Rates & Barrels - Wonka Aside...

Episode Date: April 2, 2020

Rundown3:53 Project GOAT for Music?11:26 Spring Pitching Observations22:11 Daniel Norris, Future Dominant Reliever?31:17 Time to Discount Starting Pitching as a Whole?44:04 Which Baseball Will Be Used in 2020?48:04 Beer of the Week (Check out: SupportBeer.com)Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail: [e-mail] Get 40% off a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's episode of Rates and Barrels is brought to you by Remarkably Remote, a new daily microcast from GoToMeeting all about making work from home work for you. With indispensable intel on how to stay sane, motivated, and productive at home, we're here to help you in this brave new remote working world. Add the flash briefing on your Alexa or subscribe on your favorite podcasting app. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 83. It is April 2nd. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we're going to talk about some spring pitching notes and observations that came through. We have some reaction to a topic we talked about last week as part of an email we received about concerns as it pertains to starting pitchers building up for the upcoming season. We've got some other interesting questions as well, including one about the baseball. I think I hinted at that at the beginning of last episode.

So we're going to kind of clear out the mailbag here, mostly because if we don't clear out the mailbag now, I think those messages will be crushed by Project GOAT responses. I think it's fair to say we've been overwhelmed in a good way with the responses to that project. And another thank you to our friend, Pierre Bequet from ESPN for sharing that with all of us, because I think it was, as we've seen in the responses, a much needed distraction for a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. And I know that there's,

the fun thing is that I know that there's even more going on than that's going on in our emails. Because I know that some people took the sheet and are just doing it with their league. Yeah, and that's absolutely fine. We mentioned it at the top. So if you did that, awesome. I'm glad you got more people involved in it. Maybe once you guys tally it up or whatever, and once we tally it up, maybe get in touch with us again on that email, ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com, and just let us know how yours differed or was the same or if there was something interesting that you guys learned from it. And then we'll come up with a twist. Depending on how many we have, we may have, you know, a large log jam of a tie at the top. So we may just ask those teams to break the tie by going back in.

But there's another twist we have in our back pocket in case there is a single winner. So, you know, stick with us and we'll tally them up in case there is a single winner. So, you know, stick with us and we'll, we'll tally them up. It'll take a little bit of time, but really excited by all the responses and the names of the teams are pretty great too. So thanks for,

thanks for naming your teams along the way. Yeah, absolutely. And that's going to make tracking all those results a bit more entertaining and fun. If you haven't received an email response confirming that we received your attachment, don't fret. Don't worry. We are a little behind in replying to people.

It's safe to say I've seen, I think, over 200 submissions come in. So we probably did receive your submission. We just have to get to them. Yeah, it's going to take us some time to score it. We'll just have to get to them. Yeah, it's going to take us some time to score it. We're aiming for Tuesday for the results. I know that's what we said from the jump. I think it's also fair for us to maybe put out there that it may take until next Thursday. We'll try our best to get it done.

Once we come up with a good system, like we have some ideas. But once we actually apply our ideas, we'll see how quickly we can actually score a couple hundred entries. But again, thank you to all of you who participated. We're looking forward to seeing how it played out, and as Eno said, a couple twists are in mind. And I was thinking about a twist to do something similar in music,

actually. Like, what if we did some kind of Project Goat playlist thing on Spotify, where everyone could take their own Spotify account and try to make the best possible playlist over a particular period. It could be 20 years, it could be 30, 40 years, however many years we want.

And you'd have similar rules where you could only use each artist one time. You could only use maybe two songs per year. I think one song per year would make things a little bit rough, but you could make it however you want, right? I mean, if it's 40 years and you're just asking for, you know, like a 20 song playlist or something, then I think it's reasonable to limit it to one year. One thing about that is that people's tastes are so genre specific that, you know, like I had actually a little bit of trouble with Adam Schlesinger's death, I guess.

trouble with Adam Schlesinger's death, I guess. You know, we are in that stage now where famous people that we admire and support and, you know, we're going to, the toll this virus is taking is going to become really personal in the next couple of weeks for a lot of us. Um, and so it did actually still hit me hard, even though, um, it wasn't an artist I had, uh, really connected with yet. So just because I sort of knew that more was coming, you know? So I think these next couple of weeks are going to be really hard for people. Um, they already are, they already have been hard and I'm on day, what is it? Thursday, so I'm on day 18. We had a cake. We had a cake on Tuesday, and do you know what we sang?

Happy 16th day of quarantine to us. Oh, it's like the happy birthday tune, but just, you know, twisted up in some weird we've been stuck at home for a long time sort of way. We're all laughing while we're doing it, and better to laugh than cry. interesting to me in terms of how to get through this is that the my my um my routine is a is a lifesaver right just getting up going to work doing the work is huge you know it keeps you moving and you know you have these coping that you have in a regular week. And people think of coping strategies sometimes as a negative, but coping strategies work.

They are the things that we do to feel better, like running, eating a certain type of food, watching a movie, reading a book. These things are not negatives. These are things that make us feel better and we do them. However, there's a relationship between routine and coping that's really interesting in that if you go full coping, the power of each coping strategy is lessened. So if I just decided that every day I was going to drink two crawlers and watch a Star Wars movie, about three days in, I'd be like, oh, God, this isn't working anymore. You know what I mean?

The two crawlers might be helping to exacerbate how terrible you feel at a certain point, too. It's too much of a good thing, maybe working a little bit there with the crowlers especially. But yeah, the strategy is less effective when it becomes routine. Right. So I think you have to cleave as close as possible to your normal routine.

Even if you don't have a job, even if you've lost your job or you're furloughed in this situation, I think, and maybe it feels like there's no chance of getting a job during this. I think that there's daylight at the end of the tunnel and that just getting up and doing the job search thing, you know, getting your name out there, or even just thinking about what jobs you want

when we get going again, thinking about where you want to apply, or reading books that have to do with your field. If you're an out-of-work baseball writer, read a bunch of baseball books that you didn't have time to do before. Or even if like you know my dad's a contractor you know read read about a skill that you that you think that you're not

you're not 100 on or something like that so um you know do like do something that you would consider work because you know pushing out this mammoth uh team killer piece that i did today um you know over the last two weeks i've done like like 8 000 words on the on the player that pushing out this mammoth team killer piece that I did today. Over the last two weeks, I've done like 8,000 words on the player that most killed your team. And it was stressful and it was a lot of work, but I feel better today. You know what I mean? I feel like I earned my beer tonight. The checklist of tasks has actually become more important for me, just from a home and work productivity standpoint.

We've got a running list of things around the apartment that needed to be taken care of. Last weekend was like a spring cleaning weekend. Not to bore people with the details of my isolation life, but it helped. It felt good at the end of the weekend. We sat there, and we had a list of probably 15 or so things we wanted to do. We knew we weren't going to get them all done in two days,

but we crossed about half of them off last weekend. That was more satisfying than it was pre-isolation. We do work-type things on the weekend for catching up on bills, laundry, whatever. It's just like, oh, I didn't go do something else. But when you can't go do something else, you still need to find ways to mark those achievements. It just felt satisfying to cross things off. I've done that with work tasks, even small things too, things that should only take 30 minutes or an hour. I'm trying to write them all down, cross them off, because it gives me a sense of progress when the day-to-day progress is pretty slow right now, as many of us have really noticed.

But lots of interesting things to get to on this episode. Again, we'll probably riff on isolation, life, and different ways we're coping i was i was just randomly spitting out dialogue from willie wonka last night while i was doing the dishes and trying to get the voices right and that was that was my moment of just very randomness i mean you guys rewrote the words to happy birthday um but i was trying to do the Grandpa Joe voice and, all right, Wonka, how much for the golden goose? You know, just like, and they weren't in order. Like, there was nothing there.

And I was trying to get the words to the song that Grandpa Joe sings when he gets up and starts running around the bed when they have the golden ticket. That's where my mind was at 8 o'clock last night. We've got at least a month left of this. I'm going to be really good at the Willy Wonka voices, and I'm going to have the dialogue pretty much memorized start to finish,

I think, over the course of the next month. Are you doing some re-watching to get it right? Yeah, that's the thing. When I couldn't recall some lines, I thought, I better watch this again and just kind of get it fresh in my mind but Wonka aside let's let's talk about some things that you noticed this spring I think we talked about a few of these things when you and I were hanging out back at first pitch Florida I don't think we necessarily brought up all these players on the show at least not in in great detail and

one of the things you were looking at was pitchers who picked up a little velocity back during spring training who kind of stood out to you as especially unexpected velocity risers not that we expect some players to do it but there's some guys that end up on these leader boards and lists that we generate that kind of jump off the page because you thought you knew what they were and in this case i think you dug up a few names that definitely surprised me. Well, one name that's not on this list here that was very surprising. And I don't know.

And the reason I didn't put it on the list is I don't really have an action item off of it, but, and I feel like I've, we've played this game before. You say Kikuchi was up 2.5 and sitting 95 this spring. And I feel like he's

done that before. And in terms of my stuff and command numbers, he does not do well. A 93 stuff and a 97 command.

But one thing I know about him is that when Trevor Bauer came to town, they had like a 20-minute conversation in the outfield. I know from my sources within the Mariners organization that he is a dedicated learner. And that last year was a tough one for him um i think he lost his father and had a child um and anyone who's had a child knows that is a momentous occasion it is beautiful it is lovely it is also the craziest most tiring thing that a person can do so um i wonder and then the source also said that kikuchi just spent the off season sort of dedicating himself to to refining his delivery so

uh maybe he could come back with sort of 97 type stuff and just better command um and if he got that to like 105 or something he could be like a league average type starter deep league interesting player whereas you know in the past he's been almost nothing but there were the other names on this are definitely more exciting um you know alex wood being up two and a half is exciting to me that he's healthy in his healthy years if he sits 90 91 uh we've seen what he can do um i think he's you know the number four or five in that rotation and should go with it. But more exciting is we've talked about Jose Barrios and if he has a high ceiling to go with his high floor. And other people have said, you know, we've got a decent sample.

He doesn't have a lot of strikeout rate. And I would respond that he has a really high floor because he's combined bulk with a proven track record at a good age. So there's no real marker that says that he shouldn't necessarily get hurt. And then on top of that, he's got this extra 2.2 ticks. He was sitting 95 this spring. And then you add to it the fact that he's trying to develop a vertical curveball. And I think if he had a vertical curveball

and that slurvy curveball and that changeup, I think that that could be the source of more ceiling for him um and uh you know the team was being really hush-hush about it which mean to me suggests they're really excited um that he might have this new curveball so i what do you think of like jose bar? We talked about a little bit on the labor episode. I've been pretty aggressive in trying to draft him in most of my leagues so far. I think a lot of times he's treated like an SP two. I think in an AL only league like labor,

you can look at him as an ACE. You know, if you're going to wait on an ACE, he could fit that description. You're probably going to do something a little bit different with how you back him up. I think we kind of had that broader conversation a couple times. But I just trust that team so much.

And I think they were able to get so much more out of guys with less raw talent. That's what makes me excited about what they might do, especially with that uptick in velocity. So this would be an opportunity for me. I've got a rankings update coming up soon. I think he might creep up a little bit on my rankings. This is a good reason to push him up, I think, because he was already pretty good without that extra velocity and without that vertical curveball. So you're going to give him two new weapons. Like, that's a big deal.

Yeah, yeah. a big deal yeah yeah um so i you know i uh i i agree with you that uh you know the twins seem to do good stuff with a lot less so um and you know a high floor especially you know it doesn't work anymore but like a plan with like a jose barrios thor combination would have super high floor for both your aces um and uh and decent ceiling i wonder let me see if i can identify uh like i i was uh if i don't get that one of the top five i was piecing out and doing a kind of you know uh two number twos kind of idea and um you know so so I have Berrios 19. I don't think I'd pair him with Greinke because I feel like that's too much floor and not enough ceiling. But Berrios Woodruff, I think, would be, that's 19-20 for me.

That would get me, I'd be pretty excited about that at the top of my, you know, there's a chance that Snell falls when we start this up again. Snell Berrios would be pretty exciting to me. If it's a deeper league, Berrios-Montas is not even that far off for me in terms of, hey, I didn't quite get one of the top five guys, but I got two guys I really like. I thought I had it in terms of the right concept for a rotation build. Mixed auction for Tout Wars was a combination of Barrios at 19, Syndergaard at 17, James Paxton at 13. And, of course, with Syndergaard being hurt,

it takes one key piece away. But I think part of the reason why I wanted to get three from that group was the risk of injury. In case one got hurt like they did. Right. And it was at the time, you know, I was more concerned about Paxton still working back from his injury,

and we talked about the roller coaster that he's sort of been through and kind of had fantasy owners on for the last couple of months. But I still feel pretty good about that group because I think I built the foundation the right way, even though we had one very bad outcome already with the cinder guard surgery this uh this the time has given you basically one back and taken

one away from you in a way you know yeah by giving you more time and making paxton maybe a more viable pitcher um it you know and taking thor away so you know sad about about that. I'm trying to figure out if Kikuchi, I don't remember if anybody actually threw a late dart at him. In 15 teams with six-round reserves, I think he would have been a fringy reserve pick, but I don't think it would have been outlandish to take that chance. He actually is on a roster already, so he will not be the fab replacement,

but perhaps Daniel Norris or John Means, but one of those guys could be. Did Means not go drafted? Did Means go undrafted? Means goes drafted in every league I'm in, and you know why? Because I drafted him. Scott Engel got him in dollar days, so that's not the option. I'm going to say there's almost no chance that Daniel Norris was drafted, and that is true.

He is available. How much was Norris up in VLO this spring? Yeah, Norris was up 1.7, same as Means. Both those guys were – Norris was sitting 92.5, 93, and Means is up to 93.5, 94. So that's pretty exciting for a couple reasons. Means' fastball is not his best foot forward. And if he got to league average velocity, I think that would help.

I also know that he's working on his breaking ball to improve it. If, you know, Marco Estrada, he's basically Marco Estrada, but Marco Estrada, A, never threw 94, and B, never really found a breaking ball that worked for him. So if Means gets there, and Means, you know, was a breaking ball pitcher before, so there is a chance that it works, I think there's a chance for him to

be better than Marco Estrada. And Marco Estrada, you might have different memories of him late in his career. He wasn't so great. A lot of people thought he was an outlier and projections always hated him. But Marco Estrada, with that straight change, I think deserved a lot of the good results he got. And I think the same for John Means. Daniel Norris is a guy that just doesn't have great command. And but the thing that's interesting is that over time, his command has gotten better. And it's a little bit like the Gio Gonzalez situation, where I think that he's just gotten better at commanding his stuff. Because he's, you don't you don't

normally like throw a lot of your secondary pitches in bullpens and the more that he throws in games the more he gets a little bit better command of his excellent secondary stuff so i have daniel norris with 98 stuff 94 command uh it used to be like 87 command type stuff like he's he's he's had really uh big issues with command so i'll take a 94 command that's that's above the shelf for being a starter and if he's throwing 92 93 i would say that's probably above average stuff at this point um then you combine it with his home park um and i think you at least have a plug-play guy in deep leagues where you can play him against lesser offenses at home and in certain spots on the road. But in an AL-only type situation,

$1, $2 guy, I could see it too. There's definitely the question of if the Tigers are going to bring up some of their young prospects in the rotation at some point and how Norris would fare. They have Boyd. They have Spencer Turnbull, who I know you like a little bit too. Norris could end up being, well, I guess this is the way I should ask the question. Do you think any of Norris's secondary pitches are even in the stratosphere of someone like Drew Pomerantz?

We saw the Giants move Pomeranz to the bullpen. He had a lot of success, got traded to the Brewers, stayed dominant. Does Norris have a weapon anywhere near the grade of Pomeranz's curveball? Because the extra couple ticks that he already had, if you figure another mile or two per hour on the fastball in short relief,

does he have something else that he can use to wipe out hitters and really be effective in that role? Let's see here. I've got an enormous, really fun spreadsheet that has every player's stuff ranking by pitch. pitch and stuff is w is w all right let's see here just w let's let's listen as eno navigates his large spreadsheet oh he has a 35 stuff plus on his changeup. Okay. So let's say, uh,

he's 95 out of the pen with a plus changeup as a lefty. That's pretty interesting. Um, and you know, I, uh, I could see it, but I also see that. so you got Boyd.

And if he's healthy, he's in. I think Turnbull, healthy, he's in. And then I would say in terms of quality, I think Norris might be third on this list. Although a healthy Fulmer would be third. And then Norris would be fourth. And then the fifth starter would be Nova or Zimmerman. And to me, Zimmerman has one foot out of the league. So, you know, either they could, I could see them doing a phantom DL slot for Zimmerman at some point, if everyone was healthy.

And then Nova's the fifth starter, and then if they think that they want to try Scooball or Manning or Mize then putting Nova in the bullpen is not gonna uh raising the eyebrows or upset anybody um and he's on a one year 1.5 million dollar deal so um I think and then by that time let's say you've taken one of your prospects up and replaced nova you put zimmerman in the pen or phantom dl by that time you could have another injury um and get another one of your rookies up um so there's there's like a fairly long leash for norris i think too yeah they could also try in detroit what the Royals did with Ian Kennedy. Just put him in the bullpen at this point. Zimmerman? Yeah, Zimmerman could also go down that path where it's like,

you've got this veteran guy, you've got other young people that you want to give a lot of innings to. Maybe he can find a little extra time at the back of his career going max effort out of the pen. And maybe if you're still in full tank mode, maybe you trade Ho Jimenez. That's one of the best mispronounced names in the history of our podcast.

Sorry, Joe. It's definitely Joe. Maybe you trade Jimenez because he's going to get you more value in a trade, and you can cycle through some of your young guys. Maybe some of your young prospects don't make it as starting pitchers, and they become your closer. And then Zimmerman is your stopgap closer.

So I think there's a couple ways. I don't think Norris is the number five right now and has one foot out of the rotation now he's gonna get some chances and if he pitches well then he'll stick and if he doesn't then it hinges on just how aggressive they're going to be with that group of prospects but interesting that norris's change up grades out as well as it does because that that does give me some belief that a contending team might come calling and see him as possibly like a seventh or eighth inning guy i mean that could be in the cards especially

with these with these better spring velocity numbers you know it's harder to see when the guy's throwing 89 because the average when you go from the bullpen to starting is to get like a basically a tick um but we saw that pomerants got more than that and i think that the you know the the missing link there and i haven't seen it really researched as well as i as i wish. So, you know, let me look at Pomerantz before I look at Norris. But Pomerantz, you know, if you look at his max velocity when he was in the pen versus when he was starting, I don't think it changed as much. Well, it did a little bit his max velocity went from uh 95 96 as a starter to uh 97 but see that's that's like one tick right his his max velocity went up like one tick and his sitting velocity went up from 91 92 to Yeah, he was fun to watch in the bullpen.

He was really fun to watch down the stretch. Let's look at Daniel Norris just for the heck of it. We don't have anything better to do. And let me look at his max velocity. Well, his max velocity was 94-95 last year, which is pretty poor but if he's sitting uh 92 and a half in spring i would probably guess that his max velocity is up too and that was actually something that uh farhan zaidi mentioned about acquiring oh no i think it was um it was uh sabian was saying it about um jake peavy or or someone one of their old uh one of the guys they picked up that like when they had

they had that rotation of old starters um and they saw someone throw and they said we saw someone throw, and they said, we saw him throw like two fastballs that were 96, and so we signed him. That's all it took? Yeah. So max velocity is really important. Norris has a little bit of it there. It's certainly better than it was in 2018 when his max velocity was 92, 93. And going further back, Norris has had max velocities uh of 96 97 so if you can get back to those um he's viable as a reliever and also better as a starter but

uh sean anderson was on the list and you know you don't want to make too much of a reliever turning into a starter having a velo boost in the spring. But it is nice to know that he can sit 95 out of the pen. And, you know, if he has anything more left, I think he's actually a decent choice there for the closer. I know other people have talked about Trevor Gott. And I know he was having a terrible spring sean anderson was but um he's my pick for for closer in san francisco um because you know out of the pen i could see him uh striking more guys out um and just being good

enough to be a closer when they're bad yeah i had, I had him stashed away in a few keeper leagues, just thinking that there was a chance he'd be the guy. It's still very much up in the air at this point, but I did like him a lot more working in relief. Top performers in business and sports often attribute their success to their morning routine, whether it's waking up early, setting their goals for the day, exercise, or meditation. But not everyone has the time to do it all. With Hydrant, you can jumpstart your mornings.

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And the follow-up question came in from Dan. He wrote, I was listening to the most recent episode and your discussion about how starting pitchers might struggle to get stretched out with an abbreviated spring training. It got me thinking I have zero faith in Major League Baseball to give the player sufficient time to prepare for the season once the shutdown is over, which means that starting pitchers will be unlikely to make full-length starts for the first few weeks of the season. This will mean fewer Ks and far fewer wins for starting pitchers, right? Combining that with the shortened season means that if starting pitchers lose value for the first couple of weeks, they could be cutting into a significant portion of the regular season. So long story short, should we be discounting the value of starting pitchers as a group because of these issues? And it maybe is related to the reliever topic from Tuesday's episode.

If we're going to bring reliever values up or top-end reliever values up, maybe we are pulling starting pitcher values down a little bit. What do you think here? No, I think there's a growing trend here. I think there's a growing trend here and I'm going to try and nail it down for the, I'm going to try and nail it down for, for my column on Friday, which is we,

you know, we talked about already that the, the value of a starting pitcher, some of it comes from bulk. So the less bulk there is in a, in a full season, the, the less value they have over relievers.

I think this is an extension of that. So if some part of the starting pitchers values in bulk, and they have less bulk themselves within this context of a shorter season, I think that's going to make it even worse for starters. So, you know, we talked about the Jesus Lizardo thing where, you know, he may not make it to the fifth. Well, what if everybody is Jesus Lizardo and everybody's pitching, you know, just into the fourth for the first two or three weeks? I think that'll, you know, suppress wins even further. I think that'll suppress wins even further. I think I mentioned Trevor Richards as a person that could come in and do that. And I talked about possibly looking at six starters that lose the job as people that can come in and be that bridge that they need. So Joe Ross, I don't know, Trevor Richards is one.

Ross Stripling, even if he's not in the rotation, he will be, him and Gonsolin will probably be in the major leagues fulfilling this role. And that just shows how the Dodgers are in a good position to deal with this issue. Even with Clayton Kershaw being older and David Price and Urias being on the sort of Luzardo situation, I think Ross Stripling and Tony Gonsolin can come in and give them two or three innings in the middle and be their tandem starters, basically. Tyler Molle at the Reds. Maybe Joe Palumbo or Colby Allard with the Rangers.

Austin Pruitt. Ooh, Austin Pruitt is not going to win the fifth starter role with the Astros. He's going to be their plug-and-play tandem guy. I'm going to call that right now. And for the Mets, Steven Gonsalves, in fact, in my OTP that I'm doing with Brad Johnson, Steven Gonsalves is like 2-0 in the first five games with like a 15k9 because all he does is come in for like two and a half innings and get the win. It's fun managing those teams that way where you can kind of put in these little twists like that and use bulk relievers a bit more than some of these individual teams have to this point.

But yeah, we're going to have 29-man rosters, it sounds like, when play resumes. I thought that was maybe for the first month. That was the report that I saw. I don't know if that's been finalized or if that will be subject to change, but if you think about an expanded roster, I think you're exactly right. The bulk relievers who are already on

the roster and then the first, maybe even the first two pitchers who got sent down, they might be up and there might be a lot of tandem starting going on. Yeah. What happens with all those guys the Indians sent down? Why did they jump the gun on that? Are they going to be able to take Kerenshak back up now?

That was weird. You know, nobody else is making transactions, the Indians. It's like that tweet meme where it's like nobody, absolutely nobody, the Indians, we're going to send three people down. Yeah, that was pretty weird. It happened right after we talked about Plesak versus Savali, we took two different sides on that they both got sent down and i think it i still think there's something going on with players who had opt-outs versus guys who had options remaining where teams chose to option players down and hold some of the guys who were

in camp as nris instead and that's not necessarily a reflection of what they're going to do when the season actually starts. It does read more, less about service time manipulation because there's so many questions about service time in this year and more about keeping some veterans from having to DFA some veterans later. So I agree with you on that. Cal Quantrill, if he doesn't become the fifth starter with the Padres is interesting in this role. I think Tyler Chatwood is going to make it, but that makes Alec Mills. Alec Mills has good stuff ratings. And I didn't want to, you know, I don't think he even showed in my ranks and maybe he should have, but, um, uh, he, you know, I want to, to find it, to, to tell you it, uh, Alec Mills, um, oh, it's not stuff. He has a 91 stuff,

but he has 110 command plus. Um, so that wasn't enough for me to rank him because he also didn't have a role, but you know, command that good, uh, does give you a chance. So, um, you know command that good uh does give you a chance so um you know i think alec mills especially in this role that we're talking about could be exciting um randy dobnek oh yeah we got a question about dobnek i didn't get it directly into the outline but i think someone was asking us more or less what we think about him in the upcoming season. that does just enough against lefties to be a decent starter, not like a front-end starter. Normally, when you throw from that slot, when you're that far down,

you have massive platoon splits. That's why you end up being a roogie most of the time, a righty one out guy. But there's something interesting that I looked at when I look at the outcomes for Dobnak against lefties. His slider gets a lot of whiffs. And his pitches weren't hit by lefties. His ISO on all of his pitches from lefties, the highest was.077 on sinkers. So I don't know if that's just luck. You know, given his arm slot and the movement on his pitches,

he really should be kind of a righty reliever. But I could see him having a couple of Andrew Triggs type years. So I have some shares of Dobnak actually. And Triggs. Yeah. I put up probably some better numbers than people remember when he was healthy. And, uh, unfortunately injuries really took a toll on him. And it's actually, it's good that you mentioned the injuries because there is something about most of those deliveries oh look Rotowire News says Dobnak has been building momentum as a favorite to win the number five starter spot

that was March 20 or five years ago if he does I actually like him as an AL only guy and I had him as a bit of a target in AL labor. But there is something about the way that a lot of people throw from that arm slot that does lead to hip injuries. So they put stress on their hip labrum the way a lot of pitchers put stress on their

shoulder labrum. They kind of drive the hip into the ground and then swing around it and that grinding led to for example uh hip surgeries for sisek and darren o'day as well as some other people i did a piece on it once but um yes there is some potential for injury in that hip uh and that's but i think uh triggs triggsian with perhaps a chance to be better and again a member of an organization that is handling pitching very well in this era, too. And sometimes I think sometimes some of the brilliance in Minnesota is not necessarily making the shapes of the pitches any better, because, for example, Domnax change looks basically like a sinker and a seven mile slower. So that's not you wouldn't say that's a traditionally a good pitch for him but if you look at what odorizzi did so well part of it is throwing pass balls higher in the zone and then part of it is just a better uh strategy when it came to his breaking balls and so i think that sometimes a strategy in terms of where you put it and when you put

certain pitches i think that's a little bit of their brilliance in Minnesota. Yeah, I definitely agree with you there. It's not always just overpowering or great stuff. Thanks a lot for the question, Dan. If you're dealing with a condition like erectile dysfunction, you want treatment ASAP. That's why our friends at Roman have spent years building a digital platform that can connect you with a doctor licensed in your state, all from the comfort of home. Roman makes it convenient to get the treatment you need on your schedule. Just grab your phone or computer, complete a free online visit, and you'll hear back from a U.S. licensed physician within 24 hours.

And if the doctor decides that treatment is right for you, Roman's pharmacy can ship your medication to you with free two-day shipping. You also get free unlimited follow-ups with your doctor anytime you have questions or want to adjust your treatment plan. With Roman, there are no commitments and you can cancel anytime. So if you're struggling with ED, go to GetRoman.com slash rates for a free online visit and free two-day shipping. That's GetRoman.com slash rates for a free online visit and free two-day shipping. Let's go rapid fire here on these next couple of questions. I got one from James about head-to-head innings pitch limits per week. What is a good minimum number of innings pitched in a weekly head-to-head league?

I researched, and I'm getting numbers anywhere between 20 and 40. So, you know, kind of considering some of the things that we've talked about in the last couple of weeks of the shortened season, do you err a bit lower if you're doing a weekly head-to-head league and setting that up i mean it's just about how you feel about streaming how much streaming you want to allow uh with five starters i would assume that your starters i would be okay with having five starters on a team and so if i'm okay with having five starters on a team then i'm okay with at least having 25, uh, to 30 innings, I feel like. And, uh, because you know, some of them might be two starters and then you

have to put in the relievers. So I think 20 is, is if that's, if he's talking about, Oh, minimum. Okay. Um, so minimum is the other thing. So you want to look at, um, uh, how many innings you would get from just using relievers over a week. And I think that you would assume you would only get, uh, sort of 15 or so, uh, from like five relievers over a week on average. So 20 means that you have to like start one guy. Um, I think that's still a bit low i think i would go for 30 or 40 because you're trying to uh discourage probably an all reliever setup yeah if you think of nine pitching slots you know three innings per reliever if you went all nine spots it would be just short of 30 so i think that's probably a good number to shoot for. If you are

going smaller, you'll pare it down a little bit. But I think at least three innings per pitching slot would be a good minimum sort of requirement if you're trying to steer people away from going all relievers. You could also definitely use like the starting pitcher versus relief pitcher designations on some league providers as well. Thanks a lot for the question, James. Next question comes in. It's about the baseball. And it was interesting. I think it came from Nate. And the basic question was,

what ball will Major League Baseball be using upon resuming? And maybe we can figure it out from the baseballs they were using this spring. And Nate took some time and had some ideas for why we're not going to go back to uh the pre-2019 ball which i thought was was interesting but we're not going to rehash all those here uh what did we hear over the course of spring training about the baseball from some of the pitchers who were willing to talk about it yeah i think it was masahiro tanaka who uh has a unique perspective on things because he uh lost hisitter and blamed it on the 2019 ball.

And he said that in the spring that it was a 2018 ball. And I know there was another pitcher that agreed with him. And we know that the postseason suggested at least that there's a possibility that some 2018 balls were being mixed in that there were some long drives. I mean, we're in particular a Will Smith near home run that everybody figured was a home run until it wasn't in Dodger Stadium. So I think there's a chance that it gets de-juiced a little. The question was a little bit about and I engaged Nate on

this on email, but the question is a little bit more about would the league do this? Would this be something they want to do? Would they, would, would they rather break records with home runs given that they're coming back off of this, this time off? And I don't know.

The thing that's difficult for me here is that I don't think that the league did this on purpose the first time that they juiced the ball on purpose. I think it was kind of the result of some streamlining and some activities at Rawlings and maybe some lack of oversight and not necessarily something that was done on purpose. But I have to admit that once Pandora's box is open, once the ball has been changed, once baseball admits they changed the ball, that it now seems much more possible that they would change the ball on purpose going forward. So, I don't know. I feel like it's certainly possible that the ball is just as juiced.

I don't think that they necessarily want to go back. Yeah, I think taking more control of it, they might bring it down a little, but I don't think we're going all the way back to a completely normal baseball either. For some of the reasons Nate mentioned, fans like offense, like casual fans, especially really like offense. and fans like offense, like casual fans especially, really like offense. There was a little bit of risk in 2014 with the way pitchers were pitching, the way velocity was up, the way strikeouts rates were up. In 2014, there was a little bit of a risk that we were going to have a game that was all strikeouts and just didn't have that homer component. So then 2015 through 2019, at least balanced it out a

little bit by um rewarding balls in play rewarding fly balls at least and so um i don't think that we want to deaden the ball to 2014 and have like a 23 league-wide strikeout rate, 94 per mile an hour average fastball month starters, and no homers. I almost don't think anybody wants that. That's probably going too far back the other direction. So maybe we can find something closer to the middle ground, probably erring on the side of an offensively charged environment. It kind of just seems like where MLB is going to want to thread the needle, so to speak.

We've got a couple minutes left on this episode. Eno, you've got a really cool beer project you've been working on, so we're going to do another beer of the week installment here as we close things out. What project are you working on, and what beer is on your mind this week? I'm launching a site next week called supportbeer.com. There's a two-pronged reasoning behind this in two pronged effort here. And we've got a team of data entry people, a lot of them working in the beer industry, giving them, you know, really poorly paying, but, you know, some little bit of pay during this

terrible time. And what they're doing is entering in the information for as many brewers they can around the country and giving you a URL basically that can get you directly to supporting the people that work at the brewery. So either it's a Patreon or a GoFundMe for the bartenders at your favorite beer bar or your favorite brewery, the people that work there, the brewers that have been furloughed or laid off. There's a lot of those types of links. And then there's also, in a slightly more fun way, links to directly buying the beer from the breweries. So a lot of states have relaxed their rules when it comes to from the breweries. So a lot of states have relaxed their rules when it comes to, you know,

delivering beer in the mail and buying beer directly from breweries. And so I've taken full advantage of this in California. I bought beer in the last week from Highland Park in LA, Pure Project in San Diego. What's it called? Humble C in Santa Cruz, Santia Darius in Santa Cruz, Cellar Maker in San Francisco. If you are in California, you can order from any one of these places and get delivery direct. And so those are my collective beers of the week,

I would say. And then another fun thing is there's going to be a way for users and readers to submit links of their own. And they just have to fill out a Google form and it'll show up. And what we'll have is a filterable situation where you could click a couple filters and see what places deliver in your state. Yeah, very cool. And then you could just get just the breweries that deliver in your state and get a list of those. So I'm trying to make some fun come out of this time. And with the relaxed rules, it's an opportunity to directly support some businesses that are having a tough time right now. Yeah, looking forward to that

launching. In the meantime, I've been trying to buy local beers each week on my supply run. I'd look for something local. I try not to overbuy either just from a personal going over the top standpoint. I think I overbuy. I know that will happen with the launch of this new project, but I did pick up another beer from Central Waters. They've made on a few occasions a beer called Call Me Old Fashioned. It is an imperial red ale brewed with cherries, a touch of bitters,

then aged in brandy, bourbon, and orange curacao barrels. So it's the Wisconsin take or Wisconsin classic old-fashioned cocktail basically made into a beer. And if Central Waters makes it, I will drink it. Old Fashioned is a wisconsin drink it's very popular here yeah whoa so i asked you if it was a sour because i've had a sour from almanac called truthful statement and this is a dark sour ale inspired by classic old-fashioned we fermented a velvety imperial stout with our house sour culture, then aged it in Woodford Reserve bourbon barrels along with sweet bean cherries

and some freshly zested oranges. It's delicious. It was very good. It sounds amazing. And yeah, it's one of the things I'm missing right now is a good old-fashioned. We got a local place here in Madison. They've served, I think it's close to a million old-fashions. They've been open for about 10 or 12

years now and the restaurant is called The Old Fashioned. So to get that in a different form, in a beer form, from one of my favorite breweries, I thought that was a really good release. I was happy to pick some of that up. A real quick random thought I just had. Do you have any sours in your house?

Do I? I don't think I have any right now i gotta double check and see if there's one floating around in the cellar well i just mentioned it because you know sours are made by blending right yeah i mean there's a this i think that description included some blending in there it's not a crazy idea when you're at least have a half of your central water stout. If you have a sour litten around, pour some sour in

with your stout. Yeah, just to give it that extra little twist. Because the old-fashioned drink, you can kind of mix and match how you want it. If you want it sour, if you want it sweet, you can put different little twists on it. It's not a crazy idea. These are crazy

times. If you're nearing the end of one beer and you've got another beer that you're like, I wonder what these two taste together. Try it. Don't let people turn their nose up at you. Try it. There are people who make beer cocktails. These are things that happen.

The way you make a sour is to blend different beers together. So you're just doing some home blending. I just think it's a fun idea. I'll see if I can try it. I've got a few. I wouldn't say pour two whole beers into each other because then, boy, it doesn't work out. You've just ruined two. Yes, the last couple ounces and first couple ounces

would be the best way to test that if you're going to go down that road. If you're enjoying this show on a platform that allows you to rate and review it, please take the moment to do that. We really appreciate all of you who've done that so far. If you don't have a subscription to The Athletic, we do have a 90-day free trial. I think if you click on any link when you're not signed in

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We are back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening.