Rates & Barrels - Tipping Pitches, Best Strikeouts We've Seen & A Case For Massive Expansion

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

Eno, DVR and Trevor go live at 1p ET/10a PT to discuss pitch tipping, the 'fighters' we did not choose last week and their long-term outlook -- Tanner Bibee, Kyle Harrison, Hunter Greene, Taj Bradley, and Christian Scott -- the best strikeouts they have seen so far this season, and a case for massive expansion that would completely change baseball as we know it. Rundown 1:18 Tipping Pitches 8:27 A Recent Example from Clarke Schmidt 10:45 Taj Bradley: Tipping Pitches or Too Predictable? 18:40 Tanner Bibee: A Fastball That Is Getting Hammered 26:41 Kyle Harrison: Will He Build Confidence in Secondaries? 31:58 The Case for Hunter Greene 38:33 Christian Scott: The Need For Improved Command 44:55 The Best Strikeouts We’ve Seen This Season 51:31 A Case for Massive Expansion in MLB Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Trevor on Twitter: @IamTrevorMay Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! (We're back 5/31!) Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, great barrels. It's Thursday, May 23, Derek Riper, you know, Sarah's Trevor May, all here with you for the next hour on this episode. We're going to talk about pitch tipping. How often does it become a problem? Who's trying to spot it? How quickly can it be fixed? We're going to talk about a few recent instances where that was happening,

maybe a few situations where it could have been happening, but we don't have proof just yet. We're going to talk about a few of the fighters we ignored on last week's show. We were looking for young pitchers we would choose for the next three plus years. And there were probably a half dozen guys that made the Mortal Kombat graphic who didn't even get a mention during the pod so we'll dig into what we like, what we don't like about those pitchers, what they might need to do to be chosen in a future scenario in which they are in a Mortal Kombat situation. I've got a good question from our Discord about the best strikeout we've seen so far

this season so we'll break a few of those down and I have lost my mind. I have an expansion plan that is bigger and better than any expansion plan I've ever seen at least so Eno and Trevor can talk me down from that one and explain all the reasons why that is probably a pipe dream and impossible. So we begin today with tipping pitches. And this is one of these things that is super subtle. If you're watching on TV, it's often hard to see, but I wanna know Trevor, how often is this a problem for the typical pitcher?

How frequently do you start to give something away and have it actually cost you in a game situation? I think more often than people think, it's something that I struggled with quite a bit because I noticed it's very common amongst guys that are maybe higher anxiety or higher energy, you know, like think a lot out there and you get ticks, you get tells that you can't really notice

until after the fact. The guys who are super chill, like the wheelers and the Nolas of the world, they're not going to tip stuff because it's not something they're worried about. Oh yeah, I had several times, and usually it's a veteran on a team that's finding it. Our guy in 2015, for example, was Torrey Hunter. He picked up everything. He had a bunch of stuff on sale and we really, really hit sale hard.

And he didn't know why because there was just some, some effort things he does in certain pitches and he just had it. And I'm like, I don't know how you guys can commit to this stuff, but Torrey had been around for so long that like, that was something very popular in the aughts. And in the nineties, like finding, finding stuff. So veteran guys were always watching one guy

who was actually notorious for throughout the league. And this was from Torrey. This is from everybody was, I know this didn't age well, but Carlos Beltran was the guy. He was the, he like enabled to watch a pitcher and to see stuff on him. He could sit there on top step and find something that a guy does differently in like 10 pitches.

It's just, it was a way he got an advantage he felt like. So like guys would always ask him. Torrey told me about like Victor Martinez was good at it and Miggie's good at it and Ian Kinzer was good at it. David Ortiz, Pedroia was pretty good. So these guys like learned that that was a big part of the gamesmanship of the game. Now the league's so young, players aren't doing it as much with their eyes and they're relying a little bit more on maybe you know sitting down with analytics guys after the fact of finding stuff because those

guys are watching so much that they it's just another pair of eyes. But statistically, there's nothing really that you can find there. So it's interesting. It is like if you can grab a pitch and either eliminate it or only look for it because you can hit it hard, that's a massive advantage. And I had a couple, I did a video a couple of years ago about Rizzo. I thought Rizzo had something on me. As he swung at some pitches that I didn't think he would swing that comfortably at. And then the next day I fixed it

and he looked different on those same pitches. So my tip was how much space between my body on my slider. So like I was really rigid with my hands on my slider and not with my fastball. And this was out of the stretch. So like I'd go like super tight It just I just looked more rigid when I was throwing a breaking ball And then the next day I took the push put the glove next to my body kind of like Mike Pelford used to do just Trap it and then put the ball in so I wouldn't move the glove at all and the glove would be pinned to my body

No matter what and open and as soon as I did that there was nothing for them to go on That's what I thought they were doing. I never even got any confirmation from anyone over there. But I was just like, I'm watching this. I see this. Kevin Ginkle. Ginkle. The Kevin Ginkle tip was that like his hand was like. Yeah, he would. He would. His hand was higher.

Flex his wrist. Wrist flexing was very common. Yeah, he would flex his wrist. And so you'd see more green between his arms. And there's a tension there. He doesn't know what he's doing. Sometimes it's to get your grip. I had like in 2014, when I broke into the league,

Torrey was like, dude, you dig so hard in your curve ball. I could see it. It's very obvious when I go watch him, how did I not know this? You're like digging around in the glove, trying to get the grip right? Yeah, I used to spike it. I used to do the flat knuckle spike that Pedro Martinez used to do, and that's tough to get that grip unless? Yeah, it was, I used to spike it. I used to do the flat knuckle spike

that Pedro Martinez used to do and that's tough to get that grip unless you don't start with it. And I gave like a homer to Miggie and to Vmart that day on curve balls. And Tori said, last four innings, you stopped throwing your curve ball through sliders and threw your change up a ton

and we could not see your change but all your changes were really good. So then I just struck out like nine, but they were like, you just figured it out too late. Then the next year I didn't do it anymore and that was all Tory. Couple of interesting things that come to mind listening to you talk about this is just one,

like there are maybe certain grips that like lead to this, right? Like the, you know, there's, maybe that's why people don't do as much of the knuckle on the ball. Cause it's like kind of harder. Yeah, no one like you think. Yeah. Adam Wainwright kind of just has like the loose finger, just takes the finger and just like off the ball completely.

You know, that's a lot easier to do in the glove. You just don't have the finger on the ball. Yeah, I once had one where my finger, I used to have my finger out of the glove and I used to pull it off on curve balls and then keep it on. On. I didn't even know. Oh, the other finger even. The other finger so like when I go here you could see the distance on a breaking ball so they could see it on my delivery and I was like that's the weirdest thing ever I don't know I don't know why that got even connected to what I was doing it

was just like be loose and maybe I was thinking it with my finger my other finger so they both were doing it. Oh yeah your brain is have you ever done that that kid game? Yeah, my fingers are doing the same thing. I can't do that. It's so, and we do one thing over and over again so things get connected and we can't disconnect them. It's very hard so I just put my fingers,

I stopped doing it, I just put my fingers in the glove and did the two. For anybody who wasn't watching, the kid game is the one where you're supposed to like, your point, do finger guns and you're supposed to like, like you're supposed to bring in one finger and bring I don't know it's Yeah down and out in and up. Yeah. Yeah. And the opposite really hard to do. I like my brain just freezes. Yeah. The other thing that I'm thinking of a little bit is I think it's Dan blew it. He's he's out there. He makes coach he tries to coach coaches and tries to talk about how to do

coach. He tries to coach coaches and tries to talk about how to do Little League right and how to do how to coach young kids right. And one thing that we've seen more and more of is kind of maybe the professionalization of Little League and of of coaching in Little League. You have more and more coaches. You have more and more voices. We've talked about that a lot in this cast. But one thing that Dan Blewett says is the more you are coached at a young level, the more you don't coach yourself, the more you don't think for yourself. To take this to an extreme level, which isn't there yet, but like let's say you had analytics guys in Little League that were telling you about tells or whatever. And that's not where we're not there yet.

But like, you know, maybe in the Little League World Championship you are. But the more you do that, the more the kid is just like, OK, so tell me what his tells are, you know, like and not looking for him. Yeah, not looking for themselves. So, you know, I think that that that's an interesting aspect of it. But, you know, there's also different ways to do this. Well, you know, Clark Schmidt is out here talking about how he gave up a home run to Dylan Moore and he was pretty sure he was tipping.

We have video. We have a picture right here. This is the Dylan Moore homer you can actually see from second base. You can see, you know, Clark Schmidt's hand later on in the game. He's turned his, he's put his, basically put his hand deeper into the glove so you can't see what he's doing with his grip. And these are similar, I think they're the same pitch type and there are different parts of the game. He just, he just fixed that within the game. And there's a little part of like his whole, like over the top of his toes presence on the mound

that partially might be to kind of get closer to that glove and keep people from seeing what he's doing in there. This is the traditional type of tipping. This is the one where the second baseman, the guy on second sees it and relays it to the guy at the plate. And it's totally plausible. I mean, you can see Clark Schmidt's hand in the picture right before Moore's homer. But then there's like, you know, new wave stuff where, you know, definitely teams are running your different deliveries for different pitch types through the biomechanical analysis and trying to be like, you know, but I have heard from some advanced scouts and from some team employees that they kind of went away from that because some of it was hard to point out to a player. It's like his elbow comes through differently on this. It's like,

you're saying this, you're using verbal. You can't see that. You can make it high. It's not something you can see. Like maybe they could, maybe you could prime them for it and maybe they like subconsciously could see it better if you told them to watch his elbow or something. But then they might also just be watching his elbow instead of watching the ball. You kind of want to find the release point and deal with it that way. So they actually said that they went away from the biomechanical use, the sort of Hawkeye biomechanics use, and towards more of a what are your mannerisms before you even start your delivery.

A lot of like you know how you stand on the mound, how you how you're getting that grip, how you are. So I tried to watch the Taj Bradley start that we just saw recently and what was really interesting about it was that Taj Bradley struck out like eight of the first nine batters he saw something ridiculous in the in the the first two, the time to the order. And then he gave a bunch of homers and hits the second time through the order. And you know, what I saw was the bat speed against Todd Bradley in the first, uh, four innings was poor.

Uh, but then somehow the second time through the order, the bat speed jumped six miles an hour on the fastball and like five or six miles an hour in every pitch, seven miles an hour on the splitter. So the fact that all of these bat speeds jumped makes me think not so much that it's a tip on a specific pitch, right? It's not like, oh, the bats we jumped on one pitch, they really anticipated it. It tells me that they were getting really comfortable with him for maybe some other reason than a straight tipping situation. Now, if he was straight tipping,

then the way that he sets up is he puts his glove in front of his face and he tries to get the grip in front of his face like this. And so maybe he's fanning the glove. You've definitely seen that was like maybe a Dempster situation. So people have like fan the glove wider on split fingers and stuff like that. I also noticed that his time spent in this position was different. I couldn't quite line it up pitch type to pitch type. And the last thing I also noticed was that if you look at his usage

the first time through the order when in the first pitch to righties it was all four seams, 100%. And the first pitch and the pitch when the batter was ahead against righties, 100% foreseamers. So, you know, there's, and then the last, very last thing is if you look at the heat map, he was kind of middle, middle-ish, he wasn't very much above the zone. And then if it was above the zone, it was in the waste zone. And he did a lot of cutters that were back foot that weren't that near the strike zone.

So he kind of was like either waist or middle middle. And so there's a lot of different ways that he could have been tipping that aren't like, oh, his finger was in a different spot. It was more like, oh, hey, listen, if it's waist, it's either waist or it's middle middle. So like, just get comfortable and just tell if it's anything other than middle middle

Don't swing exactly if it's middle middle. Let it go. He doesn't have great command either He leaves a lot middle middle. He throws a really good force team fastball that rides But it's just like he doesn't have very good command. I checked his how far he's throwing it He they give him that kind of up and away to a lefty tunnel and he throws in the lefties regularly Like that's his that's where he throws his face he pulls his fastball a lot he doesn't get to the arm side very well I was a little surprised actually in the amount of swings in the first time through the order on the cutter that was like not even close to the like the bottom of zone like the cutter would

be like six inches out of the bottom of zone or six inches like sort of diagonally out of the bottom zone and they'd still swing at it. I think they just stopped swinging at that and maybe they just key hold him. And they also said, well, listen, anytime he's behind, it's very likely to be a fat four seam. A fat four seam that he's thrown down the middle a lot and he just gets hit really hard. The guys with the throw four seams that don't command it well at the top of the zone tend to have higher exit veils than average.

He throws a cutter. It's not a slider. So cutters are not supposed to be swinging miss pitches, it's low 90s, then his splitter was low 90s. So everything was in the 90s, and because of where he throws his fastball at the time, he doesn't really tunnel the other two pitches very well off of it.

When he does, he's good. So he's one of those guys with great stuff that is not utilizing it well right now, and the one target thing, he's not hitting that one target very much at all. And the longer the outing goes, the more he leaves that fastball middle and then he gives up the three run homer.

That's what hurts him. Okay, so is this a function of the limited command more so than the game planning in this case? I mean, that's a strange thing with Taj Bradley. Command and he's predictable. Those two things combined will be five runs after striking out 10. Like predictability and how you sequence

and where you locate seems like it's in the pitch tipping family in some ways where it's like, well, if they know what's coming, you're gonna give up way more damage than you should. The other strange thing about Taj Bradley, he strikes out more lefties than righties. He's got a 32.7% K rate against lefties, 24.4% against righties. They're kind of neutral-ish, but Cutter is a little bit better against opposite

hands and Splitter's a little bit better against opposite hands. And he cuts his foreseam a little bit. It's not a true, like when he pulls it, he gets a little bit of natural looking cut. So everything goes into a lefty, like up and into. So that they tend to have steeper swings. So like it's tough to get on that. So he gets more misses I think. And then righties cutters are flat. He doesn't have a slider. So it's like it gets flat and righties flat

and their swings a little bit better. And they hit him harder. It's a higher X of illegal against righties this year. 94 on average, which is really fricking high. If I was a pitching coach, I would be running this bat speed thing fairly often against my pitchers to maybe spot tips against me. That's a good idea. And if there's just like a higher bat speed against certain pitches, that would tell me

that they were tipping. There's a comfortability there, something to look at. This one, it's like across the board, so it tells me, okay, they're too comfortable. How do we make them less comfortable? What do we do in the game plan? But if there was one that sort of leapt up, you know? That's probably been tipped.

The second time through the order, it's like, whoa, how come the bat speed is high on the curve ball second time through the order? It'd be like, well. Especially when it's a pitch that that is not what normally happens. Yeah, exactly. Normally you kind of have to wait to see what that is, you know. That means they knew what it was before you even threw it. Yeah, I do think a big part of the problem is something Trevor was pointing out with the Velo being so similar on the

pitches he's using most of the time, right? If 88% of the time he's throwing something that averages 91 or higher, you're just, you're not confusing the hitter, at least by speed. So what is the adjustment in addition to improving the command? What's the other wrinkle that you would try in the pitch mix for Taj Bradley?

Do you throw the curve ball more often? I don't think I got any swings on the curve ball. I think if he could land the curve ball. None of them were anywhere near the strike zone. They were all not competitive. If he could land the curve ball in the zone, that would be a big deal for him. He just needs to flip him over.

He needs to tie one Walker, you know, Max Schurz are just boop, like first pitch. He needs to be able to just, you know, get it in the box. And that'll literally open it up. Guys be like, oh, I have to know that exists now because it's really juicy and I want to hit it and now as soon as they like oh I want to hit that big slow curveball now all of a sudden the fastball up and in his range of elos just increased by 15 miles an hour now they have to like now they have

to think about that and that could be the difference curious to see if he can make that adjustment on the fly this season it's tough because they have so much competition for rotation spots once they get healthy with Boz making his way through a rehab assignment. Springs coming back later this year. You know, maybe we're talking about Bradley in more of a long relief role temporarily if they have a healthy. I think he'd be an excellent closer because then it would just be, you know, really middle middle and just 100 all gas, no breaks, right?

It would definitely, definitely work in that role. But yeah, Bradley was among the ignored fighters from last week and I think that was a pretty good outline for why that was the case. Let's talk about Tanner Bybee for a bit. I think Eno's been a little lower on Bybee than I have been over the last year or so. But it's pretty good slider and change up. Fastball has been just getting hammered this year. It's down about a half tick from where it was last season.

What have your reservations been with Bybee to this point, you know? It's just not a good fastball. As it goes away from, it was 95 when he first came up, but now it's pretty much league average velocity, league average vertical movement. It's pretty straight. So like it's a little bit interesting horizontally, but

vertically it doesn't. It's not very interesting. And I think that's why as we as we speak, batters are getting five, like five seventy eight against it. The case for him, though, is the slider. He has a really, really good slider and he has really good command of it. And there are other pitchers that have made that sort of

a successful strategy. It's just not necessarily, I can't, like maybe I can't think of them, but like an ace, like a real ace, it's more like somebody who's pretty good. Like a mid rotation starter that strikes a few extra guys out. That's probably where his ceiling is in his current form.

He might throw a no-hitter. The day that he has more 95-ish juice on the fastball and he's really dotting that slider, he could throw a no-hitter. We've also seen lots of people throw no-hitters. I keep thinking, as we see teams reducing four-seer usage this year, if that works and it looks like it is working based on what's happening with run

production around the league, we're probably going to see another iteration of that next year. So you know, you stop throwing your four seamer, what are you going to throw instead? As good as that slider is, can you really push the usage of that pitch more or does he have to go to something else in the secondary mix in order to continue leveling things out? I suppose the question would be you know left-handers. Left-handers though are slugging 80, 0.80 off of his slider so and they're slugging 1,000 off of the curve but you know it does become a question of variance. Like how much can you like if you start pushing the slider, like how how more predictable do you get?

They can start to anticipate the slider, right? Yeah, there's a certain threshold. I feel like with a lot of pitches, like it's good because you use it this much and you locate it really well. But if you use it more, it, you get diminishing returns eventually. Or you take an amazing pitch, you just make it a very good one, and things start to break down a little bit.

Did that ever happen with your change up, that you use it too much? No, it was, maybe fastball was the only thing that ever happened. I was, when I get in the 60 plus percent, I get hurt a little more often. But it is weird how you balance it, because you become aware of what's performing the best too, and then you lean towards the thing that's performing the best, so it starts to even out a little more often, but it is weird how you balance it because you become aware of what's performing the best too

and then you lean towards the thing that's performing the best till it starts to even out a little bit. So if he throws a bunch of sliders though, for example, it goes to 50% for a month and guys start adjusting to that, then the fastball suddenly gets a little bit better because 95 is not slow.

Like that's, you know, it's still something that he can get by guys if they're just, everyone's sitting slider and then until they adjust, it's just when you're able to do that and how quickly you do it. Like that's how things change. So if you don't have a fastball that like, you know, you can get a random three in one miss on

or like a pop-up, it's just squared. Cause he's commanding it pretty well too. It's not like he's like throwing it down the middle a lot. He's staying on the top of the top rail, closer to the edges most of the time. So for it to have a negative 11 run value in May, like that is, that's real bad. But the other two, the change-up's doing well too.

He's getting good quality, he's throwing good quality change-ups even though he doesn't use it very much. It is performing fairly well, but the slider's carrying him. So I don't know how good a starter can be without an average passable fastball. And I mean, it is league average on a lot of metrics, but like it's just not performing. It's just performing so bad that you can't be like,

this is an outlier. There's something happening here. So I mean, we'll see, but it really hasn't performed well ever. Since like even last year, the forcing fastball wasn't a very good pitch. It was getting hit pretty hard. It was the hardest hit pitch he threw.

So it's not like this is an aberration. It looks like it's something to do with what people see and it just must be what they're expecting. Do you think it's a fair use? I'm just looking at the 48.5% hard hit rate by Statcast last year on the four seamer. It was plus 10 for run value, but I think the first number, I think the hard hit rate on that pitch last year on the four seamer. It was plus 10 for run value. But I think the first number, the hard hit rate on that pitch probably would have been a pretty good warning if you didn't see it in a model, if you didn't

hear Eno talk about it during draft season, you're using that much hard contact on your fastball, you're getting lucky in terms of that run value by any reasonable measure, right? If you have that high, you need whiff. So it needs to be like, you're okay with a 45% hard hit rate if you're whiffing 35 plus percent of the time. But they're not. So they're not missing it,

and it's getting hit hard every time. So it's getting hit a lot, and the percentage of those hits are hit hard as high. So that means the total of hard hit balls is higher than it would be for someone who doesn't give up as much contact on the pitch. So those two things is what it looks like. You're willing to trade off,

but if you give up tons of contact, no swing and miss ever, sinker, you have like a 10% whiff rate on your fastball, but like the hard hit rate's 20%, that's exactly what you want because that's what that pitch is for. So you need swing and miss in your fourth seam if you're gonna throw it

because it's gonna get hit harder on average, hardest probably than any other pitch, no matter how good it is. It's just the nature of the pitch. You know a couple of other guys, you know, that are in his range in stuff plus in the Four Seam I think might be instructive here for a second. One is Dean Kramer. Another is Joe Ryan. And I know this guy's a lefty, but I want to throw him in here Nestor Cortez and that and the thing that is true about all three of these guys that is not yet true about Tanner Bybee is that they have increased the size of their arsenal and they have become more comfortable throwing

something other than their best two pitches in their head. I'm sure that Tanner Bybee came up being like, fastball side, those are my best pitches. What he needs to do is just embrace the curve, even though they're batting, like lefties are slugging a thousand off the curve. Like, you gotta, sometimes the process is you either gotta improve the curve or you just gotta like keep throwing it anyway because it's going to keep them off your fastball. And so to become more of a sort of 25, 25, 25 guy, I think, you know, I know he's nothing like Nester Cortez, but also like sort of watching Nester Cortez

and soaking in the like, the weirdness factor, the sort of like what he's doing to set you off. Like he just needs to be a little bit, put some wrinkles in there, put some weirdness in there. And I don't actually think of being like a 5050 fastball cider guys has his I think I want him to be 252525. Like I want him to try and try and, you know, be as as unpredictable as possible so that they can't really key on

that fastball. I think that would be the way forward for him. I mean, it's not impossible. I mean, Joe Ryan's having an ace like season and scores about the same and stuff plus on the fastball. So, you know, there I think there are going to be some good seasons for Tanner Bybee. It's just like if I'm going to bet on someone for the next three years, I want to be great all three years. And so that's why I usually start with the fastball quality.

Yeah, completely fair. And the best simple case form to best location plus of the half dozen or so pictures that we're going to talk about in this segment. Let's talk about Kyle Harrison for a moment. Request from producer Brian, at least even if he didn't formally make the request, I know he wants us to talk about Kyle Harrison. It's kind of funny the similar thing that was happening with Bybee's fastball last year that we just talked about where it's getting hit hard but it has a positive run value that's been happening

with Kyle Harrison right now and in the model it's similarly graded fastball. What would be some of the positives though in this arsenal because the results have actually been fine for his first 17 big league starts now it's a sub-4 ERA it's a 123 whip we saw big time strikeout rates when he was in the minors. So you can probably tell yourself a story that there's some growth potential still here given the lack of experience and given some of the results we saw on his way to San Francisco.

I don't know. I mean, I have in my ear this idea that his type of fastball is the hardest thing to teach a secondary to. He's got a high spin efficiency, low slot fastball. And I've been told that that's the hardest thing to kind of develop a secondary pitch that fits with. And that's been his story.

He's been fiddling around, fiddling around. The newest version of the curve that I just talked to him about is much more slurvier. So he's been, he's got, he's added movement in both the X and Y quadrants and like tried to like make it more of a bigger curve ball. Stuff Plus says, it's about the same. It's kind of a league average breaker. The change up, he should be like some, some guys who are his slot can turn over change ups and then they're more like, you know, sinker changeup guys. Uh, but he's not that great at pronating.

So his changeup is not that great. So I don't actually know how he's gotten his results. I think it just must be a little bit of just, it's a little bit funky. And it's also, if you think about it, like the comps that I have from are like Manaya and Haney and he might throw harder, right? Yeah. He throws harder than Manaya and Haney, and he might throw harder. Yeah, he throws harder than Manaya and Haney. Although, Manaya's added some juice and Haney throws okay, but that's my comps for him, is Sean Manaya and Andrew Haney.

I think a lot of it so far is also the home park, right? 13 homers he's allowed so far in his big league career, 10 have been on the road, only three at home. ERA's more than a half run lower in San Francisco too. So that gives him some added buffer. But what do you make of Harris and Trevor? Do you see a bright future despite kind of like more like mid rotation looking stuff up to this point?

Let's be clear. There's nothing wrong with being a mid rotation guy. This is success, yes. I would have taken that. He's a lefty. He's got some promise on a couple things, but yeah, searching for a breaking ball is not a good place you wanna be in the big leagues, and especially with a four seam that, like you said,

low slot kind of functions more of a two, like a two seam doesn't have any ride at all and runs a lot. It's a little funky and it kind of makes commanding it hard but he does command his fastball best. If you go look at his heat maps, that is major reason why he goes, anytime he's in trouble he goes to fastball,

which makes him very predictable but also shows that he doesn't have a lot of confidence in other things. He just needs to get confident in one thing, something, and it looks like he feels okay about the change up but like you said he doesn't pronate well and I'm looking at the spin, how this thing thing spins and he's trying to pronate a four seam changeup but it looks a lot different than his fastball. His fastball like his changeups wobbles

like crazy and his low spin efficiency and then his fastball is very high efficiency and they look very different out of the hand but he's throwing it a lot so I mean if I were there I'd be like hey you want to try seam shifting this thing because you can, you don't have to prone it anymore. You can just supinate and it'll move the same way. Like give him a power change, right? Give him a power change. Yeah, and it looks like he's trying to do too much with it

and he doesn't need to do that much to make it look like it's fastball. So that's just what I see from off of these spin profiles right next to each other. It's interesting because they're different. You don't want that. But I mean, you can't refute the fastball success. He is in a park where he can get away with some of the stuff.

He lines up well there. So there's no reason to think he can't continue to have this success with these things because it doesn't look like he's super, like he's not, he's predictable on fastball usage. He can mix that up, but it might be the same situation where he needs to use. He needs to like keep throwing the breaking balls just so he can get to on fastball usage. He can mix that up, but it might be the same situation where he needs to use. He needs to keep throwing the breaking balls just so he can get to his fastball and be okay.

Really focus on not how it's moving so much as where he's throwing it and how he's commanding it. Because if he can command a breaking ball, even if it's not that great, it'll make his fastball that are already doing well even better, and I would focus on that for him because that looks like the easiest path forward, at least to become a higher value kind of starting pitcher.

Yeah, I think there was an expectation, was a prospect that he might be a frontline guy. And you guys are absolutely right. Being a mid rotation starter is a successful outcome. You've done well. You've done well in the field if that's where you go for a ceiling. But it does sound more like macro adjustments

that would be made in the off season rather than things he's going to tweak along the way this season to really unlock everything. Let's talk about Hunter Green for a bit because I think of the names that didn't get a mention last week, he's the most electric and he's pitching well this season over a strikeout per inning,

got the ERA in the low threes, keeping the ball in the park and the hard hit rate is down early on through 10 starts. 31.1% hard hit rate by far, the best we've seen from Hunter Green so far. The Ks are down a little bit, but I think you'll make these trades, right? This is a better version of Hunter Green

than we've really ever seen in Cincinnati. And injuries have been a little bit of the story up to this point in his career. But what do you think, Trevor? Is this the full on breakout we've been waiting for for Hunter Green? He's in top percentile in all kinds of good categories. Expected ERA, expected batting average, fastball VELO.

In average, ex-VELO, barrel and hard hit are top 15% in the league. So these are things that, like, hard hit percent, too. That's been something he struggled with. Because again, he's a four-seam guy. He does really hard. One thing that's interesting, because he has a very, very, very good riding fastball, he's a big guy. He has a below average extension and a high release point.

When you throw ride that way, the lower guys with the lower release, usually the ride functions even better because you give it even more of that weird angle. He's not getting that. Then where he locates his fastball, he still throws it in the middle of the zone way too much, like mid-thigh. He doesn't touch, he doesn't hit the top of the zone accurately at all.

And he never has. I think that's the difference between him having like a two and him being a three-five, because he's going to give up those three-run homers when he cannot get the fastball up at 99. It doesn't really matter how hard you throw at that point. There's just a whole lot of red right middle middle on these heat maps and that's just too much. You're throwing too much there. But his slider, his slider is, it's a good slider and he commands it well. He might have the best command of his slider but the problem is

he gets out of his tunnels a little bit and it's just like each pitch needs to have great stuff on its in a vacuum on its own at times and that's what hurt him in the past. And he's a four seam guy so when he's not good, when he's not feeling good about his command, it means that the barrel is gonna find the ball a little bit more often because of the nature of his arsenal.

He doesn't throw a sinker that can get miss hit even if he's not throwing it where he wants to, like Chris Bassett, right? He can just yank stuff and it'll still get like, saw guys off. He's just not one of those guys. So if he just commanded the top of that zone, Taj Bradley, he's a better version of Taj.

Like they have great stuff. They both have really good stuff. Taj is just probably missing the breaking ball and Hunter needs to continue to get better with that four seam fastball command. Something that Skeen seems to have a little bit better than Hunter had when he first came up.

Like that's kind of the difference between those two guys because I feel like they're, that's a good comp between two dudes who were, Hunter Grimm was taking first overall, wasn't he? Or second? Close. Early. I think it was second. Yeah, that's what I'm seeing.

But like, I just, there's something about him. I watch him pitch. I'm like, there's just, you're like one little adjustment away here on how you approach guys. And sometimes I think he gets a little bit basketball happy and leaves in the middle plate. And that's where that three-run homer comes. But so far this year, it's been better. He's gotten better every year.

So you gotta give him that. Yeah, I wonder, you know, I think he's kind of a fascinating, what occurs to me is like, you know, he's command teachable. Like, can you improve command over time or is there just an innate level of command? And we're just gonna be frustrated about Hunter Green his whole career.

Like, you know, there is the, when you look at this line this year, the big deal is that he's kind of halved his home run rate. But if you know, like in the suite of statistics, like home run rate is perhaps the noisiest. So you would kind of hew closer to his past home run rates and say, well, not that much has actually changed. But it does provide a lot of hope

because you can see how good he can be if he can just have a regular home run rate. I like that he's throwing the splitter and the curve, but the real problem is just the command of the fastball, the command of everything. I tried to go look back at other really big home runs seasons from starters under 25 with at least 100 innings since 2000 and I'm just sort of like you know like going through with my eyes and being like is he like this guy? Well, Taj Bradley is on the list. His last year is on the list, but we don't know how that one ends.

So I'm trying to look at some other guys. Mackenzie Gore is on the list and he's doing better this year, but it's, you know, it's hard to say that he's on the other side. Tyler Moly is on this list a couple of times and it took a splitter for him, but he's not on this list because of bad command. So it's not a good combo. It's not a good comp. I think there is a really good comp on here actually though and we might be seeing the other side for this guy and that's Nick Pivetta. The problem is that I think what helped Nick Pivetta get out of this was like the power slider because Nick Pivetta was kind of more of a fastball curve ball guy that when he added the slider

just gave him a pitch that he could throw in the zone. That wasn't his fastball. That's I think what Hunter needs. Cause I'm not sure that he can improve his command. So can he throw a cutter without affecting his fastball shape? The curve and the splitter are not pitches he can throw in the zone for

strike. He's got to find one. I always lean to curveball because the margin for error on the curveball, especially when you're using it early in counts, it's just you don't have to be super fine with it. So usually that's the one you can work on flipping over and it's okay to do that. There's a lot of guys who, even if they know it's the curveball, can't really lift it that well. Yeah, and they don't want to. They're like, when you have a fore seam that gets hit as hard as his,

right? And that's what you want to hit you in at the fastball anyways. So like, oh, oh, you can throw a curveball over. The problem is same thing with Bradley. They're trying to throw it and it's just they're bouncing it. Because it's not, I don't think they're hard throwing guys. There's probably a mindset thing like, I'm not comfortable flipping something over. But Ashcraft says the same thing. And then he's a power guy that needs the same thing. And Ashcraft I don't think they're hard throwing guys. There's probably a mindset thing like, I'm not comfortable flipping something over. Like I always want guys to miss. But Ashcraft says the same thing, and then he's a power guy that needs the same thing. And Ashcraft told me,

when I throw my curve ball hard, it just bounces. Yeah, so you gotta find, the next thing we're gonna talk about is an interesting example for, because he has the command thing, the need for a command thing. I actually, this is a good example. I threw a slider and a sweeper. It turned into, the sweeper a command thing. I actually, this is a good example, I threw a slider and a sweeper.

It turned into, the sweeper turned into the swing and miss and the slider turned into the throw a strike that's not a fastball because it had like a 6% whiff rate, which is crazy low, but like it also wasn't hit hard at all either. So it's like, that's my wrinkle, I have a wrinkle, I'm using that as a wrinkle. Green's already throwing like the easiest thing

to throw for strikes is foreseam and the power slider. Yeah, yeah, but then now you're effectively a reliever and everything's hard again. And as a starter, that's the difference between throwing an extra inning every single time. I just feel like that's, a lot of guys are looking for that, that pitch, Strider was doing it too. Guys who throw really hard are trying to look for that.

Of the guys on the list, a second list, I think Green's my guy. Because I would just love to have that much power to work with. Yeah. 100%. I'd take Green. He's the most projectable. He's like, again, like I said, he's got the potential to be that two, we are a sub two era for half the year, like true, true a starting the All-Star game type guy. He is that.

He's the only guy on this list, probably. Let's get one more. Let's get Christian Scott in here. I mean, can he still tweak and improve his fastball enough to make it an above average offering? The model design is a little bit different. I mean, I think it's a little bit different this list probably. Let's get one more. Let's get Christian Scott in here. I mean, can he still tweak and improve his fastball enough to make it an above average offering? The model doesn't like it. It throws a 90 out there.

It's the lowest of anybody we've talked about as part of the show today. I like Christian Scott. I think there's a there's a great starter kit here. But is he also going to land in this sort of mid rotation guy with caves ceiling instead of something better than that? His command on his breaking balls is just not very good. Or hasn't been in the big leagues yet.

So like it's funny, the only thing he's throwing consistently for strikes is fastball. I think that's what's happening. I think that's what we've seen in three starts is that guys are just, they're saying, spit on it and they're willing to give him slider strikes and sweeper strikes in order to get to the fastball because I do think it's not a terrible fastball on paper and he's got a funky kind of low release point and approach angle and it rides more than it should for that on that arm angle so like it should be get it weird like swings and misses. I just

had his whiff rates up which they're all fairly fairly good. See if I can find them again real quick. On his fastball he's got a 32% whiff rate and a 27 on his slider, 30 on his sweeper and 23 on his split finger. Like plus 20% on everything they're almost 30% on everything. That's a good projectable I think swing and miss type guy. The problem is, if you don't throw enough strikes and they can eliminate three of your off speed pitches

and just sit on your fastball, he doesn't have a good enough fastball to do that. It is solid, but it's not good enough. So I think that's what's happening to him, but I think this is him being young, honestly. One of his biggest hot spots on the slider is like eight inches out of the zone Way down on the way like a non-competitive guy see that guys know about that veterans

They're just gonna spit on the slider. Yeah Sighters that much red that far outside the zone Yeah, it's not a good sign like the splitter the splitter heat map is is all over the place, too But that's a that's a splitter for you I think but there's some elevated, and there's some way off, like arm side. He's very clearly not comfortable and doesn't know where that's going.

So if I went and saw that, I'd be like, well, the slider that he throws second most of the time is like 30% where he wants it to go, and then the splitter is nowhere near anywhere. I don't even know where he's trying to throw it. And the sweeper, if I'm a lefty, the sweeper I can see coming a mile away. And the sweeper's just something you can naturally see because it's way off the plate away.

So you're either going to take it as a fastball and then adjust. And I'm not forcing exactly. So you can cheat on the foreseen. I think he's just getting that just cheating. And a couple of guys have hit him very, very hard. And that is accounted for the run scoring. That's how it works. And he doesn't have a huge sample size. So I'd say check back in after 10 starts and see if it evens out a little bit.

I think that'd be a little bit of a better indicator. It's not a terrible, there's some interesting thing about the fastball, which is that he has like almost league average-ish ride, which would be bad, except that he has way better horizontal movement than average. So it has some potential as a bit of a two-plane foreseam.

And the sweeper, I think, is a good pitch. And the splitter is a good pitch outside of the command question. But it's a good out pitch, but not a good pitch he can throw for strikes. So again, we're asking, which pitches can you throw for strikes? If he can just improve that slider heat map at all,

then he has two pitches he can throw for strikes. And the sweeper and split finger become out pitches that he doesn't have to play. He just needs the slider to be more competitive more often. I think we see his fastball quality change a lot if the slider just becomes more of a pitch they have to pay attention to as a in-the-zone pitch. So we all like Hunter Green out of this group. Who'd be the second choice for each of you coming out of this group? Same kind of question as last week.

Who would have been Lashley if we got to him. It would have been Garrett Crochet. It would have been probably. But I'd say Scott's probably second for me. You know? Yeah, I kind of agree. And the thing about the thing about Scott is watching him. I felt, you know, I made this joke about Fuel Plus. Like, I think I think he had more fuel than command.

So I feel like since we're trying to suss his Command out and you know so shorten into his career, like we may see that it's okay Command, it's like it's pretty decent. That's what I thought going forward. I might be tempted to still take the chance on Taj Bradley, there's just a good starter kit there with that velocity. If you could find something else to add with it, then it could change a lot for him. But yeah, I think Christian Scott makes plenty of sense here as a number two choice as well. Oh, that didn't just happen. Joey Bart Grand Slam against his old team.

That's pretty fun. Welcome back to town Joey Bart. I love this fueled by rage moments. Revenge games are real. We talked about those a few weeks ago. I think he probably had this series circled for a little while as soon as he landed in Pittsburgh. I had a great question from our discord that came in earlier this week.

This one came from Anye. What has been your favorite strikeout that you have seen this year? Trevor we'll play yours first. If you're watching on YouTube, this is Andres Munoz going up against Aaron Judge. Just pure filth. Just, just destroying him there. So 101 mile an hour sinker on the black to finish What did you love about that strikeout?

The tunnel okay, so the first slider swung and missed that perfect and you know judge knows That's where people are going then when he missed that second slider Oh come on like you tell you he's a little bit frustrated so 100% 100% slide like slider dead red slider at one two He's like I'm getting another one. Make sure we don't swing out of it if it bounces and just got 101 painted, which Munoz was probably like, I'm just trying to go for the box, I got the edge there. But it was painted, I mean, literally like,

an inch of the ball or whatever was over the edge, it was just perfect. And it's probably the hardest pitch he threw all year too. So it's like, I mean, tip your cap. And also I knew Eno was gonna come in with some Mason Miller, so I didn't go with Mason. So we can see that next.

Yeah, so my favorite one I've seen so far is Mason Miller against Juan Soto. The first one that came to mind was the first time they were up against each other. It was the Monday matinee, but later in the series, I think this was the Thursday night game, last came with the series, he sees him again., but later in the series, I think this was a Thursday night game last came with the series He sees him again Mason Miller drops in a slider which Soto wouldn't have been looking for and then he comes back with two fastballs

101 up and in and then 102 up above Up above the zone with some arm side run and Soto's reaction puts it over the top It's a three pitch strikeout which one Soto striking out on three pitches has to be extremely rare. Mason Miller's thrown as many nasty pitches as any reliever in the league. The last fastball he threw to Soto in that sequence might've been the nastiest fastball he's thrown out of a group of extremely nasty pitches.

Just absurd. Because it's not even on the black. It's actually like an inch or two above, but that's perfect. Yeah. It almost seemed like going into the plate appearance because he'd seen him earlier in the series, it almost looked like Juan Soto was like,

I want his fastball, I wanna hit his fastball, and send a message and say, hey man, your fastball might be great, but I'm still gonna hit. That's exactly what I was thinking. You got it right. You watch him swing at the first one, and it was one of his shuttle, like one of his, okay, okay,

but he like looked at him like slow, like pause, like I can get your fast, but you don't throw too hard for me, I'm Juan Soto. And then he threw him just another one and he's like just blown away. And when Juan like has something in his head, just notice this, you can go look it up. This is real, I have a theory and I think it's real.

When he has something that he's convicted on, he's like, I'm not getting beat on that pitch or like that, or if he gets completely fooled, like something that he wasn't thinking about, he does like he's gonna slam the bat on the ground. He'll like slam the bat, he'll do that. That's how he, he did it once to me because I threw him an accidental backdoor slider

that he had to emergency swing at because it was gonna be in the zone. And he swung a miss and he was like, that is not what I was expecting. I'm like, well, I wasn I trying to throw it there either? So we did it. But like that right there was, he was challenging a guy and the guy just met him head first

and he got just out skilled. Body language is really interesting because you mentioned this in the production meeting about Taj Bradley and Raphael Devers. And in the first at bat, I watched it. Taj Bradley throws 96 up and away to Raphael Devers. And in the first at bat, I watched it. Taj Bradley throws 96 up and away to Raphael Devers. And it's not the slamming bat thing, but it's this like,

it's like this like, the grudging, like kind of laugh. Like, oh yeah. Those guys, man, Devers is in that group. Try that again. Yeah. Try that again. Devers is in that group. They're wildly. Try that again. Divers is in that group. They're wildly confident in their ability.

Todd Bradley threw it again. And Divers took him deep to go for six homers in a row. So the reading body language is fascinating to me. I'm still not great at it. To compete the trifecta here, just to set up mine, in all of our cases, we have basically pitching backwards. I think we're basically the three strikeouts that we've taken really describe the state of modern pitching. So here's Paul Skeens against Cody Bellinger, splitter below the zone, 96, inside front

door, 100 miles an hour, and then two or three inches off the outside corner, 100. Like all three of our guys would have been burned at the stake for pitching like this, you know, in the thirties or forties or whatever. I mean, it's just like, they're going against conventional wisdom. Like your Paul Skeens, they're all sitting 100, it's zero, zero, and you throw the 96 mile an hour splitter, and it's close enough to the zone that he actually,

you know, takes a bite at it. And all three of our guys got finished off with fastballs that were triple digits. So it's still, you know, yes, people say like a hundred happens all the time or there's more and more hundreds. It's like, it's still pretty amazing when you see it. And I think what makes it even more amazing

and what might, and I don't want to speak for y'all, but something that that sticks out for me is that like, it's still pretty amazing when you see it. And I think what makes it even more amazing, and I don't wanna speak for y'all, but something that sticks out for me is that like, 100 when it's sprayed and it's like a foot above the zone is kinda like, okay, you like, I really muscled that one. And like, congratulations, you hit 100. 100 on the black? That like, especially in my room, a starting pitcher, but like, that doesn't, like, that means that doesn't like that means that they they can do that.

That means they can do it regularly enough that they can place it too. So we're into this new era of not just 100 wherever Henry Rodriguez style, you know, now it's 100 on the black. And that's when you're like, oh, man, what can hitters do about that? Nothing. And I think we were we're all nobody was a bad hitter in that group. Right. We're talking about Soto, Judge and Bellinger. Right. You can you can make the below average hitters in the league look really silly. But when you make some of the best hitters in the league look silly, you overmatch them. That just really jumps out when you're watching a game. Got one more topic for today.

We'll take some questions from the Live Hive too. I know it's a Thursday instead of a Friday, so maybe the turnout's a little light, but we're happy to answer some questions. I have a case for massive expansion in Major League Baseball because I want one thing. I want consequences. I want teams that are consistently not good

as a result of ownership not investing to be punished. And I want them to be punished in a way that matters to them financially. Now, to get what I want, I have to have a plan that actually gives them what they want. They want money, right? Owners want money, why wouldn't they? So my plan is to say, we're not adding two teams

to Major League Baseball. We're gonna try to add 10 teams to Major League Baseball. We're going to 40, right? Because if you wanna have promotion and relegation, you need to divide the league in half. Much more fun to cut 40 teams in half than to say let's add four and then send 14 teams to the new league and have 20 in the big,

no, no, no, no, I want 40 teams. That's the way it works. Every place that we've talked about for expansion or moving a team back to like Montreal, Salt Lake City, Vegas, Nashville. Let's give all these places teams, right? Build a stadium, get a team. Let's do this. Let's create more jobs for players. We've talked about the relievers. Every team having a bunch of dudes that throw 99. Spread that around a little bit. We got some talent Let's get some guys that are in their late 20s early 30s who might be getting pushed out of major league jobs

Give them new major league jobs give them more opportunities here And let's see what happens and the reason why I think it would work even though it will never happen Is because the expansion fees are huge right if the expansion fee for a new team is two and a half billion or three billion dollars. And maybe it goes down. Maybe it goes down because there's too many. Because you're doing 10. You're adding 10.

Let's say it's two billion. Two times 10, 20 billion. 30 current owners and ownership groups, pretty happy to get that big windfall in their pockets right now, especially with TV deals being what they are. I feel like you also set up an off ramp because the current group of owners and ownership

groups didn't sign up for promotion relegation, but you put something out there. You said, hey, you want to stick around? You want to keep this going? This is what it's going to be like from now on. And what you create is, I think, a lot of interesting possibilities from a competitive perspective where you could have at the end of the season a tournament. Eno called this the stay-in tournament during our production meeting where the teams that would be facing relegation actually have a playoff to see who stays up and who gets sent

down to the lower league. So you've expanded the playoffs without actually expanding the field of teams competing for the World Series in that year, which I think they want, right? Expanded playoffs without watering things down. That's a good thing. You've got playoffs for the teams trying to come up. That's pretty exciting too. What do you think? Am I completely out of my mind? I realize the chances of this happening are like 0.001%. But have I satisfied enough of the requirements to entice some of the very greedy owners out there?

You'd have to have hard numbers, that's for sure. They need to be like, this is what the check's gonna look like and can I have it right now type of situation, that's how they operate. I think it's really interesting. By the way, I think next time we do a presentation like this, we need to make our heads a little small and then we need a PowerPoint.

Yeah. PowerPoint slide. A PowerPoint would have been nice. Take us through it. Did you know a couple slides, keep it simple and open up for questions. Also some fake team names, that's always gonna make people really excited. Fake logos maybe if you really wanna get fun.

Oh, that was terrible. Could never be the Nashville blah-bitty-blahs. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Also the stay in tournament presented by DoorDash. That was also, that was thrown out as the second half of that. Yeah, I think it could, that's so interesting to me

because I think what would perk ears, the big things would be expanded playoffs Like you can just create a bunch of other stakes that aren't just the World Series Like that basketballs doing the midseason turn. This would be like we have other tournaments We you could end the you could end the the B series Season earlier, you know so that like you have some September playoffs in case that September, you know, the other ones aren't as exciting. You can watch some September playoffs for who might come up out of the second series, you know. Like they lock in or by a certain date you got to know who the

bought. I don't know. Like there's ways you could do that that cleverly. The relegation thing is interesting as long as there are like guarantees in place for like you said like revenue sharing changes a little bit to where like you obviously make less money so they're incentivized to win but it's not like gonna break your will to have a team anymore which and then there's like markets that are opening up and all kinds of stuff happening where it's where it's it's just it that's what people love about soccer is like, also all the teams can just play other teams.

Like you could play a team from the lower level as exhibition games before spring training or whatever. Like there's all this stuff where you can see, see these things happens and more, we said more jobs, not just for the players, but for all kinds of people that work in these towns, professional sports have a different type of, we don't have anything like this.

But basketball is trying stuff. It has been, people like it. But basketball's always had 16 teams make the playoffs. Like they've always had two, eight teams for both, not always, but like first. This is a way to expand playoffs without watering down the actual playoffs. Exactly, I love that.

I really kinda, I'm a basketball fan and I hate the first round of the playoffs. Like I'm just like, what are we doing here? They're a bad team. Some of these teams are bad. Like they're not good. Why are we watching them in the playoffs? I like the plan.

I think that's... If you could, I think the number like 20 billion is close because 20 billion, like you're almost giving them, like if you could give each one a billion dollars, like give each owner a billion dollars. Yeah, they're in. Like you're you're you're almost giving them like if you could give each one a billion dollars like give each owner a billion dollars Yeah, they're in like that's just like a free but I don't John's like wait who I'm gonna name any players I got a billion you would definitely get all the small market teams to be to take the billion, right? There might be some like ultra rich owners are like no, it's gonna water down But I don't think Colorado be a huh. What do you say 1 billion? Yeah

know it's gonna water down blah blah blah whatever. You don't think Colorado would be like, huh? What'd you say, one billion? A billion? Yeah, exactly. I think every single owner and ownership group would be like, a billion? Yeah, let's do it. Let's try it.

And I think, you know, 500 million, you'd probably get some extra people. And in fact, you know, we're getting a note from producer Ryan that Fisher might stay in Oakland with that extra money. It's that kind of money. Or you let him leave and there's an Oakland team, new Oakland team.

He can take his golden parachute, which he doesn't even need and just go away because there's a structure in place to off ramp the people that don't want to be a part of this. I mean, the one thing that would suck for Manfred is he wouldn't have as much leverage of like, oh, this team's going to leave because all the, you know, as possible expansion teams would be taken up.

But I love like, I, you know what I love is like, team's gonna leave because all the possible expansion teams would be taken up. But I love like, you know what I love is like, I only follow soccer tangentially, but I love like waking up on a Sunday and seeing a tweet from somebody I like that's like, oh, Lutentown is doing something again. You're like, Lutentown? Like really? So like I love this idea that like a team could catch lightning with some of their prospects or do something Really interesting with gameplay wouldn't it foster like innovation in the game? Because then you have this whole group of like secondary teams are like hey, man

We're in series B The only way to get to series A is do something totally different like we got to be we got to do something crazy over here Yeah, well think about the trade deadline. Imagine a trade deadline where you're trying to avoid relegation. You're trying to get better mid season because if you're not up in the higher league, there's a real cost to it. And trade deadline would be more rife, especially if you were allowed to trade with series B because there would be some series B that were like,

oh man, we're just stuck in. We're not even in the promotion tournament. So like all of a sudden right now, if you look at the trade deadline, like I was just on the radio in San Diego and I was like, where could you get starters? And so I looked at the Marlins and the White Sox and that was pretty much it because those are the ones that are obvious sellers at this point. Maybe more, you know, uncover themselves later. But if you had a Series B, you'd have maybe eight sellers, you know,

eight places you could go for players. And then the last thing is that we've talked about this a couple of times, but the Los Angeles Angels, there's a great piece by Sam Blum about how this is like a last chance to Loon and some guys are in the big leagues that wouldn't otherwise be because of the Angels. And if you want to say like, oh, there's not enough talent. I know the angels aren't great. But in terms of, you know, what they're playing to, they're playing to 20 to 20 wins, 30 losses. And you think that these players that wouldn't otherwise have chances are terrible. I don't know, man. Like, Cole Tucker is decent. Willie Calhoun is decent. Like, like Kevin Pilar is decent. If you

had an extra team of players like that, like, you know, people would come, you know, and maybe it wouldn't be 30,000 people, but maybe you'd be in a smaller market where you regularly get 10, 12,000. And then you you start to get 10 to 12,000 people, you figure something out analytically, or you figure something out scouting wise, and you start adding these young players to that core of all the leftover older players that are usually in Series B, right? And then you pop up and you're like,

oh man, we're doing something interesting. And then even from a media standpoint, you'd be like, oh, what is Birmingham, what's going on in Birmingham, Alabama? If the Rays can do this and find a way to win with the amount of money they have, that's the cool thing. Like baseball actually is uniquely positioned to do that, where people could find lighting in a bottle, can do this and find a way to win with the amount of money they have, that's the cool thing. Baseball actually is uniquely positioned to do that, where people could find lighting

in a bottle, build a great team, because the gap between the worst player in the big leagues and the best player in the big leagues, in terms of how much effect they can have on a game. In fact, they can have on the game, yeah. Baseball might be the smallest gap. Yeah, because you think about LeBron James in his prime. Exactly. He's taking over league could be the best player on the field. Exactly, he's taking over games. Basketball players can take over games.

Baseball players outside of maybe starting pitchers at times, that's the closest we can get to a game they can take over. But even they have to take a rest. Yeah, but they only use them once every five days. So like, that's just that day. But you don't have a guy who's like, I'm gonna score 50 today because we have to win. That doesn't exist. It doesn't exist, you can't do it. But you don't have a guy who's like, I'm gonna score 50 today because we have to win. That doesn't exist.

It doesn't exist, you can't do it. Hey, I'm glad you're on board. If you're handing, not only are you handing, let's say $750 million to every owner, but you're saying you're gonna get an increased share, postseason share. There's gonna be more postseason money now. Because we're gonna share in all this new playoff stuff that's going on.

The only rule is it has to make money, right? For it to be an actual idea. So you can satisfy that requirement and then put a good idea behind it, you have a chance at the very least. And you just destroyed like a lot of minor league towns. This would be kind of a cool way. Fresno right now has no love for Major League Baseball. Fresno was a great minor league town and is an indie ball league. Put Fresno on your list. Fresno is the type of city that could obviously have some people come to watch baseball and be in Series B and maybe even pop someday and jump up for a while

I mean Fresno or Luton town, you know what I mean? It's so funny to think about the ten current teams that would be most likely to go down and then of that group Which ones would be most likely to be stuck in the lower league for the longest period of time? Who would come back? Because you could see I mean Colorado because it's so tough, like you could just see Colorado getting stuck in the lower league forever. That's at least a possibility. But there's a few other franchises like that.

Although, you'd be giving them $750 million to do that. Right. They'd be voting against $750 million. I don't think they're going to vote against that. They don't seem to care that much, frankly. Like, the way they make decisions, they're kind of just good. So like, as long as that continue to make money that still think they just be like, alright

I do like 750 million plus an extra, you know what 10 20 million and you know in playoff revenue or something Hey, all right. We did it like it. I think it happened next job I like it too because I think it would put pressure on teams to, it would be way harder to assemble a bullpen of power throwing arms. Just be like, we, the giants bring up Randy Rodriguez throwing a hundred miles an hour. That would happen less often. Offense would go up for sure. You'd get a pretty significant bump in run production.

Although it'd go a little bit back to the maybe 70s and 80s where it'd be hard to build a lineup of nine thumpers. So you could get a little bit more of a like, oh, here's my break. You guys are checking all the boxes right now. Just wanted you to know that, so. Like it'd be cool, right?

Like, you know, like, like, like, you know, as a starting pitcher, if you could be like, man, that is seven, eight, nine, they can't hit. So, you know, I a starting pitcher, if you could be like, man, that is 7, 8, 9, they can't hit. So, you know, I'm facing the Dodgers, but if I can just get through the first six, 7, 8, 9 can't really hit. All right. Let us know what you think.

Drop us some comments under this video or on the actual recap that's going up on The Athletic here on Friday. Give us a follow on Twitter. You can find Trevor at I am Trevor May, find Eno at EnoSaris, find the pod at Rates and Barrels, find me at Derek and Riper. Join the Discord, have some commentary in there about this too. Maybe I'll start a thread for DVR's ridiculous expansion plan. If you have a question for a future episode send them through Discord or to our email ratesandbarrels.gmail.com. Have a great long weekend. We are back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening.