Rates & Barrels - The search for second-half risers and rebound candidates

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss hitters and pitchers who have underperformed through the first half of 2021 with projections that point toward a bounce back during the second half.  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 Subscribe to The Athletic for just $3.99/mo: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, brought to you by Topps Project 70. Be sure to check out Topps Project 70 over at Topps.com. A lot of great cards live right now. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. It is Thursday, July 1st. I had an off day on Wednesday. I mean, it's just been a whirlwind. My July is going to be the craziest month of my life. I will explain why over the course of the month. I will keep people updated because I think finding out about it piecemeal is more fun than me just giving away the entire plot up front. Yeah, we'll have some fun with that. I was on a trip to meet a new niece. And she's beautiful. She's tiny.

Her name is Zelda. But it's not after the video game. Please. It's after Zelda Fitzgerald, which is a worthy namesake and a beautiful name. But also, for most of her life, she'll have to say, no, not the video game. Yeah, I mean, I can't wait until we get to the point later this year in which you and I will probably play an intoxicated game of Mario Kart, and I will probably stupidly wager naming rights to a future child, and likely I will lose. Here's my son, Wario. Yes. I hope you put a lot of thought

into whether I have to name a kid Wario or Waluigi or Yoshi. Please choose wisely if I happen to lose that game. The main focus on this episode is going to be second half performance surgers because as we flip the calendar to July, it's a good time to check in, see some players that could be in line for big second halves for one reason or another. There's plenty of ways to do this. You could find players who are just getting playing time for the first time and project them to have big second halves because of the opportunity. I thought the first way to go about it was to take the performance from the first half of the season,

look at rest of season projections for the second half, and find the players with the biggest difference. The guys who have lagged the furthest behind their projections to this point. So we're going to have a group of hitters we'll talk about. We'll have a group of pitchers we're going to talk about, and a few other topics that we'll get to along the way that are somewhat related. Let's start with the hitters, though. You know, with that methodology, it pulled an interesting list. Jared Kelnick was among the first players that it popped up,

and I think we're going to see Kelnick likely in the second half of the season after the All-Star break. He is scheduled to play in the Futures game on the Sunday leading into the break. At that point, it would not be surprising at all if he came back and got that second opportunity with the Mariners. Plenty of reasons to believe it'll go a lot better the second time around. The numbers of AAA have been very good over the last few weeks. It seems like he's really cut down on the swing and miss issues that were plaguing him during his time in Seattle. I think of the players we're going to talk about, he's the most difficult one to really buy into right away, if only because there's less of a track record to look back on, right?

It's just the very nature of dealing with players trying to break through for the first or the second time. nature of dealing with players trying to break through for the first or the second time. Well, not to blow up your rundown, but the next name on the list, Keston Hura, I think belongs in a bucket with him. You have more of a track record with Keston Hura, but you have more of an established hole, established flaw in the game. So it's kind of interesting they both showed up on this list. I also think their projections are fairly similar. Like if you just sort of crossed your eyes a little bit, you get like a 230 batting average with power and speed and maybe some questions about playing time and a lot of questions about contact rate. Your decision there, if both of these guys are out there, is do I take a guy who's soared to great heights in the major leagues, but has what seems like a more established hole?

Or do I take the guy who has less of a track record and actually count that as a positive in this case, right? Because if you're comparing these two guys, having less of a track record might be a positive because the track record Hira's put up is kind of like a 33% strikeout rate and some real issues when it comes to contactability. Right. I think it's easy to see with Hira, if he has a terrible July, the Brewers are going to make a trade and probably put him into more of a part-time role. Demotion three could be on the horizon for him before the end of the season if it doesn't go well. And with Kelly,

we just don't know when that call up is. So if you're talking about like, yeah, when he comes up, he's probably a little bit safer for playing time because the Mariners are going to be like, Hey, we're just,

we were calling him up and we're going to give him the rest of the season. We got to see what we got here now, you know? Um, but, uh, with your, uh,

there is a different risk where he's like, he's on the team now. So I'm getting the playing time now. But, you know, Brewers 1B is probably on everybody's, like, list of places contenders could improve. And fairly easily, perhaps, you know, traditionally, first basemen have been easy to acquire. It's not like Hura is a super mashing second baseman that you're trying to replace. That's a little bit harder. Yeah. And I think that could lead him to a small side platoon role or, you know,

two or three starts a week max, if again, July goes poorly and the Brewers make that sort of upgrade. But I think part of being interested in either one of those players, especially in redraft leagues, obviously the keeper and dynasty appeal with Kelnick hasn't changed all that much, even with the sluggish start to his big league career. I think if you're looking at the redraft purposes, I'd rather be in the situation. If I had my choice, if the price to trade for them was equal, if we're in a pretty shallow league where they're both available, like a 10 team mixed league, I'm more likely to go after Hira because he's already up. You don't have to wait those couple of weeks that you're going to have to wait for Kelnick. I'd rather have the playing time in hand now than

have to wait for it later. Both players fit perfectly as guys that you'd want to get. If you're lagging offensively and trying to make up ground in the second half, we talked about this a lot with Ariel Cohen on the Athletic Fantasy Baseball podcast earlier this week. You have to start taking more chances if your team is underperforming. You need high variance players. With Hira, you've seen the floor and you've probably seen the ceiling too on a per game basis. Everything going right for him is what we saw in 2019. Everything going wrong for him is what we just saw here in the first part of 2021. So where he splits the difference, whether it's right down the middle, closer to 2019, closer to 2021, that, of course, is the game itself. But the possibility of him getting back closer to 2019, that's why you're interested if you're trying to chase. That's why you go after him, because he can be a potential five-category player

if he gets the batting average anywhere near 300. It's far-fetched based on the contact rate, not getting any better, but it's at least possible. He's at least proven that those are skills that he has when everything's going right. Yeah. And it's also really interesting to think about like the projections favor

here. You know, the OBP is a little bit better. The bat, the, the batting average is a little bit better. And the, I think it has to do with some of the stat cast stuff under the hood being better. The max EV is better.

