Rates & Barrels - Using BABIP as an Entry Point for Buy-Low Targets

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

Eno and DVR discuss the likely season-ending injury for Triston Casas among several other absences that popped up over the weekend including Yordan Alvarez, Shota Imanaga (both on the IL since recording), Freddy Peralta and Corbin Burnes. They also discuss BABIP as a tool to help find buy-low targets and pickups, and marvel at Aaron Judge's .500 BABIP to begin the season before looking at how Coby Mayo might fit on the Orioles' depth chart once they get a infielders back from the IL. Rundown3:00 Triston Casas: 2025 Season Likely Over11:19 Corbin Burnes: Early Skills Decline Followed By Shoulder Inflammation17:52 Freddy Peralta & Shota Imanaga: Leave Early w/Injuries22:16 Other News & Notes From the Weekend28:54 Inspector BABIP: Using BABIP as an Entry Point for Buy Lows & Pickups43:54 Concerns About Junior Caminero's Launch Angle?51:27 Favorite In-Season Projections54:58 Where the Money Went: Light Bidding on Coby Mayo Thanks to Upcoming Crowded Depth Chart? Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.socialFollow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.sociale-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Producer: Brian Smith\ Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Monday, May 5th. Happy Cinco de Mayo to those out celebrating. Apparently, Ina will not be celebrating on this Monday as a result of a nice weekend. Yeah, it was fun. I had Matt Denowitz in town and some other friends. Matt Denowitz helped create Beer Graphs and also helped create Stuff Plus and runs the database for us. He's now increasingly helping us do all sorts of stuff with the model. So it was great to have him in town.

We went to the Giants game, and it was the May the 4th Be With You Giants game. So we got BB-88 jerseys for the kids. I went and watched the Warriors game in a bar, and then we went to a show. It was post-rock was the genre. Yeah, we were trying to figure out what that meant before you went. So what is that? Kind of like droney, you know,

it's called Godspeed You Black Emperor. You know, like lots of, like more instruments than you might expect. I think there were like six, seven, eight people up on stage and, you know, not necessarily super, it is rhythmic, but there's no, like there's no chorus or you know what I mean? They don't do songs as much as they make sounds.

For a while. And I thought it surprisingly danceable, but I also realized that I was one of very small handful of people that was dancing to it. It was a lot of just sort of like nodding and like enjoying the sounds, I guess. But you were dancing. I found a little groove in there. Good. All right. Sounds like a nice weekend. I'm glad you avoided the IL. lot of players unfortunately did not bad weekend

So in Jack opening oh Yeah, and no balance nice My kid ate the 37 year old gum so you're still holding some gum. Yeah, he couldn't eat the whole thing. He said Yeah, it took a little bite of it and was like, that is gross, it tastes like 37-year-old gum. What did he expect? Yeah, right. Onwards, lots of injuries to talk about today. We're taking a look at the BABIP leaderboards.

Actually, both ends of the BABIP leaderboards look for some great performances that might be a little unsustainable and maybe some slow starts that have lingered on for more than a couple of weeks that might be explained by some bad luck. Got a bunch of mailbag questions to get to as well and as we do every Monday we'll take a look at where the money went. Where were people spending their precious fab dollars in fantasy baseball leagues over the weekend? Probably the worst news of the weekend from the baseball injury perspective came from Tristan Casas.

He is likely to miss the rest of the season, torn patellar tendon in his knee. This is a devastating blow for a guy that missed a lot of last season with that rib injury basically from swinging the bat too hard was the best way to kind of sum up what happened to Casas a year ago. So this could amount to really another lost season. We're going to have 350 plate appearances from Cassis between 2024 and 2025. And in that body of work wasn't quite as good, maybe a notch below what we saw from him in 2023. So I think this is kind of interesting in the sense of if you're playing

at a keeper at dynasty league, there's probably still a good bit of long term value here. If you're not playing for right now and you can afford the roster spot, you kind of put Casas on the list of players that you would go after and say, yeah, let's, let's see what happens in 2026. Maybe a better health outcome brings 25, possibly 30 home runs for the first time in his career. Would you go as far as, and this is relevant to me because I have this player Spencer Steer in an OBP league that we're both in, 20 team Devils Rejects, would you go as far as to trade someone like Spencer Steer for Tristan Casas? Probably, because I think the long-term outcome for Spencer Steer is still more of a solid floor player, whereas with Casas, whether it's in Boston or elsewhere in the long run,

I still think there's a good power-hitting first baseman there. I think there's an easy top 10 first baseman for a couple of seasons. Steer, still doing a lot of the same things he's always done, right? Keeping the K rate close to 20%. Actually has a higher barrel rate than we've seen from him so far. Three homers in 28 games, a couple of steals. He's already 27. Yeah, that's the thing. I was going to say, what are you going to say the age? Because Cass is 25 and that's pretty relevant. Yeah, the two year age gap, I think,

is kind of a big deal for me as far as the long term value goes. And I think it's a fair offer because if you're the person that just lost Tristan Cassis, you want to replace that production. You want a player you might have on your roster for more than one season yourself. I think Spencer Steer ticks that box. But if you're looking more for three to five year windows,

I think I'd still rather have Tristan Casas. I did see an interesting note because you know there's the what do what do the red socks do now is another question and I saw a note that like oh it doesn't look like Devers wants to play first I don't know if that's like something that's in stone or if it's rumor at this point, but I've definitely seen that note somewhere. And Masataka Yoshida has stopped his, his throwing program because it's not going well, but maybe he could play DH and Devers could play first. But if Devers doesn't want to do that and I could see it that Devers saying, what do you want me to do long-term?

