Rates & Barrels - A Different Ball, Hitters with Improved K% & Relievers w/Starting Potential

Episode Date: August 25, 2020

Eno and DVR discuss the latest changes to the baseball, hitters with improved strikeout rates in the first half of 2020, relievers with the potential to become starters, and more. Rundown0:47 How Much Should We Weight Fantasy Performance in 2020?12:34 The Baseball Has Changed (Again)20:21 Hitters with Improved Strikeout Rates24:01 A Brandon Lowe Breakout in Progress?28:53 What Do Teams Care About in Small Samples?37:42 Relievers with Future Potential as Starters45:50 Who Stole Dustin May's Strikeouts?50:36 Choosing Between Jose Berrios & Zac Gallen Long Term55:25 Devin Williams' Changeup60:24 Is Brad Keller the Real Deal? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail: [e-mail] Get 40% off a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Interested in picking up a Dugout Mug? Go to dugoutmugs.com/TheAthletic and use promo code “MLB30" for 30% off your first purchase! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 129. It's Tuesday, August 25th. Derek Van Riper here with Eno Saris on this episode. Guess what? The ball is different yet again. We'll talk about how it is different here in 2020. And we'll discuss hitters with improved strikeout rates this season, young relievers with potential paths to starting roles in the future, and several great mailbag questions as well. Eno, how's it going for you on this Tuesday? It's going well, and i'm ready to talk

some baseball i've you know there was a discussion last night on twitter about how much we should wait how well uh a fantasy manager does in this season you know there are these metrics like you know in tgfbi there's like a there's like an overall ranking uh that's like a multi-year ranking and some i think smata fantasy baseball who who handles that um ranking was saying like maybe we shouldn't wait this year at all and i was arguing that we should wait at some um maybe less than exactly how long the season was compared to other seasons, just because it has been difficult. But I do think that as much as the season has been trying, I think it has taught me some stuff about FAAB, about team construction. I used to be all pitching on my benches, and I have definitely gone over to more hitting

on my benches as we've had these COVID cancellations and just realizing how hard it is to always field as many plate appearances as you'd like. So if I've learned from this season, I feel like it says that this season was worth something and that, you know, we're all out here playing. I feel like it does mean something. And I'm not sure it means as much as a full season, just because there are so many things that you could just paper over in a long season and be like, oh, that was just a bad stretch. Whereas in this season, it'll turn into a player, a value killer for a player. So it is not a full 162, but I, and I've had some difficulty playing this year.

It hasn't been as fun as usual, right? Yeah, I've found that it's not as fun as it has been in the past because of the attrition caused by players being sick, games being postponed, and then injuries being up as well. You turn the injuries up from 5 out of 10 to 10 out of 10. That just makes everything really frustrating. Even when you have weekly pickups, it doesn't feel like you're making enough moves. You have enough opportunities to make moves in those leagues to even offset your absences. I had a league, made moves yesterday, had everything all lined up. I made moves on Sunday, thought I was covered.

Monday rolled around, I didn't even have a full lineup. That was literally a day coming out of fab. You almost always have a full lineup coming out of that i mean that was the whole point yeah like i don't think that's a you're a bad player sort of thing i think that's just this is a weird year and it's just really hard to find enough at bats and enough innings to offset all the absences and i do think the balance of hitters versus pitchers probably needs to be more even this year multi-position eligible guys are always so helpful when you have them and i think we've never really had a great way of waiting what that means during draft season i think we've often talked about it as more of a tiebreaker

we're looking at two similar players or maybe plus $1 if we're talking about auction values. And I wonder if there's more there. There's something to be said for having more versatile players, especially in this season. But I wonder if coming out of this year, we're going to see a little more of a premium placed on the guys who carry eligibility at two or three positions entering 2021. Yeah, I was just looking at labor and my god steve gardner is number one again i think i don't know if it was last year the year before he won both he's just a legendary fantasy player and the weirdest thing was i was like i don't what is why is this team good and then i came to david fletcher's name and i was like I just having David Fletcher in labor he has like eight eligibilities you know

it's just like you can just put him wherever you need him and get batting average and get playing time so I do think those multi-eligibility guys are going to be more helpful in the future and that you know I've always wanted to have like one of those guys in labor because of how shallow the roster is and I've got Daniel Robertson who I'm hoping will play some in San Francisco and that'll be useful to me but Daniel Robinson is no David Fletcher he's not David Fletcher hitting for a little more power this year it's not like the average exit velocity is way up but seeing him hit a few home runs to go with that good batting average, with that high volume of playing time, with that versatility, it's made him a really nice, pretty late round pick or cheap auction buy in a lot of formats. I'm looking at my NL Labor team right now, and this just makes me laugh every time I see it.

I have four pitchers out of nine with ERAs below one, and I have three pitchers out of nine with ERAs above five. So my ratios are actually not that good because it's mostly my relievers. It's Hayter and Kenley Jansen and Lucas Sims and Devin Williams who are all helping with the ratios, which is good, but I'm not getting enough innings because I'm running four relievers out there right now. And then I you know lynn bloom and descafani uh and ross stripling who've all had some major blow-ups at some point this season all in my rotation and i think that league as we've talked about before is really challenging because you can only remove a player from your active lineup if they get sent down or if they go on the il otherwise you have to cut them and there was no

point prior to their respective blow-ups in which i would have considered cutting any of those three starting pitchers so my only hope in rallying back is that they just get back to being the guys that i expected them to be all along and then i'll just make up a lot of ground in the ratios categories over the next few weeks i guess but you know it's also time to cut bait. I just cut Michael Fulmer because I need to get some saves. I got Peter Fairbanks in there and Fulmer, you know, I looked, I actually looked at DRA over in baseball perspectives and Fulmer's DRA deserved run average is around nine. Um, whereas John means is, was like 3.9. So, you know, I respect both of their stuff and I think that long-term, uh, both of them will be decent, useful pitchers, but in this season, Michael

Fulmer coming off of Tommy John surgery, uh, and just showing such poor results and apparently deserving them, uh, you know, I had to move on. And the other thing is like, I, you know, I may not have been aggressive enough in FAB in the past the past this year i put went full bore on the aggressiveness doing the whole dylan carlson and joe adele gambit and other things uh i think my average amount of fab left across the leagues where i do that is like probably around eight percent yeah that's uh that's a tough way to play it i mean i'm gonna be i'm in dollar days already for the rest of the season i've got a couple like that too but it's definitely not the strategy i've used the most i've tried to be aggressive i've tried to spend about double the

clip that i would normally spend at because i don't want to sit there at the end of the season and have 20 or 30 percent of my budget left that's not going to help me right right? So if I think Brad Miller is the best available hitter in my league, I'm going to spend a lot more than I ordinarily would on Brad Miller. Or if I think that Casey Mize or Tarek Skubal are going to be fine over what's left of the season, I'm going to push up the bid from 10% or 15% to 15% to 20%. I'm going to go that extra mile to get what I need. So I think that's all

going to be fine because what's going to be different about the end of this season, at least what I expect to be different at the end of this season, without September call-ups, we're not going to have a bunch of new players entering the pool at the end of the year. Without roster expansion late, without the contending teams just turning to a wave of new players for the final month there's not going to be as many interesting players to bid on in the final few weeks that's my expectation that's my hypothesis at this point and i would i would add to that that i think that the general arrow on the trade deadline is down i think it has to be just because of the parity in the league that we've talked about and

the lack of quality players available for the non-contending teams like we already saw the phillies make that deal that was friday night with the red socks brandon workman heat hembrie are gone clearly the red socks are going to move a few other players i mean mitch morland it's a nice platoon bat but he's not going to be a guy that changes a lot of fortunes in fantasy leagues. If he crosses leagues, sure, it's nice to get a player that enters the pool who brings steady value like that. But I mean, in terms of who replaces him, it's probably going to be a combination of players who pick up those extra plate appearances, too. So I just think there's going to be a pretty limited number of useful late season pickups, fewer than usual. And normally, I do think the end game of the season, if you're really active

in fab, I think that's where you can get a bit of a leg up. It's a waiting game in some ways, and you got to be patient, and you got to be really good about following the news and figuring out what's going on with some injuries. Because what happens in a typical season, injured players don't necessarily go on the IL, and we're left to guess as to whether or not they're actually coming back i think the example last season was jose ramirez he had that bad cut on his hand if you ever seen that picture on twitter and instagram it was pretty gross and it was a multi-week injury and it looked like he was done for the year but he came back i think for the final week or final two weeks and there were some leagues where he was picked up for year, but he came back, I think, for the final week or final two weeks.

And there were some leagues where he was picked up for a couple of bucks in fab and he had a good finish to his season. That made the difference. That won leagues for some people. Yeah, but I think, again, the arrow on a situation like that might be down because it's just like, would Jose Ramirez, if the Indians were not going to the postseason, would Jose Ramirez, like if the Indians were not going to the postseason, would Jose Ramirez come back this year?

Like, I think most people would just be like, nope, I'm done. This season's too weird. And the other thing that I think that points the arrow down on trade deadline that we just haven't mentioned yet, I just wanted to say is that I think that most player executives, most front office executives are risk averse. And this season just screams risk. So if you were considering a deal where you send Christian Pache, or is that how you say it? I should check all before we start, but I didn't think i'd say his name today but like if there was a if there was a

reason to trade christian pache for mike clevenger maybe a deal like that could happen because they're both long-term assets but the closer you get to it being a short-term asset the more a team this year i think is just going to be like nah dude you're not i'm not going to give you much for you know the next three four weeks like it's just too weird. Yeah. I think I've noticed that in our circles when trying to make deals in keeper and dynasty leagues, there are players trying to win the league this year because there are still monetary prizes available, flags fly forever, but the number of buyers in most of my leagues is smaller than it should be when you consider how soft every category really is in

a rotisserie league. You could still have a team get hot and close a 20-point gap between now and the end of the season pretty easily. You could probably close a 30-point gap in standings points in some cases just because everything is so bunched together. And in some of the negotiations I've had, it's been a response of, well, that would make sense in a normal season, but I can't give you that much in terms of future value for a rental in a shortened season. And I just think you could, you're just choosing not to. So I do think that's just a way that our minds work. It's a way that teams are going to look at this.

They're going to say, you know what? I might as well just hang around in the race. I might as well keep these guys unless there's a real dire dire penny pinching situation and getting every last dollar off the payroll for the final five weeks as a priority i think it is going to be a pretty underwhelming trade deadline overall let's talk about the baseball though because you had a piece that went up on the athletic just before we started recording here on tuesday the ball is different yet again, and it's changing the way pitches move. So as the headline suggests, what do we do with this? Now how do we react? How do we account for the changes to the ball this time around? I think of it a couple of different ways. I did not put this in the piece,

but we've talked about it on here that Derek Cardy when he was making his projections did not assume that he had that the baseball would have last year's ball and so when he did the bat projections for this year he regressed the the run environment basically he regressed the ball uh and had to project the ball as a separate factor. And I think that was really smart to do. Because what happens, we've got a ball right now that's acting like the 2018 ball. It's not acting like the 2019 ball, which is the most aggressive, hitter-friendly ball that we've seen, maybe ever. And so by acting like the 2018 ball, there's less drag.

Home runs per fly ball are down. Offense is down a little bit, and on top of that, pitchers are moving more. So that's a positive for the pitchers in a couple different ways. It may not be so easy to see given the way pitchers are being used. And it's also hard to kind of be like, oh, this pitcher has more movement this year. It must be from the new ball. Because we're also doing pitch design and player development at the same time. And we're changing those. Each of those pitchers is trying to actively change the way those pitches move.

And so it's very hard to even sort of match player to player and be like, oh, this moved more and this moved less because of the ball. So in the end, in the piece, I was kind of like, well, I think the ball's been changing all the time, you know, going back. And we've just been able to measure it now. And for the most part, player development executives are kind of throwing up their hands and saying, well, you know, there's nothing I can do about it. So I basically just aim for the middle and try to do my best with what I have. And I think that's what fancy players have to do with this caveat of like, maybe it's a good idea to kind of project the run environment to kind of regress the run environment and not just assume they're going to have the ball you had last year. The other changing variable too,

as it pertains to results that pitchers are getting is the approach of hitters and i think one of the more fascinating graphics in the piece is the hitting the hard ones higher graphic if anyone's looked at the piece they'll know what i'm referring to it's a league average launch angle in degrees on balls hit at 95 miles per hour or harder year over year since 2015. And it's pretty steadily increased. The only drop I think was from 17 to 18. And in 2020 thus far, that average launch angle is as high as it's ever been for hard hit balls, which has to be almost entirely a reflection of how the league is trying to attack pitches collectively, right? It's not just the Twins. It's everybody really trying to hit the ball in the air more consistently,

and it's clear that it's happening. So a lot of damage is being done because hard-hit balls at 95 with a 14-degree launch angle, as we're seeing in 2020, are going to lead to a ton of home runs. Yeah, and the further you push that, the more risk you have in, like, so the twins are kind of averaging around 20, and that means they're hitting balls at 25 and 28 and 30, and, you know, if the ball is super lively,

you can hit, like, sort of like a 33-degree angle pitch at 95 miles an hour, and it'll go out, even though it's kind of a sky ball, right? And, you know, the further you kind of push that, the more you're at risk for the rug being pulled out from under you. And I think that some people were worried that that's what happened to the Twins in the playoffs last year, is that the ball kind of changed, was de-juiced in the playoffs.

Perhaps they used a mix of 2017, 2018, and 2019 balls, and all of a sudden it seemed like there were more warning track balls, and the Twins felt like some of their power advantage was taken from them. We don't actually know how true any of that is, because we don't really have that you know a total transparency from baseball in terms of what balls were used and and um how uh how much drag they had in the in the playoffs um we can get sort of surmise and and make some guesses about what happened in the playoffs but it is a bit of a Pandora's box. Now that we can measure this, now that we know that the ball has varied fairly widely since the beginning of 2015,

we've had a ball that was mostly dead to one of the livest balls ever. This is within the manufacturer's specifications. Maybe those specifications need to be tightened because this kind of variance kind of makes your head turn. Well, it seems bad for everyone, right? I mean, for pitchers, and Brandon Woodruff was quoted in the piece, it's like some pitchers are getting more movement,

but are they getting more movement because of pitch design, because of changes they're making, or are they getting more movement just because the ball is different and they're doing the same thing they're always doing, but the variable that's changed is a variable that's outside of their control? Yeah, and it's very uncomfortable. That's how I started with the Verlander thing that anybody who listens to this podcast has heard before, where Verlander kind of shouted at me from the other part of the clubhouse and made me recant all the knowledge that I had about the juice ball in front of all his hitters, that's what's super uncomfortable about all this is just even talking to anybody.

Because if you're talking to a pitcher about the ball, yeah, okay, you can get them to be like, yeah, it's juice. Well, what if it's a little bit less juice this year? And what if that means you get more movement? Are we now uncomfortable? Yes, because talking to the middle of the Tigers lineup about how the ball was juice, that was super uncomfortable. Because I didn't want to make any implications about them hitting more homers.

Maybe they did some hard work. And maybe that's why, in the end, the player development executives also throw up their hands, because this conversation is not going to go well with my players. So we're just not going to worry about it. Yeah, I was just reading that quote in the piece, and I got the vibe that it wasn't verlander like in a very chill way being like yo you know come over here no you

i mean you can tell you know what he's like no he um he does not seem particularly chill it It's not the same as Darwin Barney yelling, nerd, across the clubhouse at me. That was actually way chiller than it might seem on paper. But yeah, come over here and tell these hitters what you just said about the ball. That doesn't seem like a very comfortable situation to be in the clubhouse.

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numbers. It's probably because he's a weird player. We've talked about him maybe as much as any player we've discussed on the pod over the last year or so. And what really struck me with him was that his strikeout rate had improved a lot since last season. And I think my biggest concern with him was that he did strike out quite a bit in the minors while he does draw a ton of walks. I just worried that with the strikeouts we saw in the past, especially in the upper levels of the minors, if he was going to be a 28 to 30% K rate guy, and he was going to have trouble making hard contact consistently, I thought there was a good chance he was going to have trouble making hard contact consistently, I thought there was a good chance he was going to be a disappointment. Instead, he sort of followed the same script

from AA to AAA between year one and year two in the big leagues thus far, cutting the K rate from 28.6% last year to 19.7% this year. He's got six homers. He's four for four in stolen bases. So he's now 18 for 18 in his big league career. He still a weird player i'm not gonna say we're brushing this aside and just saying oh yeah he's not weird anymore he's definitely a unique player because of the extreme fly ball approach and the likelihood that even with a low k percentage his batting average probably won't be as high as it should be because of his batted ball types but as you get more on biggio especially do you look at this approach and say actually this does work because when we were talking about him back in october and november i was definitely more on the skeptical side than

the optimistic side especially for a guy that was pretty consistently in the 120 to 140 range in terms of his overall average draft position yeah he seems extremely passive in the the overall numbers that are a little bit confounding to me how has he struck out less when he's swinging even less like i would have figured that maybe he'd swung more early in counts or something um trying to find evidence of that uh that he's swinging more early in counts. But, you know, with two strikes, a little bit of extra aggression with no strikes. But, you know, I don't know how Biggio is doing it. But I would have assumed, like I said, that he would have been more aggressive

and kind of not fallen to called strike threes. Maybe he's stringing more with two strikes and making some contact. But it's obvious that he has a decent hit tool and it's obvious that he makes the most out of his batted balls and it's obvious that he can run

a little bit. So maybe we've sold his athleticism short a little bit and So maybe we've sold his athleticism short a little bit. And that really the entire only negative, really the biggest negative about him is he's too passive. And that's how he gets those strikeouts. Yeah, I mean, and that's somewhat correctable over time with experience. He's a little old, of course, for a guy that still hasn't played a full season's worth of big league games. But 22 homers and 18 steals in 127 career games,

it's a really nice player. That's tracking close to a 30-20 guy, albeit with a low average, but with the kind of OBP that would steer him to the top of a batting order. And being at the top of that batting order in particular could be really good in terms of run scored. I mean, you mentioned the athleticism might have been something that we've slept on. He might be the kind of guy that is among the league leaders in run scored at some point at his peak. So you put that on top of the power and speed and look at him as a guy who's not

a batting average liability necessarily, even if he's not an asset in that category. And that's a better fantasy player than I expected. Now, I think beyond BGO, this got me wondering, who has improved the most so far with their KF percentages? You ran a query before we started recording, so who are some of the names that popped up as the biggest improvers among hitters in strikeout rates so far this season? Well, it's a fun list.

I just took last year's strikeout rate, this year's strikeout rate minus last year's strikeout rate, and the biggest improvers that have at least 80 play-to-prints this year are Brandon Lau, Aaron Hicks, Joey Votto, Kevin Biggio, Brandon Nimmo, Kyle Seeger, Bryce Harper, Trevor Story, Evan Longoria, Austin Nola. Like, for the large part, most of these players are having better seasons than they had last year.

You know, strikeout rate is key. It's putting more lotto tickets in play. It also says something about your approach to the plate. For Brandon Lau, I think the mechanism of this improvement is pretty obvious. He had some crazy-ass splits last last year he's horrible against lefties last year not just like bad but was it and i'm not exaggerating did he have a 55 k rate against lefties last year i found it here he had a 2.9 walk rate and a 52.9 strikeout rate against lefties i mean he did i mean i've never really seen that before.

Yeah. 52%. So, uh, this year in 2020, uh, his strikeout rate against lefties is 14%. I mean,

it's too much. You know what I'm saying? Like it's too far. It, it, it doesn't make any sense. It, it's mind boggling to go from 52% to 14% against strikeouts,

against lefties. I would say that Lau wasn't ever as bad as those splits, and he's not as good as these splits. And I think this is the sample size problem, right? Yes. Cardi all the time says that there's no such thing as a lefty masher when it comes to a righty who crushes lefties just because the samples are so small that the math doesn't really support it yes all righties are better than lefties

in general but like to say that some person mashes lefties more than other righties that's i think that's a part of the a key part of what he's saying too right but this is kind of an offshoot of that conversation even though we're talking about lefty-lefty, where the opportunities for Lau this season and last season are still so few that you can't look at the 50-plus percent from last year or the sub-20 percent this year in that split and say, it's meaningful, this is who he is. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. It's probably high 20s, low 30s, something along those lines. And then you have to get inside the head of the Rays. How much are the Rays going to let him play against lefties

if they have everybody healthy and available? That's the other part of this too. If you want a closer estimation of his true talent, I would look at his line against righties this year, which is still excellent but gives you a better sense of who he is. 12% walk rate, 26.5% strikeout rate. I think that's a better way in. 274 average, 361 OBP, 589 slugging. Maybe the slugging is a little aggressive, but he's a guy who hits the ball hard and is good

at lifting the ball. So I would say that I believe that he is a 260 hitter that could hit 30 home runs in a full season. And he walks a little bit too, so he's not going to be buried in the batting order either. He's a very good player. I do like that about Lau too. I mean, he was affordable in drafts this season, so definitely a guy that's going to be on some winning teams, I think, just based on what he cost and what he's been able to do so far. I think you're right. If you're expecting 304 the rest of the way, you're expecting a little too

much in that batting average category. But because he hits the ball hard, because he's hitting the ball more often, there's definitely a lot to like in the underlying numbers. There's something that we learned here too, I think, which is that not every player's early, and this is something we can transition out of later, but this is something important to learn, which is just because a player is being platooned early in their career does not mean that that is a fait accompli the rest of their career. Especially if the team they're playing on is really good. Think about Michael Brousseau, who's the opposite of this. He's their guy who comes in against lefties and plays second base. Is he that forever? Or will he be traded to a team that will play him more often?

At 26, if the Rays do take a step back, do they give him a full-time role? Do they give him Yandy Diaz's role at some point? So there are different ways forward than it seems in the present sometimes. And this is true even when we're talking about a full season, but I would love to know more about what teams care about in limited samples. What moves the needle for them internally and gets them to say, hey, let's give Brasso more time. Let's take the chance on Brasso over Yandy or whoever it is.

I think something like this could also apply to Taylor Jones in Houston. What does Taylor Jones have to do in very limited playing time to possibly play his way maybe into the first base job next year? I heard our Astros writer Jake Kaplan talking about Uli Gurriel is a free agent at the end of the season, so first base will be open. And Taylor Jones is one of those guys that in a world where Jordan Alvarez is healthy, he has to go play first base. And if he only gets a handful of opportunities to play this year, If he only gets a handful of opportunities to play this year, even with Alvarez out, what would it take for the Astros to go, actually, this is our guy. We have our next first baseman already.

We're not going to spend in free agency. We're going to go ahead and fill this vacancy with an internal option. I mean, it's the stuff that we talk about. I think that when we talk about trying to evaluate pitchers in small samples we talk about looking at the movement of their pitches and their velocity and their pitch mix i think the same thing is true uh for hitters the the version of stuff for hitters is max as max exit velocity barrel rate uh contact rates and swing rates those are the those describe Those describe the process that they're undergoing. Once you start talking about like ISO, slugging, OVP, those are all results. And those are all noisier because they involve the fielder and they involve the opposing pitcher more and they involve more sources of noise.

But if you're just talking about, did this guy reach at a lot of pitches, when he did make contact, did he hit one really far and really hard, and did he consistently put the barrel on the ball? I think those are the types of things that they're looking at. Yeah, and you look at Taylor Jones, he's 28th in terms of average exit velocity out of 512 hitters. You've got to set the minimum to one batted ball event just to get him included. But in that really limited opportunity, he has hit the ball hard.

The max exit VLO is more like middle of the pack so far. But you look at this guy. I mean, he's 6'7", 225-plus pounds. 12 balls in play. I don't think you would. It's funny. The max EV thing is funny because you can't – I don't think you can use it in the negative as well as you can use it in the positive. If somebody guy comes up and hits a ball one hundred and fifteen

miles an hour, you have to sit up and take notice. It's immediately meaningful. But if a guy hits twelve balls and the most is one hundred and six, he may hit one hundred fifteen the next time out. There's still there's still chances for him. He's only put 12 balls in play. I wouldn't say that his max EV is... We know everything about it. The Astros, for example, know much more about his max EV because they're also recording his max EV at the alternate site.

Right. They've got a good sense for how hard he can really hit the ball. I think the answer to that question is harder than we've seen so far. I think the average exit velo kind of points to a guy that's going to have the ability to just scorch the ball when he gets a hold of one. So he's pretty interesting for keeper purposes, for dynasty purposes. Even if he's not playing a lot right now, I try to sneak him out of long-term rosters and just see what are they going to do. There's a decent chance that he's going to play some sort of role in 2021, even if he continues to be more of a part-time guy at this point in the season. This Astros team is just getting crushed by injuries. It has been just about everybody. It's kind of weird that Carlos Correa has been healthy and everybody else.

it has been just about everybody. It's kind of weird that Carlos Correa has been healthy and everybody else has been good, too. Bizarro world. Oh, man. You know, there's some funny other names on that list. I think Joey Votto, for example, is basically just in the death throes of his career. I mean, I'm sorry.

That's a terrible way to put it, but, like, the power is gone. And so what he's trying to do is get on base and prove to pitchers that he can make contact on anything inside the zone. So his swing rates haven't actually changed much, but the power is out of what's come. So instead, he's just making—you even see him when he practices that swing coming up. It's almost like a cricket swing. You know, he does that weird little practice swing. I'm like, you're just trying to make contact on the inside pitch in a way that will go into play. Nimmo is what I would have expected out of Biggio. I think Nimmo is actually

fairly comparable to Biggio. And again, what we're seeing is that he's just not, DiGiulio, and again, what we're seeing is that he's just not, he's not swinging more. It must be, you know, in the shadow zone, if anybody wants to, enterprising researcher wants to look at it, maybe they're just getting better at choices in the shadow zone as they get over time, but do you know, how much do you believe Brandon Nimmo strikeout rate this year at 19%? He's been, uh, you know, above 26, 27% for most of his career and there's no corresponding swing change. It's kind of, uh, flummoxing. That's a good word. I think it is one of those things you could sort of believe in because it always made sense that he could bring the number down a bit. That's terrible analysis, but just looking at the way he judges the strike zone. Looking at swinging strike rate.

Yeah, it is strange that we don't see something in those underlying numbers that supports it. So that's why it's hard to fully buy into this much improvement. But I think it's interesting that his slash line right now in 2020 is basically the same as it was in 2018 when he was getting to more power for the first time. I think it was a wrist injury that he had around the middle of the season. It wasn't really the same after that. So even if I'm not necessarily buying into Nimmo as a sub 20% K rate guy, I think the power he's showing on a per gamegame basis is real, and I think that would be a skill that I'm definitely investing in in the long haul and as we look ahead to 2021 as well. I think it's going to be a weird year. We kind of talked at the beginning of the show about stuff we're learning

this season about our approach and things we're going to try to apply to next season. There's going to be just weird lines that our brains are not used to looking at, and I think we're going to have some really nice values in early drafts especially before everybody sort of adapts to how well these numbers would have translated potentially over a full season and nimmo is the kind of guy because you're not expecting to see a big power number anyway if he finishes with eight or nine home runs and plays 55 games that doesn't jump off the page, but that's actually really good. That's basically a high 20s, maybe even a low 30s sort of home run output

when you start looking at that over a longer season. Yeah, and his barrel rate is good. Best of his career so far, and we're talking about 66 batted balls, so we're getting to be able to talk about his barrel rate. His max EV has gone down over time. He's getting older. That's what happens with athleticism. But as he's lost a little bit in the stolen base and the athleticism, I think he's gained better knowledge of when to swing,

even if it's not immediately obvious what the improvement has been without a deeper dive. I would give him like a 250 25 projection next year i don't know how many stolen bases like three or something but like it'd be more about a handful and in an obp like obviously uh above and beyond that value he's more jesse winker like than we ever would have thought back five plus years ago when those guys were both prospects. I think most people would have liked Winker better than Nimmo, but they're very similar players as big leaguers for me in terms of what they bring to the table. Our sponsor today,

Manscaped, is here to make sure you're well-groomed above and below the belt. Manscaped promotes clean hygiene when it comes to shaving with their Lawn Mower 3.0 personal trimmer. Manscaped is the only men's brand dedicated to below-the-waist grooming, and the Lawn Mower 3.0 is a waterproof cordless We'll be right back. Get 20% off and free shipping with the code THEATHLETIC at manscaped.com. That's 20% off with free shipping at manscaped.com and use the code THEATHLETIC. And for a limited time, subscribers get not one but two free gifts, including a travel bag, a $39 value, and the patented high-performance Manscaped boxer briefs. So go to manscaped.com today and use code THEATHLETIC. All right, you know, let's talk about this question that sort of simmered up from a mailbag question I received a couple days ago. And the question came from George. It was about Jonathan Hernandez and whether or not he has a chance to be a starter in the future.

And I just wanted to broaden it out and say, you know, what does it take for a young reliever to become an option in the rotation down the road? So we'll talk about Hernandez specifically in just a moment. But as you start to broadly evaluate relievers, what characteristics would you be looking for if you're trying to find someone who fits that bill? Yeah, I think there's three parts. One is a history of starting. I forget who we looked at who just never started.

Carlos Estevez, yeah, before the show, yeah. Because I think one is multiple pitches. You can't just go out there and throw two pitches. I think you really need to have three pitches to be a starter. I know there are Denelson Lamettes, but those are the exceptions. The rule is you need to have multiple pitches to turn the roster over. And a guy like Carlos Estevez has three three pitches but he also has just never started so he's just you you in terms of stretching him out be something he'd never done before it would be weird if carlos

estevez started but uh the other thing is um so two pitches a history of starting. And then I think there's a delicate relationship, and it's hard to sort of just give you a number, but number of years since they started, and why did they stop starting? You know what I mean? Because like, Birch Smith has multiple pitches. Wilmer Font has multiple pitches. These guys have started in the past wilmer thoughts have mostly been opening situations he's mostly a reliever at this point birch smith is mostly a reliever at this point i doubt any of them are going to start

again so it has something to do with how old they are how long it's been since they started and how many pitches they have but we did come up with a couple names um you mean like matt strom for example does have multiple pitches but i mean seth lugo is going back to the rotation so i guess i'd put strom on that list but he's getting to the point where it's been enough years since he last started that I don't believe it. But like Genesis Cabrera started in 2018. Started 18 out of 20 games in the minor leagues in 2018. So, you know, Genesis Cabrera, I think, is somebody that could start again. I don't know how excited I would be about that,

given the results in the minor leagues that he was starting. But I do have a name that I have discovered that I am excited about, and that is Thomas Hatch. Thomas Hatch has a changeup and a slider. The velocity is good, and since he got to the Blue Jays, the ride on his fastball has increased tremendously. Those three things, I think, give him enough to be a starter, and he's not that far from starting in the past, And he's not that far from starting in the past,

and he's not that far from starting in the future. It could be next year. It could be in a trade. He could start for the Pirates this year because there's these rumors that the Blue Jays are going to trade for a starting pitcher. So Hatch, I think, is what we're looking for. Someone who has started in the recent past,

who hasn't given teams an obvious reason why he can't start, is still young enough, and has three pitches. So that's my name for you is Thomas Hatch. Yeah, and I think for people looking for guys like this, they're looking for the best case scenarios, maybe like Adam Wainwright 15 years ago, where he got to the upper levels of the cardinal system as a starter started 41 games i

think between 04 and 05 at memphis wasn't getting great results and you know shifted into the bullpen because of the needs on a playoff caliber team stayed in the bullpen in 20 or 2006 and then moved back into the rotation in 2007. And the rest is history. He's had a lot of success for a long time working as a starter, but it wasn't a straight line. And there was a short-term need that he filled, and eventually he went back to that long-term role.

Hatch is a great name. I think the Jays have been quietly trying to build up their young pitching. I think there was a piece on The Athletic about that. I forget if it was Caitlin McGrath or if it was Andrew Stoughton or if I'm just making something up entirely, but I just read something recently about all the Jays' young pitching that they've gathered from different places, Rule 5 and Small Trades. It's a little bit better than you realize when you start to kind of dig in on some of the names that they have. Maybe not like frontline starter type material, but mid-rotation and and back end guys and it's hard to find those those players if you you know are

trying to trade like you really need to get ahead of the curve and it seems like they could be so i like that hatch pull quite a bit and i think as far as jonathan hernandez goes he was a starter in the minors up through last season and i wonder how much the need to bolster the bullpen was a factor in the decision to bring him up as a reliever again in 2020 you know you look at the way the rangers have used him so far he made a couple starts late last season nine appearances overall all 14 appearances this season have come in the bullpen he does flash the occasional change up as a third pitch. I think he's throwing it a bit less this year than he did a year ago.

And when you look at the velocity, he's averaging 97.5 on that fastball right now. So you bring him down a couple of ticks in the rotation, he'd still be in that 94, 95 range as a starter. Slider's good. If he can find that third pitch, I do think Jonathan Hernandez sort of ticks the boxes of someone that we could see getting stretched back out and possibly working as a starter in 2021. So I thought that was a pretty good observation on the part of listener George. Like I think there's in deeper leagues, there's a good case for Hernandez. If he's available, he might already be stashed away. Maybe he's a good low end sort of trade target. People might

look at him as a staff filler reliever, but his future might be back in that rotation. Let me add one more thing that we're looking for, and I think that Jonathan Hernandez actually fits the bill, is it doesn't have to be great command, but it has to be a lack of terrible command. I think Bert Smith, you know, other than the injury, that's the other thing, is just terrible command. And we've with like josh james josh james has multiple pitches josh james has started recently

josh james had the opportunity to start this year josh james did not have the command to make it work and i do have that it's not necessarily a rock solid finding that i would crow from the mountaintops but i would say that i did have a finding that there's basically a command shelf and that command is somewhat predictive of how many innings you get per appearance, something like command plus. So me personally, it's going to take me a lot, and I mean like Tyler Glasnow a lot and Garrett Richards a lot lot to draft pitchers that have a sub 90 command plus in the future starting pitchers as starting pitchers the not terrible

command is important yeah as we have learned with josh james is the poster child for that because he fits everything else we said before that right yeah so you have to kind of account for josh james in this and i and watching hern, I watched him against the A's last night. He can dot it. He can put that 99 where he wants it. And I would say I've said this before, I think when they brought in Lyles and Gibson,

I tend to trust the Rangers with starting pitching as an above-average team in terms of figuring it out. I know Jordan Lyles has been getting smacked around, but Lance Lynn, Mike Miner, some of the success they've had in free agency, I think some of those principles would apply to game planning with their own prospects that they bring up and guys they trade for. So I do see a little bit of extra reason to be optimistic just based on the org with the home

park probably being a lot less hitter friendly than the old park in Arlington. So quite a few things to like about Hernandez in particular. We've got a few more mailbag questions to get to in just a moment. First, a quick word from one of our sponsors. All right, you know, we've got a bunch of great questions, very specific questions about pitchers, and we'll start with a question from Andy. This is about Dustin May. He writes, I love the show, especially now that it's three times a week. Thank you from Andy. This is about Dustin May. He writes, I love the show, especially now it's three times a week. Thank you, Andy. Question for this week's mailbag. I have Dustin May in a dynasty league at a cheap controllable cost, but I'm wondering if I should be shopping him before our trade deadline on the 31st. I'm particularly wondering where the strikeouts are for a guy with

his velocity and movement. The strikeout rate at the big league level is well below average, and even his minor league rate isn't all that great. Can he keep suppressing runs the way he has if the K rate doesn't rise substantially? Basically, I'm wondering if his value could be sneakily at an all-time high right now, and if I'd be better off trading him for a big haul. Thanks, guys. So what's the takeaway here with Dustin May? Are the strikeouts coming later, or is he almost more of a what-you-see-is-what-you-get-at-least-in-the-short-term with that low K rate? Well, I doubt, even with that massive sinker that he's got, looking at his stuff, I don't think he's going to add a lot of strikeouts. I think he'll be a change-up first sinker guyer as kevin millar would say is um is just not going to have the same strikeout rate you'll get some of it back like if you look at marcus stroman's career

you'll get some of it back with home run rate and so they will have value but i think like with marcus stroman we just don't we don't have a guy who's done that and been a top five pitcher in the big leagues maybe since Halladay. That's an extreme outlier. I mean, I'm talking about a Hall of Famer. Yeah. And I'm calling up his stats right now, so I don't tell you. Yeah, Halladay. And he quit pitching

in 2013 so it's like rest in peace by the way um he was such a great pitcher to watch but i do think that um that's like what every kind of sinker changer guy or wants to end up as and um there were seasons where holiday was not a top 10 pitcher. I mean, in 2007 for the Blue Jays, 371 ERA, 5.6 K-9. That would be a Stroman-esque type season. And then you have to kind of, then the next four or five years were just amazing, just a great run. But just expecting Dustin May to put up like like two five eras to make up for the fact that he doesn't strike guys out i think is asking a lot especially in an era where you're not going to have guys pitching at the high end of the workload yeah same way that holiday was i mean

248 that was a different era but even within that era those were heavy workloads often among the league leaders over a full healthy season. Dustin May in Los Angeles with that front office, with that roster build, is not going to be among the league leaders in innings pitched without some significant changes to how he approaches hitters. I would do this, though. He's an exciting enough guy that we're discussing his flaws. I would trade him, but only if I just got exactly what I wanted. You know what I mean?

If only the world opened up its oyster. If I could buy in to a really nice young hitter or something. Maybe if he got me Dylan Carlson plus. Or just a young hitter that I was extremely excited about. Or if I could use Dustin May to build and get Cody Bellinger, you know what I mean? That sort of deal I could do. But if it's just like Dustin May for a couple of veteran pitchers like Lance Lynn and Charlie

Morton, I'm just throwing it out there just to like,. Just to try and build up for the stretch run. I don't know about that. I think I'd rather just keep Dustin May in that case. Yeah, I do think getting what you want is key here, but I would agree with the idea that Andy had that he might be at a relative peak in value where everybody's still very optimistic about his future, and it's still a bright future, but we might be collectively overestimating

what Dustin May is actually going to bring us as fantasy players. And this is a good time to leverage that if you can find the offer that you want. Thanks a lot for the question, Andy. The next question comes from Jared. He wants to know if we could pick between Jose Barrios and Zach Gallen long-term, so if they could keep her or Dynasty League,

who would we actually prefer? You like Gallin probably as much as anybody out there, and I might be the high man on Jose Barrios, so we're kind of in opposite corners on this argument from the jump, if it's even really an argument. I think they're pretty comparable in a lot of ways because the reason I would like Barrios a little bit better is that I actually believe he's getting to that deeper arsenal. I think we're seeing a little bit

of that. We saw the velocity ticking up back in March and he's at this window right now where the ratios aren't very good. So if you're trying to buy a high quality starting pitcher right now, I think he absolutely could be that guy. But we're seeing a pretty good mix of four different pitches. The curveball at 30% is right in line with where he was last year, and it's getting better results. It seems like that pitch has taken a step forward for Barrios. So that kind of brings up my confidence a little bit. It was an adjustment that I was hoping to see.

Love that the velo is up a full tick, almost a mile and a half per hour over last season with him as well. So these are two guys that I think are very similar in a lot of ways. I think the question I would have for you is, how do they stack up command-wise? Does Gallen actually have better command than Barrios, or does Barrios have better command? They're surprisingly similar. I think you might be surprised to find out that they are both sort of top 10 guys by Command Plus.

It might be a surprise to find out that they are both sort of top 10 guys by Command Plus. And I think you've pointed out something about Barrios' curveball, which is he's now learning how to shape it differently to left-handers, so it's not as slurvy. He's developing, and you can actually already see it in the numbers in Brooks, where the horizontal movement when he throws it to lefties is different this year than it was last year. So he's finding a way to kind of do a 12-6 curveball to lefties, which that ball, like he can throw that in the outside corner and not worry about it leaking into their happy zone. And I think that could be a big part of why the curveball has better results.

That kind of gives you some window into his upside as a possible guy who can vary the curveball. Now, if he has two curveballs that he can throw along with the changeup and the two fastballs, and the fact that their command is very similar, now you're talking about two ticks, which is very meaningful over time because he's just starting from a higher place when he is throwing 95-96 and Gallin is averaging 93. On the other hand, for me, Gallin has a wider pitch mix. I think cutter, curve, change, and even a little bit of a slider poking out this year.

That's one classification. Sorry, this other one. I trust Pitch Info better. Anyway, Pitch Info has four seam changeup slider curve. That's four legit pitches, not counting the fastball twice like you might with Berrios. It's a power change with a really good slider. I think he can command more pitches better. I don't think Berrios can really command the changeup that well.

I'm going to add also demonstrated strikeout results from Gowlin that are better than Barrios'. He's got there quicker. Yeah. I totally understand it at this point, like why Gallin would be preferred to Barrios'. But their similarities are pretty interesting. Yeah.

They don't seem that similar. Like you kind of might just look at Barrios and be like two-pitch pitcher, power pitcher, not great command. But he has great command. And he actually does throw the changeup. And now he's shaping the curveball in two different ways so like he doesn't fit that and you might look at gallon say oh finesse pitcher doesn't have v low uh hundred rio type four or five commit pitches with command except you know 93 is is not 90 you know um so it's uh they're they're closer than most people would think i think um i love barrios too

i think there's a possibility barrios uh is better at price that you might be able to get barrios for less if you're trying to trade for one of these two pitchers but if they were both on a platter for me with the same price i'd take out yeah so if you're in a situation where you're playing like a dynasty league from scratch you'd choose gallon over barrios at this point i get it I'd take Gallen. guys. I just don't think it works at this point. Thanks a lot for the question, Jared. Question from Ryan about Devin Williams changeup. Interested in what we think of Devin Williams. He's throwing this unbelievable three-fingered changeup splitter hybrid that has crazy high spin, especially for a changeup, and is simply put him on the map as a potential elite relief pitcher. Curious as to what you think of him and if you've ever seen a changeup like that.

I'll leave the latter part of that question to you since that's right in your wheelhouse. I mean, I've watched a lot of Devin Williams this year. It looks legit. He's locating where he wants to. He's got fastball and changeup command. He can work up. He can work in. He can work outside. He can work down in the zone. So he's really changing eye levels effectively. And that changeup is pretty much unhittable most days. Like you just can't do much with it. It's got plenty of movement. I think it looks just like the fastball coming out of his hand.

So it's just, it's really hard to pick it up. What do you see in terms of movement? Is this pitch as unusual as Ryan believes it is? It is, and it does confound research in one way, which is that one thing I've heard is that it's good to be 70th percentile in one thing and 30th percentile in the other, and the two things are velocity gap or movement differential. And when I'm looking at Devin Williams, I'm seeing a guy who's probably 70th percentile in both. I mean, the changeup drops eight inches more than

his foreseam. And it has four inches more fade than his foreseam. And it has an 11 mile an hour gap. So there is some chance that at some point people pick up that changeup. That's what I think is the risk. Or the other risk is they pick it up and he can't command it. So that's what sort of happened with Jarrell Cotton, who had a similar changeup in terms of movement and velocity profile. But you've watched him. He can command that changeup in terms of movement and velocity profile. But you've watched him. He can command that changeup to an extent. I've seen him sort of drop it right below the zone, like almost on the black. Yeah, and I've seen him come back with a fastball in a different part of the zone and dot that exactly where he wants to also.

I think it's happened for a long enough stretch where I don't see this as a small sample sort of noise. I don't think it's just a guy with a really good changeup running good. Like it's a nasty pitch. Around 200 pitches, you can already start talking about whiff rate on a pitch. So 23% whiff rate, uh, 51% swing rate. I mean, they're not laying off that thing. I would say that, you know, he probably doesn't have a great slider. It looks okay in terms of movement, but it's just not getting good results.

There is a reason he's a reliever. I think they found somebody that can be a late-gamer reliever. Now there's these rumors that Hader might be on the move. I don't know if I believe those. It seems like it happens every year. If Hader is on the move, Williams might be

the guy who steps in i mean because knevel's hurt and is you know freddie peralta i guess could step in but you know they kind of like freddie peralta where he is i think i think freddie still fits into the conversation from earlier where because he's working on that third pitch he could end up starting again at some point in the future i think if they were to trade josh hater david phelps who was on a one-year deal, would be gone too, and Williams would be the next closer. That's just how it would go.

It just seems like a low likelihood of them trading Hader, right? It's got to be a godfather sort of offer. I think that's been the case all along. I don't think we're shopping Hader. I think if someone overwhelms us, we're going to take it. At 12 and 15, they're one good series away from being back in the playoffs.

Basically, if the Brewers sweep the Reds or take three or four from the Reds to start this week, the Reds might be sellers. And if the Brewers drop the next three to Cincinnati, the Brewers might be sellers. And if they split and the Brewers go into the weekend, they play well against the Pirates, they're probably just going to stand pat for the most part, maybe tweak a roster spot or two and let it ride. I mean, I think you can trade away a couple players and still be in the playoff hunt this year with eight teams in each league getting in.

I don't think getting rid of a veteran or two means you're... Yeah, but haters... Haters are the kind of guys, like if you don't have him in that pen, that's a pretty big drop. Part of the brilliance of the Brewers, I think, has been that they win the games that they should win.

That's why their run differential hasn't always lined up with their win totals is because I think that the back end of their bullpen is bad and the front end of their bullpen is really good, and they figure out who the front of their bullpen is really quickly, and so they win the games they're supposed to win. Right, and then occasionally they get lucky in certain spots. The offense blows up for a day, and the pitching doesn't matter, and your bad relievers can come in and protect a seven-run lead,

and you're okay. Right, yeah. But the starting rotation's been better than people would have expected. I think you have four starters now with sub-four ERAs entering play on Tuesday. Thanks a lot for the question, Ryan. I got one more question here from Albie. He wants to know, is Brad Keller the real deal? Keller, for a couple of weeks, was one of the better available starting pitchers on the waiver wire in most leagues. And I looked at him at the time, you know, I didn't really see anything different than what he was doing

a year ago. What's your take on Keller? Is he just sort of a guy, kind of a back of the top 75 starter who usually can be in your lineup in deeper mixed leagues, or is there something more there? Because I see that walk rate. I see the low K rate. It is up compared to the past, 21.6% to career best for him. And I'm still not looking at him as someone who I trust more than in favorable spots. Yeah. I mean, he's a two-pitch pitcher. He's a two-pitch pitcher.

It takes me a little met to buy into a two-pitch pitcher. And I think that Chris Archer is kind of the godfather of the two-pitch pitcher. What we're seeing out of Keller is against lefties, he's pretty good. He's got a 23% strikeout rate and a 2.9% walk rate. And he's got that fastball and slider and he can do stuff with it. And he's really good. He's got a 2.13 FIP against righties. Guess what? Against lefties, he has a 20% strikeout rate and a 19% walk rate. He has a four plus F FIP a five plus XFIP against lefties so basically he's just trying to let walk the lefties and get the righties out I just don't think that's a sustainable way

to get through things for what it's worth it's the only thing that bothers me at Randy Dobnak is if you look at what he does against lefties he's kind of has that rugy arm slot that righty the righty arm slot to get righties out and against lefties he he kind of has that rugy arm slot, that righty arm slot to get righties out. And against lefties, he's an extreme contact guy. The one thing that's different between Dobnak and Keller is that Dobnak has like a 65% ground ball rate against lefties.

So it's not just walk the lefties, it's walk the lefties or get a ground ball from the lefties and strike out all the righties. Dobnak's approach is a little bit better than Keller's. Yeah, I think without that third pitch, though, I don't really see those numbers against lefties getting any better. So unless he starts showing that, I don't see Keller as the real deal.

I see him as a high 3 ZRA, low 4 ZRA guy, middling strikeout rate. Great starts against righty lineups every once in a while, and then a bad start just like the one he just had. Yeah, you've got to watch out for the left righty lineups every once in a while, and then a bad start just like the one he just had. Yeah, you got to watch out for the lefty heavy lineups with him in particular. It's almost less about the actual team and more about how their lineup is constructed when it comes to when you'd want to sit him down. The other question that came in from Albie was about Luis Guillorme. Is he going to play himself into a regular role the rest of the season? He's playing quite a bit. I think entering play on Tuesday, he has started seven of the last nine games for the Mets.

We're seeing a lot of Robbie Cano at DH, part of the Cespedes opt-out plan. We are seeing a little less of Andres Jimenez recently. So I wonder, is this something they're more comfortable with, just development-wise, with Jimenez letting Guillorme pick up that extra playing time in the short term? I mean, I am here to denigrate Guillerme's offense. And I meant to say that he had no redeeming qualities when it comes to offense. But, you know, there's a whiff of David Fletcher there.

He makes a lot of contact, and he has a good eye so maybe he could have like a 100 iso and like a 280 average 340 350 obp and and play a lot i just think of that the team thinks of him as defensive glue. That's who he sort of strikes me as. And I don't think defensive glue usually makes waves in fantasy baseball. I just think his approach is a little more refined than Jimenez's at this point. And Jimenez would have probably been at AAA for most of this season if there were a minor league season. So that is what we're seeing in the playing time. But the Mets could easily just reach a point where they say,

let's just play the better guy long term. Let's play Jimenez more. And the role could kind of fall out underneath Guillerme. I think he profiles as a glue guy. I think the Fletcher comp, just in terms of playing all over especially, is something that does hold up for him. So I think he's more of an NL-only guy. Maybe occasional usage in mixed leagues because I'm not sure he's going to offer enough power or speed to be an asset in most mixed leagues, even with this playing time.

Jimenez has some similarities in strikeout rates. Maybe he's going to strike out a little bit more than him. But ever since Jimenez added the leg kick, he's shown a little bit more power upside. And if he can get anywhere close to league average power, Jimenez is going to be the better player. Because he'll have league average power. He'll have the same speed. He's more of a shortstop versus Guilherme being more of a second-base, third-baseman. So, you know, the ceiling on Jimenez, I'm just restating what you said the the ceiling on Jimenez I think I'm just restating what

you said the ceiling on Jimenez is better yeah he's the guy you want long term for keeper and dynasty purposes thanks a lot for the great questions this week you can reach us via email rates and barrels at theathletic.com just be sure to spell the word and if you go that route on twitter he's at you know saris I'm at Derek Van Ryper if you're enjoying the show on a platform that allows you to rate and review the podcast, please take a moment to do that. It helps new listeners find our show, which is always good for us. It's good for the possibility

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of rates and barrels we are back with you on thursday thanks for listening Thank you.