The barrel rate's been better. And it's all in that strikeout rate. Is it 37% or is it 33% or 31%? But I almost think, and this is a little bit weird for me to say, I almost think the projections were irrelevant right now on those two. You could really just go with feel on this one, I think, because we're talking about this high variance that you're talking about. So you're talking about somebody's going to get a 75th percentile outcome and somebody's going to get a 25th percentile outcome. And my computer is going to go to sleep once I plug it in. So I got to figure out something real quick. Hold on.

While Eno tries to plug in his computer, I will filibuster and talk about a couple other players that I think are interesting. Luke Voigt made the list and injuries are the main reason, I think, why he's underperformed. I think we saw this a few seasons ago, pre-abdominal injury, middle of the order masher. After suffering the abdominal injury, very replaceable, fringy sort of fantasy contributor. So I think Voight kind of fits into the same bucket as a guy like Jorge Soler. In the case of Voight and Soler, both of those guys, I think, have shown incredible power skills when healthy. That's the key, when healthy. So how much are you willing to buy into guys that have had pretty significant nagging injuries over the last couple of seasons in Voight and Soler,

seeing that they're also among the players that really pop with this method? Yeah. In this case, I just think that you have to also think about the park. No matter what's happening, Voight's going to get a boost from that park and that lineup, honestly. And also, I think he's a better hitter just from watching him.

I think Soler has trouble with spin, and you can throw him breaking balls in the zone. And that's when he gets into real long funks. Whereas I think Voight just has a big swing. I think he's kind of the modern guy where he's going to strike out a little bit because

he takes hacks. So I pretty comfortably want Voight. I'm not looking at the projections right now. What do you think? I mean, are you looking at the projections for these two? Voight is projected more favorably, but they're a lot closer than I would have expected.

Like you get seven more points in average, three more points of OBP. Power is very comparable. I mean, the WOBA is the same. Like that's the surprising part the team context though is where you get separation even though the yankees have underperformed as a team that offense even underperforming to me is comparable it's comparable to like a top 10 offense when it's starting to work again the royals are probably more like

a top end of the bottom 10 sort of offense that separation could matter. It could be 15 ish runs in RBIs each from now until the rest of the season with everything else being equal with the possibility to be more. Yeah. I was just on Starkville, um, and, uh, was talking with them and we were talking about like sort of biggest

surprises and disappointments. And, you know, the Yankees were the biggest disappointment for me, uh, even though, you know, the twins have cratered and there's some other surprises in the bad way. But I had to say that, like, under the hood, this Yankees team doesn't look as, like, I know there's people out there, the New York market is just rough. And I just know there's people out there

that are like, this is the worst team ever. Cashman should be ashamed, all this time. I know Cashman's out there saying he is ashamed. And I think that's just sort of playing along and like, in like trying to goose the team a little bit, but they're third in the league in barrel rate in that park. They had the best bullpen by Fangraphs war. I think even if you look by ERA, they're like top three,

their rotation is top five by Fangraphs war. So is it really a bad team? I could see this team catching fire. And then maybe people would be like, ooh, Cashman really lit a fire under their butts. And it's like, no, it's just like some regression happened. Some guys got healthy. I don't know. The Bronx narratives are always a little bit ridiculous.

I think it's more warranted to panic about them on July 1st than it was on April 25th, right? I think that's when it started. I think the main underperformers for me are Glaber Torres and DJ LeMayhew. I mean, those guys both have lost a ton of power compared to what we've seen in previous seasons. Glaber's been missing it for a calendar year now. LeMayhew, it's just a drop off so far through the first half of this season. And I think a lot rides on getting a better second half from Jamison Tyone, who I think as of maybe like six weeks ago, looked like a possible buy low, but

it seemed like you weren't as firm on him upon further inspection as you might've been initially. We'll get into some pictures a little bit later on. I think all of this is to say, with the Yankees in particular, are there some biases, let's call it. I don't even know if a projection system can have a bias necessarily. I feel like that's a thing a person has to have. Are there elements of a projection system that steer it to lean more heavily on the Yankees' track record than it should. If projections favor older players because of their longer track record, and this is a generally older team, wouldn't projections therefore be higher than they should be

or slower to respond to actual flaws with this roster? And then you would see that most likely in the runs and RBI projection, I guess. Right. Because that's the sort of team context situation. And, and, and definitely the,

you know, runs and RBI together combined Voight has about five to 10 more than Solaire. Yeah. In the projections. Yeah. I mean, I think it is also interesting that Pat X is the most favorable projection

on Solaire and the least favorable projection on Luke Boyd. If you go there, you might pick Solaire. Yeah, I wonder if that's got a lot to do with just the type of hard contact that Solaire tends to make. He's a barrel freak, and that carries a lot of weight in that projection system. 18.5% in the shortened season, 16% back in 2019, and even still 11.2% this year.

Max exit velocity hasn't really tailed off from where it was. I do think both Voight and Solaire are legitimate bounce-back candidates. I think Voight's going to be more expensive in a trade. He's less likely to be dropped in a 12-team league. I picked up Soler in my online championship a couple weeks ago because someone actually did cut him loose. And I understand injuries sometimes pile up and a player like that does have to get dropped, but I think he's still good enough to be rostered in the league where, you know, 60 outfield eligible players have to be started at any given time and another 20 plus or at least rostered in those leagues. Well, one thing that might make my decision or help me make my decision is my personal bias towards contact. So I think I would pick Jared Kelnick and I would pick Voight.

And like looking at this year, you're like, well, they're, they both struck out a ton, but Boyd's projected to make more contact and has made more contact in the past. And I just, it's just more, it's more balls in play. It's more chances for singles, RBI runs, you know, getting on base. You know, even, I think it even affects your ability to hit homers in a weird way. I mean, it's just more chances, right?

Yeah. So I think I'm on team Kelnick and Voight here. All right. Well, I'm on Hira and Soler because of the relatively lower cost potentially on both. But also, I think they make more sense if you're chasing more standings points. I think if you're a little closer to contending, the higher floor projection guys can make sense. You're trying to protect points. The higher floor guys make a little more sense.

Where do you put guys like Eugenio Suarez and Anthony Rendon? Because they've underperformed in a pretty big way, and projections still really believe in them based on their respective track records. I think of the players in this group, they're easily the players I'm the most confident in because I trust their skills the most. And with Suarez, maybe the defensive change is still wreaking some havoc on him. The way he thinks about hitting is just not quite

there because he's thinking so much about the mistakes he's making defensively. Yeah, I just can't get over the fact that for Rendon, you know, we're writing his epitaph and he's still, you know, walking at double digits, making great contact. We've now gotten almost the exact same sample as we got last year. And last year he was 54% better than league average. And this year is 10% worse. Like just mash them together, like he's probably not going to continue uh being as crappy as he's been um and the what was the other one again it was uh suarez and suarez the strikeout rate thing has been going on for a long time i don't yeah i don't see that going away so i think suarez relevant to your other sort of comparison for these guys, Suarez is probably easier to acquire.

Yeah, the more high-variance player of the bunch. His defense isn't grading out as poorly as I would have thought. I have visions of what was happening back in April just stuck in my mind where it was like the multiple-error games were the norm for him. But even just compared to the defensive value he provided or failed to provide during the shortened season, it's not that different. So I don't know.

I don't know if that can really be an excuse. I think you're right to point out the jump in K rate. That goes all the way back to 2019 when he popped the 49 home runs. That might just be who Suarez is as a hitter now. He's at the higher end of the scale, K-rate wise, and this type of hitter doesn't age particularly well. If you're striking out 30%

of the time before your age 30 season, it can be a bit of a cliff. I will say that since about halfway through the first half of the season, so I guess the second quarter of the season, his hard hit rates are up.

His strikeout rate is down. I mean, he was at 42% at some point, strikeout rate this year. And I think since that crest, he's been settling in around 28%. So when I say the strikeout rate is here to stay it might just be a sort of normal 28 30 that a lot of sluggers hold right um and his hard rate rate is up and there's definitely been some change in his reach rate over the course of the season so maybe it is tied into you know the position change and just being you know Maybe he just didn't have as much time to prepare as a hitter because he's preparing

so much as a defender and wanted to prove he could be a shortstop. I just wrote a piece about how the Giants are getting the most out of Posey, Crawford, and Mongoria, but the way that they're doing that is by coaching,

having the biggest coaching staff in the league, but also preparing them better than ever. And so if you're Suarez and you're like all of a sudden, like now I got to think about these different shifts I haven't done. I got to take more ground balls. Maybe you're like, I know all these pitchers I can I can hit my way. You know, I'll just rely on natural ability to hit. He's playing more third now, right? I saw him, Kyle Farmer, out there the other day. Let me look at his game log. What's he been doing? When's the last time you played short? Last time he played short was, oh, about that demarcation that I have. It's kind of funny if you actually sort of

like mark the moment where he started playing third base more often his hard hit rate goes up his reach rate goes down uh you know they're they're not they're not automatons right like no they're humans pretty stressful i mean he he signed up for it i'm sure it was good for it would be good for his career to like mash as a shortstop right before uh you know in the i think his contract is near up so you know that would have been good for his career to to go out on there uh no he's with the team forever shut up you know but anyway it's good like he's like yeah i'm a shortstop yeah baby like let's do it like you guys need a shortstop let's do it and then he, whoa, this is hard. I'm not hitting well. They put him back at third.

He's like, yeah, yeah. Let me get back into my routine. Checking out the opposing pitchers and getting ready for the game the way I used to. They really backed off that about six weeks ago. Middle of May, the last time he played short or started it short was May 29th. Look at the Fangraphs graphs.

They have this really cool thing called graphs where you can kind of go in there and you can go by game and see like a rolling graph of different stuff. I just threw in hard hit, reach rate, and strikeout rate and pretty clear demarcation about six weeks ago. We had a question come in about a player

that doesn't have much of a track record. I think this is the other type of player I was describing at the beginning. It's like, well, it could be someone like this. The question comes from Baxter. He's just curious if we have any thoughts on Harold Ramirez for the rest of the season because he's showing some really intriguing improvements just in the underlying stat cast metrics. Average exit velocity is up over 4 miles per hour compared to where it was two years ago.

Max EV looks good around 114. K rate's not bad. And the sprint speed is also up above the 90th percentile. Any thoughts on Harold Ramirez? Yeah, I've rostered and dropped him about a million times in demo rejects. I don't know how many times. If Abraham Toro takes off, I'll be mad about that too because i dropped him i picked him up and dropped him harold ramirez is an older abraham toro where he's just he's

solid right like he makes enough contact he doesn't walk a lot but um you know he showed enough power in my legs where like if he has above average power and that contact rate and like pretty good defense like he's going to be be a player and the minds gave him a chance. And, you know, he was not, he was basically replacement for two thirds of a season, but he also wasn't showing these stack cast numbers.

Then I saw in Alex Chamberlain's dynamic hard hit rate that Harold Ramirez actually shows as a very good player, a max TV of one 15, one 14.5 is player. A max TV of 115, one 14.5 is great. A bail rate of 8.9% is pretty good. I mean, I think if hell Ramirez is sitting out there on your, on your wire,

like pick them up, pick them up. Like he said, I think that he's what the, the, the, the Cleveland team's been looking for. Right.

Like he's like a guy who can play center field and will hit.280 with, like, 15 homer pop and, like, five steals. I think that could even work in 12-teamers if you're just looking to, you know, accrue more counting stats on days, like, if it's a head-to-head, you just need an extra outfielder,

that sort of deal. Like, I think he's a pretty good addition to any team. And in terms of trading for him, it's not going to cost anything. I doubt his owner believes in him. Agreed on Ramirez. More good than bad. It's kind of like paper over situation

where you're just like, I'm looking to paper over some flaws here. I've lost some people. I need a fresh alive body. I think that he's a little bit better than that. You need those counting stats, and you actually get a glimmer of upside with it.

