Rates & Barrels - A Return to the AL West

Episode Date: June 9, 2020

Rundown2:43 Re-Thinking Jose Urquidy6:24 Josh James & Variance16:25 Jesús Luzardo Helium Check25:40 Looking for Faults in Ramón Laureano34:20 Dylan Bundy Approaching the Top 200 Overall47:28 Justin Upton, Obvious Rebound Candidate?52:41 Kyle Gibson & Trusting Texas56:49 Jordan Lyles: Do the Rangers Have a Type?62:45 Looking Beyond Kyle Lewis' Minor-League Numbers Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail: [e-mail] Get 40% off a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a world of uncertainty, one thing is for sure, cancer doesn't stop during a global crisis. On Saturday, June 13th, Leukemia and Lymphoma Society will host a trailblazing event, Big Virtual Climb, sponsored by AbbVie, to support their investment in groundbreaking research to advance blood cancer cures and its first-in-class patient education and services, including financial support and clinical trial navigation. support and clinical trial navigation. Step up to take cancer down by climbing 61 floors or 1,762 steps inside or outside on stairs, on the road, or your treadmill. Climb your way. Join us for an opening ceremony and then take on your climb with our heart-pumping playlist.

Join us on June 13th from coast to coast as we come together to climb, conquer, cure. Register at lls.org slash bigclimb. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 102. It is Tuesday, June 9th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we resume our Division by Division series with a trip through the AL West. We'll take a look at all five teams and try to uncover some things we didn't previously know, or at least hopefully things that you previously didn't hear on this show or elsewhere, ideally.

But that's the plan. We're going to go team by team. And, you know, how are things going for you to kick off this new week? Good. At least I'm not in jail for trying to break into Miller Park and write my name on the grass with the tractor tires. and write my name on the grass with the tractor tires. You know, you do not have a good name for vandalizing and leaving your mark in the form of your name because it quickly narrows down the list of suspects.

But also, so you might get there and say something dumb like, wait, do we have a sponsorship deal with Chase? That could be your workaround. You could just put the little chase logo next to it listen to me obviously chase did this obviously corporate vandalism corporate vandalism it's on the rise oh god let's not say that too loud you know that somebody somewhere in the marketing department is like that's a great idea let's let's do that oh man i should cut that out just to not let that idea fly into the world uh well since we're just destroying the world uh in you know new ways with terrible marketing let's um push that aside immediately and let's talk about the Astros, everyone's favorite team to hate on.

And I think we've said this before. I definitely long for the days when the Astros cheating at baseball was the thing that I was most outraged about. But there's some interesting things about this team despite their transgressions. And I think pitching is one of those areas that losing Garrett Cole, we've talked about that on this show and not having a ready made ace,

like they might've expected in Forrest Whitley to just sort of take that spot. It leaves them with a few other interesting young pitchers who are going to be more important to this team in 2020 than they were in 2019. And they're two guys that we've discussed frequently, Jose Urquidy and Josh James. Urquidy is going just outside the top 200 in drafts since May 1st. We're talking about like a dozen NFBC drafts. And I'm starting to wonder, is he overpriced because of what he did late last season and in the playoffs? Is he actually a little underpriced because of some things he does really well?

Or maybe is that price just right? The things that we like about him, the fact that he throws four pitches, he's very efficient. You can see that in a good catch-all metric like K-BB percentage. You can see that in a good catch-all metric like K-BB percentage. Jose Urquidy was 10th among 80 rookie pitchers with at least 40 innings pitched in K-BB percentage. So he can get some strikeouts. He doesn't hurt himself with walks. He pitches in a park that generally is very pitcher-friendly. So he ticks a lot of boxes, and he should have a rotation spot to call his own. He ticks a lot of boxes and he should have a rotation spot to call his own.

Is there anything with Urquidy that gives you some pause as you kind of look back through what he did in that limited time with Houston last season? I would just say that though his stuff was good, I don't think that anything stands out as being amazing. So I'm not sure. I kind of actually, and this is a little bit weird to say maybe about someone with such a small track record, but I kind of see him as a high floor, low ceiling guy. You know, he's got the three pitches, but the fastball is not amazing at 93 on average with a little bit of ride and 8% whiff rate. It's decent, but if I say it in terms of stuff and command, his stuff and command scores are almost identical, 102 each. So basically slightly above average in both

regards and I think that's what I think of him I think that maybe the projections are missing the fact that he has a good array of pitches with command of them but I'm not sure how much further I'd push Erkady than his ATC projection which is a 40 407 ERA, 1.19 whip, and a strikeout per inning. That seems pretty good to me. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that into the equation because of the projections on fan graphs, ATC was the most optimistic as far as what it spit out for Erkady for this season. You think about guys that had you know low four zra a whip just below 120 and that that group of pitchers doesn't usually scream upside it does kind of give you that more like stable like mid rotation sort of presence and uh with the rickety if he doesn't

have a nasty wipeout pitch he can rely on then it's going to be difficult for him to take a step forward with strikeouts as well i think think it's really interesting because comparing him to Josh James, who has the wipeout slider, the big fastball, just the ridiculous strikeout potential, it just comes with the extremely high walk rates. I mean, we're talking like a Robbie Ray sort of statistical profile. Actually, Josh James looking at a leaderboard this morning, he stood kind of right next to Matt Barnes statistically. And that bothered me just because I used to think when Matt Barnes was a young pitcher that he was going to break through and be an effective starter for the Red Sox. And he's gone on to become you know a nice late inning reliever but if you are drafting Josh James in that same range where you'd be thinking about Urquidy you will be disappointed if you're getting a guy who doesn't have a path to the ninth inning which I would say is true of James since they have a closer in Roberto Ozuna just kind of

in that spot right now so what do you see with james and kind of thinking risk versus reward whereas you see so much floor with your kitty are you more inclined to be aiming for a ceiling pick in this range knowing that you know things could go wrong for james but if they go right it could be a pretty big payoff where do you say james is being taken a little bit later than the nerky but we're talking like a round or two so just outside the top 200 a little bit surprised that they'd go that close but um i think it also depends on kind of team dynamics in terms of draft dynamics if you're talking about picks in the sort of 200 300 range maybe you're talking about final pitchers and if you are talking about final pitchers. And if you

are talking about, you know, final pitchers or, you know, one of the last pitchers, starting pitchers that you're going to draft, then I think you might want to take this, the shot at upside. And, you know, James has, has very good upside. You know, he has a 119 stuff number, which is ahead of people like Sonny Gray. It's only too short of Walker Bueller. It's ahead of Jesus Lozardo, ahead of Luis Castillo. So he has a really good stuff number. But his command number is just as low.

And I think I've put him on a list of pitchers like Dylan Cease and Denilson Lamette as pitchers that have a lot of stuff, very little command, and such little command that they're at risk of being relievers. I had that piece that I tried to look at the predicting innings pitch per start or innings pitch per appearance using stuff in command. There was a slight effect for command kind of predicting how many innings you'll pitch. Command plus here. So it is possible that James is still a reliever. And I also think about this in the context of player development, like, oh, you know, when you think of astros and developing a pitcher who do

you think of um you know first you might think of acquiring existing uh pitchers and and tweaking them and making a little bit better uh but there's also you know they also have had time to to develop their own pitchers i think of like corbin martin josh james uh jose ericardy and the thing that's interesting about these is that they're not that similar um you can't really say oh the astros they just blah you know it's not the dodgers are a little bit have a little bit more of a playbook i think when it comes to high spin rate uh you know four seamers and and breaking balls uh i mean the astros do that stuff, but they turn out... Okay, just to put into context here. Josh James has, in my rankings, the third biggest difference between his stuff and command

numbers. So if you just take stuff minus command, it goes Tyler Glassnow, Garrett Richards, Josh James, and just to give you a little bit of context, Dustin May, Garrett Cole, Dylan Cease, Walker Buehler, Hugh Darvish, Denilson Lumet, Trevor Bauer, Sonny Gray. So I think that's an interesting list because it's upside and downside and risky pitchers. Also pitchers that you'll see that I like more than maybe a lot of other rankings because I'm a stuffist. But then let's look at where Erkarty ranks in a very interesting way. This is pitchers who are closest to zero. Pitchers who have the smallest difference between their stuff and command scores. Number one, Jose Erkarty. Yeah, all right. Number two, Steven Matz. Yeah, all right.

Number two, Steven Matz. Number three is Trent Thornton. Number four is Zach Pleszak. Number five is Shane Bieber. Man, these lists both just mess with your head. Yeah, you go up and down, right? You're like, ooh, Trent Thoron um but uh in those cases you have pitchers and i think shane bieber is a good example of why like don't don't uh get too

obsessed with erquity's low floor because he might pop like a shane bieber you know if he's got excellent command of one of the pitches, that might be able to... He can command that changeup pretty well, which is rare. So maybe he can pop like a Luis Castillo. So, Ruggweedy can pop. There's nothing to that. But in terms of variance, I think the distance between floor and ceiling on these pitchers is lower than the distance between floor and ceiling on these pitchers is lower than the distance between floor and ceiling on Tyler Glassnow, Garrett Richards, Dustin May, Dylan Cease, Denilson LeMet. I mean, those guys, Trevor Bauer, those guys are like unusable in some years.

And then they pump out Cy Young. Tyler Glass now was basically dumped like a reliever in that trade. I mean, they messed up that trade, but he was dumped like a reliever in that trade. Look back at that, and every time I'm just like, man, the Pirates are just... How much better off would they be if they just hadn't done that? man, the Pirates are just, like, how much better off would they be if they just hadn't done that? And I feel even worse. We found out recently Chris Archer's out for the 2020 season.

He had surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome. So knowing how bad that injury is, too, it just made me feel even worse. The thing about Glass now that didn't really make sense to me at the very beginning of his career, so back in 16 and 17 when the Pirates gave him a few innings, I mean 23 innings in 2016, 62 innings in 2017, he wasn't striking the world out at that time. He was walking the world. The K rate finally jumped in 2018.

It was up with the Pirates when they traded him to the Rays. Then it was the Rays who've been able to get the walk rate down. He's up to 115, 116 in the third innings now with the Rays since that trade. His walk rate has been about seven and a half percent, combining those numbers on on the fly k rate's been right around 30 percent it's been remarkable to see that sort of progression for him given the struggles that were there but i think he's the case for james also of if it goes right it can go really right now i think with glass now he's complicated for all of his own reasons. Injury last season being an arm injury, the limited number of innings we saw, I mean, it's easy to kind of fall in love with a sub-two ERA and a.89 whip over 60 innings, but, you know,

where was he really going to go over a full season? I think that's where the projections are a good guide. Nevertheless, you got one shot. Let's assume you've kind of built a typical sort of Eno foundation. You've got at least three starting pitchers already on your roster this season. Is James or Urquidy more likely to be your fourth? Urk. I mean, as much as I chase stuff, it's a bit early for me.

I would love to pick Dylan Cease as my sixth pitcher rather than Josh James as my fourth. Yeah, and you're talking about a 40-pick difference between those two guys. So you can take a hitter you like, or you can take a someone else like another closer or whatever it is you need in that spot wait a little longer and still still get someone who brings the type of ceiling you're looking for yeah i mean even corbin burns is a similar type pitcher he was he was just below sonny gray on that on that list that i i read out earlier, the difference between stuff and command. So, you know, I just see that Irk has fewer flaws. And for a fourth pitcher, I'm still looking for bulk and floor, you know.

I don't take these shots as much until later. And I think with a shortened season, if we have one, of course, teams are not going to be as patient as they could be over a long season. If they do give someone an opportunity, they don't see the progress they're hoping for. They're going to be, I think a little quicker to make those adjustments to the rotation, to assign roles in the pen,

you know, whatever it might be. I'm with you. You have to go back to 2018 to, to get, you know, 24 starts out of James. Yeah. It's a fun one to think about.

It's possible they both do well. That's obviously in the range of outcomes as well. They're doing it very differently. Yes. Very, very different paths uh let's move out of houston let's go to the a's and i think it would be strange if we didn't take a closer look at jesus lazardo he's probably one of the most discussed players uh throughout this draft season disgusting disgust i said that like i was upset about something his His ADP since May 1st, that might be what I'm upset about

because I like him. His ADP is 71 in 12 drafts since May 1st. That puts him now ahead of Brandon Woodruff, Jose Barrios, Trevor Bauer, Frankie Montes, Sonny Gray, Corey Kluber, Mike Soroka, and James Paxton. And here's my snap reaction,

which I think you have prepared yourself to quickly debunk. My snap reaction is that someone who has had the injuries that Luzardo has had, who didn't throw very many innings last year, who doesn't have a lot of experience, is probably more susceptible to getting pulled earlier in starts than a lot of the names, the more veteran players who he's now being drafted ahead of. But I might be overlooking something, as you learned prior to the show. So talk me into Jesus Lizardo as maybe being deserving of the elevated price.

I will have to say, once you get ahead of Brandon Woodruff and Jose Barrios, you've gone past my enthusiasm. So I was not aware that that's how enthusiastic people were. That is fairly amazing to me, and probably I'm out at that point. But I did want to push back on one little factoid I've heard, that he only pitched past five innings once in all of his starts last year, going through the minor leagues and the major leagues, and that is correct. But I do not think that that is necessarily going to continue happening.

There was a fair amount of injury last year, so he was coming back from stuff. A lot of times it's almost like a rehab stint where he's coming back from off the injury and trying to stretch out. He was on a team that was good and had a good rotation and was trying to find a way to maximize their use of him without stretching his innings too much. So he was kind of a 2-3 inning guy. And I don't think that we can hold that necessarily against him long term. And the last thing I wanted to say was that if you have a pitcher that is really inefficient on an

innings level I think that it could be something to worry about in terms of their future so I looked at all triple-a guys last year that had at least you know 30 innings like like Lizardo did and I looked at their pitches per innings pitch and when I look at a guy like Patrick Sandoval and Tukey Toussaint, who were 26th and 27th out of 480 in terms of pitches per inning, where they were using nearly 20 pitches per inning, then I'd say, yes, that worries me. That suggests to me that they have trouble putting guys away. That's going to lead to higher pitch counts early on. And no matter what you

think about static pitch counts, mostly teams don't let people go past 90 or 100 these days. So I think that would be something to worry about. With Lizardo, though, we don't see any of that efficiency problem. In fact, he's in the 87th percentile when it comes to pitches per inning in AAA last year. And when I looked at the major leagues, what did I find? I found that only 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 pitchers used fewer pitches per inning last year. That's a minimum of 10 innings because he only threw 12 innings, which I think in the end is the real thing. This is a huge injury risk.

He only pitched 12 innings in the Major League last year. I don't think I can push someone into the top 50, into the top 70 with those kind of credentials, as much as I don't think that he necessarily has an efficiency problem. Yeah, I kind of wonder if, just in terms of track record, if the injury history of Jesus Lizardo, and he's younger than James Paxton, but if they're similarly risky, and he's younger than James Paxton. But if they're similarly risky and you look at what they're projected to do, the bat has Lizardo with James Paxton.

If you look at Paxton, the bat has him at 374 and 120 for the ERA and WIP. The bat has Lizardo at 343 and 116. So better ratios there. Most of the projection systems are pretty close on these two guys overall i just i wonder i just wonder if you're better off just letting someone else have lizardo for this year taking paxton a couple rounds later and doing something else with that

pick whether that's a different pitcher or a bat or a closer, who knows what it is instead. It doesn't matter necessarily. But I keep thinking, yeah, this might be just a little bit too high. Even if you can say he can hold his own in that group, maybe you shouldn't be paying the premium given what the other guys in that group also can bring to the table. Yeah. and what the other guys in that group also can bring to the table. Yeah, and in terms of alternatives and how drafts have gone for me or were going for me, I found myself not ending up with Lizardo in snake drafts

because I have him very close to Urias. I ended up with Urias instead. Because what I ended up doing was like saying, oh my gosh, you know, Luzardo went around before I wanted to. I have both the Luzardo and Urias in the top 40, top 35. Among pitchers, let me just grab Urias before it drops down to kind of the Urquidy, Yanni Chirinos types, you know? So I do see that Lazard and Urias are part of a group of pitchers I'm more excited about.

You could call them a tier if you'd like. But I think Lazard is going too early uh you know and of course a little bit like uh your tatis thing when i got into the draft at al labor uh i felt confident enough uh to drop i forget what it was like 12 bucks on on lazardo uh just because i could pinpoint you know the exact value i wanted and didn't have to think about round dynamics and stuff like that. In that case, I was able to pair Barrios with Lizardo, which I think is actually something I could get behind because I think Barrios is fairly

safe in terms of innings, in terms of injury history, just given what little we know about past injury predicting future injury. And Lizardo has a way more strikeout per nine upside, or at least strikeout upside. So comparing the two could be fairly profitable. But again, it's really kind of hard to pull off in a draft, in a snake draft format, because they're going so close. So you do have to go back-to-back Barrios-Lazardo and that might be your fourth and fifth picks. You'd have to think a lot of Lazardo

and you'd have to have gotten three really great hitters to start. Not impossible, but in that fifth round, you may be choosing between Woodruff and Lizardo, and hey, Woodruff's pretty sweet. I think if he had stayed healthy last year, people would like him even more than they already do. He's been one of the risers this draft season,

a guy that if you were drafting way back in November and December, you were probably getting him just outside the top 100, maybe even around like pick 120. And it was just piece after piece just realizing, hey, he was actually amazing last year. So now he's kind of settled in at a full freight sort of price. But I think he can just I mean, I think Lizardo is capable of being good enough to justify it. I think Lizardo's capable of being good enough to justify it. I just think the other guys in that group are probably more likely to justify it, for the most part, justify that price range.

Urias is still going a lot later than Lizardo. We talked about this when Lizardo first jumped up. There's still more than a 50-pick gap in ADP between Jesus Lizardo and Julio Urias. I just don't understand why. That's the easiest way for me to express what I don't get, I think. Okay. Very good. Both very good pitchers. Similar injury histories.

Similar risk, I think. Similar upside. Let's talk about an outfielder in Oakland for a minute. Ramon Laureano. I knew he was priced up. He's kind of in this range with Victor Robles and Tommy Pham, kind of in the 70 to 75 range. Good outfielders who can fill every category potentially. Totally makes sense why he's being drafted where he is. I stumbled on this by accident. I was looking at his StatCast page. He's actually in the eighth percentile in outs above average last year, but in the 90th percentile in outfielder, the jump metric they have. Cannon arm, of course,

we've seen highlights. We've seen him just make ridiculous throws. The one from the warning track to first base is one like two years ago now that still like plays on a loop in my mind but I started to look at this and say he's kind of this weirdly complicated player because he has power he has speed makes good contact but he does have shaky plate discipline and it kind of made me think all right how safe is his playing time is his defense is it average is it above average is it great time? Is his defense, is it average? Is it above average? Is it great? How good of a defender is he really? Because if he does go into a slump at the plate, is he just buried in the order of playing because of his defense? That's still

a better outcome than getting benched. And I started to wonder if actually, if Mark Canna is just a lot safer in terms of skills floor, even though he doesn't run, despite the fact that Canna goes like 150 picks later than Ramon Laureano. Different players who do different things, but Ramon Laureano is one of those guys that I just sort of nodded along to that ADP for most draft season, and now I'm kind of wondering if that's a good idea or not. Yeah.

I don't know. The steals are pretty big for me. I mean, steals are just so scarce. And, you know, maybe he only steals 15, but that's, you know, 10, 12 more than Kanha. And I think that they'll be pretty similar in other ways. The biggest flaw for me, for Laureano, is just breaking balls low and away. biggest flaw for me, for Laureano, is just breaking balls low and away. If you look at his stack cast,

they have a page called Zones where you can just look at basically some prepackaged strike zone maps. And you can see really clearly, if you look at misses by zone, it's low and away off the plate. It's the only red thing on the mat for him. And that was something that we talked about over the course of the year, about how they're just feeding and breaking balls, feeding and breaking balls, feeding and breaking balls. And for a while, he just couldn't lay off them and had some trouble with them. But he had a conversation with Joey Votto.

He wouldn't necessarily tell me exactly what he was talking about with Votto. But over the course of the year, he improved his ability to lay off those a little bit. his ability to lay off those a little bit. And I think it's a manageable problem. However, obviously this became a real big problem for Andrew Jones once that he didn't fix, really, ever. And I think led to a little bit of the shortness of his career. But Andrew Jones was pretty good otherwise. And we're talking about one season in the middle of Romano Mariano's career where he's 25 years old. So even if that problem comes back to hurt him,

and he ends up striking out 30, 35% of the time later on in his career, I don't think that's going to happen right now. I think he's doing a decent job laying off that. He has such a really fun all-around skill set where he's in the top 15% for arm strength, sprint speed, barrel

rate. This guy's an athlete. I think he's going to get that low and away strike thing figured out a little bit it really is amazing if you kind of just look at everything related to how he's pitched and how often he swings there and then how often he misses in that down and away it's like a i don't know it's like a backwards l-shaped tetris piece i I guess we'd call that a J in this language. It's just this deep, dark red. It really stands out.

So yeah, if you do go to his StatCast page, like Eno said, Zones is just under the little boxes where the season stats are. There's career splits, game logs, StatCast options. Below that, it's like a green ribbon. Hit the zone so you can kind of see what we're talking about. So ultimately, the price seems kind of fair then around pick 75. Like you think the similar skills are similar between Laureano and, say, Pham and Luis Robert and Victor Robles.

Like some power, some speed, good batting average floors for the most part for that group and plenty of playing time. Yeah, yeah. And a little bit of evidence that if you go into the more detailed swing zones, heat maps on fan graphs, that he was adjusting already if you look at

full season versus July onward he wasn't swinging at sliders off the plate as much so he kind of zeroed in at least left to right when it came to sliders which is I think at least step one if not you know figuring the whole thing out he was still He was still swinging at sliders that were over the plate down late in the season, but perhaps that's the next step of his evolution. And even if he doesn't evolve and he's just a streaky guy that's super athletic, like, you know, the projections and what he's done in the past all seem to line up fairly equally. I mean, he had a.288 average in his first season and he had a 288 average last year it's kind of weird

um and uh and so i think he'll have like a 275 plus average uh something that would look like in a full season like 20 plus homers and 15 steals i think it's a it's a rarer package than mark canhouse i think that's it I think it's worth a higher investment. Big, big difference in age too, of course. But yeah, Canha is a guy who just draws a lot of walks and really seems to control the zone well. Just seems pretty stable. We may see an exaggerated age effect this year.

I'm just thinking about how it's taking longer for me to get out of bed in the morning, but, uh, but you know, uh, with age cut, there is a little bit of an injury effect, uh, with age and, uh, the injury effect will be heightened in with the, whatever season we end up having. Yeah. I think that's kind of where I've been sitting for a while too. It's like I'm expecting soft tissue injuries and just nagging, annoying problems to be more pervasive given what's happened to this point. Top performers in business and sports often attribute their success

to their morning routine, whether it's waking up early, setting their goals for the day, exercise, or meditation. But not everyone has the time to do it all. With Hydrant, you can jumpstart your mornings. Hydrant creates flavored electrolyte packets you mix directly into your water to make hydrating your body easy and delicious. Each rapid hydration mix has the four essential electrolytes your body needs, sodium, potassium, magnesium, and zinc, help you hydrate quickly and stay hydrated all day. Hydrant is backed by research. The formula was developed by Oxford scientists to provide perfectly balanced, efficient hydration. There are no synthetic colors or artificial sweeteners. The formula is vegan, and you can choose between

three different flavors or a variety pack. Hydrant starts just a bucket packet for a 30-day supply, and you can save even more with a monthly subscription. And for 25% off your first order, go to drinkhydrant.com and enter the promo code ATHLETIC at checkout. That's drinkhydrant.com. Enter promo code ATHLETIC for 25% off your first order. Drinkhydrant.com and enter promo code ATHLETIC. Maybe you're just walking around dehydrated all day, you know,

and that's why it's so hard for you to get out of bed. I actually tend towards getting dehydrated. I feel like I drink so much water, and my pee is still so yellow. It's an uphill battle. Let's go to Orange County. Let's talk about the Angels.

Dylan Bundy. I had not noticed how much he moved up in the last couple of months. He's creeping into that top 280p range, just outside it, kind of next to Jose Urquidy, a little ahead of Josh James. So it kind of fits into the framework of some pitchers we've already talked about on this episode. Are you in at that price? I mean, getting out of Baltimore is certainly a good thing just from a park factor standpoint. The defense he has behind him, really good, of course,

with Anderson Simmons being healthy and playing shortstop. But what do you think about Bundy getting to kind of press reset and start over with a new club? Yeah, I'm a fan. I don't know at some point the hype starts to outstrip the value you can get

but I think of and this may put him into the context hopefully that I've been talking about remember when the Pirates just did a string of two or three New York Yankee pitchers? That it had a hard time in New York? Yeah, I'm trying to think of some of the names. I know A.J. Burnett and Yvonne Nova are on that list.

Did they try to do it with Jeff Karstens too? Yeah, I swear there's other ones. And I think the basic theory was like, hey, they had home run problems, and their park is very different than our park and our league, so let's see if we can help them iron it out. So Bundy is at least a home run prone pitcher going from a home run prone park to one that is less home run prone so on that level I like him but underlying talent level in all these cases came to bear eventually right it's not I mean AJ Burnett had better seasons in Pittsburgh

but it's not like he was like fundamentally better. And Yvonne Nova ended up flaming out in Pittsburgh too. So, um, I, when I look at Bundy, I see a plus change up, uh, an average-ish fastball, you know, where the velocity is, has fallen off to the point where it's below average, but the movement is good. And then an okay slider, I guess a pretty good slider. It's not a slider that does that well by stuff metrics, but it is a slider that produced 23% whiffs last year. No home run problem.

He seems to command it pretty well so overall i like bundy to be a usable pitcher next year i just keep looking at the home road splits from last year so he had 17 starts at home 13 on the road on the road opposing hitters hit 216 with a 297 obp and a 409 slugging percentage against Dylan Bundy. That's good work by Bundy. At Camden Yards, opposing hitters hit.287 with a.341 OBP and a.501 slug. Damn. He gives up homers even on the road.

I think there's a big fly ball till. And we've talked about Anaheim being a park that prior to, I think it was last season, they lowered the fence in right field and moved it in, if I'm not mistaken. Or maybe it was even two years ago now. But that was one change. They redrew the line in right field. Made it easier to hit it out to right field. But it's still not Camden Yards.

And it's still not camden yards and it's still not the al east right so i i do think there's there's justifiable reasons to say hey just on environment alone he should be better can the angels do something can they make a tweak is there something maybe that the orioles never quite unlocked with bundy skills-wise that the Angels can get to. I mean, that's a bit more of a leap, but still not impossible. Well, there was the whole bit with, you know, banning cutters and, you know, then being like, no, no, that's a slider. When Bundy called it a cutter his whole life. But maybe their pitching staff, or maybe because of his injury history, Bundy called it a cutter his whole life.

Maybe their pitching staff, or maybe because of his injury history, they weren't willing to push the slider percentage. But, you know, 22% career slider usage is actually not that aggressive. Even though he has cut his foreseam fastball usage over his career, he could cut it a little bit more. He could throw 40% fastballs, 3% sliders, and 25% to 30% sliders. That Dylan Bundy has not been tried out yet you know what i mean the yoli shasin dylan bundy right yeah we haven't really pushed that button just quite yet um surprisingly uh but um you know you have to factor in that early on he was injured a lot but you know

since then he's been fairly productive with like you know basically averaging around 170 innings for three years that's not bad um if you did if he did everything correct i think his ceiling this year would be like a 1.2 two home run per nine, three walks per nine, nine and a half strikeouts per nine, and like a 4-0 kind of guy. With like a 1-2-5 whip. When we were talking earlier, a low fours ERA with like a 1-20 whip, that's what the best of the projections has for Bundy.

That's useful. That's not a bad pitcher. It's just not a guy that you draft and just always have in your lineup in a mixed league. There are going to be matchups where you don't want to take on the risk. So I think that's's yeah where the line is yeah but you know you think about that uh that division and all of a sudden the astros have the

most hitter friendly park possibly because the rangers players were already talking about how the new stadium is going to play pitcher friendly they think uh the hitters were saying that um at the very least we know that it should play closer to neutral because it's now a dome and the heat was the biggest part of that park factor down there. So if you've got two neutral parks, two really good parks, or two pretty pitcher-friendly parks in your division,

it's a fairly big divisional turnaround too it's not just the home park right but true then in a short season like this are we going to have the uh dramatic realignment even if we do have the dramatic realignment there are more pitcher-friendly parks out west yeah san franc San Francisco, San Diego. I mean, you do have to deal with the Dodgers and Dodger stadium is more hitter friendly than I think it's past. We don't even know what AL and all stuff would look like. So is, is he going to have to go to Colorado?

Yeah. I think if, if that original concept for 10 team divisions where both, both leagues, Eastern divisions are one mega division, central, same thing, west, same thing. You would pick up Colorado. Yeah. But what are we talking about?

One, maybe two road series at most where he'd have to go there? I mean, what's their bottom line on him? Like, should we play, would you rather? It's time to dust that off. All right. Would you rather? I'm just going to use my rankings. Because I had him 70th.

So would you rather Dylan Bundy or Kevin Gossman? My snap answer on that one is Gossman, which... Is that something? Is that something already? Yeah. Dylan Bundy or Dallas Keuchel? I'd never end up with Dallas Keuchel, but I think I'd rather have Dallas Keuchel.

Dylan Bundy or David Price. Price by a good margin. I think Price, we talked about the guys that are behind Lizardo, Montas

and Soroka and some of those guys, Bauer. Price belongs in that group for me. I was reaching high up. I had Price. In this edition, I had Price 54 and Lizardo 40. So I'm not too far off what you're talking about. And Price was moving up. Just Price's stuff in command numbers did not look that good.

His stuff has fallen off. But perhaps... And what's the league change going to mean if they're all DH, right? Yeah, that's true. But I think we found it right where he lives. How about this one just for me? Bundy or Turnbull? You know what? I had Bundy

ahead of Turnbull when I did this previously. Team context is kind of important here. The Angels could be pretty good. The Tigers are not going to be very good. I think that's probably enough to break them apart.

The greater point here is that the difference on my list from SP, let's say 60 to like SP 100, it's very little difference at all in that range. Yeah, it's kind of, and that was a little bit of my point on the Josh James thing. Like I might have James higher than that, but I guess when the – no, I don't. I have James in 69.

Ooh, nice. I had him too. That's very odd. Why? What is wrong with me? Well, you know, you're trying. You're trying to grow. God.

Anyway, so James, when you get there, everything's so contextual, right? It's like even this discussion of like, oh, do I take Bundy or Turnbull or like Sandy Alcantara around this time? You can try and put them in and and have general rankings but the choice between those three it really matters what the rest of your choices were with your pitchers right it's like if you have a bunch of pitchers on good teams that will get wins then maybe Turnbull is the one you want or Alcantara if you have a daily or weekly lineup you know that's a big deal for Alcantara. Can you put him in for the good starts at home and stuff?

Or do you have to just ride or die with him? And I think that context starts to matter a lot more when you get into that 60 to 90 range where there's a lot of pitchers up and down here. You can make a case for like, oh, in my setup or with my existing staff, this is the pitcher I want. I'd much rather have Mitch Keller than any of the guys we've missed here because Mitch Keller is either going to make it to week four on my roster and be a good pitcher, or he's going to be the first guy that sees the door.

And I'd rather not play that game with Dylan bundy where he has one good start and one bad start and i don't know whether or not to drop him i also wonder if that's complicated by having a track record in which dylan bundy has let us down more than he's come through for us though too it makes us quicker to hit that release button first one out the door. I've seen this before. I'm so mad. I would like to see the drop rates on Dylan Bundy if he has a start in Angel Stadium, his first start, and gives up three homers. Yeah, six runs, three homers, three innings. Just one of those Dylan Bundy specials.

There he goes. Oh, wait. He was 78 78 owned going into the start and now he's 10 owned oh my god yeah well the past track record plays in so all right so we it's not a ridiculous price it's not a must draft at the price either i think it's probably the the bundy takeaway if you zoned out there for five minutes, we'll summarize that one. One other thing that really kind of caught my eye as I was digging around on the Angels, Justin Upton was actually in the top 10% of the league in barrel rate per

batted ball event every year between 2015 and 2018. Of course, bad injury in 2019. Missed a lot of time with that knee injury. He just seems like a very obvious bounce back candidate to me. Is there some reason why I shouldn't just expect Justin Upton to be a power hitter with run production that looks more like a guy who goes inside the top 100 overall as opposed to a guy who's barely inside the top 200 on most boards? Well, Jeff, well, actually, again, I can't help myself. Jeff Zimmerman on Fangraphs had a piece about projected bounce backs and age and how much you can believe in a projected bounce back

basically in age buckets. And I want to be able to take... The way he put it was, at what age is a hitter's projection no longer reliable? And the top line takeaway at the end was that 32 years is the cutoff. Oh, that's weird. He's 32. And in fact, number one on his list of projected bounce backs is drum roll please justin upton with a 2019 return of negative five bucks and a 22 2020 projection

of 16 bucks and so i think uh might be instructive just to list some of the other guys. Andrew McCutcheon coming off a major injury. If you believe in Upton, then McCutcheon's right there. Chris Davis, major injury. Lorenzo Cain, fairly injurious. And then we've got J.D. Martinez as the first bounce back off of a good season at a big age. uh bounce back off of a good season uh at a big age uh where you've got jd martinez braun and turner all expected to do a little better next year even though they're 32 36 and 35 uh respectively so i would just say i like him it makes sense the projections are there the value is there the The age is not.

You know what? He's younger than me, so he's not old. You got to let that ship sail, man. Yeah. I'm doing okay with it. I think I'm going to have a meltdown around age 40, like at age 40 probably. That's when I'm sort of expecting it to happen.

I've seen it. I had mine at 30. You had one at 30. We were hosting this show when you turned 40 last spring, and you seemed to take it pretty hard, but you took 30 a lot worse, right? I think you told the story actually on the show now that I'm thinking about it. Well, I just went out. A lot of my friends are turning 30 so there's all these 30th birthday parties and i and i basically went to each i don't know if it was like in

the forefront of my mind but i was like i'm gonna prove that i can party like i'm 20 and i couldn't that's an error that you can definitely make at age 30. Common error. I'll put it this way. I have never been cut off at the bar except for once during that time. Was that at age 30? I tried to order my third round of Jager for everybody.

Yeah. You got to be in the Northwoods here to get away with that. And the bartender said, are you the one that stole all the toilet paper out of the bathroom? And I said no and hid three rolls of toilet paper

behind my butt. And he said, what's behind your back? Please get out of here. Did you walk up to the bar holding the toilet paper? I did because I had been dancing with the toilet paper. Right. And then he asked the question.

And then you thought, like cartoon style, you just said, I'm just going to sneak that behind my back and he'll never even know. Because he wouldn't have just asked you randomly if you stole the toilet paper out of the bathroom unless you were holding a roll of toilet paper. When I woke up the next day, I had a self-reckoning and

have changed habits. Starting that next day, I've changed habits. I've changed my life. At 40, I just went to Vancouvercouver that was fun yeah well i mean if you stop drinking jägermeister when you were 30 you probably you know made a good choice there there are never stories involving jaeger that end well no no i don't think so let's let's talk about the rangers for a moment.

Let's. And this is part of the maybe the Rangers really know what they're doing with pitching file. Kyle Gibson last year, a guy that has drawn some, let's say, scorn from the fantasy community over the years, had a career best 22.7 strikeout rate, 22.7%. I can talk. Career-best 13.1% swinging strike rate. Did spend some time on the IL with ulcerative colitis. And I know as we kind of look over players and think about health histories, there could be some elevated risk for him in playing in a pandemic, mostly because of the medications for something like that.

So something to just be mindful of. But it probably tells us something. The Rangers gave Kyle Gibson a three-year deal. And I think people reacted to that Kyle Gibson deal pretty similar to the way they reacted to Lance Lynn going there and getting a three-year deal a year and a half ago, I think it was. Speaking of time being all twisted up and confusing. So how much do you want to just trust the Rangers based on some of the things they've done well in recent years,

which we've discussed on past episodes? And how much do you just believe or not believe in Gibson in particular as a guy that seemed to put a few things together last year in Minnesota, where we've talked about an organization that's been on the receiving end a lot of praise for how they've handled players for the better part of a year now. Yeah. I wonder if he's near his peak and there's not another, like I said, button to push. He had last year the lowest fastball percentage of his career. He's improved his location strategy year over year. Last year was his best strikeout minus walk rate.

But it's funny to kind of look at that Sierra column. I don't use it too often, but with somebody who has a long track record, you know, it's funny to watch er ray kind of stumble around uh like a drunk person with three rolls of toilet paper uh while sierra is like really constant i mean just since 2014 418 412 470 460 425 425 so he's's basically been sitting around the 4.3 Sierra his whole career. I think maybe they just did a calculation where like, you know, at this price, you know, $9 million a year, basically, you know, he's worth it because he'll be a credible starter. He won't be a great one, but at 4.2 Sierra, 4.3 Sierra over the last five years, six years, he's shown that he can be a credible one. There's a name that kind of stuck out to me.

I looked at, for a piece on Hyunjin Ryu, I looked at just the number of pitchers that threw five pitches at least 10% of the time, and then also had good command of those pitches and good swinging strike rate. So if you just set 10% swinging strike rate as the minimum, and 100 minimum for Command+. What you end up getting is Ryu, Kyle Gibson, Noah Syndergaard, Cole Hamels, and Jake Odorizzi. And I think that's a pretty good list of kind of describing. And then ones that just barely missed, another one is like Tanner Roark.

So I kind of see him as like a slightly better Tanner Roark. Okay. Well, that's valuable to you. No, no. I mean, it matters. I mean, it helps big league teams win a few extra games. It just doesn't necessarily help us as fantasy owners win championships. I don't think so.

I'm not sure. Like, he has five decent pitches, but, you know, only one of them is really clear of average. Okay. I'm imagining there's going to be a similar problem with Jordan Lyles because the Rangers really seem to have a type, but he pitched so well for the Brewers down the stretch last season, pitched well for them in very limited innings at the end of 2018 as well and it kind of makes you wonder like is there something going on there that could actually

work over a larger sample you know i think that's that's the question most people have with jordan lyles and these guys go outside the top 400 in terms of adp like there's still some skepticism but their skills and maybe not enough being applied to the fact that texas should be more pitcher friendly than it's ever been with the new stadium i think off air i called uh lyle's a uh knockoff version of kyle gibson which uh would make our old friend paul sporer barf a little in his mouth, I think. But one of the things that actually, I think I was mislooking at something. One of the things that really solidifies this comparison, they are very similar. And I just wanted to point out Kyle Gibson's stuff numbers for his slider, 104, changeup, 102, fastball, 93.7 jordan lyles stuff number curveball 110

slider 109 change up 104 fastball 93 so basically what you've got are guys that don't have great fastballs but have a large variety of pitches and i think the basic theory will be we're going to dial down their fastball usage dial up their breaking ball usage um and uh find a way to uh to get the most out of them that we can get out of them and at the very least if they're just as good as they've been the last two years they'll be worth the $8 million, $9 million investment we made. Maybe you get lucky and you get more, but you don't have to

with those contracts to come away feeling good about it. Similar for a lot of reasons. Do you just trust Gibson because they put more into him and the numbers on the stuff just a little bit better even though there's so much similar there too i just you know i'm trying to come up with a

context in which you want to buy these guys in fantasy right because the floor is is there for a major league team but is the floor there for a fancy team? Like, I don't think I really even had him on my radar for AL labor because, honestly, like a 4-5 guy or a 4-4 guy, even in 12-team AL only, is not something you want to shoot for, right? Like, I took Trent Thornton for a buck, and I'm sure Kyleson went for more than a

buck but i'd almost rather just see if trent thornton can be better than we think well yeah i mean that makes sense we're talking about again a couple guys who have longer track records of being just kind of solid and and not being good enough to get us where we want to go as fantasy owners. I think this is really, to me though, it's how much of an outlier was Lance Lynn as far as the Rangers having as much success with him as they did? Is there

anything about that? Because a year ago, Lance Lynn would have been in almost the exact same range. Maybe a little earlier, but not much. Nobody was excited about Lance Lynn would have been in almost the exact same range. Maybe a little earlier, but not much. Nobody was excited about Lance Lynn a year ago going into the fantasy season. And he just came up with this year that, frankly, I don't think the most optimistic Lance Lynn-loving fantasy player on the planet

was going to come down with a 246K subk sub 4 era season like the one he turned in right i mean like that that was just never in our wildest dreams could that have been a possibility and it happened lance landon before the rangers signed him was throwing harder than he had ever thrown before yeah vila was up i think that's that's it and i and in terms of uh the the new guys gibson and lyle's gibson threw harder than he ever threw before last year however for lance land it was he threw 93 plus for the first time in his career when he'd been throwing 91s before. Whereas Kyle Gibson in 2017 threw 92 on average, 93 in 2018, 93.3 in 2019. So slightly more graduated movement up. But if he added a little bit more and sat 93.5 next year, 93.6,

little bit more and sat 93.5 next year 93.6 i suppose i like uh cod gibson a little better than jordan lyles then okay fair enough but both more in that streaming boat not guys you're throwing the late dart on thinking that you're gonna uncover someone that should have been going a lot earlier i think that's a reasonable position to take. No need to go overboard talking ourselves into it, but more just kind of saying, hey, there's something going right in Texas with the pitching front. That's true. That's true.

Let's close things out with the Mariners, who barely even have a player inside the top 200 in ADP. Malik Smith just barely in there, 189.5 since May 1st. I don't want to talk about Malik Smith. We're not going to talk about him. We've done that. It takes the Tom Murphy.

They have two inside the top 300. Wow. That's the only other one? Yeah. It's not like he's a must-have, totally safe player in that range either. must-have, totally safe player in that range either. But the player that I think I'm most intrigued by with the Mariners, you can go a lot of directions with this,

is Kyle Lewis. And I think we talked about him a little bit at the end of last season, but he's had so many injuries in the minors that it's very difficult to look back at what he was doing at high a and double a you know between 2017 2018 and say oh okay like he's just a bust right like i don't think he's a mixed league like a shallow or mid-sized mixed league sort of player but i just think he's one of those guys that you can't write off because injuries

have been that extreme for him like there there could be a late blooming uh guy that actually does sort of meet the expectations that come with being a early first round pick i mean he was an 11th overall pick back in 2016 huge raw power we did see it in the form of barrel rate. There was a ton of swing and miss. Not a big surprise. He skipped over AAA entirely. And as I mentioned, with all that missed development time, what are you going to do? In a September call-up, you're probably

not going to have a guy who comes up and maintains a low K rate. What do you think about Kyle Lewis, though? The long path it's taken for him to just finally last year between AA and his time in the big leagues sort of show that power that was sort of the calling card that made him that pick just four years ago? I mean, he hit the ball really hard while he was up, and it was only 43 batted balls. But, you know, 50 batted balls is not magic, but it suggests that 43 batter balls is some information. We have some information about how hard he hits the ball.

And also, you mentioned he skipped AAA, so we never got to see him with the rabbit ball in the minors. What if you could mentally fill in 2019 Mariners, AAA, 200 plate appearances with a 240 ISO with with the rabbit ball that would make people excited and i think that would like fill in a gap because otherwise you're looking at the minor leagues like ah his isos were all like 130 and 140 in the minors what what is this raw power you're talking about but i think people uh you know who are ranking him like fangraphs gave him a 70 on raw power. You don't see that many 70-grade raw power players.

Yeah. And then you look like he didn't really have extreme fly ball rates. There's some tweaking that can be done at the major league level with major league coaching, perhaps with hitting coaching, or just something that might come with time because he's only really played around a thousand Major League played appearances because of all that injury interruption. I put him on

that labor squad for a reason. I think he's kind of like the ideal dollar, two dollar type play where you're like you know he could just take a job and go with it and even if he hits 240 and strikes out 28 of the time you know if the power's there

he'll have been worth it yeah i think if we were looking at a complete season, it's easy like 30 home run pop. It's not even really a debate. The scouting grade reflects that. It's just it's hidden in the minor league numbers. And if I remember correctly, too, the AA affiliate for Seattle has one of the more pitcher-friendly, one of the most pitcher-friendly environments in all of minor league baseball. So that kind of piles on for this guy i mean the overall production wrc plus at double a last season wasn't off the charts but it was steady

it was 109 and then you have to add in team context this is not a team that has a player that's going to keep lewis on the bench other than hanager you know like listen with hanniker probably still rehabbing maybe with the extended date he can get back in there let's give hanniker a spot here's what's left for the other two spots malik smith d gordon jake fraley and kyle lewis or lope lopes or Lopez. I don't actually know how to say that name. Tim Lopes? Yeah, I think it's Lopes. Who is definitely a utility type. And then you start getting into possible prospects and stuff,

but I think this team doesn't really want to start anybody's clock this year. So I think Lewis is the obvious, and Fraley is in a mix to take Malik Smith's job. Yeah, I think if you're the Mariners, if you're not going to give Kelnick and Rodriguez a look this year, which makes sense for the obvious reasons of having them longer. Then see if Fraley and Lewis are actual starters. Right, like make sure that they play a ton.

Malik Smith is not a part of your future, so you play him when you need to play him, but you don't have to worry about playing him. When Hanager's healthy, you do run with the Hanager-Fraley-Lewis combination in your outfield. That's the base. Maybe you start the year. Here's another thing.

I think that Fraley's interesting, but defense is part of that interest, part of what makes him more interesting. And so in terms of his WRC projection, it's below 90 for the most part. So I would say if you want to start the year and be like, hey, we're trying to win, then the trying to win lineup still includes Lewis. It's Hanager, Malik, Smith, Lewis, with Fraley as the backup, the fourth outfielder type. And then over the course of the year, as you start to lose games and you get out of it,

then you start bringing in Fraley as a starter over Malik. That's my prediction for how the outfield works. Yeah, I could definitely see that. And Fraley, I mean, was just amazing at AA. I think we've talked about that before. 156 WRC plus last year, got the bump to AAA, was a tick above a league average at 104. But also, he showed in-game power, albeit with the rabbit ball, and he showed some speed as well, chipped in with six steals and eight attempts. I mean, he's just one of those guys, he might be a

better fantasy player than a real-life player, and all he needs is an opportunity to provide some value for us. I think he'll be a good waiver wire pickup at some point in the season. Yeah. I just can't imagine Malik Smith finishing the season in a starting role if he even finishes inattle at all like i could see him just being in a bench player for a contending team maybe even that i think is is a little bit uh stretch weird to me actually that the projections from alex smith in terms of wrc

plus are almost identical to fraley yeah where do you think that comes from uh it comes from the 2018 outlier it comes from fairly uh being projected to be less power because um you know he's consistently put up isos over 200 uh you know the last two years at three different levels and he's projected to like a 160 ISO. And then a large strikeout rate in a small sample last year, I guess is pushing his projected strikeout rate from, you know, an observed 20% level in the minor leagues to 25% in the major leagues. So he ends up looking a lot like Malik Smith in terms of strikeouts and walks and just has a little bit more power and less speed i guess i think the key here though is that when you look

at malik smith you're looking at a player who's had over 1600 plate appearances in the big leagues yes very known quantity yeah and he's been you know below average as an offensive player in three of his four seasons. 93 WRC plus overall, so below average for the bulk of that time. And he grades out as a below average defender, too. So what is your excuse for putting him on the field as you rebuild? There isn't one unless you don't have anybody else to put out there. That's it. That's the story.

Yeah. Or your the story. Yeah. Or your Biden time. Yep. And I just don't think they're going to do that. I think Fraley is going to play a lot. I think Lewis is going to play a lot too. All right. Well, that's going to wrap things up for the AL West.

If you're listening to this show on a platform that allows you to rate and review it, please take the time to do it. We would greatly appreciate that. If you don't already have a subscription to The Athletic, you can get that at 40% off at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. We appreciate everybody who is supporting the site at this time. It's just as much as we can ask for.

So thank you from the bottom of our hearts if that's something you have been doing or something you're going to decide to do in the near future. As always, you can reach us via email, ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com. Just be sure to spell out the word and if you go that route. You can find Eno on Twitter at Eno Saris. You can find me at Derek Van Ryper. That's going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Thursday.

Thanks for listening.