Rates & Barrels - The Year in Review

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

Eno and Welsh talk season winners, value risers, league offense numbers, elite average player totals and a little AFL talk around Jackson Jobe. Rundown Jackson Jobe - 6:14 Fantasy Awards - 13:23 Mailbag Question Jazz vs Chourio - 25:02 RP values from 2023 - 39:11 Super player averages - 44:22 Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Welsh on Twitter: @isitthewelsh Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Subscribe to The Athletic for just $1/mo for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

well who's a big fat liar that's me welcome into rates and barrels we are back i am back i'm like hey we're not gonna be i'm I'm not going to be here. And I just didn't pay attention to the schedule. The very last show, which is at the end of the season. So I'm not going to complain because I get to talk to all of you wonderful people. Surprise, Rates and Barrels. And I get to see that face right there. I get to see Eno, who, as i told people online and many other did

love this guy love this guy the article came out about you and we had the good old love fest which you know what man i'm all here for because there's so much negativity that floats out there i even did one of those kind of tweets where i was just like hey man i just want to thank everybody for hanging out with me i'm in a lot of places. There's no way everybody can like me. And I try not to put all the same takes. And I've really tried to outsource my stuff in different capacity. And one thing that's been so unique is this show with you specifically, you know, has been, I think one of my best ventures into being something different than sometimes what I am. And you've, you've made me better. And I, but my whole point was like,

I was thanking people for following along and not completely hating me. And there was a big love fest there for me. And I was like, Oh, that's so nice. You put out the article, same thing. And it's deserved. And you had to really let your guard down a little bit to let someone

write, really get into like the shoes that you play on the opposite. And he was, he was contacting people from my high school yeah that was nerve-wracking yeah yeah he was calling some people but um you know i really appreciate the job that brian roth did over at good beer hunting that's very nice of him and he treated me well in the piece and uh you should check him out. If you like stats, you probably do if you're listening to this. And Beer, he is the preeminent sort of data journalist when it comes to Beer.

And it was a pleasure working with him. I worked with him in different spots. And it was very nice of him to write that piece piece what an all-time line you just said uh premium data analyst for beer that's the world we live that's an amazing world we live in that was there i mean there was once a time that i wanted to be that i had the the the beer data website beer graphs yeah uh unfortunately you know one thing that is uh interesting about beer and other places and data in general is that and it's it's really complicated um is that is just that who owns the data who gets to profit off of it um how much right do we have uh to that data? That data is often born off of individual consumers.

How much right do they have to it? There's a lot of complicated things. And those things are complicated even in baseball. If you think about it, like biomechanical data, I really would love to have more of it. But think about the process of creating biomechanical data is is a player just being it's just like moving through space and and here i am being like i want that data give it to me you know it's like i deserve that data well it's it's complicated it's about a person's muscles

and and how his body works and like am i really entitled to that and you know how much control do they have over over that so uh worldly questions very ai type of thing that was a little bit of digression but yeah now we're going to talk about ai here on the thing you know i mean i agree and but also those are the questions of why you are who you are and what makes you great about what you do. And that's why Beergraphs died in the end was that the data we were getting from Untappd, Untappd was bought by a data concern

and they wanted the data. And so they turned down the API and we no longer had that hose of data. And without that, then, I mean, what are you, what are you cutting up? What, what you, you know, what were our leader awards going to be? So, you know, that was, that was the difficulty there. Well, we, uh, we'll try to make it not difficult for this episode moving forward.

We actually have some unique things to do in this episode, even though it's at the end of the season, we're going to be going through not just like the typical, cause I kind of did this earlier on in like last week or early in the week of going like, Hey, who are the fantasy MVPs and who are the guys that played bad? Yes, we're going to do that,

but we're going to use it also from an auction calculator standpoint. You know, we're going to be able to base it 80 piece to earners. We're also going to be talking about overall big gainers and earners, some stat based ups and downs where in the season have we seen overall stats go? I created this kind of super player things, just very easy math stuff of taking the, we'll talk about more,

but taking the top 30 at every single category, averaging it out and then finding the players that met that criteria and guys that might've been closer. Hitters are a little bit tougher. The pictures are pretty fascinating and you can take that for whatever, you know, cause we always have that going into each season. Here are the numbers that you want to accumulate in a Roto. Here's what you're looking for goals. Yeah. This is kind of a player based standpoint of here is talk about how those

goals should change and how baseball changed this season, too. Exactly. That's what we're going to be doing. Also, we almost had no baseball yesterday on Monday. It would have been one of the few days, except the Arizona Fall League did start up. We don't have to go crazy into it, and I know people... Arizona Fall League is my thing. I'm out here, and I went, and it was exciting.

It's going to be going on all through November 11th, I think it is. You got some big players going and we had a big player go on opening day of the Arizona Fall League in Jackson Jobe. was out there because you know here's a cool new thing that the arizona folly implemented this year is they're actually televising i believe a game every single day it's one game and it's going to be on i think it's mi it's milb or mi mlb website you got to forgive me for not knowing because i'm here sorry i'm here and i'm at well milb.tv and mlb are kind of linked. I think even in terms of subscribership. Yeah, I think it's on one of the... Once you know what it is, I didn't look at it ahead of time. I apologize. But they're televising.

And last night they televised the Salt River game, which I also found out about because people tweeted me because they saw me on the thing. And I discovered I have to not sit back and just speak. I was like, dude, there's a picture somebody sent me. I was like, please scrub that from the internet. Oh my God, what was I doing? So then the whole time I'm like sucking in and I'm like, okay, that's how I'm going to do my video. I was terrified of how I looked. So I'm going to not eat for the next but your job analysis

was fascinating to me because you know i am going to update the sheet with end of year numbers but in my last numbers um for low a that had job in them um had he thrown enough to be considered a starter he only threw 43 pitches per appearance uh he would have had the number one stuff plus among starters and also an average location plus. So, you know, a guy like Thomas Harrington had really good stuff plus 99 location plus pirates. Ricky Tiedemann shows up on our list. He had better location plus, you know, there's there's some guys, the number one guy for

stuff plus Saul Garcia in low A, had an 87 location plus. And it seems that's very, very poor. Yeah. You'd expect all these numbers to be lower considering it's low A, there's lesser talent. But Job had average location plus. And the feedback I'm hearing from you is that you don't think you were watching average location plus. Yeah, so that was my big thing because there's a big love fest about Job last night.

Like, Hey, it was a great appearance. And you know, he, he was pretty good. Exactly. On top of,

by the way, getting the televised games, salt river fields. Anytime a game is there, you can actually get stack cast data. So we have stack cast data from last night's game. He hit 98.3. I think he was extra can look here. I think he was actually, I can look here.

I think he was hitting, I think it was averaging 96. He was, are they giving me? Yeah, he was averaging 96.2 on the fastball. He had nine swing and whiffs on 55 pitches. He had a really good whiff rate, 38%, because when he was getting swings on the slider and change up, people were not making contact on it. He had a command is how you get swings.

So yeah, he had five of eight swings between the slider and change up were whiffed on his CSW percentage was lower, but here was my take on it. But eight swings on 55 pitches is not on the slider in the, on the change up on the slider and the change up. He had 12 swings on the fastball but only three whiffs and that was my thing with this is the command look off though he had four

strikeouts the fastball was up and no one's swinging at in the beginning and it kept he just like above the zone like not even close above the zone that's all he wanted to do all night non-competitive ones too there were some competitive ones that guys were sitting on but there were some non-competitive ones i filmed like every single pitch i have and i actually want to go back and break it down i just didn't have time from last night to hear you and i could you to be honest with you i want to do it with you but we just we wouldn't have been able to do it today i wanted to go back through because it looked a little bit flatter than my expectation on it and And let me see what the spin was.

I mean, 25, but this is a guy, his slider hit over 3,000. I mean, it's a big old movement slider. But the command was just off. And in the second inning, he decided to go heavier fastball, and it worked. But then when he did it with the second time through the order, started getting hit hard. Brian Ramos hit a double for 103. So the only thing I'm coming back to on this week,

I could go on a loop talking about one start for this guy with, there was a lot of buildup and everything for this, but the location wasn't as great. And I had said in a preview podcast I did on my show prospect one, I had said like, this is the guy that could have the biggest rise from the Arizona fall league, because there's a lot of big loopy swingers here. Guys like Aaron Sabato who strike out and hit two 10 and you know, there's just a bunch of these guys.

He could pile up the strikeouts, but the only thing is, is he wanted that fastball up, up, up. That's all he did. He did not move the fastball around the zone enough, at least that I thought. And it equated to an under 50% zone percentage on the fastball, and he just didn't get the swings. But the positive is the fastball still set up the other stuff. He was able to get through, which wasn't a great start.

And I will get to compare him against Ricky Tiedemann, who's pitching tonight as we're recording this, and that's going to be kind of the fun. Guys like Jerpy. Yeah, Jerpy. Actually, also tonight, I don't know if this game will be televised. Jake eater and to call Roby are going up against each other in the same game.

We're also going to see a Cooper jerky. So there's some actually good pictures to kind of pit up against each other. But you mentioned Tiedemann as a guy with solid command. What was the command number? The one away. Yeah. One away.

That's better than Job. It'll be interesting to see how these guys pair out. that is stuff i will be continuously trying to share another fastball velo for tv yeah i'm a little bit up and down he was in a good mood last night too i talked to him because i actually went over back to surprise because i live right next to it and talked to him and he was pretty jacked up about uh pitching tonight and that is where i will be and i'll have some stuff on twitter you can see and hopefully that fastball is popping we're just not going to get stack cast data which is going to be that's kind of lame i would like it to get everywhere but in the coming weeks you know viewership might be down tonight maybe not as many people passing around uh teeteman stuff but actually you know

fantasy fans uh most of their most of their uh teams are done and And so now they have this extra component of, do I watch real baseball or do I watch players that'll be more relevant for my fantasy team next year? Well, I have that too. The Diamondbacks are in the playoffs tonight and I have to go to Surprise and watch Tiedemann. So I'm going to be like phone and all that. But it'll be fun.

I'll be at my son's Little League game. Well, see, you'll be doing baseball then too as well. I'll be doing two baseballs. Yeah, well, in a couple of weeks, Eno, DVR, and I will all be in person out here in the first pitch conference, which will be pretty great. Hopefully do a podcast.

We'll all get to hang out together, talk about these players, do more breakdowns. And I will just be presenting the lead up to when you guys are all here and we'll see what that culminates to. So again, Arizona Fall League stuff, whenever I'm here, we'll see what that culminates to. So again, Arizona fall league stuff. Whenever I'm here, we'll talk about it.

You can also follow me on Twitter. If you would like to follow some of those things, I'm also doing like a live notebook that I have out there. We just, everything I see I'm writing every single start and different players. And I picked up a lot of stuff last night. So that's your little AFL. Look,

let's talk about the season as a whole. You and I were talking about the fantasy MVP, the Cy Young. And then we've also going to do the, I don't know why it made me laugh so much, the Cy Yuck and the fantasy suck. The fantasy. Copyright Jason Stark. Yeah, Jason Stark. There you go.

LVP. The LVP. So let's talk about the fantasy MVP because you and I, the big thing that we kept going back and forth about these for different reasons, because I think what you have to do is yes, Ronald Acuna is the MVP for what he did, but you've got to compare value in where you drafted these players to like the overall return dollars and stuff like that. And I think that changes up the names. We came across a couple different players and I'm going to throw up the top two

that you and I were debating. And then I don't know if we came to an agreement. I came to a decision based on the auction calculator that I felt, but you and I were going back and forth about Matt Olson and Corbin Carroll. Both had ADPs within about 10 spots of each other, but they were in the 40s and 50s.

Matt Olson ended up having the second highest auction calculator dollar return at 44. He actually had a higher dollar return than his ADP, and he was a little bit lower. And Corbin Carroll had a 10 spot lower ADP and returned $37 because I kind of thought Corbin Carroll might be that guy without being obnoxious. Both of those guys top five returns with ADPs in the 40s and 50s. But then the big outlier, and this is the guy I'm going to go with, you know, is Cody Bellinger, who ended up having the 11th best overall dollar amount.

And he had a 186 ADP, according to fan graphs. And I think if you and I are going to be touting a fantasy MVP with value into consideration, I kind of think Bellinger's that guy if we don't tag Olsen or Corbin Carroll. Yeah, it's a philosophical question almost because, you know, do you want your MVP to be in the top five? With fantasy, there's going to be some element of

what did you pay for it, right? So is it cooler to get a top five player that you didn't pay a first-round talent, first-round prize for? Is it cooler to get a top 15 talent that you didn't even pay a top 10 round prize for? Or is it cooler to get a top 30 guy that you got with your last pick in josh lowe i mean his his adp was 400 uh according to the the auction calculator yeah so really tapered off in the

back end though he did but he he turned returned 24 uh you know cody bellinger returned 31 this is a 15 team 50f mici2 utility uh setup um you know and and we got cody bellinger returning 31 i mean that's seven dollars less and 214 picks later so there is always this question of a of a sliding scale but uh i'm comfortable giving it to cody bellinger because just outside the top 10 for that low of a price i think that captures uh the essence of what we're going for most uh just one thing that that occurs to me is and i you know i'm thinking about always at the end of the season looking at uh's happened and what I did in my leagues and thinking about if I need to adjust. And I don't think that I'm going to come off of the idea

that I want to bat in the first round. There's going to be some adjustment to my pitching process that we'll get to. But you got Ronald Acuna, uh number one and he was the first rounder mookie bets number four he was the first rounder freddie freeman let me just do i'm just going to name out all the first rounders and where they went uh ron lacuna one freddie freeman three mookie bets four show you tani six bobby witt seven julio rodriguez eight kyle tuckard nine 6, Bobby Witt 7, Julio Rodriguez 8, Kyle Tucker 9, and then Juan Soto 14, Jose Ramirez 19, and Trey Turner 20. So you didn't really do poorly. There is one that'll show up in our LVP

discussion, but it really looks like among the top, the first round bats, the worst you did is a top 20 guy other than the LVP. We'll get to. So, yeah, and I feel like that I still want a first round bat. You're buying floor as much as anything you're buying into this, you know, high, high, high floor. And it really did work out. First round bats did work out this year. And there's a lot of value in pitching actually something when we talk just a tiny bit of my i'm just calling it like the super players on all the averages there was actually a lot more pitchers that got closer to the super player than

it was the hitters so you know those gaps start to close a little bit and you know the term that gets thrown around a lot like the glob of pitching the guys that are very similar you know that thing kind of gets thrown out and I see where it's going, and we can talk about that. All right, so we're going to semi-agree that Cody Bellinger gets our lock there. Fantasy Cy. So the Fantasy Cy young guy, the same metric here is being put on all these players

where there are guys with, you know, huge dollar returns. Garrett Cole was so much better than the next guy, but cost a top 15. There's actually, I think there's some bigger debate here because inside the top $5, there are three players or yeah,

three players that are outside the top 100 and two that are outside the top 200. players or yeah three players that are outside the top 100 and two that are outside the top 200 i settled on blake snell because of how ridiculously elite he was this year yeah you want elite i get it like elite elite and he was outside the top 100 but boy is there an argument to be made for zach efflin who came in at a 2121.9 return, which is only about $3 less than Snell, and he was a 271 ADP. My man, the Stuff Plus champion, Kyle Braddish, came in fifth with $21.50,

and according to this, 317 ADP. So who do you give it to then? Again, we have this decision about like, do you want a top three pitcher that you paid just outside the, uh, you know, seventh or eighth round on, or do you want someone who you took all the way down to the bottom? I, I am actually a little bit different on pitching than hitting with pitching. i just like to get a top five pitcher 300 plus that's just obviously my guy i'm definitely going with him as the the cy young fantasy cy young because there's so many other pitchers you could have taken you could have taken snell and bradish you know what i mean like it's just so much value. So great to have on your team, to have a guy

that you took near the end, just be there all season for you, you know, and just give you this much value. Like I, uh, I have a slightly different take and then, you know, I also have a take a slightly different take on, uh, you know, taking high pitchers, which again, I'm going to, I have a little bit of a softening of the stance, but high pitchers were hit and miss. You know, you've got Otani, Cole, Burns, and Strider. So with those four, the first four taken, you did well. The worst was Otani's 16 bucks and you had him as a hit or two, but it's not unquestionable that it was good. And if you happen to not get the top four, it really starts to fall apart.

I mean, Sandy Alcantara was the fifth guy taken. He had a negative value. Aaron Nola was the sixth guy taken. He was only worth six bucks this year. Banner Woodruff was worth twice that, but still you took him as the seventh top pitcher and you got 67 innings out of that and then you can go to Dylan Cease at the 11th taken pitcher and he was worth minus nine dollars

Christian Javier was 12th he was worth minus Shane Bieber was 13th he was wasn't even worth a dollar Julio Rios was 15th he was worth three3.08. Carlos Rodon was 18th. He was worth minus $13. And I haven't even mentioned the Cy Yuck yet. Yeah, I know. Save that. That's an amazing number. So, you know, really, if you just look at the top 20, it's 50-50.

Yes, the top four worked out. If you want to make a hard and fast rule that the top four are just going 50-50. Yes, the top four worked out. If you want to make a hard and fast rule there, the top four are just going to be separate every year. More power to you, but Burns was up and down and could have gone sideways. Sandy Alcantara, I think, was a consensus top five guy.

You're really going to draw the line there where you're just like, oh no, he was five, but he wasn't four. You know what I mean? I think that top pitchers are way more of an even production risk versus top hitters. Six of the top 10 SP earners went overall 90 or later. That's another way of saying it. There's so much value later on. 10 SP earners went overall 90 or later. So, I mean. Yeah, that's another way of saying it. Yeah, it's crazy.

Like, there's so much value later on. Yeah. We didn't even mention Justin Steele in the Cy Young conversation. Tarek Skubal, you know, ended up 21st. Michael Waka, dude, like, he was free. He was free. He was 100%. There's a lot of free pitch we're gonna talk about a few more a few more of those guys here in a little bit let's talk about the fantasy

lvp and this was you and i were kind of like we were going through this and i was like you know i think i found it because we went in so we actually sort of by adp there's guys that are gonna have negative values and stuff but there is a massive standout when you sort by ADP this past year you're looking at just for argument's sake here Trey Turner you know really bad start kind of came back still had a $26 return he was taking two overall that's not a good value compared to like 4.2 ADP Julio who returned 35 we're going double digits we're going double digits boom boom boom then we get to the teens and mike trout's four dollar return this year is sandwiched between i mean i'm gonna look here i don't think there's anybody else less than 18 in the top 20 there isn't anyone in the top 20 adp

no one had less than 18 and we're talking $18 return of Machado, Bichette and Guerrero. And then you go down to four bucks on trout. That's our fantasy LVP. Yeah. There's no way around it. I mean, you can look down a little bit further.

JT, a real Muto was the 22nd player taken in NFBs, these drafts, and it was only worth $12 and 50 cents. He kind of stands out there. But when it comes to catchers, that's a decent return, you know,

like Dalton Varsha was taken 29th and he only returned eight bucks. So it's not like, you know, just like tons of catchers that were amazing and, you know, returned all their value. So just a down year a little bit there. And then I want to mention Jazz Chisholm because he went 29th and it was only worth nine bucks, along with Varshow. Those could be on the LVP ballot, perhaps.

But we also got a mailbag question real quick here about Jazz Chisholm. We had a listener that was debating Jazz Chisholm and Christian Encarnacion-Strand versus Jackson Churio and Dylan Cruz. And I just wanted to mention this because it's the kind of decision-making that we

are going to have to make this offseason, where I know that, and i and i and i respect your this this sort of analysis you had chris that like you know don't worry so much about the very top uh prospects about how long it's going to take him to get there because it you know there's a piece by um i think it was uh jj cooper Cooper or Matt Eddy on Baseball America just about how quick people are going through the minor leagues now. And it's not something we're making up. It's definitely in the numbers. of think that with these particular people, I just feel like Chisholm and Christian Anacanasio

and Strand are interesting young players that could still be top 30 players next year. However, they both do something that I don't love, which is strike out a lot. And Jazz has now just been really tough on us in terms of just not being out on the field a lot. And that combination makes me think I'm going to take Jackson Churio. Or Dylan Cruz. Whichever one you think is a better prospect or has a higher ceiling. I think it is Churio. And so, if for the steals alone. So I'm going to take Churio out of that foursome. I don't know. i'm interested to see

what you think if you just had to keep them i don't think we have additional information about rounds or whatever but if you had to keep one of those four players who would it be yeah see that makes it tricky because he is tech the the question does give us an out of picking two and i think that makes this easier for me if i I had to pick one, that is tough because this is jazz or cheerio. I think I lean cheerio here because I really do believe that cheerio skill set. I mean, you know,

placating aside, like he did something in the minor leagues. I think that like no one had done since Ronald Acuna and you know, we've had comps across the board on Ronald Acuna. He steals bases. He hits the ball really, really hard. he's made better decisions without striking out and he has always been young at his level this is star quality stuff this is the type of guy that rockets up to being a top two round guy really quick I mean he's also deciding between a guy that I think is a

kind of fun comp and Michael Harris you know Michael Harris could be a cautionary tale to people like, Oh, he had a good half of a season. And then we took him in the top two rounds in dynasty. Well, he kind of bounced back and recaptured that top two or three dynasty value. I think Cheerios got that. The problem is jazz also has that,

but jazz cannot stay healthy in every way he approaches, whether it's at bats or on the field, they've moved him off. It would be jazz. It would be jazz. And sure. I'd kick one of one box and one of the other. That's exactly what I would do.

I would pretty easily pick those two. I love Dylan Cruz. And I think actually Dylan Cruz, he's got some weird, I don't say weird, but they're doing like net stolen bases and they've got a few other kind of interesting stats putting together i think cruz actually might be the safest hitter of all these players but he might have the offensive he might have the lowest upside as far as like the

counting stats that you're chasing here so because he gets to pick two it's easily jazz and churio for me but he's right the question also kind of like lines in is he says how do you weigh rookies in the campaigns and figuring out and it's like you've got to take chances here cheerio has the chance to be a top 10 pick within the next two years easy yeah jazz has not gotten there quite yet i don't think cruise and ces have that upside right now and with you know stolen bait i would be this is pretty easy cheerio and jazz but personally if i were only keeping five i i couldn't let go of cheerio right now because i think he's breaking camp next year i think they've done the weimer experiment i mean i mean it's so close if not it's the next two week thing where they you know he's up he's up uh you know

two or three yeah they want to manipulate like april 20 something or that you could always manipulate that but yeah i i think he's at best breaking camp and he didn't go to the Arizona fall league. I think like they want him to be rested and prepared. He'll probably play some in like the Dominican winter league. You're going to get your at bats. And I think they're going to push him hard. I mean,

look at what Caminero is doing. I think his agent had shared. I can't believe he's already 14 months ago. He was in a Florida complex league and he's now playing in the playoffs with the race. So it's pretty phenomenal. Another question that we got from Martin Johnson on Twitter was just that he was asking about what stats are sticky year to year. And this is relevant in the Christian Encarnacion Strand conversation, which is which is, you know, K percentage is super sticky

year to year and with percentage. So here's a guy with a 14.5% swinging strike rate and a 28.6% strikeout rate in Encarnacion-Strand. I think those things are going to port over to next year. Barrel rate is sticky year to year, but his 10.5% barrel rate is actually around the league. It's 10%. The league average or so is around 10% of all batted balls. I forget if this is... Yeah, this is batted balls. So it's not way ahead of league average. And yes, he does hit the ball hard. He had a 112 or 111.8 max EV, which is also stickier year to year. It isn't the type of... I'm not sure where the power will land it next year.

