Rates & Barrels - When Do You Worry About Secondary Pitches?

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

Eno, Trevor, and DVR discuss a few of the 16 'other' baseball figures reinstated by MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred this week including Shoeless Joe Jackson and several members of the 1919 White Sox, and when 'bad' secondary pitches become a problem by looking at six pitchers whose fastballs currently exceed the quality of their breaking and off-speed offerings. Rundown1:05 The 'Other' 16 Reinstated by Commissioner Rob Manfred12:50 No, Oyster Burns Wasn't Banned for Life15:31 When Are 'Bad' Secondaries A Problem?19:46 Robbie Ray's Limited Arsenal22:20 An Attempt to Understand Bryan Woo's Success & Splits33:13 The Andrew Heaney Odyssey40:05 We're Still Puzzled by Taj Bradley; Is It All Linked to Poor Command?53:01 Do Ownership Blueprints Come From Ownership's Approach to Other Businesses?Related ReadingSABR's Eight Myths Out: https://sabr.org/eight-myths-outMatt Moret on the 'other' 16: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6354320Zach Buchanan's 2019 Story 'A cold case, not a closed case: The baseball obsessives correcting the record about the 1919 Black Sox Scandal': https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/1260436 Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.socialFollow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.socialFollow Trevor on Bluesky: @iamtrevormay.bsky.sociale-mail: [e-mail] our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFeSubscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrelsHosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno SarrisWith: Trevor MayProducer: Brian SmithExecutive Producer: Derek VanRiper Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Ready? Game, match, point, set. This one's kind of a gimme. The answer is how tennis is scored. Do you want more of a challenge? Check out Connections Sports Edition. It's a new daily game for sports fans. To play now, go to theathletic.com slash connections. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, Thursday, May 15th. Derek VanRyper, Unisaris, Trevor May here with you on this episode. We'll talk a bit about the other 16 people reinstated by Rob Manfred earlier this week, along with Pete Rose, who we talked about on Wednesday.

So I thought the other 16 were worth at least a few minutes of everybody's time this week. We're going to dig into a question. Are the secondaries good enough with a group of six different pitchers? We'll try to do some deep breakdowns there. And if we can, discuss which teams we might be able to predict behavior with at the trade down line based on their owners. Really interesting thing Trevor has started to drill into. So a lot of ground to cover today.

It's been a busy, busy week on the news front. As far as the other 16 people reinstated by Rob Manford this week, and I keep saying I have to emphasize people because one was an owner, 15 players, one owner, there are some wild backstories in there. The biggest name for everyone is Shoeless Joe Jackson, right? Shoeless Joe Jackson is among those 16 people reinstated. And I think the interesting thing here for most people the movie or the book Eight Men Out is probably as much as most people have taken the time

to learn or try to learn about the 1919 White Sox right and there's of course missing information in the movie in the book and the good folks at Sabre have been Focused on this for a long time trying to correct that they have a post eight minutes out that will Unpack a lot of things change a lot of things you've thought you've learned already right that off the top is really interesting Highly recommend checking that out The one thing about shoeless Joe Jackson that I did not realize is that he actually did admit to taking $5,000 to fix the World Series, right? I didn't realize he ever admitted that. That was something that I just had not carried with me. Supposed to be $20,000, but I guess he got stiffed to be 20. Right. He was mad about the 15,000 he didn't get and

The way he's portrayed in the film is more like I didn't really know what was going on it was you know, his illiteracy was played up and it seemed like he was just kind of Dragged along for the ride and the more you look at the actual history and the detailed reports The less you really like the less you can believe that that was actually the truth in this case. What was he getting paid for a year? Like what was a year's salary for him? Six, I think it was six grand is what I was reading in the Sabre bio, six grand.

So 20,000 more than three times what he was gonna make in a year. Kind of a big deal. Kind of a big deal, right? I mean, let's say if somebody going up to a relief picture that's on a 700K and being like, I'll give you three, two, three million dollars. What if you didn't think you were going to make it?

It takes a level of integrity and courage to say no to stuff like that, especially if there's like intimidation involved or, you know, because there probably was some of that because this is like organized crime. And sometimes they're like, well, you don't have a choice. Like that is worth saying. The interesting thing I was going gonna try to take the, I'm glad you brought up their salary too, because I was gonna try to take the angle that

maybe owners should have just paid their players better and we wouldn't have this problem. Like, but it was also over a hundred years ago. World War I and stuff, things were a little different. The era was very different. When you read the bios of the players who played in this era, you're like, oh, that's changed in history in a big way, right? It's all sorts of details you read the bios of the players who played in this era, you're like, oh, that's changed in history in a big way, right?

It's all sorts of details you read, oh, that's not good. Even if it was quote-unquote normal for the times. But yeah, even this, like, from the movie you get the sense that the gamblers approached the players about fixing the World Series. Not the case. Chick Gandal and Chikati went the other direction. They approached the Gamblers about the idea of fixing the World Series. How did the owner go down? Did he just knew about it? No, the owner, the owner is not even connected to this team at all. You're referring to the 16th person?

Yeah. Okay, so yeah. William Cox, a lumber entrepreneur, owned the Philadelphia Phillies for 276 days before becoming the first non-player to be banned from baseball. The team's manager, Bucky Harris, said he heard Cox's secretary asking about betting odds and asked her if Cox was gambling on games. According to Harris, she said it was common knowledge within the Phillies that Cox was. Cox eventually admitted to making the bets but said he did not know it was against the rules to do so Which is why what did you say they do Trevor every spring now?

They read you out loud word-for-word rule 21 Somebody reads it and you have to sit there and listen to it in its entirety That's that's the rule for reading the rule now. You can't say you didn't hear it Is there any other rule that gets that treatment? No, no. They just give you a copy of the rule book, everyone recycles it, hopefully, and then rule 21's put in a separate memo also.

So you basically have two copies every single year. It seems like the golden rule, like you cannot break this rule. It's a rule you can't say you didn't know about. That's the most basic thing. They've covered those bases. Yes, that's very clear. They're like, you can't say this. There's a lot of arguments. You can't make the... I guess there are orders of degree, though, is sort of the point of bringing up these stories. It's like, you know, there's Pete Rose, who may have had an addiction or something, you know putting you know bets down then there's like

Going to a bookie to set up throwing the world's like ah He'd at least a Pete Rose's story was kind of like I always bet on our team to win Totally possible like I always bet on our team to win. Or. I guess. Totally plausible. Yeah, right. Or the Benny Kauff. Benny Kauff was the first player to be banned

from baseball for a reason other than working with gamblers to fix game outcomes. You know what Benny Kauff did? Benny Kauff was accused of stealing a car, repainting it, and selling it with his brother in December of 1919. Just Grand Theft Auto. Would a player be banned for life for Grand Theft Auto these days?

No, they wouldn't be. They wouldn't do it. Again, because the scale is different. You would just be arrested. You'd just go to jail. You wouldn't be able to play because you're in jail. Yeah, you deal with the legal system and maybe a short suspension. You're not getting banned for stealing a car in 2025, right? You're gonna get laughed at.

Unless it's at the park, unless like you use the baseball, like, I don't know, someone went to the game and you stole their car out of the parking lot. Ocean's 11'd them. That's the only way I can think about it. Oh, who's got the nicest car in the big leagues right now? And like, who's the most likely target of an Ocean's 11 as a result of driving the nicest vehicle in the big leagues

Carlos, Kresge he has nice cars He's a nice car guy. He's a big car guy. Well, he's got great custom cars. They're phenomenal really tasteful, too He's got a good variety. Some guys are like Lamborghinis only he is Verlanders got some I also guess it is a lot of race 20 this type guys lots of race trucks. Lot of race trucks too. More interesting name that I found on the list of people reinstated is Buck Weaver.

And Buck Weaver did not participate in fixing the World Series by the accounts we have. But Buck Weaver did not report his teammates after learning of their plan. Like is that a fair punishment? Should Buck Weaver have turned everybody in? Did it deserve a lifetime ban? That almost seems like the one I can get

almost the most behind in this group. Didn't snitch, got banned for life. I don't understand why people, because this is used around like the Astros snitch, got banned for life. I don't understand why people, because this is used around like the Astros a lot, the 2017 Astros, like, who wants to be the relief pitcher that blows up the team in the middle of the season? Like, you know, you don't even know, everyone's like, I don't know if I'm gonna have a job,

none of us feel, it needed to be one of the guys who was like one of the ringleaders doing it, and unfortunately, those guysaders doing it and unfortunately those guys are doing it on purpose. So and the whistleblower ended up having to like leave the team itself and you know I think also probably see the end of his career coming. Like Mike Fires wouldn't have done that if he thought I needed to sign like like three more contracts or whatever. He was kind of like, you know, this might be the last year or whatever. And so I'm gonna, I'm gonna get this off my chest.

Yeah, it's objectively stupid to do it before then because you don't even know if it's gonna be, you might just be shooting yourself on the foot for no reason too. And then like nothing, you know what I mean? Like maybe no one believes you or maybe, I mean, it's just, it's a hard thing to do. It's almost an impossible situation to be in.

And there are guys I know who are on the team and I have heard anecdotes on how they thought about it and how they just tried to get through their day without being the one that ruined, like that blew everything up. It's one of those things like, I can't blame guys for like, I guess I'm just taking this to my grave,

to quote a player who was on the Astros team. I guess that's what I'm doing. I'll do my best. Some would tell, it was like a little bit of an open secret. Like I had players telling me about the trash can and I just was like, this is one of those things I'll never be able to report because, you know, it's like people are telling me this, but how would I, what would I do with this? You know, I never thought a player would come out and say,

you know, on the record that this has happened. And if I had like three or four off the record, guys, I don't even think you could go to story with that, you know, three or four off the record, guys saying this team is cheating. Like you need a little more than that. Yeah. So a lot of stories there just mixed in good reading across the board. Matt Morat had profiles on all 16 people, if you want to read all of them over at the Athletic.

I saw some reaction from Shoeless Joe Jackson's family. They were surprised by all of this. The descendants of Shoeless Joe. They were like, whoa, this happened? We didn in baseball that had just been decided. Like the final chapter had already been written as far as the outcome, maybe the details of the story, what happened, what actually transpired, we'd learn more. But it felt like the end of the story, the punishment, that felt like that was locked in forever. It is weird because I think this is all about Pete Rose and I think this was for Pete Rose, but I think there probably wasn't a mechanic that he could figure out. He's a lawyer, Manfred is, so there probably wasn't a way he could figure out where he's

like, I can do this for Pete Rose and not include Shewlett's Joe. If he could have figured it out, he would have, I think. Not to try to get in his brain, but I'm just saying that this announcement seemed to be really Pete Rose-centered, and there were all these other players that were involved. I think it came down to they're all not alive. Nobody's alive anymore, and technically, it says lifetime.

That's what he was saying, but it- In the thing. It says permanent. Yeah, permanent. Permanent versus lifetime. He's thing it says permanent permanent permanent versus lifetime He's like a lawyer reading permanent lifetime. Yeah Take it to the courts. Let's get some Or or don't I guess I don't know. I don't know if that works anymore billabler hours win yet again

But a lot of good stuff out there if you want to dig deeper into those stories There's people that dedicate a lot of good stuff out there if you want to dig deeper into those stories. There's people that dedicate a lot of time looking back at the 1919 White Sox, trying to find more and more information about what all transpired. Oyster Burns wasn't banned for life for stabbing his teammate. No, and no one even liked Oyster Burns. That's the amazing part is Oyster Burns avoided a lifetime ban despite being maybe the worst teammate ever. He's got a case for that.

Oyster? You don't know about Oyster Burns? I don't, I don't know about Oyster Burns. I don't remember how we discovered Oyster Burns. I think it was the first year we were doing this show. He must have come up on a search we did. Yeah. And we're like, Oyster Burns, who's this guy?

And we learned that in 1893, between games of a double header, a teammate of Burns, Tom Daley, was sleeping in center field. I mean, Tom Daley kind of sounds like the Tristan Casas of his time. When Burns stabbed Daley with a pen knife, Daley awoke and turned on the knife, leading to a severed tendon which kept daily out for two weeks

Oh, it's a pretty fast recovery from a severed tendon Around that time knowing a little bit about how far medicine has come along over. I want to know the backstory Well, what did Tom Daly do to him? some fantasy football probably Some fantasy football probably. This is the original fantasy football dispute between baseball teammates. That would be an incredible discovery. What was the reason for that? But yes, we read more about Burns and he got the nickname for just being boisterous and

obnoxious. He was a disturber and one of the worst that ever played ball. His disposition was very bad and he made it unpleasant for any of the boys that crested him. He is what you would call a bulldozer. Somebody else described him as the noisiest man that ever played on the Brooklyn team.

His voice reminds one of a buzzsaw. He was on the Brooklyn Bridegrooms? Yeah. I just had another weird stat to do with the Brooklyn, this is the second time I heard about the Brooklyn Bridegrooms? Yeah. I just had another weird stat to do with the Brooklyn, this is the second time I heard about the Brooklyn Bridegrooms this week. I don't even remember what it was, but that's, okay, that's that long ago then. We're talking 1800s here. Oh yeah, we're way back.

Bad teammates, so he's, so, okay, yeah, that's. Like worst than John Walker. I mean, so if you, yeah, if you ever want to do a deep, deep dive into the worst teammates in baseball history That's the furthest running back that I know about that would be the starting point To all the worst teammates that have come along since it's good YouTube video. Thanks for that idea Hey, I can't pull that one off. I think you can though a lot of confidence in you Let's move on to a big picture topic we were kicking around during our meeting this week.

When are bad secondaries a problem? We took a group of pitchers, we came up with six different guys whose secondaries are of varying quality. Hunter Brown, Brian Wu, Taj Bradley, Robbie Ray, Andrew Heaney, and then Ryan Gusto got in there because we were just talking to Chandler Roam

on the Wednesday episode about Gusto and he's kind of an interesting fit right now as the Astros are looking for back end rotation help. I didn't think Hunter Brown had a problem with secondaries at all. I don't even know where that originated but you know I got a couple highlights here if you're watching on YouTube. Curbball looks nasty, tons of drop. And then you got the power change that he uses as well. So I don't know, man. Like, what are the concerns about Hunter Brown's secondary pitches? The only concern for me is that it is he's one of the very few people

whose fastball stuff plus eclipses their secondary stuff plus. This is sort of the way we group these players as we found players like this. Now he does have a 112 stuff plus on that knuckle curve, but knuckle curves rate really highly. So that's only just barely above average. The change looks good to my eye and maybe stuff plus is not capturing all of it,

but that's a 91 stuff plus. And then the hard slider that he throws that's a 91 stuff plus. And then the hard slider that he throws only gets a 92 stuff plus. So, you know, the model says the best thing he does is fastballs and then in terms of what he's actually doing this year, he's throwing a lot of fastballs. Among the league leaders, if you're ad cutter, fastball sinker, he's somewhere around 62% fastball.

That's a big number. Interesting thing with Hunter Brown. I think this is a thing we're going to see with everybody here. How good are these guys at identifying the thing that's working the best and then just sticking with it until it changes? And he's having such a good year and he's doing it. He's got a 10 run value on his four seam in May. That's pretty good.

So that was not the case last year. He needed to add the sinker in order to get the four seam better, and he did. Now he comes in with that MO, maybe that makes his four seam better. He has a great, it's a great ride four seam, it's up there in the league in vertical, induced vertical break, and he's throwing 97.

It's a really good pitch, and he's just sticking with it, but like I look at whiff rates on these things just in terms of like, how big are they weapons? How confident are you going for a strikeout that's kind of a situation I think that is pretty consistent for a lot of guys like this. And if you're a guy who has a whiff rate of 30% or more on multiple pitches, including a fastball,

which he does, he's got a 30 plus on his cutter, which I mean is the lowest value, but it's still being whiffed at 30% of the time. And on his curveball it's 33% of the time, and his fastball it's 32% of the time. So he's got three pitches with a 30 being whiffed at 30% of the time. And on his curveball, it's 33% of the time, his fastball is 32% of the time. So he's got three pitches with a 30% whiff rate. I think it's just a fact that, it's not that his off-speed pitches aren't as effective,

it's that his fastball is really effective and he's just sticking with it, but he will go there, I think, later in the year if that fastball stops being as effective as this. The only reason I know that, I've made that exact decision. I was like a 60% fastball guy forever, and as soon as it stopped being as effective, I had to start adding other things

and just throwing them a ton of the times. So that's why I only have two years out of my career where I was like 60% fastball, 60% fastball, two years of like 40% fastball, and then another year, 60% fastball again, because it was good again. So it's like, I think that's what he's doing. He's looking at this, he's with the Astros,

this is the stuff they do. They go, hey, your fastball's really effective, keep throwing it until they tell you that they're gonna hit it. And now that he's added that sinker, that might last a little bit longer. That's what I think Hunter Brown's got going on. Yeah, that was the massive adjustment last year

that really changed everything for him. And I just, I get the sense when you already have six pitches you're willing to throw in a game, you've got enough feel to make the adjustments later when the velocity makes those fastballs less effective, whether that's, you've got enough feel to make the adjustments later when the velocity makes those fastballs less effective, whether that's two or three years down the road or sometime even further into the future. You can have a good bit of confidence that Hunter Brown will have at least a few different wrinkles he can add before things eventually start to unravel on

him. And that dominance is really important here because one of our ways in was, you know, Robbie Ray and Andrew Haney. And he put up this, I've got this sheet, it's a little bit busy, but what I'm trying to say, you know, it's like the usage plus the stuff plus for each pitch. And I think it works because you see the green, you see why we picked these players.

The green is on the left in the fastball categories and the red is on the right with the breaking balls and the change-ups. None of these guys have a good change-up by stuff plus and there's very little green on the right. The green that you do see on the right, a lot of it's Hunter Brown. And what you see with Robbie Ray and Andrew Haney is a good fastball and a difficult history with their breaking balls. Now, Robbie Ray's had a lot of success with the fastball slider combo. So I've always sort of looked at that 90 stuff plus

on a slider and wondered why. Maybe it's just because he's playing it off that fastball. Maybe it's just because even a 90 stuff plus slider is fine. I don't know what it is, but he's never been able to really develop a good secondary. And I would say that his career has been relatively up and down. Andrew Haney's has been very up and down. And so, you know, I guess the question is among this group, Taj Bradley, Hunter Brown, Ryan Gusto, Brian Wu, you know, which one's going to be more Robbie

Ray or which one's going to be more Robbie Ray or which one's going to be more Andrew Haney going forward? Like who are the guys that, you know, have enough secondary and are dominant enough with the fastballs that it's going to be fine? And I would output Hunter Brown in the he's going to be fine category, but I don't actually know Taj Bradley and Ryan Gusto. I think those ones are actually harder for me to figure out. You know, another person that was kind of like this early on was Tymon Walker, where he had a good fastball and he never really had good secondaries.

And now, of course, he's older and he doesn't have the same fastball. So that's, I think, where we kind of square what Trevor's talking about. Like, if you have a good fastball and you just are using it because you're dominant and you will have other pitches you can use when the fastball comes off because the fastball comes down for everybody. You know that's that's aging. The fastball gets worse for everybody. Then you will maybe have a long career. But if you are just an all fastball

guy like an early Taiwan Walker and never never build up the second thing, then you may have a struggle fest coming for you. So, you know, I'm comfortable saying I think Hunter Brown has no problem. I think I'm comfortable with Brian Woo saying the same thing about Brian Woo. But he also is a guy who throws a ton of fastballs. And I thought when he came up, oh, he's got two, maybe three breaking balls, he can spin it, he's going to be fine. But in terms of slider usage, he's not willing to push it. He's up there almost at 70% fastballs. And he'll have games where he doesn't strike people out. I'm not complaining about the overall 284 ERA, but you know, he had a game against Toronto

seven innings, four strikeouts. It's not a strikeout rate that's doing it. He's just playing the fastballs off each other and then dropping sliders in. Do you have any concerns about Brian Wu or what do you think about Brian Wu's future? Cause you've seen a fair amount of him, Trevor. Shop with Rakuten and you'll get it.

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Find these recipes and more at NYTCooking.com. Smells so good. I think there's still something that is getting lost in his delivery. There's something about his delivery is just odd for hitters, that keeps him just off of things. He is good command, and honestly, hundred Browns commands been really good, too

Though both of those guys I think are being carried by their command a lot, but I'm looking at his movement numbers There's nothing really jumps off the page. Nothing moves in any elite way I think it's just the way he's willing to throw he throws a lot of fastballs But even in terms of the fastballs, they're split pretty, he throws, what is it, 25% sinker, 45% fore seam, 24% sinker. Like that's a good, 24% sinker is like a lot for a guy that's not a heavy sinker guy, right? It's not like a depth, it's not a great sinker, it's just a sinker. And I think it comes down to kind of like the Evaldi way, he's just willing to throw everything. The change of the lowest usage at 9%, the sweeper and the slideraldi way. He's just willing to throw everything. The change of the lowest usage at 9%, the sweeper and slider, 11 each. So it's like, I'll throw all the pitches and I locate my fastballs pretty well. The one thing is though, what happens when that 95.5 average fastball goes to 93? What

happens? How does that affect, does that average movement go to below average? And then suddenly barrels are just everywhere? Is it precipitous drop off? And I would say it might be. And that's one thing that I would be worried about because there's no just out pitch that he can go rely on. He relies on mixing it up. There might be another pitch he can learn.

I'm not convinced that that's something he can do. He's just really getting around commanding the ball really well. Nothing really jumping off the page. I think what people are struggling with is like, he has a two eight and he's good all the time. We're just waiting for him to kind of just average out at a three and he's not. He hasn't yet, but there's still nothing to show me

that he's like a game one starter for anybody. He's just probably gonna be that because he has those games where he's not dominant, but he's fine. There's other days where he's just locked in he's pretty dominant but dominance is not something you associate with Brian Wu long-term. So it's got something to do with the delivery why he's kind of tough to hit. There's something odd there and I think we're gonna figure that out eventually. I just I don't know what it is quite yet.

If you use dead zone you get a little bit more of an understanding. It's not elite movement versus the dead zone. You know if you look at Alex Chamberlain's site he's got a new stat that's vertical dead zone Delta which is just basically movement over dead zone. And the top guys in that are Mason Montgomery who's just nasty, Aroldis Chapman's four seam, Jeff Hoffman, Robert Suarez, you know just a lot of really nasty pitches, Jack Leiter, Ryan Pepeo, Hunter Green, Jacob deGrom is on there.

But Brian Wu's not too far off of that and he's got I think interesting movement given his arm slot. Both the four seam and the two seam are surprising. But yeah in terms of velocity the fastball is 85 so it's right there on the cusp like if he does lose any VELO and the slider goes to 84 that's not good for the slider and in terms of horizontal and vertical movement it's a little bit of a gyro so you know a gyro at 85, the gyros gyros are supposed to be 88, 89, 90, you know, at least the top ones because

you're not it's not a pitch that's based on movement. It's a pitch that's supposed to be look hard and come off of it. So, none of his pitches, secondary pitches have the same interesting movement profiles as as his fastball. So, I'm a little I'm a little bit worried about Brian Wu. It is interesting that he has two of them that he can play off each other, whereas Andrew Haney, until recently, had been mostly a one fastball guy.

I got one other thing with Wu real quick that I wanna throw at both of you. The home road splits for his career are pretty strong. 247 at home for the ERA, 399 on the road, 370 slug away is a big part of that that 327 slug at home. And then you look at lefty righty splits are pretty huge for him too. He is phenomenal against righties. He's got a 189 225 285 line against righties. A 240 296 418 against lefties. So if you take any pitcher out of Seattle it's usually a downgrade going to any other park, even a neutral park. I feel like if you take Brian Wu out of Seattle, I don't

know, it could be a pretty rough adjustment, especially if it's a park that boosts lefties. 27% strike our way at home, 21 on the road. I think the righty effect, and that's what I think I'm getting at with this delivery. I think the righty effect in Seattle, because there is something, I think that righty effect and that's why I think I'm getting out with his delivery I think they're the righty effect in Seattle because there is something I think that enough righties have said let's something around this place That makes it tougher for me to hit here and then you add his low arm slot is like low release angle All this kind of stuff. Maybe he's getting to a point where it's just right He's just cannot see him at home at all. That makes a lot of sense It lines up with what we're seeing an interesting kind of maybe thought experiment I wanted to throw out there because a guy who's similar in arm slot,

kind of really athletic, kind of a similar kind of the way he approaches it and he throws both a sinker and a four seam. Who would you take long term between if you had a choice between Brian Wu and Joe Ryan? I think that Joe Ryan has found the secondaries that Brian Wu needs to find. He's gotten better movement on certain pitches. The splitter's better and the sweeper's moves. I think so. And I misspoke, Wu does have a 88 mile an hour gyro

and a 84 mile an hour sweeper, but it's a little bit soft in terms of view though for those pitches. I think that's part of why he's so good right on right though. Having the slider and sweeper combo, it works great in that split. It's not going to work nearly as well going up against lefties. So that could be a big part of why you get that split as well. I think I'd be on the Jill Ryan side, but that's a good toss up.

We've wondered for Jill Ryan, even as he's improved his secondaries, how long will those adjustments work? How long can Jill Ryan in his current form get very good results? Is this a sustainable approach that he's kind of worked his way into? I think so, and I think Joe Ryan is actually a little bit of a patron saint for some of these guys, you know. He's a little bit like, you know, oh, start with a good fastball and just keep tinkering with those grips, you know, oh, start with a good fastball and just keep tankering with those grips, you know, just keep tinkering with that foot,

that splitter, just keep tinkering with those sliders and you can get to a good point. I do like generally want to bet on guys that have good fastballs, you know, you know, some of these guys on this list really stress me out with regards to that, because I'm like, I want to bet on you. Like Ryan Gusto, I want to bet on you. But the Slider stuff plus, even though it shows at 108 as positive, that is really close to average for a slider. And another thing I've noticed is that, and I said this with Chandler, is that Gusto's

numbers are inflated by the fact that he was in relief. And if you look at his game log on fan graphs, you can see, you know, his stuff plus per game. And in the games where he's pitched more, his fastball has basically become average. I think that has a lot to do with why he struggled in some of his starts You know, he had the seven earned runs against the Royals. I think he might be a reliever

Yeah, I think it's in his current form It's hard to see Gus though is more than a back-end starter at the very least that next level ceiling doesn't appear to be there Right now. I mean tweaks are always possible You can change especially during an offseason. A couple things were just kicking around in my head. One, Joe Ryan, when he broke in, was averaging what, like 91.5, 92 on his fastball? But that pitch was always highly regarded. It had a 70 grade from Fangrafts. That might be the best grade I've ever seen on a low 90s fastball.

And it's played up for a long time and it's added velocity over time too. So I just thought that was always kind of interesting and that was a huge part of what got him to the big leagues and yet he still had to make a lot of adjustments in order to maintain the sort of level we saw him reach upon arrival. When we were talking to Chandler Rome on the Wednesday show,

he mentioned Colton Gordon who started last night. I didn't get a chance to ask Chandler about it Colton Gordon has a 30 grade fastball How many guys with a 30 grade fastball find their way to the big leagues at all? Not many that's usually a this guy's not going to the big leagues. We're not up there type of writing Yeah, that's tough. That's unusual. And he still uses it 42% of the time. It's not like one of those guys where, you know, he just doesn't use it and that's his way out. Yeah, I just thought that was really bizarre, something I didn't know about Colton Gordon and I wanted to get a look at it, having that chance to watch that start yet, but wow, pretty strange. Andrew Heaney was part of this conversation though, too. He's been all over the place in his career. I mean, I

He was part of this conversation though too. He's been all over the place in his career. I mean, I moved around a bunch of teams, but also up and down in terms of results. I think the year most people point to and say, hey, he could be really good, was that year with the Dodgers, which because of injuries, there's only 72 and two thirds innings back in 2022.

The strikeout rate went through the roof. I think it was his career best or near career best walk rate also at 6.1%. And even in the years since then in two years in Texas and now the start of this season in Pittsburgh he hasn't come anywhere close to that level of result. ERA is in the low fours whip kind of in that league average slightly better than league average range last year with a 1-2-5 but we're seeing good results from Heaney to

begin his time in Pittsburgh despite the fact that the K rate is as low as it's been since 2015 and it's got a pretty low swinging strike rate behind it too. So you're not looking at that and saying, let's just regress them back to his career strikeout rate. Something actually seems kind of wrong with Andrew Hine in the underlying numbers, even though the surface stats look really good. I want to be upbeat about this because he's doing something that I think could be a roadmap for other people, which is, you know, when we talk about guys with bad fastballs, what do we tell them to do?

We tell them to throw three of them, you know? If you've got a bad fastball, at least throw three of them, and then they won't know which one's coming, right? I think what Haney's done is he's got a bad breaking ball, he's throwing three of them. He's throwing a slider, a curve ball, and then they're trying, I think they're trying to phase this out, which is why it doesn't show up everywhere on Andrew Haney's page, but he's also throwing a slow curve. And, you know, the idea is if you don't have a good pitch in a certain place, then just spam it

and just have three. Casey Meis, you know, was like, I'm throwing three sliders. There's a little bit of that like, well, if you're throwing three sliders, you don't have one slider. But there's also, as a hitter, if there's a big variability in shape, even if one of them is good, you can still miss because you guessed it was the slider and it was the slow curve, or you guessed it was the curve and it was the slider. So I like what Haynie's doing. He's in a park that makes him really viable. And I think to some extent, there's a roadmap here

for somebody like Ryan Gusto who's shown the ability, he does have a 12% slider and 11% curve and a 12% cutter. So I think to some extent, that's what Ryan Gusto is doing. He's I don't really have a good breaking ball, but I got three of them. I wonder if, you know, Wu has two, like maybe a curve ball would work for him than a change. I want to bet on Haney this year, at least when it comes to home starts, because there has been a change in what he's doing. Okay. Follow-up question though, if he's on a one-year deal, the Pirates do not look like a playoff team right now,

where would you trade for him? Would you trade for him? And then if you did trade for him, are you trading for him because he's someone you think helps get you into the postseason or he actually has a role for you in the postseason, especially in the longer series. Short series, I don't know if you'd really use him.

He might even be on the roster in a short series. But once you get to LCS. He's a get you there guy. And then in a longer series, I think he would have used as a lefty out of the pen. Okay, so he's probably your long guy or extra lefty out of the pen. One of your last guys on the roster,

but only in the longer series. Yeah, maybe he'll give you two innings at the start of a game when you're trying to do a bullpen game, but. Yeah, maybe he'll give you two innings at the start of a game when you're trying to do a bullpen game, but yeah. But I think he can get you there. But to kind of drill back into the original question, when are bad secondaries a problem? I do think part of the answer is what you were just saying,

you know, with Mai, like Casey Mai saying he has three sliders, well, you don't have one. That's the hack, or at least that's the current way I think pitchers are trying to get around deficiencies in their arsenal. You don't have a good fastball? Fine, have three. Like three mediocre options are better

than one mediocre option, because at least you're creating that doubt, you're giving yourself different shapes, you're reducing the likelihood of getting squared up, right? Those all seem like viable solutions to a problem of not having good enough stuff. So if you can't widen the arsenal, bad secondaries seem like a huge problem.

I think you nailed, I think that's exactly what's happening and they can pitch design so quickly. I also think that the multiple breaking balls comes from experimentation too. Like they're throwing a pitch, but yeah, it's not. They get them on the track, man, they're like, eh, it's still not on an elite pitch. But you do have command over it.

So there's a place to, we can find a place to place it and see how it affects. It's like these, all these guys throwing sinkers, like Hunter Brown's a great example. It's not a good sinker in a vacuum. It's not, he couldn't just be a sinker guy. It's below average in terms of how it moves. But it makes everything so much better. They're trying to say that's kind of the idea. I can use myself an example because I was just wondering. My last season

I had a 4.7% whiff rate on my slider that I've been throwing my whole career. And it doesn't move that much differently. But the reason that happened was because I added a sweeper and that was one that people had to think about. That was a swing and miss. So now I have two sliders for the first time that I'm throwing regularly. They're like, this one's smaller, I wanna hit this one, as opposed to this is the only one I gotta worry about.

And that's how that changes. So like, it's weird, you get another weapon and that makes another weapon not as good. It goes both ways, but the big thing is, I think it's a viable way, because if you have three mediocre pitches, their relationship to each other can make them seem better because there's two ways to have great pitches.

We talk about de Grom a lot too. Go look in a vacuum, not a high-ride fastball, not a crazy movement slider, but somehow he's Jake de Grom. What is it? It's a relationship to each other. You can do it through tunnels tunnels and you can do it through just straight up nastiness and there are ways to have

a lot of success in both ways, but I think that the relationship to each other is the most sustainable. If that's what you're going for because the guy can't throw an insane pitch in a vacuum, then it's still absolutely viable, not as easy to quantify, but also still a reasonable way to improve a guy or find a way. It's not all about finding that golden ticket

or that golden egg. It's about possibly just rolling a six-sided die instead of a four-sided die. The one really, the name that sticks out the most for me on this list that I just have been really trying to figure out and and I can't, is Taj Bradley. And I think he has more upside than Gusto and Wu, and I wonder if he could do the Hunter Brown

and throw a sinker. I feel like there's one pitch that we could give Taj Bradley that would just make him great. And I don't know what that one pitch is. I look at his constellation of movements and he's got something in every quartile. Like he's got the high four seam.

He's got the split dropping off of that. He's got the cutter. That's kind of a zero zero we gyro slider. He cut her. He's got a big old curve ball. I don't see something where I'm like, oh, this area has nothing, but it's not working. I mean, it's not working like I thought it would at least. And you know, it's surprisingly kind of even actually a 101 stuff less force team, 97 splitter

and 105 cutter, 97 stuff less on the curve. It's just why isn't he better? Like what do you guys have any theories? Like, what do you see when you see Taj Bradley? I think something Trevor pointed out last year that makes a lot of sense is that everything he throws is pretty hard that leaves him in a position where he has a difficult time disrupting opposing hitters timing.

That seems like a way to make an arsenal of generally good pitches played down, right, to be to be worse than your stuff like that. seems like a way to make an arsenal of generally good pitches played down, right? To be worse than your stuff. That to me was a pretty good explanation when Trevor put that out there before. He's throwing the 81 mile an hour curve more this year though, so it's like... Yeah, he's kind of made part of the adjustment. He gives up more damage to righties. 479 slug allowed to same-handed hitters.

That's kind of weird. But maybe it makes a lot of sense because of how his arsenal's built. It's both. His slider's a cutter. It's weird. Textbook, he's like, if you, on paper, he's one of those guys that like,

the electric throws hard, good stuff. But I'm looking right now, his location plus on everything is 87 this year. So there's a couple things that he doesn't do. He doesn't throw to the side of the plate he's trying to throw to very often. He's literally, I'm aiming for the box. So as Rays, we know the Rays do the single target thing,

but what you're supposed to do with the single target is as you start to feel comfortable like hitting the spot, you start to shade like in your head, you start to like move side to side. He's literally just aiming for the box and throwing the pitch. And so you look at the clustering of all his pitches the most of every Single pitch type is down the middle all of them. So he just doesn't throw it doesn't have very good command He's got okay control and not good command

He's got bad command in the strike zone and he makes lots of mistakes and nothing he throws moves in any sort of crazy way like he's very it's very like he throws moves in any sort of crazy way. Like it's very like predictable on how it's gonna move. And that's why when he gives up damage, it's a lot. And so he's giving up these big crooked numbers. His bad outings are like four innings, eight runs. Like he just can't stop the bleeding because he can't go to an edge

and he doesn't go to a default. He just keeps throwing everything. His curve ball, his curve ball command has been atrocious for three years. Like atrocious. You go look at it, you're like, how are you throwing so many curveballs over the catcher? I don't understand how there's this many that go way up there.

His clustering's all over the place. He's got no pitches. None of the pitches are even, like even the four seam fastball is like, he's got three different spots that he hits all the time. That's him making mistakes in the same places over and over again. And most of them are down the middle.

Predictable mistakes. So like you can keyhole him into a place and guys know they're gonna get a strike. Maybe it's a competitiveness thing in certain counts. Like two ohs, I'm just gonna throw a fastball. Like he's just not comfortable making, he's not comfortable just throwing the splitter all the time. Cause that is his best pitch.

It's just like, he just hasn't taken the next step. But like very clearly you watch him, like you have electric stuff, there's something here. He needs to improve, he's got to focus really heavily on command if he's gonna just be like, kind of everything's gonna be within six miles an hour of each other, and it's all gonna move a little bit off of that four seam fastball.

If you're gonna lance Linnet, you gotta throw to the edges. And he doesn't, he throws to the middle. So you either gotta be really nasty, like Joe Joe Boyle and just throw right down the middle or you got to move to the edges so maybe it's the the Tampa Bay Rays way this is the first guy he's just it's not helping him because of the way his stuff moves. And it's not surprising the location plus 87 on Taj Bradley yeah not great if you look at starters minimum 30 innings this year that's the worst tied with Gavin Williams for the worst location plus number of any starter in the league right now. Like that's that's the problem.

This is who I fall for. This is who I fall for. I fall for these guys. So I'm like, look at all that stuff. I love it. He's going to figure it out. Dude, what you were talking about, Trevor, when the batter is ahead,

he goes to the fore seam 60% of the time. And what did you say to us? What did you say to us when we were doing these breakdowns of how to pitch to guys or how to hit a guy? You circle 60%. That's a glaring one. That lights up. Everyone, every hitting coach knows that immediately.

They know that immediately. That's first thing they're telling you. Guys pinch hitting is like, he's gonna get one on you bro. Fast ball. And it's gonna be 97 and probably pretty straight and probably right down the middle because he throws it right down the middle all the time.

That's a good way to hit in the big leagues. But he's just so, the success he has gotten has been on stuff because he does have good stuff. He needs better command and he needs to make, he needs to take chances. And maybe I'd be like, let's call a bunch of splitters. Let's just do a game where you throw some splitters when you're behind.

Let's just try it. Yeah, let's just try it. Let's just put it in their head and be okay with that. And before you know it, they'll like throw one good one that's swung and missed at, two-oh. And now that guy's screwed. He's like, uh-oh. The other thing that's interesting about Bradley

is that he only took up pitching in high school. He's 24. So he doesn't have necessarily a long sort of Rolodex mental Rolodex of situations. So maybe these situations that he does get into have higher import. And so he's like, I threw that one split or that one time and the guy hit it. And, and there was some point where we were, we were wondering if he was, he was broadcasting tipping his pitches a little bit because he kind of had his fanny and his glove

in front of his face while he's getting it. I was just talking to Meryl Kelly about, how can people throw a kick change? If I threw a kick change, I'd be, it's hard to get that grip in your finger. I'd be up there working my fingers and everybody be like, you know, start a kick change, here it comes. I'd be like, shut up, I don't even have the grip yet.

Yeah. And Kelly said that, you know, and Kelly showed me, he actually is interesting, his change up is a one scene. I hadn't really seen that before. And we were talking about it and I was like, so you got that new grip, how easy is it for you to get that grip? And he's holding the ball behind his hand, he brought it up. And he's like,

yeah, I do some stuff where I kind of like fiddle around in the glove to, you know, I keep it in a foreseen, but then I fiddle around even if I'm keeping it in a foreseen, I fiddle back to a foreseen, you know, so that I'm always fiddling in the glove. And so nobody can do that. But I just thought it found it interesting that like he could just without looking at the at the ball just do that. When you added a pitch did you ever have a moment where you were like, did you have a tell at any point? Did you?

Did you? Oh, yeah. Yeah. What was it? Tipped the sh** out of my curveball. And Tori Hunter told me about it when he came over. The Tigers destroyed me and And I spiked it. Was it because you were trying to get the spike going?

It was bad. Yeah, I was awful. Like you were struggling to get the spike going and then people were like, oh, he's gonna throw a curve. Yeah, and then when I come up and you could see the spike, it was like three tips in one. It was terrible. I changed up, I didn't.

And they were like, dude, your change up is good and we just could not tell between your fastball and your change up. That's why that was good at the beginning. So yeah, I was tipping the crap out of it. I love that Merrill Kelly said that, that he like fiddles on purpose. Most guys fiddle on purpose.

When I started throwing a splitter, because if you throw a splitter, you grip splitter first, because that's the hardest one to get. That's another thing Kelly said. But then I stopped throwing it. I just kept gripping splitter because now I'm switching off that grip every single time

because I don't throw that pitch anymore. Almost like say, hey, like if you really want to mess around, I mean, maybe not knuckle ball because you might drop it. But if you're in the stretch or something, grip some weird pitch that you've never thrown, like a sweeper or something, and make it so you have to turn the ball every time you come up.

And then you don't have to worry about it anymore. That kind of was big. I don't know why it took so long. I'm not that big a fan of like getting your grip this way either. I mean, I just feel like then you have to worry about anymore. That kind of was big. I don't know why it took so long. I'm not that big a fan of getting your grip this way either. I mean, I just feel like then you have to get your grip some other way when the guy's on second. Yeah, I'm a big pin.

Pin against your body and then keep your glove in the same place. So it's a cue. It feels the same. It feels weird when it's different. Lower or higher, it feels way different. So I always, anyone's like, I'm gonna shred with my hands.

But there are all these different ways to tip that we just talked about. We talked about getting the ball into the grip. We're talking about something in terms of how it looks when you bring it out. And then we're talking about- Guys do taps and show. Tipping by usage.

Yeah, that's what maybe Bradley's doing. Very minimum, it's tipping by usage, minimum. I did a quick search while we were chatting here just a second ago and I wanted to find starting pictures with sub 90 location plus over the years. Just went back to 2021. And I want to see just the absolute worst by location plus worst in the last five years is Glenn Otto from the Rangers in 2022 had an 83 location plus Half year for Len out of that year one over 135 and two thirds innings Mike Kopek in 2023 had an 84 location plus Shohei Otani in 2023 had an 88 location plus Kopek on the list the second time for his 2022 efforts. Had an 89.

He's not going back to starting. He's not going back to starting. 2024 Taj Bradley had a 90. So right in the same range that he's in right now. Chris Archer at the end of his career in 2022 had a 91. So I'm getting over the threshold now. It's rare to see sub 90 location pluses. It's, for guys that stay in the rotation anyway.

That's the key is like, you're the only looking at the guys who made it through. There's the guys who had it and then didn't more in the rotation anymore. So yeah, he's on the cusp of it. And location plus is online now. Location plus takes about 500 pitches. Bradley has thrown 719.

So I'm not saying that that means that Location Plus will exactly, but you're past the point. It is signal, you know, it is telling us something. And it's funny because it doesn't show up in the walk rate. You look at the walk rate and you're like, oh, that guy doesn't have bad command. But then you look at the home run, right? And you say, hmm, maybe he does. That guy maybe does have bad command. I think Trevor got it right. It's like he has good control, bad command. The ability to avoid walks, reasonable ability, yeah, sure he has that, but to avoid damage?

Mm, no. Maybe we need to throw that three one pitch for a ball. Maybe we should be okay to walking a few more people. I struggled with the same thing when I first came up too. I was like, I'm walking too many guys. I need to have better, I gotta sacrifice some command for some control. I gotta throw more strikes.

And I gave up way more hits than I ever given up, but I wasn't walking guys all of a sudden. Like what did we talk about last week? You're just not gonna get the, they would rather you give up your 110 hits and 90 innings, but go out there and possibly throw six innings every once in a while. Or if you walk guys and you only go four every single time,

you're just not gonna get that opportunity. So you had to, that was the trade-off and then know that the command was gonna come and that might be what he's doing but it's time like you gotta you've been around an hour long enough he's have his nothing so he needs to have he needs to be focusing on command if he's not yeah start taking some chances at least trying to do something different I think at this point because we've seen enough as he's been approaching things for a while now.

One other question here, Trevor brought this up, so I kind of want Trevor to introduce it. Trevor, you made the suggestion that we might be able to predict team behavior based on ownership paths, and by that, how the owners of teams became owners. I thought that was a really kind of fascinating thread to pull on. I'm actually blown away, there's not a ton out there

that dives super deep into this, because mostly it's like local blogs or podcasts about their team, talk about their specific owner. But I think there's a lot of telling stuff, I don't know, I've always been interested in the business and how businesses are built and who runs them and how people get to where they are.

And I noticed there's a trend now, there's kind of two camps in the major leagues that there's the nepotism situation where it's juniors or the thirds or the fourth sticking over for their team, where their great grandfather bought the team a long time ago and now they're the owner and that just makes sense.

And then there's people who came in later and they built their fortune on their own or they didn't come from, their parent didn't give them the team. Or didn't buy the their own or they didn't come from their parent, didn't give them the team. Or didn't buy the G4. Didn't come from generational wealth. Probably came from some means,

but not from nothing. Yeah. It's kind of split down the half. Down the middle, it's interesting. A lot of the Midwest teams are generational wealth and a lot of the coastal teams have more finance, hedge fund type owners, right? And that makes sense.

I mean, that's where those things are. But what you're noticing, like with DeWitt family and with the Ricketts and like these people who they weren't the person that made all the decisions to build their business before they had the team or at the same time, they were never a big decision maker and they didn't have that competitive, like I have to out business some other people

in order to get to the top. When they didn't have that competitive, like I have to out business some other people in order to get to the top. When they didn't have to do that, especially in more recent years, the last 10, 15 years, they kind of hold pat because there hasn't been a team that hasn't been profitable in over a decade. So it's like, it's just kind of a, almost a passive income situation. No wonder certain owners treat their teams that way

because they run their businesses or that's how they learn to do business. And the reason this came up was Bob Nutting and his family owns newspapers. And not just big newspapers, not New York Times. They own local newspapers. And they've been criticized a lot in the last 50 years about buying a newspaper, getting it to just profitable,

and then just like saying, okay, give us the money. Like that's the way it rolls. Like growing things is not his goal, what he does and what his family has done. So the Pirates don't do anything to grow. Why would they? That's not how he's ever run business. And unfortunately Pirates fans,

and this is where this is coming from, I want to speak to the fans of these teams, I want you guys to have an understanding of who the guy really is and what you can expect from him. And just know, I am 100% certain nothing's gonna change in Pittsburgh in any truly meaningful way till Bob Nutting's not the owner anymore. It's just the way that it is.

But they make money and he doesn't have to leave if he doesn't want to and it's just not his personality and the way that they do business And there are other teams that do this. I'm doing the research on this I'm hoping to do a bigger one on every team for you So pay attention to that but he was the main guy and it was pretty glaringly clear based on free agency Trades just how aggressive he is and things. He's just not aggressive. He's good I know you guys aren't good with it, but he's good with it. And I

I'm sorry. I don't know what else to tell you. It's like almost like it doesn't matter to Bob noting that it's a baseball team. It could be 10,000 vending machines and it's just conservative money comes in. Money just comes in, consistent profit. I feel great about it. I'm happy because I'm making money.

Yeah. He's not trying to grow the business. He's just trying to keep it, like John Fisher's just trying to grow the business. It's just, he's just trying to keep it, like John Fisher's just trying to keep the Gap Corporation at the same. He's just trying to not ruin it. He's not trying to make it bigger. He's not the guy who grew it.

He's not the guy who made it. You can have reduced ambitions because you inherited it. You didn't build it. So your mindset around it will be different than if you had built it from the ground up. And to be devil's advocate, I don't really think it's like if that's not been your experience, like how am I supposed to expect you to be that way? If that's like, I don't know how to do that.

You don't know what you don't know. So it's like it makes sense. I'm trying to be empathetic here. Like, I I'm sorry you are the way you are, but like you're getting feedback now. You can't ignore it. You can't not know. But it's hard and you have to try, but you have to show that you're trying, not just fire the manager because the team's not very good

again and be like, all right, see, look, we're trying just to get people off your back for another couple of months. Like that's all that was. And it's frustrating because it's a person's life and it drives me crazy. You know, every person is unique and there's not one way to react to a thing. I think of a succession is like, you know, those were all children of, you know, a great person. And they actually became like maybe ultra competitive, you know, to prove to him that they were worthy, right? So, you know, I don't know,

there's another way of reading the sort of Vegas, Oakland situation as kind of, you know, being like, no, I am competitive. I see the way forward. It is Vegas. And, you know, I'm going to do this. And it'll be, this'll be my crowning achievement. This will be the thing I did. This is my legacy is moving Oakland to Vegas, which is like, think about it. It's not necessarily a positive legacy. I am also reading about Jim Crane, because we just had a Chandler on,

we were talking about the Astros, and there's a couple interesting things. It does appear to me that he's sort of a self-made person. He did, he had like 10,000 dollars he borrowed from his sister, so they weren't, you know, they weren't poor. You know, that 10,000 dollars was huge, because it helped him found Eagle USA Air Freight,

an air freight logistics business that was, became his wealth. But there's a couple of moments here that stand out. One is when he was, when he had this Eagle global logistics or whatever, this thing that he had made, there was gonna be a merger. He wanted to do a leveraged combination buyout, you know, with this other

company and he couldn't do it the way he wanted to. And then he got an equity backing and he wanted it at a certain number. And then when the number got too big, he actually became opposed to the merger that he started. So like he's very obsessed with certain number like that, you know, he was into it at $36, but when it was $48, he was out, you know, and that sticks with me a little bit. The other one is he wanted to become a baseball owner in 2008 and approached Drayton McLean to buy the team. However, he backed out the last minute, I'm reading off of Wikipedia, he backed out at the last minute before a handshake deal could be done. So again, he had a number he liked.

It got to the point where it almost went down. And then he was like, nah, I'm not into it. So just reading this, I see how we got to the Astros that we are now that are very steeped in corporate culture. And they brought in a corporate consultancy to be like, here are the people you need to fire. And, and he really liked, uh, Jeff Luna, who now was just very sort of corporate. This is money goes here.

Money comes out here. We do these things efficiently. This is how we do things and we can do them efficiently. So you're not, we don't need a ton of money if we do it this way. Right. And what's interesting is he's gone from that to the other thing that I found interesting on the Wikipedia page. He's a he's maybe he's been crowned like the best CEO golfer. This is it's a footnote. But I just wonder and I know I'm playing armchair psychologist, but I just wonder if he's like, I'm an athlete too. Those guys exist. A little bit of it. It's another side of being competitive, right?

And this is my thing. How do you go from Luno and ultra efficiency to like whatever you say, Jeff Bagwell? I don't know. And we don't know who else is in rooms either. Right. But I would say, yeah, people can come and have sway and you like, they come out of nowhere and we never hear their name.

It's so interesting because the other two I love to, who are technically self-made but aren't, kind of have not, a lot of this is around the technology revolution of baseball too, because I've read a couple business books and the agility, like pivoting quickly, doing things quickly, like break it and go, whatever. It's very Silicon Valley, but like finance people

have to be on top of stuff. What's the next big thing, whatever. Steve Cohen is inevitable in my opinion, he's Thanos. Of course his team's good. Of course they're gonna be good. He's one of those guys, I hammer my head against walls until it opens and I can go into the room that we're going to.

That's the way he operates. And I think that's why people are afraid to bid against him because literally that's what his business is and he doesn't lose very often. So it's scary for guys like Hal Steinbrenner. And his hobby is art collecting where he's like, I'm just gonna say yes until I have the thing. His daughter's a curator, that's what she does for a living.

She like sources art. But you get that feeling that he gets that reputation in business, he comes in there, now all the owners know about it and that's scary to some of the guys who aren't that way and have never had to deal with that, things just happen. So Jerry Reinsdorf and Art Moreno though, both self-made but they're in their own little camp because they're old

and they had success but haven't had it recently. Both of them, Art Moreno came in, they were good right away and they have gotten worse and then never good again. So it was never to do with him and then they won an 0-5 in Chicago and they have not been good since. And these guys, but they have this opinion of themselves that I self-made, I built things, I know what I'm doing.

They don't know how to do this. I had success. Yes, I've had success. They'll try to replicate it with the people, like the same front office, the same mindsets. Oh, we had success this way. We talked about this from the team perspective. You develop players a certain way

and you keep trying to run players through that same mold and eventually the mold's just not good anymore because the demands of the league change, right? I think it's even harder. I think in the realm of coaching and player development, things move slowly, but they move faster there than they do up in the ownership box. Because I think, because that group of people is older, they are going to generally, I think, be less flexible, but they also have a lot of confidence in the things that got them to where they are today. Like, that's, I think, a big part of it.

They believe in their processes, even if they shouldn't, or even if those processes have actually failed them in more recent times than they've actually helped them succeed. Jerry drinks his own Kool-Aid and believes in his own legend. And he also had the, he also has the bowls on top of it. So it's just like, Oh my God, dude, like it's not 1996. Yeah.

It's not 2025. Yeah. It was 30 years ago. Like, and we don't, we're not taking away, man. Were you, how you were a great owner. It's just, maybe you need to be the guy who owns the team, but someone else is the operating owner. Like he said quotes last year, what was it?

He's like, what else would I do? I'm like, who cares? It's not about you anymore, but it's always been about him. But I'm also empathetic to the fact that that's hard. Like it's your thing. It's your thing that you built. Oh, retirement is hard for, yeah, I've seen that in my family.

Not everyone has a YouTube channel to go fall back on, you know what I mean? So. Ha ha ha ha ha. Well, I mean, just to answer the original question, I do believe that there's some back history for Jim Crane. Just this idea that he came to a price and liked it at a price and didn't like it at another price.

I just don't see him going to luxury tax. So whatever trade deadline thing you have in in store for the Astros. It has to cost them three million dollars or less And this is on principle, right? These are just things he holds dear to him even more than the actual money itself because I think we know the money is There if it needs to be there. He said you can build me a winner for under the luxury tax. That's what he's thought in his head. That's the price he has in his team, in his head for this team.

That's where he's going to be at. He's into it until that price. And then they did it. So now it's never going to change. It already happened once and even outside of the cheating thing, they won it again. So it's like, he's like see and as soon as you go see it's just gonna take 30 years of it not working to get him to change probably it's just the way it is. Right and then by that point you're either a Reinsdorf or you actually

get angry enough to do something about it or you're dead like those are the three outcomes. I do think the Astros are headed in the wrong direction I think the kind of doing a Braille and then doing Walker It's just it feels like chasing bad money after bad it's like seems like that's gonna be the the MO is like we're just gonna do three-year deals and You know older guys and you know, we're not gonna pay for Tucker and we're not gonna pay for Pena and we're not gonna You know, we're just gonna just do small deals and keep the ball rolling. But I don't think that the player development machine is,

like I don't think DeCenzo is Kyle Tucker. You know, I don't think this new group of guys is at the same level as the old guys. Gusto is not Fromber, you know what I mean? Like this, the new group is just not necessarily as good as the last group was. I agree with that last part. I do think with Christian Walker,

I wanna leave some space because he had the oblique injury to begin the season. And I liked his bad ball stats. He's a little younger than Ibrayu. And he's a better defender. It's sad that he's thrown in that group right now. I know, I do think he'll be better. I think you gotta let that one play out a little bit longer,

especially with the spring injury in year one. You go to a new place, you had the pressure of the new deal. That's enough and then you were hurt. So let's talk about that one at the end of the season. It might look bad in year one. You go to a new place, you had the pressure of the new deal, that's enough, and then you were hurt. So let's talk about that one at the end of the season. It might look bad in year three. I kind of expected by the end of the deal, it might not look great, but the argument was, it might not matter if their window was still open

this year, next year. It was something that filled the need for them and maybe got them over the top. But all right, we're gonna go. It's a long episode. Sorry and thank you to our producer, producer Brian Smith for putting this episode together. You can join our discord at the link in the show description. Find us on Blue Sky, Trevor's I am Trevor May, Enos Enosaris.bsky.social, IMDVR.bsky.social. That is gonna do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels.

We're back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening. So join Rakuten and start getting cash back at Uniqlo, Best Buy, Expedia, and other stores you love. You can even stack sales on top of cash back. Just start your shopping with Rakuten to save money at over 750 stores. Join for free at rakuten.ca or download the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N rakuten.ca.