Let me do the thing that you want me to do long term Don't put me at first base make me learn first base and then castles comes back and then I'm off for a space You know what I mean? So Devers be like, let me let me be your DH I saw that von Grissom is the guy in the minor leagues that is gonna get the biggest uptake of first base Badpats that's pretty interesting. Yeah, that kind of piqued my interest a little bit. I don't think of him as a prototypical first baseman, but what the Red Sox did in the two games this weekend without Cassis

as they played Romy Gonzalez there and Romy Gonzalez is off to a nice start in a very part time role this year, striking out less, chasing less. But he's also 28 and I don't know A nice start in a very part time role this year, striking out less, chasing less, but he's also 28 and I don't know what the expectation is there. I mean typically we see Romy Gonzalez chase a lot but make hard contact when he connects and that comes with a pretty high K rate more often than not. If he's turned some kind of corner, skills-wise, chasing less, striking out less, maybe Romy Gonzalez can keep Von Grissom at bay. But yeah, I think if Grissom's playing some first base, maybe more in preparation for a super utility type role, it is interesting that

Rafael Devers has DH'd every game for the Red Sox this year. They have made that his spot. Whatever the issue was back in the spring spring as far as him not wanting to DH regularly or wanting to stay at third base, the result has been you're the DH every single day. I think you're probably right to point out that he maybe doesn't want to learn that position on the fly only to go back to DH-ing next year. If he's going to be the long-term first baseman, then maybe that's more in the cards. The projection for Romy Gonzalez and Von Grissom is virtually identical. But you know, you do hurt yourself as a team if you make your utility guy your first baseman because then you need a

utility guy. So I think you might have the right read on this that even if he's playing first base von Grissom is actually auditioning to maybe come up and augment David Hamilton in the in in depth in the infield I don't know that Abraham Toro is going to be a long-term solution for them. It's been of the same from Grissom at AAA, by the way, this year. It does have a 45.6% hard hit rate, which is a big jump from last year, but a lot of OBP, little bit of power. Not much speed right now. He's one for three as a base dealer, but I don't know, could be a small sample sort of

thing. Just curious to see what they end up doing. It's not the worst thing to have to trade for in season. You can usually find a first baseman at the trade deadline to see what they end up doing. It's not the worst thing to have to trade for in season. You can usually find a first baseman at the trade deadline so they may end up going that way even if they have to sort of duct tape it together for the time being. But I think they also had a note, I think it might have been from Jen McCaffrey that I saw over the weekend. They're not preparing Roman Anthony to move to first base for this season to make him fit there either. So we'll see.

They're not going to do anything that affects the long term trajectories for their key pieces. So yeah, at least that's what they're saying right now. Yeah, it's going to probably be something where they patch it together. I wonder who could be available if the Diamondbacks are fallout of the race or something. Maybe Josh Naylor, because he's a free agent, I think, at the end of the year. Yeah, let's see. Reese Hoskins, if the Brewers were to fall out he could be he could be an easy trade piece. But I kind of doubt that they will so who could it

be? Oh the Orioles Ryan Mountcastle once he's a free agent in 2027 so it might create a little bit of a an issue later yeah I don't see a Nate Lowe yeah could get traded again it's possible Josh Bell there's always a first baseman you can trade for Carlos Santana Carlos Santana sure yeah they're there yeah see you named like half a dozen right there. Yeah. It's not the worst thing to need so they will be okay. We are watching the injury to Corbin Burns. He got scratched from a scheduled start Monday with right shoulder inflammation. Corbin Burns has been very durable and I think that was what made, part of what made him so appealing in

free agency this winter is he's rarely missed time with injuries throughout his time in the big leagues. The start to the season for him has not been typical Corbin Burns. The K rate is at a career low 20%, the walk rate has spiked to 12.1% underneath that low K rate, a 9.2% swing and strike rate, and a zone contact rate. Not surprisingly, swing and strike rate goes down, zone contact rate goes up. How about 92.4% for Corbin Burns' zone contact percentage? And a 50.5% hard hit rate allowed. We don't talk a lot about that from the pitching side,

but Corbin Burns hasn't seemed quite right to this point. Worst stuff of his career, worst cutter stuff of his career, worst Cutter stuff of his career. Cutter first time under average by stuff plus, worst location plus of his career. Where do we go from here? He kind of fits into the conversation we had on our Thursday episode last week.

A guy with a long track record who should be able to figure it out and bounce back, but really has put together a pretty disappointing string to begin his career as a member of the Diamondbacks. I do have some hope in the way that he found his cutter last year. And the nice thing about Corbin Burns is that I find that when he's struggling, he still puts up decent numbers. You know what I mean? Like we're talking about how bad he is and he has a 358 ERA. You know what I mean? Like we're talking about how bad he is and he has a three five eight ERA. You know what I mean?

So I think the cutter is just really good at limiting damage, you know. Right, he's got a two oh eight ERA in the last three starts. It's only 14 Ks against eight locks. So the underlying numbers are bad, but the results are still passable. I think he's just like a two now.

All right, so it's a soft step down as long as this shoulder inflammation doesn't turn into something worse. Ryan Nelson getting the spot start. We'll see if this turns into an IL situation for Corbin Burns. I think Nick Pollack also had an interesting text about that's a social media post about this. Let me see. Oh, I just had it. Oh, here it is. A few reliable workhorses says Nick Pollack entering the season Corbin burns il Logan Gilbert il George Kirby il

Christopher Sanchez forearm concern, but okay, I guess Predicting volume is the hardest thing we do in the offseason. I consistently wonder if we put too much stock in it It's just May but here are the injured guys Jacob deGrom dope hunter green dope Max Reed dope Garro crochet dope Brian woo dope and Here are some of the worried about health guys. We were correct so far Snell Sandy McShane glass now Strider So I do think it's worth doing we we've talked about this before a fair amount So we don't need to kill it to death, but just the idea I think it's worth trying to think probabilistically about pitcher injuries and that you have to acknowledge that some pitchers are more likely to be injured than

others and you have to manage that risk. But I think you can also just have a healthy attitude about it and know that you can't manage that risk completely and that sometimes it's worth taking shots on guys that are that are injury risks. What was the health grade on Corbin Burns coming into the season? Was he an A health grade or was he one of those guys that because of his age was starting to just lose ground in that category because of I mean cumulative wear and tear is the other way to eventually get hurt.

You pitch so many innings because you were so healthy so now you're going to get hurt. A plus health grade. A plus second percentile. He was up there. The other ones, 95th percentile for Logan Gilbert, 92nd for Cease Reagan's 95th for Kirby, 95th percentile for Ober, Bryce Miller, Fromber's a 91, Hunter Brown is a 93. So I think I'm naming mostly healthy guys. Logan Webb is 98th percentile, right? Like I think it works to some degree, you know.

Obviously it won't work for every player. It couldn't. I mean, so that was the reason why I wanted to bring it up. It's like, well, okay. Most of the big like A or near A health grade guys actually fine so far. And this may be relatively minor. The bigger concern might just be the stuff has taken a tick down for Burns, maybe a little bit quicker than we expected.

I was of the belief that with the tweak in his pitch mix at the end of last season again, that Burns is going to go back, especially with the big contract in hand, going back to being the guy that was going to strike a lot of guys out and just be more like the ace version of Burns. So far, that's been a bad read. So in the top 25 pitchers, by their injury rate given by Jeff Zimmerman, the hurt ones are Kirby, Gilbert. I guess we count now, we count Burns now.

Am I missing somebody? No, I think that's it. Oh, Kirby, Gilbert, yeah, that's it. That's it, it's pretty good. Pretty good. You know what I mean? Like, if I look at the other side, I'm sure there's way more hurt.

Like the bottom 25, we're talking about Walker Bueller, hurt, you, Darvish, still hurt. I don't know, who're talking about Walker Bueller hurt, you Darvish still hurt. I don't know who else is on here. Is Joe Ross hurt? I think it generally works. Max Scherzer hurt. Tyler Glass now hurt. Frankie Montez Jr hurt. So this is that's the other side. And I think just eyeballing it looks like maybe double the injury rate when it comes to the bottom health percentiles. Some other injuries to get to here. Jordan Alvarez day to day with a hand injury. For now they're saying no imaging is going to be needed that according to the Athletics

Chandler Rome so we'll keep this in the day to day bucket for now. Two pitchers pitched well on Sunday and left their starts a little early going head to head. Freddie Peralta and Shota Iminaga. I only noticed the Freddie one because as he was walking off, I think it was in the sixth inning, he looked like he took a really awkward step as he was walking off. Like something was bugging him and they're saying he's got a groin injury. So we'll see if this turns into a brief IL stint, which the Brewers can't afford it right now.

They've got major problems with health in right now. They've got major problems with health in that rotation. They've got underperforming guys already. Peralta's also interesting because the start before he'd lost a significant amount of velocity. Yeah, well that was back. He was sitting 93 for one start. He was all the way back though on Sunday. He looked like typical Freddy Velo. So that was probably just a one-start blip. But geez, man, like Shota also having an MRI on his hamstring suffered that while covering first base. So that one maybe is a little more serious based on the initial reporting. But yeah, it's another

it's another starting this week. I'm trying not to in both cases, because even if it's like they need an extra day, considering that it's going to be a late in the week sort of start, it probably bumps them into next week in weekly leagues that they just pitched on Sunday. And with an MRI especially, I'm not as confident in that situation. Hmm, I have no NFC shares of either Freddy Peralta or Shotay Iman I guess so. Well that is a bummer. We're also awaiting the results of an MRI on Sal Freelick. He left that game early with a knee injury

that was suffered while he was hitting, so we'll see if anything comes from that. Who's starting in the Brewers' outfield now? Daz Cameron replaced Sal in the outfield on Sunday. Isaac Collins is playing a little bit right now. Yeah who's that guy? I saw him in the box score. Who's that guy? Isaac Collins, 27 year old with contact ability and middling power. He's actually a little bit interesting. Yeah a little bit. They seem to find guys like this. Another Creighton Bluejay for you just

like Alan Roden. I think in deep leagues you should pick up Isaac Collins for a little bit. I mean he's a switch hitter. He makes contact. 111 max EB. Yeah I think he'll play more than Daz. I think now Daz moves into the the primary bench outfielder role. Defensive replacement kind of guy. That's my expectation but man their starting pitcher depth chart is it's just it's a mess right now dude duct tape Real real bad. So they need they need some good news on Freddie Peralta I would expect Logan Henderson to be back in the major league soon I am waiting in a league where I can't stash him in a minor league spot and I really really need that to happen

Savali still I think about to start a rehab assignment. Hasn't even gone on his yet. Tobias Myers hasn't pitched well. Quinn Priester hasn't pitched well. And they just have needs. Galore Woodruff's a couple turns away. Velo ticking up. You've been a Woodruff pessimist the entire time.

But I do think, compared to what they're throwing out there, I think Woodruff could be an upgrade. But also, his results are ticking up. If his V Velo is ticking up that's an interesting thing to me because he's got 29% strikeout rate in AAA right now. It's pretty fun. I would like to know Brandon Woodruff's Velo. His next start at Nashville by the way is Tuesday. They're really kind of slow walking this return. Well I think they want to make sure he's all the way back man it's a major injury like it's a really big deal to make sure that physically everything's right before they turn him loose again. I'm not

emptying the fab bank for Woodruff when he gets back. Understandable. Other news and notes from around the league will cruise through these it looks like Randy Arrozarena is gonna be okay he left with a hamstring injury nothing serious per Mariners manager Dan Wilson it was an 8-1 game at the time of Arosa-Reyna's early departure. We saw Tanner Bybee leave his start during the sixth inning Sunday with leg cramping, that's according to Jonoga of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Anthony Volpe has had an MRI and x-rays on his shoulder. Those came back clean, no damage there. He did sit on Sunday after feeling a pop in his shoulder, so that one's a little tricky for weekly leagues. I would almost play that one safe even if he's going to avoid an IL stint.

I could see Volpe maybe getting another day or two off before the Yankees put him back in the lineup. I did not like the sound of that, a pop in his elbow. So I'm in weekly leagues where I have an option. I've been playing other people. Good news relatively speaking, but play it safe if you can with Anthony Volpe. Jackson Merrill is expected to come back on Monday, so there's some good news there. Corey Seeger was activated on Saturday and Royce Lewis actually got activated on Monday as part of

a couple of roster moves. The twins got Willie Castro back and sent Edward Julian and Mickey Gasper down to AAA so a lot of changes Twins need to make a move right now five games under 500 You know not really great vibes with regards to ownership spending and you know what they did in the offseason for this roster ownership spending and you know what they did in the off season for this roster. But we've always liked them, you know, from a talent standpoint, and this needs to be the time to kind of put it together. Well, see if they can actually make that happen.

Here's one that caught my eye. Kyle Harrison's backup for the Giants as a reliever, and he was pitching really well in the rotation at AAA. What do you think is different this time around for Harrison? Like is the arsenal gonna be more narrow working out of the pen? Is there uptick in VELO or stuff that we're seeing at AAA that explains the spike in results? At least from a K to BB standpoint. He had a 38 to 8 strikeout to walk in 26 innings, 346 ERA, 131 whips a little bit surprising but all in all I would say considering it's the PCL especially, those are really good numbers

from Kyle Harrison in just 26 innings this season. Yeah, he did have a VELO uptick in the minors, and the stuff on the fore seam was 110 in AAA. So, you know, he's touching 98 now. He sat like 92.5 last year as a starter I think you said. So there is something interesting there. I do think that they're just going to use them in the pen and there have been plenty worse starting pitchers that have turned into great relievers. I think that one thing that could be important is if he can sit 96, 97, 98,

then the shape on his fastball matters less. And I think it'll even make his secondaries play up. So it looks like he's basically a fastball sweeper change guy right now. And that puts some pressure on his change up, which is not great by stuff plus because a lefty with a fastball and a sweeper is not going to get a lot of play as like a closer for as an example, you know, because he's got bad platoon splits. So I

think he's going to be a reliever for them and could potentially be a good one. But I wouldn't depend on it happening this year. Based on the usage, since he was fully stretched out as a starter, I would think Harrison's probably going to work more in multi-inning outings for the Giants. I wouldn't think this is a bump immediately into short relief, but we'll see how it plays at the big league level. A follow up from our Friday episode, the Rangers fired offensive coordinator Donnie Ecker over the weekend.

They also placed Leody Tavares on outright waivers. You mentioned it on Friday. Things were tense around the Rangers' lack of offensive production. We talked about it in the light of Jake Berger being optioned to triple A and the Rangers having several guys who were chasing more than ever when we looked at the O-swing year over year leaderboard.

Yeah, and there's internal frustration that's pretty obvious now with the way that it's going and, you know, making this move, making these two moves, you know, to some extent maybe is trying to send a little message to the players. I don't know, Leota Tavares is a capable defensive center fielder. I'm a little surprised that they would just DFA him like this. I'm surprised he didn't have any trade value, but he doesn't hit the ball hard, which is, you know, is something that the league values right now. So if he's just seen as a defensive replacement by the most of the league,

then he's just going to catch on somewhere where they just need someone to play in the outfield like Milwaukee. He could be better than that Cameron. Well, that's sort of the calculus that every team has to make. Say, do we think we can find something in Leodi Tavares that we can change that made him a very intriguing prospect years ago. On occasion, he looks like a guy that can still put together pretty interesting numbers over a full season. But the big step back from twenty twenty three to twenty twenty four is probably as much of what this is about as 30 games this year of Lyotide

striking out more and walking less than he ever has like it's been It's been a strange arc for him. It's only 26 years old He debuted so young but a switch hitter that can play center field and plays good enough defense to stick at that position We'll find another landing spot somewhere. Yeah, somebody will pick him up I mean he's protected to be a league average bat and in center. Like, I just, that one surprised me a little bit. I don't, wouldn't have made that move. And I would hire Donnie Eckert still. I think he's a good hitting coach, but I guess I also want to leave room to say that, like, I understand that they feel frustrated and they're feeling some pressure

maybe and they had to make some moves. It's funny how fast things change, right? The Rangers won the World Series two years ago. That's just, man, it's a quick level to reach but there has to be accountability I guess somewhere in the organization and looking at the struggles of that group, that's the first change to happen. Let's get to some other topics here though. Let's talk about BABIP a little bit as maybe a good entry point for by lows and pickups and also a good way to level set accordingly if you have a player who's just been going off for the first 30 games or so.

I wanted to get Inspector BABIP on the case. So we've got Eno here to dig into these profiles a little bit. It's probably my ear up there. Yeah, that's not my best. If you're watching on YouTube, you can definitely see it. Ear placement's a little high. It's coming on my forehead. I was working on a deadline, man.

There's only so much you can do with limited time constraints and no actual Photoshop skills. Did AI do this? No, no, that was a DVR special, man. I'm not gonna use AI. I'm gonna just do it the old fashioned way. And the results are what you just saw.

We need another AI cake. No, because I can make a better cake than AI and I'm terrible at Photoshop. So I chopped off the top of the leaderboard. There are six qualified hitters right now that have a BABIP of 400 or higher, which is just not something players tend to sustain over full seasons. At the very top it should surprise absolutely no one Aaron judge is the league leader among qualified hitters in Babbitt What's his babbitt, you know? 500 500 on the nose. Yeah, it's a career 351 guy Right the career babbitt versus the current one is kind of a good way to say okay

What's more likely to happen going forward Paul Goldschmidt's up there at a 412 with a career? 345. Gavin Lux at 410 with a career of 321. Kyle Stowers a 408 with a career of 333 and he hasn't been in the big leagues a lot but nearly 75% of his played appearances have come before this season so that still gives you a little bit of a sense of the type of player that Kyle Stowers was prior to the start of this season. Zach McKinstry is running a 4.08 against a career 2.85 and George Springer running a 4.00 against a career 2.96. I thought the interesting thing with Springer was that he had a 2.45 batting average on

balls and play last year and that looked like an outlier in the other direction where there wasn't enough that had changed with Springer to say like yeah knock 50 points off going forward so you're still probably pulling him back closer to the career rate than all There wasn't enough that had changed with Springer to say, yeah, knock 50 points off going forward. So you're still probably pulling him back closer to the career rate than all the way down to what happened in 2024. But how do you use Bavip when you see guys at the top of the leaderboard like this or maybe some of the guys at the bottom? You're more likely to use it as a way to find buy lows and pickups than you are to find

sell high types yeah one of the problematic parts about using it to sell high is that like you're not going to sell Aaron Judge high because he has a high babbip and a lot of the guys that have high babbips have run high babbips in the past so like you're not going to regress Paul Goldschmidt to like a 280 babbip or whatever the league average is you're going to regress him to his own Babbitt. So, you know, yes, he is a little bit less power dependent. And that's actually where it matters for me. It's like, if you look at like Kyle McKinstry, do you have Kyle McKinstry or something? Who's that? Zach McKinstry. Zach McKinstry. He's on there with like, he's batting average dependent, right? He's not useful

if he's not going to have great batting average going forward, you know, not as useful. So that matters to me. Like I'm not, I'm not going to pick up that player cause I feel like regression is coming and he's dependent on batting average, right? And so it's a better use I think to look at the guys who should have positive regression coming that can give you value in other places and then add more value when they actually have a batting average that goes along with it. And so I generally do that. And there's, I think there's a good reasoning for this. So here is the graph of reliability and this is like stabilization rate. So once this, the Cronbacker alpha, the

number on the left here gets past 0.75, That's when you're starting to get more signal from the stat itself than from league average. And as you can see, ground balls, fly balls, and home runs stabilized pretty quickly around a hundred, 150 balls in play. And they give you a lot of data. You know, they, they, they, they predict themselves reliably, you know, by the time you get 150 balls in play. Singles you never know. It never crosses the 0.75 line.

It is never a good idea to look at someone's like actual rate of singles that it will never tell you anything. Singles are just chaos. And so that's where I might draw a line and be like, I care how much power they have and how much their ground balls and fly balls, because that's going to inform, A, their value as a player and B, what kind of babbip they can have going forward. And so if I see a guy who's really dependent on singles, that I don't like them generally as a player, and even if they have a low BABIP, I'm not necessarily lining to pick them up because maybe they just have one of those years where it's a low BABIP and they just have chaos

all year and they're singles dependent. I don't want to buy that and wait for more singles to come back. So this is, I guess my way of saying is I don't use Babbit that hard because all I'm doing is chasing power because power becomes meaningful quicker, stabilizes quicker, there's more signal in it quicker, and it gives you a good value across the board. But I will look at low Babbips I guess and I do think it's useful to know who could have better days going forward. But I'm like, I'm not buying Josh Bell because the power's not there.

Right? So even if he gets some singles, like, why do I care? I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not on for that. You don't own Eugenio Suarez for the batting average. So yeah, I mean, I guess he could be a bylaw, but he also may just have a terrible two, 30 bad ball year because he hits everything in the air. You know? So all of this list, I think that the ones

that are most interesting is probably Taylor Ward and Vinny Pascantino and Jazz Chisholm. I would find them by loss because they are demonstrating power. You know, Jazz has the speed. And if they just had a slightly better batting average they'd be more way more valuable as players. Yeah. I think my frustration with, with Jazz jazz and that injury news and I think I mentioned being

bummed that I wanted him over Jaren Duran during draft season was my risk tolerance being too high on the injury front at that point in the draft. That was something I probably nudged a little too far in the wrong direction. But I think at the time, and this is still true, I mean, Jaren Durant's had some injuries in the big leagues too, like he's not an A health grade player either, even if you would give Jazz an objectively worse health grade of those two. But I do tend to use this in a similar manner. I actually think I like Josh Bell in deeper leagues.

There has been a little bit of power there. I don't think there's much in terms of threats to his playing time. He's in that first base, DH mix pretty safely for the Nats. Maybe he's a guy that after the trade deadline is a bench player somewhere else. That would be probably my bigger fear for a deeper league. Inexpensive power targets. Power's been fine. It's less power than you would like from that in a mixed league.

But in the kinds of leagues where I'm trading for Josh Bell, it's probably enough power to capably fill. Just trying to get a player that will play, I guess. Yeah, Vinny Pasquantino, man, I feel like there's so many things that he does well, it's only a matter of time before things start to click for him. This is like, it gives you an underlying, you get a sense that this is a guy who makes contact,

this is a guy who makes powerful contact, this is a guy who has a good plate discipline in terms of chase rate. He knows what's going on at the plate. I think he could be ready to break out. Would you say Michael Conforto, who narrowly missed the cut, I mean, he's got a 203 bap up right now, 293 for his career, he's been in the 270, 280 range

the last three years we've seen him, would you say Conforto ticks the box as someone you probably wouldn't go after because the K-ray is up at? 31.9 percent that's the worst we've ever seen from him the barrel rate career low 6.6 percent round ball rate 53 percent Right like there's something not right here like the pull rates at 29 percent like he's hitting opposite field grounders weekly Like what why is he doing that it's pretty strange it was 12 better than league average last year 327 woe but just a solid year that looked a little better when you put it in the context of having to be a lefty playing half his games at oracle i thought this could be fine for the dodgers and

maybe it eventually will be similar to last year but I don't see obvious by low there I've had Conforto in one of my 12 team leagues with five outfielders and I feel like I've been too patient with them or maybe that patience has finally run out. Yeah I'm starting to see him on dropped lists I saw him you know dropped in Autonew at a decent price where you're like you know they're just not in a lot of news, the kind of situation where you have the lead benches in daily lineups, like you'd think that you'd want to keep

a good photo in that situation. So if he's starting to go, he's, he's, he's going to end up being dropped off at 15 teamers if he's not already. Yeah. Taylor ward is the other name you mentioned. I think Taylor ward often has a projection that looks really nice The bad act still has him at 257 333 459

23 homers the rest the way Like compared to other players with that projection I just think you're gonna give up less in a trade for Taylor Ward than you will for almost anybody else in that bucket Yeah, and I mean there's a little bit of risk again else in that bucket. Yeah, and I mean, there's a little bit of risk again. Like I pointed out, groundball fly ball has more signal than the Babip. So it is interesting to see that Taylor Ward is hitting 51% fly balls. That's not necessarily great for Babip.

He could maybe have the worst Babip of his career this year. He's probably headed towards that since he's already banked a month of 190 Babip. But you may not want to regress him to his career 296 BABBIT as most of projection systems do. Maybe you regress him to that 280 average, 280 BABBIT he's had or maybe even a 270. So don't buy him necessarily thinking he's going to hit 257, I think like the bad ex says so I'm still careful around Using this even if I say I think he's a bylaw. He does a lot of things great His projection is generally good like give yourself a 238 average with him I think value him that way is the combined approach here if you're trying to distill this to a simple leaderboard

At least like method to investigate more players as by lows are you looking for a minimum ISO alongside the babbitt like that would probably be the easiest thing you could look at the right next to each other you know like maybe something like 38 35 38 percent hard hit at least you know because that's where that's where the power hitters are at least I mean if he has speed or important defensive position of obviously you're that's where the power hitters are at least. I mean, if he has speed or important defensive position, obviously that's a different situation, you know? But generally, I would feel better about buying low

on Babip if the guy also has like a 48% hard hit rate like Taylor Ward does. Right, show us at least like a 170, 180 ISO or higher, and I think that's probably a nudge in that direction. So Shay Lang Alliers, maybe pops as someone, if you're looking for a catcher in a one catcher league, I think as the weather warms up in Sacramento, the power he shows will continue to be there.

It might even tick up a little bit. He makes a lot of sense as a good target. He also like was an incredible, you know, spring training story about really cutting a strikeout rate and look at low and behold, he's about really cutting a strikeout rate. And look at, lo and behold, he's actually showing the best strikeout rate and swing strike rate of his career.

So there's a lot of healthy things under the hood here for Shea Langley. There's a 15% strikeout rate and a 10% barrel rate and a 114.5 max EV and a 45% hard hit. Everything looks good except for the batting average. That's what I'm looking for. You know what I mean? How about this one? Michael Harris. He's come up on the show a few different times.

240 Babbitt seems unlike seems unlucky for a guy that can't hit the ball hard. Also runs well. Those players tend to pop pretty well on Babbitt. Three homers, seven steals, 17% K rate for the year. Only a 118 ISO. That's the only hesitation I had on ISO is because ISO includes BABIP. Yeah, yeah, you're counting it twice that way.

33.9% hard hit rate right now compared to 45.8% for his career. Would you also consider buying low when you have a three-year track record of an above average hard hit rate. And then you're like, but inconsistent actual underlying stuff like 7% barrel rates. Okay. One 12 max TV is okay. 33% hard hit is not that great. I consider them a buy low. And sometimes you have to like, especially in today's environment, maybe they'd listen to this podcast, you know, maybe they read fan graphs, you know, they can see all the projections,

everybody knows about bail rate, right? so sometimes in order to actually get a bylaw and get something done you have to take a chance and There are players that improve their bail rate over the course of the season that happens every year you know, there are guys who start hitting the ball harder and Generally, I like that Harris is you know got the best swing strike rate of his career so far, best strikeout rate. He's making contact, he's stealing bases, he's playing defense well, he's in the lineup every day.

Don't worry too hard about his hard hit rate. Otherwise, if you had the perfect buy low, then it would be pretty obvious to everybody, I think. Right. I think in this case, when you see those other metrics heading the right direction also a career-best groundball rate for Michael Harris there's probably still better days ahead but I continue to look at BABIP as an entry point to the conversation I'm looking for players that might be undervalued might be good targets might be just struggling because

of bad luck I just want an explanation for why things aren't working at least at an entry point. It's like a grouping mechanism that you have to kind of, I think you do have to look under the hood a little bit and think about the type of player they are, how much true talent power they have, that sort of stuff. Let's get to a couple mailbag questions here. I like this one, this is from Grant G. Do we have any concerns that Junior Kamen Arrow might fall into the high bat speed, exit velocity but poor launch angle to be able to take advantage category of hitter. The hitter most like that that I can think of that I was wrong about ten times before I

finally I think I've finally given up on him after this draft season would be Eloy Jimenez. Who are you going to say Cabrera? No, no, because Junior Caminero hits the ball very hard. Like these, it's always done that. I mean, he's run some amazing maxes already. But even like this year, 50.5% hard hit rate, 47.2%

for his career. He's played 82 big league games. The main thing I see that's similar is I see a high 30s 0 swing percentage, 37.7% so far this year, 38-4 over the course of parts of three seasons he's been in the big leagues. Great hard hit in barrels, like 47.2% hard hit, 11.2% barrel, but that barrel's lower than you'd expect it to be because he hits the ball on the ground a lot, which is the launch angle question. It's one of these things where I

Don't want to bet against the junior cam and arrow because it didn't work for Eloy Jimenez but I want to acknowledge the possibility that an outcome like that is possible because It happened. We just watched it. So what's different for you? What's potentially different between these two guys? I mean defensive value kind of comes into the equation eventually, but in terms of age and expectations, to me, the Rays are still probably pretty happy with what they're getting from Junior Kamen Arrow. If you have a guy who is 21 years old and he's holding his own as a league average hitter in the big leagues, that's a good thing, especially when you get the power numbers

that Junior Kamen Arrow puts up on the surface and underlying. So to the question, do you worry about this launch angle? I think we don't appreciate what Lloyd actually did when he was in, you know, a 269, 318, 462 line for his career is 12% better than the average. Now, if you put just what Lloyd did did But you say he actually plays 600 played appearances and oh he plays a good third base That could be what like a four-war player. That's an all-star if if he plays a good third base, I think is also going to be a Question right? I mean, that's not necessarily a junior cameo narrow strength. We'll see if it becomes a strength over time.

He's not as bad as a lawyer. So he's going to have some defensive value. So the other thing that I would just say is he's young. He's 21. And if you look at what happens in aging curves alone, batters as they age swing less, chase less, and hit fewer grounders. Those things all in a row, if he stays healthy and he's on the field playing good defense

and has positional value, those aging factors that should help him, all in the worst parts of his game. You know what I mean? Like the aging should be really kind to him, all in the worst parts of his game. You know what I mean? Like the aging should be really kind to him, is what I'm saying. And you are making me a little bit nervous with this comp. I'll have to be honest, I was prepared to be like, I don't care about any of that. He's a great player and he hits the ball hard.

I think he should have like 320 babips, 330 babips, you know, to bring this back into the conversation because he hits the ball hard and he has some speed and he doesn't necessarily pull the ball or pull the ball in the air a ton. I think he'll start running plus Babips. So I think the Babips will allow him to run sort of 320 type OVPs a little bit more than any walk rate will, you know what I mean? So I think he'll be somebody that has like a 320 BABIP at some point and that'll get

his OBP up to like 320 and he's going to be a guy who hits at least like 20, 25 homers a year. Now, does he access that next level, get to 30 homers a year? Does he hit 280, 290? I think those things are still possible but you are making me nervous and I'm trying to be as reasonable as possible as I can about Kamenero. So the projections are all just so good too. You know, they're 275 with 24 more homers.

So they say he's going to the oopsie says he's going to end with 30 homers this year. What do you want? What do I want? That's that's a loaded question, isn't it? I just feel like, you know, sometimes, yeah, like this, this could be what he is and it could be great. And it might not be, you know, a top five player. He might not be the next man in Machado, you know? Right. And I wonder, I wonder if that was ever for some people, maybe that was in the

range of outcomes. But even if he's a half notch below Machado, that's a really good player for a long time. I think the reason I'm spinning in circles as I think about this, and again he's young so it might change, it's looking at the interaction of his strikeout rate and his walk rate and how much he chases in his approach and not knowing how much I can project the maturation of his approach to either lower the K rate to the point where I don't even care about a 5% walk rate or increase the walk rate because he's become much more selective. He's driving the pitches he should drive. He's spitting on the pitches that he used to pound into the ground.

I would generally give any player his age the benefit of the doubt. I think he'll get to some more walks over time due to them fearing him. I mean, you know, a guy hits 117 mile an hour piss rocket off you, like you know, not as fine with him next time you're further out in his own. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah, like how Chris Davis with the sea did not have great, you know, true talent idea of where the zone was. But when he was feared by the league, he they he feared his way into walks as a more than

like actually having a great sense of where the zone was. I love that you threw the Brian Hayes comp out there though. Like that. That's even like, I don't think I don't think that one's too far because Hayes had the top-end maxi bees but he never really got the barrel rates and Caminero's come into the big leagues with the barrel rate 10% is not an amazing barrel rate, but it's better than what Hayes put together yeah, this to me feels more like a Window where you could actually get caminero in a long-term league with a godfather type offer that

Frankly might not even be on the table this time next year. Yeah because there could be another I mean we there's still only 340 player appearances right like the next hundred and forty player appearances might be really important for what we think of him. Yeah so worried no but I'm paying attention I'm thinking about players that have done this before similar things as hitters and gone on to disappoint us at least. So thanks a lot for that question, Grant. One related question, I'm going to make a related question anyway, it comes from Marcus.

What are your favorite in season projection systems to use? Do you have a lean toward any one system, maybe one for hitters and one for pitchers? Yeah, there's a little bit of news here that I haven't seen the results. I haven't seen the study. I'm just, I am trusting Jordan Rosenblum on some level. He could just be saying this and not having done the work. But he said that in terms of projecting forward

already in the first month, he tested the different systems and oops, he did the best on pitching, but was second to the bat x on hitting and that's he said he may what he's trying to learn from that is he may regress bat speed a little bit more heavily because that's the big difference between him and the bat x and so there may be change in the oopsie projection system going forward but right now i'm just more comfortable using the bat x for hitting and oopsie for pitching. You know that's that's the way I work right now.

And I think you can also projection shop a little bit like when we were talking about you know the different batting averages I'm not just putting out 238 as a number that was a 238 was a projection from a different system so you can to extent, look through the different projection systems. And if you personally feel a certain way about a player, you can use those projection systems to guide you. Because you can be like, I'm down on this player, let me use the worst projection. At least to, you know, give me an idea of what that could,

what being down on a player could be like, you know? So I kind of use all the projection systems to kind of give me a sense of what the scope of this player could be. Like what are the scope of projections on this player? What could different ideas be about this player? But if you ask me to run the auction calculator and you know, think about what I'm doing in terms of buying or selling players,

I'm gonna use the bad X for hitting and oopsie for pitching. To that end, if you're trying to level set accordingly, you know, what do you think the rest of Junior Caminero's 2025 season is gonna look like? Every projection system on Fang Graphs has a better slash line for Caminero going forward than what he's turned into the first 32 games, all of them. And there's a reasonably large range.

Oopsie is the most optimistic, and as you mentioned, maybe with less of an influence from bat speed in the future it would come in closer to the bat X the bat X is 271 319 473 22 homers so yeah he'd finish with 28 if he actually did that average would come in probably in the 262 263 range and you're catching more than that the rest of the way if you're trading for him or he's on leading out man like for 30 homers that part of his game is not what I'm worried about it's it's the the rest of the pieces getting all the way to the levels we want them to firm to be an early round

third baseman you know that's things right with that bat speed I just I'm gonna bet on it I can see how the Rays have this philosophy as a team. They seem to want guys who make contact and hit it hard. I put it that way to a guy who worked for the Rays. He's like, yeah, we like guys who know how to hit. Make contact, hit it hard. Yeah. Yeah. They sound like hitting defined with more words.

Thanks a lot for that question, Marcus. Let's get to where the money went. It ended up being a slightly more eventful weekend because of the promotion, or the recall, I should say, of Kobe Mayo. He, of course, debuted in the big leagues last year. Kobe Mayo now has 784 career-played appearances at AAA. I think there's something that caught my eye on his baseball reference page when I was getting ready for the show today. The Orioles were splitting Kobe Mayo's time defensively between first and third base.

While he started at third on Sunday, hitting the bottom third of the order against the Royals, I wonder if as we try to put the pieces together and think about how Mayo fits for them beyond the next couple of weeks. You got Jordan Westberg on the IL right now. They've been mixing up the DH spot with a lot of guys moving through there. Ryan O'Hern has 13 starts there,

but I think they've got five or six other guys that have DH'd at some point this year. Ryan Mountcastle is struggling. He's another Babbitt-ip laggard, 253 this season compared to 313 for his career. He still has a 48.1% hard hit rate, still has a strikeout rate in the range of his career norm, so maybe Ryan Mountcastle is a bit of a by-low

for at least deeper leagues. But at the same time, the Orioles have seen that movie for a long time, so maybe Ryan Mountcastle is on the move. Maybe not in the trade in division to Boston where they need a first baseman now but I don't know. I've wondered for about two and a half years if Ryan Mountcastle is the guy that some other team would want as a source of power and the Orioles might not miss him that much because

of the depth they've built up. What was your approach with Mayo this weekend given the way they've historically handled prospects? Even Jackson Holliday with the quick up and down last year, Heston Kirstad, formerly Kyle Stowers. This has been a tough organization to read for playing time purposes for a lot of their prospects. I didn't get any shares of Kobe Mayo and even in my leagues where he went, he went for modest amounts in my main event. He went for 40 out of a thousand. And I think that's because of the same concerns I have, which is just like, it's time for the corresponding move song. You know, it's like, you know, what is the, what is the reason that Kobe Mayo is up? And the reason that Kobe Mayo is up is that Jordan Westberg is hurt to some extent and Jordan Westberg is about to start his rehab assignment.

So when Jordan Westberg is on this team, what is the role that is left for Kobe Mayo? And I don't necessarily see one. That's probably what kept the bidding down. Yeah, and I don't think they keep them up to push Mountcastle to DH or whatever, you know. And even Heston Kerstad, who's been playing every day, I'm not sure he plays every day when Kausler and O'Neill are both healthy. And I don't think that they prefer to like, you know, take these players and just make them full-time DHs, any of them.

So I think Kobe Mayo will go back down when Westberg is healthy. A few other moving parts. Ramon Erias went on the IL this weekend. I think that was the thing that actually bumped Mayo onto the roster in the first place. So it's a lot of different moving parts. I mean, he's a short-term starter. Like he's going to, I think, start every day at third base in the short term. I think part of the reason, I actually threw some bids on Mayo

because I'm desperate for corner infield help in a few leagues. And one galaxy brain idea that I had was that the Orioles are off to such a frustratingly bad start that I think that leaves the window open for you to hit your way into a roll right now. If Mayo just goes on a heater for a couple of weeks until they get healthier, then maybe they do find a way to prioritize them. It's just soft enough depth chart wise,

where I could see, despite the crowd, a path to it. It wasn't a smash the piggy bank and throw a quarter of your budget at them, but I was willing to pay a little more than that the 40s you saw just to see what happens in this case. So you got some shares? I got some yeah. I may regret it in three weeks who knows. The other thing that I'm concerned about is I have no idea what his batting average and strikeout rate situation is going to be. It's been all over the place in the minor leagues. He's had strikeout rates nearing 30%.

He's had a 35 and 145 played appearance to double aid the first time he saw it. And then he's cut it all the way down to 21% with a 10.8% swing strike rate this year in AAA, which I think for Mayo would produce a pretty good batting average if he was able to replicate that at the big leagues. But you go back and you look at his Fangrass Prospects grades and he had a 30 slash, 30 present, 40 future for Mayo in terms of his hit tool. So if he doesn't have a hit tool, then he better hit for a bunch of power because I don't think he's going to steal a lot of bases. So that's, that's what he needs to do is he needs to hit some homers right away. That's... and that's, you know, it could happen. You're right, he could happen.

That was my play. I know it's not easy. It's usually a meandering sort of road with Orioles prospects anyway. I did have a question for where the money went from Farnsworth in our Discord. Did Sunday's outing from Logan Evans temper your enthusiasm about him as a pickup this weekend. I didn't actually pick him up anywhere and Logan Gilbert is throwing again. The swing strike rate's not great for Logan Evans and the stuff plus, he has a 99 stuff plus that's really floated by you know a elite curveball that he only uses 11% of the time so is it elite if he only uses 11% of the time. So is it elite if he only uses 11% of the time?

Like why is it 136 stuff plus curveball he uses 11% of the time? I don't get that. And basically what Logan Evans has is an elite breaking ball. Maybe I'm getting like a little bit of an Aaron Savali vibe off of him. It's not bad.

It can be a frustrating profile to roster though. And it's a young Aaron Savali So it's not an Aaron Savali who's like figured a lot of things out and is a veteran and knows how to get outs and stuff You know, it's like a it's a Aaron Savali waiting to happen I have had Logan Evans shares and I do still like him But it is weird when you have this stuff plus that's floated by one pitch You know, it could work out Cal Bradish, but it doesn't always work out. Did you have anybody you were excited about by the time Fab ran on Sunday night? You know, I got a share of Chris Martin because Luke Jackson is imploding.

Robert Garcia is, you know, in the mix, but I think they could, with Robert Garcia being a lefty, I think they could go to Chris Martin for the next save. I was excited to get him. In barf, I got Gunnar Hoegland. I also got Karmin Majinsky for his double tap. Wish me luck. Good luck with that, dude. But Gunnar Hoegland has a plus change-up and two decent fastballs and he

had a pretty good debut so you know I'm willing to see what the schedule gives me on Gunnar Hoagland. I think he has Seattle this week or something. Yeah I think the matchup for this week is fine. The Mariners lineup is producing. We talked about it a couple weeks ago with Jed Lowry and it's kind of held up. I think you wonder about the ballpark at home as the weather warms up in Sacramento and then job stability I think is actually solid in this case. Zvaldo Bidot has been disappointing so far. Still chances he turns it around but who who's gonna push him back out? Are they gonna immediately go back to JT Ginn

when Ginn comes off the IL? Yeah, not if Gunnar's pitching well. Right, so there's already an opportunity for him to just stick. They could go to a six man if they wanted to. If they felt like they had to use some other combination of those guys. I like the setup for Gunnar Hoagland a bit.

I did see AJ Smith Schaver get picked up again in a bunch of leagues. I think there's a two-step that could happen. I got him for that two-step. Dropping Bidot. Oh no. How many Bidot drops do you have now? Well, I have a lot in draft and holds, so I can't even drop them, but I've dropped Bidot three times in the last week. Oh no. I mean he's just I do think that Bidot has a chance of being okay his his command is better this year it's just not great and that park is just such a mess that I don't want to start him at home so he's just become a guy who's gonna be useful to me as a streamer. So I need to keep moving. You know, he can't, I can't hold a streamer like him and Smith Schaver, you know, I think has some more interesting stuff

going on in the hood and how to to start. So the other guy that I picked up was Andrew McCutcheon and it's super boring and I cannot recommend him in 10 and 12 team leagues. But Andrew McCutcheon is something going for him that I was a little surprised he's playing every day. Plays a lot. He plays all the time and he is a an above average hitter. Now he may end the season with a 255 average and 17 homers. So it's not going to be something that wins me a league, but

it's something that could really be useful at least in half weeks. You know, if I don't have other guys who are hurt or you know what I mean? Like he's a good bench piece. I wish he was something other than you to lonely, but you know, sometimes you just need a competent bat to play the weekend out. Maybe your your guy sits against lefties is out and you need somebody to play instead of him. That's how I think of Andrew McCutcheon. So I was a little excited about that. I also considered Miguel Vargas because Miguel Vargas is available everywhere and he's made

an adjustment this year to his batting stance. He's making more contact than ever. He still has that really good eye. You know, 110 max to be in a 5% barrel rate does not suggest that he's about to go on a tear or that he has great power or anything, but he does hit the ball in the air enough to maybe still, you know, fake his way to 15, 18 homers in a season, maybe with three or four steals. So, more another deep league guy, but, you know,

getting all the runway that he wants to. Right. That's the thing that I think is appealing about Vargas. You mentioned that swing change. I think it was James Fegan from Sox Machine that has a piece about that. I got to go back and read the full piece, but I just saw that that note on blue sky. I was like, OK, something is different. And the reason I thought that was interesting is because there was a day off that Vargas had back in April, April 22nd.

He had a day off against the twins and came back and just went on a tear for multi hit games in that space. Please start every game since then. went on a tear. Four multi-hit games in that space, started every game since then, and he's hitting 385, 467, 564 with a couple of homers in his last 11 games. Six walks against 4Ks. Could it just be a heater? Yeah, maybe, but the fact that you could get a guy who's third base and outfield eligible with basically everyday playing time, who was an interesting prospect for a long time and maybe has made an adjustment for deeper leagues especially. I mean I think that's why we saw some movement on him.

Even some 12 team leagues I thought Miguel Vargas got scooped up a bit this weekend so there might be something there that's changing and unlocking some of the talent that put Miguel Vargas on our radar a few years ago in the upper levels of that Dodgers system. We need to go on our way out the door. A reminder, you can join our Discord with the link in the show description. Thanks to our producer, Brian Smith, for putting this episode together. You can find Eno on BlueSky, EnoSaris.BSky.Social, MDVR.BSky.Social. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels.

We're back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening.