Rates & Barrels - Willy Adames to the Brewers, in-season adjustments, and expectations for Spencer Howard

Episode Date: May 24, 2021

Eno and DVR discuss the four-player swap between the Rays and Brewers that sent Willy Adames to Milwaukee, Taylor Walls' promotion, organizational brain drain, making in-season decisions nearly two months in, expectations for Spencer Howard, and a surprising development with changeups.  Rundown 1:02 A Meaningful May Trade! 8:02 Taylor Walls Gets the Call 14:02 Joey Wendle is On Fire 16:01 Organizational Brain Drain 26:45 Making Better In-Season Decisions 33:01 Rallying in Roto Leagues 38:18 Spencer Howard is Back! 47:34 Concerns About Changeups w/Current Baseball? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to the Rates & Barrels YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/RatesBarrels Subscribe To The Athletic for just $1/month: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels presented by Topps. Check out Topps Project 70 celebrating 70 years of Topps baseball cards. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. Happy Monday. We had a trade go down pretty soon after we stopped recording on Friday afternoon, so we narrowly missed being on there for breaking news, which I know makes everybody really happy. Yes.

I'm going to keep an eye on Twitter just to be safe. So we'll talk about that deal. We're going to talk about the concept of organizational brain drain because it definitely relates to one of the teams involved in that trade. We'll talk about making better in-season decisions. Lots of great questions came in, so we're going to try to answer as many of those as we can. Plus, we get Spencer Howard back up in Philadelphia, so we'll talk about what we might expect from him in the weeks and months ahead. Let's start with this trade. It's pretty rare to get a starting caliber player moved early in the season, months ahead. You know, let's start with this trade. It's pretty rare to get a starting caliber player

moved early in the season, but it happened. Willie Adames, along with Trevor Richards, going to the Brewers, JP Fireeisen and Drew Rasmussen going back the other way to Tampa Bay. At the time the trade happened, everybody said,

Wander time. And the Rays, 30 minutes later, said, Nope, Taylor Walls time. Which, you know, Taylor Walls is a nice prospect. We'll get to him in just a minute. But one thing that really struck me looking at this trade was Willie Adamas' home splits at the trop are just brutal. And I'm trying to figure out just how much I want to adjust accordingly with my expectations. Getting out of that difficult environment for him to hit and going into a hitter-friendly park absolutely is worth something,

but he is crossing over leagues. Going to see a lot of pitchers he's less familiar with, and he's been running a high K rate now going back to the shortened season. So I guess I'm trying not to expect too much too quickly, even though I think this is a clear upgrade for him. Yeah, he can't just take that away split, that 292, 365, 493, beautiful baby, and stick it in the new crib to continue that tortured analogy. I doubt he'll have a 130 WRC plus as he has had away from home,

even if that seems to come in a slightly robust sample. It's not really. It's 636 plate appearances away from home. Is that it? That's all he's done? Seems like he's been up a little longer than that, doesn't it? I'm doing the career splits. Yeah, but look at his overall.

He only has 1,200 plate appearances for his career. So anyway, away splits, you know, they get accumulated in a lot of different parks. They get accumulated over different years, so I wouldn't say that. But at the same time, there's like a human involved here and the human has said that he had a hard time seeing the ball in tropicana field drop the drop so we know that you know see the batter's eye the sort of background behind the pitcher uh can be a big deal and that at certain parks will augment strikeouts even. That strikeouts have a park factor, basically.

And for a player like him, who has been kind of toggling between hitting the ball hard and striking out less, you know what I mean? I could see a home park that made his strikeout woes worse being a big deal. So I think he's a really interesting player to watch going forward. And we'll have to see how much the friendly confines will help him out. Yeah, I think it's going to be a nice little boost.

Probably 240, 250 type hitter with the swing and miss in his game, but maybe is more safely going to reach that 20 homomer sort of output that we've seen him flash in the past. I think that's the key here. The floor is much more stable. Playing time is not going to be a concern because...

Unfortunately, the steals are gone. The steals are pretty much gone, but the Brewers are going to play him every day because they needed a defensive upgrade. That was the reason why they made this trade. Luis Urias' defense just hasn't been that good. Urias sort of becomes more of a super utility player. That's funny because I see highlight reel for Urias, but not steady production.

Throwing issues. Defensively. Like consistent throwing issues. But now Hura's up. I mean, there's an interesting thing happening with the Brewers' situation there, that depth chart. So is Urias becoming more of a utility player? Kind of in some sort of timeshare with Travis Shaw at third

and then backing up the rest of them? Yeah. But if he has throwing issues, you don't really want to play him at third. Who was playing at second that pushed Hira to first? Colton Wong. So you're not going to move Wong. Oh, you've already got Wong, yeah.

But Urias being a righty, he can platoon with someone like Wong or he can platoon with Travis Shaw. And if he hits enough and irons out the throwing issues, there's no reason to think that he couldn't play third base if you decide that he's your best option. Come to start of there eventually, yeah. Yeah, so I think that's the path for him.

I think it's interesting that Trevor Richards was thrown in this deal because when the Rays acquired him, we talked about him, I think, on this pod. It was two summers ago at the trade deadline. And we thought, hmm, maybe they're going to just have him throw the change up more. And he really didn't increase the use of the change up all that much.

So now I remain curious if the Brewers will have him throw the change up a little bit more often, if they're going to try and use him as a two-inning guy. Losing two relievers as part of this deal kind of dealing from depth brewers give up jp fire eyes and drew rasmussen two guys that have good stuff and two guys that you could see having meaningful roles of some kind in that raise mix and match bullpen yeah and i think they can get equal bulk out of uh who is it more rasmussen i think i think they'll be able to pitch rasmussen both of these guys have excellent stuff numbers they're both uh 25 to 30 better than

the average with stuff and what's also interesting about them is that they both have multiple pitches i think fire asm and Rasmussen came up in along with the other guy that just got traded, Sean Poppin. Remember? When we were talking about relievers that could start? Mm-hmm. I did reach out to

a source that I have with the Rays, and I don't think either guy's going to be made into a starter. But I do think Rasmussen could replace the two innings at a time that Richards has been doing and then Fire Eisen will be a more traditional one inning guy probably because of the injuries he's had in his past. Yeah and I wonder how much just having some flexibility and getting guys who are earlier in their careers cheaper how much that plays into...

This is the last year that Richards has options and once that year's passed, then suddenly he becomes a guy you have to keep on your roster. Guys like that don't always fit on a team like the Rays where they love to shuttle guys up and down. Because the Rays are always overtaxing

the bullpen, honestly, and have to send guys down to get rest and then get a fresh arm up for a while. That is what they do, right? Is it? Part of it, yeah. It's kind of hard to tell because when you look at their bullpen, it's like they don't send guys down regularly. All those guys are there.

They put guys on the IL a lot. Well, they haven't had to do it as much recently. I think if you go back three or four years, there was a little more of the up and down happening on the bottom spots. But yeah, they haven't had to do it as much recently. I think if you go back three or four years, there was a little more of the up and down happening on the bottom spots. But yeah, they have either improved the quality or just been injured enough where that sort of guided the decision-making as far as shuttling guys up and down. Most teams have been.

Injuries everywhere this season. Let's talk about Taylor Walls for a moment. I felt kind of bad for him that his big league debut comes at a time when all of us are waiting for two really interesting prospects. Tearing our shirts apart for Wanda Franco. Yeah, like we're waiting on Wander, waiting on Brujan, but get Taylor Walls instead. Chris Blessing from Baseball HQ put it out there in a few more words, but he's like, hey, Taylor Walls is good. Just because they didn't call up Wander doesn't mean you should be disappointed.

This is a guy that can actually do some stuff. He's hit tool over power, defends really well at shortstop, can obviously move around and play other infield positions too. I mean, kind of fits the Rays' prototype really well. And a switch hitter too. So an even more versatile piece that they can move around. So I was trying to think about this

from a longer-term perspective. How could I envision a situation where all three of Taylor Walls, Vidal Brujan, and Wander Franco would all be on that roster together? Because they've all moved around enough, even at AAA. Brujan's Wander Franco would all be on that roster together because they've all moved around enough even at AAA. Brujan's playing in the outfield. Wander's playing multiple infield spots. It's not that hard to imagine Yandy Diaz playing a little less

and maybe with an injury or you shift a guy like Brandon Lau off second base some days, move him over to first base or DH, and suddenly all three of those guys are on the field together. Here's a crazy thing. Lau has options. But guess you know he's still even with his struggles he's eight percent better than they average the stick so he still has enough power and patience to make up for the strikeouts and the poor batted ball luck he's having right now. So I don't think they'd option him, but I do think they lost Yoshitsutsugo to the Dodgers. And I feel like that could happen with G-Man Choi and with Yandy Diaz, where they just decide they can get more out of that spot if they put somebody who's versatile in there. And they've done that in the past too. mean they they just picked up joy but before they've shuttled people in and out of first base um so lau could

become a guy who plays first base more often and then that would open up one spot and then the other thing i keep waiting for them to do is trade kevin kiermeier but i don't think anybody's taking them off their hands i don't think anybody wants that contract and player production combination. No. And I don't think they're raising the business of paying prospects to get rid of players. Yeah. I mean, I guess with Kiermaier, he's good enough to be on your bench as your last outfielder. But he's taking up a roster slot.

Mm-hmm. That's the problem, right? I mean, you're kind of just stuck in this no man's land. good enough to be on your bench as your last outfielder. But he's taken up a roster slot. That's the problem, right? I mean, you're kind of just stuck in this no-man's land. You'd have to bump like Brett Phillips or someone like that off the roster. And what's the deal here? What's he got left? He's got... Kiermaier's signed through next season, right? Through 2022?

With a 23 club option. So you could just EFM. Yeah, just eat the money. Is it? You know, they got rid of Willie Dumps. I'm just projecting this because

you know, the Rays act the way they do. I don't think I would say that for any other team because Kiermaier is their sort of grizzled vet at this point. And he still has some value on the field. But I think that they could get more, especially offensive value, if they basically went with Brujan in center. And they would have a soft landing spot with Margot.

So you basically have a Brujan-Margot situation in center. It would be more offensively productive than one with Kiermaier in it, I think. And not to completely lose the discussion just from a what's going on with the Rays' offense standpoint. I mean, they're actually good as an offense right now. They're sixth in the league in WRC plus sitting at 107. But to think that they could maybe make a couple more moves and push to the very top,

they could challenge Houston and the White Sox and the Dodgers and possibly be a top three offense if they make the right moves. That's why we're so intrigued. Now, as far as Walls goes, he was picked up in pretty much any deep mixed league over the weekend pretty aggressively pursued i think because of his versatility it made sense to at least put in like a three to five percent bid in a mixed league i don't know if you had to go a lot higher than that because there is uncertainty he could come up and struggle for

the first time and get sent back down and it wouldn't be the biggest surprise in the world but i thought he was a player that was at least worth bidding on yeah yeah what's complicating is the fact that i i think i i speak for the consensus in the scouting community that wanda franco is bad it's more exciting than taylor wallace's um and uh just the reason why we might push bruj and Wander into the major leagues this year is that Tampa is running that 107 WRC plus with the fourth worst strikeout rate in baseball. And the one thing that Brujan and Wander can do over Walls even is make contact. Walls' strikeout rate is something that I will find really compelling to watch

because it was at times sort of low teens, mid-teens. And then this year he started walking twice as often, so 21% of the time, but also striking out 29% of the time. So if he becomes more of a sort of three-two outcomes guy, I don't think that actually helps the Rays do what they need to do, especially when it comes to the postseason. They need to make more contact in the postseason in particular. So I wouldn't be surprised if they move away from Kiermaier

and maybe even Walls towards Wander and Brujan at some point because those guys make more contact. By the way, what's up with Joey Wendell? He's hitting a lot. He homered again on Monday, so he's at 310, 365, 552 this season. Has the K rate just under 20%. It's a grand slam, I think. Yeah, an early grand slam against Trent Thornton, right?

Oh, my God. I love him because he just alternates good and bad years. I just didn't see this coming from him at all. But if you go back and look through the years, I mean, 17, 18, 20, and 21, good OBP, good average, not a lot of power most years. So this is definitely a step forward. I mean, six home runs in 45 games. He's going to break his career highs. His previous career high was 7 back in 2018. He's probably going to break it by the end of the month. But don't do the on-pace for, I don't think.

He's got a 5% barrel rate. I don't think he's on-pace for what would the on-pace for be here? 15? Even more than that. That'd be 20, 21, I think. Yeah, he's not, I don't think, the over under for me on homers for the year

for him is still around 12. A better player though than I'm probably giving him credit for. At least better than I was giving him credit for back during draft season. He has saved our butt in Devil's Rejects. We're falling off a little bit because

the injuries have been pretty bad. But he was an amazing... He was our last keeper in 20-team keeper, OBP. And he's eligible at all these different places. And we've played him everywhere. And he saved our butt. We weren't even sure we were going to keep him because he's a pretty marginal guy year to year, you know? Yeah.

If you told me going into the season joey wendell or louise arise i'd say it probably doesn't matter they're both good average guys that play all over that don't have a lot of power and the correct answer to this point has been no pretty obviously joey wendell he is delivering a lot more in that category we had a question come in over the weekend from listener John, and it's about the Rays. He's actually a Jays fan writing in. And what he's wondering about is how the Rays continue to do what they do with the resources they have. And he says, if I suddenly discovered that I've been left a baseball team in billions of dollars,

the first thing I'd do is go wild for about a year and hopefully not die. That's standard. Right after that, I'd call the Rays GM, offer him quadruple his salary, and tell him I'll also hire anyone he thinks is integral in any way to their success for triple their salary. I feel like that'd be worth way more to my team than a $10 million free agent. Is there a reason why teams aren't doing a more low-key version of that and just brain draining the Rays to death over the years? Thanks a million, John. And we started thinking about it before the show. You start looking around, like there are several GMs that came from the Rays. Andrew Friedman in Los Angeles, Chaim Bloom in Boston. James Click is now the GM in Houston. He took over after Jeff Luno's departure. Matt Arnold is the the GM in Houston. He took over after Jeff Luno's departure. Matt Arnold is the assistant GM in Milwaukee.

He's fairly well locked in there as the number two behind David Stern. It kind of happens already, and the Rays just keep on churning. They just keep on finding good people up and down in the org that enable them to have this prolonged success. Yeah, actually, I hadn't thought of this until you just use that description churning. There is actually kind of like a corollary between how they run their baseball team and their front office. They just like, they have things, I guess, that they look for in hiring people and they have certain salaries they won't go beyond um and they just let people go if they need to go right that's like so they do on the major league team we just saw dumbest go

so um yeah to some extent it's about there being a fair amount of supply out there of people that would have the skills that they that they the sort of analytical skills that they they value um and so they're just gonna that's one way that they're going to get through it. Another thing that I think about is that there's a guy, Louis Polis. He now works with the Phillies front office, but he wrote a piece a while back that suggested that front offices were an untapped resource in terms of investment, that teams should invest more in their front offices

and should invest, that there was more, more returns to be had if they invested further in their front offices. And I think we have seen that now we've seen a lot of titled inflation. I wrote about that maybe two winter meetings ago, where you're, you're stacking more people in. And also that helps build in sort of ideation time. So if you now have an AGM that handles one third of the job that the GM used to handle, right? You have three AGMs and each of them handle the job the GM used to have. Now that GM can kind of just dream up some ideas, dream up research, dream up trade ideas,

stay connected to other GMs and maybe fall into a trade they didn't expect, that sort of deal. And now the president of operations is tasked with kind of, you know, overall vision. And so now there's like four or five people doing the job that used to be one and that's partially because people are investing but also the last thing i think of and i don't necessarily always think of the raise when i think of this i think the major part of investment right now among teams is player development and so um you know if you think about salaries for GMs these days, you know, they're not really public, but from some Googling and some thinking, I think that I would guess the average salary for GM right now is around $2 million. And so if you really wanted to have the best GM, you might spend $5 or $6 million to get a GM.

The best salaries for pitching coordinators that I know of are around $300,000. So that means that if you wanted to get the top of the line player development program with the best pitching coordinator, the best hitting coordinator, you could do all of that and hire maybe 15 people and spend a million dollars, spend half as much as you'd spend on a GM. And you might have more of an impact so i would say that that's what we're seeing from other teams is they're like you know is the braids brilliance the player development or is the gm or is it just the whole sort of mindset of like we're going to ring the most out of every player and we're only and we're

not going to get attached to any player we're not going to get sucked into any player we, we're going to ring the most out of every player. And we're not going to get attached to any player. We're not going to get sucked into any player. We're just going to keep everybody moving. And if you realize that that is their general strategy, then you can employ almost any GM and say, hey, let's be more like the Rays and own everybody from 23 to 26, and that's it. And then add a couple old pitchers and call it a day.

So I think that the player development is really where people are doing this. The brain drain, the serious brain drain is in player development. If you establish yourself as a person to be had in player development, you can be had for less money. And that's the sexy part of baseball right now. Do you think that there's still something, though,

if you're in a different market, forces of selling tickets, being popular, maintaining a happy fan base that really is part of the business of baseball that makes this less tenable if you're not in a place like Tampa Bay or Oakland? I think you could look at the A's and see plenty of parallels over the last 20 years.

I mean, there's a lot of success without a lot of spending on player salaries in particular. And a lot of player movement. Yeah, a lot of player movement. And we've seen people leave Oakland to go on to have prominent roles. Farhan Zaidi, of course, in Oakland several years ago, now calling the shots in San Francisco. I wonder, can you run the Rays model everywhere? And again, this is not necessarily a player-friendly model at all. This is a very team-friendly model. I just wonder if you can get away with that in bigger markets with consistently higher expectations and more pressure to keep stars?

Yeah, I don't know. There's, I mean, there's two things that come to mind. One is that when you study attendance, players, like single players don't seem to drive it. Like if you look at like a big call up, you know, or a big free agent signing or something, there isn't usually a one-to-one correlation, which may just be because stuff is complicated and there's all sorts of reasons that people might not buy tickets or buy tickets. You know what I mean? It might be really amazing to be like,

they signed Bryce Harper and tickets went up. Maybe that's just not possible to draw that line. However, you can't draw that line. You just can't draw that line for a single player the number one thing that drives attendance is winning um but then once you say that right and then you're like but then look at oakland and tampa right and look at these places where they just run through players and there's those. You have fans saying things like, oh, Chapman, we've only got him for another couple of years. You know, just enjoy him while you have him is like a thing I hear in Oakland all the time. Enjoy him while you have him, which is just depressing.

And I think it does lead to fewer fans in the seat. It has to have some sort of effect. It definitely has an effect on how fans view that team. There's definitely sort of like, you know, I have to be a laundry person here because the player will be gone in two or three years. So I'm really fascinated to see what Farhan does in San Francisco. It's going to be really fascinating

because they already did not sell Madison Baumgartner at the trade deadline. They didn't sign him. So they, they're not, so that's more raising, you know, not don't like give Madison,

but money because he was so awesome in the past, you know? Um, but at the same time, uh, they did not trade him for a small prospect at the, at the deadline. Um,

and so there might be an attempt in San Francisco to, I don't know, keep some semblance of continuity and stars you recognize. Because I think there is a fair amount of pressure on the Giants to keep butts in seats, and there's also a fair amount of built-in butts in seats because the park is so nice and it's become a destination park and people will go to it. So I don't know. I want to see. The Giants definitely at the beginning were churning.

Like they worked the waiver wire maybe harder than anybody. Right. But that's what you should do when you're rebuilding. You should, like even if you have money, you should be churning because you're bringing new talent to the organization at every opportunity, evaluating those players and trying to figure out who sticks and who could possibly be used to help you acquire younger players that will help you more in the long run. I do think one key difference here, and maybe we have a blueprint already with the Dodgers and Andrewrew friedman i think farhan's gonna steer the giants more like that they're gonna try and be the organization that does everything well they're gonna be patterned more like that for a lot of the reasons that you mentioned they have the stadium they have the incentives to fill it because they can right and and then you sign justin turner but you only sign him for like three years and you

try to just keep the number down, right? Like you want Justin Turner because he's good and because your fans love him and you know, you want him around, but like, you also don't want to sign him at necessarily his number and give him too many years and that and so on and so forth. That's probably why those negotiations drug out a little bit because everybody like the player and the team wanted to happen. They just didn't want to like't want to get themselves locked into some sort of situation they wouldn't want to be in later. Yeah, well, we still don't know with the Dodgers.

Will they pay Corey Seager? Will they pay Cody Bellinger? Yeah, they paid Mookie Betts, but are they only paying at the absolute top of the top end on those massive multi-year deals? Because we know a lot of times you get good production early, you get the pool holes problem late, and that's not a good spot to be in later on if you're trying to contend on an annual basis and you're worried about navigating things like the luxury tax, for example. So a great question from John. It's happening and they keep winning despite it,

which is truly, truly amazing all right you know it's that time of year where i think we're all getting a little antsy with our they're not slow starters anymore our long slumpers we'll call them i don't we have a name for these players our disappointments our biggest disappointments like you start to stare at those numbers on the screen you're making your lineup decisions on mondays or every day in some leagues, or at least Mondays and Fridays and NFBC leagues. And you keep thinking to yourself, like, am I really sticking with this guy? Am I really going to keep going down this rabbit hole? We had a question come in about Anthony Rendon versus Austin Riley specifically as a possible lineup decision. So opening it up just more broadly, how do you make decisions like that when you have

a guy like Riley who's tearing the cover off the ball, but you have a guy like Rendon who's a clear cut early round pick with that long track record who's just been unable to really get it going at the levels we're accustomed to around a couple of early injuries? Yeah. specifically, I'm probably just fine with riding with Rendon still. You know, the barrel rate is about the same as it was last year. I think he can improve the strikeout rate just because he has such a long track record of having a good strikeout rate. I think the batting average will come. I think he'll still manage to hit 20-plus homers this year. But, and if you look at projections, like if you look at the auction calculator in a 12 team situation rendon is worth like eight more dollars uh than riley rest of

season or let's see if that holds up with the bat i'm a steamer is the default there with the bat uh we've got rendon worth 13 rest of of season and Riley worth three. Yeah. So it's about the same situation where projections are going to tell you, you just got to play Rendon every day. The one thing I will concede is that I, I do start thinking a little bit more about peripheral pieces of information that could help me make decisions.

So they do, they do have come closer to each other. So now, if it's a daily league and Riley's facing a lefty and Rendon's facing a righty, I might put Riley in. If it's a weekly league and Riley has seven games and Rendon has five, I might put Riley in. Yeah, I think sometimes you get lucky,

and some of the information like that makes the decision for you, or at least makes it easier to go against your initial instinct. Because my initial instinct is to do it with the projection, say, and stick with my stars for a long time. And generally, that's probably the right long-term play, but it's not always the right long-term play. Schedule's definitely a long time. And generally, that's probably the right long-term play, but it's not always the right long-term play. Schedule's definitely a good call. I think...

Health could be a problem here. There could be an underlying health thing that doesn't show up in the projections that is affecting Rendon. Yeah, so you've talked about this in the past, but if you look at rolling exit velocity charts, do you find that that's still a good way to unearth whether or not a player is completely healthy? I mean, I think in the case of Rendon, clearly he's back from the IL and he's playing right now, so he's ticking the box

being available, but do you look at something like that and see, oh, if he's lagging, not hitting the ball as hard as he ordinarily does, he's lagging a bit, does that give you that little nudge to say, yeah, it could still be an injury that's slowing him down, even though he's back from the IL? Yeah, I suppose. But, you know, the exit velocity situation here for Rendon tells us that since he's come back from the DL, he's hitting the ball well.

I'm just looking at... Now there's game logs on Fangraphs with average EV. And just looking at the last 15 games, he's been averaging over 91. He had 5 batted ball events on May 1st that averaged 97. Yeah, he's healthy. Doesn't it seem like he's healthy? Seems like he's pretty healthy at this point.

Yeah, and the barrel rate compared to last season, still in the 6% range. He's had years in the past, 15, 16, and 17, where he was in the 5% to 6.5% range each year, popped up to 10-plus in 2018 and 2019. That may have been just the career peak. 2019 was the rabbit ball. Look back at what he was before. He was a 270 to 300 hitter that hit 20 to 25 homers. I believe that's who he is. And if we say that about Rendon,

what do you think Riley is at this point with some of the adjustments he's made? Yeah, I just think Riley's over his head on the batting average. Right, I think he's more of like a 250 guy for now. One who walks a decent bit. Might have more power. Middle third of the order. Yeah, could unlock more power. But is it going to be that much of a difference i mean we're talking maybe a handful of homers over the course of what's left of the season at most so you're trading a few points in batting average

maybe more than a few to possibly get the extra homers your point your your position in the standings actually could be one of those peripheral concerns that changes your mind about playing him you know what i mean like if you just need the power and don't care about that batting average difference, maybe you play Riley. It's interesting, yeah. I mean, Riley last year did show improved plate skills, walked more, struck out less.

He's striking out more than he did in the shortened season, even with this breakout. He's also walking more. And he has a 420 Babbitt, dude. You just gotta, you know, I know that's old school, but nobody averages a 420 Babbitt, dude. I know that's old school, but nobody averages a 420 Babbitt for the year. No, he will not continue to do that. So in this particular case, I'd be sticking with Rendon unless we have those lumpy schedules, which we did have this week.

Especially with the first part of the week, the Braves only having two games in the first four days, only five for the week as a whole. So I would have stuck with Rendon in that spot. four days, only five for the week as a whole. I would have stuck with Rendon in that spot. If the rules were reversed, if Rendon had five and Riley had seven, that would probably be enough for me to say, yeah, I'll play Riley this week, but I'm getting Rendon back in there and planning on using him by default most of the time going forward. Thanks a lot for that question. That came from Jonathan, by the way. A similar question came in about how to make a comeback in Roto. This one came from Casey. Casey's in a 12-team 5x5 league.

He's had a mix of bad injury luck and bad performance so far out of his hitters in particular, which is a pretty common problem. I think there's a lot of people out there that can make a pretty big run still. He has got a Yelich, Kyle Lewis, Cattell Marte, Conforto, Happ combination, and he's got Miguel Sano and Dansby Swanson underperforming too. So what do you do? He's down in the most critical and correlated categories, homers, RBIs, and runs.

Do you wait for these guys to bounce back or do you chase waiver wire replacements and try and grind it out that way? I mean, it's related to the last question too, right? When do you cut bait on a guy? But if you cut bait on Miguel Sano, have we had this question sitting in the inbox for a while? Sano?

No, this one actually came in fairly recently. He went on a binge last week. Yeah, he had like a five-hour week. I think probably his batting average has sunk. Yeah, you punt average maybe as part of your strategy here. I think probably his batting average has sunk. Yeah, you punt average maybe as part of your strategy here. So if you have somebody that is mostly giving you value from batting average on your bench, or if you had an Arias type that you were keeping around

just to try to keep your average afloat, you could just easily punt him. Punt him. Don't kick players, don't punt players but you could easily drop him for a player that was more power centric and maybe even one that has a bad batting average and that might be actually available on your wire because that's a fairly common player. Yeah, I agree. If one of your other

core hitters that you didn't include in that list, you're thinking about your roster and you got Jose Ramirez or somebody who's just a good foundational piece who has delivered, who does draw a good amount of value in that batting average category, you can consider trading that player, possibly giving up one and getting two back. You can maybe skew towards those lower average mashers that people are generally pretty willing to part with. I think you might be able to find a trade partner who can consolidate a spot. They're helping themselves. They're getting more production out of each roster spot.

And you're getting more production out of each roster spot for the categories that you're actually chasing the rest of the way. So I would think about that, too. This would apply to higher end players on your roster, not just the mid-range guys. Yeah, focus on categories that seem the easiest to move. And the things like batting average and ERA are the hardest to move at this point already. You already had two months banked. That means that if you have two months banked of bad

in a category like that, ERA or batting average, that means for every 10 points you want to move you have to you have to average like 20 points better for two months you know so you're you can't just be like oh you know i want to you know i have a 3-5 era and i want to get to 3-4, so I have to pick up guys that will have a 3-4 ERA. No, you have to have a 3-3 ERA for two months to really move the needle there. I think that finding ways to punt categories and focus on some things is probably the best way forward. I also find, and I'm trying to be very cognizant of schedules

and maximizing playing time anyway but i would be extra aggressive if you're trying to make a comeback in the pitching categories you're already low in the ratios go after a lot of two-start weeks you can start going after the players that you ordinarily wouldn't necessarily even want for a two-start week the more fringy guys because if you can start making up the ground and wins and tries yeah yeah and you might get lucky with the ratios too if you've only got a couple points you can start making up the ground and wins and Ks. You're trying to make homers, yeah. Yeah, and you might get lucky with the ratios too. If you've only got a couple points you can drop, you might as well take the chance on the points you can gain going up in wins and Ks.

Yeah, good idea. So be more aggressive on that front and be more aggressive schedule-wise with your hitters as you're trying to make that comeback as well. The Ras Ball Stream Inator is fairly useful. I like it. I use it especially in weekly lineup leagues uh you use the stream in air you can just compare guys in their schedules better so it has hitters and it has it has pitchers for the next seven days and you know you'll you'll be able to kind of look at that Riley versus Arenado or Rendon situation within the confines of even projections

and say, oh, even the projections say that this week Riley is a better play or Rendon is a better play. So I highly recommend that product. Yeah, factoring in all those different things that you're looking at. I mean, teams change quickly. We've talked about that for pitching matchups. There are some teams that three weeks ago we wanted nothing to do with streamers that now we're sort of aggressively targeting with streamers

because injuries piled up, one or two key players are gone, and suddenly they go from an above-average lineup to a below-average lineup. So finding tools to help you account for that is really helpful. Definitely times you want to stream against the mets and then i could see times when you don't want to yeah once they get healthy i don't want to stream against them anymore for now i think i'm willing to take my chances with a lot more fringy options um let's talk about spencer howard for a minute he came back up over the weekend tough first assignment so if you were to first come first serve league, you would have picked him up and probably just said, I'm going to wait

until his next turn. He's going to pitch against the Marlins on the road this week for his only start. The question that came in on Howard was effectively, is he a streamer only for this spot or should we have some expectations of him making an impact even beyond

having a good match up this week yeah i i my my instinct is to say that he's a streamer because his home park is not super conducive to good pitching stats um i'm not saying that it's a super hitters park or anything but um it's not like he pitches in Florida or something. And so when he does get those good matchups, I want him in there. And there's some good news in his stuff numbers. The overall stuff is just slightly above average, but his slider is 126 stuff plus and his four-seam fastball is 105.

And you don't actually, there's a lot of fastballs in the league that are sub 100 that are out there on good pitchers. So to see that combination says that's probably what you're looking for in young pitchers. Like that's what you're, the foundation you're looking for in young pitchers. His curveball is 92 stuff plus, changeup is 59. So maybe he ends up focusing on being a two-breaking ball pitcher. But just to see the fastball slider rated so highly makes me think fairly highly of his possible outcomes. I think what I'm worried about is just how the Phillies want to manage him, too. The park is definitely a concern for me, so I was bidding on him this weekend.

But I was bidding on him more like the way I would bid on a streamer that I hope to keep around, but didn't have to keep around. It was more like two to 3% of my budget in a lot of leagues, because fortunately, a lot of places where he was available, I wasn't desperate for pitching. So it was more of a keep him on a sort of bid. If I get them, great. If I don't, not the end of the world for the reasons we're talking about. And I think with the Phillies, I do see that as one of the worst places to pitch in the league. It's probably a top

five hitters park behind Coors and Yankee Stadium. I don't know if there's an overall environment that is all around more difficult. It boosts homers. It boosts runs. I think it boosts offense as a whole. It might not be off the charts for doubles and stuff

because if it's a small park that boosts up home runs, then some of those balls in play are turned into outs. But at Miami, obviously I want to use him there. If he's in the rotation still next week, he's got at Cincinnati, and he should still be there. They're not going to put Chase Anderson back in the rotation. Are you starting Spencer Howard at Cincinnati even if he comes out and crushes against the marlins on thursday i'm i'm pretty hesitant to use him in that particular spot on the road yeah no uh no i'm not i'm not

using him there uh here i i just loaded up the stat Factors, which I've always thought that StatCast and Savant numbers were the best possible way to do Park Factors going forward. Rockies, number one. Braves playing as the second friendliest two hitters. Hmm. At Truist Park. Then you've got Cincinnati, Philadelphia. Citizens Bank is fourth, and fenway is fifth so i mean i i wouldn't want to play him in for those five i'm a little surprised by the

braves ranking to be honest but um it's possible that that braves Park is... I think the Braves Park screwed me a little bit with... Who just went there? JT Brubaker? Was he part of that losing 9-0? Losing 20-0? That was bad. That was really bad. I benched Tyler Anderson for the weekend for that reason. Anderson had a bad start there. Anderson had the Friday start.

I'm starting to think you don't want to start marginal starters in Atlanta. Shame on me for not realizing it sooner, but that's something that I will be looking at going forward. I just didn't want to do it because of the lineup. I wasn't necessarily fearful of the park, but

if you combine the two, then you get 20-0. In the first year of the park. I wasn't necessarily fearful of the park, but if you combine the two, then you get 20-0. In the first year of the park, didn't it play pretty hitter-friendly, and then it swung wildly back the other way? The park factors in Atlanta, I feel like, have been a bit of a rollercoaster since that park opened. Yeah, I've seen

Andrew Perpetua study that somehow the wind has something to do with it. But, you know, this is a three-year you rolling park factor from StatCast and it's read across the board it's boosts boost all offense by 12 percent boost home runs by nine percent doubles by 16 percent i don't know seems seems like it's pretty legit not not a park that you want to mess with even if the braves are down a good hitter or two at some point it seems like every team will be at some point this year angel stadium used to play kind of pitcher friendly and is now the eighth friendliest to bats but they also made some uh serious changes right they changed the walls yeah the right field wall came in what 10 feet at least i'm a little surprised to see the d-backs

as ninth friendliest to hitters um because with the humidor I thought that was playing mostly pitcher friendly. And a little surprised to see guaranteed rate field going slightly pitcher friendly. And so an American family field too, Milwaukee. And Yankee Stadium. The roof's been that Yankees one's weird.

I know there were some pretty cold early season games at Yankee Stadium. It's warmed up here a lot in the last 10 days or so. It feels like July already in the upper Midwest, like 85% humidity and 75 degree days already. So I think that warmer weather is going to get the ball to fly in a few of those places. And I wonder how much some of the parks that are in colder weather climates, how much those change over the course of the parks that are in colder weather climates how much those change over the course of the year you know first third versus middle third versus

last third or even first half versus second half in a lot of cases oh you know what's uh complicating things is the ones all the ones i named that i was surprised by are uh parks where home run park factor is large and hitter friendly. So in Milwaukee, that park boosts homers by 6%. In Guaranteed Rate Field, that boosts homers by 11%. And Dodger Stadium boosts homers by 14%. However, it's blue everywhere else. boost homers by 14%. However, it's blue everywhere else. I don't know what that means for why that would happen, but

I suppose sometimes homers that become homers aren't doubles, so you could see a negative correlation there, right? Yeah. And you do see that a little bit with these parks where they suppress doubles because maybe those are turning into homers but interesting to see that they that they play

pitcher friendly in terms of runs and I went back to 2020 to check to see if there was big movement and there hasn't been because these are three year rolling numbers these parks are definitely figuring out this. Park factors are not easy, man. They are not easy to figure out.

If you go back to 2019, Yankee Stadium, seventh friendliest to hitters. There's been a little bit of movement. It's not fun. I leave it to other people because they tend to be a little better at it than me. But you got to keep an eye on it because stuff does change for all sorts of reasons. I think we've talked about it before, but the construction around downtown San Diego, around the park has changed some things there. A big video board in the left field.

Every park has different things like that. Nationals Park has so many condos going up around it. It was playing really hitter friendly for high drives but with the condos going up, is it changing the other way? It ended up going from third in

2019 to sixth now in terms of hitter friendliness. Maybe. Yeah, I love the well, maybe. That's all we can do in some cases. But thank you for that. It's a great question on Spencer Howard that got us digging into the rabbit hole.

I think he's kind of a streamer type in 12s, pretty safe in 15s. So probably like a back end of the top 100 among starters, like 80 to 100 range for now, in part because of the park and in part because of how they're going to very carefully, I presume, manage his innings, even though I think that spot's pretty safely his over Chase Anderson. I had another question come in. You know, this one is about change-ups and whether or not there could be some issues with the new ball on that pitch in particular. The question comes in from Sean. He started thinking about this because of Luis Castillo, but also Devin Williams as two guys

whose change-ups are really important, but two guys who have not really delivered on our expectations for this season. So the question came in, how would one break down results off only change-ups also by style and grip? Is there an easy way to find out if more probated changes are struggling compared to past performance? I was surprised what I found when I looked. I was surprised

what I found when I looked. I had this narrative in my head that maybe the sticky stuff or just the excellence of breaking balls had made this a breaking ball league and people were throwing changeups less. And maybe, you know, sticky stuff didn't lead to better movement with changeups like it does with other pitches. Or maybe it was the ball. But I just I had thought that changes were being devalued in the game today.

But when I looked on StatCast, changeup usage is at a 10-year high. And even though changeups are doing the best they've done in terms of results, in terms of weighted on base average WOBA, changeups have never had a better

WOBA against in the pitch tracking era. And I thought, well, maybe just all WOBAs are down for all pitch types. But I checked sliders, and sliders have the third highest WOBA against in the last 10 years. And so when you put the two together, basically the WOBA difference between changeups and sliders has disappeared. Which would be a first. Then I started looking at

changeup usage more than ever before. And then I started looking at changeup movement and changeups have more drop than they ever had. So I think the ball is actually helping changeups move more. It's pretty interesting. And they're being used.

I think it's all part of the, you know, using the fastball less is using the change-up more. So I don't think there's much evidence that change-ups are struggling. Yeah, I mean, I kind of agreed with where the email came from, from Sean and your thoughts. It seems like the league's sort of trying to move away from the change-up, but if they're more effective than they've really ever been,

that's probably not going to happen. Yeah, I don't know. I do know that change-ups get fewer whiffs though. So when I look at Woba, that should be factored in. But I do use a lot of changes but they also lead the league in ground ball rate and so they they've embraced the ground ball at a time when other pitching staffs are are chasing after the the strikeout yeah that's all really interesting stuff because again it runs totally counter to what I thought we would find, even pulling some of the threads going on there. As far as Castillo goes, man, I feel like every time he pitches fantasy baseball, Twitter has a mini meltdown

because everyone wants it to be a turnaround outing, and it's like there are little flashes there, but overall we're still far away from the guy we thought we were getting back on draft day. And I got to say this again. I didn't have any reservations about Castillo, where he was going at all. And the only reason I don't have him a bunch of places is just because of random things like bidding plus one on the right player in an auction or being in the exact right seat where someone else who I liked a little more was there or someone took him right before me. I mean, I would be

wearing this Luis Castillo 10-start stretch everywhere if things would have broke a certain way. I'm very grateful for that because homers are still a problem. Walks have still been a little elevated. I don't know. Do you see any glimmers of hope in these last couple starts?

I mean, 11K is against the Giants two starts ago. That's probably where people are starting to say, that looks like the guy that we're used to. Maybe he's turning the corner. Yeah, there's a lot going on there. One of the things is I decided this year I wasn't going to do the 2A strategy. And so I got one ace and that meant that I would get somebody

ahead of Castillo. And then since I wasn't trying to double hit on the ace, I've never got Castillo because he wasn't in my top five or six and I would get one of those top five or six and then I'd peace out and start getting guys around the 20 again. And so, yeah, I also am not getting too much exposure to this.

But the other thing that's interesting is that when you look at his, people have done pieces on this and try to look at it. When you look at his changeup, it's dropping more this year. And so you would normally think that would be good and in the context of my last conversation i did say that changeups are dropping more than ever and that is probably good but for him the added drop has come with a reduced reduced uh velocity on the changeup and we don't normally think of that being super important, but his changeup stuff plus this year is 110.6. And in 2020, the changeup stuff plus was 121.7. So the changeup has gotten worse. The slider

has gotten a little bit worse. I think the velocity loss has hurt him more with the secondaries than with the with the fastballs but uh all that being said stuff plus has seen something of a turnaround the last two starts um after being under uh 100 with his stuff plus all year the last two starts were at one 10 and one 15. Okay. So yeah, there's,

there's some hope there. Yeah. Um, what I'm, so what am I seeing in the pitch mix? Uh, cause he took a pretty big tumble in your rankings that came out on Friday. Yeah, he did.

He did. Uh, because I just think that, uh, I, I actually penalized Molly and him, um, a fair amount because that park, man. I mean, I like

those pitchers, but that's a tough park. And so we haven't even seen the weather start to warm yet in terms of offense is going to peak later. And with Cincinnati playing the way it is, I think it's only going to get worse. So I do like Luis Castillo for bounce back, but I think he's more of a top 30 pitcher than I think he's a top 10 pitcher. Okay, that may make him comparable to guys like Sonny Gray or another possible buy low in Kenta Maeda, Jamison Tyone, all in that range in the back of the top 30.

So great question. Thanks for writing in, Sean, and definitely a surprise to both of us seeing how that turned out. If you've got questions for us to get to on a future episode, you can send them our way. Ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com is the best way to do that.

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