Rates & Barrels - 2020 Pitcher Rankings, Part 1

Episode Date: July 7, 2020

Rundown3:05 David Price Opts Out of 2020 Season11:29 The Difficulty of Gathering & Tracking Information22:12 A Few 'Normal' News Items31:28 Pitcher Rankings; Mike Clevinger vs. Shane Bieber40:04 Patrick Corbin vs. His Projections50:27 Buying Stability Early, Finding Overachievers Late Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail: [e-mail] Get a free 30-day trial to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 110. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. It is Tuesday, July 7th. On this episode, we are going to talk about Eno's updated pitching ranks. We will have some disagreements, I'm sure, and some friendly agreements along the way. Before we get to those ranks, we're going to talk a little bit about the absolute wild west that news gathering and reporting has become, and we expected it to be this way. But the start of summer camp at the end of last week and over the weekend for a few teams brought us a few more players who decided to opt out. We've got players who are away from their respective camps for a

variety of different reasons. We have normal baseball type injuries. We have guys who are actually making progress back from previous injuries. So it's like the usual spring training wave of news times two or three. And a lot of it is extra complicated, of course, by the pandemic. So we'll do our best to sort all of that out and steer us in the right direction. Eno, how was your 4th of July weekend? It was fantastic. It was nice and long. I drank lots of beers and figured out how to get my grill working

even though the starter is broken. Sometimes Twitter is so good for that. My grill starter is not working. A couple of people tweeted pictures of long lighters at me. I was like, oh, my grill starter is not working. And then a couple people tweeted pictures of long lighters at me and I was like, oh yeah, duh. I could have gave you that one. You get the gas on, you go to the side,

you hit the long lighter button and it starts. So there was no... There was a moment where I said, oh my god, I'm not going to be able to grill this weekend. But then once the long lighter situation was put in place, I grilled lots. Well done.

That was the case. I got to see my in-laws. We had stuff on the grill as well. I drank a unicorn. Oh my God, you drank the blood of a unicorn. I did. I drank the Central Waters maple barrel st, you drank the blood of a unicorn. I did. I drank the Central Waters Maple Barrel Stout that I talked about on the show a while back. It was amazing.

It was delicious. So I was pretty excited about that. To be honest, it's not the ideal beer for an 85, 90 degree day in which the humidity is 70%. I did drink it at night while watching Family Feud, which is the proper way to drink high ABV beers in the middle of the summer. Yes. Never a dull moment with the feud. But let's get to some of the news that broke.

We're not going to go out to every single story. I recapped some of it on the site with a piece on Monday night. And even that wasn't all-encompassing. I think the biggest story just in terms of opt-outs was David Price decided on Saturday that he was not going to participate in this 2020 season. I think Felix Hernandez also opted out that same day and Nick Markakis opted out on Monday. But with Price, this was a situation where we've talked about the Dodgers pitching depth time and time again. And even without him, since this is the guy they traded for, of course, after trading

Kenta Maeda away to the Twins way back in February, they still have a ridiculous amount of pitching depth at their disposal. And the assumption here is that Ross Stripling will now have a spot to call his own in this rotation. The weird thing about the Dodgers that I had not really noticed previously was that when spring training was first happening, Alex Wood was said to have had a spot to call his own. There wasn't a competition between Wood and Stripling. It was Kershaw, it was Buehler, it was Price, it was Urias, and it was Wood. And then it was Stripling and May and Tony Gonsolin all kind of on the outside looking in. So a little bit surprising, but then less surprising when you recall that at one point, Ross Stripling was headed to Anaheim. Yeah, yeah. But even without Ross Stripling, they'd still have pretty impressive depth. We'd be talking about Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May coming up. It relieved a little bit of the pressure on ranking the back end of that Dodgers pitching staff and allowed me to push May and Stripling. Stripling's in the top 50. May's at 55. And Urias is at 30. So they've got really impressive depth there. And this was something they can

handle, I think. Yeah, they can deal with this, especially in a shortened season. I think what I noticed about Stripling, as I was looking more closely at what he's done over the last three seasons now, when he's starting, he's pretty easily a top 40 starting pitcher with an argument to be somewhere in that 20 to 30 range. I mean, that's where he falls in terms of individual skills. The K-BB percentage jumps off the page. If you look at a three-year leaderboard of starters, Stripling is well above the league average in that area. ERA, always in the threes. Good whip as well. So if we get a confirmation that he's the guy, that probably starts to nudge him up in drafts

as those begin to pick up again. Even without that confirmation, I could see people pretty easily pushing him toward the 175-200 range overall. I mean, think about it. That's where Hyunjin Ryu was being drafted in a lot of leagues last year. Yeah, and I have Ryu at 32 in a worse worse situation but now with the dh and the national

league these situations are not that far apart you know toronto and uh la just it becomes a strength of schedule uh question almost in a stadium schedule uh so uh stripling's in a pretty good spot i think you know i did get a a question that he should be higher uh because he has such great uh command plus and um a good projected uh strikeout minus walk rate um so it's possible uh i have him too low but at the same time you know just having so much respect for dustin may May's stuff makes you kind of wonder how that's going to play out in the end, you know, and just looking at Stripling's history, it's not like the Dodgers have committed to him as a full-time starter yet.

So as much as I love him, there was still a few things, and you know, I pushed him pretty hard. He's right there with like Kenta Maeda, Lance Lynn, Matt Boyd, Lance McCullers. Like, those are pitchers I want. So, I don't know. Maybe he could be higher up. He's really cut out of the Ryu mold. In fact, he said that he saw how Ryu pitched and was like, you know, I want to pitch like that. I want to have five pitches that I can throw at any time.

He's kind of done that. Yeah, I mean, you do have Dustin May within earshot. I think it's because now he's in that sixth starter seat, kind of a coveted spot we've talked about for a lot of rotations. And I think the paths really hinge on the injury histories of the players in front of that sixth starter I think with Alex Wood you've got some pretty scary back injuries with ureus you have shoulder problems you have Walker Bueller with a Tommy John surgery on his elbow a few years back you've had Kershaw's back problems

you've had that lack of a commitment to Ross Stripling so in this case the sixth starter especially I mean this is stripping away just how good this team is at developing pitchers and even May's really intriguing talent, which stands up on its own. They have one of those, I guess you'd say, weaker depth charts just in terms of where you would grade this team's overall ability to stay healthy just based on what we've seen in recent years too. So there will be opportunities for Dustin May. And I think it comes back to one of the thoughts that's been kicked around a little bit on this show is how long can you wait for someone who's not starting? If you're in a deep enough mixed league and if that player is being used as a two or three inning reliever, I think you can use that pitcher in your active lineup.

I think May will be used that way. So I think he can be waited on in a mixed league. I think the line might be Tony Gonsolin. I think you have to kind of wait and then pick him up if multiple injuries, if multiple paths open up, then Tony Gonsolin comes onto the radar because while he would also be good enough to be in a bunch of rotations in the league you

can't sit back and wait and wait and wait and not have that possible payoff around the corner of that starting spot yeah i had in my rankings a little six sixth man uh area um it started with Jonathan Loizaga at 102 who I think is actually more likely to be a reliever in the long run but will fill this role for the Yankees which means lots of wins plus his stuff is outstanding and he has good command it's all just

injury risk so I had him first and then there was a group of those like Andrew Kittredge, Tony Gonsolin, Trevor Richards, Randy Dobnak, Patrick Sandoval, who might be actually like a starting sixth person in the rotation, Logan Allen. So I had them all after 100, which says something, I think, because even in a 15-team league, 100 is, we're talking about your last pitcher. Yeah, I think that's an important distinction to keep in mind. And one of the things I'd point out with any set of rankings, there's very little that separates players once you get to this point. A lot of it is opportunity, but having that preference, choosing carefully which

late-round flyers you want to take is really important. You look at Jonathan Loaiziga, he's kind of interesting because Masahiro Tanaka got hit by a comebacker on Saturday. Thankfully, he appears to be doing about as well as he could be after that. He does have

a mild concussion as they've described it. I don't know why people describe concussions that way, I guess, because you could be in a worse state than you are. So I think that maybe that's why that language is used. But he was riding a stationary bike on Monday. And he may actually be ready to go when the season starts in just over two weeks, which if you saw those pictures, if you saw the video of that incident as it happened on Saturday, that was definitely not the timetable that first came to mind when that accident occurred.

Two weeks, dude. Yeah, it's coming up, coming up real quick. And what was on your sheet? We got something like 65 major leaguers that have covid right now not not quite there um so so this this but this speaks to the difficulty of of tracking everything right so i made a sheet

i've kept it internal because it's really for me just to track what's happening so i can properly relay information to everybody else and i I'm tracking 2020 season availability. And the reason I labeled it that way and I'm tracking it that way is that we do have players who have tested positive for COVID. I would say looking at the list, on the list that I have,

probably at least 20, probably well over that. I say that knowing there will be more positive tests because there have been delays in testing, which have caused some teams to cancel workouts on Monday. It's been a point of frustration from some GMs and from some players. The weirdest thing about that, you know, is that I've seen and heard from other players and GMs watching various clips of interviews and following things on Twitter. In some camps, things are running smoothly.

They're running the way they're supposed to. In others, there are delays. There are testers not showing up in a couple of cases. It's been really, really strange. So the hardest thing about all this, I think, just from knowing who is where and what they're able to do, is that because teams can only share information about a positive test if the player consents to it, you have players who are away from camp,

sometimes because of the virus, but sometimes for other reasons entirely. And you can't quite tell the difference because of the language being used when managers and when GMs are being asked by reporters, hey, where is this guy? Jordan Alvarez doesn't have a confirmed positive test. He just hasn't been at camp yet. So we can't assume that anybody who's not at camp has that, but there's a lot of players who haven't been seen at team workouts. I mean, Tyler Glass now is on that list. He has not been seen at a public raise workout since their camp opened yet. It means something, but we don't know the exact cause for sure. Sometimes. Yeah. I mean, what we've seen, there's a couple of stories that come to mind. So Josh James is on this list, but you know, James clicks his non COVID personal absence. So we may be

conflating a couple of personal absences. this is something that's going to happen because we have to figure out we have to read between the lines it's terrible and so uh maybe josh james isn't isn't uh covid positive but we know that on your list right now it says cole calhoun missed workouts friday saturday the news comes out today that he protested positive right so it's like this underlying assumption but you still can't make that assumption and you don't want to a you don't want to say anything or write anything that assumes that but you do want to try and just account for it and and see if that player shows up to workouts the next day or two days later or three days later, or if the IL situation plays out, or if you get confirmation of something else entirely,

which I think Kirby Yates was an example of that. He had some personal matter he was attending to, and he's supposed to go through intake testing. He either went through it Monday or he's going to go through it today on Tuesday. We're just left to kind of wait until we get those details. So I think being a beat writer is always difficult. Like having followed beat writers since I joined Twitter for the purpose of knowing what's going on. I think it's never been more difficult to get accurate information. And on top of that, you know, we're talking about people who are going into a ballpark in a pandemic and working in some very unusual circumstances to

even do their job in the first place. Yeah. And then you add, uh, just the, the, the weird stilted access that we're getting, which is two random players on zoom every day. Um, you know, and as a national reporter, I'm finding out that I'm lucky to actually be invited to these. In some local markets, the national reporters are not invited, which, you know, just to say a shout-out to national writers, that crap ain't easy either. And there are actually some things built into the system uh to help uh local beat writers uh that

are not there for national writers but uh no one cares about my little sob story the other thing i was going to say is freddie freeman had a very interesting situation where he tested positive was held out of lineups uh held out of workouts for a day i think he then tested negative uh and then tested again and tested positive so not all the tests are exactly right and there's a cadence to the test that's a little bit off because of july 4th weekend apparently baseball wasn't ready for a thing called holiday weekend uh which is it's unheard of i've never heard of such a thing called Holiday Weekend, which is unheard of. I've never heard of such a thing, Holiday Weekend. And that caused some flight-related, sample delivery-related backups,

and that's caused Mike Rizzo to step out today and say, the season is at risk if this is how it's going to continue. So baseball really needs to find a second testing place, And they've said they're going to do that. They need to have shipping protocols in place for holiday weekends. And they need to be able to do this because some camps have even canceled their full workouts because they haven't gotten the test results from the last testing they did. So, yeah, I think one thing that, you know, take a big deep breath. One thing that has been true of the coronavirus all year and of our situation has been that things change quickly.

Sometimes things seem at the very bottom. When they're not, they can get worse or they can get better and then get worse again. So I would say that I don't think that this means that the season is not happening. I do think that it wasn't the greatest first week of testing, I do think that it wasn't the greatest first week of testing, but maybe given baseball being so focused on the financials, maybe this was something that's foreseeable. Yeah.

As frustrating as all of this is, I think it was Mark Krig, he suggested on Twitter, this is really a microcosm of what's happened in America overall since the pandemic started. And I think that's a reasonable comparison to make based on how this is playing out so far. Now the question is, how much can things improve and how quickly can they improve? Monday did feel like a day where the sky was falling again just based on the general tone of baseball in general just looking around twitter you have your good days and your bad days twitter's mostly bad days but then there are some really bad days monday was closer to a a really bad day but then you sleep on it, you show up the next day, you read some more reports, and things gradually start to improve.

But I do think we're still awaiting details from some teams because of delays. There was a point, I think it was on Sunday, where I looked at the list of players I was tracking, and there were six or seven teams that didn't have anybody even on that list because they were radio silent about what was happening in their camp. Yeah. The A's have been, the A's have been very silent, but we found out why with,

with Alex coffee story about the test delays and they did get on the field for a workout Monday. And I think initially they were, they were not going to get a team workout in Monday, but they got it in later in the evening. But they also had players as of Sunday afternoon, Jesus Lizardo and Mike Fiers. Their activation for camp was, quote, pending and also, quote, not injury related. So, you know, imperfect information, limited information, completely missing information in some cases.

Yeah. And these are huge movers. I decided not to really look at this list because there's so much not to think, but in the context of today's pitching ranks, Anthony Scafani, awaiting test results. Josh James hasn't arrived yet, but that's a non-COVID accident. Jose Urquidy hasn't arrived.

Maybe it's a visa thing. Who knows? And Lizardo, if it is a positive, it's a pretty big deal. Because that's why I said, that's how we got into this. That was the segue. Two weeks. Two weeks. So, you know, I think that any player under 30 would, even if they got COVID, might be ready to work out in two weeks.

However, if this is Jesus Lozada coming back to camp, we don't know how many innings he's ready to throw right now. And then he has to stay out of camp for the next two weeks because he has coronavirus. Even if he comes back healthy near opening day, we still don't know how many innings he has. Right. So, you know, Aaron Nola had to isolate because he was supposed to someone, and we still don't know if he got it, but that would be a big deal. And Carlos Martinez is awaiting test results. We kind of just are in this really weird waiting game and as we're in this weird waiting game that the season approaches so right and i think you kind of hinted at this just a little bit uh with you know lizardo but this applies

really to every single pitcher and it came up up when Derek Shelton from the Pirates was talking about their guys being pretty stretched out before camp started. Everybody is in a kind of an individual situation. And until you have the player in camp and until you get some confirmations of what they're able to do in an inter-squad game or in their bullpen sessions,

you kind of have to put the initial workload and timetable for when they're actually going to begin their season, regardless of opening day's actual date. You kind of have to put that into a question mark situation and just wait and say, okay, now I know. Now I've got confirmation. I've seen that Garrett Cole threw six innings in an intra-squad game over the weekend or something, which that hasn't happened yet. But the Yankees had an intra-squad game on Monday. And, you know, I'm looking for normal news nuggets like that, where Aaron Judge and John Carlos Stanton are healthy and participating in games like everybody else. Aaron Hicks was out there, too. Like, Aaron Hicks was coming back from Tommy John surgery.

He was going to miss half the season back when we were going through the first part of draft season. Now he could be ready, potentially, when this season gets underway. All that to say, it's crazy out there. I'm glad you mentioned the ranks and how, at this point, you didn't take these situations and adjust for them i think you're right

to be careful with this because a day can change and a player could be totally fine if you find out on wednesday that jesus lazardo showed up to camp and threw six innings that that would have completely changed your perception of where he's at on a dime and then and then on top of that um it's not clear to me like remember they came out and said oh 31 players tested positive right and so everyone said oh that's that's a great number you know um oh you know then we were flying high then all the stuff got to come in here we're like well it's actually closer to 70 it looks like well which one is it and i think that one of the problems is some of these are were like earlier you know like right there's a phillies uh there's a phillies contingent on this list but we've kind of known about the phillies one for like five days or something right and that in and of itself was a unique situation because i don't think that was

supposed to appear on the transactions log where people found it. The league, MLB.com, just has a transactions log and there was some question as to whether or not these were supposed to be there. The Blue Jays had that too and those groups, those are not necessarily

all players with a positive test. Those are also people that could have been exposed. I'm kind of shrugging all players with a positive test. Those are also people that could have been exposed. So, I'm just, I'm kind of like shrugging my shoulders, and this isn't a TV show or a video stream or anything, so people don't

see how animated I am. It's great radio. It's outstanding radio. It's the absolute best. But, if you're trying to say, how much should I move this guy up? How much should I move this guy down? I don't know if I can give you a good answer. I can try and explain what I've been able to learn so far about that situation. And I think individually, we're going to have to just

decide what are we comfortable with? What are we not comfortable with in terms of actionable things at a granular sort of level? I mean, one thing that really surprised me, I'm happy for him if this is the choice he really wants to make and he feels good about it. I'm surprised Carlos Carrasco is pitching at all this season, and he's already built up to a six-inning workload. So, I mean, that's crazy, right? Like, I wanted to be healthy. I wanted to play this season. I think Carlos Carrasco is amazing.

I just would have thought as players were choosing not to play this year, he would have been one of those guys I would not have been surprised one bit to get that news from him. Yeah. And while I'm kind of sure that a positive test right now for a starting pitcher is negative news because the next two weeks could be used to ramp up. I don't think it's as negative for someone like Hector Neris just to kind of try and read the tea leaves and try to do something actionable here

because relievers just come out and throw as hard as they can for an inning, right? I don't know how much he'll be affected in that way. But, you know, Adam Haisley, Scott Kingery, Miguel Sano, Luis Urias is just, he seems to be snakebit. You know, those guys, batters tell me they need two weeks to get their timing. batters tell me they need two weeks to get their timing. So if they're out for the full two weeks, then I would say it's a definite negative for them this year.

I think what we're looking at is a situation that somewhat resembles a normal spring training in that a reliever needs less time to ramp back up than a starter that's just the way the workloads of those pitchers are and i think the one thing we've always probably underestimated in the past is how much a hitter's timing gets thrown off by a absence like that you know that's why hitters go on rehab assignments for a game sometimes, just to get that back before they come back up to the big leagues. We've looked at these types of situations before.

Our prompts for looking at them have changed in one of the worst ways. That's what this is. It finally struck me over the weekend. We always look at depth charts. We're always looking at who the next person's going to be. We're always trying to figure out playing time

in the event of X, Y, or Z. Well, now there's another variable, but it's the same kind of process that we're going through, just being prepared for absences, knowing that there will probably be more absences than usual in this 2020 season. Yeah, there's going to be some weird lineups.

I mean, just look at the Phillies. If they really have to start opening day without Kingery and Haseley, who's playing center? Right. Some teams don't have major league-ready hitters to play certain positions. They might have a good defender who was at AA last year who would come up and just be that guy. And a catcher is where it first comes to mind. But even center field could be a little bit like that.

But Roman Quinn, I guess, would be the center fielder. Quinn would play. That would be pretty. That would make him a fantastic first-week pickup for steals, I guess. And then Baum, I guess, would just play. Would just, hey, kid, get out there. You're playing third. Yeah, he's

I think Segura would just move over to second. Baum would get a shot to play some third base. I'm curious to see how much they would play like Neil Walker. I think this is going to be one of the tricky things, too, with the teams that have prospects in the pool, on the cusp of being on the opening day 30-man roster,

will they go with the veteran who's done it before in that spot, or will they actually push their chips in with the young player? That's among the things we're hoping to learn in the two weeks before opening day. It's nice to say two weeks before opening day, by the way. Yeah, let's put a different spin on that. Not two weeks. Let's go with two weeks. Nice.

Only two weeks before we get to watch baseball again. They get three spring training games. One thing that is annoying, too, is I have seen some reports about what a player did in the intra squad games and

it's not helpful i mean okay strikeouts and walks i think i was a little surprised kluber went like six innings or something and only had one strikeout against one walk but am i gonna freak out about that i don't think so especially since the only piece of information i want is where did he sit on the radar gun yeah i i think there's a chance that when it's good teams might leak that right but there's a chance when it's bad that won't come out yeah. Yeah, and that's been my frustration with this in general is just I feel like the doors have been shut on access

and PR is running the show in a weird way. So the one thing is they are all playing in stadiums that have Hawkeye. Those velocities are being recorded. They're going somewhere. They should go on Savant. It would be great if they were, but... I don't think so. Yeah, that's not going to happen.

Those are not going to be publicly available unless something very very surprising happens in the near future summer is here and our sponsor today manscaped is here to make sure you're well groomed above and below the belt manscaped promotes clean hygiene when it comes to shaving with their lawnmower 3.0 personal trimmer manscaped is the only men's brand dedicated to below the waist grooming. And the Lawn Mower 3.0 is a waterproof cordless body trimmer that makes it safe and easy. Subscribe to the perfect package and get a new replacement blade refill for your trimmer delivered to your door every three months, making sure your trimmer always stays fresh and clean.

Get 20% off and free shipping with the code the athletic at manscaped.com that's 20 off with free shipping at manscaped.com and use code the athletic and for a limited time get not one but two free gifts a travel bag a 39 value and the patented high performance manscaped boxer briefs go to manscaped.com today and use the code THEATHLETIC. But let's talk about your ranks. Those went up on the site on Tuesday. No big surprises at the top. I'm going to give away the top five

because why not? So you've got the Col de Grom, Verlander, Scherzer, Buehler, Quintet at the top of your list. I think those five in some order, usually the five guys that you see there. The one difference, the one change was I did put Cole over to Grom. I had to Grom first, but the DH thing kind of switched it up. I feel like if they're both throwing the same kind of lineups,

the difference is kind of stadium on one side for Cole and a little bit of age and not quite as good stuff on the side of DeGrom. Yeah, I think that's fair. I think the thing I've got right now on mine, my stuff comes out, overall list comes out on Thursday. I've got Verlander at five, Bueller four, Scherzer three, splitting hairs. I think it's pretty easy to justify Verlander a

little earlier, of course. The guy that I think moved up the most in the top part of my list, and I imagine compared to where he was the last time he did this exercise, he's crept back up because of health, is Mike Clevenger. 27 spots. Yeah, that's a huge, huge jump. I've gone to the point where I'm Clevenger over Bieber now. You're Bieber just over Clevenger. They're at six and seven, respectively. And I think it comes down to a couple of things.

I'm convinced by some of the things that I saw in Alex Chamberlain's PitchCon presentation about the hard contact that Bieber allows. And I just believe more in the Clevenger strikeout rate too. I don't think there's much that separates these two guys

in terms of ratios, but I think I trust Clevenger to get me more Ks over Bieber, all of the things being equal. Yeah, we have a really good email that I want to spend more time on. But one of the things I pointed out about Bieber and Chamberlain's piece and just the ability of a pitcher to control exit, control exit velocity. Um, and basically he pointed out that Bieber lives in the zone a lot, and we know that the zone is where hard contact is. And that caused

Daniel Murphy to get in touch with me and say, Bieber needs to throw more knockdown pitches. So I wrote a piece about Bieber, you know, at least needing to get out of the heart of the zone um and uh maybe what what's the efficacy of knockdown pitches so i would say that the efficacy of knockdown pitches is dubious at best because you hit the batter a lot but uh there was some evidence that um even if you hit the batter, that things would go better for you in the next couple plate appearances against that batter. So if people are getting too comfortable against you, throwing up an in can be a way to remind them not to do that,

not to sort of dive over the plate. However, my point is, Bieber had a home run problem in the first half. He was two in the middle of the zone. In the second half, he threw more pitches outside of the heart of the zone and had a sort of legendary second half. So I don't think that pitchers control exit velocity. I think that they control launch angle to some extent. And this is something that jives even with dips. Dips theory is defense-independent pitching.

Voris McCracken came up with that. But with dips, we thought pitcher can't control a ball in play. However, one big retort I've always had to dips is, why are there ground ball pitchers and fly ball pitchers then, right? So obviously they can control something, and that has to do with location in the zone. If you throw low, you get more grounders. If you throw high, you get more fly balls. But in any case, the pitcher has control over where he puts the ball to some extent. And so he does have some control over where he puts the ball to some extent and so um he does have some

control over launch angle he just does not have much control over the exit velocity however we know from launch angle analysis that there are good and bad launch angles right um we know that 45 is great you know that's a pop-up we know that minus 10 is great that's, that's a pop-up. We know that minus 10 is great. That's a million hopper. So, and given that Bieber has much better command than Clevenger, Clevenger has better stuff, but given that Bieber has much better command than Clevenger, I think that any of his issues with exit velocity to date are surmountable, given that he can move the ball around and has shown the ability to adjust on this level already in the past season. So that's my

piece. But the email was really interesting because he kind of broke it down into inside the zone and outside the zone as two different places to evaluate a pitcher. And that could be fair, I think. Because inside the zone, you have a set of things you want and a whiff is number one. Or a called strike. A non-swing inside the zone or a whiff, that's great. But a non-swing outside of the zone, just that sort of was an aha moment for me.

It's like, oh yeah, a non-swing outside of the zone is a ball and it's bad. So inside the zone, you have obviously a different set of priorities. And outside the zone, you have a different set of priorities. Right. So if you were just doing a brief hierarchy of the outcomes, the individual outcomes of each pitch that you want as a pitcher, in the zone, what's the ideal pitch? In the zone, non-swinging strike? Yes.

Because the hitter didn't even try to do anything with it, and you located it so well, you still got the strike. Yes. I kind of prefer a swinging strike inside the zone, though, because I think it has implications for the batter's willingness to swing. You know, pitchers get into real trouble when the batter stops swinging. Right? Adam Modavino, his worst year, he said, they went to the plate and

said, I'm going to make this guy throw me a strike first, right? So a swing inside the zone suggests that the pitcher is doing something that is good in terms of getting them to swing. But yes, there's a huge difference between a non-swing inside the zone and a non-swing outside the zone. And so therefore, that dichotomy by itself I think is meaningful. It's

kind of like, well, what are you trying to do? It's where intent comes back into. Are you throwing this pitch hoping to get a swing and miss in the zone? Are you hoping to get a swing and miss in the zone are you hoping to get a swing and miss outside the zone are you hoping to freeze the hitter completely and just catch them off guard with something that maybe couldn't get a swing and miss but the element of surprise is the intent of the pitch you know like there's a different

combination of things you can do it depends on what you have to work with it depends on a lot of different factors i guess 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, 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 US 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

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I think I had him previously in my top 20, and I've finally just started to lower him. He gets Ks. He's on a good team. I think what I'm more asking myself now is, why don't projections like Patrick Corbin? What about him gives him a projection with the ratios that's worse than the other pitchers who go in this range? I don't actually know that because I would have always

figured that it would be my fancy schmancy numbers that don't like him and that projections would love him. Just looking at his numbers for the last three years, even the one where he had a 403 ERA in 2017, in terms of projections, the strikeout rate was good, the walk rate was good, the home run rate was manageable, and you could actually regress that year. The BABBA was 326, so you could actually say he was a little unlucky on balls in play. And looking at those three years and projections normally

mostly come from the last three years, I would project something in the low threes, you know, because three years ago is the thing that's weighted the least. So you'd be waiting 325, 315, and then 403 the least. So I'm a little surprised at that. three the least um so i'm a little surprised at that one thing i do know is that velocity is now uh fastball velocity is now in most uh projection systems um and so he sits at 91.9 and that's a good tick plus under league average uh so they might be adding that in. Plus he hit 30, so maybe there's an aging component that's dragging him down. But for me, on my side,

he has the worst stuff number in the top 30. And the only person who's worse than him, the only two people who are worse than him in the top 50 are kyle hendricks and matthew boyd okay well maybe that's an indicator of the direction like boyd it could be the direction he's heading in which is a little bit weird because there's still some things you could look at with matthew boyd and say he's potentially getting better yeah i mean there's the change up uh that he was throwing that looked good that he always has a change-up but he'd gotten away from it when he fell in love with the slider uh also I will say something about this group Matthew Boyd Kyle Hendricks and Patrick Corbin all have excellent slider command and uh

the missing component uh for Patrick Corbin when I looked into his slider and said, why is the slider so good? His stuff numbers aren't great. By the ways that we normally look at sliders, it doesn't look great. And the biggest thing that was missing was command. Corbin is excellent at putting that slider where he needs to put it. excellent at putting that slider where he needs to put it. So, um, I think that's the, I think that's sort of the missing ingredient that if a person's stuff number was low, um, you know, other, other low stuff numbers in my top 50 include Zach Greinke, uh, Hunjin Ryu, um, uh, Eduardo Rodriguez, uh, Kenta Maeda, All these guys have excellent command plus numbers generally,

but a lot of those are buoyed by a hard breaking ball command. So that's where the league is going. That's what the league has demanded of its pitchers is a command of a secondary pitch on the level of getting strikes with it. So I think that's the missing ingredient for Corbin. The other thing I'm starting to think about with Corbin is Rich Hill and what he's been able to accomplish in his late 30s

as a two-pitch lefty who doesn't have velocity at all right i mean it's the same kind of thing like average 90.3 last year it's a curveball instead of a slider but i think it's the same concept we're talking about two pitches a low velocity fastball but he commands it he commands the the breaking ball he doesn't command the fastball sometimes it's painful to watch him command the fastball and he's's out there cursing. That's the fun part, though, is how mad he gets about it. He's such a normal human being in that moment. He has this extraordinary talent.

He has this amazing curveball. And yet, when he can't locate the fastball, he's just like me working on a project on the patio that's not going well. I saw some spring start where he was cursing, and there was only like 300 people in the stands, and it was just reverberating. It's like F-bombs, just like, you know. I guess the reason I bring up Hill, though, is it's like people were betting against Hill for a while, in part because of the unusual shape of his career, the comeback and everything.

I would feel like a real donkey if five years pass, if we're doing this show in 2025, and I'm, well, you know, I've aged a lot in five years. I've been fading Patrickrick corbin for five years but it's time for me to go ahead and start investing and that's the year he's a top 30 pitcher right and then if that it finally all falls apart but i i just think you know it goes back to an idea that we're not going to capture everything yes even as projections get better they're still going to be these blind spots that are there. No matter how good, no matter how accurate they are, that in and of itself shouldn't be my reason.

I should keep digging in deeper and keep deciding, okay, is this slider and that slider command, is that good enough for me to trust him to keep beating his own projections and to keep beating those expectations? And maybe it is and maybe it isn't. I don't have to buy in. I could let other people pay a premium price.

I mean, look, we're talking about a guy who goes in the top 50 of drafts most of the time. Like, you should be pretty sure about a guy you're going to draft in the top 50. If you're not, let somebody else draft that player. I don't think I have a single share. So I agree with you, but I also, like, what will end up happening is i'm not going to draft you know patrick corbin's stuff number is so bad

that i should really put him you know if i'm just like a stuffist like i say then i should put him like 35 next to kyle hendricks and matthew boyd and put him in the 40s and be like, this is where his stuff says. I should just rank it by stuff and be like, this guy's stuff is bad. I'm not going to put him in the top 50 or whatever it is, you know. But I also have respect for projections, but projections miss. So what ends up happening is I end up putting Corbin one or two lower than consensus, you know, not 5, 10, 15, 20 lower than consensus, and I end up not getting any shares.

That's how quickly it goes. You just move a guy one or two off of consensus and you either get a ton of... I have Jose Barrios at 21. And the projection for him suggests he should be more around

28. That is kind of an enormous amount of movement against the projections and that is why I have like four Jose Barrios shares. Yeah, so you could argue up and say he compares favorably to someone like Grinke, or you could probably argue down and compare him to someone like Lance Lynn. And there's a 60-pick gap between those guys. Who's the hitter, Corbin or? Barrios.

I think you could argue Barrios as high as Grinke, and you could probably bring him down as low as Lynn, who might be a little too low himself, potentially. Yeah, and someone pointed out, well, Stripling and Granke have the same Command+, like, shouldn't Stripling be closer to Granke? And I'm like, well, Granke has established results, you know, and the projections love him. So with those two, like, I'm comfortable putting him where he is,

but I did move him down a couple spots. So I don't know. We're all trying to figure this out. But I do like what you're saying generally, which is we're not going to have it all figured out. And I don't have... In my master list here, I've got stuff, command, steamer, strikeout minus walks, uh,

ATC projections, uh, and then old rank. And so I'm just trying to kind of not move anyone too far unless I have a real good reason, uh, look at what the projections are, but don't be totally married to it.

Especially once you leave the first, uh, sort of 30 behind. Now you're talking about well I like this guy that was projected for $4 better than this guy projected for $7 fine that's fine do that but could I

have a thing in here for a slider command especially maybe someday I'll have a deception number you know well that would help Joey Lucchese yeah maybe because he needs some help he's pretty buried in your ranks you know? Well, that would help Joey Lucchese. Yeah, maybe because he needs some help. He's,

he's pretty buried in your ranks. I'm not a Joey Lucchese guy. I just, he was one of those names. I said, Whoa, he's, he's low on this list.

I've told people this before, but, uh, he has, uh, this is amazing. Listen to this. He has a 66 stuff number and an 88 command number. I don't have another person with a stuff under 70.

But, okay, so then the deception score has to be off the charts. He has to have like a 125 deception score. Because he couldn't exist without that. We can kind of assume that he's at or near the top of that list for deception, and that's how it all works as well as it does given X, Y, and Z. Thinking about what we're saying here, as you move further down the list, you are worried a lot less about projections. Early, you're buying projections. You're buying a confidence level in those projections. But as soon as you move into the middle rounds, you're just trying to find guys who break projections,

like who just completely over-performed them. And that's where I relied on stuff. I started to depart from projections actually as early as 30, I'd say. Trevor Bauer, Frankie Montas, Julio Rios, Corey Kluber, and Sonny Gray. Sonny Gray starts that list. Giolito, Gray, Bauer, Montas, Urias, Kluber. They have projections varying from $13 for Giolito to $8 for Urias. And I put them all next to each other because they all have basically one tent or better stuff.

And they stood out. And then I slide in Ryu, Hendrix, and Rodriguez who are command guys. And then I'm back on my stuff. Wheeler, Urquidy, Gallen, Otani, McCullers, all excellent stuff. So, and then if you want to look like way later for my sleepers, you know, I have another group of stuff sleepers. Canning, Cease, Turnbull, Means, Hauser, and Keller.

And Nate Pearson all have excellent, I don't have a stuff number for Pearson, but those all have excellent stuff numbers. So, that's a little window into... I'm willing to give someone below average stuff and good command if they've got demonstrated results. If you're going to come into the league with below average stuff and above average command, I'm going to need a year to see what you're going to do with that. Because I don't think that could turn out any way from like, that could be a spot starter to, if you're very lucky, Ryu. Yeah, I think that's what you're hoping for,

is that you're unearthing the Ryus and the Glasnaus and the guys that are very talented that have everything come together. That's the goal. I think what's frustrating is that while we have, I think we're doing a better job as a community finding indicators that lead us to breakouts. That's my hypothesis that we're better at it now than we used to be. I have not proven it with an extensive research project, but I think we're a little bit better at this now than the collective we used to

be five years ago and 10 years ago. What I don't think we're good at is finding the players up top who are going to come down for reasons that are actually a little more predictable, right? Injuries happen. That's part of the game. I don't think we've done a good job or as good of a job, maybe because we don't want to. It's not as fun to find out who's going to decline and why. It's more fun to find breakouts. It's a positive trend. You want the positive trend. I just don't know if I feel like I've seen analysis that consistently helps us find with good reason players who are highly ranked who will not perform at the level that is expected yeah yeah and they're difficult to spot one thing i did for my stuff in command numbers was just highlight um uh the bad um with conditional

formatting in my excel so that between 90, between 90 and a hundred it's light pink and then under 90 it's, it's bright red. Um, and so just looking at like my, uh, top, let's say top 15 down to glass. Now, uh, the only pink on there is Clevenger's command number, Flaherty stuff number and and Glasnow's command number. And I think we're all sort of aware of Glasnow's command problem. I don't think that anybody would put a really great command on Clevenger, but maybe people will be surprised to see that Flaherty actually has more in common with Patrick Corbin than he does anybody else in this top 20. Oh, a good, a player I could be wrong about for the next 10. Great. Makes me really happy. But, and, and what do Flaherty and Corbin have in common?

Because it's not really slot or size or even handedness. It's slider command. Yeah. That's really interesting, though, because in a traditional scouting sense, there's no world in which anyone would comp Patrick Corbin to Jack Flaherty or Jack Flaherty to Patrick Corbin. It just wouldn't happen. Yeah.

I mean, even if you't happen. You might be surprised that he has the 95 stuff number given his fastball velocity, which seems pretty decent. But he just hasn't really put together that third pitch. We're all waiting for that curve to

solidify or the splitter. That sounds a lot like Patrick Cor corbin to me right he's flarity still trying though that's right i'm a two-pitch guy like so i think that's what maybe drives us to flty and says okay like he's already doing this and this being being Corbin alone is good but he might be a right-handed Corbin who also develops that third pitch and if that happens

that's the difference between being 10 to 20 year over year and being in that top 10 yes and so but I did want to point out that that's the pink that I'm looking at because if I was forced into a corner, that would be someone I'd pick against. I use a similar shading system, the conditional formatting. It's not secret. It's not a big deal.

I use that on my sheets as well. Oh, no. Come on. I thought I was the first person. You discovered it. I don't have the stuff numbers and the command person. You discovered it. I don't have the stuff numbers and the command numbers in mind, though. What I'm leaning on is just differences in strikeout rate, basic skills, strikeout rate, walk rate, home run rate, ratios. I have the projections. I have backwards-looking stuff.

It is interesting to see where those little specks of pink. You don't see red at the top of the list, but you definitely see pink for some players. I mean, you see it in even Scherzer and Verlander's home run rates. You see it in Luis Castillo's walk rate. You see it in Blake Snell's walk rate. You see it in Hugh Darvish's projected walk rate. You see it

in Grinke's home run rate. You see kind of like white strikeout rates for some of those guys like Grinke and burrios right so i do think it's a good way to visualize some things that when you're looking at players who on the whole are all very good and have generally great skills across the board just having that occasional flag like no hey look this this isn't as good as the other players it can help you make a decision between two players where you really don't have a strong

pole one way or the other. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and it just, I think it, it helps you kind of, uh, see your own biases and sort of see your, uh, analysis in effect, right. In a visual way. analysis in effect, right? In a visual way. Cause I can see that stuff that I can see how I'm a stuffist based on how much more white there is on the stuff as I go down. You know what I mean? Yeah. Uh, yeah. And you can, and you can start to see sort of minimum thresholds where you're like,

Oh, you know, nobody with a command plus less than 90 is in my top 45. Nobody with a command plus less than 90 is in my top 45. Well, and I think the quick case I would make for continuing to keep some basic stats and even a little bit of backwards looking stuff in there too is that'll help you find some outliers. Some guys where the stuff doesn't match up. And then you can drill in a little more and say, how is this happening why is this happening do i still trust this to keep happening you know i think that's really important too i think if you get too locked in to any one of these things you can miss something that should have been brought to your attention you know

because you look only at one column or two columns when you could have been looking at eight or 10. Well, I, that's why I'd leave steamer strikeouts minus walks in there. And, um, you know, that's more of an in-season thing than a season to season thing. When you start looking at season to season, you can start to say a little bit more about a player's pitchers home run rate, for example. And that's kind of the missing thing. If you're awesome at strikeouts minus walks and awesome at home run suppression, I can't imagine what kind of pitcher would not be awesome given those two things. Do you know what I mean?

So I left strikeouts minus walks in there, and I think in this season, if there's something that we cannot account for and that'll be difficult in a 60-game season and that stands out, is that home run suppression will be the wild, wild west because we won't even get a full season sample. So there will be some pitchers that have great strikeouts minus walks and in the past have had trouble with home runs that would just not have home runs problems for 60 games. Yeah, I think that's a really good point.

I mean, overall this year, the shorter season is going to be very difficult for us to evaluate looking ahead to 2021 for a whole bunch of different reasons. Like Matthew Boyd could be the same pitcher he was last year and just have half the home run rate. Yeah. Just for no good reason.

But it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't mean that he changed anything skills wise that will help him in the future. 60 innings, you know, or 60 games. Yeah.

But anyway. So this episode will easily be a two-parter. If you have some questions for us that you'd like us to answer about Eno's ranks, we'll keep an eye on the comment section for the piece. You can also email us, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com, spell out the word and. If you go that route, you can find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris. You can find me at Derek Van Ryper. If you want to check out the list and you don't have a subscription to The Athletic, you can actually get a 30-day free trial at

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this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Thursday. Thanks for listening.