday. Yeah, if you're going to subscribe, subscribe off of that Royals piece. It is the hot poop, as the kids say. Thanks for listening.

That's what the kids say.