If you just port him out, he could be a 26 homer hitter, but he could also be a guy who hits 26 homers and hits 240 with that strikeout rate. The one thing that does not stick year to year is batting average or batting average in balls and play. So yes, he had really high Babbage in the minors, but those are bad defenses, you know, all sorts of things. So, you know, the over under for me is something like a 250 and 25 homers, which I just think is more replaceable if you're talking about him

compared to Jazz and Churio, who are going to steal bases, or Dylan Cruz, who you'd hope would strike out less. I don't know he will, but you're hoping that he develops the ability to strike out less, and he will have better OBP, better walk rates than than anker nassau and strand so yeah and looking at like a player that doesn't look like they're going to put out like elite elite power numbers and maybe he doesn't have elite barrel percentage when to strike out concerns like i couldn't weigh that over dominant stolen bases in any way like strand

might not be any better than bases for true yeah if you're looking at 40 stolen bases in any way. Like strand might not be any better than bases for true. Yeah. If you're looking at 40 stolen bases for either one of those guys, Cruz could be a 20 stolen base guy. If he decided to steal a bit more, but like strand could also not be much better than Jake Berger. You know, Jake Berger puts up like elite, you know,

barreling and big hard hit numbers. He has batting average issues. That might be what, who he is, but these other guys you're talking top two round and you have to chase stolen bases this year. Well, very interesting, too. This is the tease

to my super players thing. When you hear what the average number across the top 30 stolen base guys ended up being. Since we're here, you wanted to talk about earners and then we want to translate

over to something that Jason Collette had brought up. Were there any other earners that you wanted to? I know we talked about a whole bunch of them. I don't know if there's anything else super important as far as pitching or hitting-wise earner standouts for you.

No, but I do want to transition a little bit to what this means in the context of how the league changed. You know, Jason Collette did some research comparing this year to last year, and he had homers up 12.5% over last year, steals up 41% from last year, batting average up 2%, runs per game up 8%, and strikeout rate up 1%. And that last one there, that second to last one, runs per game, 8%. That's the thing that I should have seen as obvious and didn't. That's the big thing I think I missed going into this season was I was in the minutia of trying to predict who would benefit from the shift rules

and who might hurt from the clock and who's going to steal more bases and i really tried to get into the smallest things and i forgot that all these things are putting pressure on offense on pitchers you know what i mean like they're putting they're they're friendly to offense and so therefore they're putting pressure on pitchers and so one thing i noticed when I looked at the, uh, just qualified ERA guys, uh, this year, uh, we had 11 guys qualify for the ERA title with the ERA under three 30. And last year that number was 24. And so that was what I was presaging earlier when I was saying top pitchers are still a risk and I don't really want a first round pitcher. I have to balance that with the fact that I do need to maybe invest more in pitching at the top.

The league that I won the easiest was this year was a league in which it was a 12 team league without an mi and a ci and only three three outfielders right and so in that league i went hard on pitching there was keepers it's complicated but once we came in the draft i think my first three picks were were pitchers and uh i i added logan webb and luis castillo uh to my otani keeper. And yeah, you could say, oh, you just won because you had Otani as a keeper. But it was really important to add Castillo and Webb. And in fact, I got glass now. So I think I added three pitchers in my first four picks coming out. And that's the kind of magic that I want to access again, even in NFBC leagues, where

I find the way to pick a lot of pitching up top, get those innings, get some guys who are going to be in that 330 club, you know, but still get my first round bat. So if there's some way that I can play that game, maybe take, I know the fifth pitcher didn't work out this year, but let's say, you know, other years, the top five pitcher does work out. Maybe take the fifth best starting pitcher work out this year, but let's say, you know, other years, the top five pitcher does work out. Maybe take the fifth best starting pitcher in the second round and then hit again in the fourth and the fifth, you know, and try to maybe get a bunch of pitchers at the top. The offense is going to be there.

We just, I just, just gave you all the numbers, all the offenses up. So if I can get that first round bat and add a bunch of pitching around it that might be my strategy going forward most of the leagues where I did better I did better on that side the other thing I learned

I had this crazy thing happen to my main event where I think it was 8 weeks into the season we were like 730th out of 790 main event teams and last in our league. I mean, it just looked lost. We could have easily said, ain't our year. We battled back and we streamed and we did everything we could

and every week we looked at the wire and we did our best. We ended up third. Wow. We ended up in the top third, 33% too of, of main event teams. So we, that we did that all with, uh, with work. And so you have to think about that too, when you're drafting is what can I get off the wire? What will be there for me? And how can I, how can I develop this team so that it's ready for that and the weirdest part was our ratios got better while we were streaming uh which means that they were probably pretty bad to start with but also there was but there were some pretty dang good uh streaming options this year of players that were after i mean obviously cole reagan's tarik scooble michael king was

someone towards the back i mean there was we streamed cole reagans and then we just kept him yeah so there's a streaming and then you just keep the extremer so like just thinking i think that like you know one thing that is out there i think that what i've learned from the streaming thing is one thing that's out there for you are runs and strikeouts that's that's going to be out there so I don't know that that means that I want to take a low strikeout ace but if the strikeouts are out there I have to factor that into what I'm doing you know what I'm saying so it's like you have to know

what you can stream your way into and what you can't and so those are the things that I learned from my various teams is I do want to invest a little bit more in pitching even if I still believe in first round bats. And I have to know that I will stream to some effect. So my last five picks may be total

shots in the dark. You know, I would love to take, you know, the hype will be too high on Jackson Churio, but I'd love to take a prospect or two in those last five picks and just be like, maybe this guy makes the team, you know, otherwise that's going to be a streaming spot anyway. Yeah. And that was something that people would have picked up a couple months back when you and I were kind of going through this and being like, Hey, why not at this point? Like if there's a guy that's at double a, that even finished at double a and is a really big talent, you should consider that Wyatt Langford with the Rangers.

That's someone you guys should all consider. He might be up next. I think he could break camp with that team. Dylan Cruz could break camp with that team. A guy like Ricky Tiedemann getting his innings up. He's dicey because of the missed innings and how much can they push him this year? But like taking a shot on some of these hitters,

maybe a few pitchers in lieu of knowing that you can just push to streaming options is probably a good idea. You know, something I definitely picked up. I, cause I completely agree with what you said on pitching was also just the relief pitching market of how expensive relief pitching. It's always been a battle between get your closers now.

And then the, I'm going to just wait and stream closing market. I think those two always battle each other in FBC stuff. We see like relievers going like the twenties and stuff stuff like that because people don't want to screw around but i mean take a look uh going back as our auction calculator here the top 10 dollar listen to some of these guys number one and two okay felix batista and devin williams you're fine you paid for those yeah number. Number three, Tanner Scott. Number four, David Bednar.

Number five. Oh, by the way, those two are big stuff plus wins. Oh, what, Scott and Bednar? Yeah, this one isn't. Alexis Diaz has a funky fastball. But outside the top 180P, Camilo Duvall and Hader were in there, but then eight, Evan Phillips,ips nine craig kimbrell and then 10 was emmanuel classe so you paid for him but you you got your floor at least i mean you're not you're not you didn't lose your season because he ended up 10th instead of second or

whatever but also playing in the middle of the closing department like if you want to get your get your elite guys because what did we see we saw the elite of the elite guys show up in that list, but then we also just saw absolute waiver wire fodder. Yeah, I mean, the only guy that was in the middle that ended up in the middle was maybe, could you say Alexis Diaz and Joan Duran? Yeah, he was in the middle area. Yeah, but the middle, like Andres Munoz,

was a huge disappointment this year. That didn't work out. Rysel Iglesiasius was in there he was like 14th on there yeah i really didn't want to take those pictures yeah ryan presley had a six dollar return where's kenley jansen kenley j yeah he was another one of those middle guys he's not even on this list this fan graphs list that we're looking at uh he's not on the first page at least he is uh 46 he had a 946 return under a dollar that's crazy because it's all saves he didn't look good anywhere else yeah but you know i look at like janier cano who didn't close the whole year he had a three dollar return and he looks mighty mighty good i just said all that and it's like

i'm probably gonna want him because Batista is having Tommy John surgery out the whole year. He might be the closer and that'll be someone I want to invest in. But I think it's just like, just wait and you can get a lot of streaming options or take the top. Maybe you guys already know that.

Obviously, I want to get somebody. Yeah, you want to get some. I think you want to get somebody, you know, in the top five and then take a real long break and then just get like two two or three guys later but like the guys that do the wheel closers like i don't i'm not interested in the wheel closer thing anymore like not that i ever really was but like if you're on the wheel and you just double tap closer oh double no yeah i'm not we're not double tapping and so that was

something well then i then how are you going to invest hard in starting pitching right yeah you just you just that one of the places Yeah. You just, you just, that one of the places where you take a starter, you just took a reliever. Yeah. I did that in AL league this year where I was, I, I like, I did it last two years and I double tapped closers and AL only league. And even more so why I wouldn't do that because then it was, you know,

I was hurting my starting pitching and look at all these guys that end up popping up here. One thing I wanted to note back on the stats that Colette mentioned, I do think it's interesting. After the first month, I want to say he posted that stolen bases were up like 90% or just some absurd number. And it did stabilize down to still an absurd number.

I would just remember it was bonkers in the first month and it stabilized down to what is still in absolutely insane. Can you repeat those numbers one more time? Do you have those on what the overall... Homer's up 12.5%. Steal's up 40.9%. Batting average up 2.1%. Runs per game up 7.9%.

Strikeout rate up 1.3%. Do you personally at all feel that those are pretty big gains on homers and stolen bases? Do you think because stolen bases are up so much there's so much more in the market that you would prioritize maybe homers a little bit more or do you think the opposite end because we're seeing some elite elite stolen base guys that you would now want to prioritize those stolen bases because there is more in the market i don't know i took my middle of the line approach, uh, with stolen bases and mostly got middle of the line results in stolen bases. Um, I think that's okay. It is all about

what happens in terms of people spend on it. Um, if people, uh, decide not to spend on it, then maybe just rack it up. It's a category like any other. I'm not sure how people will react to this. You can't ignore it. But one thing that we've said over and over. On Rates and Barrels. Is that we just don't believe necessarily. In no power.

Steals only guys. Those guys make me super nervous so wherever i get my steals i would want it with power well uh can i share this with you can i share my little super player thing what would have been the best thing i could have done i just didn't have time to do it would have been do what this was last year and i think we could speculate i really want to compare on it but this is what this year looked like so here was the super dummy formula that i put together what this is something i would do not you know you know be like you know all the great stuff i'm like okay i take each category that we would play in and i take the top 30 producers and then i average that out and i average out the

numbers to get what does the super player look like? This is very simplistic to what are the average categories you want as far as winners in your leagues that I want this many stolen bases, this many homers. I did four categories of pitching and I'm going to do like losses if you guys do that. I did ERA wins, whip and strikeouts. And then I did for hitting, obviously, the big major five. So this is what I'm going to put up on the screen here for anybody that's watching on YouTube, youtube.com slash rates and barrels. This is what the average, if you take each of the top 30 leaders in each category, would look like.

This player hits 35.7 home runs, scores 100. You haven't put it up yet. Oh, yeah. Oh, I was going to say it all, and then haven't put it up yet oh yeah i mean oh i was gonna say it all and then i'll put it up but uh 35.7 home home runs 105.5 runs 103 rbi um i don't think i put i messed up stolen bases not writing it there but stolen bases 34 with a 294 batting average. So I'm going to guess that player last year, with the homers up 12% and the stolen bases up 40%, you could probably just do some simple math if you wanted

that the homer total would probably look closer to around 32. That would probably bring the run and RBI totals down to probably closer to 100. But then the stolen base number by 40%, you're probably looking closer to the 20s and then batting averages, whatever. So that's what this player looks like. Now a star player is the 330-30 guy.

Yeah. So how many players did this this year, Eno? How many do you think? Three. One. One player hit this qualification. Ronald Acuna. That's the only player that hit this qualification of all across the board.

There was one player that was super close. They just missed it by the stolen bases. They hit the homers, the run, the RBI, and the batting average. Do you know who that player was? Why am I not thinking of him? It's got to be obvious. It's very obvious. Who is that?

Mookie Betts. Oh, Mookie. Mookie. I forgot that he hit 38 homers this year. He was the close to super player. I could have probably gone down the list and given you a whole bunch. There were two others that I felt that were within real close range of this, and they missed just by a couple little notches.

The two players were Julio Rodriguez, who was three homers off, two runs off, one RBI away. He hit the stolen bases and he was like- He looks like this. 0.20 off on the batting average. He was super close to the super player. Number two, Freddie Freeman. He was six homers off, little bit more but he nailed the

runs he was one rbi off 11 stolen bases but remember first baseman got it and he demolished the batting average so those two players were close to the super player hey no shocker these are all first rounders but i still think like freddie freeman outside the top five is like a monster this year they almost accomplished my offensive superpower number but doesn't this look crazy inflated i mean like i said probably last year this is closer to a 30 20 guy with less run in rbis and the offensive production have made almost 35 35 guys but the stolen, I think I'm five year old. I think I'm taking him probably top six. Sure. I think so.

I think so. Top eight. Maybe once I really get to the bone in me, just, but he, you know, I think I, I think it was Sam Miller had this great piece about,

uh, players that kept beating their projections like over and over again. Um, and one of the examples was Dansby Swanson who just kept getting a little better over time, you know? And, uh,

uh, you know, the other one was Freddie Freeman and mostly it's not necessarily, I mean, yes, he's, he's gotten better over time, but also he just hasn't aged,

you know, like in Atlanta in 2013, he's gotten better over time, but also he just hasn't aged. You know? Like, in Atlanta in 2013, he was 50% better than league average. 10 years later, he was 63% better than league average. I agree. That's wild to me. He beat every single one of his

five counting categories this year, over last year, and he'll be 34 all next year. So, i think i'm still going to be pretty hyper aggressive oh it's a 34 all next year he just just turned 34 okay 21 days older yeah yeah i i have a hard time with the falling knife syndrome of like i don't want to be the one catch it on the way down i just don't i don't know if we're quite there and he literally beat every single category and he's just such a advantage positionally as well and where you have to really chase those stolen bases to get kind of the elite side of it he still gets

you there he's one of those unique like matt olsen's incredible don't get me wrong that's elite elite power but it's a more traditional first base package you know yeah where this is like i have batting average i have elite battingting average, elite run, elite RBI. I'm not falling that far behind in home runs. Not really. You got 29 homers this year. Yeah, and you can pick it up in other spots. I guess that's the one category that if I do draft him next year, I think that there's a possibility he hits between 20 and 30 homers,

like anywhere. He could hit 21. He hit 21 in 2022. He's kind of an oppo guy. What if the ball's a little bit less bouncy or doesn't let more drag or whatever it is that changes every year and some of those oppo homers don't fall for him and he hits 20 homers next year, steals 15 bases and hits 325.

He'll still have a ton of runs, ton of RBI. That'll be like 12 more stolen bases in your average uh first baseman and he'll blow the all the first baseman out of the water and batting average and so you'll get all these advantages and you'll still get 21 homers as long as you as long as you like say in your head that he's not necessarily a power threat and that you in some other place get a little bit more power maybe get a catcher that has a little bit more power or something like like you could pair him with one of those catches like cal rally right where he's like okay my catch is gonna hit 220 but he's gonna

hit 30 homers if i smush cal rally and freddie freeman together bam like that's a normal package yeah i mean you could probably make the argument to like kyle schwarber you know kyle schwarber is gonna fall back and you're gonna to get elite, elite homers. It just really hurts you in the batting average. But you could pair those guys together. The interesting thing we don't have yet, I'm going to watch, with the shift in the base situation, we also don't know what the age decline to stolen bases is going to look like,

like over time. Because something you could argue with a bigger first base base type getting older will he stop running but i don't think we have any type of proper data until we see three or four at least three or four years that you know will that advantage of space between the bases help guys not lose those stolen bases as they get older you know whit merrifield had more stolen bases. You know, that's not something I think we can project a decline. So I don't know. I think Freddie Freeman is kind of a safety net.

So I'm very. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, despite batting average going up 2%, it's still not the healthiest stat in the world. A median batting average in my NFBC leagues is around 255 for a 15-teamer. Let me just check that one more time against this one.

Yeah, 255, 256 is median batting average for these. I just smushed Schwarber and Freeman together, and this year they would have hit 267 together with 76 homers and 23 stolen bases and 239 runs and 206 RBI. Hello. So that actually works pretty well.

Freddie Freeman buys you that one sort of get-out-of get out of jail free chip for later where you're like, ooh, this guy's only problem is bad batting average. I'm taking a hit. Yeah, exactly. Here is the super pitcher. This one looks a little bit more average, and it's 13.4 wins. So, again, I did the same thing.

Top 30 in each category. Averaged it out. 13.4 wins a 3.4 era which is i believe like you were talking earlier about the 24 guys a year before that had done a 3.3 and this year it was like 10 or 12 well 3.4 actually ended up being what this the super player would be a 1.14 whip and 202 strikeouts it's actually kind of average ish but and 202 strikeouts. It's actually kind of average-ish. But 202 strikeouts is probably the limiting factor here. It is.

There were actually only two pitchers that hit this marker, this exact marker here. And obviously, I took off one category, which maybe is cheating. He did not. Fun fact, he didn't even get into the super close territory either because the ERA went up. I actually think he might be in the one, but he did not make this one.

Only two pitchers hit this criteria. Cole is one. Yes. You actually mentioned the other guy earlier. Snell. Nope. Whip. Whip kills Snell.

Oh, Whip, yeah. You mentioned him earlier as a big key. AL, West. Bradish? Nope. I'll give it to you. Luis Castillo is the only other guy with Garrett Cole that hit this marker. And I took Luis Castillo in an early mock

as a third SP. That's a good he's been. Yeah, I hit the 13.4, 3.4 ERA, 1.14 whip, and over 200 strikeouts. He hit that marker. Here were the close guys, and you already mentioned a couple of them.

Snell hit three of the four categories, but the whip was too high. Kevin Gossman hit three of the four categories. Whip was too high. Kodai Senga hit three of the four categories whip was too high kodai senga hit three of the four whip was too high so he made that marker do you think he's do you think he's just gonna do what he did this year again there's something that makes me a little nervous about what do you mean like like it's the 11 walk rate oh well i mean yeah are you saying like he's just gonna

throw the same mix and we're gonna just have walks through the roof or is he gonna stop throwing something i mean i think he's gonna four sierra you know like yeah but also look at like the think of the adjustments that had to happen i mean i'm trying to pull this up live here but what was the second half what were the second half sanga numbers compared to the first half because i mean the whip is gonna be i mean also snell just was one of the most elite pitchers, like a five whip. He did get better. He went from a 331 to a 258 ERA.

Yep. There you go. Wolbaugh was down by, you know, his walk rate went down from 12.3 to 9.6. Yep. Keep going. Anymore.

Yeah. I mean, it got better. It was pretty dang good. Four more players in the almost made it category. Justin Steele hit three of the four, but he missed the strikeouts. This is one I'm not betting on for next year.

Yeah, and I mean, 3.4. When you look at that number right there, do you think it's going to be a big miss across the board on Steele? Here's what I think. He's going to be a big miss across the board on Steele? Here's what I think. He's going to have a walk rate regression. We saw in the second half that he was a 3-6-2 ERA guy. Part of that was actually homers, not walk rate. I don't know. um i don't know i just uh i don't i don't it's a you know one of the things that stuff plus misses misses on is two pitch pitchers this guy's a two-pitch pitcher

you know and so i don't want like why am i going to say that oh this two-pitch pitcher is going to beat all his peripherals where where the other two pitch pitchers have been lesser than their peripherals. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Outside of Strider. Yeah, right. Like Strider this year was worse than his peripherals. He was worse than his stuff plus.

And he's a two pitch pitcher. Ashcraft is a lot of two pitch pitchers that underperformed. This is the one that overperformed. So I'm just going to say that i think of him as like a number two uh at best uh the there are three other guys that just missed it zach wheeler just missed this by era a 3.61 he's perennially underrated i feel like super underrated that's exactly what i pulled out of this and then two guys missed it by strikeouts verlander and kirby they hit the other markers, but they missed

it because Verlander only 144 strikeouts, Kirby 172. So any bump would get them into that area. Kirby's going to be, I think, in my top 15 next year. And I think ranking Kirby against Verlander will be really

interesting. Just because Verlander's 21.5% strikeout rate is the worst he's had since 2015 when he was injured. And he's 40 years old. He's going to turn 41 at the beginning of the season. And he's going to pitch deep into this playoffs, possibly. So I might have Kirby ahead of Verlander next year. I think so.

I think he's like the only major league or two that's older than me at this point. Verlander, Kirby. There were a couple of guys that were. Rich Hill said he's coming back. Okay, never mind. For the second half of the season. Never going to retire. He's the only major that hears the same age.

Affectionately, he's the roach of MLB. He's just never going to go away. Somebody will be like, well, we need some spot starts. And he only wants a million bucks. So come on. Yeah, why not? There were three guys that were close in kind of multiple categories. Merrill, Merrill Kelly, Kyle Braddish, and Logan Webb.

They were very close, like almost hit all the markers across the board. And then there were three guys, and you can comment on any of these, that were pacing to be able to do this. Michael King, Tariq Skubal, and Tanner Bybee, all in the close range. I think Yuri Perez was there and I had pulled up Glasnow. I think Glasnow was kind of close. And again, I could have kind of kept going i'm just giving you guys extras here but uh kelly bradish webb were the next closest group to being like one off and then michael king scooble and bybee were standouts that look like they were facing to make this there's something uh familiar there's something similar about them in that neither one

of them has an amazing fastball but command a really good secondary pitch that they play off of i mean it's not the same kind of pitch but something interesting there uh i would put glass now king and scooble in a in one category which is extremely tantalizing extremely interesting love them gonna be on every you every sleeper list going into the season, have been in the past, and will be again. And extremely high pitching injury risk, I feel like. Yeah, I think I agree with you on that. Scooble's coming off an injury.

Glassnow's coming off an injury. Maybe Glassnow, like maybe people will forget because Glassnow had one of his better innings totals. Michael King had a fractured elbow the other day from the other year from pitching. So, and he's going to be doing a big innings bump. So all three of those guys are guys that I like that I'd put the over under at

like 110 innings and buy them accordingly. If I could get them as my third pitcher or fourth pitcher so that I had some horses ahead of them. I'd like it. But inevitably, what I end up doing is picking those injury risks a little bit too high and then being like, dang, where did all my innings go? Well, I think you can also ask, hey, where did my innings go? In general, five pitchers went over 200 innings this year. That was it. in general five pitchers went over 200 innings this year that was it so yeah you know that marker of what you need has lowered and i think 170 175 looks like a really good number to hit at this

point based on averages so you know 120 is the new 140 so you can just kind of keep moving that up yeah 175 gets you in the top 30 uh 150 gets you in the top 60 so if you think about that if you're in a 15 team league 160 innings would be your sp4 just on innings alone you know i obviously there's all sorts of other things to think about but uh that means that your fifth starting pitcher is going to have less than 150 innings that's kind of crazy it's kind of crazy well these are fun experiments a good talk as far as my little super player thing i'm gonna i'm i might make this into an article because i want to pair it against last year and i need to add more names this is something i was working on today but it's a good look across the board talking about the earners on the year talking about some mvp stuff talking

about where the league offensively has changed and what are some of the markers of the elite of elite players those are a lot of guys that we're going to want to be paying attention to not going to be a lot of sleepers there and also never say never i'm not going to say this is my last episode i don't know i have no idea hopefully i'm back no matter what but we'll get you back in the afl yeah whatever's going on. Thanks for everybody that reached out and shared their successes this year. It's been a pleasure

helping you win and hope for more success in the future. That's right. It's been a great time hanging with you guys. I believe layover next week, DVR coming back and all the great stuff here on Rates and Barrels. Make sure you go to theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels, get a subscription

so you are locked in the whole season. It is not crazy expensive, and it is very, very worth it. So go and do that today. Make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so you don't miss when the podcast drop, and youtube.com slash ratesandbarrels so you can see the faces. You can see all the stuff.

You can see the things that go up there. Thank you guys as always for hanging out. Hopefully your season was awesome. I will talk to you in the AFL and hopefully, you know, as well soon or, you know, I'm Welsh.

We'll talk to you next time, right here on rates and barrels by friends. Thanks for listening.