Rates & Barrels - A Break for Edwin Díaz, Buying A Luis Gil Breakout & Leveraging Pitching Depth

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss Garrett Whitlock's injury and the prolonged opportunity for Cooper Criswell in the Red Sox's rotation, expectations for Edwin Díaz's break from the closer role, Luis Gil's impressive stretch to begin 2024, ways to consider leveraging pitching depth, where the money went this weekend, a few frequently dropped players from the weekend. Rundown 1:50 Cooper Criswell's Extended Window in Boston 7:47 Edwin Díaz's Break From the Closer Role 16:00 Luis Gil: Analyzing his Early 2024 Breakout 29:52 Any Reason to Worry About Framber Valdez? 33:24 Did Ryan Weathers Figure Something Out? 39:00 Leveraging Starting Pitching Depth 43:24 Disconnect Between Stuff+ & D-backs Starting Pitching 47:56 Still Optimistic About Daulton Varsho? 51:24 Big Weekend Adds 1:02:11 Buying Any Drops? MJ Melendez, Brett Baty & James Outman Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! https://www.youtube.com/c/ratesbarrels Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Register today at SunriseChallenge.ca. That's SunriseChallenge.ca. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. Itrels Tuesday, May 21st. Derek Van Ryber, Enoceris here. Schedule's a little bit jumbled up thanks to the Memorial Day weekend upcoming. Britt Jiroli out on assignment. We messed things up with the Max Bay episode on Monday, so hopefully had a chance to check that out. Max was a guest.

Eno was the lead host, shuffling chairs around here on Rates and Barrels. I did a really poor job as usual. You're just, I mean, think about how many more times I have hosted a show than you. Yeah, it was my transitions. You could see them coming from a mile away. Just the long windup. 8.7 foot swing length. That does it for up. Yeah. There's 8.7. At the end I was just like, oh, that does it for us.

See you tomorrow. It happens, man. Even after thousands of reps, I still trip over my own feet sometimes. It's just the way it goes. But smash the like button if you're watching us on YouTube. Be sure to subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already. And if you have not joined the discord, the link is in the show description. We got some mailbag questions we're going to get to on this episode.

We're going to dig into some things that happened from the weekend. It's we didn't get a chance to talk about them yesterday. And we got a few news items as we get started. Garrett Whitlock, unfortunately, is likely headed for surgery. There's damage to his UCL. And unfortunately, Whitlock was going to be one of the better pickups of the weekend. We talked about him at the end of last week. It looked like he was going to return maybe today from the IL.

Of course, that's all off the table. It's a bummer for Whitlock because I wanted to see what happened if he came back and pitched well this year. But the other related question now is that the Red Sox have to rely a lot more heavily on Cooper Criswell. This keeps the door open for him in their rotation. And we've talked about the Red Sox as a team that have dialed down their fastball usage, right? They've really gone away from fastballs. Cooper Criswell in particular is a low V-Low lo guy and that makes him pretty unique.

But I think he's actually pretty good despite the limited velocity. And I think he's in the right organization to sort of hide that flaw. And it made me wonder if you if you go back and think about how baseball's been played for a long time where everything revolved around the fastball. If you remove that, you could take a bad fastball pitcher and make them a lot more effective because you're not asking him to throw his worst pitch 40 or 50% of the time, right? Like that's kind of taking, taking the problem and just flipping it upside down and saying, well, we have two or three other good pitches, let's use those and just occasionally use a fastball and it will all work out.

So I'm curious if you're buying Cooper Criswell as a low velocity guy that a lot of people might be a little skeptical of for that particular reason. Yes and no. What I like about him is that his sinker has great movement on it despite being 89. And so it is a little bit harder to square up than maybe your average 89 mile an hour pitch. I do love the amount of break, 19 inches of horizontal break on the sweeper. Just, you know, huge movement patterns here from him. One sort of caveat that I have is that the thing

that sets up everything else is still the fastball and it's not movement. It is maybe sitting on it. What it is is the VELO sets the tone for what the batter can do with the rest of the pitches.

And so at 89 miles an hour, you basically just have an extra half second or whatever to appraise what this pitch, what the pitch is that he's throwing. It might be in his benefit then that he doesn't have a wide VELO range. He isn't Nick Pavetta with with 97 and you know 82 out there with the curveball or whatever. He's 89, 85, 86, and 77. So I guess in some ways that works for him. I'm basically saying though 89 still matters even if you'd use it less because that's when the the batter has to start a swing that's when the batter has to start his decision making process. And so a 474 slugging on the sinker with a 267 X lugging I kind of believe the actual numbers on that a little bit.

And a 533 slugging on the sweeper, that's one where I actually think he'll go in the other direction. I don't imagine that, you know, considering he has a decent cutter and a good change-up, he's not throwing it to lefties. I don't know exactly why they've teed off on it other than perhaps when they start at 89 miles an hour and the sweeper comes in at 77 they just have much more time to figure it out. We know that sweepers still are better with Velo. We know that the best sweepers are like Griffin Jackson's 86, 87, 88 mile an hour sweeper, you know? So something that's 77 is going to suffer from the Velo. But sum it all up like Stuff Plus does and he is a lot more interesting that you might think

if you just looked at You know Velo and and and and pedigree honestly. He has no pedigree. I Would I would be interested in him for like two start weeks? I've been probably a little bit more interested away from away from home But I'm definitely interested in him. I mean, he's going to beat the projections, right? I mean, the projections are brutal. Steamer is the most optimistic at a 456 ERA and a 136 whip, but Zips is up over five for the ERA.

The bat's at a 492. He could run a low fours, can he? Like a 425 or a 430 the rest of the way. It's a 276 with a 109 whip so far. I'm not expecting that either. But we have a projection. I guess our projection is better than most projections. The Stuff Plus projection is for 435, right?

Yeah, that makes sense. Like that's kind of where, if I'm just looking at the page. Absent of any other information of what just looking what he's done. Because, OK, yeah, 35. But for example, you know, right, there's going to be a home run problem when you're operating with some 90 below. That's going to happen. It doesn't walk anybody.