It just seems like he's a different player than he was when we last saw him in Miami, and projections aren't necessarily caught up to that yet. I think that's where the appeal comes in for me with Harold Ramirez. And as Baxter pointed out, Josh Naylor's out for a long time, might be out for the rest of the season. That solidifies playing time for Ramirez.

Do we have a diagnosis on you? It didn't look good. It didn't look good at all. I saw at least August they were trying to figure out if he needed surgery, so that situation is a bleak one, which is too bad because I think Naylor still has one more level that he's going to reach. He's on that list. He's on the list of DVRs, guys. I don't know what it is exactly. He's on that list. He's on the list of DVRs guys. I don't know what it is exactly. It's the hit tool, mostly.

Yeah, and the chatter in San Francisco around Belt just to bring that injury up, it didn't look as bad. I mean, he just sort of tweaked it when he was running, but that was the one that he had surgery on. I know that they're saying that he's expected to uh avoid surgery but

there was definitely a lot of uh certainty off record that um he would have that surgery so i'm trying to hold on to belt but i might i might drop him in some places just because that's like microfracture plus uh plus a tweak yeah could just even if they say avoid surgery it's like oh yeah but he just needs him he needs like three four five weeks and you're like why did i hold on the bone belt for like five weeks i needed i needed somebody else in that spot yeah yeah especially in the non-il situations unfortunate too because i think he was among those giants hitters definitely showing us another level here in 2021. The process stats were amazing.

I mean, for all those guys, they all have the best reach and barrel rates of their careers. With Longo coming back, switch Bell for Longo if you need a CI. Yeah. Is Longo coming back before the All-Star break? Longo is coming back imminently. Quicker than Bell. Yeah. It's still hard to stash guys like that,

especially in 12-team leagues, though. Hopefully, it gives you an idea of a few hitters that might be able to help you out in the second half. The dogs came with me. They came with you. That's amazing. They go on the road. How do they do in the car?

They used to have trouble with it, but now they just sleep the whole way in the car. Nice. That's good. It's good to have dogs that do well in the car. Great to have dogs that love to bark. They love to be a part of the show. They are a part of the show. They're the fourth and fifth hosts

of Rates and Barrels. I hope they know they're valued as part of the show. Let's move over to pitching as we look for a few arms to possibly take a step forward in the second half. Same methodology was used here, just looking at the FIP from the first half compared to projected FIP in the second. Basically just looking for guys that have underperformed expectations who should get back closer to what we expected.

And this turned up a pretty interesting group of players as well. to what we expected. And this turned up a pretty interesting group of players as well. Kenta Maeda, who I think was already a buy low about six weeks ago, just on principle, draft day cost compared to what he'd done to that point. Now that we've seen more of his season, what is your interest level in trading for Maeda? Do you buy into Maeda sort of getting back to normal, maybe being a high threes E into Maeda sort of getting back to normal, maybe being a high

threes ERA, 120 sort of whip pitcher with a strikeout per inning going forward? Kenta Maeda was the biggest loser in Stuff Plus when we did the update. And so I dinged

him pretty badly. But if you look at the Stuff Plus over time, the last three starts have been, I would say, over 100 stuff plus. So he cratered at 85 stuff plus in early April at some point. So I would say, looking at this, it's actually a little bit similar to the Luis Castillo graph where it's just gotten better over time uh Castillo is a better buy low if that's still possible for you because I believe stuff plus is you can move ahead of uh some of these uh projection systems and um so I'm going to say I may have penalized him too much because I was just so mad about the update being like, Oh, I've been saying Kenta Maeda is a buy low because he's had 107 stuff plus this whole time.

And now he has like a 92. But he's back. He's up to 100. You know, and I think that league average stuff, good command. And then the thing that stuff plus does not capture which is a large array of pitches so you're talking about a guy now that has above slightly above average stuff a lot of pitches decent command does not pitch in a hitter's park may have some patsies on the sketch that was mean may have some patsies on the schedule. That was mean. May have some good spots on the schedule in the second half.

Yeah, I think the high three ZRA I threw out there could be a little too optimistic based on what the projections say, but I do think he's on that list of pitchers you should consider trading for. More good than bad in that profile. It's certainly a good sign that the stuff number is trending back in the

right direction. Breaking news. Love it. What do we got? Jacob deGrom has given up three runs today in the first inning. Uh-oh. Here comes the panic. Yeah, so his ERA is over one.

Sell. Sell. but uh uh yeah so his era is over one sell sell get out now uh i looking at forward at the rest of this list and we'll get to the names uh maeda is my second favorite buy on this list i'm gonna go on a limb and say that the next person i put on the list patrick corbin is not your favorite person on this list. I think we've had a few conversations. As a person, I don't know. He seems like a nice guy. I don't have any issues with Patrick Corbin as a person. As a pitcher, though. We have been concerned for a while that being so dependent on that slider and often being a two-pitch guy makes him very predictable.

That's the problem, and that just hasn't changed. Relative to Maeda, I think you're talking about trading a lot less to get him. I think there are some shallow mixed leagues where Corbin has been on the wire for a little while. What's your assessment based on some of the recent trends with stuff in command for Corbin? in command for Corbin. I mean, he's trying to throw in some other wrinkles, throwing the sinker more, throwing a cutter. He's even throwing a changeup.

Three of his last four starts have been some of the most he's used to changeup. However, let me list the stuff pluses. I'll even be charitable to him and lift the stuff pluses within pitch type. So this is how good these pitches rank against other pitches of their pitch type. The cutter, 97. That's the best one. Sinker, 86 stuff plus within sinkers. Changeup, 68 stuff plus within changeups. And the curveball, 50.

