Rates & Barrels - Updated Prospect ETAs

Episode Date: April 28, 2020

Rundown1:39 Searching for Salsa in South Korea7:33 Developing Better Habits14:32 Updating Top Prospect ETAs21:08 Increased Playoffs = More Aggressive Callups?29:21 Which of the Top Teams Falls Most in Shortened Season?41:01 Why Do Some Pitchers Still Use Wind-Ups?50:09 Can Mitch Keller 'Fix' His Fastball?57:31 Problems with Pitching-Heavy Rosters?61:06 Beer Bracket UpdateFollow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Get a free 90-day trial to The Athletic: theathletic.com/free90days Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 90. It's April 28th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we're going to discuss our projected minor league timetables for a lot of prospects as we shorten up the length of the season. We don't know how much yet. Obviously, some plans have changed as far as when players might be making their debuts. Now, we had some mailbag questions about windups and box. We had a question about Mitch Keller, so we're going to get to those. We're also going to break down a roster that drafted a few weeks ago. There was a thought of,

hey, if the shape of the season's different and I have a roster built this way, am I screwed? So we'll go through that from a broader perspective as well. Eno's beer bracket has launched. We'll talk a bit about that later on in the show as well you know how's it going for you to start this week good good i i i had a fun set of conversations last night with some people in korea uh talked to min q sung the gm of the lottie Giants. Talked to Dan Straley and Josh Herzenberg, formerly of Driveline, and the Dodgers, who's now their pitching coordinator for the Lottie Giants in Busan in Korea. And, you know, the fun thing was that I was talking to Dan Straley, and, like, it seemed normal you know not not only was I finally

talking to a pitcher again and and we were talking you know some you know pitching data stuff and what he's doing there but also just the way he described his life it sounded like an American trying to figure out Korea you know he was talking about about how he cut a lot of fat out of his life because he used to be bigger and he said he didn't want old Dan coming back. And he said that Korean food that you get at restaurants and stuff is pretty fatty. And I think that fits with what I think of a bibimbap and bulgogi and Korean barbecue. A lot of the stuff is, is pretty fatty meat. Um, and so he said, you know, the kind of health food chains, I don't know, out here in California, we have like, um, I don't know if it's national, is it called, is it like fresh choice or something?

We don't have that here. We probably have something similar that's regional, though. Yeah, a place where you get salads and grilled chicken or something. Healthier choices, basically. And so he said he didn't really have that option, so he's cooking more than ever and he's using the air fryer. And he said basically he's allowed to go out. He's got a scooter. There's a place about 15 minutes away that he and Adrian Sampson, who he said they're best friends now because they're the two foreign pitchers in Lottie. And he says that they basically scooter over to a Shake Shack about 15 minutes minutes away and he said there's a place called um oh what was it called it sounded it's so bad it was called like what was that place called he

had a he had a place that basically he said he would never go to otherwise but it's the only place where he can get salsa and chips um and it's it's like their version of uh of like a maybe a taco bell but more like a chili's maybe i guess it sounded like yeah that probably sounds about right chili's has um prominent tortilla chips and salsa available yeah and he says that like they feel a little dirty when they do it and every time they go they decide that they're going to do like a real uh taco night where they cook in and do it um uh and then they they usually alternate going there and doing taco nights at home so you know he said he has to wear a mask and uh he gets temperature tested a fair amount um but and he also i tried to talk to him about what the biggest question i think um in this and somebody asked about one

somebody asked about what are the um morals of testing baseball players repeatedly uh when testing is not around i think that baseball could do something like syria has done in italy which is that uh for every one test administered to a baseball player, baseball buys five tests for the general public. It's not perfect, you know, but it will ensure that the supply of tests increases rather than decreases because of what baseball is doing. And it kind of helps everyone and helps baseball. I think that's a possibility. The other thing is the biggest question is what happens if someone tests positive, if a baseball player tests positive while they're playing.

And, you know, I talked to Dan about it, and he said I don't – he's not speaking for all of Korea. He said he doesn't know exactly, and he says he doesn't want to know because it's just more stress in his life. And he's just going to do what he does until someone tells him to stop doing it, basically. But he said that, like, it's a wait and see. Like, basically, the sport would stop for a couple of days while they did contact tracing. And once they did contact tracing and tested everybody that could have, that could have been near the person, they'll, they could reevaluate and basically say, okay,

we've got two or three players here that need to be quarantined. We'll just give them a special allowance to, to, to basically just DL those guys for two weeks and we'll play on, or it's like 15 people on one team. So we have to stop all of baseball for two weeks and we'll play on or it's like 15 people on one team so we have to stop all of baseball for two or three weeks yeah i've seen there's there's there's kind of a loose proposal in place yeah that that's that's they have they're working that way and and so far so good they made it through the first two weeks uh they're in intra-squad games and now they're doing spring training. So whenever we do start up, it's going to be like this, I think, in your personal life and in sports life where we're going to try and start up. But we may have to stop again.

Right. And that's, I think, increasingly something that I have just accepted. It's not going to be a perfect path forward. At least it's unlikely to be. And the way we've started to handle our day-to-day lives or week-to-week lives, really, if we're talking about running errands, a lot of those practices are probably still going to hold up for a while. Even if things keep opening up, it's not, oh, hey, I'm going to go to the grocery store and I'm not going to wear a mask. I'm not really going to worry about touching surfaces and whatever.

I'm going to go back to the way I was before all this started. I don't think that's how most people are going to handle it. At least I hope most people are going to keep a lot of the habits they've picked up for a while yet just to really ensure that this doesn't come back in worse form consolidating all of your errands uh to like like the day out you know yeah yeah right because i used to go my grocery habits were bad prior to yeah i used to go like two or three times a week sometimes. You know, because, oh, I forgot this. I forgot this. It was a pain, though.

Like, I started thinking about that recently. I'm like, you know, sitting down with my wife, talking about what we're going to eat for the next week, listing everything out very carefully, buying it all at once, making sure we process fruits and vegetables so they don't go bad. Those are all good habits to have, to not go to the store three or four times a week, to not go to multiple stores even. I mean, yeah, I understand. I live in a place where stores are pretty close together, and it's not that big of a deal, but I don't know. It's pushed me to support the smaller local store because I see how they're treating their employees. I see how they're treating their store in this see how they're treating their store in this situation.

And I want that business to do well. And I've also realized for me, I'm saving time. I'm not dealing with driving all over the place to break up my list into three parts just to save a few bucks. I think it's better to save the time and to have that time to focus on other things when I get home. Yeah, yeah.

And what I've done is we have a robust freezer selection because that was like when I freaked out early on and just bought a bunch of freezer stuff. And we actually haven't gotten to it because we've settled into a fairly regular routine. But what you can do with the freezer selection is fill in that last day or two before you go shopping again so you plan as much as possible and then the last day or two you're having fish sticks or whatever um because you know you want to make sure you're still kind of doing that once a week thing so you know i think that uh we we've found different ways to cope and we're going to continue to find those. I think, you know, we'll start doing more things like, you know, I don't know if this is like if like I'm allowed to say this publicly, but like I let my I let my father come over. You know, I think I'm allowed to say that, you know, we've been we've been sheltering in place for so long.

We haven't been going anywhere since March 10th or so. We're talking about six weeks. We're fairly sure that we don't have it. We're not asymptomatic carriers. We're fairly sure that he doesn't have it. We allowed him to come over. He had a lot of fun. He took the kids to the crawfish pond over here. And, um, he said it was like watching me, uh, back in the day in rural Georgia, um, you know,

looking for crawfish. They even found, uh, the biggest crawfish we've ever found in that little pond. So, um, it was kind of, you know, I think that we're just going to sort of cautiously feel our way through this and some of it will be our decision. You know, it won't all be on the national level. Some of it will be our decision on like, how do we move forward? How do we open things up, but still be cautious. And, uh, some of it will be institutional. So, and, but I think that the institutional thing will, you know, people kind of look to the institutions like baseball and stuff and be like oh you have to have it all figured out and you know you have to protect everybody and all this stuff i don't know if

that's possible so i think institutionally they're going to do something similar to us which is we've come up with a plan that's the best plan we can come up with we've talked to everybody it protects people as much as possible we don't know if it's going to work and we're going to open up tentatively. And if something bad happens, we're going to have to shut it down again for two or three weeks and try again. Yeah, I think I think that's kind of how we're going to go forward on this personally and institutionally. But I think it also provides like a little bit of hope. It's like we're humans and we're just doing our best to figure this out. It's helped a lot in places like the upper Midwest.

Madison, specifically, the weather got a lot better this weekend. So being able to spend a little more time just around the patio and just to be outside the walls a little bit more, I think also lifted the spirits for a lot of people in this area especially. So we're making progress. It might be slow. I'm not really here also for like the online shaming. Like I saw somebody, I think Matthew Iglesias posted a thing where he's like,

Oh, some sort of lockdown. And he had a picture of like two people sitting in a bar together. How do you know those? And it was like an outdoor bar. I was like, how do you know those two people weren't locked down together? like when you look in and when you look at like crowd shots of like people at the beach or stuff you know i can't speak for all of them and i do think that opening a beach is a

little bit uh scary but sometimes like if i went to the beach right now, I would take my family and it might look like five people not not observing social distancing. But it's the same unit that has been, you know, together for the last eight weeks or so, you know, six weeks. So, you know, I don't know. I don't know that you can look at a picture and shame people. And I'm not really here for the snitch lines where you call in and turn in somebody for poor behavior. Just because I've been on Nextdoor before. Do you know what Nextdoor is? No, is that something you have when you have a house?

Don't ever look. It's like a Facebook for neighborhoods, No, is that something you have when you have a house? Don't ever look. It's like a Facebook for neighborhoods, but it ends up being just like, you know, they were all talking about how we treated our cats for a while. And they were like, there's this one emaciated looking cat. Are we sure anybody's feeding it? Has anyone seen it being fed and then someone came to my front door and was like um so we're just all really concerned about your cat and i'm like oh hillary yeah she's the runt do you want to see how much she eats i give her three wet food containers a day i gave her so much food yesterday she just barfed on the ground. So, yes,

we're feeding the cat. Thank you for your concern. Please go away. Yeah, some people have too much time on their hands. Yes. I can't imagine going on next door right now. It's like, did you see somebody? I mean, there's

probably people who are mad that in the neighborhood where i live if i walk my dog i'm not wearing a mask in that situation because we're not densely populated i can pass people several feet away i can cross the street and avoid them i'm not running with a mask on dude i mean that's a bad use of a mask if it's a disposable one if it's a reusable one maybe okay but i i don't know tough to run harder to breathe yeah not uh not ideal but uh let's talk a little baseball because as more pieces come out and the reality has set in for me it's 81 to 100 games ken rosenthal had a piece that went up on on t, and that July 4th date keeps

kind of popping up for a lot of people. It just makes so much sense for a lot of reasons. We've talked about the implications on the minor leagues, and that could look completely different. And what a lot of people are wondering about as fantasy baseball gets closer to potentially starting up again is what happens with the top prospects. We talked about Alec Boehm on our last episode, and ETAs in particular could be adjusted quite a bit off of a normal season. And we had a question that came in via email from George about a few players, so we'll add his players to some other players of interest for everybody and cover as much ground as possible in george's email he pointed out that some of the minor leaguers that

he has are still on their big league rosters i think the broader point for me with rosters right now is i don't think they matter a lot in terms of what they're going to look like when games start i think there were some procedural things done to preserve club control a little bit and to hold on to some players who had opt-outs. I wouldn't read too much into players being optioned to AAA or not being optioned to AAA prior to the roster freeze. So don't sweat that too much. Yeah, and it's a little bit like the DL

where they basically don't want to make a decision until the very last moment when they have to. Right. You know, so unless there's like a 40 or 25 man roster issue, which I think that might have been going on in Cleveland where they wanted to keep some guys around and the other guys were on the 40 so they could they could option them. Then, you know, I think that that was what that was about.

