Rates & Barrels - Walker Buehler's Stuff Plays Up & The October Struggles of Catchers

Episode Date: October 17, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss Walker Buehler's outing in Game 3 of the NLCS and the overall uptick in pitch movement at Citi Field on Wednesday night. Plus, they examine the struggles of catchers at the plate this postseason -- and in recent years -- before discussing publicly available defensive metrics following the release of Gold Glove finalists earlier this week. Rundown 1:13 Was That Walker Buehler's Best Stuff of the Season? 9:29 David Fry's Injury-Driven Defensive Limitations 11:53 Are Catcher Ground Into Stumps by October? 20:06 Will Smith's Slight Downturn in 2024 30:06 How Does This Guardians Team Compare to Other Recent LCS Clubs? 41:20 The Gold Glove Finalists Made Us Wonder: How Do We Feel About Currently Available Defensive Metrics? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-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

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, Thursday, October 17th. Derek the Ripper, Innosaris. On this episode, we discuss some fatigue factors in October baseball and how catchers might be particularly affected by the grind of the long season. We're going to take a look at gold glove finalists and talk a bit about public facing defensive metrics and how they've come along over the years, how we feel at the current state of things trying to evaluate players quantitatively with the things we have at our disposal and

a quick snapshot of where we are right now in the postseason with it being Thursday October 17th you might know that today game three in Cleveland for the ALCS gets underway it's probably already happening to listen to this podcast because my internet was not working this morning so we have a delayed recording the good news is we are not previewing that game and we're not previewing game four of the NLCS because you'll get to watch those games as they happen, but we will talk about some things happening in those series of great interest. So, you know, we begin today with Walker Bueller. Was his start on Wednesday the best stuff he has actually had in his arsenal so far in 2024? Because it certainly looked like that watching him. We can't get an official number just yet because we're working on trying to unlock the postseason numbers but he had the best drop ever on his knuckle curve, the most sweep ever on his

sweeper and I think the most fade ever, most horizontal movement ever on a sinker. So, you know before the game I saw Xavier Scruggs Mentioned that you know, he should throw more sinkers and sweepers and and and mix it up a little bit because he'd been getting really Locked into cutters and curves, you know, and I was like our sinker and sweeper all that all that good But they look great in that game. I had like a little bit of like, so check out his spin rate in this game. Now, it's the most he's had since Sticky Stuff Enforcement, basically.

But if you're looking at this graph, when I say it's the most spin he's had since Sticky Stuff Enforcement, that makes you think, oh my God. But when you look at his graph, you're like, oh, but he's kind of been here three times already, you know, in posts. It's very obvious where Sticky Stuff Enforcement is on this graph. But he's not back to where he was with Sticky Stuff. back to where he was with Sticky Stuff, and the number that he was up was around 115, and that's like one standard deviation. So it's just enough to be like, hmm, but absent any sort of visual confirmation or any sort of reports of sticky balls or whatever,

I would say that this is not that suspicious. Look at the next graph though, if you looked at vertical movement, you'd say, oh my God, the vertical movement is back to where it was the sticky stuff, he's doing it again. So, you know, this is lying with numbers in a way. I would have to say that there's probably

two things going on. One, something clicked for him mechanically that hadn't in a while. Two, we've talked about this a little bit before, I think there's actually more salt in the air where they play in New York than where they play in Los Angeles. Really? Why do you think that is? I've looked at a map of it. It's incredibly low res, and so it's not very specific. And it's like a grab that someone put in their article

and it's behind a paywall by some research site. So I'm just looking at like some low res imagery of this. But I think the simple answer is they're closer to the water. Okay. I mean, that would be one satisfactory simple explanation for me as someone who has not spent time looking at salt maps. Yeah. So I mean, you Darvish's sinker movement went up when he went to San Diego and I posited that to some extent that's due to more Sailing content in the air and we did have Alan Nathan Confirm that sailing content in the air would create more movement because it would create more drag so whatever reason it was you know, I think the fact that the movement on all of his pitches was so plus and

Only in the spin on his fastball was within the range of what he's done this year. I would say that it was more mechanical and environmental. In any case, you know, one thing he still did do was bounce that curveball a lot. And I thought the Mets should have spit on more curveballs, but there were a couple he did. He threw just enough in the perfect spot in the zone that I think as a Lindor or, you know, as we saw him kind of swing over a couple of

those, I think you, you feel also you're behind if you're the Mets. And so you kind of feel like, you know, I needed to make something happen here. I would have been a little bit more patient with Bueller cause he's pretty wild, uh, this version of Bueller. But I think maybe he was just good enough and the movement was just good enough that this was this was a good version of him. It made me wonder, you know, how I will look at him next year. I mean, there's a couple of questions here. First off, where

will Walker Bueller pitch in 2025? He's a couple of questions here first off. Where will Walker Bueller pitch in? 2025 he's a free agent maybe becoming a free agent at a less than optimal time But if you were going to advise Walker Bueller on places to go if you were going to leave the Dodgers The Mets wouldn't be a bad choice. It's a pitcher friendly park stuff was moving really well It didn't seem like it was just Bueller's stuff either. Ryan Brazier was getting a ton of movement. I think it was on his two seamer. I was watching that pitch. I was like, is that better than usual? It's usually good, but it seemed like that had a little bit of extra. We've seen plenty, plenty of pitchers end up with the Mets in recent years and get better results. Maybe this is part of it. The atmospheric conditions on top of the park itself

help that stuff play up. I think Adam Adamino talked to us about that earlier in the year a little bit. Brazier had three extra inches. Yeah, over average. Okay, so it wasn't, sometimes I see that stuff and I'm like, okay, maybe I just didn't watch Brazier very closely the last couple times he pitched

or different day, different everything, everything. But yeah. Okay. Oh, check this out. Everybody had extra movement. Everybody did the whole both sides. I bet you there was something environmental going on. Michael Copac, extra two inches vertically, extra five inches vertically on the cutter, extra three inches horizontally on the cutter. Extra three inches horizontally on the cutter. Brian Brazier, extra three inches on the sinker, extra four inches of ride on the fore seam. Blake Trennan, extra five inches horizontally on the sinker.

