Rates & Barrels - Back in '82...

Episode Date: April 21, 2020

Rundown2:56 Retro Fantasy Baseball Draft: 198210:10 The Different Shapes of Each Position in '8222:05 KBO Sets an Opening Day28:51 Losing the Feel of a Pitch35:41 Alec Bohm's Path to 2020 Time with Phillies46:37 How Do Players Feel About Fantasy Baseball? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail: [e-mail] Get a free 90-day trial to The Athletic: theathletic.com/free90days Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's episode of Rates and Barrels is presented by the Salvation Army. Your donations can help those affected by COVID-19 find help and hope. To give, ask your smart speaker to make a donation to the Salvation Army or make your gift at SalvationArmyUSA.org. Welcome to Rated Barrels, episode number 88. It is Tuesday, April 21st. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we're going to take a look back at a fantasy draft from the 1982 season that I took part in on Monday night. Yeah, that sentence probably wouldn't have made sense a month ago, or especially two or three months ago,

but we did it, and it was actually pretty fun. The Korean Baseball Organization has an opening day now on the calendar coming up in the first week of May. We're going to answer some questions about losing the feel of a pitch, a question about Alec Boehm and his 2020 role, and perhaps we'll get to some questions about player interest in fantasy baseball as well. If Eno's got any good stories from being a fantasy guy in a clubhouse, we'll share those later on in this episode.

How's it going for you on this Tuesday, Eno? It's going well. It's going well. Slept well for once. That's awesome. I had a dream that I went to the store. Tuesday morning is normally the morning I make my supply run, and this week it's going to be Wednesday because this is a crazy week.

In my dream, everything was kind of normal except for I was at a Costco, and they had lots of Clorox wipes in stock, which was a relief to me in my dream. But people also had giant croissants, just the biggest croissant you could imagine. It was as wide as the top of the cart. And everybody in my dream was buying at least one. Some idiots were jamming two in there. The only thought I remember from my dream before i woke up was wow i gotta get one of these croissants you're hoarding giant croissants i just can't believe anybody was buying

two they weren't even wrapped in plastic or anything they were just sitting there on top of the funniest thing too is the croissants go pretty stale pretty quickly so like they're rushing home to like eat that with their family of eight or whatever. Somebody got two. They must have the extra large SUV to fit those in.

Imagine driving by that person. There's just two croissants in the back. I wonder. We kind of passed Bryce Harper leaving a spring training game this spring. You and I were driving down the road. Yeah, a croissant in the back. Probably.

The windows were tinted, but that's probably why he's not tinting up. He's got a bunch of croissants in the back of the SUV. But let's start with this 82 draft because this was a season that took place before I was born. Even if it had been 1989, it's not as though I was playing fantasy baseball when I was five. Going up against a lot of people in the XFL, our friends Ron Chandler, Jeff Erickson, Todd Zola, lots of other cool industry people. Peter Kreutzer, who has a big hand in Tout Wars. These guys all lived that season. Some of them even played fantasy baseball

during that season. So I felt like I was an underdog. And for prep, I didn't go overboard. I didn't run a set of dollar values from 1982 and work off of that. I decided to do it in kind of a modern but yet traditional sort of way. I had player lists and stats in front of me.

Basically imagined that I went to the library, printed off a bunch of stats, and then just crossed them off. That's more or less how I drafted. But the 1982 season, if you pop it open on Fangraphs or Baseball Reference as we're talking about it, you'll see pretty quickly that it doesn't look at all like a modern baseball season. Pretty much nothing about it looks like a modern baseball season. And I had the fifth pick in this draft. It's 12-team league, five-by-five, usual categories. We all had the stats in front of us. It was wild to me that Ricky Henderson, who had 130 stolen bases that year, was actually still there for me to take with the fifth overall pick.

And I'm wondering this morning, with a clearer mind, if that actually ended up being a mistake, even though it's a great season for fantasy purposes. I just wonder if it's not actually a top five season in that particular year. Yeah, well, stolen bases are probably the way that it looks the least like today because not only did Ricky Henderson have 130, but Tim Raines had 78.

Lonnie Smith, who I remember pretty well, but I just remember him as being pretty mediocre. I remember the end of his career with the Braves. That must have been his best year. Yeah, I remember him in atlanta on the yeah the good braves teams of the 90s and by then you know i don't think he was running quite so much he was 68 stolen bases in 82 so let's see that's oh okay that was like his first full season and then he he did steal uh like 140 over the next three and then he was the Royals and by the time he got to the Braves his high was 25 and he did have a really good season with the Braves one year he was 315 21

homers 25 stolen bases which is amazing because his career high and homers otherwise was nine that's a totally goofy season he had an 8.1 war that season. Yeah. That's more than he had in the previous five. But 82 was the second best season with 5.4. Yeah. So I think what happened in this league, I won stolen bases by a lot because as I was tracking my roster, I wasn't doing a good enough job of figuring out what was really left in the

pool. Like normally I've got draft software and I can kind of look at what other teams have. We had standings running. We were checking them at the end of each round, looking at the counting stats, looking at what we needed. When I noticed, you also drafted Von Hayes, which is a 32 stolen bases you didn't even need. Yeah, that's the kind of stuff I was doing in the later rounds. I was probably taking the best available player based on the system i was using but not taking the best available player

for me in a league where i already had known stats that was that was probably the mistake that i was making most often and it's really flipped on its head. We're here where everyone's chasing stolen bases. There, you kind of want to chase power because if you sort by stolen bases, the bottom of the page has 27. That's Rafael Ramirez. It's the 30th guy. But there are 25 guys who stole 30 bases. And there are 11 guys who stole 40 bases. So there's a fair amount of stolen bases. But if you sort by homers, the league leaders were Gorman Thomas and Reggie Jackson with 39. And you're already out of 30 by 16th. So Robin Yount with 29, it was 17th. So in this one, you almost want to chase homers, it seems like. Yeah, you kind of need to put a premium on something that we've not put a premium on in our game in a very long time.

And that is jarring. Where did Dale Murphy, Mike Schmidt, Pedro Guerrero. Where did they go? Murphy was the third overall pick. Pedro Guerrero went sixth overall, so maybe he should have taken him over Ricky Henderson. I took Mike Schmidt in the second round. He actually fell back to me. That's great.

Yeah, I thought that was pretty good value. And I think the other mistake I made in my foundation, if Ricky Henderson wasn't a mistake, maybe that was value-wise the right call. Gary Carter had an amazing season in 1982.'s a two catcher league the catcher pool you think it's bad now look at some of the dudes playing catcher in the 80s and find find two i mean this is a 12 team mixed league people used to play 12 team al only it i can't even i can't even imagine how ugly the production was at the bottom of that pool. Gary Carter, Lance Parrish, Terry Kennedy,

Bo Diaz and Tony Pena, but they were kind of defensive guys. And Pena went pretty late. And relative to the pool, he actually was, I think, a little undervalued. Because I think one thing that I was doing that was helpful. He hit 296, which is pretty odd for a catcher back then. Run production is also a pretty steep cliff. Runs and RBIs. I think Peña must have been hitting a little higher up in the order than most catchers were hitting at that time

because his run and RBI total made him sort of stand out to me a little bit later on. It's war, but just by war, the 15th best catcher owned in your league, right? Gene Tennance hit.258 with 7 home runs, 18 runs, and 18 RBI. That's terrible. And let's say you, okay, that's a war number. Let's look at somebody who's more likely to have been drafted, more plate appearances. Rick Dempsey, 402 plate appearances, 270, 5 home runs, 35 runs, 36 RBI. Oh, man.

You think your second catcher in AL only these days are bad. That's pretty bad. That seems like my second catcher in AL labor. Yeah, I end up with Mike Heath. He was the second to last pick that I made, so the 22nd round. So I went Gary Carter early, Mike Heath late. Oh, he didn't do well by war.

He hit homers or something? No, he hit three. Three? He had 82 combined runs and RBIs. At that point, that was the best I could do. Oh, my God. So the thing that I thought was probably more important coming out of it than I realized going into it was the shape of each position,

where the production's coming from relative to each position because it looks so different than the pool that we have right now. Shortstop is totally different back then. We've talked about how recently shortstop is loaded to the point where you could go middle and possibly UT

with shortstop eligible players. Not back then. No chance you're doing that back then. I think that's what drove the value of robin yount he was the second overall pick doug dennis made that pick and oh that's beautiful line though 29 homers 129 runs 114 rbi 14 stolen bases 331 average that's a good first round pick for sure especially since look what you're saying the fourth best shortstop was todd cruz with 16 homers 44 runs 57 rbi and a 230 average and it gets worse after that with ul washington with 10 homers dale barrow with 10

homers the eighth best shortstop that year was alan trem tremble and he had nine homers and 19 stolen bases yeah i took alan tramell in the 13th round. Wow. I mean, that felt like okay at that point. And part of this, too, with Ricky Henderson as the first pick and some of the hitters I was building around, I ended up having to punt batting average, which probably isn't smart in the 80s. Probably not what you want to do.

No, because they had some decent ones. Yeah, you can find some guys that at least keep you afloat. I think you can do the DJ LeMayhew, Joey Gallo sort of trick where you find some guys who could be up there, especially when you know what they're going to do. You get a few guys who were in the race for the batting title,

and you get some of those cheap power boppers with low averages, and you end up doing fine in that category, and you end up with a lot of balance. So the exercise itself is a lot of fun, man. I would do it again. I think I would have done terribly in it. And I think because it exacerbates my two weaknesses and removes my biggest strength. So I was thinking about this when looking at Pedro Guerrero. So Pedro Guerrero in 1982 had the seventh most war with 6.2. He had a great season, 32 homers, 22 stolen bases, 304 average.

And in fact, we were talking online today a little bit about short peak guys, and he is actually right there. In terms of a four-year peak, from 82 to 85, he put up 13, 14, 19, almost 23 war in four years. Averaged somewhere around 28 homers and 20 steals with a 300 average. So really good player for a short peak. Dodgers fans will know him. However, the year before, Pedro Guerrero, in 1981, had played well, but only in 387 plate appearances to 12 homers and 5 stolen bases against 9 caught stealings. And, you know, I would have been all over him if we didn't know what the 1982 stats were. If I was to say, hey, look, he had really good power, made contact, good plate discipline, stole some bases, and now has a full-time role playing the depth charts and the stuff that I talk about here. I

don't know what we would have had for exit velocity back in the day, but this would have been somebody that I feel like I would have been all over, except in this draft, everybody's all over him because they all know he's going to hit 32 homers and 22 stolen bases. So like it, therefore shifts the, the, the, the person who wins this is the best at tracking like in, in draft tracking, I think.

Right. And since modern draft software doesn't adapt to a league this old, you can't really do it unless you build your own way of doing it. Yeah. Or maybe it flips back to my method, which is I don't actually use in-draft software. So my method is I just round everybody that I've got. And I'm like, okay,

30, 33. I've got a hundred stone bases. Yeah. I think tracking at least your own team more than I was tracking mine last night will help because winning steals by 50 steals or 60 seals. Like what'd you end up with? Like 250 steals or something?

Yeah. I think it was two 280 my god oh my god i sometimes i i'm okay leaving a draft with 80 these days i know that i'm not gonna win it but i'm like you know either i can trade for guys or i'll find guys or i'm hoping this guy will steal more. Like in AL Labor, I basically had 75 steals and Tony Kemp, and I was like, come on, Tony Kemp. Yeah, it's wild. Steve Carlton, by the way, was the first overall pick in this league, which I think makes a lot of sense in a retro draft. Pitcher injury is eliminated. The season happened. You know what you're getting getting you're banking it so 295 innings 23 wins oh my god yeah tiny ra a machine good year the worst

thing that happened in this draft in my opinion was the closer run that happened in the late part of round four if you take a look at the saves leaderboard that's kind of wonky what yeah what it's bizarre they didn't have closers back then or the saves rule or what like look at the shape of those saves oh there's one guy with 14 saves and second place has five saves yeah it's it's really strange i mean there are only 16 pitchers i think the qualified filter might be on i mean let me lower that a little bit yeah but if you you look at the shape of saves there are 12 guys who got to 20 and oh okay there was a weird oh the qualified filter okay yeah you guys but they're more

they're very spread out. That's the thing. I was like, what the hell? Okay, there's Bruce Suter, Dan Cuisinberry, Goose Gossage. Okay, there were five guys with 30 saves and 12 guys with 20 saves. Still a lot fewer, actually, than even today. Yeah, I mean, I took Dan Spilner in the fourth round, and I'd never heard of Dan Spilner before yesterday because he had 133 and two-thirds innings

with a 249 ERA. 41 saves and 12 wins. And 12 wins, exactly. That was the thing that really separated him was that his strikeout rate wasn't atrocious. It was probably even a little above average, 6Ks per nine. Big number back in this era.

Look at Bill Caldill, though. Yes. 12 wins, 26 saves, and a 10.4 strikeouts per nine. I think he actually ended up being one of the better values. Jeff Erickson did make a set of dollar values before this. He ended up winning. He took a two in home runs and he still won the whole thing really by a few points too he had a pretty nice margin of victory in this but

he was the guy that took bill caudill uh with the 11th pick around three so 35th overall and again like when you take closers is a lot different also when you know they're not going to lose their job. Of course the guy who made dollar value is one because there's no doubt. Well, I think what it comes down to also though is having that advanced understanding of where those drops are. That's something that you will have by making those values.

If everybody had those values, then you have to sort of do the dance and adjust to what the room's doing to get leverage. It's kind of like the Project Go concept. Tears, which people don't say exist, but in this situation, tears would totally exist because the only thing that separates everybody, everybody has the same dollar values. The only thing that separates is when you get your guy. Yeah, exactly. So if you want to do this, you can do it. I think the key is that of the people you set this up with, you need someone who is really good at Excel.

Todd Zola is really good at Excel. So he made a sheet where he was typing in a team number next to each player on a stat list, and it was populating stats as we went along. We had another running thing where each person was putting in their own pick, and that was spitting it out into a grid. It takes some prep ahead of time, some significant prep ahead of time. Thank you to Todd for doing that.

If you do it, it is a lot more fun than even that I expected. I thought I was going to enjoy it and it was going to be like, oh, okay, well, these guys all beat me because they lived through it. I took third. I did okay. And I made some mistakes that I learned from. And I think it'd be fun to do this for other seasons. I mean, the next one this group might do is probably going to be a season before anybody was alive, at least before anybody was playing fantasy baseball. I think we're going to go back to either the 20s, maybe even the 50s, but probably the 20s just to really try something different. Yeah, I mean, baseball was totally different back then. I'm also looking at 1987, which is a weird year in the 80s.

And I think it's because there was a massive spike in home runs. Yes. That's when Mark McGuire hit 49. But it wasn't just that. Andre Dawson, 49. George Bell, 47. Murphy, 44. This is a funny season, 87, because it actually looks a lot more like our game,

and it was only five years later. Yeah, it's a step in that direction, at least. But pitching in the 80s is weird. It's just so different than anything that most of us who grew up either playing in the 90s or the 2000s, we just haven't seen anything like that. We probably never will see that again with strikeout rates that low. I can't even imagine the full scope of the rules changes that would have to go into effect for strikeout rates to get back to the point they were at in the early 80s. Shane Raleigh for the Phillies in 87 went 17-11 with 230 innings and a 4.8 strikeouts per nine.

Totally normal for the era. So weird. Roger McDowell, who had 25 saves for the Mets in 1987, had a 3.25K per nine. Real good. Yeah. Weird. But yeah yeah definitely recommend it if anybody out there's thinking about putting something like that together i would give you the nudge to go ahead and do it in 87 you start to see more double digit strikeouts for nine it's really interesting

you might might be seeing like the more forward-thinking clubs i don't know because uh tom henke 12 strikeouts per 9. Dan Plesak with the Brewers 10 strikeouts per 9. Dave Smith with the Astros 11. So it's starting to happen among relievers at least where you have the big strikeouts. Yeah, I wonder if there was a velocity bump

or something that was happening around that time. Be interesting to track that. 87. Whenever you plot things, 87 always pops up and is weird. Actually, wasn't 87 one of the years where the baseball was different?

I think that it's more conjecture. I'm not sure that they know this. Well, we've got to send Dr. Wills some baseballs from 1987. It's the only way to find out. All right, let's talk about the KBO. They have a date. They are going to start on May 5th, which is awesome.

There are still some scrimmages and things that are being streamed. If you know where to look, my KBO on Twitter, Dan Kurtz, is the guy you want to follow there. It gives me hope. It's been giving me hope all along that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, even if our timeline in America is very different than the timeline for a country like South Korea. Yeah, and I honestly think that it gives us a roadmap in a way. I've talked about this before the temperature taking the uh you know

i think people talk too much about like sort of quarantine and sequestering and making it sound like we're going to put the players on an island and they won't allow be allowed to touch anyone if you look at what's happening in korea that's not at all what it's like you know dan strehley gets to go out and have dinner um you know at the barbecue places he wants to go to. It's a little bit more just about contact tracing and temperature and giving people best practices. And yes, reducing some of what they go out, but not just being draconian about it. If you know Americans, you know it's not going to work. You're not going to keep Mike Trout from being there for the birth of his first kid.

keep Mike Trout from seeing his first son, having being there for the birth of his first kid. So I think that we've got to watch Korea closely and, and hopefully a month from now we're, you know, doing something similar, ramping up to a similar situation with the, as Korea.

And so it's also baseball, you know, and I think there's going to be places to see it. There's still ESPN still in there to maybe get some games on it. I hope they tape delay it or something. We should be able to find some baseball. I know that Taiwanese baseball is streaming, so people are doing that. That league is small and the play is uneven. KBO has gotten better recently and is a little bit has gotten better recently and it's a little bit

closer to uh japanese baseball npb um and so you know last friday i i just tried to highlight some of the stuff that you know makes the kbo what it is there'll be more i think trent rosecrans is going to write something this week and um i don't know if either of us are going to get to it, but the bat flips are amazing. So good. They're so good. It's a bat flip league, and I love that about it. But it's a 10-team league. I have a friend who's working on a new friend

who is working on a fantasy game for KBO and NPB right now. And because it's a 10-team league, it may look weird to you. You may only pick eight players. And it may be almost like a weekly pick-eight, where you pick eight players on Sunday and you get their stats for that week. That's the last time I talked to him. That was what he was going to pitch to the game makers. So there may be something out there.

And it's good to have a smaller game because, you know, the average slash line, they deaden the ball in the KBO, and the average slash line right now is 268, 340, 388. And that 388 slugging for the average player means that if you were digging really deep, you'd start getting the Mike Heaths of the world on your roster. That's what you want, really.

The Mike Heaths of the world. Even the Mike Heaths of the KBO. You really want those guys. Yeah, so I think, not to disparage Mike Heath's name, he was a major league baseball player, but, um, you gotta keep it a little bit, uh, more shallow to reflect the fact that there's a third as many teams. Um, but one, another fun thing is that foreign players do really well in the KBO. Um, you know, so if you recognize a name on a roster, you're already out in front, in other words.

So I think Dan Straley is going to do pretty well there. Ben Lively, who used to be of the Phillies, is there. Jose Miguel Fernandez, Mel Rojas Jr. Those are names you can recognize. And Jared Hoying. I pointed out that former prospect Jared Hoying, he's one of my studs in the article where he's been hitting 280 with a 340 on base percentage and averaging like 25 homers and 20 steals over the last two years there. So he's a stud. And, you know, so then then i also uh you know beat the ground a little bit

uh and ask some sources for breakout candidates um so uh you know i think this is what we do right this is we like to you know learn all about a new league and learn all about uh these players and so i think um i think uh this will be fun oh the other follow on twitter by the way uh it's sungmin kim at sung s-u-n-g underscore m-i-n-k-i-m if you want to give him a follow as well so uh just a lot of fun to have baseball happening in another country you mentioned taiwan before and i actually haven't been diving into those games at all yet but the kbo has my attention probably because there are some familiar players i think that that sort of helps for me to just have that baseline going in the black tux

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All right, you know, we have some questions that came in over the last week or so. Thanks to everybody for sending those in. First one comes from Galen. His question is, I've been thinking lately of the phrase I hear quite often when a pitcher has a bad day on the hill. They often say in one form or another that they lost the feel for a pitch. I often take this at face value. The actual grip the pitcher used in the ball

on that particular pitch somehow didn't feel right, but lately I've been wondering if some guys might mean something else entirely. Something with arm mechanics or footing or something. So, what does it mean to lose the feel of a pitch? Keep up the great work and stay healthy. All the best, Galen.

Oh, you know, I first thought of something we just talked about recently on this podcast, which was Chris Bassett talking about losing the feel for breaking balls in the dry Arizona. But we've talked about that, and that's, I think, more along the lines of what this writer was thinking about losing the actual feel of the pitch, like where the fingers touch the ball. But I was talking to someone else recently about release point in space out in front, and, oh man, who was I talking about? Maybe, maybe Tanner

Roark. Um, oh, maybe it was, no, no, no. I think it was Chase Anderson because Chase Anderson has, uh, has had a curve ball for a while and it's been okay, but then recently it's been getting bad. And I think by the stuff number, uh uh it showed up as basically a 30 curveball like basically a bottom shelf curveball um and you know I'm doing the pitching piece with with uh Keith Law this week and I was tempted to put Chase Anderson's curveball as a 30 but I didn't because of this conversation I had with Chase Anderson which was he's moving to a spike grip um and the reason he's doing that is because he's such a change-up guy that he's got that feel for pronating. And when he gets to the other side of the ball, he just doesn't have that same feel and he doesn't have that same release point out in

front. So going to the spike grip allowed him just to pretend like it's a fastball and just release it just like where his fastball is. So if you're thinking about a pitcher's delivery and you're thinking about where he releases the ball and where that is out front, just think about trying to pitch to the left side of the plate versus the right side of the plate. I'm just going to use left and right here because that works if you're a lefty or a righty.

So if you're just trying to pitch to the left side of the plate or the right side of the plate, and then think about where your hand will be on release and how it'll look and what that might do and that does things to the shape of the pitch it does things the action on the pitch and it does things to where your mechanics on where you release it so i think that's a why pitchers have less command to the their glove side because they have to kind of reach across their body and find a new release point. And B, what can happen with guys that have either multiple breakers or a good changeup and are struggling with their breaking balls. There's mechanics upon release, basically, is the short way of saying it. That differ from pitch to pitch, and sometimes you will lose that release point, basically, is how I would put it.

Yeah, I guess I would answer Galen's question by a summary sort of way of saying, yeah, I think it's more than a grip. It can be other parts of the chain when it comes to pitching that can be a little bit off. I think, yeah, I think you're right to open it up because even Adam Modavino said that his landing foot, he's so cross body and his landing foot kept drifting towards his body

to the point where it was just getting ridiculous and it was great for his movement, but it wasn't great for his command that that bad year he had in colorado he basically when in the off season had to kind of retrain to land his he put like a stripe down on the mound and was like i have to land on the stripe because if he's a little bit left or right or front or back of that target it changes basically everything yeah and i and i was you know i was talking to somebody about um uh that that thing that like you can

watch you can just like move your landing foot because uh mass and bongard is so amazing that one thing he can do to uh change the shape of his pitch um is change his landing foot so he's pitching more or less across his body. And he's so good at it that he can actually sort of repeat different landing points. And he's cool with it. And I told somebody else that and they're like, yeah, I know, Madsen Bumgarner, I can't do that. That takes a fine level of motor skills that even all elite athletes don't necessarily have that specific skill. That's very specialized. Yeah, yeah. And it's kind of brilliant that he realized that your ball is shaped differently if you're going to the left or the right.

And so he was like, well, I can change my body to make this seem more left or right you know what i mean yeah so um yeah he did say once because he stopped bum gunner stopped talking to me at some point and i i got really mad and i was like what you telling me about your curveball grip is not going to help the hitters man man. Why don't you just tell me? And he's like, well, maybe I want to be a pitching coach someday. And I was still mad at him. And I was like, that's BS. You're going to make so much money. You're not going to want to be a pitching coach.

But I do think he thinks like that. And I guess it's now that I'm saying something, now that I'm more removed from it and talking about his landing foot, I guess it's possible that he could be a pitching coach someday I think I think he could absolutely do it if he wanted to I just think the that's why like is Joey Votto gonna be a hitting coach no dude he's gonna ride off in the sunset with tons of money be at Raptors games yeah I just I think a bum garner is someone who has some interest some interests that are on a ranch or a farm somewhere. I mean, literally, the dude was in a rodeo this last year.

Right. I don't know if he necessarily wants to spend his 40s and 50s touring the country and telling other people how to pitch when he could do other stuff. Yeah, exactly. So tell me about that damn Kerbogger at Madison. Jeez. Thanks for the question, Galen. Next question is about Alec Boehm. This is an extension of the

conversation we were having. Wait, the last question, though, had something about Cascadian Darkales and Darkboggers, right? No, that's this one. Oh, okay. That's coming up. The question stems from the nldh conversation we were talking about scott kingery as a player who can move around and the email points out you know gene segura was playing third base i think we saw him for that

that game we were just referring to a little while ago the one where bryce harper was driving away with a big croissant in his car afterwards. Gene Segura played third base that day. Anyway, with all of that and thinking about the bench, we thought Jay Bruce was basically the DH for sure. But in a scenario where you can shuffle players around the way the Phillies have the ability to shuffle them around, is there a shot for Alec Boehm to be in the DH conversation for the Phillies? I mean, I think broadly,

I don't think teams want to take a player that young, especially a player reaching the big leagues for the first time and put them exclusively in the DH spot. But I think the overall question is basically, is there a way for Boehm to have a regular role? I think that is possible because you could take a guy like Didi and give him an occasional day off because of the depth you have at shortstop. You could give Kingery days off from defensive duty too, or you could move him around and give outfielders days off in the DH

spot, and you could make Boehm part of your plan at third base. I mean, I think that is a possibility. Do you think it's realistic at this point that Alec Boehm could be a beneficiary of the Phill it's realistic at this point that Alec Boehm could be a beneficiary of the Phillies getting a DH this season? It is. Maybe we short shrifted him by talking about Jay Bruce. There's so much changing right now. For example, baseball is going to meet today

with Mount Miley baseball, and supposedly baseball is going to meet today with minor league baseball, and supposedly they're going to cut it down as much or even further than they planned to. They're going to cut 40, 50 teams. And we don't even know what kind of a minor league season they can have. And if the minor league season is really impacted, doesn't exist, is pushed off into the future, you know, then maybe what you were saying about teams wanting to develop their best prospects, maybe that could be spun into, you know, oh, they'll have them on the big leagues.

Because we're probably talking about expanded rosters beyond just an extra one or two. We might be talking about sort of 30-man rosters. And if the alternative is Alec Baum sits for two months and hopes that there's a minor league season, or Alec Baum is in the major leagues playing most days, I think from a developmental standpoint, the Phillies would say, let's get Baum up here. Second, the Phillies go from, in a 162-game playoff percentage, they get an 18% chance of making the playoffs. In an 81- game season, they have a 31% chance. And around the edges, Baum could really help them. I mean, he's only projected to be basically a

league average hitter. The bat likes him a little bit less, but most of the rest say league average hitter. However, a league average hitter, you know, when you could be choosing, especially if you're in a DH game, you know, or, you know, or Jay Bruce is hurt or something, then Alex Baum would be much better, probably, even to have Baum, you know, if Baum plays to his projections, than Kingery. Honestly, Kingery is projected to regress, based on, you know, overreaching on his BABIP a little bit and having more power than

we really thought for him. So, I think, you know, if you're saying, okay, we're going to focus on these things. Baum may have a poor developmental process in front of him in the minor leagues. We have an extra roster spot or three. Jay Bruce can be the starting DH, but we could still use another bat to move around. And Baum is going to be better with the bat than some of the guys who are going to play regularly,

that seems to add up to Allie Baum in the major leagues. Yeah, I just think this is another type of question that front offices are going to have to sort out internally. What are we going to do to develop the young players who are an important part of our future if we don't have the full minor league equivalent available to whatever we're doing in the big leagues, which they won't. They're not going to have nearly as many options to play minor league games. That seems pretty much impossible.

And if it's, let's say they're still playing, but it's more like the intra-squad games that I was talking about. It's more like developmental games then i think there'll be a priority put on like let's say you're an a ball you're 17 18 19 that okay fine intra squad games is fine we're we're we're focusing on mechanics we're focusing on this and that we're just trying to grow you into better players it's okay if you're not you know playing games every day but if you're more of a finished product and you're more of a double aA, 23-year-old like Baum, then how much are they going to learn from taking glorified BP, basically?

Or even if the pitchers are decent, it's like Phillies pitchers in the minor leagues are not at the same spot as Phillies hitters. So Baum would just sort of beat up on most of them. unless he gets to face, what's his face every day? Spencer Howard. Yeah, you could have a Groundhog Day scenario where every day Alec Baum takes 15 plate appearances against Spencer Howard.

Every fifth day or whatever. Yeah, every fifth day yeah you can't do every day that would be bad uh but yeah but but i think that sort of highlights the situation that this the decision making though they'll go undergo and as a team that has money and has more money it is uh the the backdrop of all this is uh just we don't know how much the economy will be impacted. And we don't know how devastating this is going to be for attendance, when attendance is going to even be a thing again. And so there there will be a powerful influence within the sport to be as conservative as possible monetarily and that's the big stone that sits on the other side of any ledger that we're trying to any any sort of balancing act we're trying to make deciding about alec bomb right they could just say hey, we have a $330 million man in right field,

and everybody's going to make 20%, 30% of what they expected to make this year, and even next year they might only make, as a team, 60%. So let's keep Baum cheap. Yeah, I guess that could be part of the calculus as well. Still a lot to be sorted out on that front. I guess that could be part of the calculus as well. Still a lot to be sorted out on that front. This email also included a quick note.

Dark ales and black lagers don't get enough pub out there right now. Recently had a Cascadian dark ale from Pontoon Brewing in Atlanta called Not Today, Satan. That was pretty great. What are some of your favorites? I think the first beer that popped to my mind when I read this email was Surly Damien, which I mentioned back around Halloween I think as a beer of the week.

Even that is... It's like a black IPA. It's not quite... It kind of fits this description, but it's a little bit further removed. The Cascadian... the cascadian um usually cascading ipas are that's what you that's what that is right that'll that'll count in this

case for the dark ale all right yeah yeah i don't know if they all have names like that damien not today satan but it fits the the style of the beer or or uh my favorite is kursklitza which is uh just a german the the sort of goat, the original dark lager. That's when I think of dark lager. When I think of a Cascadian IPA, I think of Wookiee Jack. Yeah, Wookiee Jack. It's a discontinued Firestone Walker beer. But I believe that some, you know, Cascadian, they're're the mountains up in in in um in the oregon and washington

the cascades sounds right yeah and uh so some people call it a black ipa and then other people call it the cascadian ipa or whatever and um they're the same thing but that also suggests that like just shoots probably has a good one um it's it has is a favor that's falling out of style it's definitely not uh like wookie jack got discontinued and it's definitely like i can i'm picturing my safe way out right now and i don't think there's a single one in it i'm just thinking of uh one more that i had right now just kind of scrolling through untapped evil octopus from mayday i had that in tennessee last summer spring may or so that was really good too i i think i think it is a good style i think it's a good style because if you if you like a more multi-profile you actually can get that. You can get it without giving up a lot in terms of hot character as well.

I just think the balance on those tends to be really good. I actually wish they were more readily available. I wish you could walk into a grocery store and have a few to choose from. Yeah, I'm starting. I bought like you could get cases of beer delivered in california during this and i and i went oh nuts and i bought like cellar maker and humble c and pure project all these and highland park and all these and i and i'm getting closer to like the the back half of this and i'm getting a little tired of hazy ipas right now suddenly too much so uh in my next order, I'm going to try and be a little bit more judicious

and spread out the styles a little bit and not just get can after can of hazy IPAs. If one of the places I'm ordering from has that on there, I might jump. Yeah. It's good to have a different sort of profile. That's why I got that Champagne Tortoise, that mild ale, last time I was out. I picked that up. I got a double IPA. I got some hazies. But I realize everything in my cellar is way too boozy to drink that on a regular basis. So it's not working at this time.

Thanks a lot for that email. We got one more from Greg. Thanks a lot for that email. We got one more from Greg. He is curious if any players you've talked to are actually interested in fantasy baseball or if they have positive views and opinions of what we do as a hobby. Because most of what I've heard from players indirectly has been more like, oh, fantasy players always ask me to do this or fantasy players are nerds. It's usually one of those two things.

This question comes from Greg in Boston. Yeah, it's interesting because fantasy football is super popular. Right. Most teams have probably a clubhouse league and or maybe even a front office league as well. Oh, my God. teams have probably a clubhouse league and or maybe even a front office league as well oh my god farhan like there's a legend there's like oral histories of how farhan has dominated his fantasy football league uh farhan zaidi the gm of the giants and and you know and basically any any team that's out of it in september is they're just openly drafting, discussing. The TV gets switched on to Matt Berry.

You know what I mean? They're into it. And so I have to imagine that the cognitive disconnect has to be either strong or at least some of these players are realizing fantasy is kind of fun and it's okay if people play fantasy baseball. Yeah, I mean, I would imagine it'd be weird

to play fantasy football, but then to completely hate people who play fantasy baseball. That just seems odd. That's my point. Or to look down on them. I could see not wanting to talk about it if you play the game.

I can get that. I can understand not wanting to play fantasy baseball if you play real baseball i think that makes sense as well something that our colleague michael beller was saying on fantasy baseball in 15 like coming out of high school and going into college he played baseball had a chance to go play i think it was d2 or d3 said he just kind of laughed off playing fantasy baseball until a few years later he's like i grew up and then i i actually thought i realized it was cool and i enjoy it but i think i think that that's an attitude that i think a lot of players probably would have about fantasy baseball in particular yeah the switch is between fantasy football and fantasy baseball is that they're not

really allowed to play fantasy baseball right it's i's, I think it's like literally in, in the CBA or something, but it's like, it's, it's a, it's a lot too close to betting on, on baseball. So they're not allowed to play it.

They don't like, like I, I made the mistake once of asking Dexter Fowler, why didn't steal more bases? And I think I mentioned my fantasy team. That did not, that did not go well. They don't want to be seen as random number generators for your fantasy team.

They don't like that. But I would say in the pantheon of things that they don't like, fantasy baseball is way, way behind uh autograph seekers and uh the place that it's gotten most complicated is when a player becomes an autograph seeker oh an autograph hound yeah yeah there's a few stories about that yeah who was the guy that publicly got in such a battle with Zach Greinke? It was Pat Neshek, who was collecting, you know, would send things over to get signed from the other clubhouse, send his clubby to get things signed to the other clubhouse and sort of collect things.

And I have to say, I kind of 100% come down on Zach Greinke's side on that one. I have to say, I kind of 100% come down on Zach Greggie's side on that one. Because as a player, I've seen this. I go through the same tunnels as the players. I access the field the same way as the players. And there are these throngs of people. And it's good. They're supporting the game.

And they're collecting. And I'm a collector. I was a collector. I was a collector. I have my whole baseball card collection sitting right behind me. It's got some signatures on some balls and stuff. I've got Tom Glavin's signature. I've got Dale Murphy. So I understand it and it's cool.

But it's also kind of devolved into this frenzy, this feeding frenzy, where people develop these lies. Oh, I went to school with your sister. They get little details and they develop these stories. And I swear half of them are lies. And so the players don't know who's lying to them and who's not. And then there'll be people that come with kids and they put their kids out in front of them. And so now you're, they have these like six year olds who are super cute. And the guy thinks he's signing for a six year old, but the six year old turns around and gives all the signed stuff to their dad or their uncle or whoever,

who's going to go sell it on eBay or whatever it is. So, you know, there's all these like kind of gross practices that happen around it. Um, and it's like one of the, the one time that like the public gets to interact with the player and it's so like needy and like, gimme, gimme, gimme that the players get really

turned off by it. And so, you know, it's, it's actually a pretty selfless act when a player does sign because they, they get inundated, you know, and I actually understand when a player's like, not today, you know, like just not today. I'm not feeling it today. And so then you get into the clubhouse and you think, ah, you know, my BBWA card says I may not ask for an autograph. If I do that, I lose my BBWA card. Like, I lose my ability to go in the clubhouse. So the clubhouse is supposed to be a place where you don't have to do it. Now, there are corporate things where the owners or the Giants say, hey, we have these game balls.

We're giving them away to kids in the hospital or this or that. And so there'll be a thing out in the middle, and everybody has to come by and sign a jersey or something. It's for charity or whatever it is. So that is there in the clubhouse, but it's a little different than the clubby coming over and being like, Pat Neshek says, can you sign this game ball for him?

Yeah, something about that exchange is still not quite right. I understand where Neshek has probably a fond appreciation for the game and respects the players he's competing against, but it just doesn't seem appropriate. I'd be really interested to see what like you know brad ziegler thinks of it um i think that's you should probably import that question over sometime if you're talking to him i think he may have talked about that on an episode of the throwback it's now called or was at the time called sports unsealed but yeah he's talked

about that before how he's had to kind of limit the number he'd sign and do it a certain way. I mean, even the larger question at the start of this was how he feels about fantasy. I would say that they don't love it. They don't hate fantasy baseball. I think they realize that it creates a lot of interest around lesser games and that people might be watching just for them. I think some of them might like it a little bit. It's like, you know, I'm Brian Anderson on the Marlins, and nobody really cares about me except for the bunch of people who have me in their fantasy league.

This is a sad but true fact about the current state of the Marlins and how that impacts Brian Anderson. Beer of the Week came in from Greg as well. Trillium's twice-the-daily-serving blackberry and pomegranate Berliner Weiss. That's a great call. It's a Weiss beer. It has a real milkshake feel to it. Pretty much a juice explosion.

Trillium's always good. So yeah, if you're in a place to get Trillium, you absolutely should. If you're enjoying the show on a platform that allows you to rate and review the podcast, you should do that. That'd be great if you did it for us. We'd really appreciate it. If you could also sign up for a subscription to The Athletic. Obviously, we appreciate anybody who's doing that. You can get 40% off at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. appreciate it. If you could also sign up for a subscription to The Athletic, obviously we

appreciate anybody who's doing that. You can get 40% off at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. You can also get a free trial though. If you're not sure about it, not in a position to pay right now, we totally understand theathletic.com slash free 90 days. If you'd like to go that route on Twitter, he's at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. As always, you can reach us via email ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com. Thanks for the many great questions we received this week. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Thursday.

Thanks for listening.