And 50. And I think it's pretty obvious you could just go to brooks or something there's just the the curveball is his slider but slower like there's no differentiation differentiation and that's one of the things that stuff plus um you know in this iteration i think has actually started to capture is that these things have to mix together and it does matter if your curveball like robbie ray stopped throwing that curveball pretty much right like he because it was just a slider but slower you know so it's like why am i throwing that pitch let me throw the superior one there's not going to be really that much of a differentiation you know

so um yeah i'm not really buying corbin dude the dogs aren't either the dogs are definitely out on corbin he's uh he's like been on a bunch of my nfbc waivers and i've just been like there are other things i'd rather do i'd rather almost chase like the hot new flavor of the month you know young pitcher wise you know, young pitcher-wise. You know, the National Stadium is not pitcher-friendly. No, no. Going back to your high drives piece, geez, two years ago now, 2019,

it's one of those environments that you think is like neutral or pitcher-friendly that plays more hitter-friendly. I think that works against Corbin as well. I think if he recovers you have a pretty interesting mix of projections on him overall it's probably a mid four zra the rest of the way as opposed to the high threes that we've grown accustomed to or the low threes even that we saw in 18 and 19 it's kind of amazing shows up on this list you're like oh yeah so he must have good projections, right? Like it must be, but you're like,

so he's been so bad that like going from a five 40 to a four 40 gets him on this list. Yeah. Like, uh, well, I don't really want to be out here buying four 40 ERA pitchers. No,

I think he actually makes the most sense in like an NL only league where you're just trying to get bulk a lot of times. And your ERA has been like there's ballast on your ERA, right? Whatever your ERA is now, maybe you kind of did a skimpier thing and a more reliever thing, and your ERA is pristine. And then you get 440 from him going forward, but you get some wins. I do think the Nationals team is on the rise a little bit, and their offense has been clicking a little bit more.

So I think Soto is going to get it together, and Bell is in the midst of getting together. So, yeah, he'll win some games giving up three or four and five innings or whatever. It won't be amazing, but in an NL only, you'd be like, I banked a win, I banked 6Ks. My ERA was half determined anyway.

I got a lot of notifications this week when Victor Robles hit his first home run of the season. It's a damning with faint praise situation. You know what? Congratulations on your first home run. Some people know when to put on the life vest and get out of the boat.

And some people are like me and they just ride the boat to the bottom of the floor. I've got one share in an Anu league. It's like a points league. It's like the very worst place to have him. But he's just like my last outfielder that I'm like, i've got nobody else i can play today victor robles go on down it's great i feel so good there's like almost no reason to cut a one dollar player because you don't get any money back so that's that's how i found use for robles oh it's one of my greatest humiliations of the 2021 season to

this point alan webster ah we don't have to we have to do that today the sun is out yeah let's let's let's be optimistic here there are more good things happening than bad let's just focus on the good for a little while longer here uh Blake Snell popped on this list because, well, he's been pretty bad so far. And projections point to a guy that shouldn't be nearly as bad going forward. And the spread here is interesting because with the method I used, again, looking at FIP so far versus projected FIP, we're talking about a guy that should be a run and a half better going forward than he has been to this point. That's a pretty significant difference, right? A 529 actual ERA.

Current FIP is 426. Projected FIP going forward from the bat is 375. And that's the worst Blake Snell projection out there right now. Like I had the worst Blake Snell projection that I used for this. And he still came up as one of the most likely pitchers to be better in the second half, looking at it this way.

I don't know why that damn changeup keeps coming back. God, just throw it away. It seemed like he had ditched it, too. For a second. And that was his best start by stuff plus of the season was the one where he didn't throw any. And in that game, he struck out 10 Mets with one walk. And, like, in seven innings, he's got to win. You're like, yeah, dude.

So maybe when he came back against the Mets again, he's like, well, I got to throw the changeup because, you know, I got to put a wrinkle in it. Well, that game didn't work out so well. At Colorado, I think he can throw out. And then against the Dodgers, pretty good start, 622. So I'm all in, man. I'm buying.

This is my favorite one on the list. This is the one I want. He still has the stuff. I'm not – I don't think he's – I can look at this real quick. I don't think he's on my spin rate losers thing. So I don't know. I'm just, I say ditch the changeup, but even without that piece, I think he's a good pitcher.

Mostly I'm in on Snell. I think he's easily the most expensive to trade for of all the pitchers we're going to talk about in this cluster. And the weirdest thing to me is just the walk rate spiking this wildly 13.2 i mean that's the highest it's ever been that's even higher than it was back when he debuted with the rays in 2016 he's kept the strikeouts home run rate it's up a little over some of his better seasons but it's actually better than it was last year so i definitely see enough reasons to go after him. I think projections-wise, he's got the best ratios of any of these three pitchers going forward.

You know, one of the most simplest ways to find good guys to buy are strikeout minus walks, you know? And he's okay there. And actually good there. And his command plus is 96. I think it is all the changeup. He can't command the changeup.

So he throws a bunch of changeups. He gets a bunch of walks. It's like, what did you think you were going to get it's not a great pitch and you can't command it so let's move on you know not i mean by like snow i mean like like let's just move on from the change up uh so his strikeouts minus walks even with that high of a thing he's got uh like 17 percent 19 what is it Get it wrong. 16.6, 17%. So, you know, that's not amazing, but the projections say the walks will go down. We have a reason to believe the walks will go down,

and it is above average. Plus, you can bank all those strikeouts. That's a useful thing in and of itself. Let's move on from Blake Snell because the next guy is the best puzzle of all. So Patrick Sandoval has a.389 ERA in 44 innings this season. He's pitching pretty well lately. A.473 FIP, so again...

Oh, that's interesting. But then the projected FIP is closer to the ERA that he's given us so far. The projections are kind of closer to league average ratios. Low fours ERA, low 130s whip, strikeout per inning. That plays in a lot of formats. And job security keeps ticking up,

especially with Dylan Bundy to the bullpen. I mean, yikes. A lot going wrong for the Angels this year, of course. Bar City. Oh, geez, he did. I think Bundy may have a chance to come back in that rotation but uh no it's i love this this is kind of funny um you're like 389 era so uh good you know there's like first level analysis right good 473 whip. FIP. Bad. Projected 411 whip.

FIP. Good. You can kind of hit all the ways, all the analysis branches on the tree on the way down. It's scripted debate. It's like a factor fluke argument

just writing itself right there on the page.. It's scripted debate. It's like a factor fluke argument just writing itself right there on the page. Yeah, and even within the confines of Stuff Plus, you can kind of continue down this arena where like, overall Stuff Plus, 94. Not so good. Well,

slider and changeup, both above average. That's pretty good. You know, fastball only you know 91 uh stuff plus not so good but then you look and you're like hey there's four average pitches here and the sinker's at 82 so it's like there's five you know close to average pitches here that's pretty good you know and then you go over uh to to command Plus, and I think you get with him at least a sort of league average, 94 Command Plus. Mediocre.

But it all adds up to like matchups play to me, man. I don't believe in him so much. There's so much up and down here that I just don't believe in him as like a rock solid acquisition. I'm in. I think as a cheap pitcher goes, he ticks enough boxes where I want to take that chance. I want pitchers in the AL West.

The two above average secondaries, the passable fastball. Yeah, it's good enough because the arsenal is deep enough where he can get away from that fastball a bit more. Hopefully the Angels have him make that adjustment. Swinging strike rate is really good too. I like the direction that's headed. So I think even if the ratios don't come out the way you want, the Ks keep coming. And at least if you have that floor, that's worth taking a chance on.

If you're looking for relatively inexpensive pitching to go after via trade or in a shallow league. Possibly still scoop up off the wire. The last guy I want to talk about in this group, Tarek Skubal. He has been up and down, and it was mostly down early and up lately. It's been a fairly, I don't know, predictable sort of ride. A young guy still trying to figure it out, putting some pieces together, a boatload of strikeouts so far. FIP doesn't believe here

at this point. A 5 FIP on a 4.06 ERA thus far, but a 4.55 FIP going forward, plenty of Ks, probably higher risk and higher potential reward than someone like Sandoval though. And the thing I cannot separate from the Tarek Skubal expectations, you know, is the minor league track record. I have a very difficult time seeing a guy with that minor league track record putting up below average ratios in the long run. But there have been some tweaks to the arsenal so far. So he's kind of been a different pitcher in the last probably seven or eight starts than he was throughout the first month of the season is the current version of Tarek Skubal worth going after right now yeah let's see here I mean I can the easy answer from stuff plus is uh not really uh just a lot like a fair amount of pitches but like the fore four-seam fastball is below average. The knuckle curve is below average.

You know, the sinker is about average and the slider is about average. The changeup is just rates really poorly, 81 for a pitch that he throws more than any other secondary pitch. You know, and if you want to say split-finger changeup, yeah, he's been kind of toggling that switch. The split finger does even worse. So, um, you know, his stuff plus has been mediocre and with a down arrow, like his last appearance, he had an 87 stuff plus. that's supposedly with these changes that you're making, you know, like in terms of what he's done over time. I mean, Brooks baseball definitely has him.

It's not working, so it doesn't matter. But, yeah, what did he do? He toggled the split finger and the changeup, right? What else did he do? .net,.net,.net. I got it on.net. It's not oh it's oh i picked a hitter hitter terese coble come on why would i want the hitter tricks come on dude does that make any sense oh good lord um all right so uh usage and outcomes here we go he has turfed the splitter and gone to the regular change,

which is a good change by Stuff Plus. However, just looking overall at his movement types, the reason why Stuff Plus doesn't like him is that there's not that much difference, differentiation between his fastballs. The fastball doesn't have good ride. The sinker doesn't have good sink. Uh, the slider is about average in all respects. The curve is slightly above average in terms of depth. Um, and, uh, the changeup does not have much good movement differentiation, but it looks like, you know, it has a 12 mile an hour gap. So, you know, maybe there's something there, maybe stuff plus is missing something on this guy we've done updates where a guy popped right um so maybe stuff plus is missing so you could go back to

your kind of strikeouts minus walks and you get an 18 which is above average and you've got a nice home park. It all adds up to a guy that I might pick up for the Tigers. I would like to be able to use him in a way where I can use him in Detroit, just to give myself a soft landing. Because look at those home runs. Last 100 innings, they're still talking about two home runs per night. I think the problem with Scooble also could be second half workload management. I mean, you can deal with that problem when you get there, but I do wonder if he's the kind of guy that they back off of maybe in the second half of August or at least in the early

part of September. But just going back to the beginning of May, and I'm curious if there's a clear point on the charts you're looking at where he made that switch with the split and the change. Going back to May 7th, the numbers are excellent. I mean, that's an arbitrary cutoff point, but that's 10 starts. And it's a 76 to 22 strikeout to walk, eight home runs allowed, so 1.3 homers per nine. So not the absolutely disastrous start that he had where he was yielding all of the hard contact all the time. After the Yankees start? Yes. May 7th

would have been... Minnesota was that matchup, the first one that would be included. That's pretty interesting. That is where he turfed the splitter for the changeup, it just says. It's like a switch flipped when he did that in terms of the results. Started throwing more sliders. I just wish that Stuff Plus liked that.

I mean, it likes a fair amount, right? I guess. I mean, he went from throwing a 73 split finger to an 82 changeup. But that doesn't seem like enough to power all this. He also started throwing the sinker,

which he hadn't been doing before. And the sinker grades out as a positive over his four seam so maybe this is like the undercover thing he did you know everyone's talking about the change up but it's actually maybe things playing better off the sinker because he definitely was not throwing a cigarette all before that day and now he's throwing it about you know ten to twenty percent of the time which is taking away from the foreseam. Was it just an arsenal of spare parts or things that didn't really work off of each other initially, and he found the right tweaks to at least make things a little bit more cohesive?

I mean, he didn't throw the sinker at all last year. And I feel like, I don't know the whole backstory, but there was a movement in the game to kind of get everybody to the four-seamers, right? And, you know, the quality of the four-seam almost be damned, right? It's like, this is a four-seam league. You better throw it, right? We want those whiffs to the top of the zone. What's interesting is you can get whiffs to the top of the zone with two-seamers. Just watch Anthony Discofani. Like, that's how he's getting his whiffs, is with the two-seamer at the top of the zone. I mean, even guys like Bauer and Kluber do that. So, you know, I think that, you know,

they probably were coaching him in a certain direction. And then maybe apparently May 15th is about when spin rates started going into decline from the sticky rate stuff. That's a finding of Rob Arthur had. So maybe he was just like uh well i gotta ditch the sticky stuff soon anyway like the chatter is that you know we gotta stop doing it i don't have us i don't have the spin rate in front of me i don't think he's on my biggest losers but he might not show up as the biggest loser guy if he made that change in may you know what i mean because of the way uh my my method works or i'm looking at this versus this time period so if he's already going

down he won't show up. And I don't remember him being on that, on that list. My point is at some point he was like, Hey, how about my sinker? Which I don't think he just like came up with. He probably,

you know, there's like, that's sinkers are like what kids have in high school and college. Right. So I think, I think they were probably like, yeah, F it.

It's not like you're giving up two homers per nine and a lot of those are on the four seam let's uh let's uh let's check out this uh this anchor you've got hopefully that sheds some light on a few different pitchers you can consider for the second half all at different ranges i'll say you you convinced me a little bit on that one i think digging in a little bit further i don't think think, digging in a little bit further, I don't think I want to be a self-absolutist where I'm just like, poor stuff, I'm never in on them.

I think that was an interesting foray into, I think I'm a little bit, I'm a little bit more positive about him than I was. Hey, I'm glad that I'm doing my job trying to convince you

on players and may I never be as wrong about anyone as I have been about Victor Robles again in my entire life because, again, my greatest 2021 humiliation, but a few others that I wanted to point out uh Randy on Twitter mentioned on Monday that Chris Taylor has been awesome this season there was a recent

episode I think I think it was Monday's episode where I said he was a part of the reason the Dodgers were underperforming lately not the case case at all. I had the Fangraphs depth charts page open that was looking forward with projections, not the one that has all the current stats on it. It even seemed weird when I said it, but didn't have the right page in front of me. Chris Taylor's been outstanding this year. It's more Pollock, you know,

and Taylor's been stealing some of that from Pollock out there in the outfield. Yeah, so thank you to Randy for pointing that out. It's important for us to be right. Eno was right, by the way. Michel Baez on Monday's episode. Michel, my boo. No, you know, the thing is,

sometimes my French and German training sends me in the right direction. I do want to apologize, though. I don't want to be seen as, I wasn't laughing because of gender stuff. And, you know, it'd be, you know, even if it's called Michelle, like, that's fine. But Michelle is more like a like a French or Spanish reading of Michael. I mean, it's just a slightly it's just a slightly different phonetic situation there. I was laughing at myself mostly for just being so awful when I

tried to do this. And I'm not trying to make fun of players. I'm not trying to make fun of people's names. My name has been made fun of my whole life. That's not the point. If you hear me laughing on this show, I'd say about 80% of the time it's at me.

That's how I took it when we were talking about it the other day. I hope everybody heard it that way. The thing about names too, people have called me Van Ripper my entire life. Every teacher I ever had in school. And it's like there are obviously a million worse things in the world. There's not two P's in there though. No, there's not two P's. It's pretty obvious that there's only one.

And that sort of nudges me toward the, try to get people's names right it's just important to do that it could have been okay in college band bong ripper yeah sorry never never got that one that's the first time age 36 the first time someone put that one on me yes uh we had a tweet from rex and he suggested to brian hayes as the next jesse winker and i think that's right in line with the type of profile you're looking for from a guy that could go for like mid-ish round sort of expectations up to early round expectations he looks amazing winker is a guy i was early on i have tons tons of shares everywhere. It's just that you hear it every time I talk about play. I want guys who can hit the ball, who make contact and show some ability with power. There's

just so much more opportunity to leap up from there. And then I just think the bell curve for guys that strike out a lot are like, watch Hira. It's like he came in, he was exciting, but even if he gets it together and gets it down to 31, 32%, he's going to be useful for a little exciting, but even if he gets it together and gets it down to 31%, 32%, he's going to be useful for a little bit, but I don't want the back end of that either. Chris Carter is just the guy who scared that belief into me. Where it's like, yeah, he was useful for a while, but it fell apart real quick. It wasn't all that useful in the middle years.

Really, really hope that's not the road that we're going down again. But thank you for that tweet, Rex. Joe on Twitter tweeted us to say, every time you'd pull a name from a new starter to discuss Stuff Plus, I was hoping it was Eli Morgan. His swinging strike rates look pretty good.

How is his Stuff Plus number? I should have had that rating. In my notes for the show, I think I had circled JC Mejia as someone I like a little better, actually. Morgan's Stuff Plus is 85. He has no pitch that's above average. He has no pitch that's above average, and he has been surviving mostly on location strategy, which I think is the thing that sometimes leaves us astray on the Indians, is that they have the best location strategy. He's an Indian, right? Yes. He has a 97 command plus, but he has a 105 location plus. That just tells me the Indians are telling him the best places to put his pitches.

