Rates & Barrels - Vidal Bruján gets the call, Rowdy Tellez has a new home, and a lost season for Sixto Sánchez

Episode Date: July 8, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss the Rays' promotion of Vidal Bruján, his chances of sticking on the crowded depth chart after Manuel Margot returns from injury, Rowdy Tellez as a Brewer, a lost season for Sixto Sánchez, and the White Sox's decision to part ways with Adam Eaton. Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Subscribe to The Athletic for just $3.99/mo: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels presented by Topps. Check out Topps Project 70 at Topps.com. Tons of great cards live each and every day. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris with you on this Wednesday. A bit of a different look if you're watching us on video. Travels have returned. Therefore, road pods are

very much a part of our life right now. The chaos around road pods also includes sometimes doing slightly shorter episodes. If this is one of our shorter episodes, it is the chaos of life yet again raining down upon us. How's it going for you on this Wednesday, Eno? Yeah, don't mind me as I try to move a pillow behind me because I'm like in the guest bedroom holed up as the kids are sure to scream in the hot tub outside. But it's all in the name of

family fun. But I am glad that we'll be driving home tomorrow. I'm recording from the third floor of the McAllister home from the movie Home Alone. So up in the McAllister attic. Pretty good acoustics up here, though. So a different backdrop. Wait, I recognize that backdrop. You've got a few options, to say the least. Yeah.

What you guys don't know yet. Should we tell him? Sure, you can tell him. He's at my house. But he knows not here. It's so ridiculous. Very strange. Very strange.

You'll find out more about why in the coming days, perhaps. But yeah. So hello, my house. Your house is still here. It's in great shape. You didn't burn it down. That's good. I did not. Did not have a bagel go awry.

So definitely some good news there. But let's get into some news items that have broke since we last spoke at the end of last week. And we will kick things off today with Vidal Brujan getting the call for the Rays. And I think Brujan's a player we've been looking forward to for a while now because we're expecting him to make a pretty significant impact on the base pass, at least on a per-game basis. I think there are some questions longer term about how he fits into the current build of the Rays lineup. Temporarily, Manuel Margot is on the IL,

so that opens up time for Margot to play in the outfield. The Rays trust him in all three spots. He debuted at second base as part of a doubleheader on Wednesday. Where are you setting the expectations for Brujan in his first go as a big league hitter? You know, I just, the biggest problem here, it's almost like a uh minor league pitcher coming up where you're just missing a large part of the data that's really important uh because if

you look at his background you say okay this is a slap hitting contact guy with with uh with what we hope is good patience so um i don, I don't know who's, uh, who's, uh, a comp for that, like an Iglesias type, um, you know,

somebody who will get on base, but they might, you know, kind of force the bat out of his hands. You're like, you might not expect to have a 10 or 11% walk rate like Brujan had in the minor leagues. If he actually does,

uh, have true talent, 100 ISO, because it's just going to be sort of, you know, you know, walk rate like Brujan had in the minor leagues if he actually does uh has true talent 100 iso because it's just going to be sort of you know you know fill up the zone on him because you're not scared of him hitting doubles right um and uh but then you also have these sort of bright spots in Brujan's record including this year at AAA, where he has a 212 ISO. And, you know, if he was a major leaguer and you had this kind of background,

you would have the exit velocities, the barrel rates, the kind of stuff that can help you refine your projections given a small sample like 216 plate appearances with almost double his minor league ISO to date. So what makes him exciting is that ISO could be real. And if that ISO is real, then he could be a sort of 260 to 275 hitter with something like 20 homer power and 40 steel legs. And he could have second base eligibility and outfield center field eligibility.

So that's super exciting. I'm describing a ceiling, though. I think his floor is a lot more like a 240 hitter that hits you maybe 10 homers in a year and maybe doesn't get on base as much because that walk rate goes down, and so therefore is more of like a 30 steal guy. Plus, you throw in the wrinkle, it's the raise.

And so, you know, is he just going to be here for a while while Margot is down? Or does he play his way into regular role? Yeah, I wonder if this is something of an audition for him, especially in center field. We've talked about Kevin Kiermaier being someone that's pretty vulnerable to losing a significant share of playing time. And if the Rays are willing to take a little bit of a hit defensively and move things around and play Brujan there or shuffle the defense around to adjust, that could be one way to increase that playing time. But a big side platoon role for Brujan doesn't seem egregious as far as a short-term cap goes, and then that already starts to whittle away his value. He goes from being

someone that you'd want to have in possibly all leagues because of the stolen base potential to someone that is a little bit more difficult to roster depending on the schedule, even in some 12-team leagues, if the bat doesn't come around right away. I think there's a huge range of outcomes, and I was looking for guys with rest of season projections with a 240s-ish batting average. And I guess at this point, we'd be looking for about eight to 10 steals. And you can go down the list, you see Manuel Margot actually 260 with nine steals, eight homers. I mean, that could be the type of fantasy player that we're getting right now is another Manuel Margot. And that's not necessarily going to win your league for you. But it could be an upgrade of what you have currently in some

leagues. Yeah, I just think that there's a possibility here for that kind of fabulpalooza energy where people are really excited about him, drop you know uh 20 of their fa via budget or more on this player and then he ends up being uh an injury placement and goes back down i mean that's just um i would say the meat of the possibilities here um you know kind of projecting and sort of depending or paying on that ceiling ignores the fact that the Rays don't really like to give up assets ever or drop anybody. Like, they don't want to DFA anybody. They don't want to release anybody. They're not going to trade Kiermaier, you know.

So are they really just going to DFA Kiermaier to get Brujan that roster spot? And if you kind of look around that roster, who else would they DFA? Like who else would they get rid of? They've already gotten rid of Tsutsugo. You could say G-Man Choi and throw Brandon Lau at first base. The problem is G-Man Choi right now has the best weighted runs created plus on the tee. And maybe that's a lot of Babbitt luck, but he is a guy who gets on base and does his job and has some value to the Rays.

So who else would you drop? Yandy Diaz is a possibility, but he's still above average with the bat and has some pop. And then it's Brett Phillips, really. And they acquired Brett Phillips. They traded for Brett Phillips. And I guess it's Brett Phillips, really. And they acquired Brett Phillips. They traded for Brett Phillips. And I guess it's a possibility. That's the weakest spot in the roster.

DFA Brett Phillips and give Brujan, what, 60% of the playing time between center field and second base? And then Kiermaier becomes a defensive replacement? Yeah, I guess you could also... There's one other way you could do this. You could option Taylor Walls back to AAA once Margot comes back. Give Franco the full-time job at short. Play Wander every day at short

and make Brujan your kind of floating infielder if you want to do that. What Wendell used to be. And I suppose third base is still an option, but I haven't heard third base for Brujan. Yeah. I think there's maybe some lack of arm strength there. How much do you think we can learn in a week about their intentions with how they use him though? Because I've been duped by the Rays before.

I think Nate Lowe was the classic guy that I thought the Rays really liked because of how much he was playing and where he was hitting in the lineup, only to find out a few weeks later, no, actually, we're going to send him down because Choi's healthy again. So I am a little worried that even a few weeks, two to three weeks might not be enough. If he's only good or okay, or if he's bad, he obviously goes down. But if he's just good or okay, that might not be enough.

He might have to be excellent to actually stick for reasons that are out of his control. And it could be with the timing. We're still two to three weeks puts us, if it's two weeks, 10 days before the trade deadline. If it's three weeks, we're talking about a couple days before the deadline. That could play in too. The Rays are obviously going to be a team that will make a move or two once we get to the deadline later this month. That could help clarify some of the uncertainty

that we have around how the pieces fit. Yeah, I just don't see them trading Brujan or Franco. I guess Walls could be trade bait. Because there's nothing left for him to prove in the minors. Yeah, and maybe he could bring back something that's better offensively

than defensively because they've proven that they can really suppress runs with the elite. So maybe they just want to get a short-term bat like Nelson Cruz, like Taylor Walls for Nelson Cruz. That wouldn't be crazy, would it? It wouldn't be crazy at all, actually. I don't think. Because Taylor Walls would, for them, they've already moved Jorge Polanco off. Maybe they could give you back Simmons, too, if you wanted, if you wanted sort of a defensive guy as a replacement.

But Nelson Cruz would be a short-term upgrade on offense for them. Anyway, it's a possibility. You know, it's hard for me to tell what quality prospect Walls is across the board because they have such a logjam and it makes him all, he's like the raised sixth best prospect. Well, that could be the first best prospect for the Twins, right? Or for another organization.

But he's also, his package is more defensive forward than offensive, I think. And we just know from the trade, from how people get traded and how people get rewarded in free agency, that defensive first profiles are not necessarily sought after. Yeah, I am totally with you there. I mean, I think Walls is the most tradable of those young players, and I think the defense plays at a high level. That alone gives them a good floor. Definitely one of those guys that could be on the move

that would obviously help us. But the Rays could also just say, we want him to be our shortstop. We like Wander at third, and we're cool with Brujan moving around. And that sort of leaves Joey Wendell also in one of those long-term spots where we don't really know what to make of him. Wendell I could see getting traded just because he's too old. I mean, he's too near the end, you know.

But it's a weird thing. I don't think the twins would be like, yay, Wendell for Cruz. No, but we were excited about a different trade that went down. Rowdy Tellez is a brewer now. I mean, I was very disconnected for a good part of the day yesterday. And when I got back online,

the NBA finals game one was on. So I, as a bandwagon Bucks fan, had to sit down and watch that. Wasn't even scrolling my phone. Wasn't looking at baseball news. And it turned out, yes, Rowdy Tellez, our son on this podcast

is now a brewer. I couldn't believe it when I saw that. It's funny because people call Daniel Vogelbach our large adult son, but I think on this podcast, Rowdy Tellez is our large adult son. Now one is replacing the other. The thing that we've liked,

you know, I think on this podcast is pretty obvious. He barrels the ball really well. I mean, up there with in the elite. And he made a big adjustment. Like this year, his barrel rate, even in a bad year is 13%. For his career is it's 11%. 10% is sort of where I start to really take notice.

So he can barrel the ball. And then he made it a big adjustment in the last two years where he cut his strikeout rate from near 30% to above average in the last two years. So I just find that a fascinating package that I will always bet on. But Keith Law pointed out something pretty interesting. He said that he hasn't hit fastballs. So I looked up Woba against fastballs over the last three years, minimum 150 fastballs. Number one right now is Trevor Larnock. So it's not a huge sample as you can tell it's enough

to get him in there number two is abraham abraham almonte which is surprising me number four is cruise five stanton six azarena seven springer eight harper 10 judge i mean the best hitters in baseball feast on fastballs. And you have to go down to 344 out of 646 to find Rowdy. And just to give you an idea of who he's hanging out with, he's hanging out with Hanser Alberto and Tim Locastro. Josh Rojas, who's improving a little bit, so it's not baked in for good. Jake Bowers, JB Crawford. Anyway, it's not a great group.

I would just say, like, can't i don't i can't swear the circle like he he has great barrel rates good strikeout rates has immense upside and he must have hit some fastballs to get here so like i just uh i think this is just a quirk of the sample, honestly. But if it is a real flaw, then maybe Vogelbach takes his job back from him. I don't know. Tellez has options. Yeah, I mean, it's nice that he has options because the Brewers don't have a lot of flexibility unless they're sending someone like Hira down.

We've talked about Hira a lot. Just to check in on him since coming back from Nashville, he's hitting.244,.360,.488 entering play on Wednesday. Still has a 34% K rate, but walking 10% of the time, and he's been 31% better than a league average hitter in terms of WRC+. So kind of tracking back toward at least the good version of Hira, if not the best version that we've seen so far. And that, to me, is enough to keep Tellez in more of a part-time role. Maybe you have the occasional tough righty where you feel comfortable sitting a guy like Hira down in that matchup, but I see Tellez as still more of a

part-time player in Milwaukee, even with Vogel back on the IL. How long is Wong out? Wong, I think after the All-star break is the hope. Hira played second base back in April, the first time Wong got hurt. He has not started a game at second base in May, June, or July. That tells me that ship maybe has sailed. It's still an option if they need to get everybody in, if offense is an issue, if Jace Peterson gets hurt. He's playing a ton at second base right now. If offense is an issue, if Jace Peterson gets hurt, he's playing a ton at second base right now.

But really, they're just trying to find a way to hold it together with some of the options they're throwing out there. So I think Rowdy at this point is really just somebody that we're pretty excited about in NL only leagues, adding to the pool, getting some cheap power, getting at least two, maybe three starts a week and a good week. But I don't think there's a whole lot of mixed league appeal as it's currently constructed right now. And I do think the fact that he has options left was a big part of the reason why the Brewers were comfortable acquiring him. Yeah. Yeah, it is interesting. I mean, he's a lefty, though. So, like, you know, if it does turn into a straight platoon,

then this really hurts Hura. It's also just a question of, like, how much do the brewers value him they sent out a reliever but they sent out two relievers for adamez and that turned out really amazingly and adamez is a full-time starter so i think there's still the chance that that happens you know and in fact some part of me says you know get rowdy for% of your FAAB budget and stick him on your bench and see what happens rather than get Brujan for 25% of your FAAB budget and get screwed. So, I mean, the chances that either of these guys turns into a full-time starter for the rest of the year and gives you all that you dream of might be similar. Way more similar than some might have it.

It's closer than you think. It goes back to one of our long-term threads that we pull out on the show. It's like at a certain point, is it better to have a player that has some track record in the big leagues, who's already gone through the adjustment phase, who's already failed maybe more than once, but still has big league teams, still has these skills, still has these traits that we like, versus the unknown of someone like Brujan, who could go through an even greater adjustment phase that first time around

before he's even ready to help us in any sort of meaningful way. I do think there's another guy that kind of fits into this conversation. If you're looking for cheap speed, it's Daniel Johnson in Cleveland. I don't think he's necessarily a great player, but I think in deeper leagues where you're speed desperate and the big money is going to go after Brujan, Johnson's the kind of guy that will play more with Eddie Rosario on the IL. It may be temporary. The only thing that gives me some pause is that when I look at his profile, Daniel Johnson's K rate has gone through the roof this

year at AAA. And I'm trying to decide if that really means a lot to me or if it's actually just something that it's the result of the broken 2020 season where a lot of guys are knocking the rust off in the first half of 2021, and we can't look at inflated K rates at that level as a necessarily new baseline. Yeah, it's a tough one. His strikeout rate had been floating around 20% until this year it just ballooned to 33.5 at AAA. Obviously, the year off had something to do with it. I also think he might be trying to transition a little bit

from a guy who didn't have that much pop early on to hitting the ball harder. So maybe there's some give and take there when it comes to the strikeout rate as well. But, yeah, I mean, maybe these guys are all, in the end, only guys. I mean, that's, you know, only league guys. That's the thing. And so if you're going to spend a ton on Brujan, I don't know.

I just – I think that the Daniel Johnson bets are also bad. Because, I mean, you can convince yourself, like, I'm only spending a dollar on this guy. But sometimes it's a dollar for a week. Yeah, and then he gets optioned midweek and you take a zero for part of the week because you thought, I might as well play this guy. Yeah, that's the worst.

I hate that. I don't know. The timing of injury uh reports and you know like i hate also hate the like the tuesday that your your team has an off day monday uh but you have to kind of set your lineup and then you set the you set the guy in and you have no options that's why it is nice to have some like Wendell Wendell has been a roster saver for me in a lot of places where just to have a guy like I can put him in util and then if something bad happens you know with a Tuesday report or something I can put Wendell in there and then have it's just anybody on my bench that can split into U2.

I think those types of players are really useful. Johnson will be OF only. Brujan is probably 2B only. Rowdy is first base DH. None of these guys are going to come in and solve that for you, but Brujan does have that possibility yeah i think you can dream on the brujan ceiling a little bit more you're really looking more at floor floor power from rowdy floor speed if it clicks for daniel johnson but that is a big if given what we've seen at triple a from him so far this season all right you know let's talk about six though sanchez We found out that he is

officially out for the season. Things were weird kind of going back to spring training with him, because if you might recall, at the end of March, they optioned him to the alternate site, and there wasn't a lot of warning before they did that. I think the initial thought was, oh, well, maybe they're just going to be careful because of past workloads, and he's absolutely fine. Within a couple days of that happening, he reported some shoulder soreness, and he's been trying to increase his throwing program on multiple occasions in the time since. Turns out there's actually a tear in his shoulder. It is a small tear of the posterior capsule, and that has required surgery. The Marlins are cautiously optimistic that he'll be ready for the start of 2022, but this is a pretty massive setback for a guy that looked really good upon arrival last season.

Yeah, and the toughest thing for me is that the shapes on the fastball are not amazing. He's kind of a sinker guy with that slot, and the shapes on the fastball are not, uh, conducive to strikeouts. That's why you've seen, uh, up and down his minor league record,

you know, not, uh, not great strikeout rates. Um, but then he, he, he like really opened eyes when he was sitting 97,

you know, when he came up and was sitting 97, then you're like, well, shape matters a little bit less if you're just going to blow it by them. And so the thing that worries me is that he has a surgery and comes back and he's at 94 which is fine but i just i think at 94 um i'm more likely to look at like a 7k9 uh a 50-55% ground ball rate and say this is not a fantasy

ace. This is not fantasy ace material anymore. Ceiling comes down quite a bit without that velocity due to the issues that you mentioned with the fastball, but definitely a significant blow. I didn't think this was going to turn out for the season situation. I just thought back during draft season, it could be

June or July before we saw him. Unfortunately, he's not going to make that timetable. There's nothing harder, I think, in rankings than trying to rank a guy like that. I think I had him all over the place. In the end, I had these little injury pockets

where it's like, okay, I've run out of arms i really like uh that are healthy so now here's a pocket of like six dough thor say you know there's all these little like in like they kind of described a tear in a way it was like okay you know i'm done with the with the arms i really can believe in and so here's some guys I could believe in if they were healthy. That's just the only way I could figure it out because we're going to look back at Sixto, Sale, Four, Severino, and at least one of them is going to have been a good investment.

Right. And it didn't look like it was sale, but it might be sale in the end. But even the cost, the cost isn't draft day cost. The cost is roster management in season cost. That's the miserable part of the whole thing. It's never the actual draft day acquisition cost. And I don't know how we're ever going to calculate that really well. I think you just get two camps

of people. The camp people that will take the chance and the camp people that don't. I will say I took very few chances of actually drafting an injured pitcher. I took two ones that stick out to me. It was almost the

only two I can think of. I really didn't want to do it in NFBC formats because there's no IL. So I was just like, I learned that from last year. And my teams are all doing better because of it. Because innings and plate appearances are the real gold, I think, in NFBC, where you can really get behind the eight ball with a short bench and no IL. If you look at where Jeff Zimmerman, Jeff Zimmerman is doing really well in his NFPC teams, and he's also doing really well in innings pitched and plate appearances.

And that's like, it gets kind of his approach. So I didn't do that at all in those. But in other ones where I had ILs, I said, well, come on, I got to take a shot. Just one, you know, who's it going to be? I don't know, the cheaper one, you know? So Thor went off the board and Severino went off the on. I got to take a shot. Just one. Who's it going to be? I don't know. The cheaper one. So Thor went off the board, and Severino went off the board, and I got Sale in my barf league, which is there's Glarf.

You're in Glarf. I have Sale in Glarf, yeah. I have Sale in Glarf. I am fluttering between second and third in that league, and I need pitching. And I'm looking at league, and I need pitching. And I'm looking at sale, and I'm like, well. And someone came and was like, you give me judge, I'll give you Woodruff.

And I was like, it makes sense looking at standings and all that, but I'm just staring a hole into sale right here where I get to keep judge. I get to keep judge and just wait on sale and the other one is um al labor where i took severino for a dollar uh we have unlimited aisle on that one and again i need pitching and i'm in second place and i'm just looking at severino being i guess it's you old pal you know you have a deadline acquisition already stashed away it's magic yeah and in related manner i have very little fav and obviously so we'll see how this works out but yeah i mean it always comes down to your league structure and

stuff but um i i definitely have an ear for people who are like i'm not gonna i'm not gonna pick up an injured pitcher and i'm not going to draft pitchers that I think will be injured. That second part becomes a lot more tricky though because it requires a pretty rigorous rubric and I also think you can be right by accident. You're not always right by

process with some of those guys. Pitcher strains a hamstring covering first base and you were worried about his arm well right you don't really get a w for that don't be don't be the pain guy being like i told you so i told you he'd be hurt and you're like he got hit by a pitch at the plate yeah he kind of rains on a lot of parades that's that's his uh his mo don't look he was raining he was talking about somebody's mechanics for a kid who died from

Tommy John surgery, from complications after Tommy John surgery. That's about the very bottom of the barrel. Don't go look. It's just terrible. Yeah, that is definitely terrible. Let's talk about Adam Eaton for a moment. I was just surprised to see

this break. Also terrible, but in a different way. He's played very badly and the White Sox are... Put that one up there with portrait transitions. How do you get DFA'd by the White Sox right now as a veteran outfielder? Do they need everything they can get?

They need everything. They DFA'd him when Adam Engel came back, so they're going to go Vaughn, Engel, Goodwin, Gavin Sheets as their primary four outfielders. I know Larry Garcia plays out there too. What does that say about how they feel about Eaton given the current makeup of that group of alternatives? It's funny. His barrel rate is not out of line with what he's done before.

His hard hit rate's decent. His max abuse is the same. It's not about the quality of his contact. He's got a 9% walk rate. I think it must be all the strikeout rate if he's going to strike out 25 percent of the time he needs to do something else better than he's doing and to be honest 220 plate appearances into the season it's not a bad time to kind of look at the strikeout rate and be like it might not be exactly 25 going forward but it's probably not going to be his career 17 going forward you know um it is a little surprising because the projections would

say uh most of them say league average bat still going forward and that could be useful for them uh but i would say you know projections saying that he's going to be an okay outfielder. Maybe that's also part of it. They say, okay, maybe he could be a league average bat. We think the strikeout rate says he's not going to be. Also, he had a few plays. He cost

Giolito a no-hitter or something. There was something where Eaton was trying to catch a ball at the wall and just like fell down and g lito was like staring at him from the mound just like the hell was that dude so i don't think he's very popular maybe like he hasn't been in the past that's just extrapolation strikeout rate um and then maybe the defense is worse than we think all-time low slugging percentage to go with an all-time high k percentage a bad mix once you get to this point

in the season i think teams would look at that and say something's off even if he bounces back he's not bouncing all the way back to those previous norms so it makes sense and especially if there's anything at all where he wasn't popular in that clubhouse that's a team that's done a lot of things right so far, despite all these injuries. They are in a great position. If you told me they also lost Grandal to an injury, which was on a check swing.

That was a leg injury on a check swing. That was very bizarre. Yeah, if you told me all these things, you'd say they're in the last. This has been a lost season for them i mean you could you could you could explain the twin season better by replacing clay you know what i'm saying like oh why the twins and last oh well they lost their starting catcher they lost their starting center fielder they like except that's the white socks so um i guess kudos to the organization for I think getting the most out of their pitching that they've gotten in a long time.

Absolutely. Steps forward from a couple guys. Dylan Cease, Michael Kopach out of the pen. The trade for Lin has worked out really well for them. Healthy Rodon. We talked about this team at the beginning of the year and said they could easily win the AL Central, but they probably couldn't withstand

a season like the one that they're having. So they have exceeded expectations by getting through their biggest flaws to this point. Hey, real quick though. Here's some love for Adam Engel. He's a great defender, by the way. I think Engel is their starting center fielder until they get the replacements back. Because Billy Hamilton is pretty much a nothing on offense. So I think he's more of a defensive replacement.

And Sheets is definitely a corner outfielder, and so is Goodwin at this point. So you're looking at your starting center fielder for at least a month or two, and he's going to... I think his pop is underrated, and he's going to steal you some bases. So I'm very glad to have him on labor, and I think if he's available in your AL only or deep league,

consider him. I think he could hit better than the 230 he's projected for. He could do 240, 245 with five homers and maybe five steals going forward. I'm not painting the rosiest picture, but that's useful in a lot of leagues. Safer than Daniel Johnson is where I would say Adam Engel goes at this point. And a similar package of stats he could give you. Definitely. Had one question come in for this episode.

This one came in from Taylor. He writes, what are you guys making of Chad Kuhl these days? Since returning from the IL, the command appears much stronger, and the last four starts in particular have been excellent. Blister issue aside, partway through the June 30th start, Slider looks nasty and could work for him if he leans on it more. Looking forward to the next episode, as always. Thanks, Taylor.

I think you mentioned Kuhl recently as a bullpen trade target for other teams, for contenders. As a guy that is definitely good enough to get guys out, it's the question of whether or not he sticks long-term as a starter. What have you seen lately from Kuhl? I've always liked his breaking ball. And one of the things that I've always wanted for him is to throw that breaking ball a ton, you know, and kind of, you know, kind of join the 50-50 club, you know, per se. And Stuff Plus tells that same story where the slider and the curve are his best pitches. The changeup is about league average, and his four-seamers and sinkers aren't that great.

And in terms of command, he's pretty poor, actually. So it is kind of the package that would make a big leap forward if he was a reliever, you know? And I think they keep trying him because, A, they need starting pitching, and B, maybe he has more value on the trade market as a starting pitcher in the meantime. And C, you know, he has representative other pitches, right?

Like he has a changeup, you know? And so I will say looking at the location and stuff numbers he has been trending uh positive uh two of his uh his two best location plus uh starts of the year are in his last four starts and two of his best stuff uh starts of the of this year or in the last four starts. So I think that's partially just throwing his good pitches more and his bad pitches less. And, you know, showing maybe a little bit more strategy when it comes to location,

because his command plus is like an 87. It's reliever level. So I think, like, long-term, he's a reliever. But short-term term very interesting acquisition for um someone looking for a cheap pitcher that could sit on their back and this is probably true for fantasy too a cheap pitcher that like in any given week like sort of a streamer situation um somebody that or if it's's AL or NL only, somebody you could acquire for not very much that if he does go to the bullpen, like just still gives you innings, like he will give you innings and they will be okay if it's on the Pirates or not. And there could be some good

starts in there, but I think long-term the vision for me for him as a reliever. Yeah, I agree with that. Streaming use is the proper way to go with Chad Kuhl in the short term. Thanks a lot for that question, Taylor. We will take a lot more questions on Friday. So ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com is the best way to email us on Twitter. He's at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. If you don't already have a subscription to The Athletic,

you can get one now for just $3.99 a month at theathletic.com slash ratesandburials. For Eno Saris, I'm Derek Van Ryper. We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening.