Rates & Barrels - When to Give Up on Young Players, Spin Rate Check-In & Making Sense of Morel

Episode Date: September 15, 2022

Inspired by the 2022 struggles of Jo Adell and Jarred Kelenic, Eno and DVR discuss when they give up on young players, what they look for while trying to determine a player's future power potential. Plus, spin rates are ticking up as sticky stuff appears to be alive and well, an update to the tempo data for pitching pace, and an attempt to make sense of Christopher Morel's rookie season.  Rundown -- When to Give Up on Young Players -- Looking Back at the Early Years Dansby Swanson -- What to Look For While Seeking Future Pop -- Spin Rates Are Healthy -- Revisiting the Rule Changes; Clarity on the Tempo Data -- Making Sense of Christopher Morel's Rookie Season Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You've always wanted to be part of something bigger than yourself. You live for experience and lead by example. You want the most out of life and realize what you're looking for is already in you. This is for you. The Canadian Armed Forces. A message from the Government of Canada. Welcome to Rates and Bar at the plate up to, you know, maybe 400, 500 plate appearances combined in their big league career. You need to see something. So we'll dig into some players that have underperformed and try to set some expectations for the future. The sticky stuff is back. Eno wrote about that recently. So we'll discuss

that piece just a little bit. We'll talk about some of the rule changes that actually went into effect after our episode from last Thursday, an important correction coming as far as how we were describing the tempo leaderboard as well i noticed a few things while preparing for 2023 drafts already with some position eligibility that we should probably discuss and i think there's a christopher morel question that we should probably answer. Interesting player. Played shortstop the other day. Playing them all over right now. But we begin on a slightly negative note. When can we realistically give up on a player? The two names that inspired this question are Jared Kalnick and Joe Adele. And on a positive note, at least Joe Adele is getting chances to play in the big leagues right

now, whereas Jared Kalnick is finishing his season in Tacoma. He did not come up and join the Mariners when rosters expanded at the beginning of September. They went with Taylor Trammell instead. So this is a common problem. You have these top prospects that come up. They get sent down. They come up. They get sent down.

They don't deliver on high expectations right away, but they're still very young for the level. on high expectations right away, but they're still very young for the level. When can we start to say the ceiling's not what we expected and the floor is really low and we can't necessarily rely on these players to become as good as we once hoped? Well, I think one thing that both Kalanick

and Adele have going for them is age. You know, if you start getting to, like if they were 26 and they were getting this up and down treatment, I think that, you know, as fantasy players and maybe even as a major league teams, we would start to reconsider how important they were to the organization and maybe start using them in a part-time role. And because if you are 26 and 27 and having these struggles, then you're at your peak age range. And there's not much more we can say, oh yeah, aging curves say he's going to get better. Aging curves start saying you're going to get worse after that. So

even if you figured something out, you would likely have a short career. I call it the Ryan Ludwig situation. It's a little bit upsetting to me. Mike Curlin, I think, was part of the reason why we're talking about this. He was talking about Joe Adele the other day. I think he was mentioning, Joe Adele's not playing every day. The Angels are acting kind of weird, though. They've got Fletcher out there who's been hit on the hand and all he can do is bunt. He can't even swing. This team is not playing for anything. Why are they running David Fletcher out there?

He can't even swing. So the fact that they are mostly playing Adele against lefties, am I reading that right? It is strange to not just have him playing every day right now, given the state of things. Learn as much as you can about the player. Give him as many opportunities as possible to start working on his flaws, continue working on his flaws, and go into 2023 with a greater amount of confidence about how he fits into your long-term plan,

how he fits into that roster next year. Because they have to be, regardless of what happens with the franchise, whether or not they sell in the next few months or it happens in the spring or whenever that happens, you have to think they're going to try and contend for a playoff spot again next year as they're currently constructed, unless they go through some kind of let's trade everyone teardown. And I don't think you do that right now either. Yeah, that seems awful. You know, the think you do that right now either yeah that seems awful uh you

know the thing you you do when you're a bad team and you know good teams do this which is weird i know i just said the bad team like think about the red socks when they're when they are bad uh when they were bad they they were auditioning players they were you know picking up guys they were trying to find guys in the bullpen they they they claimed garrett they were you know picking up guys they were trying to find guys in the bullpen they they they claimed garrett whitlock you know they claimed you know they they're out there working they claimed nick pivetta you know what i mean like they were we have we're bad we have extra roster spots you know the giants they actually try to keep roster spots extra so they can still do that when they're good you know like you know um and uh the angels

i don't know what they're doing um so you know you you should play adele every day but uh so the age is in still in adele and kalanick's side and so what we did for this uh to prepare a little bit was a custom leaderboard on fan graphs and what we did was we we limited the age to under 23 and under um and the minimum plate appearance is to 500 uh because i think that's a good number we want a little bit of sample you have to be there has to be something going on for people to be like oh we're out um and i think we did a good job because when you sort in reverse order by the worst WRC pluses, the worst production of players under 23 with at least 500 plate appearances in the last 12 seasons, so since the beginning of 2010, so that's maybe 13 seasons. Jared Kellnick is third and Joe Adele is fourth. the only players that have been worse than those two in their first 500 plate appearances under the age of 20, 23 or under, Yolmer Sanchez and Alcides Escobar. So that is not a good sign.

Right. You don't like to hear that. But there are some pieces of good news on this list. Yeah. And I think the thing that's probably popping into everybody's head as you throw out those two names, Yomar Sanchez and Alcides Escobar, is they don't hit the ball nearly as hard as Kelnick and Adele can hit the ball. Well, they also made a lot more contact. But they're totally different player profiles. Yeah, totally.

So I think that's where you can look at that and say, oh, okay. If you want to worry about somebody who's an infielder with a similar, kind of a similar game right now, Geraldo Perdomo is someone to worry about comparing him to LCD's Escobar and Yolmer Sanchez. I think the key difference here, Perdomo is walking a lot more than those guys ever did. But similarly, light production. You only see him if you drop the plate appearance threshold a bit lower he's at 478 plate appearances so he misses that's a good one to bring up because we were talking about you know getting the diamond backs

uh you know on the on the 3-0 show and and maybe even on this one we've been talking about signing a a short stop for the diamond backs for a while because we're just not that super into Perdomo. But there are players of Kalanick and Adele's profile that struggled to begin their careers that are on this list. I've expanded to the top 50, and if you want comps, quote-unquote, for them, Javier Baez had an 82 WRC plus through the first 759 plate appearances with a 30% strikeout rate and a 4.5% walk rate. That sounds pretty familiar. Byron Buxton, 32% strikeout rate, 7% walk rate, 84 WRC plus. Austin Riley, 30% strikeout rate, 6% walk rate, 86 WRC plus. Um, and then to a lesser extent, I think you could include jazz Chisholm jr. Um, and, uh, maybe even a little

bit of a taste of Nick Castellanos. However, Nick Castellanos did get good grades for his hit tool coming up, and I don't think that's true for Kalnick and Adele. So I think we're talking about Riley and Baez and to some extent Jazz Chisholm when we're talking about being hopeful about those guys. However, of course, those are three guys on this list. And here are some other guys who didn't make it work, had some high strikeout rates. Anthony Goes, Jonathan Villar, you know, he scratched out a career, but, you know,

I don't think he was as good as he's supposed to be. Adelberto Montesi, I guess we're still waiting to see. Nick Franklin, Mike Zanino uh and then here's some other high strikeouts travis snyder jake bowers travis snyder there's a blast from the past name akil badu we'll leave the door open for him so uh i don't know the fact that they've given this many plate appearances to people with this high strikeout rate uh still leaves them as maybe a little bit less than a 50 50 proposition if you're just looking at straight numbers of other guys in the last 12 years that have that have similar profiles that have gotten 500 plate appearances under this age

and been this bad half of them worked out and half of them didn't yeah give or take i mean i think the most interesting player that this search unearthed is actually dansby swanson dansby swanson for going 1-1 did not have expectations of a player that typically goes first overall in a draft that was a year where there were probably a i don't know five or six different players that could have went there and people wouldn't have battled an eye about that. But he's turned into a much better player than expected, right? The 27 home runs last year, he's following that up with another 20 home run season this year, stealing bases, getting on base a ton, more swing and miss in his game than when he came into the big leagues but i think the trade-off is well worth it when he was running barrel rates in the three to five percent

range it looked like a bad first overall pick and a bad decision for atlanta to go out and trade for him when they got him from the d-back several years ago so there's a lot going on with swanson that i think is kind of why this is such a challenging question a player can change a lot going on with Swanson that I think is why this is such a challenging question. A player can change a lot, especially when he gets into the big leagues as young as a player like Swanson did at 22. Obviously, guys like Kelnick and Adele have been on our radar at even earlier ages. I would be inclined to really consider the differences even between a 22 or a 23 year old and a 20 or a 21 year old making a debut in the big leagues and i'd give those younger guys even even more uh more runway to figure it out and to turn things around i think that's where the that's where that perdomo

question in particular is challenging like i don't think most people who play fantasy are completely writing off kelnick or adele right now You're getting them at a buy low sort of price if you're playing in a keeper or dynasty league. That, of course, makes sense. But Geraldo Perdomo is also just 22 years old. And his first exposure to big league pitching last year, I think, was because of injuries. They didn't really expect to bring him up. He didn't play at AAA other than three games last year, only had 82 games at AA. And we're seeing a similar path for CJ Abrams because of the lost pandemic season in

the minors, the injuries he's dealt with, where you take this guy who's very advanced, you take away some playing time because of needs on the big league roster, and you're left with a more challenging, where do we go from here sort of question than if that player had been given nearly full or completely full seasons at each stop in the minors i'm just gonna tell you something man i'm not gonna talk about perdomo anymore like i'm swim moving past him maybe it's a blind spot maybe it's a blind spot i'm just saying like i'm not that interested in him um but i i do think you're right that there's this player type i think danzy swanson is is is fascinating i think the way i would describe it is obviously good plate

skills that needed to add power right and uh for me you know i have two names when i expand this list i dropped it down to 400 to see if i could spot somebody i think there's two names that pop out of this list for me gavin lux and luis urias those are two guys that have shown good plate skills but have lacked the power i think urias has started to tap into it so we're starting to see it now of course there's an injury component for him that it's just been hard for him to stay on the field but if there are two guys on this list with under 90 WRC plus before they turn 23 that look anything like Dan's be Swanson to me mathematically it's it's those guys but I guess I guess you're right.

10% for Perdomo, walk rate, 20% strikeout rate, just missing the power. Stranger things have happened. I would rather hitch my boat to Luis Urias and Gavin Lux, though. If you have the plate skills in place and you want to add more power, what kind of evidence do you look for that you would you consider to be like flashes of power is it a certain number of hard hit balls is the max exit velo number like where where do you turn to give yourself that that light in the distance and say oh no there could be some power down there i I don't think you pay for it. You won't have to with Perdomo.

A lot of players like this end up kind of cruising under the radar unless they have the Gavin Lux levels of production in the minors. Again, guilty. I'm part of the Gavin Lux hype train. I was there. I was the conductor, perhaps, of that train for a few months back in the day. So I've made this mistake before, but what do you use to really look at a player, whether it's Perdomo or someone else that has similar skills and say,

I actually can see some power here and I would continue taking chances in the right format? Or if you're in the case of the Diamondbacks, you'd see enough to say, he's still our guy. We're not going to go out and make the DVR dream of Trey Turner going to the desert come true. The easy answer for me is Max Exavilo because it just shows potential. I think Max Exavilo is raw power. Perdomo has a 30, 40 raw power, present-future raw power grade on fan graphs

and had a 103.3 last year to 104.7 this year. 108 is traditionally kind of the line between good and bad or average and above average. When you look at Luis Urias in san diego years where he hadn't been really showing the power uh he didn't have the barrel rates but he did have a 107 max ev and a 105.5 so at least uh you know hit the ball a little bit harder there uh and and then i'm gonna i'm not gonna have gavin lux in front of me just yet but gavin lux's max EVs 109.8, 105.6. So I just want to, I want to see someone at least get above that 105 level, uh, to, to, to kind of believe there's more

there. And I think you've seen, you know, uh, Gavin Lux is getting pretty close to 110. He's been hovering around 108, uh, as a max EV and his barrel rate like I think there there is I've been I've been actually on the other side of the Lux thing and been kind of a detractor because I don't see the power but this is the type of person where you know he's 24 years old his plate skills have matured he could easily just decide I'm going to do my A swings more. I'm going to swing harder this year. I might do some weighted bats in the offseason, whatever it is, and get that max EV up to 112 or something, get that barrel rate up to 7%, 8%,

and then have a breakout season that looks like 280, 2010 at least. That's in him. And it would be swansonian looking at the max exit velo leaderboard right now i know we've talked about cody bellinger a lot on recent shows 107.3 dude 231st out of 246 qualified hitters you are you're falling into no nikki lopez Kwan territory. Oh, God, no. You're within a mile per hour of those guys. Isn't that bad?

I like Kwan and Lopez as players. They're just totally different players. Different players, yeah. So different than what Cody Ballinger was. This isn't me making fun of them. They have exceptional abilities to put the ball in play, and Kwan especially, and and Lopez because of his speed can be occasionally pretty interesting for our purposes but don't hang out there Cody look

who's at the bottom here of max ev this year oh yeah no I am minimum 25 it's Yomer Sanchez oh yeah bring it all around you know just bring it back around I thought you're gonna get the perdomo being three from the bottom on the qualified list that's right is he is stury ruiz uh near the bottom here uh this i that's the type of player i think he is honestly to myself i think history reese belongs here with yalmer sanchez david fletcher d strange gordon anderson simmons michael pepiereski travis jankowski i think that's what i think of history reese maybe i'll be wrong but uh he's falling right into it what i'm disappointed to see spencer steer down here he's probably disappointed to be down there too but the thing about max

exavilo is true and that people brought up to me is that you know the absence of it is not quite the same as the presence of it. You know what I mean? That's a good way to think about it because Jose Altuve is the best player, the all-around best player I see on the qualified list who's within, he's on the fold on the bottom of the screen. So if you look at the absolute bottom where Tony Kemp is, you can still see Jose Altuve if your monitor is not tiny.

He's up there. He's at 108 even, right? There's not tiny. He's up there. He's at 108 even, right? There's not a lot of good players in that range. But also you have to change, what I'm saying also is a sample thing. So change your minimum to like 25. And then you'll see some young players that have bad max exit VLOs that were supposed to have power coming up. And I'm just saying that you can't really count them out just yet um i'm thinking of spencer steer uh let me think of somebody else who's on this list um yeah like michael stefanik like didn't he have power didn't he hit a bunch of power uh bombs in the minor leagues yeah it is funny how

when you add in the the bigger pool of players all of a sudden the the low-end guys who qualify don't look quite as bad by comparison alberto mondesi like has a 105 7 i don't know if i believe that i think he's he's got more power than that anyway on the plus side where it's it's more it's it's always it's always meaningful when someone does it that's the finding that rob arthur had um is o'neill cruz of course number one our new stantonian god uh who plays shortstop uh the the siren song the only reason that o'neill cruz won't work out is because Franchi Cordero is sixth. It's not some sort of silver bullet

situation. He can't be Franchi Cordero. That's not possible. Yeah? That can't be. It's possible. I love him. I'm sorry. I love O'Neal Cruz. I'm just saying. It's possible.

Joey Bart is 34th. That speaks well to you. You were a little bit more positive about Joey Bart than I was. Royce Lewis. By the way, I've already tried this in the one league where I think I could pull it off, and it didn't work. So if anybody's listening, in this offseason, if you can buy Royce Lewis, I would do it.

Yeah. No, I think you should. I think as long as he comes back healthy, he's going to have a prominent role for the Twins in 2023 and for a long time beyond that. Everything we saw looks really good. Definitely a possibility. Luis Garcia is an interesting entrant at the top of this list. The universe really is just a a giant circle

because jared kelnick is up here at uh tied for 39th in max exit velo oh what did you have a do you have it with one bb i brought it down to 25 let's get 67 batted ball events oh there he is okay for me it's 41st for some reason. I don't understand. Oh, they're all tied, so it just ordered them differently for you. Okay. I moved him up in my head to make him sound better. Okay, all right.

Yeah, but he's tied with Cal Rowley, who's been hitting bombs. Mm-hmm. And Sean Murphy. That's interesting. If only he was a catcher. Too early to give up on both Kelnick and Adele. If I had to try and say today who I'm more likely to roster next year, I still have

more faith in Kellnick by comparison. I think the reduced swing and miss at AAA when you compare their numbers at that level makes me believe more in the hit tool. The fangraph scouting grades on the hit tool also favored Kellnick all along. Whether the Mariners believe that and want to play him every day, but

he's a lefty, Adele's a righty. Looking at the Angels usage, that and want to play him every day but he's a lefty Adele's a righty looking at the Angels usage that could be a problem for Adele as well I'm not telling you if you believe in Adele to not take a late flyer on him but I think if you're only going to take one of those players it still seems more likely to me that Kelnick ends up being consistently productive than Adele if only one of them makes it. I'm still influenced pretty heavily by that Baseball Perspectives article that said Kelnick may have had lower strikeout rates than the Miners but hadn't closed his hole. And I'm still intrigued by Adele,

and I also feel like maybe Adele fewer obstacles on that team. also feel like maybe adele fewer obstacles on that team it's not great that right now he's got not much of an obstacle at all but um this team could use adele you know like the mariners are doing pretty good without kelnyx so maybe they use him in a trade piece or you know maybe they just he's a maybe he's just an up and down guy for them you know maybe he's just an up-and-down guy for them. Maybe he's depth. Whereas Adele, the Angels need Adele. They've got to figure this out and just play him the rest of the way. I think my belief is that in part because he's with the Mariners and Jerry DiPoto will seemingly trade anyone,

if they don't want to use him a lot, they'll trade him now while someone else is still very interested because if they use him as a part-time player and he doesn't get a lot better, they're missing an opportunity to make their organization better. Trader Jerry. Trader Jerry. Made with freshly ground espresso beans, frothy steamed or ice chilled milk, and topped with marble chocolate curls.

Now that's music to our ears. Available hot or iced, only at Tim's. Want visibly glowing skin in 14 days? With new Olay Indulgent Moisture Body Wash, you can lather and glow the 24-hour moisturizing body wash is infused with vitamin b3 complex and has notes of rose and cherry creme for a rich indulgent experience treat your senses with new olay indulgent moisture body wash buy it today at major retailers did we answer the question though i do think think that 500 was an interesting number to sort at, you know, because when we were sorting at a higher number, like when we sorted at a thousand,

we didn't find any of these sort of breakout type players, you know, they'd already broken out. Right. I think Javier Baez is 759 is kind of the high watermark for me. I think 800 plate appearances I'd like to give a guy 800 if they were a highly rated prospect I'm not I'm not saying every prospect I'm saying if there were a highly rated prospect that we were waiting on I'd love to give him 800 that seems to me like a season plus yeah because you might even use a player in a platoon role for two or three seasons to get to that number or parts of three different seasons and then at that point maybe you've seen enough because adele's already at 511 and in part-time like you're saying and i'm not quite giving up on him so but if he comes up if

he if he gives you another 300 400 next year and is and this is bad uh i'm i don't see as much of a reason to to continue you know trying to roster him and stuff. Yeah, I think the bigger point is that this number used to be at least 1,000, and it's less than that now as far as what teams will actually give a player. But I think based on more information that we have available, we're able to cut down on how much we need to see before we're ready to start moving away from players that had those lofty expectations.

You wrote about it. The sticky stuff is back. It never, like, did it fully go away? Did it partially go away? Yeah, I think it's still a bit of a debate, but I thought there was a particularly compelling chart because you were looking at, it was spin rates by month when the crackdown happened,

before the crackdown happened, and we're still not at the spider attack levels pre-crackdown, but we're pretty close. We're getting into that range where it's working for pitchers again. I think in concert with the ball being deadened this year especially and the humidors, all the factors that are in play here, it seems like a step too far in the direction of being too pitcher friendly, just slightly.

It's the power in particular that we've been kind of going back and forth on. We've talked about the slugging percentage for the league being a tick below 400 throughout most of the season. I don't think we're way off. I think we're slightly off if that, but what do you make of what we're seeing now? I think we've talked about this being more like clear substances that are very difficult to detect on the uniform or possibly up in the hair that's been a long-standing spot for me where i'm watching guys i'm like come on you're in your

hair all the time why would you even why would you even mess with your hair you got other stuff going on right now so what seems to be the the current approach that's helped pitchers get so much spin back with an alternative sticky substance? Yeah, we've even seen a person whose spin rate went down after enforcement and then who's got it back up. He's been checked on the field with the fingers through the hair. The umpire massaging him like this little you know baseball after dark moment and uh and and they couldn't he couldn't definitively say that there was anything different other than you know like how much hair gel is too much hair gel you know how much sunscreen is too much sunscreen you know and so we're at a point now where I think they're just stuck enforcement wise.

They have cut spider tack out of the game, I think. Because you can see the spin rates are not all the way back up. You can see, for example, I looked at the highest spin rate, four seam spin rate seasons. Yeah, player seasons, basically, right? In the Trackman era. And the highest this season is 50th, right? So, you know, not quite at the top. And the second highest this season is 174th.

So Zach Gallin has the second highest four-seam spin rate this year among pitchers that have thrown 100 fastballs and it's the 174th highest uh of uh of this sort of enforcement era so i think they've cut spy attack also think about it uh sort of in practically in types of use like if the one thing that anybody who's touched spy attackotac or Pintar knows is it's not easy to get off, you know? And so,

you know, even with, I've heard some rumors of like baby oil and, or hand sanitizer on the pants to like give you a little bit of extra help. Even then your pants would be all Brown, have just a big old Brown smear wherever you're trying to wash it off every time right and so i think that would be pretty obvious and and if you had a hat that was like soaked in hand sanitizer uh you would smell like an alcoholic you know what i mean like they

would be like out on the mound from the fumes getting your face i'll probably be like yo man don't drink so much before you start so um so i think what it is is hair gel it's something a little bit more than bullfrog maybe because bullfrog was more on the level of a plus 100 rpm spider attack was plus 500 rpm and what we're seeing now is something in between so i do think there's been some engineering going on there's been some some work that's they found some clear substance that's sticky that can be taken off pretty quickly. And the problem is if it's a clear substance that can be wiped off pretty quickly, somebody in the dugout is not going to help. By the time they got to the dugout, they cleaned it up. They already saw the guy and showed their hand. So the only solution that i heard that made any sense was a fifth umpire that

stood right behind the pitcher and like could intercede after they touched it and before they touched the ball you know what i mean let me touch your hand now no you know like not after you're done pitching let me touch your hand right now that'd be good for pace of play oh my god it would and it would be so awful it was so weird looking and we're really going to add an umpire just for this? So I don't think... And one last thing I couldn't put in the piece for various reasons, but my understanding is

they cannot enforce a suspension based on things that happened after the fact. So video is not on the table uh taking a ball and and and saying x picture through this and it has substance on it it's not on the table because suspensions arise and this is my understanding is suspensions arise from umpire action on the field you understand the difference like we don't get a lot of suspensions we're likepire action on the field you understand the difference like we don't get a lot of suspensions we're like oh we looked at the video and we think last night player did this or this right now they review things where a suspension has already been issued the umpire

says something umpire kicks them out and then they can review it but there has to be an umpire action on the field it has to come from something that happened on the field. So yeah, a fifth umpire would be the answer. And I think baseball is happy maybe to have cut spider attack level out. And maybe at stake was, you know, one or 2% of strikeout points, right? It's one or 2% of strikeout.

So if only one or 2% of strikeout so if only one or two percent of strikeout rate is on the table they're trying to cut five percent four percent so maybe they cut a half a percent or a percent out with spider attack and the rest they're going to attack with uh the pitch clocks and if if needed moving the mound back right or tweaking the humidor settings again i guess that's always a possibility if they want to change how the the ball responds to contact they could always i mean that's yeah that's more on the power side but i think on the on the strikeout side so i i think you know there are certain high profile names um that you can sort of read between the lines

who've been at the forefront of this that have, you know, maybe had their, uh, their performance go up and down around, uh, enforcement, um, that, you know, guys that might go one, you know, among the top three pitchers next year. Should I just name him? Yeah. Yeah. Garrett Cole. I mean, he's talked about it. He's talked about it in post-season things, you know, if you're nervous about Garrett Cole. I mean, he's talked about it. He's talked about it in postseason things. If you're nervous about Garrett Cole and added enforcement next year because he's been right at his back a little bit, it's not back to spider tag levels, I don't think you should be because I don't actually think that there's anything the teams, the baseball can do that they have the stomach to do.

Do you really think that they're going to add a fifth umpire? No, I don't think so. And if they add a guy in the dugout, that's like supposedly looking around, they have guys in the dugout do it. No, Hey,

they have guys in the dugout now that come in and make sure you're not stealing pitch signs. Did you know that they have somebody? You never really notice who that person is on TV. I mean, I guess if they were randomly in there, don't know during a shot like maybe if you watch that team all the time and say wait i don't know who that person is because if you watch a team on a regular basis you get familiar with the random coaching staff and support staff people that are around the

dugout you're looking for like a translator for polo shirt with an mlb sign on it that would be the giveaway yeah yeah those guys uh i know i've seen them in the in the clubhouses checking the mudding i've seen them in the clubhouses near uh sort of technology centers where they're like looking at pitches and stuff um and apparently they sweep the dugout two or three times a game to make sure that nobody's stealing signs. So that exists. So you could just ask that guy, hey, stay in the dugout a little bit longer and see if any pitchers are loading up. I just don't think that you'll catch anything because the pitchers know that getting on and off the field, they can have their hands touched.

So they don't want to be doing anything in the dugout they want to have they want to get to the field of play with whatever their substance is somewhere on their body not touch it anytime except right before they pitch and then get it off before the check so i don't think having someone in the dugout is really going to help is this person someone who has played the game at a high level before, who is a known cheater? Or is this a person who's more like Hugo, the health inspector from Bob's Burgers, where it's just someone who's a stickler for rules, but also wouldn't be fully adept at leveraging the rules to his benefit? Who has not been a cheater himself. Right.

Yeah, just someone who really likes to enforce things, but isn't actually a cheater himself. Right. Yeah, just someone who really likes to enforce things, but isn't actually a cheater. It's like, I feel like you'd want the craftiest of cheaters. Yeah, you want like a former cheater. Yeah, you want something like 80s, 90s snotball specialist to be the one that, oh yeah, like someone along those lines is who you want because they would think about every possible thing.

Who was the other spitballer? Was the Necro a spitballer? He was a knuckleballer. Who am I thinking of? He's a knuckleballer. Who's a spitballer? Everyone knew he was a spitballer.

He even admitted it. He like wrote a book about it after he retired. He's in the Hall of Fame, dude. Gaylord Perry? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gaylord Perry. That's it.

Gaylord Perry. You need people like that hanging out in the dark who are so immersed in the world of he might be looking for the wrong things though because he was a spitballer so he's looking for spin reduction you know but he would certainly spot the baby oil. Right, exactly. That's what I'm saying. It takes one to know one, I think, at a level like this. Whoa, what are you listening to this for?

Wait, who's talking? You know you're driving a 2024 Ford Escape with available Alexa built in, so you can change the music. Oh, yeah. Alexa, change station to 99.2. See purchase a 2024 escape ST line, all wheel drive with tech pack at 3.49% APR for 72 months with down payment.

That's just two 67 bi-weekly cash value of 40,294. Plus eligible Ford owners get a thousand dollar bonus for details. Visit your local Ford store or four.ca. Let's get to the rule changes just for a moment um there's a little bit of a tweak made to the stat cast tempo leaderboard that we discussed last week and the original data we were looking at did not measure tempo the same way that the pitch clock works the tempo leaderboard as it previously was, I believe, was time from the pitch being released to the time that the next pitch is released. And that's not how the pitch clock works. So what that did was

it created a much larger group of players who would seemingly be too slow. They have since added a translated version of that. And when you look at the leaderboard now, you can see that a much smaller group of pitchers will be forced to make significant adjustments. But I think the general thrust we were talking about last week is that relievers were taking a lot longer than starters as a group, and they are still going to be largely the group that needs to make more changes and will be probably the most impacted by the implementation of the pitch clock yeah i put minimum 100 pitches did the timer equivalent sort and about 100 pitches out of 580 uh will uh

you know had a pace this year that is worse than the clock uh will be next year so um that's still a fair amount of players you're right most of them are relievers the most prominent of which are roldis chapman devin williams jonathan lewizaga kenley jansen and giovanni gallegos are the are the slowest but ryan presley is slow um you know there's some older pitchers that are trying to hold on to their velocity but even ryan helsley is slow uh those guys will craig kimbrell is slow this is a bad time to have to adjust something for Craig Kimbrell but Pete Fairbanks is on this list in terms of starters that we should worry about at all there's only a few names but they are high profile names and I'm trying to get to them where I know Shohei Otani Corbin

Burns Shohei Otani and Michael Kopech were three that I remembered that's that's it but Shane Boz I I lowered the the things to get everybody but Shane Boz is is close uh JP Sears is a little bit slow yeah Corbin Burns and Michael Kopech. That's about it. I would say, and Luis Garcia and Yu Darvish. Those are, that's, it's not something that I would actually, I think I did say something, I would have this open during draft season.

I'm going to take that, I'm going to walk that back. I think this is something more like that you would get all you know upset about and think about too much right um the only one that that bothers me a little bit is shohei otani uh i'm glad he's throwing the sinker because if shohei otani next year was just throwing the foreseeing with poor shape and lost like a tick and a half because he had to work faster, he could actually hit harder. But with the sinker, I think Shohei Tani is going to be a pretty good pitcher next year.

Yeah. You may find that too, having a full offseason to train, and if some of these guys are on pitching staff that have guys that work fast, they can talk to each other. Team can give them a game plan for how to be better prepared for it. Just practice it in the offseason at least. Yeah, right. Your side sessions and everything you do, you're going to figure that out.

Maybe you lose a little velo. That seems very likely for some of these extreme guys, but if you've got four or five pitches and you command things well, it's probably going to have a reasonably small impact on the starters, especially. Here is one pivot I might actually make, given this news. I don't think I want to have a lot of old relievers next year. It's not something you want generally.

I generally don't like old relievers next year yeah it's not something you want generally i generally don't like old relievers anyway but yeah but i've had some like you know i've done like i have some enrolled as chapman shares this year and i had some keg kimbrough shares this year because you'll you'll find that there'll be you know kenley jansen there'll be a guy who falls who has a job and you're like hey the only thing that's wrong with him is he's old. Maybe I would rather pick someone that the Pitching Plus model likes and is young rather than somebody like Kenley Jansen who has to shave five seconds off of his pace.

Ryan Presley, does he count as old? He's close. He put together a nice skill season. He'll be 34 next season, though. But he already had some velocity loss this year. And if he has to shave off three seconds, I don't think that Ryan Presley is going to be a fave of mine. If I can catch him as a third reliever,

but he's going to go more first second, right? Yeah, I think so. He's going to fall a little bit. He's going to go more first-second, right? Yeah, I think so. He's going to fall a little bit. He's going to fall a little bit. He's not going to be a legitimate. I don't think he's going to be a legitimate first closer. The question is, do I want him as a second closer? Maybe if I wait.

Or as one of your last closer one options, if things are breaking away where the first seven or eight are off the board, is he still in that circle of trust? I'm going to be nervous. That's more like when this year in my worst situation I ended up with Giovanni Gallegos

as my closer one and I felt like I had messed up. Yep, well, you didn't mess up as bad as my Kittredge-Malanson combo. Seems so smart at the time and didn't spend that much. Oh, there's a cheap 50 saves. Yeah.

Big brain. Or five. Or five. Or you punted the category and you might not cash because of it. Idiot. Yeah. Oh, man. Sorry.

Yeah. Let's see. That's my own stupidity right there. I didn't play it that way in most things. Yeah. Let's say that's, that's my own stupidity right there. I didn't play it that way. And most things. Yeah, it's exactly. It's what I'm going to tell myself was I,

as I try to pony up another big entry for the same league next year, like, all right, we're not making that mistake again. Are we? We'll make a different one. Yes. We'll make a new mistake.

That's the, that's the motto for 2023. We will make new mistakes this season the also we we talked a little bit i think we we we did a good job it just turned out a lot of those rules came in right after we talked about it we didn't know that was going to happen quite like that no and so when we talked about the shift uh rules i had kind of assumed uh from what i'd heard behind the scenes that the pie slice rule was going to be the shift rule um and that would have helped people who hit up the middle uh but the rule as it is now uh that that will keep uh you know two defenders on

each side uh and in the grass i think people are going to overvalue what that means for left-handed pull hitters. Do you think they're going to think those guys bounce back more than they do? Yes, because when they did this in the minor leagues, Vavip didn't change much. And if you think about it,

the big sort of advancement of the shift, the reason why the shift works so well is because you put the second baseman really close to the first baseman, but far, you know, like far in the infield. Think about what it looks like, right? What does the extreme shift look like? You've got a second baseman who's in the grass.

So making that guy walk two steps forward is not changing that much, right? You still got the second baseman in that kind of ground ball, pull ground ball alley. And the other part of it is you put your shortstop standing on second base. So when the lefty pull hitter hits a line drive up the middle, shortstop's still going to be on second base catching it. And when that lefty pull hitter hits a pull ground ball in that sort of pull alley there, that ground ball alley, the second baseman's still going to be standing there. So I think the pie slice rule had a chance to actually change something.

I think this rule will change very little. I'm going to examine it a little more closely, and we'll probably talk about it on a future episode just to see if there's any particular type of pull hitter that might do better than others if there's someone that has like a hot spot that will finally be available but you might be right it might be a smaller adjustment than people are going to anticipate there are there maybe are some i think about like joey gallo where they're really powerful ones where they've played like manny machado against him in the outfield like almost as a more as a fourth

outfielder than a infielder and they've made outs you know way out in the outfield um so there might be some extreme ones but i would just say like i don't think i would sort for let me do this real quick um you know pulled ground balls you can do this on the splits leaderboard on fan graphs uh where you just uh you take ground balls and then you uh you go to batted balls and you can do pull percent on ground balls and that's salvador perez max muncy luke voight tyler o'neill anthony rizzo jose altubey cody bellinger kyle schwarber like i'm not gonna just be like hey let me give 20 points of batting average to all these guys uh i think this group will still have a fairly low batting average to all these guys uh i think this group will still have a fairly low batting average all right well more to come on that but uh keep that in your back pocket just as far as an

adjustment that some people might make that you don't want to make he's a righty yeah but the other ones are good and luke voight is a righty too I'd focus mostly on Muncy Rizzo Bellinger Schwarber types no he's definitely a lefty those are the those are the guys that everybody will be hot after

and I think maybe overvalued something to think about for sure one more question to get to as we go christopher morel is a pretty fascinating player because he didn't put up great numbers in the minors wasn't really on the prospect radar before this season came up played pretty well initially and it's still getting a decent amount of playing time for the cubs the final numbers this season if the season ended today it'd be a 242 312 430 line 13 homers 10

stolen bases he's been caught six times 374 plate appearances but it's a power speed combo with a batting average that won't hurt you and there's some reason to believe that maybe the k rate could get a little better than where it is right now as he gets more experience at the big league level talking about a guy that only played nine games at triple a last season was actually returned to double a to begin this year how do we how do we kind of set expectations for him because as one of our viewers on youtube bove wrote there are some things that are really good in the underlying numbers the 12.6 percent barrel rate that was through august nice max ev multi-position eligibility the k rate's a bit of a red flag and the caught stealing rate is a little high but there's good there's bad and

there's not necessarily the typical track record through the minors that that gives us a good understanding of what exactly he's likely to be as a player. Yeah, the shape of his season is going to create some recency bias that I think may offer opportunity for players. Because Christopher Morrell's May, we all remember, 283 average, 147 WRC+, 878 OPS. I guess OPS tells a story. 878 in May, 815 in June, 724 in July, 575 in August, 584 in September. His second half in general, 198 average through 265 OBP, 347 slugging.

That's going to leave a bad taste in people's mouths I've seen you know Cubs fans discuss how he was just a hot starter and there's nothing else there but I agree with you that you know there's a potential here for a little bit more contact as he gets used to the as he gets used to the league I don't know how to pair that with just the fact that his strikeout rate has only gone up over the course of the season, really. Uh, and he's hovering over 40% right now for his last 50 games. Um, so, you know, it's a, it's a interesting conundrum for me. I think what I want him for mostly is, uhagues in case a 24-year-old with a second taste of the big leagues comes back and strikes out 26%, 27% of the time with a good walk

rate, capitalizes on that power, and gives you an 800 OPS next year at multiple positions with stolen bases. I mean, that's worth it. In terms of like, you know, making him my starter at any position in 12 teamers, I think the flaws are enough that I don't want to do that. In a 15 teamer, I'd love, love to start the year with him on my bench, I think. Because if he does work out, he's a guy who can, like, especially in NFBC, he can cover you at a bunch of positions. And he would be such, he would a guy who can, especially in the NFPC, he can cover you at a bunch of positions. And he would be a guy that would allow you to have another pitcher on your bench, which is huge. So I love the multi-eligibility.

I love some of the markers for power. The strikeout rate just increasing over the course of the season is concerning. Yeah, I think that's the young player going through an adjustment phase. And I think that adjustment can be more harsh when you haven't seen a lot of AAA pitching on your way to the big leagues. So, I mean, with Morel, a 12.3% barrel rate as we record on Thursday, that's tied for 33rd among qualified hitters. That's Christian Walker territory, Pete Alonso territory.

Adelise Garcia's on here at a similar barrel rate. I think there's some actual profile similarities between those two players. And Morel has a little bit better sense of the zone. Yes, I think that gives me a little more confidence too. And he got to the big leagues at a much younger age than Garcia did. What do you think his price will be? Do you think he'll cost like a starter? Like people will buy him as a starter?

I was trying to think of a pop-up guy in the pool with power and speed and more to like than dislike and some question marks. I landed on Akil Badu as far as like how people will treat him. Different kind of player. Sort of different kind of player. But maybe with Akil Badu actually having just happened,

I bet you that comp's not going to be the first time that comes up. And if that happens, I think that might reduce the price on Morel. I think Akil Badu might reduce the price on Morel. Even though Badu is a little bit older. No? Was he? He was just a Rule 5 guy? He just wasn't old? About the same

age. He was a righty. With some similar question marks. Yeah, Badu is a lefty. Oh, okay. Morel's a righty. So I don't know. Fringe top 200 is probably where he'd go at the high end. I could see Morel hopefully falling more to that 250-300 range. I think I'm a little bit more in on 250-300.

When you're picking the 200, you're still picking a starter, I think. Yeah, that's generally where I am. I thought Badu was interesting. I didn't really have him a lot of places. If Morel follows that price, that's probably where I have to go. But if he's somebody you can keep in a dynasty league

at a relatively low cost, I'd be more inclined to keep him than to send him back into the pool because the versatility gives him a lot of ways to contribute for the Cubs next year, even if they add some players. So thanks a lot for that question, Bove. As always, you can send us questions either by dropping them in the comments section under this video on YouTube, or you can email us, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com. You can find Eno on Twitter

at Eno Saris. You can find me at Derek Van Ryper. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Monday. Thanks for listening.