Rates & Barrels - A Search for Acuña's Missing Power, Strength of Schedule & Waiver Targets

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss several news items including a trip to the IL for Grayson Rodriguez, the return of two other Baltimore starters, more knee trouble for Byron Buxton, and several rehabbing pitchers. Plus, they examine the missing power from Ronald Acuña Jr. this season, strength of schedule considerations, and several players to consider as waiver-wire targets as the weekend approaches. Rundown 4:53 News & Notes: Grayson Rodriguez, John Means, Byron Buxton 12:48 Suspensions & Rehab Updates: Shane Baz, Taj Bradley & Walker Buehler 20:11 Ronald Acuña Jr.'s Currently Missing Power 25:13 Factors to Consider in Strength of Schedule 30:52 Fluctuations in Lineup Quality Due to Absences 35:08 Toughest Stuff+ Faced This Season 41:57 Project Prospect: Tyler Black, Jordan Beck, Jackson Jobe, Paul Skenes & Heston Kjerstad 57:24 Weekend Waiver Preview: Wenceel Pérez, Nick Senzel, Jacob Young & Pitching Darts/Matchup Plays Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Thursday, May 2nd, Derek Van Riper, you know Sarah's here with you on this episode, we dig into some news and notes from around the league, we have injury updates, we have a lingering question that a few folks have been asking in Discord, I think Braves fans have wondered a bit about it, where is the power for Ronald Lacuna Jr. this season, we'll dig into that. We got some Project Prospect as well, thanks to a few recent debuts, we got Paul Skeen's watch

in full effect, we'll talk about his latest outing at AAA, and we've got a few weekend waiver preview names to discuss later on in this episode. If you haven't joined already, join the Discord. You can do that using the link in the show description. Eno, how's it going for you on this Thursday? It's going good. Got a piece up about Sonny Gray

and his evolution of his pitches. That was kind of fun to write because he's thrown a lot of different breaking balls. And in order to even talk about them, you kind of have to call it things that he doesn't call them. You know, like he's like he's been famously said like, oh, it's not a sweeper. It's a slider. Well, I have to differentiate it from your other slider. So let's call it a sweeper. I guess maybe in his head, it's a little bit more slider and cutter. So, you know, but it does sweep a lot. So it was still useful to kind of call it a sweeper. He's the breaking ball king.

One thing I've learned, though, just from the Friday shows we've done with Trevor and I think from last week's conversation with Adam Ottavino, is that some of the reasoning behind pitchers calling their pitch a certain thing is almost like a cue to themselves for how they grip it, how they let it go. Those things are kind of important to them from a mental standpoint, because if you change something in your head, you might change something with your hand or your fingers or your elbow, and then you create new problems for yourself. So it's easy for us to just measure them very clearly and say, this is definitely a sweeper. But I finally understand another reason why there might be disagreement

about what a pitch actually is. And it has a direct application of the story, which is that I think it makes sense for him to call it a slider because he's actually trying to throw it harder. And when he was trying to chase movement, it was a lesser pitch. So when he was trying to chase sweep, you got it was a lesser pitch. Now he's trying to throw it harder. It's a better pitch. So maybe he wants to call it a slider to keep from chasing the sweep.

Yeah. What you call things and how you measure things very important. You might remember on the show from Wednesday, I said that Wisconsin has more lakes than Minnesota. And I wasn't wrong based on where I heard. I heard it on the radio one morning. It was just part of the news. I was driving to work.

Wisconsin radio. Years ago, it was mostly like Wisconsin public radio. I was trying to be a better human, listen to some news and the way to work instead of music or a podcast or whatever. And I remember that sticking in my head and someone quickly pointed out this morning, well, Wisconsin counts lakes differently

and that has been verified as a big part of why. So if you care and you don't, if you care, the Minnesota DNR says a lake must cover at least 10 acres of land to be considered a lake in Wisconsin There's no minimum so you could have a pond on a farm and that would be classified as a lake by the DNR So by that measure Wisconsin does have more lakes than Minnesota But if you use the 10 acre requirement, Wisconsin, I think there's about half as many Lakes that size in Wisconsin. So there you go.

Everything you ever wanted to know about lakes in two states you've probably never been to. The weirdest lake thing for me was hearing recently that there are no nature-made lakes in Georgia because I remember being in those lakes. They're all manmade lakes? They were all manmade. I also remember kind of gross bottoms. And I even learned to scuba dive in Lake Lanier in Georgia. And all I saw at the bottom was beer cans, like tires, like someone's cooler that fell off their boat. I was a great preparation for scuba diving in Jamaica and Hawaii. I'm sure you'll find some interesting things at the bottom of some of the smaller lakes

of Wisconsin. I actually don't want to go look and see what's down there. Hey, hey, I wasn't going there, but yeah, also that. Let's get to some baseball news you should know because that's probably why you're here. Grayson Rodriguez was placed on the IL with shoulder inflammation and this is a bit of a tricky one because there was no real indication

looking at the performance on Monday night as far as velocity, spin, number of pitches. He went over 100 pitches, he pitched really well. Everything looked really good. I think we could maybe put this on the optimistic side for now, just based on those factors that maybe it is just in fact a little extra soreness. And after a brief stint on the IEL, Grayson Rodriguez might just happen to be OK. Unfortunately, though, Grayson Rodriguez makes it nine out of the top

10 leaders in fastball velocity last year that are currently hurt. The only one who's not is Hunter Green. Somebody put him in some bubble wrap right now. He was hurt a lot last year. Yeah, so there is some debate in baseball circles if raw velocity is the source or if velocity respective to your max velocity is more of the stressor. I tend to think though, that if you are averaging 98 or 99 on the fastball, that you're probably pretty close to your max too.

The max that we've seen out of a human is like 105 and really the most often max we see is like 102. So if you're sitting 98, 99, you're right up on that. Again, comes back to how the VLO is measured. I think you go back a few decades, you'll find some reports of guys throwing a little harder than that. And I don't even wanna go down that road

because it's a never ending argument. The good news on the flip side of this, we do have John Means returning from the IL as the corresponding move. Here's a guy who doesn't throw hard who got hurt. Yep. It happens to everybody. Wade Miley. It happens to everybody. You can't just shop in the low Velo bin and remain unscathed.

Yeah. And you got Kyle Bradish back. He's actually starting against the Yankees on Thursday. We talked about Bradish earlier in the week and being a little bit reluctant to use him, given the difficulty of the matchup. And the velocity in the minor leagues. Some questions about that. Not quite to where he's been in the past. But we haven't talked about Means yet

and Means looked really good in his last outing against AAA Gwinnett, which is not a strong AAA lineup. Yes, the Braves are a great major league team. Their AAA lineup leaves a bit to be desired, but seven innings, like one hit, eight Ks. Give me a name that you recognized. I mean, Forest Wall, because he used to be a prospect, but he's basically like a pinch runner.

I think Uli Gurriel's down there. Whoa, Uli Gurriel's still bouncing around. Yeah, but beyond that, it's guys that, they're up and down guys, if they're even major leaguers at all at this stage of their career. So it wasn't like a lineup full of prospects. It was more like the AAA Charlotte lineup

than the AAA Norfolk Orioles lineup. That said, he did strike out 26% of the batters he saw on his rehab stint in AAA, which is more than he struck out in his rehab stint in AAA, which is more than he struck out in his rehab stint last year in AAA. So maybe he'll strike out more than 3.8 batters per night. I mean, he had a really low strikeout rate last year. That's enough for me to be taking a real wait and see. I want to see major leagues, spin rates, usage rates,

VELOs. I want to see some shapes. I don't I want to see something before I am throwing them out there on my team. Well, good news. They'll get to start this weekend, likely Friday or Saturday in that series against the Reds. You'll get a chance to get a few more numbers on Means before making that decision. And given the state of pitching in a lot lot of leagues I could see Means being one of the more sought after waiver targets on the mound this weekend which again just speaks to the lack of alternatives but good signs from him overall on his rehab assignment. Let's talk about Byron Buxton for a moment he left early on Wednesday with some knee soreness and that's in the twice

surgically repaired knee. I'm definitely worried now because it's been such a long road for him filled with multiple injuries and now you've got this major thing that seems to be a problem again. He's going to have an MRI. You look at the results so far this season. We talked about Mike Trout on our show with Britt yesterday and at least Trout was looking like himself again before the injury. Byronxton not so much right we're still looking for the quality the contact to come all the way back it's a 4.9% barrel rate through 30 games compared to a 14.6 last year he's been double-digit barrel rates each

of the previous four seasons so that hasn't been there even the raw power is down pretty much yeah and as a base dealer last year, nine for nine in the 85 games he played, this year one for three. I mean, still limited samples, but something still isn't right, even though Buxton had already appeared in 30 games, 28 games this year,

and it was just looking like he was feeling better just by volume of playing time, but not necessarily by getting the results all the way back. There was also an UMP show situation in that game that I was not excited to hear about. The UMP told him to get off the field because he was limping his way off the field. Really?

It's too much. It's stupid. I don't, the UMPires, we talked about the Rays Brewers a little bit. Really? That's awesome. It's too much. It's stupid. We talked about the raised brewers a little bit. Chris Guccione was actually more of an aggressor in that situation than an umpire should be. I'll say it again, umpires have a difficult job. I don't think officials in most sports get enough respect. I think that trickles down to youth levels

and creates a lot of bad situations. You see stupid videos online of people being jerks enough respect. I think that trickles down to youth levels and creates a lot of bad situations. You see stupid videos online of people being jerks to officials all over the place. But I do think part of the job, especially at the professional level, is to not be an aggressor back in a situation. You're the umpire. You have control. If you eject somebody, you should not be walking back at them and yelling back at them. That's just part of the job like having to take that to some degree having to be the bigger person having to have the cooler head should be part of the job because I

feel like umpires are never disciplined for doing stuff like that telling Buxton to get up he's an injured player like what's wrong with you he's an injured player let him take his time getting off the field. There's no tactical benefit here. Like, be human about it. I don't understand it. I guess I understand sort of wanting to feel in charge of the field, and that is part of the job, but my sense of leadership reminds maybe a little bit more

along what you're saying. Speak softly and carry a big stick. We're all human. like it's easy to if someone says some terrible things to you It's easy to fire back with something, but I just think you have to have the cooler head if you're in that position I didn't even know that about the Buxton situation. That's just disappointing the umpires know a lot about the game That's why they're there. They love it in some fashion Got another box you would know. Yeah, you would know the situation with Buxton You would know he's had tons of injuries, especially with his knee. So that's just cold to be that way We mentioned von Grissom coming back from the IL earlier this week that got delayed by an illness

He's expected to come back on Friday. So if you activated him for the week, you're gonna get a partial week instead of a full week That's a little bit Disappointing again much needed player getting back in the lineup for Boston. We do have some suspensions from that Brewers' raise game on Tuesday night. Chris Guccione, zero, the umpire, not suspended. But Abner Ebe, six games, and he sends him an option to AAA.

Freddie Peralta, five, he's appealing. So does he serve them at AAA? I don't think you can serve your games at AAA. You gotta serve them. So he has to come back and serve them? They're gonna have to come up with a time when they'll appeal, maybe it'll get reduced, and then they'll bring them back up,

do it at some time when the bullpen's more rested. I would be with my guess there. Jose Sierra, he got three games. That was already reduced to two. He started serving that on Wednesday. Apparently he was sore from the altercation on Tuesday anyway, so he'll be back later this weekend, health permitting.

So that was the fallout from all of that. That was a game in which Tyler Black actually debuted. We'll talk about him a little bit later on in our waiver segment. And on the race side, there's actually a few injury updates to pass along. Shane Baas is going to move to AAA for his next rehab progression toward rejoining the race rotation. Sort of at the two inning level right now. Yeah, they're bringing him along slowly.

If you follow the kind of schemes plan, which might be what they're kind of doing, I think you still probably two or three weeks out. They're just going to add like one inning per start. Probably by the end of the month. Seems reasonable. And once he's back, I think they can let him work mostly like a regular starter.

We got one more weekend start at AAA, at least one more weekend start for Taj Bradley at Durham as well before he potentially rejoins the rotation. We already looked at it with Tyler Alexander having a spot that kind of seems like a path for Bradley to get a look here sooner rather than later so it might be another guy that he's probably taking up in terms of roster rates, but he is absolutely worth looking at as far as stashing him or trying to pick him up right away this weekend where available. Walker Bueller is going to be back for the Dodgers on Monday. He had a nice rehab start at triple A five innings, one earned run, seven hits, five case, no walks. I think the big question with Bueller is going to be similar to what we're talking about Bradish. What's the initial trust level given the overall makeup of his rehab assignment and given that this is the second Tommy John that Bueller's coming back from?

Dave I saw a surprising piece of research. I hesitate to say it's 100% lock solid and we should act accordingly. But down on the farm, Drew Haugen, who does good work, looked at different variables to try and predict Tommy John surgery. And I think you'd be surprised with the most dominant features in his model where number one, breaking ball spin, breaking ball spin. Number two, release extension. Number three, pitches, which is that's just sad. That's just sad. Four is, is breaking ball.

So how many breaking balls? Five is breaking ball velocity. Six is release point. Seven is release point. So X and Y. Eight is off speed velocity. Six is release point. Seven is release point, so X and Y. Eight is off speed velocity. Nine is fast ball velocity. So that was surprising to me. Breaking ball spin, huh?

That's something that you have to watch with Bueller is it's a second Tommy John, and one of the things they do, and this is why Keaton wins is kind of fun, because he throws his splitter so much, is Keaton Wynn throws his splitter so much because they take your slider away in Tommy John rehab. The slider is the last thing you're supposed to throw.

So Walker Bueller was like a breaking ball spin champion, right? So how much feel will he have for his breaking balls coming off of this rehab is something that I don't think a box score or just a straight V lo is going to tell you until you kind of see him. However, he's of a great enough talent. I had him top 50 still. You have to do that looking on your roster if you can.

Yeah, I'm looking at the breakdown of what he was throwing in that last start. And there is an easier way to get the breakdowns for some of the minor league starts. You can go to savant and click on the game feed tab and you work from there to go down, change the calendar date, the lower part of the calendar date, click on the level where it says the number of games. When you press game feed, there's a there's a there's like going to be games across the top. Yeah. Below that.

Ignore those. There's a little calendar icon that's grayed out that doesn't look like it's clickable. But if you click that and what what game what time did he play? Pitch last he pitched on Tuesday, April 30th. So then you go to April 30th on that calendar. Then you click on MLB and you can go to AAA. Yep. And then you get all the box scores that are available in that format. Who's the AAA Dodgers?

Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City. So then you can go to the Oklahoma City game, play breakdowns, and he pitched against Kenny Rosenberg. And his average fastball velocity was 92.9 but he did throw 18 cutters 13 sliders and 13 knuckle curves yeah pretty kitchen sink sort of mix for Buhler I think that's pretty interesting I want to see if that ports over none of that top-end Velo he used to have not yet anyway I wonder if it will if it comes back when it will come back. Usually VLO comes back before command.

So you think this is probably closer to what we're gonna see when he gets back. I do, I do kind of. Although there is an aspect of, usually when we study this, we've said that games back predict your fastball VELO going back like very well.

Like one is already a lot of signal, two is almost all you need, and three is basically can predict your fastball velocity the rest of the season. The reason those might be major league numbers and not minor league numbers is if you're Walker Buehler, like maybe you're just out there feeling good. Maybe you're not like, I need to throw hard. It wouldn't surprise me if he sat more 93.5 or something, but that's not what he used to be. Right, it's still having to deal with less velocity

than he had before the injury. But it's a two-start week for Buhler coming back, home against Miami and then road against San Diego. I think that's probably a go. In just about any format, you still take your chances on Buhler having enough in the the tank win probability being pretty high, especially in that first start. What if he pitches like seven innings Seven total. Yeah, I mean that's possible, but they let him go five in this last rehab start

So it's not that's a good point. It's not like because of extreme workload concerns. Just hoping for efficient outings. Yeah, it's got to locate well That's gonna be key for Walker Bueller One question that's been kind of simmering around in discord lots of other places is Ronald Acuna jr. Power going to show up soon because it's weird right? He had that knee injury during the spring There was some concern. He got back reasonably quickly. He's stealing a ton of bases. He's 13 for 14 as a base stealer.

There's a couple of things that are different. The power hasn't been there so far this year, just one homer through 29 games. He's striking out a lot more than he did last year, but more in line with previous career rates. 27.9% to be his highest since the shortened 2020 season, to be the highest of any full season that Acuna's ever played in the big leagues. The quality of the contact is somewhat there in the sense that the hard hit rate is still

pretty good, 48.1%, but the ground ball rate's up at 53.2%. That would be a career high for him as well. So because he's running so much, I don't really believe the knee is a major problem that's causing the power to be lacking, but seeing that ground ball rate up and seeing that K rate up makes me wonder if he's just being pitched to a lot differently and is in the process of adjusting to it. Yeah. I have a feeling that last year was like this really great meshing of his approach

and what pitchers were trying to do. I went through the heat maps and last year he got a lot of high fastballs and low breaking balls. It's you know, an approach. I think we did an Acuna on how to pitch to him, right? We did that on a demo episode. And that we didn't actually publish, okay. So you go high fastballs, low sliders with him,

but if you look at the heat map, it wasn't working, obviously, he had a season for the ages, really. And the wrinkle this year is low force seams, and not low force seams and not high force seams, it's low force seams and not low four seams and not high four seams. It's low four seams and high four seams. One thing that you'll see is a career high in fastball seam. A major jump in four seam fastballs from 30% last year to 39% now. So, you know, he's seeing a lot more fourseams. And I think the approach basically is if it's high, I've got like a, you know, clear my hands through quick kind of tomahawk swing, right? So if it's high, I'm just

getting those hands through and pow, you know, like I'm just a real sack, you know? But if it's low, it's a slider and then I want to scoop it, right. And I'm going to scoop it and I'm either going to scoop it for a pull home run if I'm out front or I'm going to fillet it. Right. As a fillet is kind of like a scoop swing, but you kind of it goes opposite field, you know. What if you try to scoop or fillet a low forcing? I think that turns into a weak grounder. Let's say this is all true. You're left in the face of like ground ball rate is starting to become like there's signal there, barrel rate, there's signal there now.

You have the two things in opposition. One is here's a strategy that's being imposed on him that you think that he could fight his way out of, figure out a new strategy himself, right? But then you also have these numbers that say, well, there's signal here. So I tend to think that he's going to find his way out of this. It's just sort of my assumption for players this good. I think it might just be a reminder

that the league tends to try something different when you're really, really, really good. They spend a lot of time trying to come up with something that will work. It's just the question of how long it will work. I'd be more concerned about the power not coming back if you looked at some of these underlying numbers and saw bigger drops.

I mean, you look at, we've talked about best speed, right? The average exit velocity of his top half, batting balls. He's still, Acuña is 21st, tied for 20th actually, in that matchup. Max CV, 113 is very good. Right, low for him, but it's still very good. Yeah, yeah, it's not as good as, like last year he hit a 121,

last year he was like, Stanton-esque. This year, he's more like top 10, top 15 type guy. It's still hitting the ball really hard, and given his career ground ball rate is 43% and last year was 49%, this year was 53%, I think he's going to find a way to lift it. Seems like it's only a matter of time before Acuna has one of those months that's like two and a half months worth of production rolled into one. Let's move on to another topic.

You and I have been kicking this around behind the scenes for a couple of weeks now, and it seems like the strength of schedule in baseball, fantasy baseball in particular, but just in baseball in general, doesn't necessarily get enough weight put behind it. Like I feel like we have ways of reacting to it. You know, when a bad team wins a series or even sweeps a good team, we kind of joke about

it and laugh about it. That's like one of the areas that comes up in conversation occasionally. But we started to look back at what the Red Sox pitching staff has done so far. And we're wondering, did they make some layups against the easy run of the schedule? Or has there been a massive skills growth? It's possible to have both of those things simultaneously, and that's when you get results that are a lot better than expected. So what did you find when you started digging into the opponents the Red Sox have faced to this point? Is there some truth to the idea that they have had an easy schedule for their pitchers up to this point in the season.

I think so. It's kind of hard to quantify one of the things that's so hard to quantify about strength of schedule or looking at things is, you know, how good is the team, the team, how good is a team is hard enough to figure out, you know, and then to have it be kind of a moving target. Sometimes teams are better at different times of the year. They're different personnel, you know? So how good is the team when you thought going into the season, how good is it gonna be the rest of the season? It's a difficult thing.

But I will say, you know, also I'm a human being and I was about to maybe do a victory lap on the Boston Red Sox having one of the best rotations in baseball, you know, that's down a little bit since. And when you look at the schedule, it kind of all makes sense. They did Seattle, Oakland, Angels. I'm going to skip one and I'll come back to it. Angels, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago Cubs, and the Giants.

And you know what you see? Zeroes and twos and fours and ones in the opposing runs category. Now I'm gonna bring in the one series that I did not mention. April 9th through April 11th. Brian Bayo, Cutter Crawford and Garrett Whitlock pitched. These are pitchers that we think are good now.

The Red Sox gave up seven, seven and nine runs to the Baltimore Orioles those three games. Those have been their hardest opposition. And yes, they're a good team. I would put forth that none of the rest of the teams are that strong offensively. No, no, I think the Orioles are the clear best lineup of the ones the Red Sox have faced on their schedule. And even of all the teams you named, I don't know if you'd mark any of those lineups as more than average in their current form, at least.

I don't know. Cleveland put up a 10 on them and they're playing pretty well. But like I still distrust Cleveland lineups just generally. It's been so long. They haven't been that good, you know? Yeah, they're a 108 by WRC Plus. They don't strike out. They're doing well now. Under a 20% K-rate for the season. So that's a top 10 offense by WRC Plus.

The Cubs are a 100. They're, again, on an average. Angels are a 99, Giants are a 97. Oakland's can't be that high. Seattle can't be that high. Oakland's an 89 in WRC plus. Yeah. Seattle's what, like a 94?

93 and they probably, they strike out a lot. 28.7% K rate so far. I think, is that series in Seattle too? We got more on some park factors on the Friday show. Tomorrow would be interesting, yeah. We're gonna go full nerd tomorrow. It's gonna be awesome. Going forward, it's kind of an interesting schedule.

It's not all hard, but it's harder I think. At Minnesota, at Atlanta. And you know, I got some pushback with Cutter Crawford, like, oh dude, like, what are you doing? Putting the ERA leader in the sixties in your rankings. And I'm like, ERA is not predictive at all. And this is part of the reason why. So Cutter Crawford, I guarantee you his ERA is not going to be, you know, a 1.5 or whatever it is after he goes to Atlanta.

I'm pretty sure. Like I just, I kind of have a feeling about this. So Minnesota, Atlanta versus Washington. And then I'm gonna skip one and it'll be interesting to come back to this. At St. Louis, it's still a pretty good schedule. Where it gets really hard is May 27th. Baltimore, Detroit is good. Atlanta again. White Sox is good.

Philly, Yankees, Toronto, Cincinnati, Toronto. And we don't again, I'm going to go back. Tampa is the team I skipped. Tampa and Toronto. We should talk about a little bit because Tampa and Toronto on paper in terms of projections are teams you should be paper, in terms of projections, are teams you should be afraid of. In terms of projected runs scored going forward, the Blue Jays are still a top 10-ish team.

The Rays actually have fallen off already on projected offense, but they should be teams that you might be a little bit worried about, particularly at home, and yet, they haven't been playing that way. So yeah. So the Rays just on Wednesday got chewed up by Colin Ray, six scoreless five Ks. And it was a very watered down Rays lineup that had a flaw,

an obvious flaw going into the season. Wander's gone. Like, that's a huge missing part of their offense, but still no Josh Lowe, still no Brandon Lau. Jose Siri didn't play in that game, but also Jose Siri is the kind of player that I think is a net positive when he's in the lineup because he strikes out so much. From a fantasy perspective, you say, I don't mind Jose Siri's playing today,

even though he could do some damage. He's helping your pitcher probably always. He might also go 0-4-4 or 3K. Sure, so you look at that team right now and they're definitely not playing well. 94 WRC plus. They have three regulars above 100 WRC plus. Isaac Paredes, Ahmed Rosario, and Richie Palacios.

Richie... Hey, I'm feeling good about Richie Palacios. That's right. Playing time's ticking up. it's one of my guys. That was as much your call as anybody's. Just follow the logic. If a Cardinal bat ends up in Tampa Bay, in Tampa.

good things seem to happen. I don't know how long it's gonna work, but I'm gonna try it until it stops working. The Jays don't have as much of an excuse. The Rays you can kind of quickly break down and go, yeah, that's not a lot of the fear. That's actually, the Rays have become a lineup to target and stream against instead of being kind of middle of the pack with all the injuries.

That would be my assessment of where they're at right now. The Blue Jays, they fall into this category of a lineup's reputation and even their projection versus reality. And as a team, they underperformed last year, and now we're looking at a month's worth of games where they still haven't been the Blue Jays that many of us expect them to be, right? They got a 96 WRC plus.

They're a little bit Cleveland-esque. They still temper strikeouts, 20.6%. So they're gonna put balls in play, and they could certainly come in and bab a pitcher any given day but here we are through you know 32 games this season, Vlad jr. three homers 104 WRC plus okay I'm not really worried about this version of Vlad and their best everyday player is Justin Turner or Dalton Varsho by what has happened to this point and then you look

at the supporting cast like Bo Bichette, who's supposed to be a star, has had a bad first month. George Springer has been below average by WRC plus so far. You have an age component there where it makes you a little nervous. Yes. You start to wonder, OK, like, I'm not burying Bo. I liked Bo as a third round pick during draft season. I'm not going to completely abandon that, but there's going to be a deep dive probably on Bo Bichette in a future episode.

We had questions about some of the other players they were going to lean on, right? They give Ernie Clement and Kevin Biggio and a bunch of guys time that aren't necessarily big leaguers you'd fear. So they have a couple of holes in the lineup already. There's too many like utility guys like I kind of think of IKF, Kevin Biggio and Ernie many like utility guys. Like I kind of think of IKF, Calvin BGio and Ernie Clement as utility guys.

And Kevin Keirmeyer often hits like a utility guy. I know he's got the defense to keep him in line up, but that's for utility guys. This is why Davis Schneider has been playing. This is why Davis Schneider has been interesting to me. And this is why I don't know what happens to Davis Schneider's playing time when Kevin Keirkeimer comes back. But it may not be as cut and dry as you expect,

which is Keirkeimer comes in and Schneider goes down or doesn't play as much. But even if we look at Vlad, Bo, and Springer and say, sure, they're all going to be at least a little better than they were. How good is this team? If they at least a little better than they were. How good is this team? If they're not a lot better than they were, that's kind of a big deal as far as what you do when Toronto comes up on the schedule.

And I just biff this man. I just chose a lot of single start guys over Seth Lugo at Toronto man. And what do you do? He just came out there and shoved. Betrayal, oh, betrayal. I know, he's my guy. I just figured, you know, at Toronto, Lugo's peripherals aren't great. You know, this is when Vladdy shows up.

One little interesting side point is strength of schedule cuts both ways. So we have this interesting stat from Thomas Nesteco. It's at TJ stats on Twitter. And he's just looked at opponents stuff plus. So just what stuff plus the batters have seen his stuff was a little bit different than mine. But I think we align close enough that my results wouldn't be that different if I tabulated them. He has the Angels as number one, Toronto as having seen the best stuff plus, number two, Tampa, three.

These are teams that we've been wondering, where's the offense? I think with the Angels, it's like, well, it's not there. Now trout hurt. I mean, like there's also that. And I think- But with Toronto and Tampa, like what if they just been facing really good pitchers

and that's made them look worse? I could get on board with that completely. I think this is a really good way to quantify the difficulty for an opposing lineup. Like when you're wondering about a group of underperforming players, this would be something you'd look at and it would help you at least understand or explain what happened. Let's just say the Blue Jays of the team they were last year and not the team they were prior to last year when they were kind of flirting with being

one of the best offenses. Best lineups. Because they looked more like a peak Astros lineup that did damage and didn't strike out prior to 2023. Even last year, they were an above average lineup that didn't strike out a lot. They just weren't getting to the long ball as much as we expected them to. And that made them less of a problem to match up against. Yeah, I mean like a

an eighth best team with the 107 WRC plus and then put this also into context what we were talking earlier when I was talking about within terms of like how teams ebb and flow. So I think let's say okay let's say they're a talent, 107 WRC plus team. That's what they were last year. Let's say they're or let's say they're 105 this year. Still good. It's probably a top 10 lineup. People oscillate around a mean that each player does. Right? Like if you look at rolling Woba charts, or like rolling production charts, you'll see it's like an EKG up and

down up and up and up down right? There's amplitude, there's waves. There's waves and we generally say the middle of that amplitude is the thing. So now let's take all of these EKGs on a team, put them next to each other. All that's going to do is amplify, you know, it's going to, it's going to, it's actually going to, in some ways, I think soften it, right? Because if one guy's hot, another guy's not, they cancel out, right?

So there'll be some softening, but there'll still be an oscillation around the meat. So if you think they're a 105 WRC plus team, it is totally possible that for the next two weeks, they are a below average, or even for a month, they are a below average or even for a month they are below average offensive team. Writing that wave though and saying I'm gonna start Seth Lugo because they look like a below average team right now it's still risky. Oh it's definitely risky I mean the top five teams right now

just for the first month of the season by WRC plus Dodgers, Brewers, Braves, Orioles, Astros. There's one of those teams that you don't expect to be in there. I'm not fearing the Brewers lineup. I watch them every day and I'm like am I not throwing an average pitcher against them? Especially not in Milwaukee where the the home run rate is a little bit. Especially with Jelich down too. I mean, you take the best hitter out of a lot of lineups, they can go from above average to average pretty quickly

if they're only a shade above. They're well above right now at 118 for WRC plus. I doubt they're anywhere near that. What's the over under the rest of the season for that offense? I can give you. Probably a 100 even would be like a good outcome the rest of the way and then they'd still finish above average for the season. it would be like a good outcome the rest of the way.

And then they'd still finish above average for the season. They'd be like a 103 or 104 for the year. Yes. And runs scored per game projection on fan graphs says the Brewers have the one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, best offense going forward. So that's a little bit lower than, no, you just said 100. Yeah, I said 100 the rest of the way

and they ended up a little higher because of the good start. But that means you could throw a pitcher against the Brewers despite them being one of the second best, the second best offense in the league so far. What else would matter in a matchup though? What, have the Brewers faced less stuff plus? Have they faced easier competition? Have they benefited from their schedule?

Is that the explanation? Is that how they've done it? And while you're looking into that, think about the teams that projections don't usually like, Rays, Brewers. They're gonna be kind of funky teams that would still be rest of season under-projected relative to actual improvement

because the projections are gonna be generally slow to catch up. I was hoping that maybe down thread he'd done some more into it, but Vlad Guerrero Jr. has himself faced the best stuff plus in the big leagues. And Ray Theorosa Reyna, who's really struggling, has seen the third best.

I think that matters. I really, I would, I think there's some weight to that. I will try to maybe watch on Twitter. I'll put it maybe in Discord. I'll do, I'll ask for the opposite of this, which teams have benefited from seeing the worst stuff. I think that would also be interesting to see if the Brewers are on that list.

I'll try to put this in the reverse mailbag channel on the Discord, but what factors are you, the listeners, what are you looking at when you're trying to determine strength of schedule for upcoming matchups? Be that for pickups, be that for who to sit, who to start. Because I think this is an area where there's still some opportunity, there's some tools out there that try to cut through it.

What tools do you use? Razzball's good, you know. I will look at Razzball, I have to say, I do it by feel. I don't know. I mean, I think on say I do it by feel. I don't know. I mean, I think on some level you could do well, but maybe you could do better if you had feel plus information.

Is it the question of what information you wanna have and how reliable is that information? Yeah, I mean, I'm fed by information all the time. Right, yeah, you're not without information. Your gut is backed, it's fed by some information. I'm staring at these numbers all the time, but yeah, it's a tough one. It's a tough one.

I made the wrong choice with Seth Lugo this week. So we're gonna merge Project Prospect and our weekend waiver preview together on this episode for the most part because many of these players are going to be targets over the weekend. I know you and I talked about him in draft and hold season. Tyler Black is up for the Brewers. He was promoted on the day of the fracas

at American Family Field, we'll call it. Tyler Black's a strange player in the sense that he doesn't necessarily have a good defensive position, but he's very patient. He has some power. He has a lot of speed and this is a team that while it's performed very well so far does have an opportunity to get better at first base in particular. Jake Bowers has been very good defensively but I don't think Jake Bowers is hitting enough for the Brewers to say we're okay getting great defense from this spot. We're seeing a 38.2% K rate,

lower walk rate than last season, less hard contact than last season. So you have to wonder if this is the opportunity for Tyler Black to carve out at least a big side platoon role. Maybe he'd be the kind of guy that loses some, late inning plate appearances here and there as a defensive replacement might come in and take over, but he does so many things well that you could make a case

for Tyler Black in a pretty wide range of leagues, even though there's a lot of ways the playing time could shake out. You know what it's time for. Would you rather? No. Build a bench. Oh, it's back. Build a bench.

Build a bench usually goes away for April, so I'm glad it's already back in May. Well, the reason I'm asking is, can you actually keep Jake Bowers on this roster and Tyler Black and Reese Hoskins? Yeah. And I'm not suggesting they're gonna cut Reese Hoskins. Hoskins has been fine.

Bowers is closer to being cut. So if you're positing sort of Hoskins as the everyday DH, let's put Hoskins as the starter. Yeah, Hoskins is sticky. Breaking news, breaking news. Bradish up to 97 in the first. Hey. You're back.

I like that. Says the tweet from aspiring cat. Aspiring cat? Is that on the Orioles beat. No, I don't know. It's just in my Twitter. Um, uh, we're, we're putting Hoskins. That's the information going into your gut.

Aspiring cat tweets coming from aspiring cat, aspiring cat gets you V lo but also gets you a lot of other information too. We're putting a Hoskins at the start of DH. Churio is the starter and right. Freelick is the starter and center. Who's starting and left? Perkins? Well, Perkins is playing center a lot right now. Freelick's playing left while Jelich is out. Once Jelich comes back, then things shift yet again.

Okay. So we're right now we're doing Perkins in center, Freelick in left, Joey Ortiz at third, Adamas at short, Turing at second. We'll put Bowers at first just for or we'll put Tyler Black at first for this. Contreras Sanchez. So having done all that how many spots we have left? I think he's still got four spots on the bench I think you think you named nine starters. I was following well I also put Sanchez in so three spots left three left. So that's Bowers for one for now Oliver done. That's new Bowers last

So who's the backup center fielder like anybody you could? It's free like it's free like it's choreo They got it they got there they have built-in backups at shortstop and center field that are in the starting lineup. That's okay. Who's the fourth outfielder? Weamer for the moment Okay, so there goes one two spots left. Who's the backup shortstop? Joey Ortiz Joey Ortiz Bryce Terang either one of those guys can be the backup short. Do you need another body? So who's the backup middle infielder, backup infielder? Oliver Dunn.

Oliver Dunn, done. So we have one spot left. You do have an extra infielder, an extra outfielder. I guess what their flexibility has done has allowed them to do this, right? You can have a weird combo. Anybody can play center and anybody can play shortstop. Since they have three guys who can play shortstop,

three guys who can play center field, the backup just needs to be another body and then they can shift Turing to short if they don't want to play Dunn at short, you know? Or they can shift Churio to center if they don't want to play Wimmer in center. So they've got all this flexibility that allows them. So Bowers and Black at first,

the loser gets cut when Christian comes back. Yeah, and I think the thing about Bowers, he's one of the few players in the entire roster that doesn't have options. Everybody else, with the exception of like Willi Adames and Reese Hoskins and Gary Sanchez, can be optioned. So Black has to hit. Black has to hit, but they need more from that spot. I think there's a window that's open right now, especially since they need another left-handed bat.

It's huge for them. There's some runway, a lovely swinging strike rate, a not so lovely max CV and hard hit rate. He's a little bit more Sal Freelick. More in-game speed though. We've seen some crazy good stolen base numbers from Tyler Black. 47 for 56 last year at AA8 for 11 at AAA. Interesting player.

I think he's a good pickup if you are looking for speed. If you can afford it, it might be worth... Do you think it's worth a 10% bid? Yeah, I think it's worth a 10% bid? Yeah, I think so. It's a calculated risk, but there's enough ways for it to go right, where I think you take it. You could sell you 25 more bags from here on out.

Yeah, and it's with non-zero power, a pretty good approach that should keep the K rate down, should get on base, kind of a prominent spot in the lineup. Like there's just, that lineup is so fluid. Anyone producing can move to a prominent spot. I did have someone put him up against Gleyber Torres and I'm still keeping Gleyber Torres. I wouldn't take Tyler Black over Gleyber Torres.

But if you have a need in the middle infield and a need for speed in particular, you should find room for Tyler Black, I agree. What do you make of Jordan Beck getting an opportunity with the Rockies? Is he brothers of Tristan Beck? That I do not know offhand, but big numbers at high A,

took a little step back with a promotion to double A last year, hit the ground running at triple A, power, speed, much like Tyler Black. Pretty good eye at the plate, struck out a little more than black, but a sub 20% K rate at triple A, that'll work, age appropriate. Good hard hit rate too. Had a 49.4% hard hit rate early on this year at triple A. Colorado wide open for opportunities, Chris Bryant nowhere close to returning among other

factors. Do you think this can work? Doesn't have the top end raw power. And then, you know, just as I'm picking the knits, despite the decent strikeout rates, these swinging strike rates are higher. We had Joey Lopofito. We were just talking about him. He had a 10% swing strike rate against a 30% strikeout rate where Jordan Beck has a 12.9% and a 13.6 and a, and then a double a 16.1% swing strike rate for Jordan Beck has a 12.9% and a 13.6 and a and then a double a 16.1% swing strike rate for Jordan Beck. So those

are higher numbers. It's kind of funny to me that somebody can and it's not like he's a free swinger that is getting to the ball and play before you know, he walks too. So he looks like Joey Lopofito in terms of walks. He swinging misses more than Joey Lopofito, and for some reason his strikeout rate is 10 points lower. I tend to actually think these guys will meet in the middle. I think he will strike out more in the major leagues.

And I think he'll be a 26, 27% strikeout rate guy. Nice thing about Coors though, is it's gonna inflate your babbip. And that's something we saw from Jordan Beck at every stop in the minor leagues too. So if you give him a 320, 330 babbip, along with a 27% strikeout rate, you can still get to a 250 batting average.

This seems like maybe the Nolan Jones package all over again. Nolan Jones' injury is a big part of the reason why Beck's getting this opportunity right now. But similar to what we said about Tyler Black, I think if Jordan Beck plays well, I think he just sticks. I think the other interesting thing that's happening in Colorado,

we haven't talked about Brenton Doyle yet this season. Some roto goodness for him through the first month. And the biggest question is really, how many levels can he improve, his plate skills? He's got the K-Rate under 30% right now. I was walking a tick more than last year. He's running a 435. 435, that bit. Yeah, so if you're looking at that slash line,

you're like, hey, he's hitting 311 with a 360 OBP and a 481 slug. Yes, there's some improvement there. I think it's probably more of like a 230, 240, low OBP, good pop sort of profile. It's still, for what you paid, you're still happy with Brenton Doyle, even if that's the player he turns into.

Also, centerfield defense is a huge part of what's gonna carry his playing time. Yeah, as much as I think that Beck might have more true talent power than Doyle and better true talent plate skills than Doyle, I do think that Doyle's defense keeps him on the team. And so while Nolan Jones is gone, I think Beck has that shot. When Jones comes back, you start to look at Charlie Blackman a little bit right and they're at the point with Charlie Blackman They can play him less. There's no reason at age 37 to just keep throwing Charlie Blackman out there production has not been there So far this year

Quietly had a nice year last year Relative to pretty low expectations, but if he's doing what he did last year He'll stick in the lineup more if he keeps doing what he's done to the first month Charlie Blackman falls into a Kind of part-time. I don't know, kind of like the Andrew McCutchen role in Pittsburgh maybe, where it's definitely not a regular and you let the other young guys play because you're trying to see what you have in those guys for the future.

But I would at least have Jordan Beck on a contingency list where I'm looking for outfield help because I think he'll play enough and offers a few ways to be useful. The real battle, once everyone's healthy, might be between Beck and Bouchard and they're really similar. I'd tell you they're really similar. I'd say there's a little more swing and miss in Bouchard's game and then Beck has gotten

to his power more consistently than Bouchard. It really could just be decided by who's playing better at the time and right now Bouchard is not playing well. So Beck, if you're if you're want to look at two fan grass pages and sort this one out, put Beck and Bouchard up against each other. That's the real battle, I think. Other prospect related news, Jackson Job left Wednesday, start with a leg injury severity unknown, he was actually leaving mid at bat.

So we'll have to see if we get a follow up on him. Just a heads up in case you're keeping an eye on what Joe has been up to. Paul Skeenswatch, I just saw a note on Roto Wire. One more triple A start lined up. No. Six scoreless innings with seven Ks. Oh, oh, oh.

You're saying that they're gonna do one more. I think they're done. They. I think he's up. Hey, they could just be saying they're giving him one more and then changing their mind. Oh no, that's what he's what you're saying. They said they're giving him one more and then changing their mind. Oh no, that's what he's what you're saying. They said they were gonna do one more.

Yeah, currently on track to go Sunday against AAA Buffalo. Let's do the schedule game. Pirates, Sunday against, you're saying, what is the date Sunday? It is the fifth? Yes, that is. Bailey Falter against Colorado. That was the one that we thought might be home against Colorado, might be the fifth. Yes. That's Bailey falter against Colorado.

That was the one that we thought might be home against Colorado. It might be the one, one, two, three, four, five, Bailey falter against the Cubs at home. Yep. May 11th. What is the fourth time we've moved this back now? Yeah. But then if they move it beyond that, then they're gonna move it all the way to the end of May because I don't, I agree with you, I don't think they're gonna do it May 16th at the Cubs.

No, do it at home, pack that place. Get a May sellout. Then it's May 22nd against the Giants. That seems so far out. Yeah, what are we doing here? Not a thumbs up on that one. Definitely not a thumbs up. I really, really thought May 5th versus Colorado was the ticket.

That is such a soft landing. Your home Sunday day game. You got Bailey Falter as an insurance blanket. Well, we're going to try and send a message in division instead. He's not yet on a five day schedule. Well, he just pitched Tuesday, so if he goes Sunday, then he will be on the five day schedule. That'll be the next nudge, right? But then you have no more boxes. You can't be like, well, he hasn't struck five people out with his change up, so we're gonna wait until he does that.

It's like Panda Watch. Question for you about Hested Kirstad sort of bridging the gap from the rest of project prospect to a few more waiver names. What are you doing with him in redraft situations right now? He's playing a lot less than we expected. Yeah, I have, I've even used the opportunity to trade him in one league, in the keeper league. I traded him along with Keaton Wynn

for Pablo Lopez in an auto new league. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure there's some salary considerations in there, but that seems like a nice get. Speaking of schedules, do avert your eyes from Keaton Wynn's coming schedule. Oh, so that's, okay. Yeah, it's important. It's good to point that out.

Yeah. And maybe sell, keep, win as fast as possible if it's in a in a redraft league, because he's going to be a lot harder to sell after he goes to Cincinnati, to Colorado and then gets the Dodgers at home. Beautiful. May not be great for him. No, you don't want to use many of those spots if you can help it. Yeah, Kersad, I think is a... I was going to put the B word on him just for redraft. Just not a guy I want in redraft right now. They're not playing him consistently. They don't have a plan for him.

How do you as a young player come in and dominate if you're playing once every three days? You don't. You really don't. So maybe it's a drop for now and I think about it later if things change on that depth chart in Baltimore. Here's a player we have not talked about yet that has really been causing problems for someone we liked throughout draft season, Wensil Perez playing a lot for the Tigers and really kind of pushing Parker Meadows to the side.

It's been happening for a few weeks but I don't know what to make of Perez. The results in the minors have been interesting at several stops, and he's not the kind of guy that's been like gold at the level. And also bad. A couple of bad stops, but not, I don't know, like he's got good plate skills.

He's got some power. He's been an efficient base dealer at a few stops in the last three, four years in the minors. It seems like there might've been a swing change in his past because he went from 50% ground ball rights to 40 and 50% fly ball rights. Yeah. So I read a few of the scouting reports and tried to figure out what it was that people

didn't like about him. He moved off of shortstop. So he was kind of an honorable mention on Keith Law's top 20 for the Tigers. Oh, and so people dinged him for not being a shortstop anymore. No, but he's starting to fit in in center field. He switch hits. He does a lot of things we care about well. This is better than I expected.

Yeah. 7.9% swing strike rate is good. Yeah, I feel like I should have been a little more interested sooner. Here's something that's not good. 103 MaxEV, 101 in AAA, and even last year, 1047. So the raw power is not good, but he gets to it some. A guy with bad raw power trying to get to it in Detroit. That's that's where you get risky.

Look at the projections also. 128 ISO from Zipips 107 from ATC The bat is a little bit nicer with 145 But even with a 145 ISO that's you're saying like a guy who if you gave him all season might be a 1515 guy Or a 1520 guy. Yeah, or maybe you have a 10 10 20 10 25 I think you're looking more speed than power, but it's non-zero pop, even though those, those underlying numbers aren't great. I'm intrigued. I'm at least thinking about him in the leagues

where he's available. There's some deeper leagues I plan. They got 16 team or I think where he's out there. He's going to get scooped up tonight when Fab runs. I think he's going to be interesting. Also like, you know, like him or Wilier Abreu, it's like, you know, there's something similar to me about like, oh, well, you can,

you can pick the knits and find the flaws or you can just realize that like, they might be good enough to play and they have the opportunity and they're maybe like better than that league average players with the bat and in today's league, especially the deeper your leagues are, the more you're like, oh, I could get a guy who's 2010 or 1510 or whatever, you know, like, yeah, okay, let's do it. Yeah, I'm kind of into it. A little bit of a load them guy, I think at this point,

given that there wasn't a lot of prospect hype on Winsil Perez. Are we interested in Nick Senzel? Is this happening again? I have an ongoing group chat thing with my co-manager in the main event where I keep saying, Senzel, and he keeps saying, no. It's good to have someone in your life

that keeps you from just getting wrecked by the same players. Just like, let's do it. I mean, 14% bell rate is great, but he's smaller sample than everybody else. Of course, he's always this. Yeah, well, yes. His whole his whole career has been a smaller sample that we would like it to be because he's had all sorts of

stuff go wrong. And the top end raw power does not suggest a 14 percent barrel rate. So I think you have to say, OK, best case scenario, we're getting league average power out of him with the fact that he hasn't attempted a steal yet and all the injuries. I put that up against the Nationals being one of the most aggressive teams for steals. That's an interesting one. How many steals do you want to give him the rest of the season?

Projections have seven, eight. Yeah. Low, mid to low single digits is I'm thinking more. I think the average is light right now. He makes pretty good swing decisions. So maybe the average is a tick light. It's the volume of playing the ball. He's hitting opposite field fly balls right now. That's a little weird. That's not really going to do much.

That's not good. I remember the the opposite field slugging percentage is 300 in the on fly balls and the pool is 700. Is the more interesting pick up in D.C. Jacob Young, who's now 12 or 13 as a base stealer this season. Did I read right that he got caught stealing to end the game the other day? That's too bad. That's a really bad one caught stealing when you were perfect. Otherwise, and trying to play.

And he might be zero power. Yeah, that's that looks like zero power. But he seemingly swum move past Victor Robles, I guess. Yeah, Vicks hurt right now. Once he's back, that could be a bit of an ongoing battle for playing time between those two. So I've been kind of cautious with Young so far, even in deep leagues, even though I think the speed's legit,

it might be short lived. I think you're talking about like a 3% to 5% bid as like a kind of a streamer speed bat. Right, and I think I'd still shoot more towards deeper leagues. I don't think you want to try to push him onto like a 12-team league roster or anything like that. Loprofito came up earlier in the week.

Trey Cabbage is also up for Houston right now. Cabbage is AL only for now, even though he put up some pretty big numbers at AAA last year. He's a kind of a three true outcome slugger type in the numbers, but he does have speed. So if you can manage a low batting average, you might be interested in him,

but I think you still just have a really crowded Astros roster. Is there some way that he comes out over Singleton? Yeah, maybe. Maybe. Yeah. I mean, he has more defensive versatility than Singleton. Singleton at this point is 32 years old, but Singleton seemingly has found something in terms of not striking out as much as he used to. Whether or not that has affected his power output is another question, but there's still a chance for Singleton to like hit 250 with 20 homers

and we look up at the end of the year and be like, wow, Singleton just played all year. It'd be fun, be a good story if it actually turned out that way. What's opened the door, unfortunately, is a Chas McCormick injury. There's a lot of extra playing time available on him. No, I have so many Chas McCormicks

and the power hasn't been there this year. No, and the problem I think with Chas McCormick is if you have him at a 12 and you don't have IL spots, you can look at the injury and say, do I have to cut him and then try to get him back later? Or is there something in the underlying numbers that should lead us to hold on and wait? I mean, still theoretically a 2020 talent.

Tough run so far, 2% barrel rate here through the first of the 21 games. What is up with that? That's not good for my main event team. No, no, that's the tough cut that I'm thinking about heading into the weekend, and I don't like it, because I also have a lot of, lot of Chas McCormick on teams.

Pitching. I didn't put anyone on the rundown that I actually want to go get right now. It's so bad. This is one of the reasons why, if you've been listening that like, sometimes we don't love doing this episode, if you want to hear how the sausage is made, because we don't want to tell you that you have to go out and get this guy when we don't necessarily think they're very good. Yeah. It's. We're just somebody you have to go out and get this guy when we don't necessarily think they're very good. Yeah, it's just somebody you have to pick up because the schedule says so or because if you

really need speed or whatever, you know. I think I've been more like stash mode right now if I can. I know Alec Manoa had 12k's last time out at AAA. Still not sure I want to take gamble there. I think I'd be more likely to pick up Christian Scott if I could in the Mets system and just hope that he gets an opportunity because I think there's a better chance of Scott coming up and having success than Minoa coming back and being the guy that he was before last season. But I think it's more of a stash week as of right now for the pitchers I'm looking at. But that means that you're doing well and there's lots of us that are just struggling and need to be streaming or looking.

I would say Tyler Anderson at Pittsburgh home against KC deserves a little bit of a look. Alex Wood home against Texas at Seattle. He's throwing like 90 poo right now, but could be what you need in a deeper league. This is the part where like, you know, you get in trouble. I mean, Alex Wood is in the words of Nick Paul, like a cherry bomb. It can go off in your hands anytime. And Tyler Anderson as well. And lively against the White Sox maybe as a streamer.

Yeah. A little scary, but that's the state of pitching. It's not fun. Streaming is hard enough in most years, and then this year with the injuries and the offensive weight is Andrew Haney at Oakland, ooh, at Colorado second. So you're struggling out there in streaming land.

Cooper Criswell? Maybe you just pick up a Ben Brown who has San Diego at home. It's not a two start, but maybe I'll have a two start next week. You know, if he's still in the rotation. Yeah, Cooper Criswell, Bryce Elder. I do think John Means is one of the better pickups in many of my leagues, so he'll probably be someone that gets a little bit more of a bit. Is kind of interesting to me. He throws 89, and so you'd expect his stuff numbers to be bad, and they are not necessarily. Let me see what I've got here.

Overall is a 105 stuff plus, and a 116 on the Sinker that goes like 89 miles an hour. So there's a little bit more to Cooper Criswell. One thing that is interesting is if you look at the last seven days, it's a little bit more to Cooper Criswell. One thing that is interesting is if you look at the last seven days, it's a little bit down 108 on the sinker. Still, isn't that way better than you'd expect for somebody who throws 89.90? So Cooper Criswell is a model play, you know, you still look at 17% strikeout rate and 5.5% swing strike rate and say, who boy, I trust the model on this one, but trust but verify, you know, trust but look at the schedule like trust, but you know,

like this is definitely one of those ones where maybe it's just so weird that there's no comps. The other names that are kicking around out there are maybe Simeon Woods Richardson with a two-star week. Jose Budo's got a tough second matchup. He gets the Cardinals first, which is another team that by reputation you wouldn't necessarily target. Who's the second matchup? Atlanta's the second one though. Oh, is it home at least?

It is, he gets Atlanta at home, he has to go on the road for St. Louis, but that might be more playable. I'll put Budo with Tyler Anderson, like, you know. Yeah, it's so hard, man. Every week. Best streamers of the week? Every single week you look like,

I don't love it, but I could try, I guess. Yeah. Throw this out there. You know, you mentioned Trevor, the Nationals, and how good they've been as a pitching staff. Trevor Williams has a 2.27 year in a 1.17 whip. It's 22 Ks and 31 and two thirds innings, 12 walks. Like nothing's jumping off the page

as a major change. Nothing's supporting it. Yeah. There's zero things supporting it. And so in those cases, I tend to say it's not gonna continue. Yeah, I think it's John Means week and otherwise you're looking for guys coming off the IL.

Frankie Montas could be back, so maybe that's a good way to go as well. Stash someone who just went on the IL that you're hoping is for a shorter one, or check the updates on like a Whitlock, or these guys that are on the IL, and see that maybe you can pick somebody out two weeks before they're back and stash them.

Digging in the corners, I I think is where you're gonna be if you're looking for some pitching this weekend. We are gonna go on our way out the door. Just a reminder, you can get a subscription to The Athletic at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. You can find me on Twitter at Derek and Ryker. You can find Eno at the maceras. You can find the pod at rates and barrels.

It's gonna do it. We're back with you at one o'clock Eastern on Friday. Thanks for listening. Build a bench. Build a bench.