Five inches on the fore seam, three inches vertically on the fore seam. I'm seeing plus vertical plus movement numbers everywhere. Even Ben Casperius, which I don't even know what they're comparing it to, so I won't bring that up. But Luis Severino, plus movement, plus ride on the fore seam, plus sweep and fade on the sinker. So I bet you there was something going on in the air that led to this.

Tyler McGill, even though he didn't pitch well, got a lot more horizontal break than average. It also got colder in New York in recent weeks as well. So temperature changes probably had a factor, at least relative to humidity, dew points. I think colder air leads to more drag. Because we know from the way that the ball flies through the air when you hit it that it goes

further in heat and it goes further in heat because the the air is putting less drag on the ball so colder air might have more drag and create more movement which is a double whammy if you think about it for offense it's colder the balls not flying as far when you hit it and the pitchers who are throwing are throwing with more movement and because the postseason video bomb that throwing harder with more movement. And because it's the postseason they're not throwing their crappy pictures. So that's why if you look over the course of you know at least the last ten years the postseason OPS the OPS plus or WRC plus is never 100. It's always below and it actually fluctuates around 90.

So offense is about 10% worse in the postseason generally because of these factors. And it's not just the catchers, it's everybody because it's just harder to hit. Right. So we were wondering yesterday if guardians would use David Frye behind the plate at some point. We had a few listeners including professor Alan K. Chen in the Discord letting us know that Frye hurt his elbow back in late June and has not been catching or playing right field since then. From a fantasy perspective he started more than 20 games behind the plate this year. So you get catcher eligibility for David Frye in 2025. I know

some of you are just here for that. But that was one of those things that I was not aware of because I missed out on David Fry in fantasy this year. So I was not watching day to day David Fry news as closely. I had him and I just thought that they weren't catching him because he wasn't good at it. Yeah, I this would be a question. Did you find reporting on this elbow injury? I didn't even go back to, we had multiple people telling us about it. So yeah, I believe it. I just, I don't know why I missed it.

The tricky thing for me, when you tell me you have a part-time catcher, is deciding how bad the defense really is with the limited defensive metrics especially. If you don't watch that guy every time he starts behind the plate and you're just looking at some of the numbers, it probably doesn't look as bad in the numbers

as it could look from a scouting perspective. Okay, check this out. This is why it's a little bit weird. He was removed from the game with elbow inflammation. And so you would say, and then they referred to it as an elbow injury afterwards, but the actual day that it happened,

it was referred to as an elbow inflammation. So basically I think what happened, what's going on is he got a partially torn UCL. Oh, if he hasn't gone back to playing catcher or right field, the thing I expect to see after the Guardian season comes to an end is David Fry had some kind of minor, maybe possibly a major, but some kind of elbow procedure given that he wasn't able to play either one of those spots.

Well they're playing a little bit coy with it so that's in my defense you know I don't think that elbow inflammation would have immediately come up in my head and been like oh he can't catch now you know but he didn't and I just thought they decided you know Bo Naylor and Austin hedges were better defensively, which is not which is a yeah, duh But you know on the flip side, you know, they're starting Austin hedges in in this game Cleveland is and I think it's twofold Mike Petriello kind of talked about this a little bit It's a if they're not gonna be good to offensive, take the better defensive one. We saw Bo Naylor did pretty poorly the other day defensively. Part two, I said A, now it's part two. Part two is that now with hedges in to begin, you can bring Bo Naylor on

when you think you need more offense. So you can kind of time it right. And so if you do come up with Osnit Hedges bases loaded, you can put Bo Naylor in, you know? But if you just sneak hedges through the game, then you just keep him in for defensive reasons. And you can also kind of do the David Frye, then Bo Naylor comes in if you wanna pull the trifecta. But one thing that's going on with this is that catchers, I just talked about how offense is down in the postseason

catchers this postseason are batting 153 to 23 to 33 Maybe you know there are some offensive catchers that are you know it's postseason always have more limited samples Maybe if like JT room Muto's played longer. He would have changed his number and So I'm not so concerned with the 33 WRC plus they're putting up as I am when I looked across the last 10 years and found that across the last 10 years, catchers have a 62 WRC plus in the postseason, all of the postseason has an 86 and this is most obviously

the worst position out of all of them. So I think when you were saying something about the wear and tear of the season on catchers, I think there's definitely something there. I don't know what that means for team building or playoff preparation or what you do. I think it does mean as much as you like Austin Wells, you don't play him in the middle of the order.

That's even separate of the catcher situation, the tea on the catchers in general. I just think they have better options, especially with Rizzo back in the fold. If Rizzo is actually healthy, you'd put Rizzo in that spot over Wells, and Jess Chisholm should be in that spot. If your analysts are coming to you and projecting numbers

and saying, oh, Wells is, Wells projects for a 110W, 110W RC Plus, he should be in there. Jazz is only at 105 or something. Then you should at least at some point, if you have power as a manager, maybe you don't. I know that recently Will Clark was on local radio yelling about Farhan's ID and how, you know, they were giving Bob Melvin the lineups.

And I noticed that he wanted to say they didn't do that to Bochy, but he actually kind of admitted even in his rant that they gave Bochy lineups, which is something I've known for a while and listeners to this show should know because I brought it up a couple of times. So I don't know.

I think that front offices handle the lineup more often than people think. I mean, hey, it started back in Moneyball. We saw it in the movie. It had to be real. It was happening in Art Howe's office. Sad Philip Seymour Hoffman face. Like I think of that every time.

That's not just the A's being money ballish. I think it's, you know, I would say at least two thirds of the teams now probably operate like that. Right. It's probably a group collaborative effort to build it in the first place. Maybe there's input coming in from multiple places and then there's a final say comes down from the top,

but ultimately, yeah, it's not the manager in most situations. Will Clark yelling on the radio, I'd love to see some ratings on that at some point if we can track those down. Be sure to email those to me. There's a few things going on with the catchers in particular though that I'm surprised by. Francisco Alvarez has been among those catchers struggling. They're all struggling.

Alvarez to me is one of those players that still could bring a lot more to the table in the long run. He's still really young. He's gonna turn 23 next month and he's already got 800 career plate appearances counting the playoffs now as a big league player. We've seen double-digit barrel rate. We've seen a decent K-rate with some patience.

I think if he's lifting the ball more consistently, there is still 35 home run potential here. And the big thing that's changed for Alvarez compared to when he was a prospect, much like Austin Wells, the defense has come along to the point now where you look at him and say, great, he's gonna play even if he's slumping

because his defense is really good. That wasn't always locked in with Alvarez. The beginning of his career, I think we had some questions about whether or not he was going to occasionally lose time to a glove first backup. He's gonna be a workhorse, and it's the matter of time, I think,

before everything in that profile starts clicking for him at the plate. Yeah, I want to, in this off season, take a look at young players, even if they struggle, maybe they struggle, maybe they don't. But young players in the playoffs the year after. I want to look at this because I feel like, you know, one thing that does happen and this is pretty obvious, but I think there's a corollary here that might not be as obvious. One thing that does happen, and this is pretty obvious, but I think there's a corollary here

that might not be as obvious. So you have a young guy come up and he struggles, like a Jackson Holliday or even Heston Kirstad, the first time it comes up, right? And then they go back to AAA and they rock AAA, right? Yep, happens a lot. It happens a lot, and I think, and you're like, mathematically that should happen.

Like, what point are you making? My point is the playoffs is another level above regular season. Well yeah, you were just talking about the difference in performance from regular season to the post season, because the pitching gets better. You're facing better teams, better pitchers, tighter decisions, all of those things.

You're turning the difficulty from very hard to extremely hard. Yeah. And so if you imagine this in the, he's like, oh, there's A, double A, triple A, whatever, you know, like there's majors and then there's postseason. So if Alvarez is struggling in the postseason, when he gets back to the regular season,

maybe it'll feel easier. And one of the things that I think also will go into this is the learn skills aspect. When you look at aging curves, you find that the physical skills peak earlier and they just sort of decline. We know this with bat speed, sprint speed, defense, a lot of the more athletically inclined aspects

of your production go down. But we know also that hitters take more pitches as they get older. And that walk rate kind of, you know, peaks later and stuff like that. So those are what I call the learned skills versus the athletic skills. And the thing that Alvarez need the most, I think, are these learned skills. You look at just a little bit of change in his chase rate and like fly ball rate, getting the ball off the ground a little bit, that can come from pitch selection

as much as anything mechanically. And what I'm seeing him struggle with the most right now in the post season is getting domed up a little bit. Like he's, they made a joke about it on the cast even where they were talking about, you know, his A swing. He didn't, he only has one swing, it's the A swing. And that's fine with me. I'm not saying that's a problem,

but what it does say is that like he's anticipating the wrong pitch. But you know, he's playing that game where he's trying to anticipate the pitches. He's trying to anticipate what they're doing and he's calling pitches. So I just see that clicking. You know what I mean? where he's trying to anticipate the pitches he's trying to anticipate what they're doing and he's calling pitches so I Just see that clicking you know what I mean like he's gonna come back

He's like oh, man you guys are you guys are just doing I remember this was the book in the postseason And you're not even throwing as hard as that guy or as your sliders not even as good as that guy So I got this you know so I could see him breaking out next year I would be interested in looking at like, you know, Austin Wells, Francisco Alvarez, looking at young guys and seeing what happened before with young guys that struggled in their first taste of the postseason. What do you think about Will Smith struggling in the playoffs and even just during the regular season?

I think he was more in the very good, but not quite elite category seen at times in the past and slugging down in the low 400s at 433 OPP at 327 is the lowest he's ever posted I think he was chasing more outside the zone this year than he ever has before the underlying numbers otherwise aren't terrible still a double-digit barrel rate you know hard hit didn't go terribly down like similar ground ball rate although all those things are still mostly intact was this just a normal slight down regular season

for Will Smith and things are gonna be fine rest of postseason and beyond, or do you see anything there that gives you some concern? I think, especially when you look at a strikeout rate that's the same or better than usual in this postseason, and then Will Smith is also walking more than ever. You know, I don't see him as being as domed up as Alvarez. Like I could buy that he, you know, is just suffering this, you know, what we're seeing

is like a 20 point downturn in catcher WRC plus. So right now he has a 71 WRC plus Will Smith does that translated to a 91. We wouldn't say he's having a problem. And I think that maybe there's something to that when it comes to a career too. He's been healthy and on the field for four straight years above a 500 plate appearances. Maybe there was just a little bit of the grind that caught up to him.

Yeah, it could be. And I think they've tried to be aware of that with their usage of Will Smith in the regular season, too. They don't push him to the absolute max, played appearance wise, compared to some of their players at the position. And maybe we're finally starting to see JT Realmuto, like maybe we're finally starting to see heavy, heavy workloads, including some deep postseason runs in recent years, really take their toll on him now that he's 33. So looking at Real Muto for a second, what kind of future do you think he has?

Betting on 34 year old catchers always seems a little bit risky but Real Muto seems to be above average in terms of athleticism especially for his age. Now we're coming off a year in which he only attempted four steals. He was two for four as a base dealer after going 16 for 21 last year and 21 for 22 in the regular season two years ago. There's a piece by Dave Cameron before he went to work for a team called catcher aging curve is a curve not a cliff.

And so, you know, to some people, you know, you might say, oh, when a catcher is done, he's done. It looks like their aging is just about the same. Of course, aging has changed a little bit since 2013 when this article was in. And I do, if we're talking about a position that maybe if you're talking, like sort of putting this context of what I was just talking about in terms of physical skills, it's probably the most physically demanding job on the field.

It seems like it, but actually by a pretty healthy margin. You're not seeing a post-season dip on the same level as catching for short stops and center fielders, I checked those in particular. So maybe in a game, maybe we need to revisit those aging curves because this game is putting a lot of pressure on on athleticism. And, you know, it's a financial thing in terms of, you know, teams wanting to have younger players that are cheaper. But it's also some of the rule changes. So, you know, maybe he's going to be, you know, he's going to be not just just never kind of reach those heights that he has recently.

If I was doing a projection for him next year, I think I would probably give him about like a 260 average, a 330 OBP. So that's a little bounce back when it comes to OBP. back when it comes to OVP, I think just sort of feeling better will lead to a little bit more power. So maybe like a 180 ISO. So that's more like 16 to 17 homers, but I may not give him more than five steals a season going forward. And that's age 34. So even with a normal aging curve, he may only have, you know, maybe two or three more seasons where he's, you know, fancy relevant.

Right. He's probably gonna take that tumble where maybe 2025 is the last year where in single catcher leagues you feel okay if you waded into Kuryo Muto. Beyond that, it might be a little more fringy and the usage might change beyond that too. Eventually players like that just don't have that that workhorse ability anymore. Either they're on the IL or their team is a good job. Yeah, how does 260, 17, 5 fit into the catcher landscape is probably.

Not bad. It's probably mid table now, 6, 7, something like that. Yeah, 260, 17, and 5, I mean, okay. Let's put it another way. If someone could guarantee you that from Bo Naylor next year, would you take it? Would I take Bo Naylor over in Real Mudo? No, I'm saying if you could get those exact numbers from Bo Naylor going the other direction,

I mean, you'd be pretty excited about that, right? Compared to what he just did this year with a high K rate. I don't think he falls too far. I've got Zips 2025 in front of me. Yeah, all right. It's based on preseason 2024 information, so it's not great. But in terms of homers, JT, oh, it actually has 17 homers for Rio Mudo. That's amazing.

And a 247 average 315 OVP. He would be 15th in homers according to Zip's 2025. Ahead of him would be Wells, Rutchman, Yannir Diaz. They've got Sam Huff ahead of them. I think that might be wrong, but whatever. William Contreras, somebody named Wes Clark, Shea Langlieres, Will Smith, Salvador. So he's gonna be like 12th-ish in homers.

They have him with 11 stolen bases I just don't believe that anymore you know after a knee injury and everything I'm revising him down so if he got five home five stolen bases he would be you know around 15th and that so 15th and homers 12th and 12th and homers 15th and stolen bases and probably like top 10 and batting average so he's still a top 10 catcher. Yeah, that's still not bad. I think even this year by auction calculator results, J.T. Riamura was the 12th ranked catcher

in fantasy baseball in a down year. And I think there's a little bit of bounce back. He had an injury this year. He was not feeling good. Right, so even if the per plate appearance numbers are similar, the counting stats will be better without the missed time. There's a chance to get a little bit of skills bounced back from him as well.

So I can see myself having a decent amount of JT Riamuto going into next season. Wells versus Naylor for 2025, I think is an easy call for Wells, just kind of focusing on the catchers in that series for a minute. And I think it's a lineup qualities better even if you're not expecting that lineup position that he's in

right now to hold that's fine being a left-handed hitting catcher playing two-thirds or more of the time for the Yankees a lineup that should be somewhere top three top five in the league. Nice for Park. Great Park so the power floor is steady I think I like Wells just flat out better than Naylor right now but Naylor still to me has some untapped potential. The defensive metrics actually liked him. I know you mentioned he's had a couple of rough appearances in the post-season but he still popped 13 homers in the regular season, stole 6 bases. We saw improvement

over time from him in the minors. I think it was repeating double A was where he really clicked from 21 to 22. And then that was the year he also played a triple A for the first time as well. So I think there could be some will make the adjustments over time. And we were saying all young players are taking a little longer to make adjustments right now because the quality of the pitching they see in the upper levels the minors is pretty far away from what they see in the big leagues. Even if Bo Naylor is on a superstar expecting it to take a year a year and a half as a catcher is not that much of a leap. It's a very difficult position to play with all the other responsibilities a player has so I'm

still a little bit optimistic about Naylor even though he hasn't really hit for the Guardians this postseason, I think he's pretty clearly still their long-term solution behind the play. Austin Hedge is a free agent at the end of the season anyway, so even if they bring Hedge back as a backup, I think they want to continue leaning pretty heavily on Naylor.

In both of Bo Naylor's seasons, he's improved in chase rate over the course of the season, improved in swinging strike rate over the course of the season, and improved in Wobba over the course of the season, improved in swinging strike rate over the course of the season, and improved in Woba over the course of the season. However, in 2024, all of those improvements were less impactful than they were in 2023. So my only worry is, yes, there is the ability for a 24 year old catcher to improve, and he has shown some improvement over time, but that there's something here that is running up against the ceiling of some sort.

Maybe, but even if you just mash together this season and last season, almost 200 games, but it's 627 played appearances, 24 homers, 11 steals for Bo Naylor, a 28.7% K rate with a near 10% walk rate, 89 WRC plus to sort of start in your first 600 PAs. Not bad. It could actually look a lot worse.

So I'm going to keep the door open for more from Bo Naylor. We had a question about the Guardians in particular. And I think as admitted skeptics of this team who have since well I apologize I don't think you ever actually apologized for your skepticism about the Guardians I may have just been Midwest nice and in seeing the similarities between the team I watch and follow most closely and the Guardians maybe that maybe have a soft spot for fans in Cleveland nevertheless Sierra six wrote this in our discord I don don't know if it's just me,

but the Guardians team, this Guardians team feels exceptionally weak on paper for a top four team left in the league. I am not trying to slander them, but the lineup does look very uninspiring. I feel like the median level of teams as playoffs has decreased Manfred Ball trademark at work. So I like to just zoom out sometimes and say, okay, I've had a feeling like that too. I have texted you my lack of enthusiasm about Will Brennan being up in key spots. We've talked on the podcast about the quality of the rotation during the regular season,

which withstood a lot of injuries. Bieber, McKenzie, those two alone, that's a massive hit. Many teams lose their top two starters, they're not going to the playoffs, they're not winning their division, they're not going to the ALCS. So the fact that they've been able to overcome this with a great bullpen, with the pitchers that were there, says a lot about their organization. Year three of the 12-team playoff format. I was looking at the teams that were in the ALCS and the NLCS each of the previous two seasons, right? Like are the Guardians the worst team we've seen in the LCS round in the

expanded playoffs? Maybe, but there's two offenses I think they're somewhat close. One was worse in the regular season. That was Arizona last year. They had a 96 WRC plus, 18th in the league. The Guardians had a 100 this year, as we've talked about before, tied for 16th, smacked out in the middle. The Padres in 2022, when they got knocked out by the Phillies in five in the NLCS, they had a 102 WRC plus that year.

So only 2% better than league average. So maybe comparable to the slightly high side, Arizona maybe comparable to the little worse side. You think about the quality of the pitching, Arizona's pitching last year versus Cleveland's pitching this year. I think I'm taking Cleveland's pitching this year. Yeah, that's pretty close either way. The rotations are close, but I think the bullpen by far, Cleveland. So Cleveland's better in that regard. So at the first glance, I think the Diamondbacks were a worse team, at least on paper, than this year's Guardians, which doesn't mean

either one of these teams are bad. Because I like Sierra six, I'm not gonna slander these teams, like some of this is just the format of the postseason. I know we kind of feel like this could be a sweep. Maybe by the time people hear this it'll be 2-1, the Guardians will have one game three at home. That's possible.

Do you agree that something is lackluster about this Guardians team and do you agree with my assessment that perhaps they're on the same level as that Diamondbacks team that made it to the World Series and lost to the Rangers last year? Yeah, I'm a little surprised that the Diamondbacks offense didn't rate as poor as it rated as poorly as it did, because this year's the Diamondbacks offense was so good. Oh, yeah. And there's there's a few there are a few holdovers, but 2023, man, the last World Series was a lifetime ago.

How many position players can you name off the top of your head that were in the Game 5 lineup, the game they were eliminated from the Diamondbacks roster last year? I think there's a little trick in this question because I think Andrew Haney started that game. So I think it was a lefty. Ivaldi started that game. Ivaldi, oh, all right.

Yep, Ivaldi already started. Corbin Carroll, Eugenio Suarez, Christian Walker. Suarez played for the Mariners last year, so he watched this game at home like we did. Suarez just came over this year. But you got Carroll. You got Walker. Christian Walker.

Okay, yeah, who else was there? Jake McCarthy. I think he was on the team, in the organization, I think he was on the roster, he didn't play in that game. Perdomo. Perdomo, yep, he hit ninth. I was in the organization. I think he was on the roster. He didn't play in that game per domo Perdomo. Yep. He hit ninth Moreno, I remember Moreno hit third for them last year. Yeah, that's when they weren't as good offensively as true, right? I mean you could tell Marta still there Marta of course, Sam Lourdes, Gary L Alec Thomas fan Evan Longoria

I mean that that was not a good lineup last year for a playoff team. Like this is a multi-part question. So A, I don't think either of them is that great teams. That's funny to say about so many made it to World Series, but yeah, I don't think either of them are that great teams. B, like is this Manfred ball requires a little bit more because what you're also talking about in Manfred ball

would be a race for the middle. And there's been to some extent a race for the middle that always existed. Between the teams that are kind of okay with a wild card even before there are three wild cards there were other wild cards and so there were teams that were like you know like the A's who are always never there were never gonna build a you know a team that they did win some divisions, but they never built a team that was like a lock to win the division. That wasn't their idea. Their idea was to build, it's sort of the 54% that, what's his face from the Mariners talked about? Jerry Depoto. Depoto talked about.

You build a team that is a true talent, 87 win team, and if things go right, you win 92, 93, and you get in, maybe you go all the way. That's always existed. I think the other part of Manfred Ball would be the race for the middle from the top teams. So have we seen the top teams reduce investment in order to basically have the same chance of making the postseason, have the same chance of making the World Series and spend less? And I would say that we have not seen that from the Dodgers. We have not seen of making the postseason have the same chance of making the World Series and spend less. And I would say that we have not seen that from the Dodgers.

We have not seen that from the Yankees. We have maybe seen it from the Giants and Red Sox, which is important because those are teams that could, should, would in the past be in that high end. We spend as much as we want group. Sure. And I would say the only team that kind of tailed spending near the very top that's still in the playoffs is the Mets. But that was a pulling back a little bit to, I think, make bigger investments in the organization as a whole. I think that's actually a lot of it for next year

because now they actually have a lot of money they can spend and people have said it's for Soto. What if it's for Soto and Roki Sasaki? What if it's for both of those guys and for Bregman? Like oh, okay, so you're gonna have the Dodgers winter from last year, you're gonna be that team now? I kind of expect that to be the case if they get somehow shut out on all of the top free agents,

which I don't think would happen. But the Giants and Red Sox kind of meandering around, you know, 200, 200 plus million does make you wonder a little bit if there are some teams that might have gone past this with different rules, different incentives, and different postseason situations. Right, and we talked about the lack of a 100 win team.

The Dodgers got to 98 in the end. So like within arms reach, they had a few injuries. If those injuries don't happen, they get to 100. Full seasons can have noise, too. That could just be just something that happened this year. I think so. And the importance of the injuries they had, plus the importance of the injuries the Braves had, a couple of teams got dinged up pretty good

at the upper end of the projections I think it was a little bit of a Random occurrence an abnormal random occurrence I guess I'd say where this could happen again five ten years from now And it might not be the sign that teams have pulled back all that much the Manfred ball thing It's just having more teams in the playoffs if you have more teams teams in the playoffs, this format lends itself to some unexpected things. Are unexpected things bad? No, they keep life interesting.

I think I do agree with people that you want to see as many different ways to win as possible. You don't want to see the big payrolls bludgeon the little ones all the time. You want to see, like the Guardians focus on contact and this bullpen and those sort of things. You kinda wanna see different strategies win. Unfortunately, I think what you have seen to some extent

is the big payroll teams adopt the strategies of the small payroll teams. And so what are the Dodgers doing? They're guard-z-ing, guard-balling. How would you say they're guard-balling? Elaborate on that for us a little bit. I'm not sure I agree with that. Bullpen games with the pitching staff.

They're being super aggressive. That's because of all the guys they're missing. Would they be bullpenning this hard if Glasnow was healthy? Would they be bullpenning this hard if Yamamoto was completely healthy and he's limited in part because it came off the injury? Like I think those types of the Kershaw, would they be treating Kershaw like this?

If Kershaw were himself, they do it a little, but I don't think they're doing it. It's like doing both of these things clearly has some value. So it's like, if the, if the small strategy works for other teams, they're going to do it. And not having to do it as much as the Guardians and Tigers I think is kind of the sweet spot. Where the Tigers, if they had had Jack Flaherty, and yes I realize they got Trey Sweeney out of that deal, but let's say they had had one more starter they could trust, that might have been the difference. That may have been the thing that put them into the ALCS this year. Because that wear and tear on the bullpen may be finally caught

up with them. One thing that's kind of impressive about where the Dodgers stand right now is that guys like Lindor and Pete Alonso have not actually seen any Dodgers reliever twice yet. That's a good thing for the Dodgers going forward in the series especially sitting on that. It is early in the series and the Mets are trying to do some similar stuff I mean they put Tyler McGill in for the full bit there so they weren't going to put you know show their their A relievers too early in the series. Thanks a lot for that comment by the way Sierra Six got a note here from our producer Brian Smith, Gavin Williams will start game four for the Guardians on Friday. And he has to go

more than two or three because we don't even know if Matthew Boyd is gonna go more in between two or three. So one of these two guys has to go more than two or three I feel like. We've been hoping that Gavin Williams could do it. He's shown some flashes at times in the second half but hasn't had the season I would have expected. A lot of injuries from the very beginning, that fluky weightlifting injury, just had a hard time really getting all the way back from that over the course of the year. So the Gold Glove finalists were released this week and I think Juan Soto's name being among them was one of the more surprising things that people were joking around about

on various social platforms. And I just wanted to pull back and ask you, how do you feel about defensive metrics that you have at your disposal in 2024? Do you feel good about the public facing numbers you can utilize to try and quantify how good or bad a player is defensively? I feel better than ever.

I, for a long time, have not felt great about them, so I'm not saying that I'm putting them, elevating them to the level of the offensive stats that I like, the WRC+, barrel rate, the stuff that we talk about. I would put them as inferior to those. I've talked about why. I mean, it's just, you get fewer chances

to really show off your defensive ability. You get fewer chances to really show off, you know, your defensive ability. You get fewer plays that really highlight it. But, you know, there's something about the suite of defensive stats that we have that they don't agree as much. So imagine, you know, they're supposed to be results in the way that OPS has results, right? They're not supposed to be necessarily,

they have some aspect of process to them, but to some extent, they're supposed to be like, this is what they did on the field. And you don't go look at baseball reference and see an OPS, and then go to fan graphs and see an OPS that says OPS that's just wildly different. You know what I mean? Even if you look at OPS Plus and WRC Plus,

which are done differently, and WRC Plus is mathematically superior, they are really closely correlated, like 98% correlated. Like you could, sometimes I just use OPS Plus because more people know it, you know? Yet when you look at defensive stats, like for example, I'm looking at Francisco Lindor. This is maybe where you also saw a bunch of jokes on Twitter about, you know, Francisco Lindor had a great play that he made and, you know, he ranged, he kind of like flipped over to his right and then had a great

throw. I've just fully, you know, just so that people know, I voted, I think I voted for Lindor as the best shortstop in baseball this year defensively. And that's a little bit based on the stack cast fielding run value, which uses outs above average. A little bit of my personal sort of feeling that Danzi Swanson's arm keeps him more in sort of a second place thing. And I think I had win third. But here's what happens when you look

at all these different numbers. Fielding runs above average, or Fielding Run, FRV is the stack cast number. Dancy Swanson first, 14. Bobby Witt Jr. second, 12. Lindor tied with him, 12. Mason Nguyen, 4. He's in eighth place.

Okay. Then you go over to DRS. Mason Nguyen, 14 DRS. Dancy Swanson, 7. Francisco Lindor 2. I'm not even bringing up UCR. So you know, just those two which purportedly are measuring the same thing have no agreement. And so what I did in my voting process was to be like, I'm going to group all the people

have the best DRS and the best fielding runs and put them into a group. So that's why I put Whit, Lindor, Swanson, and Wynn in a bucket. You know, they're all in a bucket for me. Now I'm going with gut. So there's still, I think too much gut that you need to use to evaluate defense. So some of that might be limits on the number of plays you can set yourself apart, right? There are plays that every good defender should make. So as long as you're making those

and you're just on that level, and then there's only a few dozen, maybe over the course of the season, extraordinarily difficult plays you should make, and however many of those you make might just be the thing that separates in any given year and there could be a lot of noise because you're talking about that smaller that smaller sort of sample so I guess that's one way to think about it I was trying to come

up with the explanation for how Juan Soto got got recognized as a finalist in right field I think the answer is actually kind of simple. It's that you don't really have that many everyday right fielders. Like there's a volume component here. I was surprised. I looked at the leaderboard for put outs, a stat I'd never think about.

And Juan Soto led all right fielders in put outs this year with 289. So there's volume. He played 145 games. There's nobody else on the leaderboard that played as many games as Juan Soto in right field because of how teams mix and match. What's the Castellanos do?

Sorry, I was looking at just the American League. Castellanos, if I throw on, NL was 157. So Castellanos played more overall. They're the only two that are above 1200 and if you look above 1000 there are six of them. Yeah, so you start to lose options right away And some of its that teams also rotate they have a couple of guys that can play great centerfield. So Sal Frelick plays a lot of right field for the Brewers he plays he can play some center to a lot of teams He'd be the center fielder

Outfield is the easiest place probably to platoon Because you're not asking somebody to have the exact same skill set as somebody else you could be like, oh we actually platoon our Backup center fielder with our backup right fielder, you know I mean like, you know, this guy doesn't have the same defensive abilities to the other guy, but he's a right-hander So we put him in there and we had this other guy who's a left-hander, you know, whatever, you know, you know what I'm talking about. Mike Yastremski is the guy that I'm thinking of where he's not really a full-time outfielder. He's not really a full-time right fielder in terms of how he's used and how often he plays.

Hunter Renfro qualifies quote unquote for this list, not really a full-time player. quote-unquote for this list not really a full-time player and so when those guys are in the top ten and you put a top ten in front of voters that includes these guys and Juan Soto is the most recognizable name He's gonna get a lot of votes just because he's Juan Soto, and I don't think he actually really that good defensively. If you look at the advanced stats Soto has a minus one DRS and a minus one at minus two FRV. You know I struggled with this when I did right field because I was supposed to put ten names down and so I put a

limit in my voting thing I used 750 innings because I was like, well, if I got to put 10 names on, I want to, I want to get a better look. So there are 14 guys that did 750. So Sal Freelick made my list, you know, and he was actually near the top because he has 16 DRS and an eight FRV. People are saying that will you are a Bayou is a function of Fenway and maybe that's true, but he had 18 DRS and a 9 FRV and so those two guys were, I don't know exactly where my votes were, they don't have it in front of me, but those two guys were I'm sure in

my top three. If you were wildly positive in both, then you made it. You know, I'd probably put Joe Adele higher than some might have had him because they had 6 DRS and a minus two FRV. I figure if one system has you at six, you've gotta be doing something good. So I had Tatisse up there. So in any case, just putting 10 on the list,

I think is going to lead to maybe some changes in the future where you maybe just put five on the list so that you're grouping the list differently, but it's never gonna keep us from, on some level, picking guys that we see more often. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. The thing that I keep looking at for defensive purposes is just trying to have a sense of what thresholds matter

for playing time. Because one thing I've really been pushing for the last few years is that the edge, if there's any edge to be gained in fantasy baseball, it's that you can be more accurate at projecting playing time to the people you're competing with. And the reason I think it's possible

is because I think most people use a lot of the same public-facing numbers from fan graphs from other places where the playing time inputs are the same, right? So yeah, Vlad just put out his projections against the depth charts for runs in RBI, which I think is basically just a playing time projection. And he did better than the depth chart. So that is a place, I said congratulations on nailing the playing time.

Jeff Zimmerman talks all the time about playing time. So yeah, playing time, doing your own depth charts basically, I think is a way to put some elbow grease into beating your competition. So just using catchers again as an example of a spot where this could be particularly challenging. You look at the leaders in defensive run save, catching of a spot where this could be particularly challenging. You look at the leaders in defensive run save, you know catching is a spot where most teams are going to put a premium on the glove because it's important.

Anywhere up the middle I think would apply but catchers a good place to start. Jake Rogers, fifth in DRS. And also fifth in FRV so there's agreement on that. So you take a guy like that or even Bo Naylor was sixth, tied for sixth in defensive run saved. I think that's gonna drive playing time. Where I wonder, where things get slippery for me is if you're kinda close to average at the position, right?

So DRS at catcher would be, I don't know, three or four, closer to like a league average sort of spot. Because then it's gonna come down to other factors. How good is your bat? If the bats are equal, does your team have any need to play you somewhere else? Do they have a good DH? Like there's all these other variables that come in

and I guess that might be at the higher end of the pool a playing time question about Freddie Fermin, who is great by defensive runs saved for the Royals. And that probably changes things they can do with how they approach free agents and players they can bring in, because if they want Fermin's glove behind the plate for most of the season,

his playing time is high in the regular season, even if they get to the postseason again and toggle it where they say, well, we don't have Sal Perez's bat, and offense is light we're going to get to better pitching so we're going to dh someone else because that's the best combination of nine in the games that matter the absolute most but i think defensive value carries even more weight in the regular season for driving playing time than it does in the postseason kind of circling back to the David Fry thing like i think they back to the David Fry thing.

I think they would be playing David Fry behind the plate if he could play right now. Because they need a bat in the lineup. Just to name some players, Luis Camposano is the guy that going into this season maybe was more precarious in a more precarious situation than I realized. I thought you look around the Padres. It has to be Luis Camposano.

He's the catcher, right? But Higuyoshoca was a much better defensive catcher. Camposano among catchers with 550 innings was the worst defensive catcher this year. So, you know, who's the next Luis Campososano? I think connor wong who was the second worst catcher this year defensively Danny jansen who may end up being a backup even though he's on the free agent wire and somebody may think oh He'll start somewhere um tyler stevenson Surprisingly bad defensively now

Do they have another option? You know, you're not always, like, did you think before the season that Kyle Higashoka was going to be a starting catcher? Not in the playoff, nope. You know, it may not be obvious who takes Tyler Stevenson's job, but, and I like his bat, this is going to cause me to knock him down a peg or two in my rankings, you know, internally because there's just the chance that he gets replaced. You know, Ryan Jeffers was 26th in catcher defense. I don't think he'll catch up to Yanier Diaz. Also, you know, they've been playing at first. He could just be the next first baseman for them.

I think he has that good of a bat. Will Smith had a poor season defensively, but they have a good first baseman and I don't think they're good. They have a good DH, so he's just locked in at the position. Shay Langiliers? I don't even know if I agree with these defensive numbers. 33rd worst defense. That does not seem right to me. I've watched a lot of Shay Langiliers. I don't know what's going on to me. I've watched a lot of shag langoliers. I don't know what's going on with that. I like how that stumbled, that made you stumble right back into the first question

we asked in this segment. Like, how do you really feel about the defensive metrics that we have at our disposal right now? I mean, I think looking beyond the catcher position too, you can look at a leaderboard for DRS or FRV, all available at Fangraphs, and you can say, oh, well, Bryce Terang and Andres Jimenez,

they were 21, 20 defensive run save, even if their bats are lagging. They're gonna keep. Jimenez on the field. Huge, huge boost to their team. It might be bottom third of the order when it's not going well at the plate, but that's still playing time that's afforded to them,

which gives them more time to make adjustments and to make changes and to possibly get better as hitters. Your glove can buy you playing time. And that's still the really important thing you can take away from looking at the high end and the low end of these metrics. At the very least, the top of the leaderboard and the bottom of the leaderboard

should be strong consideration for trying to map playing time. Yeah, the middle, like Kibbutt Reeves is right in the middle. And I just feel like that team's not going to take that away from him yet. And I wanted to add Alejandro Kirk at the top, next to Fermin. Those are two names where I think their defense will

make them play a lot. Wow, Alejandro Kirk was all the way up near the top? Yeah. That's nice. Nice to see. Kirk is fourth in DRS and Second in FRV. It's weird because when Kirk came in they had Danny Jansen They had Gabriel Murano still in the organization

There were questions about how much he could play because if the other guys were better defenders If he was only gonna be a 40 grade defender Then he ended up being a lot better defender than Danny Jansen. But he was such a good hitter when he first broke in. Low K rate, lots of barrels. Well he could be a part time DH. And it's just been a meandering road I think so far for Kirk but if the glove is in fact that much better

and that playing time situation's totally different anyway because they traded away Jansen. Now he could be a workhorse catcher whose bat maybe comes back a little bit and ends up being really solid because of volume. I'll have some Kirk's and two catchers. Yeah I think he definitely works in two catcher leagues. It's going to be a question if he can bump himself back up into the bottom end of the one catcher leagues as well. We're gonna go a lot of ground covered today hopefully a lot more covered on Friday as well. Be sure to subscribe to the athletic even done so already theathletic.com slash rates and barrels join our discord we'll get some threads going for each

game as they're happening here on out so if you're watching the game you could watch it along with a few other folks and what do you got you know? In the discord let us know we've done a slight change if you've not noticed to how we're approaching this daily podcast during the playoffs or not doing as much sort of recapping of single games and previewing of single games. Let us know about the balance if you like it

or if we should bring back more reviewing of games or anything like that. Yeah, the reason we made the change is it's very hard time wise. We are not in a position right now where we can stay up after the games and record. Logistically, it doesn't work for us right now. Schedules don't line up. We figured the better way to go is to take a look at the bigger picture stuff happening around the postseason and talk about that,

since we don't have that late night option right now. So if you like the format, let us know. If you don't like the format, let us know. If you don't like the format, let us know that too. We appreciate that. You can join our Discord with the link in the show description. That's gonna do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels.

Thanks to Brian Smith for producing this episode. We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening.