Rates & Barrels - 2020 Pitcher Rankings, Part 2

Episode Date: July 10, 2020

Rundown2:49 K-BB Skills Without a Strong Home-Run Rate7:28 Revisiting 2019 For Craig Kimbrel & Edwin Diaz13:36 All-In On Kenta Maeda?17:53 Alex Wood's Surprisingly Low Projected Strikeout Rate21:41 Grouping the Prospect Pitchers26:45 Limited Downgrades For Absences (For Now)38:58 Players Buying In For Each Other?43:04 Problem Pitcher: Carlos Martinez48:01 Garrett Richards: Mid-Round Bargain?53:03 Pushing Up Pearson, Howard & Kopech 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 111. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. It is Thursday, July 9th. On this episode, we continue some of the conversation from our Tuesday episode, pitching rankings were the focus then. We're going to get a little deeper into our list. My rankings went up on the site. Enos were already up on the site as of Tuesday. I've got hitter rankings thrown out there as well, so feel free to peruse those. Leave comments.

Be kind even if you have critiques. I'm happy to acknowledge that it's very difficult to rank players this season, in part because of the length of the season, but obviously because of all the uncertainty we talked about on our episode on Tuesday,

which just gets worse by the day. It's not like we're getting increased amounts of clarity as we move forward. So let's kick things off and just do a little check-in. How's everything going for you this week? All right, all right, all right. I'm going to take some time off next week. I forgot to talk to you about that.

But I'm going to go to Half Moon Bay. We've got a house. The fam's here. The thing that is not restful about the family coming here is that my wife's sister has two really big dogs

and the cats are terrified. And the way that that manifests in a problem manner for myself is that they don't want to come to the house during the day to eat like they normally do and so they come at all hours of the night and so the last last night the last thing i heard before i went to bed was or before i fell asleep was a cat meowing and the first thing i heard when i

woke up was a cat meowing and the night before one of my cats kept me up till midnight and then started meowing again at 4.30. So, I'm a little tired and I would like these dogs out of here. But the carrot at the end of the stick for me is some time at the beach house

next week. So, I'm excited for that. Well, that sounds pretty good. And between now and then, I will formulate a plan for what will happen with this show while it's gone. We can have a Tuesday episode. We may just push Thursday to Friday.

That's easy. Advance heads up on that then. I could do this offline. Or just make great radio. That's terrific. So you came across something. You're working on a piece and we I could do this offline, you know, or just make great radio. Just awesome. Terrific. So you came across something. You're working on a piece. And we talked a lot about the variance of a short season as we've picked up more details about how things are going to work this year.

And thinking about pitchers in particular, you're finding that home run rate is something that, you know, a pitcher can get really lucky with over a short season. And they can get very unlucky with it as well. So as you've come into that, what has that kind of led you to? Are there a group of pitchers that you are now more interested in as a result of kind of thinking through how that's likely to play out? Yeah, I'm not sure that I want to use this information to change my rankings because it's like you said it could go either way um i don't want to load up with home run problem pitchers and then just assume that they're all going to get lucky in the good way

uh there will be some some like decent major league pitchers that we all draft this year that will have a two and a half home runs per nine at the end of the season. I'm guessing. But the way that this came into my brain was from Rob Mainz's brain at Baseball Perspectives. He wrote a piece about the precedent for a 60-game season. And what he did was he took 1981, which had two halves, and each half was about 60 games. And he split them in the halves and just looked at the halves and looked at what we could learn from them. And the biggest surprises on the pitching side were, and I love these names.

Somehow it seems like we don't have names like this anymore. Bert Hooten, Bob Knepper, and Larry Gura. Those three, I just want to look at those three, and when I was looking at them, I realized they didn't strike out any more batters than they normally struck out. In fact, they struck out fewer than they struck out in their career in 1981. And in terms of walks, they walked a little bit fewer than they normally did, but it wasn't a huge reduction. If you look at homers as a group, they gave up in 1981,

they gave up a third of a homer per nine. And for their careers, they gave up over three quarters of a homer per nine. So they basically halved their homer rate plus more than half their homer rate. And that makes sense if you look at stabilization statistics that we've talked about, where strikeouts and walks, strikeouts are the first thing you want to look at. Swinging strikes, strikeouts, those are the first things that stabilize. And the last thing that stabilizes, it takes two and a half seasons before you can believe a pitcher's home run rate. And so home run rate and BABF, of course, are the last things that will stabilize. So if we have a 60-game season, you know, basically we have no hope when it comes to understanding a pitcher's true talent, BABIP or home run rate. So that all comes together.

So that all comes together. I'm working on a piece with Jason Stark, and I sort of indexed everybody's strikeouts and walks and homer rates and kind of just looked at top strikeout minus walk rate guys with home run problems. And this is them ranked by how bad their home run problem is. So this is not necessarily the best strikeout rate, guys. It's guys with good strikeout rates, good walk rates, and bad home run problems. That's this list. Matthew Boyd is at the top.

Jose Urquidy, Dylan Bundy, Jake Odorizzi, Kenta Maeda, James Paxton, Rich Hill, Griffin Canning, Justin Verlander, Lucas Giolito. Now, if you've been listening, you know I'm high on most of these guys. Yeah, Giolito kind of was the one that just made me perk the ears up a little bit because I think he was one of the few on that list that you've come out and said you're not necessarily into at the price. Now, I think if Giolito went 20 spots later among pitchers or something, maybe there'd be a strong case for him then. It's just that he's being drafted pretty early.

He's also the only one on this list that has a below average walk rate. There's your extra reason for what makes Giolito different in particular. I think this is a good way to drill into skills anyway. I do think even in a long season, as you said, if it takes two and a half years for us to be able to trust the home run rate, one season's not enough. Two seasons aren't enough. So you can easily talk yourself into a pitcher saying, you know what? He misses lots of bats. He doesn't hurt himself with walks. If he does give up home runs because he strikes a lot of guys out and because he doesn't walk a lot of guys, they might be solo home runs and it doesn't hurt him that much. So I think that's part of the fabric of how I look at pitchers in general, too.

It's interesting because I also thought of Craig Kimbrell as an example just from the reliever side for a moment. I mean, Craig Kimbrell's season a year ago was a disaster. 3.92 homers per nine, and it was only 20 and two-thirds innings. homers per nine and it was only 20 and two-thirds innings so it was a a body of work kind of in line with what a reliever at the low end will probably have over a 60 game season maybe get a little higher than that because you could go every other day for an inning and get probably about 30 innings as a short reliever as they kind of do the sprint thing this year so kimbrell has the problem that giolito has he also walks guys you have to at least account for that he's he's always walked guys that's that's been craig kimbrough even at his best he's had

a higher walk rate than you would like thinking about kimbrough specifically are you a little more inclined to draft him in a shortened season especially since he's kind of in that 150 range overall he's not treated like a top 10 closer he's more of that third tier sort of guy that used to be a top tier guy yeah i mean i i'd hate to have a bullpen led by kimbrough and eris but i will it's already been done the strikeout rate was fairly close. I mean, he did fall off. He had a 50% strikeout rate year, hit two of them, and he was down to 31, but 31 is still really good. So his strikeout rate has been fairly good. His velocity has fallen off, but at 96.2, it's back where it was in 11 and 12 with the Braves, and he was pretty good back then.

Plus, he didn't really have the same ramp up, so I'm willing to set the over-under on his fastball velocity this year at sort of 96.5. If he's at anything over that, he's going that he could still have a season where he strikes out uh 30 of the batters he sees uh walks 10 of them and doesn't give up four homers per nine um you know there is a chance for a home run explosion with velocity loss but we've talked about this before, that happens more around 94. It doesn't happen when you go from 97 to 96 usually. So I don't think he necessarily earned every single one of those home runs last year or that it means that he will continue to have a home run problem.

You could probably extend this conversation to Edwin Diaz, who is being treated like last year wasn't as bad as it actually was, which maybe is right in the framework of what you're saying. I mean, over two homers per nine from Diaz, a strikeout rate just under 40%, walk rate sitting at 9%. Most of the things in that profile are still good, but he's pretty reliably taken as a top 10 closer. He's going earlier than Kimbrell, not really cracking the top five in most of the drafts that I've seen. Is the Edwin Diaz rebound something that you're buying into?

I am. And the thing that separates him from Kimbrell is that there's no velocity loss. In fact, last year was the best year of his career for velocity. Or at least, I guess there's different systems saying different things here but he did not have a velocity drop off last year and so i think that's why people were betting on him the problem for me is that i think i'd rather have kimbrough because there's so much of a discount whereas diaz there's not that much of a discount and there are some other possible closers in that bullpen. Whereas the Cubs have released Brandon Morrow. They do have Rowan Wick, who is exciting and fun.

And maybe a handcuff or a holds candidate in your league. He's definitely a nice arm. but I don't think that Rowan Wick is as much of a threat to Keg Kimball's job as necessarily Seth Lugo or even Uris Familia if he gets it back or Dillon Batances. All three of those guys have had amazing seasons. Yeah, I think the Mets bullpen is actually good. Very boomer-bust. It could be really good.

It could be really good. It could be really good. If they're really good, it goes a long way to mask some of the flaws they're going to have in the back part of their rotation. I think I'm with you, though. The slight price break on Kimbrell, just between those two guys, I've been going a different direction with closers in general. I'm more likely to wait and get Kimbrell instead or end up being stuck with Kimbrell if that little run of closers happens.

Like Diaz versus Ken Giles is the ADP toss-up. I'm going Ken Giles over Edwin Diaz every time. And everything we're saying about pitchers, for starting pitchers, is just magnified when it comes to relievers. So if it seems kind of crazy that Edwin Diaz had a 2.3 homer per nine last year in 58 innings,

just wait until he only has 20 innings this year. I mean, we don't need to break out the stretch finder to find some 20-inning nonsense lines from great relievers. I'm sure there are some where it's all zeros and they're amazing, and there are some 20-inning lines where Mariano Rivera was gettable. It's going to be awesome when two or three of the top 30 relievers end up with ERAs below one this season, and there's really no way of knowing who they're going to be.

Someone's going to throw up a 10. The OOTP ratios of Josh Hader from the Athletic Alternate Universe League were insane, like a 9 ERA and a 2-something whip. Oh, that was over a full 162. I couldn't believe that. But you could see that from someone good in a short season. That's going to happen this year, but in 20 innings. Yeah, maybe not to Hader necessarily,

but to someone good, the ratios are going to be disastrous because of just a couple of meltdowns in this limited volume of innings. But circling back around to the starters, because I do think this concept is best applied to some of the mid-tier guys, Kenta Maeda is one of those pitchers that I love this year. We're used to Kenta Maeda getting that shutdown treatment from the Dodgers in September. I've been arguing since that trade was even first made that it really wasn't as much of a concern for me with him in Minnesota. I know you pointed out their depth would allow them to potentially do it if they wanted to follow the Dodgers script, they wanted to avoid the incentives in Maeda's contract. But this is a guy that does everything well, and now he's in

another organization that gets it with pitching, goes from one to another, and he lands in the beautiful AL Central, which is a great spot to be in right now. So Maeda, to me, was one of those guys that I liked him even before the season was shortened, and I like him even more in these conditions. It's truth, and I have, I think, every Twins pitcher higher than consensus or higher than projections. It's partially because of the schedule, and then partially just because I like all the pitchers they've come up with. Odorizzi has a little bit of weakness when it comes to the third time through the order penalty, and it's possible he only pitches four and a half innings per start this year. Just hoping he gets the love of the official score sometimes, and maybe is so efficient through his

first two times through the order that he can actually go through the third time a little bit and get those five innings. But, you know, other than that, I find, you know, Berrios, Maeda, Odorizzi, Hill. I mean, Hill, there's a little bit of an injury, you know, asterisks on him. But almost all of them, I think, have very good floors with decent ceilings as well. Yeah, I like Rich Hill. We talked about him on the last episode. His temperament is among the things on the mound that brings us joy. I think the only thing that's probably going to keep me away from having him a lot of places

is that it seems like everybody else likes him more than I do. I've got him kind of in that 50 range among starting pitchers. I think some people push him up maybe the 35 or 40 range. I get it because the ratios when he's healthy are often borderline elite. He misses plenty of bats. I think what has really kind of kept me from going all in on my Hill re-rank has been the conversation that we had with Virginia Zakis from Inside Injuries on the Athletic Fantasy Baseball podcast about a month or so ago. We just checked in with her about all the injured pitchers and I think there was this perception that I had and I think some people have this too that

the procedure that Rich Hill had on his elbow, which was a revision, is not necessarily the same sort of like minor thing that a scope would be or something like having loose bodies removed it's a little more like in the middle of a scope and tommy john surgery so i think there's still a bit more injury risk as it pertains to rich hill than people are currently acknowledging like i have no doubts about the skills i just think we need to see it a little bit health-wise and frankly in a season this short, I'm probably not going to draft him with everybody in the room liking him more than me. And I'm probably not going to break the fab piggy bank

to get him because I think there are some redraft leagues that already happened back in the spring where maybe he was undrafted because he was going to miss half the season before, right? So if your fab's about to start back up and Rich Hill's sitting out there, he might look like the best pitcher out there, but I don't know if I'd throw half my fab at Rich Hill,

even though his talent would suggest that he could easily make that a good decision. Yeah, and then we have all that fab and no time to spend it in. There are going to be some big bids on Hill. I have Hill right next to Garrett Richards at 49 50. It's pretty splitting the difference here between you and the, and the crowd. But I think that that they make sense together because they are my bubble wrap pitchers where love them. If they make it through the season, hate myself if I spend too much on that bet and they don't.

Alex Wood is about 13 picks lower and is in the same boat. Yeah, I might be a little bit too low on Alex Wood. I think the nature of his injury, the back injury, I think is one that concerns me. The strikeout rate, the projection for that is a bit lower than I would have expected. I think you mentioned before you use ATC as you're kind of putting ranks together just as a projection system to have in front of you. I use the bat. So same kind of idea. I'm just looking for things that stand out to me, good or bad, and making some adjustments based on that. I thought Woods projected strikeout rate would be about a full strikeout per nine higher than it is. I thought Wood's projected strikeout rate would be about a full strikeout per nine higher than it is.

So that's given me some hesitation on top of that injury history. So I see him kind of similar to like a Miles Michaelis. And Michaelis is one of those guys that I never get. I just, he had an elbow injury or forearm injury back during the spring. He's been an easy avoid for me throughout this draft season. Even with that extra rest period, I don't think I end up with him anywhere at all this season. I think it's great that you brought that up because I have Wood and Michael that's very close to each other. And it's the least favorite part of my rankings. That section? There's a whole section here. So with Garrett Richards and Rich Hill and then Yanni Chirinos and Jake Odorizzi, that's like my 49 through 51 or so.

Those pitchers, there's something like if I took them, I'd be like, ooh, I got one. I like that guy. And then there's just this list of pitchers that I don't like that I had to put somewhere. And I couldn't push them any further down. You know, this is the ones I really struggled with. So there are some that I like. So I'm going to skip over the ones I like, but here in this sort of fifties to early sixties,

Masahiro Tanaka, Madison Bumgarner, Herman Marquez, Miles Michaelis, Marcus Stroman, Andrew Haney, Alex Wood, Ravi Ray, Stephen Matz. I've got that group, like half of that group clustered together and the other half kind of split below it. And then what I have is this group of younger players that I just don't know where the innings are going to be. Like I put AJ Puck and Michael Kopech and even Brendan McKay. That's where I get excited again. I put those back in at sort of 65 through 75, because I sort of think of, you know, 12 to 15 team leagues as my default. And 75 is like, like get those pitchers are your like it last two pictures and so that's where i put my canning cease turnbull means hauser pearson you know puck you know that type of player i put those in that next group uh but you know 50 through 60 was

a place i had to put veterans that were better bets, higher floors. So maybe I'll get one of those. I've got Stroman in a couple places. Luke Weaver's in that group. I might get him. There is a reason to take a high floor guy before you start taking your shots, right? Yeah, part of it's the makeup of your roster. Part of it is the exact size of

your league i was thinking about the like the i put this disclaimer at the top of the rankings i rank for like a 15 team mixed leagues that's the format i play the most that's the format of the nfbc main event and i realized like you could scale rankings down pretty easily you just got to make sure you have enough players and you account for the depth of a league that size so i figured it's easier to take a smaller league and look at rankings for a bigger league and have them still work whereas if you kind of rank aggressively thinking that the replacement level of players is really high then i think your established veterans come out too low so that's just kind of how i i came to that place to go that direction with it but i think what I did is I ended up taking the prospect pitchers who I don't

think we're going to see, but we could see. That would be Mackenzie Gore, Matt Manning, Casey Mize, Tarek Skubal, Luis Patino, Forrest Whitley. I don't have a lot of confidence that those guys are necessarily going to have a lengthy stint in the big leagues this season if they even get that chance. And I had to bury them just outside the top 100 because that'd be your SP7, right? So if you're going to draft six starters and three relievers, this is your pitcher on your bench. This is basically a lottery ticket. This is a, let's see what happens in these next couple of weeks between the day I draft and maybe the first or second fab. And if they get that opportunity, great. I did a better job taking one of those guys than taking the guys below them, the Tanner Roarks and the Zach Davies,

the guys that are still going to be useful in certain spots. There's just no reason to draft them with the uncertainty of the role for those younger guys. I had a similar sort of epiphany about 100 as well. And 100 for me was a collection of interesting six starters, like Kyle Wright is there. That's where I have actually Michael Kopech because injury and he's not necessarily a starter to begin the season. But then also what I found was that early 100s is where I put my six starters that I thought would be interesting to own in the expanded roster portion of the schedule. So Jonathan Loizaga is 102, and he kicks off a whole crew of six starters like Kittredge, Gonsolin, Richards, Dobnak, Alec Mills. Those are guys I like. They have skill things that I like. Luizaga has an amazing combination

of stuff and command numbers that if there was no health thing and he actually had a starting role, I would have him in the top 40, I think. And Richards is, I think, a perfect fit for what the Rays are going to do. He's going to vulture a ton of holds and wins in the soft middle in the fifth and sixth innings. He's just going to come in and change up to death some guys, and it doesn't matter how bad his breaking ball is. Yeah, his changeup is nasty. I think I saw some comments from Kevin Cash.

He just pitched an inter-squad game earlier this week and looked really good. And it's probably working in tandem with somebody else or following someone who goes short. Ryan Yarbrough has actually become a tough rank for me because in my head, I just trust that the Rays are going to use him correctly. But that usage could be a lot lighter than some of the other starters. And I think because of the way we're valuing innings overall, right, just the need to pile up strikeouts in a season where every single stat is going to make a big difference. I'm torn between, you know, the value I expect him to provide from ratios from that optimal usage, but the possibility of a reduced number of wins if he's used like a traditional starter who then has a multi-inning follower

because i do think yarbrough is at his best when he's not seeing that lineup a third time through so i if i knew he was going to be a follower i would rank him higher with more confidence so it's so strange i like him but i still don't know exactly how they're going to use him and how exactly that fits right into this short season. And remember when he ranked the teams by shenanigans, the Rays were first or second. So most likely to pull some of these shenanigans. It's true. I feel that possibly I have Ryan Barber too high at 54.

He's just among a group. I may have to move him and possibly Dustin May down. I'm making notes here. It says down, question mark, next to both, just because of what you're talking about. Maybe the mid-50s is a little too early to take a picture that you have this many questions about their innings in a year where innings will be so precious it's a good point summer is here and our sponsor today manscaped is here to make sure you are 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 lawnmower 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 theathletic at manscaped.com that's 20 off with freeic at manscaped.com. That's 20% off with free shipping at manscaped.com and use code theathletic. And for a limited time, subscribers get not one, but two free gifts, a travel bag at $39 value, and the patented high-performance Manscaped boxer briefs. So go to manscaped.com today and use code theathletic. Something you said on Tuesday that i think is worth repeating

here as well i didn't go too deep into downgrades for players who've been away from camp because i still think if we don't know how much those guys have been throwing on their own regardless of the reason for their absence. It's a little bit reckless to give them a huge downgrade. I think you still want to rank based on skills. And I think you do that knowing you're keeping a close eye on any sort of follow-up information as soon as it becomes available. So Jesus Lizardo is still pretty high in my ranks. He's still in my top 30. That could change very quickly. If we find out that Lizardo has been limited in how much he can throw while he's been away from the team, he falls quite a bit. I think comparing that just to what I did with some hitters is a little bit different because we've talked in the

show, you've had players tell you that it's harder. Kyle Bode, I think from driveline also pointed this out. He thinks it's more difficult for a hitter to get his timing back. And I think hitters have confirmed that than it is for pitchers to get ramped up and kind of into their, their mid season form. So I think I was a little more cautious with where I ranked Freddie Freeman and Charlie Blackman and some of the players who have tested positive for COVID who have been known to be symptomatic. In Blackman's case,

I think as of yesterday, he was still isolating at home in Georgia. So even if he's back in time for the start of the season in two weeks, there's still a really open-ended question there as to how ready he's really going to be, or if he maybe lost some strength aside from the fact that he was missing out on those reps i would say that generally i've been positively surprised or impressed with how many innings the starting pitchers have had in their first simulated games we've seen people throw five and six innings already. I would have to say, though, that the average, to me, Jeff Samarja is an average dude.

Please don't talk about it if I said that. Jeff Samarja, average dude. You sure he doesn't listen to the show? Yeah, in terms of athleticism, he could whoop me three different ways. I mean, that guy was a good college football wide receiver. He's a good athlete. Yeah, but he said that he was most likely

to have about 75 to 80 pitches. He was most likely to have about 75 to 80 pitches in his first go around during the regular season. So I still think that some of the stuff we're saying, plus the expanded rosters is a fact. So no matter how well off a pitcher is in terms of being ready for the season,

they still have the expanded rosters that will be filled with relievers. So teams will definitely take their starter out earlier if they have that many relievers with relievers. So teams will definitely push, take their starter out earlier if they have that many relievers at their disposal. So it's almost irrelevant how stretched out starters are, but I do believe that starters, at least the first time through, won't necessarily be stretched out. However, being so positively surprised

by how well stretched out people are and having Jesus Lizardo test positive positive now like i'm not sure like let's say it is a setback he's still gonna throw uh he's just gonna throw on his own and let's say it is a setback but he's going to be back on the roster uh by opening day so if he doesn't start he's probably going to throw 40 or 50 pitches the first time he gets out there because I'm guessing he has at least that much. And then his next time out, he's at 60 to 70. So how much should we really dock him?

He could even get a win coming in as a six-starter type behind Chris Bassett, and then his next time through the rotation, he's the starter. And then after that, it's just regular going, right? He's young. he's asymptomatic. It seems a little bit different than my guy who was a veteran who got coronavirus and it took four weeks. He had symptoms from the beginning and that were pretty terrible and dealt with them. So I think we have to sort of listen for these details. As painful as it is, we have to listen to find out how bad it is for each of them. And if they are asymptomatic like Lizardo, he's going to throw.

He's not going to see much of a downturn in his performance in the off time. We just won't see him. My Friday afternoon activity, I think, for the next couple of weeks is going to be going through my player tracker, following up on every situation. Trying to maintain it during the week is tricky, but as I go through each round of tweaks to the rankings, just making sure, okay, where's this guy at? Is he back in camp? Is he throwing? Is he hitting? Is he playing in intra-squad games? Kind of seeing where each player is and making sure they're on track is going to be important. If guys start to fall behind as we flip the page over to next week, that's when I start to become a little bit more concerned. I think we're just far enough away. Thinking about the timing of when these players were tested, a lot of guys tested positive prior to intake testing. That's why they didn't end up

making it to camp in the first place right they're a little further along in their recovery so they could be there in a matter of days and that gives them enough time to catch up we were worried about scott kingery and hector naris as being one of the more prominent names for fantasy purposes at least that had tested positive but we learned from a story this week that kingery had it in camp you know in march or something that that he's already had it it was bad and he's done with it and he's in camp again you know i don't know if he's actually in camp again technically uh junior gara might be one of the first to have had it and be welcomed back to camp.

But I do think the Kingery is very close to coming back to camp because it was a test that happened a long time ago. It was not an intake test. So I think some of those Phillies and Blue Jays that we heard about were people that were before intake testing. And that's why if the number is somewhere around 65, I think what we're seeing is maybe, I'm sort of guessing, but maybe like 10 to 15 of them were in the first round of testing. And then we have that number 31, which is sort of an incomplete number from the intake testing. which is sort of an incomplete number from the intake testing. So we're at 45. So we have another 15 that are either filling in the intake testing or we know that there were a few positives in the second round of testing,

the sort of second and third days of testing. But the good news is that there were fewer positive tests after the intake. So we knew the intake would be one of the worst because everyone's gone and off and not being tested and doing their own thing. And so the second and third days, there were fewer of them. And so I still remain fairly upbeat about the season happening. Yeah, things seem to be headed in the right direction. about this season happening. Yeah, things seem to be headed in the right direction,

and this is coming from someone who's clearly acknowledging that the intake testing, as you said, was not complete. I think there are players who were told to stay away because they either had symptoms and needed to be tested while they were at home before they were cleared to travel, or they were near someone who had symptoms or had the virus, and that ultimately is why a lot of the players, not all of them, but a lot of the players who have not reported, haven't reported,

but it also lowers that overall number. Like if you have people who are likely to test positive for the virus and you don't test them as part of your intake testing, you're reducing the rate at which the people who go through intake testing are going to test positive. Like that's just, that's how it works. That's all it is. So I don't think that was done to test positive. That's how it works. That's all it is.

So I don't think that was done to manipulate anything. I think that's the order of trying to get people back into camp safely. That's what's happening here. There are a couple things I don't like about the way MLB handled it. One, the 31 number was given to us of admission that it was possibly not complete. And so that allowed people to say, oh, this is great. This is great. Well, already at the time that that 31 came out, the number was probably around 45. If you count people that tested positive before and then the incomplete. So that was already kind of fudging the numbers a little bit.

The other thing is there are obviously some problems over the Independence Day weekend, but just generally in terms of getting tests back to results back to the teams on time, it hasn't been good so far. And just out here in the Bay Area, I've been on a bunch of Zoom calls where players are upset about it. Jake Diekman said, I'm not going to opt out. I'm going to soldier through. I'm high risk and I don't like this. And I like this can't continue. And what do you know? I had someone step up like, well, you just have to soldier on, you know, like we all do.

No, I think you're allowed to speak out because it affects you. And he already said that he's going to play. What he wants to do is speak out and get something done about this. So we've had him, we've had Posey say some things. We've had both the Giants and A's canceled practices because they hadn't gotten results back yet. We have Mike Rizzo from the Nationals talking about how this is not an acceptable process right now. So, you know, we're on Thursday. I'm hoping that there are no canceled practices on Friday.

uh there are no canceled practices on friday that would suggest to me that the sort of weekday schedule has been figured out and that people are regularly getting their tests back and then i expect that we will get sort of uh positive tests um they'll they'll slow to a trickle in terms of getting up to the season because they're not traveling you know um and then the big test will be the first couple weeks of the season because the the first time you go on a road trip the first time you're flying around the first time you're interacting in a different city the first time you leave your sort of uh accepted routine your semi-shelter-in-place routine uh that's going to be when we get back at risk and that'll be um when, like Jake Dietman pointed out, this is the big risk, is that if the test results don't come fast enough,

that if there's like a three- or four-day gap, basically you could wipe out a team. Because they won't be able to take the person who tested positive and separate them from the team in time. I remember seeing a tweet, I think it was from Fabian Ardaia. He covers the Angels for us. The Angels had a team meeting about the situation. Yeah, here it is. Andrew Heaney said the Angels have agreed

as a group not to go out to restaurants, go to bars, or attend large gatherings this year. Everyone will wear a mask whenever not at home, their car, or the ballpark said they were, quote, common sense and, quote, precautions that should be done anyway. So, you know, that sort of buy-in is, I think, what teams are going to need to reduce outbreaks.

That's what I was hoping for, man. This is the team mentality. Like, even if you politically don't agree with this, I don't care. Do it because we're a team and we're asking you to do it. And it's not that big a deal for two months to, to wear a mask and to do these things. And, you know, like all aboard, let's, let's be the team that wins this because we were all good, you know? So I was hoping, I was hoping that might like, it seems, it seems like not too much of an ask. I mean, if you've already stepped onto the field and you've decided to play, yes, I understand opting out makes sense for some people.

But if you've already accepted the risk of stepping out on the field and playing, then these other things are not that much more to ask. Yeah, that was something that just made me optimistic about players being able to make it work was that their health and well-being the health and well-being of the person next to them and their families all hinged on each person buying in now this is one team out of 30 and i think the thing you brought up that's really important to keep in mind is once you get out of that routine out of that bubble out of that camp once you start traveling and teams fly on private planes, it's not like they're going through the airport and waiting in line for Jamba Juice and acting the way most of us act at the airport when we travel. They're still going to be going to team hotels, designated places to stay for road trips,

and they're going to be interacting even just a little bit with other people. As as that's reduced that's still going to happen so i think you're right i think we will see that sort of trickle over the next week or so but then we're going to see an uptick probably within about a week of the season actually getting underway so i think we got to mentally sort of be prepared for some ebbs and flows some ups and downs as this continues. But yeah, I came away pretty encouraged by that particular statement that Andrew Heaney kind of put out there and shared. And I've seen, I mean, I followed, I think, every team account and beat writers from around the league, and they're retweeting players. It looks like players are buying in.

I mean, aside from the health and wellness aspect, their livelihood, money, hangs in the balance for them too. And a lot of players are in a position they need to earn money this year. They can't afford to not get paychecks. So in order to get those paychecks and to keep things running,

it's again buying into the safety and health protocols. A bit of a sad part of it is, you know, if you look at who's opted out, the only ones that were pre-peak and hadn't had like a free agent contract yet were like Joe Ross, basically. Yeah.

I can't even think of another. Almost everyone else has made their money. And then once you've made a decent amount of money, the interaction between the money you could make this season and the risk, the calculus changes immensely. So, you know, I'm not super comfortable with that, You know, I'm not super comfortable with that, but I also know that the shutdowns were really terrible for large parts of the economy and that there are people that have no choice but to soldier on. And they have to sort of go out there and do their job.

I wish that we had a better, uh, system of, um, you know, helping people when they were down. Yeah. I don't want to get too political there. I'm trying to dance around the words that set everybody off. No,

no. I think there's pretty broad frustration with what you're, you're getting at, but we don't, we don't have to dive into that right now. There's a, there's a time and place for that. If you're dealing with a condition like erectile dysfunction, you want treatment ASAP.

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so if you're struggling with EB, 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. There's some other pitching-related topics that I wanted to get to on this episode. Other problem pitchers, I guess. Undefined roles right now are bad.

I kind of hinted at it with Ryan Yarbrough. But the one that continues to really frustrate me is Carlos Martinez. It's almost like the Cardinals don't even really know if they want him to start or relieve, or for some reason they're just cagey about it. What the heck is the plan for Carlos Martinez? Because if he's starting, he's not very confident in where I ended up placing him. I think Carlos Martinez, when it all came in last night, was sitting around 40, 46. He's at 40. Okay, so Carlos Martinez is at SP 46. He's not in mine. He's not on your list?

No. I mean. I don't know how that happened. Apologies. So I got him lumped in with Erod or Keity. Yeah, Jesus. One thing I'd like, Erod has tested positive, hasn't he? I wonder if that means something.

I might knock him down a little bit. Just because he's also an injury risk with a knee. I think that's a bit high, but maybe not. Lance McCullers, I have at 39. And the risk is that Lance McCullers is like a four-inning pitcher and just never gets the wins. The risk with Martinez is mitigated, I think, perhaps by the fact that he could easily be the closer if he's a reliever. It's not that he could either be a starter or he could be the glue guy. With Carlos Martinez, I feel like he's either a starter or he's the closer. Yeah, and that's been an open question the last couple of days.

Giovanni Gallegos has been unable to leave Mexico to report to summer camp. So the longer he's delayed, the more we kind of go down that path. Okay, if Martinez is in the bullpen, is he the closer? Hicks is not ready yet. Helsley's been getting the helium. But I think Ryan Helsley would step out of the way for Carlos Martinez. Not him personally, but I think for the team, they'd be like, yeah, we'll put Carlos Martinez in there.

Helsley's set up, and let's go. I've been treating him more like a starter, though. I'm evaluating him under the expectation that he's going to start. So he's in my top 50. I think he's better than that if he has the job all season. Let me just play a would-you-rather so I know where to put him myself. This one's pretty easy, so I think I'm going to make a space above him. Joe Musgrove.

I've got Martinez over Musgrove by only eight spots among starters. They're pretty close. Denilson Lemaitre. I have Lemaitette two spots higher. Mike Miner. I have Martinez actually higher than Miner, which could be an error. I mean,

maybe I'm too low on Mike Miner, but I've got Miner clustered with Odorizzi, Andrew Heaney, just behind Rich Hill, just behind Robbie Ray. I think Robbie Ray could be one of those guys that gets fortunate. He's got the walk problem, obviously, too, but could just be a monster for strikeouts in this season.

It's true. It's true. Yeah, I think Carlos Martinez, for me, will be late 40s. Okay, so we're probably going to end up pretty similar. Go right in that sort of Garrett Richards, Rich Hill area. I think he might end up in that Garrett Richards with Hill scenario. Because the injury risk on Carlos Martinez is really high. It is, and that's why I guess I'm not pushing him as high as he could be based on his talent. It's a little bit like the Rich Hill problem earlier.

I'm bringing him down because of injury risk, not because I don't think he's good. Right. If you could tell me, you know, if he comes down and tells me he will be healthy and he will be a starter, I think I could push him as high as low 30s. Zach Wheeler is 36 for me. If I knew he was healthy and starting, I think I would maybe rather have him than Zach Wheeler. What do I have to do to get the injury fairy to visit?

Do I have to smoke a brisket or something? How do I get him down here? Smoke something. How do I get him down here? Smoke something. Apologies for not putting Carlos Martinez in my rankings. Well, the angry mob didn't come after you for that one, so I don't know if they missed it. Well, they were mad that I didn't rank Eovaldi,

which is kind of funny in retrospect. I'm a little lower on Richards than you, but I think it's more just like what happens after the top 50 or so where you can pretty easily shuffle guys around and you're not gonna lose sleep over it what do you think about the short season is good for someone like richards i mean obviously he came back from tommy john last year we didn't see him that much his baseline is his baseline like a sub-4 ERA and like a 125 whip?

Because if that's really where his true talent baseline is, he should probably be nudged up in my rankings. I would say you're probably right if that's where we think he's going to go with that performance. Well, he has a fairly large spread in projections that go from anywhere from zips at 399 to the bat at 427. A large part of why I'm excited about him is just my stuff number for him is top five in the league.

Of course, my command number for him, he has similarities to Glass now in terms of stuff and command, I guess, and injury, except you have to, you know, goose that because he's 32 and has had a longer track record of just constantly being injured. I mean, we have four years. In the last four years combined, he has thrown 130 innings. That's a problem. That's rough. But 16, 17, 18, his ERA combined was basically 3-0-0. Yeah, and that's the thing.

It's like he does that with some Ks too. It's not just like you're getting good. It's not a Hendricks scenario or something where you're getting a lighter return in that K category to get those ratios either. I think that's part of the appeal. Yeah, it's a stuff bet for me. Maybe it's too aggressive considering how high he's ranked,

but like I said, 50 was where I kind of looked at the rest and was like, ugh. I was trying to get a quick glance at the leaderboards over at Fangraphs from 2014 to 2018. Again, Richards missed some time during that five-year window too. In terms of how he stacks up against other starters, he was 22nd, actually tied for 20th, in whip, out of 179 qualified starters, at 117.

That's good. That's like Luis Severino, Garrett Cole had similar whips to Garrett Richards during that time. The K-BB, it's not going to be quite as good for him, but it's still not bad.

And then just look at the stuff. He sits 96 with a 90 mile an hour slider, an 80 mile an hour curveball, and a pretty decent power change. I mean, it's all power, but it's all power.

That's good and bad. Yeah, it's 14.4% K-BB. So that's in the Berrios, Fulte, Zach, Wheeler, and a five-year range for that. I mean, a pitcher can change a lot during that time. It's been better recently in terms of at least the strikeout portion of it. Yeah, ERA, 15th in ERA during that five-year span. So Garrett Richards is good.

There's a chance he returns even more than where you've got him, and I've got him buried pretty low. So he might be among just the skills-based adjustments where I go through and make injury tweaks the next time through. So I think buy Garrett Richards is the general takeaway here. The other guy that's tough, I mentioned him just with that group of starters, like the Manning-Mize situation, not knowing if they're going to come up, is Forrest Whitley because even if he does come up, are we sure he's going to be a starter?

He might just be a two-inning reliever. I mean, I think about the way they broke Josh James into the big leagues and how they used him last year. That could easily be part of the development plan for Forrest Whitley at this point, given the struggles he had in the minors last season. Yeah, I'm trying to spot my prospects here. They're the ones without Command Plus numbers. And I've got him with Manning. Manning and Whitley and Scubal are in the 130s for me as, you know,

prospect guys I could see taking a shot on, but not necessarily my first choices. My first choices are in order, I believe, Gore, Patino, Pearson, and Howard and Kopech, I have them all a little earlier just because I'm more confident in their paths. I have Pearson and Howard around 75. Yeah, I think that makes sense. I think they are that last starter that you draft out of your first five

that you say, yeah, you know what? He might be shaky. Maybe he doesn't have the job right away. They're going to delay a week or so just to preserve the service time and you stream for a week or possibly two until that opportunity comes but we've talked about howard and pearson a lot in the last few months those guys are important to the playoff hopes of their respective teams kopec is probably a little more complicated he's away from camp right now for personal reasons and the white socks i think have

been if you if you kind of plotted all 30 teams on a how cagey have they been with with testing and things like they'd be among the more cagey organizations to this point that's just the way they've chosen to handle it um just as of a couple days ago rick Hahn, their GM, said there's no timeline for Kopech. So that gives me some concern. As we look ahead, if this is still the case a week from now, he has to start coming down. And he's low enough right now where I think you're not making a huge mistake if you draft him

because there is still a little bit of a wait-and-see with him anyway. Maybe complicated by Carlos Rodon being healthy. You know, Carlos Rodon, I think he's good enough to be in that starting five and he's close to 100% healthy through 45 pitches on Sunday. So three innings for him there. You know, project him forward to maybe 60 pitches

coming up at the end of this week. Give him 75 by about this time next week. That gives him a shot at getting up to 90 before the start of the season. That's almost regular usage. This is a guy that had Tommy John surgery last May, so he's going to be about 14 months removed when the season begins. I'm not saying go overboard and get as much Carlos Rodon as you can, but he goes from a guy kind of like Michael Fulmer was at one point too, where he was just totally off my radar for this season, where at least in the endgame, in the reserve rounds, I'm thinking about it because I think there's a better chance than not that Carlos Rodon is actually a starter this year. Yes, I did contemplate Carlos Rodon for a while.

I did not know where to put him and i didn't end up not putting him on and partially was this weird not weird this great email i got in the middle of thinking about these things um timothy charlton is a uh is a is a research doctor um who's also a baseball fan um heard a a podcast that I did with Paul Sporer a few years back where we talked about what happened to Tommy John returnees when it came to their pitch accuracy and their reload and movement. And he actually did a clinical study. The study has been accepted for publication and will be coming out soon in the Orthopedic Journal of Sports Medicine. So really,

congratulations to Timothy Charlton and his group. Really fun study that if I can be so bold as to sort of top line, kind of summarize it for you, is that velocity and movement, for the most part, return after Tommy John surgery, but that fastball command doesn't necessarily return the same for everybody, and that the fastball commanders, the people that do have poor fastball command when they return, are more likely to be fastball-centric and are more likely to be relievers. I think that makes a little bit of sense because you put, uh, people with poor command, um, and, uh, and more fastball centric approach in the bullpen. So that all sorts of comes, all comes together, um, to say that Tommy John is maybe a little bit more worrisome for a reliever that throws a lot of fastballs. But for Radone, I wanted to check his fastball command plus, and he's at 87 and 89,

respectively, for his two fastballs. Poor, poor command of his fastball, which I think will be exacerbated somewhat by his Tommy John. And so, you know, command has been the big question mark for Radon as he's moved forward. He's projected into some walk rates that would be, you know, the second best of his career, basically, if he did them. And I just don't know if I buy that. If I change the walk rate on those projections at all, he's likely to have an ERA above 4.5. Didn't necessarily describe enough upside for me to put him on my rankings. However, we know that there's a certain amount of stuff here. It's possible that

he's had enough time to recover and won't be in the bad group. We'll come back and have some success. Thinking about some things we've talked about with slider command, that was a pitch he threw more than ever before he got hurt. He got that up to 37.4% usage. How does the slider command compare? I mean, bad fastball command is a concern.

Could he actually command the slider well enough to be one of those guys that gets by with that heavy usage? I'm not sure that he can. His command plus overall is in Dylan Cease territory. Um, and his slider command is his best, his best pitch for command plus, and it's a 91.

So he doesn't even have a league average command of that um which makes it just it just makes it hard for him to do what he needs to do in certain counts and to not fall into places where he has he feels he has to throw the fastball um and if his slider commands at 91 it's not good enough to kind of be the established for strikes pitch so just overall uh i think command has has been what's kind of done rodonan and even if he's likely to be a starter this year i kind of feel like in the end uh the most dominant portions of rodon's career will be as a reliever yeah it could be i i think the question for me in the short term, though, is like, do they want Rodon to start or do they want Gio Gonzalez to start? You know, I think the threshold right now that it's kind of like give this one more shot.

I think that's where where my mind's at. But again, we're talking about a late, late round pitcher, not somebody that's necessarily a priority sort of target. Likely, I think, given the expanded rosters and what we've been talking about, is that he's the shadow starter. He comes in in the third inning for somebody. And that allows him to, if you let him come out in three and four inning stretches, that allows him to be there if you do finally decide that Gio Gonzalez is not going to be the guy. Because if the White Sox are going to push it, they're going to take guys out in the third inning.

If they're going to try and win every game, they're going to take guys out in the third inning. Keichel could have a bad game. Reynaldo Lopez is at a risk of losing his rotation spot, in my opinion. Michael Kopech and Carlos Rodona right there. So basically you have Lopez, Cease And Gio Gonzalez all could lose their Rotation spots this year or be Taken out really early in games

And so what you do is you take Rodon as the 6th Star to begin the season and if you Finally decide Reynaldo Lopez is not Happening for him or Gio Gonzalez It's too far gone like it's the End of his career,

then Rodon comes in for them, and then Kopech comes in for the next guy. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think if you start using some of those guys as two-inning relievers, that pitching staff does get pretty interesting pretty quickly. So having one more option to work with certainly adds a nice little bit of depth. They're going to be a fun team this year. I don't know if they're a playoff team yet, but they're going to be fun to watch. You know what they remind me of, and it's fortunate and unfortunate at the same time,

they remind me of the Twins in that they have eight players under the age of 27 in Moncada, Madrigal, Anderson, Eloy Jimenez, Robert, Mazzara, Giolito, and Cease. I did not count Kopech yet. So I'm talking about like, you know, major league experience, but young. And that's what the Twins had. You know, the Twins had this great collection of young position player talent.

What's unfortunate about that comparison is that I do not believe that the White Sox pitcher development and pitching coaching is on the same level as the Twins. So, I don't know. Either they have to get lucky or sign some guys that were developed

in other organizations like the Keiko signing, but I'm not sure that I'm putting them on the level of the Twins when it comes to that portion of the schedule. A little bit sad, though, if they had that extra development push, maybe they could get more out of some of these guys. They definitely have a bit of a lag in terms of command relative to the stuff in the pitchers they put together.

If Cease and Kopech could hit their ceilings like Di Alito has, you could have a really awesome top three so and it's still possible it's still possible definitely a team that I'll be watching a lot more in 2020 than I was watching in 2019 they were almost on an avoid

list as much as I love Jason Benetti Colin Gams there was just usually two or three other teams playing when the White Sox were on that were more deserving of my attention this time last year that is going to wrap things up for this episode of rates and barrels if you're enjoying this show on a platform that allows you to rate and review it please take a moment to do that we'd greatly appreciate it if you're looking for access to the athletic you can get a free 30-day trial at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels.

If you're looking to reach us, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com is our email address. Spell out the word and if you do that, you can find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. I guess we left some time for another Pitching Ranks piece, another Pitching Ranks podcast where we kind of dig deep. So we've got that coming. And of course course thanks for listening