But otherwise, like if they don't have to make a decision on Alec bomb they're not gonna make it now um and they're not gonna telegraph that one so um and they're all talking about this like the way we are i i you know went and uh do we have an email that we want to do we want to say the exact names or yeah this email was from george uh and it was two- question. How likely is it that these players contribute in 2020 and will these contributions continue in 2021? Bohm, Jonathan India, Nationals Luis Garcia, Spencer Howard, and fifth guy on the list, Pirate Tallstop O'Neal Cruz. I like the Tallstop.

That was good. It's up and down. I think that the analysis has to end up depending on the team and the player. And I'm not using it as a cop-out, but I'm talking to, I was just DMing with a person in player development about this exact thing. And he thought that, one, that basically the minor leagues would be complex ball, just like I've been saying, basically like intra-squad. Maybe you travel to a close by complex, but not stuff where they're necessarily recording the results in a way that we can see. And so he said that would be what the minor leagues is like. And then I asked him, well, what if you've got someone who's major league ready,

like a Pearson or a Gore or somebody, and you don't think that they're going to learn a lot just facing the same guys in the complex every day? What would you do? And they said, if it's a lost year guys in the complex every day. You know, what would you do? And they said, if it's a lost year anyways in the show, might as well have them there and see what they can do since most will discredit 2020 anyways. Win-win.

Which was kind of a bit of a spin on it that I hadn't thought about was kind of how people think of the year and, and the type of production that happens in it. But it is possible that you could just try a player out in the big leagues and almost treat it as, you know,

another minor league year. I think that would be maybe something that like the Pittsburgh Pirates with Cabrian Hayes, if you've got the Pittsburgh Pirates with Cabrian Hayes. If you've got an extra roster spot and Cabrian Hayes, you know, you feel like he's ready and he hasn't really played. He's not going to play that much. You know, he's not going to learn that much in complex ball. And you have this extra roster spot. Maybe you bring him up and you don't necessarily give him Colin Moran's job right away.

But you see if he plays his way into it or not. You know what I mean? And you use it to further develop him and see what you're doing. Could be a possibility. But the way on the other side of this, and my friend had to admit this, it was true, that on the other side of it is, if you're really cheap, like the like the pirates and you think that revenue

is going to be bad and it's going to be worse going forward then we've talked about this like then you just want to keep everyone as cheap as possible for as long as possible so it's about the player how ready they are how much they can learn from complex type ball and it's about the team in terms of how financially stable they are. And it's about the team in terms of how good their playoff odds are. So if you kind of set, let's say like 30%, let's say you have a 30% playoff odd or better, and you've been building and you've got some young players. Who's that like? So the Angels have a 33% playoff odds in a short season. Maybe that helps them put Adele on the Major League squad. The White Sox have 35%.

I think Kopech did get optioned, but I do think Kopech will spend the majority of the year in the Major Leagues this year. Philadelphia Phillies, 30%. It could be both Baum and Howard if they go for it. The Diamondbacks at 31%. I mean, I think there was some risk that Gallin wasn't going to make the rotation, but that risk is gone completely at this point. Yeah, that was kind of an absurd notion at the time.

That was probably like midwinter sort of stuff because somebody counted the number of starters in the depth chart and said hey they have too many yeah when zach gallon has options well like no no come on like this is a guy that they they see as a big part of their present and future there's there's no reason to mess around and play games with him but i think and then Leake got hurt like a week later too. Yeah, and then that was kind of just solved that way. But yeah, the team's in the middle. And the Padres are definitely part of this too.

This is why Mackenzie Gore is so fascinating. Looking at the Fangraphs playoff odds right now, they have a 40.5% chance of making the playoffs based on the Fangraphs projections. Who's that, the Padres? The Padres, that's high yeah yeah and by zips i was using zips numbers sorry um by zips it's uh was 42 so yeah i mean i think that they they uh and especially with the need for pitching i wouldn't be surprised if gore and patino uh spend three quarters of the season in the major leagues this year.

Well, the other part of this, too, if you think about revenue and the possibility, perhaps, of having some fans maybe later in the season or in the postseason or what could be an expanded postseason, the incentive to qualify for a postseason in which you can actually have some fans, potentially, is up. It's another reason to right maybe by that point i mean that's the other thing that was in ken rosenthal's piece that was like a lot of this is going to be evaluative so they might do a first half where they're like we're going to play in arizona and texas or something for the first half we're going to keep it uh simple for the first half and then uh we're going to reevaluate

and see if we can open up and see if we can do some fans because other leagues are already talking about opening up um to fans with like you know one-third the capacity of usual and some distancing guidelines and masks required and stuff like that so um and and the owners are talking about asking for some clawing back some money from the players if they don't have fans because the fans represent a big portion of their income. So there's definitely that cookie, that carrot possibly at the end of making the postseason and getting some actual fans in seats. And I think among the various proposals, there's been this kind of undertone that there could be more teams in the postseason this season. So that opens up some spots for potential mid-tier teams as well. Now, just to get back to some of the names, Boehm, as we talked about last week, I think

he's close. I think he is up for half of the names, Boehm, as we talked about last week, I think he's close. I think he is up for half of this season, if not more. I think his opportunity may hinge on that extra hitter spot being available in the lineup, not because he would necessarily be the DH, but because they could move some guys around. They could move Gene Segura back over to second base. They could give infielders days off

and rotate the dh spot a little bit um so i think boom of the players of the position players that george asked about is the most likely to contribute in 2020 i think he's a regular for them by 2021 but everybody else on that list from the position players, Jonathan India, even with extra roster spots, I have a hard time finding a place for him, at least in terms of playing time. If rosters are big enough, sure, why not, kind of as your friend suggested. But I also don't see the Reds having an incentive to play him over several other more polished, more productive infielders. other more polished, more productive infielders. Yeah. I mean, if he was an outfielder, he has a chance. But even then, they've got Irvin and Aquino.

I'm not saying Irvin and Aquino are better than India, but Irvin and Aquino have both played in the major leagues and fit a bit of a right-handed need and play the outfield. So it's just, yeah, it's not. But like for the Cardinals, their playoff odds by zips go from 28% to 34%. And I think that's just yet another argument for Dylan Carlson making the show. Right. Dylan Carlson was already kind of tracking towards a very early 2020 debut.

He might just be up immediately or within a few days of the season starting. We'll see how service time is ultimately determined. But Luis Garcia, I mean, he was a 19-year-old, a young 19-year-old. He turned 19 last May. He was at AA last year. He was below league average, his 79 wrc plus but age to level i mean just the fact that he he didn't get completely destroyed by pitching at that level says a lot i don't see him coming up in 2020 maybe he's a part of their infield in 2021 though just given

how aggressively they've been moving him up and odiel cruz i think for the reasons you mentioned i think the pirates they are in that goofy spot where they're always cheap. They're not close to contending. If the NL Central is still the NL Central this year, they're easily the fifth best team in the bunch. I think the Brian Hayes thing is different because he's older. He's further along, whereas Cruz. And the ceiling is lower.

O'Neal Cruz is a classic, really low floor, really high ceiling guy. Right. He makes a lot more sense for complex ball anyway. Like, even if you put him on a team that isn't frugal, holding him back for another year probably makes a lot of sense. I would love a year of making Cruz feel comfortable at the plate, get him feeling good about walking 10% of the time, striking out 22% of the time, hitting as many ground balls as fly balls, and just sort of evening out his...

turning more of his tools into skills, and feeling good at the plate. He's had some good seasons and good stretches and some really bad ones. So an extended year of feeling good at the plate, even if it wasn't against major leaguers, I think, especially since he's 21, I think it's okay. 22 next year, then he's got a full season under his belt. I would say that they probably next year

even play the slow game with him, but maybe he's up by 2021, June, July. Yeah, I think he's a mid-June 2021 ETA for me because of the org. I think in other organizations, he might be a late April or May 2021 call up, But the Pirates, you know, they think about Super 2 and they're going to wait as long as they reasonably can. I would say Garcia is probably like a May 2021 guy. India, I think, needs a trade. I think he's sort of blocked for a while. I don't really have high expectations for him.

I do think there were some injuries for him, though, last year, if I'm not mistaken. What's scouting going to be like? What if you want to trade India in the offseason going into 2020? What's the other team going to look at? Do they send people for looks? Do they get track man? Will the Reds be like, we had track man on him, here it is?

Or are they not going to give that? If they don't give that, did the other team have that TrackMan? That'd be really weird. And not all these complexes will have TrackMan set up. And if they do, it'll be in the, like the Reds will own it. You know, it'll be the Reds' data, not like, not data they share.

Unless people share, that's going to be, that's a fascinating question that I just stumbled upon. Well, this is kind of like the old football exchange game tape thing. Teams would trade tape ahead of time, and each team could prepare. Do teams in a complex situation with their minor leaguers, do they record games? Do they even stream games maybe on social media since the games don't count?

There are no rights holders. Are you going to let a scout in physically that might just be part of the plan to try to be as safe as possible say hey no scouts on site for this season you'd have to do something you have to have video

you need to look at other teams players so I think they have to work out some kind of exchange or some kind of accessible system wonder if it'll be like one year blip where like everyone's relying on their scouts because the data is super wonky and we were supposed to be entering into a new uh a new data stratosphere with hawkeye so it's just a a crazy thing here's another thought I had. Just off the rundown question for you. I'm looking at these teams, and of course, in a short season, the teams that suffer the most are

the people who are supposed to win it all, basically. The Dodgers apparently had a 99% playoff odds going into the season by zips. And they drop all the way to 70%. And the Yankees were at 91%. They dropped to 63%. Astros were 84%. They dropped to 59%.

The Nationals were 72%. They dropped to 50%. The Tampa Bay Rays were 77%. They dropped to 56%. Which of those five teams is the one that doesn't make it? Of the good teams that have fallen in playoff odds. Because it's a short season. I could see maybe even the Nationals. They seem

to be dependent on the Major League rotation. What if one of those guys goes down with injury or two of those guys go down with injury um i could see them having a hard time uh putting together a pitching staff they don't have a lot of depth you know like their sixth starter is their fifth and sixth starters are joe ross and austin voth and i don't know what they do after that it's also easy to look at that team and say you, maybe they don't get as much of a step forward from Victor Robles as they'd hope. Maybe Carter Keboom's just kind of okay and not above average. They see the loss of Rendon. Right.

I think they could feel the loss of Rendon more than... I think they're going to be fine. But in their range of outcomes, in their reasonable range of outcomes, they don't do enough to replace him by getting extra production from some of the younger players. That could happen. The younger guys, yeah. Yeah. And the Astros are fascinating too because not only are they coming off

this big scandal and so we're all waiting to see how much they benefited from that in the past, but a fair amount of those guys really benefited from their home park, not in a way where Minute Maid gives everyone homers, but they knew their home park really well, and they used it really well. So Alex Bregman was a little bit like Brian Dozier the year where he pulled every one of his homers down the line. was a little bit like Brian Dozier the year where he pulled every one of his homers down the line. And, you know, Minnesota's not a great place to hit in the center of the field. So Dozier was like, I'm just going to pull these all down the line. And he had like 50 homers one year.

I think Bregman did a little bit of that where like his, his stat cast type type power numbers are not really that great. And, um, But he made the most of it by basically placing all of his powerful batted balls in the right place for them. The Crawford boxes are a perfect place to aim for, basically. So what if they're

not playing there? What does that look like? And what if they don't get the benefits of whatever system they had in place in terms of stealing signs and stuff? That's a really interesting one that they went from 72% to 50%.

I have to think that the Rays are the type of team that will benefit from this. Not only do they pitch, they play in a fairly neutral park, like a dome that skews a little bit towards pitchers, but they have so much organizational depth. I mean, they just have so much. Does this mean that Wander Franco is slightly more likely to make the major leagues? He's still one of the toughest players to figure out because they have a pretty crowded roster.

We've talked about this in the past where they can't mix and match every position. But if you give them just a little bit more room, do they say, you know what, we're going to play him. We're going to play Adames up the middle with Wander Franco. And we're going to just take our chances that we manage the playing time right. I think that's a possibility because you don't – do you really want Wander Franco to play complex ball for a year? Is that ideal?

No, of course not. It doesn't seem like it would really challenge him, and he hasn't been challenged yet. His WRC pluses and his first three attempts at leagues were all over 50 yeah 150 i don't know i mean i think it gives him a slight bump at least and i think it's really easy on the 10 likely or something yeah it was probably one or two percent before right it was a rash of injuries before now there might be some other considerations that the razor rosters more churn yeah and then double headers within that is if you do bring him up how do you handle playing time if he slumps for a while i mean like that's a messy development question to think about too is

hey we're gonna throw this guy out there he's gonna be the bottom third of the lineup to start we'll see how it goes if it goes goes well, he moves up. He plays more. If it doesn't go well, you've got fewer games. You're still trying to make the playoffs, but you're also still trying to continue his development. I guess that would be some proof in the pudding that the complex minor leagues

as they will be for this season might be okay for a stretch because you tried it. He wasn't quite ready. I think there is an increased chance but i still think he's a relatively low probability it's it's still easier to look at a team like seattle who i think with the fan graphs odds they still have a zero percent chance of making the playoffs which they technically short season zips has them all the way up to five up to five okay. But less than the Tigers. Less than the Tigers.

But those teams, to me, the Mariners, the Tigers, the Orioles, don't really have any elite prospects. They're not going to do it. They have no reason to play Kalanich in the major leagues this year, I don't think. Right. You're not going to see him. You're not going to see Rodriguez.

You're not going to see Rutschman for the Orioles. I don't think so. You're not going to see Maez. I think you could see Skubal. I think the difference with pitchers is that you want I mean, you're not going to see my, I think you could see scruple. I think the, the difference with pitchers is that you want to make sure you're not just wasting, you're not wasting the arm essentially.

It's a really cynical way to look at it, but I think there's at least a chance of that happening, but I think the shortened season has made it easier for the teams that really still don't have much of a chance to say we're just going to wait and bring these guys up at the beginning of 2021 yeah i would say that generally because we haven't even seen the specifics of the expanded roster it may just be you know one or two extra pitchers and maybe they don't you know maybe the owners don't want to spend more money

because it would be more money that they're giving out if they have expanded rosters for hitters. And so maybe the retort is, we don't want to pay for those extra. We'll pay for extra pitchers because we don't want them to all be injured. And yeah, we understand that. But maybe they just make it 27 and you get 14 pitchers.

And just because of the potential injury and the potential double headers and the way the season is going to go, I think that every ready pitching prospect gets a little bit of a bump. And I could say that is the one thing I could say across the board. Every ready pitching prospect gets a little bit of a bump. When it comes to hitters, it's a little bit more touch and go. Yeah, I think that's a pretty good summary as far as how that's likely to come

together. But, you know, Major League ready starting pitching prospects that have not played in the Major Leagues are a tough way to make your business in pansy baseball. Yeah, you're still going to deal with, even with an elite talent like wander franco the risk that playing time could dry up right away just because but i just mean

pitchers specifically i mean like the bust rate is higher on pitchers and how many even highly rated you know highly thought of pitchers um you, you know, uh, bust. And then on top of that, think about how many guys that you, that you like now that struggled early in their careers. I mean, Corbin was up and down. Um, you know, uh, are there any more examples? There's gotta be more examples. I mean, Verlander wasn't Verlander right away. Scherzer definitely wasn't Scherzer right away. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, so I would think that there's even more examples if we open it up.

But, you know, betting on a guy to just – Oh, and then there's the types that were like Julio Urias or, you know, other guys were like they were good, but they were in the bullpen some, and, you know, they didn't return a huge fantasy investment. Right. So I feel like, and that's going to be possible of all pitchers this year where we don't know how many are going to throw five innings and when. And I saw Tom Tango speculating, and I think he's probably right,

that there's going to be a lot of bullpen games. Well, it's another way to give your young players innings that matter too. If you have guys that are close and you don't have rotation spots necessarily, two or three innings out of the pen might be kind of where they're at right now. They might have two pitches that are good major league pitches they command well. That'll get them through the lineup once. And if you give them three innings against major leaguers out of the pen, you might have a chance for them to sneak in that third pitch

and still work on it. I was talking to Nate Pearson about why did you, in the minor leagues, why do they have you throw one or two innings one day, take five days off, and then throw four or five innings? Why didn't they just have you throw three innings every time? He's like, because if I threw three innings, I would never use a third pitch. So they wanted me to do that. So maybe they'll figure out something like that where major league pitchers, they can be in the major leagues and they can kind of be starters,

kind of like piggyback or something where they combine two guys that are going to throw four innings or something. But, yeah, it's going to be a weird year. And I would suspect that nobody, even like a pro-rated version, gets to like a pro-rated 220 innings. No, that's just not going to happen. Players got to stretch back out again, too. I think that's something we've been talking about for a little while now as well. The Black Tux believes every groom deserves a better experience when it comes to finding formal wear, a suit, or a tuxedo for their big day. Did you know the Black Tux was actually started by two guys who had one of the worst tuxedo fittings you could imagine?

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All right, more questions to get to. And the next one is one that I had thought about a while ago and basically forgot about it. Not the specific player, but this is a broader question that came to mind. This comes from Fred. Do you have any strong opinions on how pitchers are starting their windups?

Thinking of someone like Mike Clevenger and how he rocks into his motion, it's something that seems odd, but games like MLB The Show have made it seem like that was common among historical pitchers. That's the first part of the question. I was thinking about this just from a repeating your mechanics standpoint and how if it were completely up to me, I would not want my pitchers to have a stretch and a wind-up delivery. I don't think it's good to have two different deliveries.

But how do you feel about pitchers who still work that way? That's a general trend. The general trend in baseball is to have one delivery and to pitch out of the stretch all the time, basically. And I think that the things that generate velocity are not necessarily the things in the wind-up, like the stuff that you see when they're sort of getting into their wind-up. I think that the things that generate velocity

generally have to do with your shoulder, your shoulder rotation as a, as it's coming through, um, your lead leg and, uh, how, how your, uh, how your torso rotates. Um, so that's a lot of sort of compact right at, at, at, at delivery stuff, not so much like all that sort of gathering that people used to do. And I think of like Daniel Mengden, where he had like this crazy rock in the thing. And I love watching it, you know, but, you know, it it didn't lead to good outcomes when he had to go to the stretch. He was always a person that did really poorly once he was forced to go to the stretch, I think because he lost some command and he didn't focus on his pitching out of the stretch.

And the other thing is that a long arm path in the back, there's some link between that and injury. So I can imagine that there's a lot of old-school deliveries that sort of require a lot of sort of rocking. And then the ball is sort of coming back up, you know, in the back and it takes a long path. And that that could lead to timing issues. And it generally is the more complicated your delivery is. Like, I think that's where you were going a little bit, too, is the more complicated delivery is the more stuff you have to repeat every time.

And, yeah, I mean, maybe you've been doing this your whole life. And so you're actually okay with it, but maybe a little bit of an injury here, a little bit injury there. Now, all of a sudden, all these complicated things that you're doing are set out of whack and you can't get them back together again. So I think generally there is a trend towards pitching out of stretch and simpler pitching motions. Yeah, I was also wondering too if maybe you become more susceptible to tipping pitches

if you're working out of a windup. You've got more moving parts. There could be something that teams pick up on. They do differently every time, yeah. Yeah, that just kind of gives away what you're actually going to do. I wish that I – maybe I should do more research into pitching mechanics that the stuff that I've read is not something that you can necessarily see with the naked eye very easily. force into your lead leg and how much your shoulder, like the relationship of your shoulder and timing issues. I don't think I can look at a video and be like, oh, that guy's going to get injured

a lot. At the same time, when I look at Joe Ross or Tyson Ross or when I look at Clevenger, there's some violence in the delivery that makes me concerned, I guess. But I will have to admit that I don't necessarily have the vocabulary and the knowledge to tell you exactly why. That's a little bit more, I guess, speaking out of my ass. But I will say, you know, watch Clevenger.

That delivery looks fairly violent. Yeah. And he's had a fair share of weird injuries. And it makes you wonder, yeah, there's a change around the corner. There was a would you rather today. There could be. I don't know. There's a would you rather today on the on the athletic bieber or clevenger

um and i think zach mosel did a great job of writing it up the first comment was i'd rather have clevenger for a game but be refer his career basically and i think i agree with that because i think bieber is the kind of guy i would want to bet on to continuous success year to year because he's so good at command he's so good at at replicating his delivery so smooth basically um but clevenger's violence in a single game i think maybe has more upside in terms of just scaring the crap out of the hitters throwing the ball harder you know and uh and having a different movement profiles. But I don't know that I have confidence in Clevenger to have a real long string of healthy seasons.

I don't know. Clevenger's a little bit older than you think, too. It's not always as simple as that. 28 or 29, right? Yeah, he's already 29. I mean, Jacob deGrom was a college shortstop, converted pitcher, had Tommy John. His path to when he broke out kind of made sense

when he traced it all back and everything. But, yeah, Clevenger, it's surprising to me. He's already 29. That's slowed the time frame, right? Yep. I don't think – I mean, in the minor leagues, he was pretty good. Let me see. Yeah, I mean, he got stuck in the low levels with the Angels for a while,

so I would assume those were some injury seasons way back in 2013. Without many innings. I mean, in 2013, he had five innings. That might have been a surgery. And in 2014, he had 44, 100. Yeah, 150 with the Indians. He's only had one 200 inning season yeah it's definitely more injury risk there than you might think it's not just the stuff we've seen

in the big leagues uh the other question from fred was about craig kimbrell and he wants to know shouldn't something like kimbrell set up in the stretch be a balk as he comes set he rocks towards home and back repeatedly it seems like a weird rhythm thing for him but it's not something I'm ever seeing even 10 years ago seems like it violated the letter of the law for a balk given that a pitcher is moving toward home and stopping any idea where it may have come from

there's a few guys that I think balk I mean John Gant does something really weird he's cleaned his up a little bit compared to when he first broke in yeah didn't even fulton years have like a little bit of a foot there's some weird things where like you can't really put your foot down twice and some people do it um i don't know I think the balk is unevenly adjudicated and is not a great rule and could use clarification. I think that the whole lefties pick off move thing is kind of a ridiculous idea.

This like 45 degree line that no one ever is looking at you know why can't they just put that down and then some chalk or something if that exists um yeah and think about the angles that the umpires are having when they're trying to judge that there's a guy you know a guy at first base but he's not like he's not a 90 degree angle to the pitcher he's like a little bit off i don't know uh anyway those i think those are also um the kind of rules that if you go to to the game with somebody who is more of a casual fan they don't want to they don't care about those rules no they don't want to hear about them it's not the most exciting thing um about baseball i do i do think it's like i think

it's worth like questioning like yes i think kim rolls is like a little bit weird and gantz was weird and caps's thing was carter caps when he used to do that sort of jumping off the mound thing was a little bit weird. And if there's, but the thing is, generally being super weird in your delivery is going to lead to command issues and repeatability issues and stuff like that. So I think that's generally why we don't see more of them, not necessarily because of the rule. Because the rule is not applied judiciously. Thanks a lot for the question, Fred. We've got another question here from Daniel. It's about Mitch Keller. Daniel wrote he's had

a fair amount of buzz this season and you've been down on him apparently because of a straight fastball which kind of begs the question, how hard is it to change a grip and try to get movement on the fastball? Reports have said they are trying to change his pitch mix, which sounds promising. So Mitch Keller specifically, you know, with the Pirates making some significant changes to how they're approaching pitching, where do you fall on him for 2020 and maybe for 2021 as well? Well, you know, I like him because there are a lot of parts there. You know, in terms of stuff plus, you know, the driveline stuff number,

the slider is 20% above league average. The curveball is 13% above league average. The fastball, even with its issues is a 95 so it's there and the change up is not great at an 85 but like you know that that could be a show me change um and and so i think that there's enough there and i think if he hasn't solved the fastball issues by now then um it's not huge hope that he's going to change the movement profile on his fastball at this point this age this many fastballs he's thrown in the past so i actually think that it's most hopeful that we're hearing about his pitch mix change um Last year, he only threw sliders 20% of the time. And in terms of Command+, let me see here.

Let's see if he can command that slider enough to use it much more. Come on, Mitch Keller slider. There we go. Mitch Keller slider there we go Mitch Keller slider command plus 102 so that's not a huge number but it's above average command of the slider so maybe he

pushes that slider percentage to 40% and he uses the slider to get some strikes in counts where he was throwing the foreseam and getting tattooed. I mean, last year, the four seam had a 703 slugging percentage. So, you know, that was a problem.

The slider had a 289 slugging percentage. And I'm not saying that just if you replace one with the other, bingo, bingo bango you've got a guy but um i do think that uh being less predictable with the four seam is a way out for him because he's got two wood breaking balls and maybe a show me change um and that's enough to take pressure off the fastball so i i don't think he's going to change the movement profile on that fastball very much uh but i do think uh he can change his pitch mix and so that's the most hopeful thing yeah so if he gets that fastball usage down maybe closer to 50 and bumps up the change a little bit maybe each of the breaking balls a tick you know that gives him a little more balance too so maybe just getting away from the fastball would help and he loves it because it's a 96-mile-an-hour fastball,

but just in terms of movement, it's straight. It doesn't have much wiggle and it doesn't have much ride. 60%. He should not be using the 60%. No, I think that's something we'll see the Pirates tweak this season. I'm a little more optimistic about their pitching now than I have been probably in four to five years at least. It's been quite a

while since I was looking at that team and rounding up on skills. It's so weird how you can fall behind so fast. That was one thing that I was talking to some player development people about. I was like, how much of a slog must it be to always be out in front?

Because as soon as you think you have something, you have two or three years before everyone's doing it. And if you don't, and he was like, you just have to keep trying to innovate. They need to keep pushing it and you have to keep pushing it.

Foot on the gas as hard as you can and realize that we're not always right now, but we have to keep going forward because otherwise we're going to fall behind. I think that's the only explanation for what happened with Ray Searidge and the Pirates. They were on top of the game at one point, and then they just didn't keep innovating.

I mean, they wrote a whole book about it. Sawchuk wrote Big Data Baseball about how great the Pirates were. They couldn't have been idiots, but I think they must have been complacent or maybe it was just the luck of how the player personnel worked out. I don't know.

I think that's the scary thing for teams. We've talked about this just from building rosters, like back in, in labor. I looked at what worked for me last year, saw that I had the flaw of buying two closers and then repeated the flaw because it worked so well last year and thought, why did I do the thing that didn't work last year even though the result was good?

You do have to evaluate your process as a team. You do have to constantly change it. Even when you get things right, it might not be entirely because of your process. It's exactly what you said. It might just be the perfect storm with the talent in the system at the time making it look like it worked a lot better than the system actually was working. Or the other side of that, that later the, the personnel didn't fit what they were doing and it made them look bad, even though they were, they were doing the right thing. So yeah. And I, I tried to change my labor philosophy a little bit

because I got so close last year, but Luis Severino really hurt me. And so what I thought was, you know, I will spend a little bit less on my ace and filter that money down and try to get a bunch of guys who will be healthy because, you know, getting innings is so difficult right now. And that's where I lost was innings and wins that Severino would have given me. So did I overreact? Was that a good thing to learn? It's very difficult to know if you're learning the right thing. Yeah, I think it's even more difficult when you're just trying to figure out what's next, though, too. A constant innovation mindset would be exhausting to have.

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All right, we had another question come in this week from Nathan, who is writing from Australia, which is awesome. Glad we have kind of a global audience now for this pod. we have kind of a global audience now for this uh this pod but you know he drafted before all of the baseball world and the general world came to a halt and he went very pitching heavy in his 12 team league it's a league that has a 1500 innings limit uh you know starter wins homers allowed k's holds era whip walk rate quality, and net saves as categories. So he went very heavy with pitching. He's got a lot of good pitchers, though.

He's got Cole, Clevenger, Castillo, Rikidi, Paxton, Gore, Rogers, Nick Anderson, Tommy Canely, Dustin May, and Giovanni Gallegos for a pitching staff. And he's just worried that if his league is going to fade pitching in a shortened season, is he imbalanced? And I really don't think the league changing its plans is going to change much in a league where you have that many pitching categories and you have so much talent already there. I mean, he sent us his list of hitters, too. I think the offense is solid. It's not as deep and great as that pitching staff is, but would you be worried about having too much pitching in a year where injuries could theoretically go through the roof, given the unusual shape of everything? Yeah, that's a good point. I do worry a little bit about that offense. I mean, Posey, Freeman, LeMay, Hughes, Suarez. Suarez, getting more time to heal that shoulder might be good. Andrews, Laureano, Schwarber, Chu, Cruz is good. Segura, Abasel Garcia, David Peralta, McCutcheon, Fletcher. I'll tell you what I'd be tempted to do. I would be tempted to package Clevenger and someone like Chu for a stud bat.

Yeah, try to turn one potential ace into a top 30, top 40 type hitterter and the reason i picked those names was chu um leaving he would have left a really nice uh home park anyway uh to go to the new park in texas this year uh but um just generally that's a person leaving a hitter friendly park. Um, and maybe he's in Arizona where, you know, maybe he's at a park where it's super hitter friendly too, but, um, at his age, he's also an injury risk. Um, I don't know that just, that's a name that sort of jumped off the page at me. And I just feel like hitting is...

Man, the thing is, hitting is going to be easier to find because there's going to be so much hitting. Right. That was kind of where I was going to go, too, was just to say, hey, even if you don't have enough bats right now, it's a 12-team league. It looks like it's pretty deep in terms of rosters. You can just drop two for somebody that takes a job or something.

Or David Fletcher to me is probably a cut in a 12-team league. I know he's versatile, but you're going to find somebody. You mentioned AJ Pollock being available. I'd rather have AJ Pollock than David Fletcher right now. Especially if there's a universal DH, Pollock could be a I'd rather have A.J. Pollock than David Fletcher right now. Especially if it's a universal DH, Pollock could be a big gainer from that. In fact, universal DH would create sort of 12 jobs. I mean, it might not be 12.

We've talked about how it would be more nuanced than that, but there'd be 12 potential type jobs that somebody could fill in the National League that would create 10 to 12 interesting new hitters in 12-team leagues. So, yeah, I guess, yeah, I'm convinced. Hold tight. Hold tight. Maybe you'll win your pitching stats. Maybe you'll win your pitching stats with like a 3-6 ERA.

Yeah, it could be a really, really nasty pitching staff that Nathan has put together. And Dustin May, what's fun too about Dustin May is that he may end up being a vulture starter, may end up getting more innings than just a reliever. So that's a fun sort of RP eligible SP, that you might be able to play with there. Yeah, I agree with you there. Now, one more thing we want to talk about on this episode, the beer bracket, that post that went up this morning. What should people do with that? Yeah, check it out.

Yell at me for what I missed, what I didn't include or what I included. That's fine. That seems to be what brackets are about. But what I do find interesting is that there are a fair amount of really close votes. Coors Light vs. Miller Light. Brooklyn Logger

against Stella Artois. Firestone Walker Easy Jack against Boulevard Tank 7 is tied right now. What else is basically a tie? Actually, they're starting to separate a little bit, but

Omegang Three Philosophers against Newcastle is close. So there's a few, and the one that really bothers me, and if I can just, I don't want to put my finger on the scale, but could some people please go and vote for Sierra Hazy Little Thing over New Belgium Fat Tire? Oh my god.

Hazy Little Thing is 200 votes back of Fat Tire, and you couldn't pay me to drink a Fat Tire. Sorry. Sorry. I'm trying to maintain objectivity. I'm running the bracket. I'm not telling you to, but I am telling you. Go over, Sierra, Hazy Little Thing. I've heard great things about Hazy Little Thing.

I actually haven't had one yet. That's very sessionable hazy, right? That's the goal there? Yeah. And it's a great crossover beer for people who say they don't like IPAs because it's not bitter. Anyway. Get those notes in. We'll see who. beer for people who say they don't like ipas because it's not bitter anyway get those we'll see who and then on thursday we can uh talk about the final four which i what i tried to do at the beginning was as you heard from the matchups tried to keep light beer against

light beer uh and style reasonably within style uh but at the final four, you know, we're going to have like, my prediction is probably maybe Jungling. People love Jungling. Like it is. Jungling, Jungling, Founders All Day, Founders All Day and

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale or Sculpin versus Guinness. And I think that's a fine Final Four. I think that's the point of this. The point of this is to talk about our favorite beers

that are readily available. The kind of beer that you'll get when you're at the airport and there's nothing better, or you get at the grocery store, or to also bring different kinds of beer drinkers to the table. Because I know every time I talk about craft beer, there's always someone who says, all I want is Coors Light in a can.

Okay, vote. You're in this one. Everybody's included in this one yeah and i just thought also uh there's actually uh some data uh interesting data on this um flagship sales and grocery store beer sales are flat to up um so basically we're getting more of our, we're like, we're consolidating our deliveries or consolidating our, our desire to go outside. Like we were just talking about, like, you know, go to the grocery store once a week, that sort of deal.

And if you consolidate like that, and if you, you just, you think about things that way, you're going to probably get your beer from your grocery store if you can't, because that means one less delivery, less you know contact the outside world one less expenditure you know so i think that's what's happening is that people are kind of going back to their fit their favorites and also sometimes you have to buy a case like when i get delivery uh even from in in breweries here i sometimes i have to buy like 24 cans of something and i've literally decided not to do delivery from the place because I'm like, I don't know. I like that beer, but I don't know if I want

24 of it. It's a big commitment when you can't have people over to help you drink it. Yeah, right. That too. So like these are the kind of beers where you would get a 24 pack because you've known it your whole life and you know, you got to get the house through the week and this is the one thing you can all agree on so that's that's that was the kind of thinking behind the beer bracket i know that uh some people are killing me from one side saying oh the macros of coors light they sell the most bud light sells the most beer you know how to lose in the first round i don't know people like coors light better i guess and then you know there's other people being like where's bells too hard and i'm like i don't't know. I can't get Bell's Too Hearted

at my grocery store. Can you? I was wondering about that. You can get Too Hearted. I know I can get it here, yeah, because it's the one state over, so I get all the best stuff at the grocery store. And I know that in the northeast, you can get it too, but I don't think the southeast, the northwest, or the southwest see Bell's Too Hearted.

So maybe I missed the bank on that one. One really good litmus test is if your grocery store has a build your own six-pack cooler you know whatever's in there that stuff's usually either very local and then there's like a few rows of very widely available like you can grab a guinness yes it's too hard it's in there here like that like i'm talking about we're talking about the 12 and the 24 packs that's that's the kind of beers we're talking about the 12 and the 24 packs. That's the kind of beers we're talking about. Yeah. So definitely weigh in at Eno Saris on Twitter. Check out the article on The Athletic.

And if you're not a subscriber to The Athletic, you can get a free 90-day trial at theathletic.com slash free 90 days. If you're able to support the site with a paid subscription, you can get 40% off at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. Thank you all for supporting the site at this time. Thank you for listening to our show. We always appreciate that. And if you're enjoying the show on a platform that allows you to rate and

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derrick van riper that is going to wrap things up this episode of rates and barrels we are back with you on thursday thanks for listening Thank you.