You know, he gets more strikeouts than you expect. His strikeout minus walk rate is above average. I mean, he's he's credible and the projections think he's not. So there's there's a gap there. Yeah, it seems like a guy that should be more rostered in auto new. And I think now that we have the Whitlock injury news, Cooper Crisswell will become a little more popular in those deeper formats. But I think you're right. For the majority of leagues, you're focusing more on the spot starts and those two start

weeks. Quick injury news item from the Rays, Zach Efflin to the IL with back inflammation. I saw this and just said, hey, at least it's not his knee. He's had a lot of knee trouble throughout his career, so this seems like a relatively minor thing. And the Rays are going to get Ryan Pepio back from the IL that likely take that place for Eflin so it doesn't sound like a major problem for him for now. We'll keep an eye out to see if we get any updates that suggest that things have taken a turn for the worse. Let's move on to Edwin Diaz though. A question here, how long will his

role be fluid? The recent struggles of Edwin Diaz have opened the door for Adam on a Vino, possibly read Garrett to get some sales for the Mets in the short term. I keep looking at this and thinking, maybe it's like when Josh Hayter was acquired by the Padres and hit a few bumps that year. I think that was in August, kind of righted the ship by the end of the season. And mostly until the beginning of this season had been the Josh Hader that we came to expect. Is that what we're going through right now with Diaz? I mean, we're going to be talking about Edwin Diaz at the All-Star

break and saying, hey, he's back. He's in the Mets closer again and things are clicking. Or do you have some longer term concerns based on how this season has started for him? He doesn't have the very top end stuff that he had, but, you know, with the 114 stuff plus, you'd still expect him to be better than he was. Has been so far. And one thing that I do think that Diaz and Hader have in common is they they lack command. And that's what I saw in the

in the year that that Hader kind of lost his job was just the command got so bad that that's how he lost his job. That was the mechanism. And I did talk about this with Cal control this last week, my pet theory that it's easier to replicate stuff on the mound than it is to replicate command. And so therefore when you have a smaller injury or you're still dealing with some soreness or pain in some area, you might still throw 95. You might even be able to get the shapes that you got before, but you can't place it as well because it's that kind of everything feels good that that final little bit there's there's some evidence for that which is that command goes away before stuff within one outing and uh and so that that's like the role of fatigue and what is fatigue but sort of nagging type bad feeling uh and and quantral said that he the reason why he has largely the same arsenal that he had before, this new splitter, which is pretty good, and he's having more success this year

is his shoulder doesn't hurt. His shoulder hurt last year with Cleveland. And so, you know, that's something that I don't even know how much time he lost for it, but that's something that was bothering him. So I would say that this is related to the knee and that it may take until next year. But I will also say that the other options in this pen, you know, may may look really exciting.

But one thing that Reed Garrett does that always makes me nervous in a closer is 50 percent sliders and a 27% use of fastballs. And I know we just came off a conversation. We talked about like how what starters can really turf the fastball, but I just, if I have an old school bone left in my body, it's that I want my closer to have just a great fastball and be unafraid to use it Robert Suarez profiles as like my kind of closer you know here's the fast ball over and over again you can't do anything about it thank you good night

game over not slider slider split finger split fingers slide oh fastball slider split finger I mean generally it seems so oh, fastball, slider, split finger. I mean, generally, it seems so much easier to have the feel for your fastball. You can lose the feel for the breaking stuff easier. And if that's your bread and butter, then things can unravel very quickly in those spots. But Reed Garrett is really strange. This guy has come out of absolute nowhere. Thirty one great story.

Thirty one year old 16th round pick back in 2014. And you look at the mix, he's got a sweeper, he's got a slider, he's got a split finger, he's got a four seamer. They've got them down for 7% on sinkers as well. What's going on? Like this, this is the type of arsenal you'd expect to see from a pop-up starter, not from a short reliever.

It's a 41% K rate entering play on Tuesday. It does have an 11% walk rate, but when you miss that many bats, you can get away with an 11% walk rate pretty easily. And for the season, still has not allowed a barrel this year. Yeah, that's crazy. And as with any other sort of pop-up reliever, behind a guy, I think that he deserves pickups where you can get him.

But I kind of think that Diaz is gonna get this job back. The other factor here is that Edwin Diaz has the long-term deal with the Mets, right? Like you don't pay a guy what they're paying Edwin Diaz to give him a hook from the closer roll with three guaranteed years on his deal. Diaz does have opt outs actually in his contract, too. But he has to be pitching very well, I think, to actually do that. But the stuff has only declined a little in terms of Velo.

I think there is a pretty, pretty simple reason to be excited about Edwin Diaz. Still he's bounced back from a dip like this before on paper. It looks a lot like what happened to him in 2019, his first season with the Mets. Cause that's what happened to the Velo. The home runs jumped up that year. ERA went up north. That's true. That was the last year he was 97.

Yeah. That to me is where like, Oh, okay. Well, he was younger then. So it was easier to bounce back and put all the pieces together. But I think this comes back to the injury. I think I, I overlooked it or downplayed it. A knee injury is in particular between Reese Hoskids and Gavin Lux at their ACLs, the patellar tendon injury that Diaz had.

I did not worry about knee injuries at all this draft season. Shoulder, arm, elbow. That's what I'm worried about with pitchers. But and to me, like I did the same thing with Hoskins. I thought this would be a fully healthy year and he'd be fine. And here is on the I.L. again. But the knee is just super important, right? Like the blocking leg is really associated for hitters and

pitchers with trunk rotation, with velocity, arm speed, bat speed. The way that you get arm speed and bat speed starts in your legs. And there's a there's a, you know, kinetic chain that goes up through your body. And so a there's a, you know, a kinetic chain that goes up through your body. And so if there is a weak link down there, you know, you're just not transferring as much energy from your legs to your trunk. And I guess that's what's going on. What if they just I held him for a week

and just gave him some rest and said, like, like like let's start over and let's you know I don't know. I guess they could have done that haven't done it so far the sort of story that got us here is You know two three homers three homers and six outings and You know, there's some rest in there. The 13th, the 16th and the 18th were not consecutive games in any way. But maybe just a couple of two, three days rest

could help them, you know, get back some of that juice. Yeah, I'm still pretty optimistic that Diaz becomes a top five closer again, at least for a stretch. I mean, not by the end of this year, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's that guy at some point between now and the end of next season. I think I do like Garrett a little more than Ottavino as the short term option, but I don't think you're getting a lot of mileage out of either one of them, because as you suggested earlier, I think we're talking about this

as a matter of weeks rather than months for Diaz to work his way back into the ninth and out of the fluid role that the Mets. Yeah, what happens if he just like shuts down, you know, like two or three teams in a row in the eighth inning? Like there would be some powerful inertia to get him back in there. I think so. I like why why wouldn't there be at this point? If you're as obsessed with basketball as I am, then you know there's no better time of year than the NBA playoffs. Why wouldn't there be at this point? and share stories you won't hear anywhere else. Like Devin Booker on why he talks so much trash, or Paolo Bencaro on his shooting workouts with Kevin Durant, Ray Allen's epic free throw competitions with LeBron when they were

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Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. See kraken.com slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. A lot of great mailbag questions came in and one of them is about Luis Heal who pitched exceptionally well over the weekend having a bit of a breakout here now that he's healthy again in 2024. It's a big one for the Yankees 31.2% K rate now on the season.

That's 62 Ks in 49 innings, good ratios and a good home run rate so far too, which I think is maybe the part of his profile that I'm not entirely sure about given the home park especially. But the projections have started the warm up on Luis Heal quite a bit. You see some sub four ERAs, you see some decent whips and you see big strikeout numbers. I think the general question with Heal is, is this different than someone like Edward Cabrera? Like you see the 12, 13, 14% walk rate and you wonder how long can someone get away

with that many free passes? Like my answer is a long time if they strike that many guys out and don't give up homers, but if you don't trust them to keep the home run rate as low as it's been, that's where things could slowly start to unravel. And the specific question we had came from Peter, good subject on the email to Luis Healmesh. Luis Heal is a two-pitch fringy starter with a nasty fastball and slider and bad command. This year he's throwing his change-up more than his slider with opposing batters hitting

just one twenty two one thirty four one forty six against it. James vertical and horizontal movement seem unremarkable. And the stuff plus number is a ninety six. But it also hangs out in that ninety one to ninety two mile per hour range, hitting ninety four or ninety five on the high end. Peter's question is, isn't it all a little weird? What do you see and what do you think the Yankees see that have led them to favor the change over the slider? The times that I've watched heel

he's used the change-up almost as a freeze-take pitch It's been a pitch that I think because he is so vertical with his other pitches, the fastball and slider, and then he has this much more horizontal change up. I think the swing rate on his change up is 41%. The swing rate on his four seam is 47%. The swing rate on his change up is 41 percent. The swing area on his on his four seam is 47 percent. The swing area on a slider is 45 percent. So like you know they're not swinging at it as much. The whiff rate is the worst of his three pitches on the change up. But when he can get it in the

strike zone it's a free strike and it doesn't look like his four seaman fastball and four seaman slider. So it's just It's like when Strider was throwing the third pitch, you know, it's like a walt I know you're trying to keyhole me into one of the two and Probably half you guys are standing up the plate just being like I'm just gonna swing like it's a fastball every single time and the Other guys are like I'm just something like a slider every single time. Well for both of you I got this other wrinkle and I'm gonna throw this change up. The only problem is that he does not have good natural command. He has really bad natural command I think but where it's playing right now is very interesting. I called up all starters this year,

and he's in the bottom 30. I had no, let me just put like, okay, I'll put 10 innings on here. So now he'll a 16th. He has a 16th worst location plus. That sounds bad, and it is, but who is he next to? Marcus Stroman, Ryan Weathers, Kyle Gibson, Jose Soriano, and Bobby Miller.

So 95 seems like maybe this place you can live without as many consequences if you have great stuff. But we've watched Jose Soriano kind of have these starts were like oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's happening and Then you're like, oh, I don't know if it's happening We've watched Weathers Make us look like fools With his yo-yoing we've watched Kyle Gibson throw amazing games and then terrible games Christian Scott has a 96 and then terrible games. Christian Scott has a 96.

Freddy Peralta has a 96. I mean, this is a pretty good measure of command, don't you think? Frambovaldez has a 96. It's like, yeah, okay, that's actually, this is passing the sniff test. When it gets worse than that, Joe Boyle, 88. JP France, 90.

Tristan McKenzie, 90. Christian Javier, 92. Louis Varland, even, 94. Siroka, 95. That's 90 Tristan McKenzie, 90 Christian Javier, 92 Louis Varland, even 94, Soroka, 95. These guys have it worse. And I think it's, you know, Tavier is the only one who's trying is currently really out stuffing that problem. But there's clear, like there's a clear sort of jump here where

it's like, I think at 95, it's doable. I think it's doable. Edwin Cabrera came and was doing 90s and 93s and 94s and when he got to 94, I was like, oh, maybe it's doable. Hasn't quite been doable. So I think I would just describe Luis Huil's command as doable. What is going to happen though, is if the command slips at all, then he can't use that

change up. He almost hit a person in the face of that change up at 91 in the, in the Phillies game I watched. So, you know, if he loses that ability to get called strikes with that, then it pushes all sorts of pressure on his foreseeing fastball command, right? Cause then he has to get strikes with the, with the fastball to use the slider. So I, it's like a long story short, like right now we're like, Right because then he has to get strikes with the with the fastball to use the slider so

It's like a long story short like right now. We're like oh my god Why isn't he like you know ranked number ten for you and your rankings like you know like why isn't he why aren't you making? Every podcast about how great Luis Hilda's and my answer to you is it is the walk rate it is the command and it is something that you should think about even as he strikes everybody out because You know, he's at the barely tenable portion of the command spectrum Yeah, it's really interesting because if the slider command were to get better That would take some pressure off of the change-up too

Because he'd go to that second pitch more often instead of having to throw the change up. I also wonder how surprised teams are. I mean, it's in the scouting report now. I wonder if they have a counter adjustment to the change being a bigger part of it since he was such a heavy two-pitch guy previously. A lot of questions too, just about how does Luis heal among other guys that have been hurt and not pitched a lot of innings in recent years? How does he handle the workload, the wear and tear of the

season over the course of the year? Right? Things are smooth sailing early on, but what happens come August if he's still pitching well in this rotation? Does the K-rate drop? Does the stuff deteriorate? Does the command slip then? Those would be some of the concerns. We've even seen with Jared Jones. And, and this is something that I'm starting to see. It's sort of patterns in over time, which is you, you know, young rookie comes up, throws as hard as he can to get everyone's attention. Um, and then sort of settles in as a, as a starter.

Uh, Jared Jones was like a one 33 stuff stuff plus when he got into the into the league. And I I'm doing rankings right now and he's one of the biggest losers in stuff plus. But you know, he's down to one twenty five. Like, you know, don't cry for me, Argentina. So, you know, I just feel like with heel, there's some of that risk. Also, what did he top out at? We topped out at, uh, looks like around a hundred innings in 2021 and he's already got 50 under his

belt now. I doubt, I sorta doubt that they'll let him go all the way, especially since, you know, they have Will Warren who might be a credible starter and at some point they might move heel into the bullpen. Um, I kind of doubt they'll shut him down altogether because he would be a great October weapon. But I just can't see September rolls around and Luis Heal is just regularly starting games

and pitching amazingly. I think the other key to all of that, of course, will be Garrett Cole getting back from his injury eventually, right? If you have Cole back and everyone else holds up physically, then you have the luxury of reducing the in-season workload of Louise Heal and trying to get to a number you're more comfortable with. And then next year, giving him a full run as that number five starter.

Maybe turns into some sort of piggybacker that like is ready to like he, they stays on the roster long, long reliever, but like, you know, one that, you know, if they need Rodon need something or if they need to skip a start heels there. So, um, I, I think it'll be hard for them to demote him, uh, see how good he's pitching, but it may not be a super fantasy friendly role that he ends up in. On the other hand, look at how they used Clark Schmidt last year

when they pushed Clark Schmidt up to 159 innings, which was probably, I don't know, I'm going to say 25, 30 more at least than I would have expected, because like Luis Hill, full seasons were something that were hard to come by. And even the high water marks for Schmidt, at least within the Yankees organization, weren't at the level you just mentioned for Louise Heal. I don't think he hit 100 actually before.

Yeah, I think his 2022 was about 90 and then like 91 and two thirds. I'm doing the math correctly on the fly. So that's not, you know, that's not great. But Clark Schmidt putting it all together this year as well. Just had a fantastic start against the twins last time out. Eight scoreless, eight case, his best start of the season. He had a start recently where all of his strikeouts came against lefties. And I think it was maybe the raise one, I don't know. But it's that to me is amazing because

that tells you that the cutter has come a really far away. And I saw him throwing a lot of cutters low and in off the plate to get strikeouts, which is not where you'd expect a cutter to be. And maybe that's maybe it's just a sort of blip where people haven't caught up to the scouting report yet. But it also shows that he's maturing and where and having command of this cutter in places you wouldn't expect so he's maybe he's able to move that around. He's always been looking for kind of a hard pitch he can throw to lefties to offset the curveball. I've thought he should be just cut or curve

against lefties and that is the basis of his approach've thought he should be just cut or curve against lefties. And that is the basis of his approach, but he still sneaks in some high sinkers and some back foot sweepers to kind of keep him honest. But he's, yeah, it's kind of like the maturing of a process where he's figuring out what works, what pitches work. Yeah, really nice start to the season though for Clark Schmidt.

Interesting, would you rather rest the season Heal versus Schmidt? You take Heal because you got a little more big league experience? I'll probably take Heal just because I'm a stuffist. And I just feel like... It's close though. Huh? It's close though, even in terms of overall stuff. Yeah, I guess so.

I've got right now in my working working ranks Clark Schmidt with a 388 Projection why is Luis? He'll have a 428 projection. It's that it's that it's that location plus that's amazing and then Schmidt has a 19.6 K minus BB and Luis. He'll has a 17.6 which is funny because he has that 31% strikeout rate. So you would have expected his K-minus BB to be better, but the walk rate is so high that it is not. In fact, Clark Schmidt has the better K-minus BB. Those are two things that I did not expect and they're making me rethink the sort of

10 spot difference in the rankings right now. A lot of times when I'm in the rankings, I'm like, what, what can you do for me in the next couple of weeks? You know, and I have to, it's really hard to balance that with somebody like Bobby Miller. Where do I put him? He's hurt. You know, I will be very excited about him when he's not, you know? And, uh, and so Louise Heal, you know, with, you know, pitching right now seems great.

That, you know, it's the, it's an extended version of the Tyler glass. No problem. I've seen a lot of people just put Tyler glass now number one, and I can't, I can't do it yet. Like even my write-up, I say pound for pound. Yes. But how many pounds are you going to get? Well, that's been the problem, the argument forever with Tyler glass now,

but I think you know, which side of that I fall on. My ongoing argument with Tyler Glass now or for Tyler Glass now is that his minor league workloads should count. You can't only look at the big league workloads and say, he never stays healthy. No, he gets hurt. He gets hurt somewhat often, but he doesn't always get hurt. Though don't discount the workloads that he had five or six years ago as an up and down guy trying to figure it all out because those seasons were proof of being able to stay healthy. Even though they're further in the rear view mirror, I get it.

They're not as valuable. They're there. They should still be mentioned. The key with Glass now all along too has been that on a per inning basis, he's always in his last three, four seasons kind of flashed this number one SP ceiling. It's not, it's not like a new set of skills. It's the best ERA projection that we have among starters for sure.

Yeah, yeah, I'm not at all surprised to hear that. I thanks a lot for that question about Luis Hielpeter. Got one in our Discord from Peele's 25. How concerned should we be with Framber Valdez? Yeah, I left him in my top 25, but he's 25th. And just hanging on. You know, the thing that I don't think that everybody gets when they watch him is that Framber is actually a bad command guy

and I Don't know when he added the cutter or the the slider thing I was super excited because the strikeout rate went up. And he does not have the walk rates associated with bad command guys. And because he keeps the ball on the ground, he doesn't have homer rates associated with bad command guys. But we've seen it in the playoffs sometimes. And, you know, like last postseason, he had a 10 percent walk rate and his first postseason, 11 percent walk rate when he came into the league. He had 15 and 13% walk rates.

So I think he's just found places that he can live inside the zone but what that means is if it's not great natural command it could pop up from time to time. You know like I say people always oscillate between in certain bands and if he's like near untenable command, that means he's going to have, he's going to oscillate into untenable command for a couple of starts and come back. That's basically my story for Fromber so far this year is he's just, I've been flirting with the bad command and also kind of not using that slider as much, which tied with the losing time for injury and then

maybe he thinks it's hurting him. I've literally heard people, I've literally asked people, I try not to share it because when you start talking about injury, like people are. So I won't I won't put a name on it, but I've literally asked pitchers like, why don't you throw this pitch more? And they'll be like, it hurts. It's possible it'd be the best explanation for not using that. And in his case, especially the K rate, sort of the pivot point

for whether or not he's going to make value or not this year. Right. And he's got a 19.9% strikeout rate. It's the lowest of his career, if that holds. The control is still good, right? So even if the command's not good, he's not running into that free pass problem that he had earlier in his career. The swinging strikes are still there, right,

in line with these last several seasons. 65% ground ball rate. The homer rate should come down, really. Yeah, homer rate should tick down slightly. I mean, I think it's going to be good ratios. Maybe missing some of the Ks would be the expectation going forward. And then the other part of his value comes back to, are you kind of warming back up to the Astros, the team that has worked through their early struggles and are going to be good at providing ample run support

and bullpen support for starting pitchers to be an above average source of wins? I mean, I think that's the trend they've been on recently. I think they're seven and three in their last 10, took two or three from the Brewers over the weekend. They're starting to look more like the Astros we expected. It was helped by the fact that it was Detroit and Oakland. Hey, you play who the schedule says you play. But I think I'm still mostly in Unfromber.

I think it'd be a pretty low level of concern. They had that missing slider is probably the underlying thing that bothers me the most. Thanks for that question, Peele's got another one from our Discord. This one's from Holy Predator number 72. I don't want to meet the first 71 Holy Predators. Did Ryan Weathers figure something out? Back to this guy again.

People are always asking about him. I mean, he's somewhat fascinating because when he first came up with the Padres, like his fastball had really poor shape and. It seemed like they didn't care. And then he just got, uh, destroyed. And since then he's improved his fastball shape a little bit every year to the point where it's almost average. I'm a little surprised. The sinker hasn't taken off, but even that one doesn't have amazing shape. But at this point what he's become is a true four pitch pitcher that has more options and

has used pitch design to sort of coax the best that he can out of his pitches. Right now he's getting the best horizontal movement on all of his pitches while also getting the best horizontal vertical movement on this four seam fastball that he's ever gotten. And yet, you know, given all that, uh, improvement that he's made, it's still kind of barely good enough. I mean, it's a 99, um, it's not a 99, stuff plus this location. He has a 99 stuff plus fastball, 85 stuff plus sinker, 128 on the slider, 82 on the change with poor command now because the other thing he's doing is throwing as hard as he can

because he's got one foot in the grave and he knows that this is his best chance. So you know throwing 96 on the four seam fastball. I think it's a recipe for injury in the long term. The difference between his maximum and his actual right now is, wow, is less than two miles per hour. So it's small. It's really small. Like the golden number that we've heard from a SMI and their studies is you want three plus four plus is great. Derek Jones is actually at four. I saw in our podcast where you're choosing your fighter.

So Ryan Weathers is at two. And I don't think that's really good for him for also somebody who's had issues in the past. So I don't know for me, Ryan Weathers is somebody I would never trade for him in a keeper league. I would use him as was useful for my season in the current league, you know, much more at home.

Nice to start. I'd be a little nervous about sending Ryan Weathers into Atlanta or something. Sure. You pick your pick your spots with him. I think he's trending toward being a league average starter, not necessarily for fantasy, but for real life. I mean, he's got enough pitches, enough control,

and because of the park, he's just safer than a lot of other guys that are in that same bucket. I do think there's a little bit of what's going on with Fromber where the swing strike rate and the K rate are a little bit misaligned, so maybe we get a few more Ks. You're probably not getting ratios that look like this the rest of the way.

That's where I look at the projections, what he's done so far. I hew closer to the projections, but I think he beats his projections the rest of the way. I think he's like another 420, 125 whips over to guy with an okay strikeout rate. And if you use them correctly and avoid those bad blowups, then you'll be pretty happy.

Stuff plus projections have him with a 463, Sierra a 420, somewhere in there is the truth. Yeah, I think Sierra's got it just about right. Thanks for that question, holy predator. Sierra's underrated, man. It's one of the better kind of ERA estimators that you can just put on your, on your Fangrass dashboard. It's, it is actually a pretty good stat.

And what's interesting about it is it just finds a way to, you know, reward ground balls correctly. And it's, it's a pretty good, it's a pretty good stat. And whether it's gets nice amount of ground balls, 49.4% ground ball rate. He has flashed that ability at various stops throughout his career. More sickers this year. And you mentioned like keeper dynasty, he's still 24 years old.

So while that long-term concern about how close he pitches to his max is absolutely there, I do think you'd find a few willing buyers in many cases, people that would trade for him in longer-term leagues. Maybe that is the centerpiece of a deal. But as like a second or third piece, if you were playing for the future or they're playing for the future and want to just try and get some arms, that could be helpful because the way that rotation is broken down, we six, those Sanchez is in it right now.

So even if Max Meyer starts pitching well at triple A, he's still probably getting bumped first. Yeah. Trevor Rogers could get bumped first. They could go to a six man. So I do think job security for Ryan Weathers is much, much higher here in late May than I would have expected back when the season started.

Here's a fun thing. He has the best stuff plus in the current Marlins rotation. OK. Great result. Great stuff plus. No, not great stuff plus, but the best in the current rotation. Hey, I meant compared to the rest of that group.

That's all. Let's talk about trading, starting pitcher depth. But a question from Rob, he's had a lot of quality pitching to 15 team league. He's got glass now, Kirby gallon, Seth Lugo, cutter, Crawford, Clark Schmidt, Taj Bradley, and a bunch of other like useful depth pitchers clearly has been listening to Ransom Harrells and stockpiling guys we like. And this happens once in a while. You get good fortune on the injury front with pitching. You hit on a few late options and you're the team that everyone is coming to

looking for pitching. And usually in this case, even though you hit in a bunch of pitching, you don't have perfect health and perfect quality up and down your group of bats. You tend to line up pretty well for trades. And this is a keeper league too, so that complicates things a little bit further. But what do you do in a situation like Rob's where you've got this really good group of pitchers that you like, that's performing, how do you decide where to trade from when you have depth like this, knowing some of these guys are gonna bring back

a lot less than others? The Dean Cramers and even the Cutter Crawfords bring back a lot less in a trade than even, Ataj Bradley. And then of course, there's a huge jump up to the gallon, Kirby, Glasnow Group. So where do you find you get the most bang for your buck trading out of that depth? Yeah, I think I would try to use the.

Quantity on your on your side to up the return for a mid tier guy. So could you get a decent return for like Lugo, Kramer and Gray? And does that make you nervous? Of course it should, but it also opens you up to keeping a currently healthy rotation that's full of studs while working on the wire to replace the guys that you, that you just turfed. Um, you know, do you want to, you know, do you want to, you know, do you want to potentially give up somebody that is a little bit more exciting to get a better bat? I put Cutter Crawford in there,

like a Crawford Lugo combo, which would, seems like it would knock something loose. If you really wanted to trade somebody for a stud, I could see doing it with Bradley. I don't know what it is. It's a great fast ball, but it's, I don't know that he has great feel. And that's something that I just had Kyle Quantrill's, you know, semi yelling at me about for 15 minutes was picture feel. And, um,

you know, you see this last start where he just goes out there and he's just amazing. He struck out eight of the first nine batters he saw against Red Sox. It's cruising. And then he gave up two homers and four or five runs the next time through the lineup. And it's just like, there's something there that, that annoys me. It's, um, and, and, and also, you know, you get this year where he's okay. He had last junior like, okay, he's just breaking in. Just, just feeling his way out. Then, you know, I think, I think like a long-term stud, like a Kirby, think of Kirby. Kirby comes,

he debuts, he's fine. What does he come back next year? He says, I'm going to throw my slider 90. Guess what he does? He throws a slider 90. What does he come back the next year? He's like, I throw a knuckle ball and a splitter now, you know, you know, that's, that's the kind of progression I see from someone who kind of continues to innovate and stay ahead of regression. You know, I didn't see like Bradley came back and he's like, yeah, I'm throwing these pitches still. I don't, I don't see like Bradley came back. He's like, yeah, I'm throwing these pitches still. I don't, I don't see you like the cutters a little bit harder.

That's about it. Well, and there's still the up and down job security created by the raise pitching depth, which as they get guys back, Boz Springs adds more questions about how they'll use someone like Bradley in the short term. He still has a couple years of options and stuff, you know, like. So yeah, if you're playing for this year and you find that you're going to get a nice return for Bradley, that's going to help you right away, then I think he makes sense as one of the longer term guys that you'd move. I think of the big three, Glassnow, Kirby, Gallin, I think Zach Gallin would be the guy

you would trade 10 times out of 10, as long as you're getting the value you're expecting to get back, right? You've had some concerns about gallon that kind of go back to draft season. Yeah. And it's interesting. We had another question here, which I'm just going to cannibalize really quickly because we do have to get to some other stuff on the rundown, but we had a question about, you know, stuff plus potentially, uh, misidentifying, um, you know, the situations in Arizona. Um, I would say that right now, uh, where we are in the S in the season,

you can start to look at, uh, things like location plus, uh, and pitching plus I would say that Ryan Nelson continues to be someone I do not understand, continues to do stuff that the model loves and continues to not strike anybody out and not get anywhere with his ERA. So I don't know about that. But Brandon Fott, you know, having above average stuff plus and above average pitching plus, I think he's in the midst of figuring it out He does have a mix that works fully against righties and And not so much against lefties, but I think he's a little bit like Clark Schmidt where he's like figuring out how to get

On lefties now Slade has a 101 stuff plus and a 105 pitching plus But his stuff has actually been falling off. And if you look over the last 14 days, he has a 99 stuff plus and a hundred location plus. And in the last seven days, that's down to a 90 stuff plus on the fastball. So, and a hundred location plus so. I'm a little bit of a guy that like was throwing as hard as he could at the beginning of season and is doesn't necessarily have the feel on his breaking balls ninety one location plus recently.

and on his slider. So when he can't land his breaking balls for strikes and he has to go to the fastball, that's when he loses. So he has good stuff on the secondary stuff but he can't command them as well and good command on the fastball but it's not as good stuff. So I think even within the model you can kind of see how Slade has some upside, but may not figure it out. Whereas Fahd and Gallen, Gallen stuff less is his Velo is actually just come up. You know, he had a bad Velo phase at the beginning of the season and it's come up. But what I do think what we saw in the bad Velo phase from Gallen was that the strikeout rate wasn't there. He managed to, he has feel, he has feel.

So that might be a reason to not, not trade him. But at the same time, when you see a Velo dip like that and then he gets back out of it, I feel like next year we'll see the Velo dip again and he won't get quite as far out of it. And then we'll see the Velo dip again and he won't get quite as far out of it. And then we'll see the Velo dip again and he won't get out of it. You know? So sometime in the next two years, Zach Galland will be sitting 92 and a half. And you think that's when it's going to unravel a bit more? I think so. I just don't think like, you know,

going against Dodgers 92 and a half, I mean, you can have four pitches, but, and good feel, but it's, it's not usually the not usually the way it doesn't usually turn out good for you. So I think maybe gallons the one. The other argument, of course, is just glass now because of health. But we already already sussed through that one real quick. I mean, hey, if you want the sun, the moon and the stars, you want a first round bat back in the trade, then there's your path to get it. Might still be worth it.

I mean, like if you're getting a first round bat, like that is worth more than a first round arm. It is. Right. You could make that trade. Glass now could win the Cy Young and the NL and you'd say, I got a first round bat back. Like I'm not unhappy. I got enough pitching.

So I mean, you have to have balance to win the league. So that would be the other approach. Even if someone really likes Tyler Glass now, I'm not against that because I think that rotation was deep enough where you could get away with it. I'm always trying to have my cake and eat it too. So what I would be trying to do is protect those top three guys, keep them and trade from the lower end of my rotation. Yeah, I mean, you can try, but I think Taj Bradley's

the name you circle and say, that's the one that we're like, yeah, sure. You could like him and he can be good, but he might not be good right away. And you're giving up the future value. And Bradley and Cutter-Croffer together is like, that might knock loose a real nice bat. Yeah. Give it a shot. Thanks again for that email, Rob.

Let's get to a question here about Dalton Varsho. Are we still optimistic about Dalton Varsho? I'm seeing a player who strikes out less and walks more due to fewer swings and is sacrificing solid contact It's not really working out that question comes from Tobias in our discord Yeah, I mean not really working out but he has eight homers and five stolen bases. He's gonna finish the season really close to 30-20 Yeah, it's it's that it's like it's a 214-301-441 line. So yeah, the power is back up to where it was in 21 and 22.

So the power has recovered, but the slash line, the first two pieces of that slash line are still kind of gross. And it's not like he walks, like he walks. He doesn't care. 52% fly ball rate, which leads to a 232 babbitt, you know, which he kind of has earned. Yeah, he's a, I mean, he's a fly ball machine. It's weird though, because he runs well enough

or even as a fly ball machine, he's a little unlucky right now in balls and play. I think relative to his career norms, right? By 30 points of babbitt. So if you were to just give him 30 points of babbitt right now, he'd be 30 points of Babbitt. So if you were to just give him 30 points of Babbitt right now, he'd be in the 240, 330 range with those first two numbers. And then with that power speed combo, you'd say, that's fine. That works.

Even currently he's 13% better than the average with the bat, which is kind of amazing. I think it's just proving that the higher water mark for average and OBP is probably what we saw back in 21. That kind of first air quotes full year, it was like a half season with Arizona. But the power speed combo is good enough and the playing time is stable enough because the defense is great. Where I think he continues to chop his way through it. One critique I have seen of Varsho is that he might lag in runs and RBI's because

of where he hits in the order because he's not on base as much as he should be. So I think that's valid. And then the part of that is that the J's just, they're still not quite right as a lineup, as we've talked about a few times. So that's a bit of a limiting factor as well. But if you can look at the projections and say like, Hey, look, it's more batting average than we're getting right now. Similar power, good, good Homer, good steel totaled in the season. It's good enough to play in a ton of formats. It's the, I just ran a year to date 15 team value in the auction calculator, five by five, five OF.

Hmm. Is that worth like 18 bucks? Cause the average is so low. Geez dude. That was pretty good. So it is 1750 and he's the 23rd best outfielder. Yeah. Yeah.

I was just a little surprised by the thing because to me he's been, he's been a valuable, like I've, I'm glad I have him where I have him and it's worked out, but it is a little bit. Schwabarian. It is like less power, but more it shifts a couple of the categories to be a little more of a balanced Roto profile. But it also makes it harder to own because he's still like one-handedly punting your batting average. Yeah. right. You could take one or two guys like this.

You can't take four or five. So it depends on how you take one or two. I would assume right now you are in the lower third of your batting average. And really, we should dig into that for a future episode. Since we're running a little light on time real quick. Let's take a look back at where the money went this weekend. Luis Matos had probably the best week of his career going forward even. I mean, we like him, but 16 RBI's

last week, two homers hit 385, only struck out one time. So that juiced up the bidding quite a bit. We liked him, we still do going into the bidding quite a bit. We liked him. We still do going into the weekend. So he was on the receiving end of some pretty big bids, even in 12 team leagues, where initially I was a little bit hesitant to say that you definitely wanted to have them. Those are from five outfielder leagues, though. So he's going to play enough where I think it does make sense for him to have been somewhat aggressively picked up.

The most frustrating thing that happens in weekly fantasy baseball leagues, one of the most frustrating things just happened on Monday. Joey Ortiz, who's in this nice run where he's playing really well, gets picked up in more shallow leagues, gets banged up on Monday, gets hit by a pitch in the ankle. Looks like he might need some time. We'll see if we get an official word. But what it makes me want is midweek IL swaps.

Midweek IL swaps, Tout Wars has them. Very, very few sites offer this as an option. Tout Wars is by unrode. Beyond like NFC's like, you know. Right, the Friday swap a guy out. If you can't get the midweek IL removal option because your league provider doesn't have it, if you can't get the midweek I.L. removal option because your league provider doesn't have it. If you can at least set another weekly deadline to change guys out,

you have that built in that way. It's so frustrating to have guys get hurt and then miss a good chunk of a week or a full week. And some cases I play in some leagues where it's locked all week. Third inning of the of the Monday game. Yeah. The way to make fantasy baseball better for weekly leagues is to have a work around for that.

I think the midweek IL activation, we need that for the future guys that come off the IL can be put in guys that get hurt can come out one shot and you can't tinker with the lineup beyond that, but it's just fixing those things as they come around. That needs to be normal. One thing I do want to say about a couple of the names on this list and not so much Joey Ortiz, cause I actually, I really like Joey Ortiz and I hope he's fine.

And I, and you know, if it is only a couple of days missed, you know, don't drop him right away. Like I'd want more news on him because he's got a potential there, to have a guy that in a full season would hit two 75 with, you know, 18 to 20 homers and in five stone bases. So I think he's a pretty good player and he has some defensive abilities, eligibility that might be useful in your league. But, um, I do have some shade to throw around on two of the three or four biggest names

that were picked up one Louis Matos, like, I don't know what his deal is. I think he thinks he's more than what he is. If he, I think if he just embraced who he was and became a guy who hit, you know, 35% grounders, you know, 35% fly balls, 30, you know, like kind of like a lot of line drives, just tried to spray it, um, and didn't swing for the fences and use the most of his natural contact abilities, he would be a pretty decent player. Um, but he plays, he's trying to hit 48% fly balls right now. And he's done this before in his career where I think he thinks he's a power

hitter and I just don't know that he is a power hitter cause a 108, 109 eggs of velocity does not speak to that. And a career 3% barrel rate in the big leagues does not speak to that. So that's weird. Then people think of him as oh he's a center fielder, he's speedy, but he has basically average sprint speed. He's not a very good center fielder. If they do find other options over the next few weeks, it may not be just oh it's Luis Montos all the way through. And he's not going to give you many stolen bases. So the Giants especially don't steal bases.

So they're not going to, he's not getting plugged into a Cincinnati red situation where they're like, yeah, just go, you know, they're going to be cautious with them. So yes, you're going to get a decent average probably, but he's going to make that average worse by hitting so many fly balls. It's not going to be a Luis Araya's you know 300 average he's going to be a lot like Jung-Hoo Lee with maybe a lower batting average and and so I don't know some people did some really aggressive bidding there the other one that I was really surprised about was Miguel Vargas I mean people were putting some serious coin down because Miguel Vargas. I mean, people were putting some serious coin

down because Miguel Vargas came up, but I think it was a short-term platoon replacement for Max Muncie. That was kind of the corresponding move as I saw it, and he's played once since he was called up. So I don't think that Miguel Vargas is worth the money this week. Yeah, he's tricky for a 12 team league, especially. I like him more in the auto new, deeper mixed league, stash someone for the future, see what happens between now and the trade deadline, because I don't know if he's really a part of their long term plan in Los Angeles. He might just be the return for an upgrade that the Dodgers give back later on.

With Vargas too, the thing I liked was that he was producing at AAA, right? I mean, the quality of contact was there, but it was there last year, even after he got sent down with that finger injury. Nothing on paper looked different to me than what he was doing a season ago at the same level. And now he's more age appropriate for AAA.

I mean, previously he was kind of cruising through the minors, a little young for the level before he got up. And I know he wasn't healthy when he got that opportunity with the Dodgers last year, but they're clearly going to need to get an upgrade into their outfield rotation. They need one more piece. He's another guy. If you have a 107, 108, 109 max EV, I don't think you should be hitting 48 to 50% fly balls.

Like that does not make sense to me. I don't know why the Dodgers would let him do that. Maybe he should spray it around a little bit more and try to be, you know, an all fields guy just based on the limitations of that raw. So yeah, that was kind of surprising. I mean, Alec Berlison, like, do you believe in the bat enough for him to be impactful in a 12 team league? I was just surprised that people were as interested in him because he wasn't really on my radar,

even though he's he's been productive on a per plate appearance basis now. I mean, the batting average on balls and plays is a little aggressive. Three thirty three to seventy four for him for for his career. But here's an example of someone I do think is kind of being himself in that his raw power is is average at best. He's one of seven, one nine, one ten and three years he'd been in the big leagues. And his barrel rate is, you know, 6% for his career. But what he does do is he makes contact. He has a pretty good line drive rate. You know, I think that he is a guy who can hit 275 with

15 homers and very few steals. It's interesting that that would be a 12 team or this, this to me has been a guy that has been on my main team and also dropped off of my main team. I think we've owned Burleson and been happy with them and we've treated him a little bit more like a streamer bat than an acquire in a 15 team league. The other hitter that was a popular ad in 12s over the weekend is Jake Meyers. He was on fire in that series against the Brewers and, you know, Chas McCormick has been hurt. So that's left the door open for playing time. Little Profito still striking out a little bit, but I saw him get his first big league

homer last week. It kind of seems like he's making some adjustments and settling in nicely. I mean, you'll take a 333, 381, 436 start through your first 14 games, even with the elevated K rate. So the question I have for you with Jake Myers is do you like the skills? And once McCormick is back, do you think this is just kind of a mess

where everybody has a slightly reduced share of playing time? I mean, the one who's been struggling is Chas McCormick, but he's also. The established one compared to Myers and Loper Fido. I could see Loper Fido actually going back down. It's possible because the other spot, one of the other spots he can play his first base and they seem to like what they're getting from John Singleton there. Yeah.

But on paper, I look at what Singleton is doing and say, hey, like I'm rooting for this guy, but that's the guy I would move on from of all of those guys. I'd rather have Loper Fito playing first base. I did see, I think Chandler-Rome's got a story coming about Jose Abreu being near ready for another look too. So that's your other complicating factor as far as the roster possibly squeezing someone off. Due back today, I think. So all this is happening right now

and we're gonna look like fools no matter what we say. I mean, Myers is gonna stay on the team. Loprofito could go back down. Singleton is One of those things where he may just hang staying hang around because if they do release him he might get claimed at this point He's played well enough that somebody else might take a shot And they the only way to get him off the roster is to release him Because he has no more options so they may just go with Singleton or Breyew

and tell Lopofitor, hey, you may be back in a couple of weeks. You did a great job. Thanks, kid. But the way the roster works right now, we can't have three first basemen basically. Yeah. Well, they've been playing them in the outfield though, at least so that bodes well for the flexibility.

But I think I'm a little nervous about Chas McCormick with everybody else coming back and with Myers playing well I've been waiting on McCormick in a couple of leagues through the IELTS and and now I feel To that he's like a right-hander and like if if they decide that oh, he's just platoon versus lefties that's that's a real fall from grace, but I'd hope that like, you know, they say, you know, let's see what a fully healthy guy can do and give him a shot before we make that decision. That seems like the most drastic decision they could make out of the bunch.

Let's talk about a few of the drops for a moment. James Outman was a heavy drop because he was among the players pushed off the roster by the Dodgers. I kind of like the underlying numbers. Last time we looked for Outman, given his defensive value in center field, I was a little surprised that he got pushed down, but the production has been poor to put it nicely. Who of the three players that were cut this week and a lot of leagues that are healthy, James Outman, Brett Beatty and M.J.

Melendez. Who do you like most longer term as you're trying to figure out where you might find some undervalued long term bats? I mean, Melendez kind of looks like more of the same where if you're in a 15 team league, maybe you're not quite ready to cut them. But if you're a 12, I could understand where you did with Beatty. He just isn't getting to the power as expected. I thought there was a breakout coming. Maybe it's still in there, but I have less faith today than I did three months ago.

And an outman, it's like, hey, if they don't even want him on the roster for his defense right now, he might be on the outside looking in longest for playing time compared to these other two. Yeah. I mean the guy who's still playing I'll take Melendez is still playing. He's heating up. He's two out of his last 12. The the bar is low. Well, the one thing that's interesting on Melendez is that like Max EV barrel rate,

his O swings up a little bit, but pulled rate, like strikeout rate, everything but his walk rate and his BABIP are within normal variance of his regular approach. And I know he's pressing right now and I've seen him and he looks super lost, but there does become a moment, like a moment of clarity where like maybe he decides, hey, instead of chasing my way out of the situation, I'm gonna take my way out of the situation, you know? And I think just a few more takes could lead to some better A-Bs and get him on the going to, I'm going to take my way out of the situation, you know, and I think just a few more takes could lead to some better a B's and get him on the path to, you know, it may not be super exciting, but two 40, um, a guy that would hit 20, two 40, 20, and you know, five plus stolen bases over the course of a full season, which is definitely worthwhile in 15 teamers. I had the interesting situation of two teams at both being 15 team leagues,

uh, one dropping, uh, MJ Melendez and one picking them up. But, uh, that's just what happens when, uh, your teams are, one team's more desperate and the other team's, uh, you know, doing better. Um, but,. But I picked up Luis Matos in TGFBI for 31 bucks, despite my misgivings. And then I also picked up who did I pick up in the Southern League? I got in barf. I got Jack Sawinski.

For six bucks. I'm still banging that drum. I wonder if Sawinski and Melendez can be the Spider-Man meme. Yeah. Because Melendez has had this approach with quality contact for two plus, like two seasons in two months now. And it has not led to that full quality season that it should. It's been really weird and frustrating and he's still just 25.

So I understand why the Royals wouldn't want to give up on him. I don't want to give up on him either. The Bat X has him at 240, 320, 437 for a rest of season projection. That definitely plays in a 15 teamer. I think you're right. If you're in a my roster's killing it situation, then he could be the worst player on your roster, but in most situations, he's probably good enough to be in the lineup of the three.

I might like baby the best in keeper leagues if you're looking for a stash or a or a or a flyer or maybe a throw in, the raw is still there. And there are other players that hit the ball that hard and hit the ball on the ground and have success. It's a little weird that he hits the ball that hard at times and he has a 50% ground ball rate and his babbip has been under 300. Most of the guys who hit the ball that hard and hit it on the ground have good babbips. And it's not like he's a statue, but he's not super fast either. I just, I just assume that like there's a

pathway forward for him where he continues to try and lift the ball and it, and it doesn't work or he just embraces who he is. And this is the theme of the podcast today. And he's like, fine, I'll just hit on the ground. I'm not going to hit a 30 homers, but I'm going to make the most of this and have like a three 40 Bavip. Um, and, and there's going to be this, there's a way for me to, to, to sort of hit my way out of this. So, uh, just, just give me a guy who's hit the ball 114, um, and does not strike out a whole bunch and you know,

has okay defensive chops. And then, um, you know, I'll give them a chance on my squad. This is like, wouldn't the Rays love to put a claim in on Brett Beatty, you know? Yeah. It's interesting that the Mets might actually start playing Mark Vientos over him. Beatty has improved a little bit defensively by most defensive metrics. So that's a good sign.

And Vientos is a DH by most defensive metrics. Yeah. I think you just got to, I mean, and that's, you can't DH Vientos cause you just got to. I mean, and that's you can't do HVN does because you got JD Martinez. So there may be a short term where Beatty, but I would just keep an eye out for him. You know, if he gets if he gets dropped in one of your keeper leagues, you know, I might pick him up. And at that playing time lags for a few weeks in a keeper league, he'll be easier to trade for.

He's already easy enough to trade for, but he'll be a throw in, probably a deal at that point. So, yeah, a lot of players on the move. But I thought those were the more interesting drops. Outman, I think you just have to wait till he comes back at this point before you throw that dart again to see if he can make it work. I mean, what he did last season was really solid, right? Twenty three homers,

16 steals and just 567 plate appearances. We knew the flaw was there at that 31.9% K rate and that flaw didn't change in the offseason but the power basically got cut in half. I mean the barrel rate just nowhere near where it was last season for Outman. So we'll see if he gets another look here. Maybe if Andy Pahez continues to struggle, if he goes through a prolonged stretch and out, it's playing well at AAA, maybe they make that swap. This Dodgers team is definitely one that's not going to be cool sitting on their laurels. So now if you're looking for a team that wants a major league ready guys that the Dodgers can't afford

to wait it out with. Well, there's a few. There's Outman, maybe Vargas, Gavin Lux. Who is the cell? We should do this Well, there's a few. There's Outman, maybe Vargas, Gavin Lux. Who's the cell? We should do this on a, we should look at what players they could actually, maybe next Tuesday we'll do that. Start playing early matchmaker for the trade deadline. Sounds like a good time.

Until then, if you don't have a subscription to The Athletic, you can get one at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. Find Eno on Twitter at EnoSarris. Find me at Derek van Riper. Find the pod at rates and barrels. That's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. We're back with you on Wednesday. Thanks for watching!