And that tracks with what I know of their preparation. I think that Aaron Savaldi on another team, Aaron Savaldi on the Nationals, would have had a really hard time. So, Morgan, that means that Morgan's landing spot is good, but if you're going to talk Indians, I think the one I like is Juan Cosme here. With Morgan, be very careful. I think he's extremely matchup dependent at this point

as they continue to look for innings. Hunkus and Quantrill. These guys have below average stuff, but they're in the right park and with the right game plan. They have the right game plan every time like they can still useful but like you're gonna land you're gonna step on some lines quantrill is exactly that guy because i thought of all those names i thought he was just a tick

above them and it's been rough and he's been sitting around 99 100 stuff so like i think you'll have a good start on him i just don't know know which one it'll be. In fact, I did a brief on him where I was like, maybe take the under. It was in the last one. It ended up being 9-4. I was like, betting is hard. It's exhausting. Rob on

Twitter wanted to know if we had stuff in command numbers for Tyler McGill of the Mets. I'm assuming we're saying it right. I mean, there's a, there's a no in there. Yeah. Um, but, uh, he actually, I think, uh, I remember looking at this one. Um, he, uh, had an impressive, uh, yeah, the, the secondaries are impressive and the fastball is not and he throws the fastball a lot

which i think is actually sort of hopeful right you know he's a 112 stuff plus change up a 107 cutter a 102 slider a 101 curveball and then an 84 forcing i don't know i think uh there's also just the question of uh four seam specific pitchers right now i'm not casting aspersions i'm just saying like four seamers are taking the biggest hit in baseball right now among all the pitches. It's a good pitcher's park. He might have some good matchups, and if he can throw fewer fastballs, there could be something there. There was also a question that came in about Bailey Falter, who we talked about, and it was just about whether

long stride and releasing the ball closer to the plate actually is a factor in stuff plus and it is uh in the feature selection this is something i want to explain about the feature selection that was we got some dms about it and stuff and i've been having a conversation with alan nathan about the importance of spin and um he was basically thinking that uh spin by itself wouldn't be that useful for stuff and so I replied that when we did feature selection spin rate was the third the third feature on the list and so that's that sort of had people thinking that like oh more spin

is always better and it's the third most important feature it's the third most important thing in stuff that That's not quite true because stuff is like an interactive model where all these pitches interact with each other. And so for one pitch, for example, change-ups, less spin is better, right? But spin is still important to the change-ups value. It's just that it's less spin is better, right? So I think it is still true to say that spin is important to the stuff of a pitch and very important because it's near the top. But it's not like you couldn't. One way I was doing this, maybe more of the data nerds will get this. But like one way I was saying is you couldn't do a weighted regression and use the list that we have the features and out pops like a stuff metric.

You know what I mean? Like it's not just like A plus, it's not like 10 of A and A to B and 20 of spin rate. And you know what I mean? Like that's just not how it works. It's just a description of like what features were important to the model. And spin by itself was important.

Extension is on the model. It is not high up. And that fits, like when I've done correlations where I'm like, you know, people talk about perceived velocity. Like, oh, this guy released so close to the plate. It's more like a 95-mile-an-hour fastball. Well, when I looked at it, I didn't really find that like, oh, you know, guys with amazing extension outperform guys with less extension on fastballs. It just didn't show up that way. I think maybe batters adjust to some extent,

but extension does matter in the model, and he has a 100 stuff plus, and it's been trending up. In fact, three of the last four starts are above 105 stuff plus because his pitch mix is moving around um and his length in each appearance is moving around but what i would say is here's a guy with above average stuff i think way above average uh deception and then i think from our last show the best command of all of the young pitchers that we were talking about, 110 command plus.

So we were heavy in on him before, and I'm heavy in on him now. I think that's one of the better young pitchers, even with the Philadelphia Park situation. Yeah, I think occasionally you'll be careful with him at home, but generally there's quite a bit to like with Bailey Falter, and hopefully he can do some of the things we were hoping that Spencer Howard was going to do. And they're desperate for him. They did innings real bad. They continue to sort of just tread water as a slightly below 500 team.

Thanks a lot for those questions and those follow-ups. We want to be right. We want to get things as clear as we possibly can. as clear as we possibly can. One very disturbing story that Britt has been reporting on, along with Katie Strang, are the allegations of sexual assault against Trevor Bauer. You know, I've read the full piece, and it is troubling and disturbing, and it makes you feel awful.

And it is an ongoing investigation for the Pasadena Police Department right now. Bauer released a statement just through his attorney. There has not been a lot of communication there. And I'm speechless. The more I think about the details of this case, these are just some of the most upsetting allegations you could possibly learn about. Yeah, yeah. And consent to some act uh, act is not equal consent to everything. So, um, you know, I, I, I think this is pretty deplorable. And I think

one thing that really stands out for me is that like, I can't believe the Dodgers are going to let him pitch on Sunday. They're kind of throwing up their hands right now saying, uh, it's on the commissioner's office and, um, you know, know, they've taken it out of our hands. But I don't think it's ever truly out of your hands. As a team, you can suspend a team employee if you like, you know. So that's, I think, just evading responsibility. And then the commissioner's office has the power to suspend someone with maybe with pay for up to seven days while the investigation is ongoing. Maybe he's not doing that because he thinks the investigation will take longer than seven days.

But then this is just going to be a terrible book. If it's going to take longer than seven days and we're talking about, you know, a month of Bauer pitching and giving value to the Dodgers and making money and and just being like a terrible. and making money and, um, and just being like a terrible message to anybody who has ever, you know, been close to this or suffered this sort of thing on their own. Like, it's just, it's like a, you're not, you're not valued message, I feel like. Um, and it's just, we're just going to let him pitch through all this. So I just, I think it's terrible. Even if the outcome ends up being like, you know, somehow there's more consent there

on her part than we know about and they can prove it or something, you know, I think it would just be better for everyone if he just wasn't pitching during this. Yeah, we'll see if that changes here in the next couple of days, but great reporting, difficult reporting done by Britt and Katie Strang

on that story. Of course, all the details are up on The Athletic if you want to dig deeper into that story, but definitely a very troubling situation involving Trevor Bauer. But that is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. You can find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris.

You can find me at Derek Van Ryper. You could drop us a line, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com. We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening..