Rates & Barrels - Baseball in America in 2020

Episode Date: July 28, 2020

Rundown4:18 The Marlins’ COVID-19 Outbreak10:57 A Need To Fix Old Habits21:52 Ohtani’s 2020 Pitching Debut26:36 Tommy Pham & The Padres Are Running!31:12 A Closer Look at Houston’s Pitching40:09 Mike Foltynewicz Gets DFA’d45:29 Nate Pearson Coming Up Wednesday; Stephenson Arrives in Cincy55:23 Statcast Is Working! Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiperE-mail: [e-mail] Get 40% off a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's episode of Rates and Barrels is brought to you by Dugout Mugs. Dugout Mugs is a company that was started in a college baseball dugout, hence the name Dugout Mugs. What they do is they take the barrel of a baseball bat and turn it into a 12-ounce mug, and they're licensed by MLB, so you can get your favorite team logo laser engraved right onto a Birchwood baseball bat barrel mug. It's perfect for the big game or to put on display and it's great for baseball fans as a unique gift. Go to dugoutmugs.com slash theathletic and use promo code MLB30 for 30%

off your first purchase. That's dugoutmugs.com slash theathletic and code MLB30. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 117. It is Tuesday, July 28th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. We have a ton of topics to get to. 28th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. We have a ton of topics to get to. We have an unfortunate outbreak with the COVID-19 pandemic impacting the Miami Marlins. We've had cancellations. We have other COVID-19 matters to get to. We have actual baseball to talk about, which is cool and only adds to the cognitive dissonance that I think many of us are experiencing right now. We will get to a lot of baseball topics, of course, on this show as well.

We got a prospect debut that we're all looking forward to coming up on Wednesday and some surprising transactions to get to throughout this episode as well. Eno, how's it going for you on this Tuesday? It is super, super weird. Today is the first day that I will go to a ballpark since February. How do you feel about that? I mean, I know that I'm not likely to have bad symptoms, even if I get it, and that I'm not likely to get it because the way that they do things is the media just basically arrives in the press box without really seeing anybody else. And I don't even think that we'll see PR staff so um i also don't know why i'm going

um but uh it is such a weird thing i get like it's almost like rubbernecking like i don't know i'm going because i am in this time and this seems like something I should do just to see what it's like and and maybe to understand better I'm writing about these players I'm writing about these issues I'm writing about what's going on I should go at least once to understand what it feels like to be at the park right now and what it looks like and what it sounds like even um so like i hope it's not rubbernecking i hope i'm not just going to say i went but i this might be the only time i go yeah i don't think it's rubbernecking i think it is what you said it's to have a better feel better understanding for what the environment's

really like i mean watching the games on tv you can see and hear the ways that it's different, but I think going through the process, going through having your temperature checked and the things that are going to happen as you get to the park and as you make your way up to the media area, just understanding that firsthand, I think that will help you on some level sort of connect with how everything is different at the ballpark every day because you've been there for several years when things are completely normal. That's a jarring sort of difference. That's been the story of this year. So yeah, I wouldn't feel bad about going at all. And I think you might be right. I think you might find that it's just awkward and uncomfortable and it's hard to get a lot out of it because of the very unique way that it's covered

and the limited access, but it's still, I think, worth experiencing just for the reasons that you mentioned. So we'll start things off with the Marlins story. It's really the biggest story in baseball right now. Initially on Sunday morning, I believe there were four players who had tested positive. It kind of started with Jose Ureña. He was supposed to start that day. He was scratched from his start. And the Marlins went on and played the game and won against the Phillies on Sunday. Monday morning, we found out that many more players had tested positive, that a small outbreak, I think four was enough to count as an actual outbreak, was actually much larger. And as we record this just around one o'clock Eastern on Tuesday, it sounds like we're up to half of the active roster is now tested positive for COVID in Miami.

is now tested positive for COVID in Miami. So Monday's game was canceled. The Marlins were supposed to play the Orioles. The Phillies, who hosted the Marlins on Sunday, their game against the Yankees was postponed as well. So it's been a roller coaster 48 hours, really. And all of that was surrounded by some injury-related news that we'll get to in a different part of the show. And I just think in all of this, what I'm stuck realizing is that we don't give me a lot of confidence that every scenario was thought through during the shutdown period. And I think the uncertainty about how the schedule

is going to play out in the next couple of days and whether or not the season's going to continue is very much a reflection of that lack of clear planning. Yeah. I mean, I have to throw a little bit of sympathy in here because you're dealing with a lot of different states and local authorities that have their own rules. And so you had to leave a little bit of leeway in for different teams to deal with things differently so that you could still gather all these. It's a little bit of a problem without national federal leadership in this situation overall. We're seeing that play out in ways where corporations, sports have to kind of allow for some leeway if they don't do a bubble plan, right? And so there had to be something like that.

something like that. But now I think looking back to one of the questions we had that was always very awkward to ask, but you have to ask these hard, awkward questions when you're running a sport, which was no one has said anything about, we said this many times, no one has said anything about how many is too many and what is the moment when all the baseball shuts down? And when you look back on that question that we had that has not been answered and has been answered a little bit by circumstance, you have to think that the reason they didn't put that number in there is that they wanted to be able to do a little bit about what they're doing now, which is, well, it's just the Marlins. Tell me with a straight face that if 15 Yankees were hurt right now, we'd be playing,

the other teams would be playing baseball. If 15 Yankees had COVID right now, that we'd be playing baseball. I can't because I think even in one of the example scenarios when we talked about this before, we suggested, what if it's this team versus that team? And it's unbelievable that it makes a difference, but you kind of just know that's how the league could view something like this.

And I think there's a lot of things that are troubling about this. I mean, the Reds might be dealing with an outbreak too. It's not necessarily as clear just yet, but they've had a few players who have been removed from the roster, placed on the IL due to illness, and were kind of left in the dark. There wasn't a lot of news on the Reds really on Monday at all. They played as planned against the Cubs, so things are progressing there, I guess. Those are more, I think, the Braves and the Reds are more

situations that we kind of envisioned, like two or three players, catch it fast, get the players out of there. The Braves may have even been an abundance of caution. I don't think we've yet to find out if Tyler Flowers and... Who's his backup? No, Travis Darnell, yeah. We have yet to find out if either of those guys tested positive, right? We just know that they stayed back.

Right. And yeah, if that's the extent of what is going to happen outside of what's happening with the Marlins, that is more in line with what I kind of expected if it were going to happen.

If things were going to make it through the end of the season, those would be the types of setbacks. Those would be the types of virus-related problems that teams would have to overcome. But I think that those other teams are acting, like honestly, they seem to act a little better than the marlins did i mean it's a little weird that the marlins players had agency in this and decided to play

uh you if you ask a player they're always going to be wanting to play and in fact some of the some of these things that they're talking about now are saying like uh we're going to redouble you know masks are required in in the clubhouse and stuff like that. Well, that should have been the position at the beginning. And I think for some teams, there were more stringent requirements than other teams. Just think about the fact that Tyler Flowers had like a little bit of a sniffle and boom,

him and his backup catcher are sent home at like a considerable risk to the Braves in terms of on field play because now they're playing like like the 19 year old William Contreras and you know I don't know exactly how old he is but he's a baby man and uh and he wasn't supposed to be ready yet so you know they they they took a risk by doing this um you know I think there were a couple managers that felt under the weather and got tested and ended up being fine and stayed away from their teams for a game or two. I think we just need to step back and that be the default. Take players out. Cancel games early. Cancel that Sunday game that the Marlins played. Don't play that game.

You already have four. Four is bad. Yeah, four is very bad. And I think it's watching baseball throughout the last couple of days, even teams that are being careful, even teams where you see a lot of players wearing masks. I've seen Anthony Rizzo offer hand sanitizer to a runner at first base in the Cubs Brewers series this weekend. I think Orlando Arcia got a single Rizzo pulled sanitizer out of his back

pocket and drip some on Arcia's hands right away. You see players trying and taking it seriously. And even with that, there are still these momentary lapses or there are certain things about celebrating a home run that still don't look quite right i'm really surprised by how much they're touching each other after those i figured we would have had some more innovative you know uh you know i i air hugged a friend recently you Yeah. For the first time today, I met a friend for coffee, sat outside, and did an elbow bump when I left. It's literally the first human contact I've had with anyone who isn't my wife. I haven't shaken anyone's hand. I haven't hugged anyone.

Mother's Day, I didn't hug my mom. That kind of stuff. I haven't touched anybody. Even that, I'm like, wow. My circle of people I've just even made contact with is now two in the last five months. I think it was Hunter Renfro on Monday night. He had a home run,

went through the gauntlet and they were doing elbow bumps, which, okay, you're not doing high fives. That's like the modification, but it was in a crowded dugout. And the thing I saw was that Renfro at the time didn't have a mask on several players in the dugout didn't have a mask on. If you get elbow to elbow away from somebody,

you're probably closer than six feet, right? And I imagine when you're playing a game in the trop in July, you're warm, you're sweaty. There's just going to be breathing and droplets and all those things we've been talking about, right? We go to the grocery store and there's a piece of plastic between all of us and the cashiers and for good reason. And then you go to a baseball game and you hit a home run and you're that close to someone without that barrier. That seems pretty jarring to me. I know they're all in the same circle. I know those guys have to look out for each other and they have to do everything they can to not catch the virus and spread it. But I still think there's another level. And maybe after what's happening with the Marlins, maybe this week, we will see teams that were being a little too casual.

Which I think is almost just getting comfortable in the circumstances. I don't think it's intentional negligence. I think it's just sort of the byproduct of getting back into a routine, playing baseball again, and just sort of falling into old habits, right? Like you just sort of, you start to feel comfortable and start to do the things that you used to do without even thinking about it. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, we're at the precipice right now. Apparently a vast majority of Nationals players has voted against making the road trip to Miami this weekend. And in fact, given the gestation period of the virus, really the Marlins should be shut down for five, six, seven days, which is just an awful amount of time

given the season and how much they're going to have to pack in later to try and get any of these games back. And yes, those aren't games that necessarily mean a lot to the Marlins' chances of winning this year, but they do mean a lot to the other teams that are playing them. So there's already kind of a hole in the schedule, and it's already getting wobbly. And now the commissioner has the choice of, you know, sort of ordering a team into a hotspot or canceling it and seeming like, you know, any team at any time can kind of decide not to play, which maybe they should be able to.

I mean, they're the ones that are, you know, at risk here. They're the ones that are, you know, interacting with each other. I mean, Manfred's not in the dugout, you know, giving high fives. So, um, I don't know. I would, what I would like is just, uh, just everyone to be a little bit more cautious, um, maybe see more masks, uh, in the game, definitely in the dugout in the clubhouse. Um, I'd like to, I'd like there to be more baseball. I'd like them to maybe cancel this Nationals-Marlins series, uh, just to see how, how bad it is. And, and, uh, you know, the, the good news I think is the Phillies first round of testing, um, you know, nobody so far has tested positive, but the, with the gestation period, they might have just gotten it.

So you could be talking about a philly's problem uh on friday yeah having just finished up that series on sunday it's possible that players will begin to test positive from those exposures at the end of this week like that's well within the range of outcomes so i'm hopeful even though things are going wrong I'm just hopeful that teams are going to see what's happening, tighten everything up, and do their absolute best. But I think part of that optimism is being in a position, as we've said before, where this is our livelihood. And it needs to work for a lot of reasons that are very personal to me. But I want everyone to be safe about it because we've seen complications. We've seen Eduardo Rodriguez with a heart condition that they think is related

to COVID, right? So we've seen some scary things. We had a professional scout pass away at age 40. I mean, we've seen horrible things with this virus directly connected to baseball and obviously outside of it as well. And we have complications with tests like Juan Soto having negative tests, but not being able to clear protocol. So I will have to say that there's definitely like conflicting pieces of information coming out about Juan Soto. That's just so weird. I mean, you know, Bob Nightingale saying that, you know, he hasn't tested. He hasn't had a positive test since the 23rd or something, but also saying that he hasn't been able to have two straight negative tests. Are that many tests coming back inconclusive?

That's the only way that you can fill in the missing information that we've got there. I don't understand that. I do understand that the at-home tests that Soto is taking and that other people are taking, the kind of quick response, do-it-yourself ones, I think are among the worst in terms of false positives, really. And maybe they're just among the worst tests. The ones that baseball is doing with the saliva sent away to the lab, those are much better. So if Soto is saying, you know, I have all these tests from the at-home thing, that may not carry as much weight and obviously doesn't because he's not playing. So we did get an email about that from a listener, didn't we?

Yeah, Dr. Devin Kelly, thanks for the email explaining some of the differences in the tests. And yeah, you could have as high as like a 20% to 30% false negative rate for some of the upper airway testing. And there was a really interesting calculator he sent us as well. I think the thing he sent us at the end of the email is the important takeaway as we think about baseball, we think about life. This is how he ended his email. It's important to remember this is a novel virus. The scientific and medical community still have a lot to learn. We should all learn to accept

the scientific and medical community is working very hard to make progress, but this takes time. We will continue to have uncertainty and hopefully this improves with time. Sometimes there are no clear-cut black and white answers. That's the reality of the situation in a very clear and succinct way. You know, like, of course we weren't going to get through this with no positives. And of course something like this could have happened.

And of course most of these players will be fine, and that's what we're seeing. A lot of them are coming back quickly. But then you still have the fact of Eduardo Rodriguez. And no, Eduardo Rodriguez's heart is not damaged for his life. I don't think it's more a reaction that his heart has had to a virus viral infection. So that's something you can get from the flu, you can get this myocardial reaction to, to the flu as well. However, it's a big freaking deal. I mean, he's arrhythmic, basically. He has a heart issue right now. It may not be something that stays with him

the rest of his life, but he has a heart issue right now, and that's a lot more than just, oh, he has a cold. When they say that players have flu-like symptoms, they're talking about they're hungover, or got the craps or he's puking. Those aren't really flus. Yeah. So even when people say it's just the flu, that's really ridiculous. Also the flu is really

terrible. And this is even worse than the flu. And it has all these things, like we were saying, we're learning all these implications for future health and we don't even know what those are and we just know that the heart is affected

and that it's really rough on some people so I don't know we're going to have to we'll keep playing fantasy and we'll keep talking baseball while there is baseball that That's the big cognitive disconnect and it's really difficult, but you just

have to represent yourself and represent the issues you have with how things are going and yet at least be happy that there's something new on TV. I think I've watched everything on Netflix and HBO. You've seen it all. You've seen it all.

I've seen it all, so now it is time for a little bit of baseball, just not involving the Marlins, I guess. I'll get NBA, NHL coming back very soon as well. To that end, the final 22 teams have made their way to Orlando and

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All right. You know, we actually have baseball things to talk about on this episode. Not that the COVID-related baseball things aren't baseball, but I was excited watching games this weekend. I was excited Monday night when the Brewers rallied back from a four-run deficit in the ninth and won a game against the Pirates in extra innings because those baseball things make life feel a little bit more normal again, even though we keep ping-ponging back and forth and getting those harsh reminders that this is all happening within a pandemic. Shohei Otani made his first start on Sunday. We talked about that on the Friday show.

It was one of the things I was really looking forward to. It was short-lived, unfortunately. He did not record an out in that first appearance and did some ratios damage along the way. He hasn't hit in the first series of the season either, so it's just been a slow start to the year for him. I think it's going to lead some people to start wondering if this starting plan this season doesn't go well, if he has a couple of bad turns the next couple of weeks. It's going to lead people to start asking

if the Angels should consider using him as a reliever, possibly getting a little more of his bat that way because with the starting pitching plan, they have to kind of ease off him a little bit as a DH. How long do you think they're going to wait before they actually change course with their plan? Because I think a big part of Otani signing with the Angels when he came over from Japan was their commitment to him as a two-way player. Yeah, I always thought the college plan would work,

where he plays every day as a bat and he's a closer or at least a high leverage reliever. I mean, that would fit his skill set. He has Udarvishian command and stuff, I would say. So, you know, a lot of times that player ends up relieving. And so not to link it or blow up the rundown too much, but Josh James is on that list. Tyler Chatwood doesn't quite have the stuff of those other two, but he has the command issues. So you can see that these are players that there is some risk involved when you take a guy with really bad command. And you've seen the Hugh Darvish up and down swings. You've seen Chatwood go from a reliever to a starter to

a reliever and back again. We're watching Josh James try to force his way through it. We're going to see Dylan Cease, I believe, today. These are the types of players that often, I would say more often than not, become relievers. They have a reliever-like command. But if Shohei's sitting 96-97, then sure, yeah, man, sitting 97 for multiple innings, then yeah, I want him out there as much as possible, and I can understand the sort of siren song, and then the player himself is telling me that's what he wants, but, you know, he went, he was, I think, one of the biggest velo droppers of the season. He went from 96, 97 plus last year to sitting 93 in that start, and I just, I don't know if it's, he's shaking the rust off, he didn't get a single whiff in that first inning, and, you know, the hits, like, he didn't give up a homer or

anything, and, you know, the movement was still there, so I'm hoping next start out, he's got to be sitting 94, 95. Like, really? I think that's how important the next start is because fastball velocity becomes meaningful after two to three starts. It predicts like 70% to 80% of the rest of your season's fastball velocity. Yeah, and if he has command issues, he needs every tick possible. You can't get by with reduced velocity and mediocre command. That's just not going to work.

And I think it's extra challenging when you're talking about a guy who could be a top 15 or top 20 hitter. If he focused solely on hitting and got to hit every single day, I think he's already flashed the type of ceiling that leads us to believe he would be an early round pick, even if he were only a hitter, whether it be an outfielder, maybe as a UT only guy, he'd still be in that conversation. He could be that good. So I think that just puts like this extra pressure on him. And I don't know i i'm hoping he gets a chance to bounce back and hopefully it's going to be next time out but i'm definitely concerned in the

handful of places where i've drafted him this season a couple observations i had from the weekend the padres ran all over the diamondbacks tommyam alone had four steals. The Padres, I think, have seven already this season. And as I started to really take a look at what they were doing, it actually looked like they were more aggressive in every facet of base running. It wasn't just taking off. It was, you know, first, third situations. I saw Josh Naylor run in a situation where he might not have run in the past. Oh, yeah, he oversled the base. He actually had a stolen base and then oversled it. Yeah, and he actually looks a little better, too. He looks a little more trim than he did a couple years ago

when I saw him in the Fall League. And he's got a chance to play for what it's worth. But I just like that the Padres, they seem to be one of these teams that are going to be aggressive this season. You talked about them as a playoff pick, I think, on last week's prediction show. Nice to see Pham healthy, of course, after he was dealing with an injury at the end of last season and back during the initial spring training back in March. But I also wondered, are the Padres more aggressive,

or did teams see something in Carson Kelly that makes them more willing to run on Kelly this season? The Diamondbacks get the Rangers next. I don't know. The Rangers just got blown out of the water by the Rockies. That was weird. Not getting good news with the Corey Kluber loss. It seems like one of those beginnings to the season when it's such a short season where you're like, oops, they're already in trouble.

And they're 1-2. I mean, it's not that big a deal, but it's kind of in this season. But no, there's not really a lot of waiver steals out there for you. Danny Santana is like owned in all leagues. Solak doesn't really run. I don't know that I can identify somebody quickly unless Leody Tavares was subbed in. I think he's still there for more defense and pinch running, though.

Yeah, I just... I don't know. I always say Kiner Falafel. I don't know why. It's weird. He does actually run a little bit, but he's coming off a bad hamstring. So is he going to necessarily want to run now? Anyway, after that comes the Dodgers, and the Dodgers are a little bit more waiver-friendly

because they have such depth that um you know they end up they end up being somebody i mean like kike might be on your on your uh waiver wire and uh you know he steals bases every once in a while yeah he went crazy in that opening series mostly on opening night against the giants and we talked about lux getting sent down and youike and Chris Taylor being the guys who were going to play. As a result of that, I think he did his part to make that decision look like a good one, at least during the first weekend of the season. Some injury news, though. It was pretty bad throughout the weekend.

Justin Verlander has a forearm strain. At one point, there was a report that suggested he was out for the season. He came back out, and I think Dust dusty baker also after sunday's game said he's just gonna be shut down for a couple of weeks so they're still hopeful he can come back i don't know man like uh i you could you can see what happened there immediately that the player thinks he's gonna come back and says oh it's only two weeks and then i'll come back. But the team is like, well, it's a two-month season and he's got a two-week injury with, there's got to be some ramp up after that. So he's at least out half the season. And in the case of Corey Kluber, I think it's even more obvious. It's like, he's out for the season and in the case of cory kluber i think it's even more obvious it's like he's out for the

season i mean it's a shoulder first of all and it's a month like you'd be lucky if you get two starts from him i'm dropping cory kluber i have one share of him i'm dropping him right now yeah i'm with you it's really bad news for kluber it's a strain of of the Terry's major, I think, is the actual part of the shoulder, but a four-week shutdown with the ramp-up. The season's basically over. If he comes back later, great. That's an amazing success story, but certainly don't hold the optimism for that particular injury. With Verlander, it's a little more tricky, I think, in part because you're talking about a guy you drafted either late in round one or middle of round two, probably at the latest. So to let that go and not just kind of see how it plays out for a little

while, I understand the added desire to do that. The Astros are in some trouble. I kind of hinted at this before. The bullpen's not necessarily locked down with four or five great relievers the way that most playoff bullpens are. You're losing Garrett Cole in free agency, even though they got Lance McCullers back. That was going to put a little extra pressure on some of the back-end guys. We saw Josh James come out and struggle against Seattle in his first start of the season on Monday. At this point, Forrest Whitley is just not there developmentally to take on the role they would have expected at this point. I thought Forrest Whitley was going to be contributing a year ago, and now they've got multiple vacancies in this rotation,

potentially, and he's not necessarily even the favorite to take that spot. A couple names that have caught my eye, Christian Javier, who I think people were drafting back in December and January for draft and hold purposes. I think he's really interesting. I think he was in the bullpen to begin the season. And then there's Brandon Bielek, who's been in the 60-man player pool all along. I think he pitched behind James on Monday night. The Astros do have a way of developing somewhat unheralded pitchers and turning them into very useful starters. So I think in the case of Javier, in the case of Bielek, really in the case of anybody that they bring up, you want to look at the underlying numbers. You want to see what's in the arsenal because the level of trust is still pretty high despite the failure to get Whitley where he needs to be at this point. They've done

more with less. Jose Urquidy last year, I think, was a really good example of that. Yeah. And Bielek has four real pitches and average VLO. So it looks like he could have a little bit of that kitchen sink situation. Command is an open question. Had some poor walk rates in the minors and had some better ones early on. So I think he's relatively unknown. It is maybe interesting to point out that his steamer projections are decent uh sub four just barely sub four era um you know the other name is brandon bailey uh who i believe um was available in the rule 5. And I remember there being a buzz that the Orioles would take him.

Especially with the Baltimore-Houston connection in Baltimore's front office. Yeah, but somehow he's still here. He is the return for Ramon Laureano and has a tremendous ride on his fastball, has had some really great strikeout rates in the minors, also some iffy command. His projections are not as good, and his arsenal may be not quite as wide. He threw a lot of fastballs when he came up. It was just a one inning last year, so we can't say everything. But I would say that I think Bailey's slightly ahead of Belak for a spot in the rotation. Right now, it's Frambois Valdez, who's, I think,

a low-ceiling kind of guy. Like, just a decent guy that I picked up in some leagues and some deeper leagues, but I wouldn't, like in a 12-teamer, I wouldn't be rushing out to get him. I dropped him in a shallower 15-teamer. And then Urquidy will come back eventually, and I guess they're going to have to. That means that James has a longer leash, I think, because if you're talking about Bailey and Belak behind him,

I don't think that you're necessarily reaching for the alternative for a while. So that's good news for James' owners. Good news for Urquidy and Valdez owners that want him. I might revise James downward a little bit after that first start because of all the struggles with the command. And I would say that maybe he's in the 60s somewhere. Valdez is in the low 70s. And I would say that maybe he's in the 60s somewhere.

Valdez is in the low 70s. And Urquidy is probably the best of the bunch, but also the biggest question mark with the IL, the COVID return. So that's her group. Bielek and Bailey, I would leave that for 20 teamers with big benches. It's weird that Whitley doesn't even feel like an option. This is a guy who's a top 25 overall prospect on some list still, despite a disastrous 2019. He could come out of nowhere.

Like he, he could be the option. We don't, the problem is it's a total black box. We have no idea what he's throwing like right now. Nobody can see him. Like we can't even, there are no scouts i can't

text a scout and be like have you seen whitley no no they have not seen whitley i've been texting scouts and they're like no i can't i i all i see is what you see yeah i mean think about how short the list of personnel is who are allowed to watch the alternate camp workouts. I think they should share video, man. I don't hate to be radical or weird or whatever, but I don't know how people are going to see it. They should share video, man. How could you make a trade with somebody? I don't know.

Yeah. Looking off old data. You almost think you'd see video when someone's up a few ticks, right? Like teams would take the- Like leak it. Yeah, right. They would do like the flat ground approach with their own players and be like, hey, check out this guy you've never heard of.

He's throwing 99 right now. And oh, well, that's cool. Maybe we should trade for him. But he used to throw 95. It would be strange to see teams doing that, basically to be pushing their own guys out there and selling them with hype videos but every team wants to get a look at other players so there's there's sort of a mutually beneficial reason to actually go down that sort of path but keep an eye on what's going on with this group of astro starters because there could definitely be

a few interesting guys that get opportunities and i I agree that there is a little bit of the feeling of the wheels going rickety. They haven't fallen off yet, but you've got Alvarez and Urquidy missing. Nobody knows. Nobody knows how long they're going to be out. You've got Presley with the elbow already hurting a little bit. Abreu has been up and down as soon as just getting back in there, but that bullpen isn't quite what it might have once been. You're asking for just one injury to one of their main lineup cogs,

and this team doesn't look half as good as it looked going into the season. No, things could change very quickly. Things have changed a bit for the Dodgers since we last spoke. Clayton Kershaw's back has obviously knocked him out of that opening night start. We talked about that a bit on Friday. We just found out this morning that Alex Wood has been placed on the IL. So Dustin May's temporary hold on a rotation spot and kershaw's absence could be extended if the issue that's put wood on the shelf keeps him out for more than a couple of turns

yeah yeah uh it's interesting that alex woods uh spin rate was up big uh he was a like a top five guy in spin rate changes uh number one was uh trevor bauer who went from sitting 2400 to sitting 2800 it's like going from like middle of the pack to top 10 type spin and i think we know how he did that uh anyway uh major changes in spin can be predictive of injury it's something that carter caps posted about recently on Twitter. And usually you think of it as being a drop, but he said that sometimes there's a major increase right before. So maybe there's a significant injury here for Wood. I've been beating the drum pretty hard for Tony Gonsolin, but I guess that just means that May, Strip, Urias, Buehler are safe. They're

waiting on Kershaw with the back, but he completed a 15-pitch bullpen session. I think he'll be back next time through. So maybe they just bullpen it with Danny Santana one day if they don't want to do the transactions that are required to bring Tony Gonsolin up. I did hear from one executive that I was talking to that teams are having a lot of 40-man issues. And the issue is that with the expanded rosters, you're putting guys on your 40-man, like the 30-man roster, right? You're putting guys on your 40-man maybe a little bit ahead of time because you have to, because you have to feel 30. And it's only for two weeks or something, but then you see them for two weeks and you're like,

well, I don't want to take them off my 40-man. I like what I saw. So there are definitely some moves we'll see that seem weird that have to do with this 40-man crunch. I thought that was maybe going on with Mike Fulton-Evich getting DFA'd by the Braves. You can't option guys down at certain points, and then they have to come off the roster. It depends on what they have.

It just seemed weird to me that if something was wrong, they wouldn't have put him on the IL, and it's also weird to me that they didn't just give him a chance in the bullpen first like that was a pretty swift move but i think i saw one report that he was down almost five miles per hour in velo like that's a that's an incredible drop yeah it was it was bad and the thing about fulte is that um he definitely it's a little bit like the Nadia Valdi fastball, where, you know, even when he was going well, like the 2018 season, he had a 96.8 average fastball velocity.

But, you know, he got 8% whiffs on that. That's not, you would expect many more whiffs. And it has to do with the fact that his fastball is almost exactly average in terms of movement. And I think that is your definition of straight. So even when he was throwing 96.8, fast batters had a 436 slugging against him. This is 2018. So now you go to 2019, and now he's sitting 94-9, still super straight. And Batters are slugging 522 off of him, off the foreseam. Well, you know, what happens when you come into 2020, and he's now throwing the fore four seam at 90.9 i think they just thought that even if he gets a tick in the bullpen this is this is just totally gone and you know i

think that alex anthopolis in some ways might be one of the perfect guys to have at the helm for your team in a 60 game situation like. Because do you remember when they took Sean Newcomb out of the rotation and he had like a three ERA? Yeah. They saw that his command was just terrible and that they just couldn't get through four innings with him. And so they took him out before the issue can happen. So I think in this case, they looked at Fulton and they're like,

look, he's 90.9. If we put him in the pen, he's 91.9. Still put him in the pen he's 91.9 still gonna be or 92.9 even still gonna be a problem because at 95 his fastball wasn't good it was just passable um and now at 91 it's just gonna be a tattooed and i think that you'll see you know everyone's like oh they should my team should claim faulty i think you'll see that the bottom of the barrel claims faulty i think think he'll be an Oriole or a Marlin and that everybody else will pass because they can see the same things. But Anthopolis, and this is how we have to work too.

Major velocity degradations like this, we have to move on them. And so I'm writing a piece now where I'm just going through like 30 pictures and just writing about them. And, uh, Mania is owned in 93% of leagues, um, and through 88, like, nope, I'm not down for that. I know he debuted a new curve ball, but, uh, he does not have Kyle Hendricks command. So I, you know, that's what you need.

If faulty had Kyle Hendricks command, he he would still have a job but he does not so i think we need to move fast on these velocity things yeah i'm right there with you there's no time to be optimistic there's no time to see if things get back to normal in this shortened season so perhaps a very proactive move even with otani, who we're excited about, and who threw three miles harder than Fulte in his down. There's the bat thing that makes it more complicated with Otani. But if he threw 93 again and had a bad game, I would sell him as a pitcher. If he's a pitcher only, I might even drop him. Madison Bumgarner, minus three miles an hour, couldn't crack 90?

Yeah, that's a major, major problem. Charlie Morton, I dropped from top 10 to top 30 just based off of that first start, minus two and a half miles an hour. It's brutal right now to see some of the drops and some of that velo might come back, but if it all doesn't come back, you still have a problem.

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That's GetRoman.com slash rates for a free online visit and free two-day shipping. That's getroman.com slash rates for a free online visit and free two-day shipping. A couple things to be excited about. You know, we are seeing prospects get the call. We're just passing that threshold. Six days is what it takes this year for a team to hold an extra year of service time with the season starting last Thursday. Tuesday, today, is day six. So tomorrow, Wednesday, is the day that we're going to see

Nate Pearson debut for the Blue Jays. He's a guy we get to see pitch back in the Fall League. He started the Fall Stars game. That was just, was it this fall? Was that only a few months ago? Was it really only that long ago? Or was that like 10 years ago? Throws triple digits with a fastball, of course.

Going to be a big part of this Jays rotation. They're kind of like the Padres of the AL, where I feel like they're angling more to get to the postseason, especially with 16 teams getting in. They're one of those teams that gets a bump anyway. But I think Pearson's one of those guys that can come up and have some success right away. As long as the command is there, I think he has front of the rotation stuff already, even though we haven't seen that much of him in the upper levels of the minor leagues yeah i mean there's i think there's definitely some risk with pearson too um the command doesn't always look like it's there and

the change-up flashes in and out i think the breaking balls are ahead of the change-up um but the movement profile on the changeup gives him the most wiggle out of any of his pitches. And it's a five-inch drop off his foreseam. So, like, theoretically, it should be good. But, you know, theoretically, Carlos Rodon's changeup is good, and yet he doesn't have the command to use it. So there's that bit of risk.

There's also the risk that he gets super fastball happy and the team that he first matches up with just ends up timing the fastball. It does not have amazing movement. It's all about velo for him. So in effect, this could be faulty-like, but young and still with the 96-97. So there were some good seasons in there for Fulte. I will reserve judgment on him until I see more of him against major league hitters. Some of the stuff that he does against minor league hitters comes just from blowing them away.

80-grade fastball. You don't see a lot of 80-grade fastballs, especially on starters. Yeah. Well, I'm not sure I would give it a full 80-grade myself. We only have two or three games of movement data at Brooks Baseball, but it's fairly straight unless he's gotten more right on it since. And when I did talk to him in the spring he spoke fluent track man and so he was talking about upping the spin

efficiency on his curve which would get a more drop on that pitch and make it a better pitch and if he's working on spin efficiency on the curve and the foreseeing that would theoretically mean more ride for his foreseeing so as always uh with uh pitching debuts my favorite thing to do in the world is look at their pitch fx data the next day as much as it is to watch like i will admit this i don't care what it says about me well and the gifts the gifts are up there too when you get to digest some of those i mean even even if it goes wrong he's gonna going to throw a few nasty pitches, I would think, in that first outing.

Yes, he will. He's that kind of guy. He's very pitching ninja friendly already, right out of the box. The Reds called up Tyler Stevenson, and he actually homered in his big league debut. I thought he was kind of interesting in deeper leagues. I didn't think in a full 162

he was necessarily going to get more than a late season call-up unless there were a lot of injuries behind the plate. They lean pretty heavily on Tucker Barnhart and Kurt Casali. And I think with Stevenson, you know, we saw him handle AA capably last year, a 130 WRC+. He just hadn't played at AAA yet. Catchers especially take a little bit longer, especially as a guy who was drafted out of high school. Now that he's up though, I'm intrigued, at least in two catcher leagues. I mean, again, he handles the bat well enough. I just worry that the playing time is still going to be a little bit sporadic, probably even playing less than someone like Victor Caratini, who gets a decent

amount of DH run for the Cubs. So if you're looking for that second catcher who maybe doesn't hurt you with the bat, I think Stevenson in deeper leagues could actually provide that. Dude, he has a 50% barrel rate. No, I like how patient he was. Pretty amazing to get in there and walk with the game on the line, too. I mean, I guess maybe not that hard to walk against Craig Grimble right now, but still big, big position, big time, big time cojones to wait that one out and not be all aggressive and try to

win the game yourself. So I like what I saw. I like the fact that they, they played him. It wasn't just some sort of pull this guy up and let him get a taste or whatever. So I think he's a pickup. I think he's a pickup in most leagues. I think that he can outplay the starter. And it's exciting that he's in the big leagues.

And if you need some help at catching, I think he's someone to pick up. Yeah, I like him as a hitter at the present time quite a bit more than William Contreras. We mentioned in passing a little earlier with the two primary Braves catchers unavailable right now. Contreras and Alex Jackson are both up. Alex Jackson hit a ton of home runs at AAA last year. He struck out a lot and didn't walk that much, so the approach probably doesn't work against big league pitching. But William Contreras is one of those guys,

and keeper in dynasty leagues might actually be out there if you can pick him up now that he's up and stash him away for the future. I think that's probably the optimal way to go about it right now. I think in shorter-term situations, he's probably limited mostly to NL only type usage. The bat's not nearly as far along yet as Tyler Stevenson's by comparison. We saw a 106 WRC plus last year at high A, a 90 WRC plus with the promotion to double A, almost split the season evenly between those two levels. So the power is still developing.

The patience is still a little bit of a work in progress for him but eventually a guy who i think is going to be the starter in atlanta so there is a little bit of long-term appeal there yeah i just don't know um how to adjust like even with stevenson like you know tucker barnhart went on the paternity list so it could still just be like a three-day thing you know and with wilson contraris like um you know darnell was put on the on the covid i guess so that i guess they uh they okay they did the catchers did get it or or do we don't know that they actually have it they're just in the protocol they're in the protocol yeah that that's all we do know that you see the thing is i had that tracker going and everything started to happen and i couldn't keep up with it and frankly i may have to take a day and go through and update it and see what the true numbers really are right now

yeah because they keep pointing out this like 0.1 percent but and and we haven't we used to get these we've gotten a bunch of reports on how many people have tested positive, and we haven't gotten one since the whole Marlins thing went down. As far as I say, they were already admitting to about 80 people since the testing program began. I'd have to say that I think we're getting past 100 players. 100 players, depending on how you count it, if you just counted the active rosters, you're talking about, you know,

what is it, 30 times 30? 900? So we're talking about over 10%? Anyway. I don't think that's an unreasonable estimate at this point. Contrary to 22, we got got the age we looked him up there he is 22 uh i would normally say don't worry about it it'll just be a few days but if arduino and flowers are out for that long then contraris is gonna play and two weeks from now who knows what's

going on so you might as well make a fairly deep play at them. Deep leagues only, I think, for Contreras. Keeper formats, definitely. Stevenson, the better of the two if you're looking for that help right now. Interest rates have hit record lows, which means it's a great time to refinance your student loans and see if you can lower your monthly payment. If you've been making the same monthly payment on your student loans for the last couple years, odds are you could reduce your payment and save by refinancing with earnest.

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slash rates and barrels. Not available in all states. Be sure to visit Earnest.com slash rates and barrels for more details. Terms and conditions apply. Earnest student loan refinance loans are made by Earnest Operations, LLC, NMLS, number 1204917, California. Financing law license number 6054788303, 2nd Street, Suite 401, North San Francisco, California, 94107. Visit earnest.com slash licenses if you want to see a full list of licensed states. All right, last thing we want to talk about on this episode, Eno, you mentioned going into the weekend, you were looking for unusual things with the StatCast data and knowing with some of the changes involving Hawkeye and some of the way those things are built, those were going to be inevitable. Did we see any weird things that definitely were the result of glitches?

Any seven-foot home runs or thousand-foot home runs or 130-mile-an-hour fastballs that we should know about? No. And I've been checking around with the different analysts that I quoted for my first piece, and most of them are happy. The one thing that they are worried about is real-time cleanups. Sometimes the real-time, like when Scherzer was debuting, they kept calling his fastball cutter,

and so he was throwing 97-mile-an-hour cutters. That kind of stood out a little bit but real time has always been an issue real time is always difficult real time um you have to uh just have to it's better if you have a long knowledge of the player and the system and obviously we don't have a long knowledge of the system so i don't blame them too much for that real time is always the most difficult thing in terms of big mistakes i didn't see any and in terms of what the analysts are saying they say spin is is iffy but movement and velocity and exit velocity all look pretty good. So, um, that's the good news. I think we can believe, uh, most of the stats we're seeing. Uh, there's just this question of will, did they cheap out on the centerfield camera and will we

get, um, observe spin axis the way we'd like. All right. So maybe a little bit better than expected, right? I mean, there were some concerns that things might be ugly to begin the season with the data. Yeah, I thought it would be worse. In fact, given the situation, this is about as best as we could hope for because there's always an issue when you try to hand off from one system to another.

And all the other systems had more trouble. I mean, we were losing ground balls and fly balls with TrackMan, and we barely knew what a two-seamer was when PitchFX first came in. Yeah, the in-game tracking has always been kind of frustrating, thinking about some of the things I saw this week and that didn't seem quite right. There were some players that the announcers were saying had new pitches, and you're kind of looking at it like,

that looks like what we used to see, just has a different classification on it. So let's not make it seem as though everybody's throwing a new pitch if we can help it. Oh, and here it looks like maybe we start at the beginning of the show talking about how the Nationals were voting against going to miami uh and it looks like now uh craig mish who has reliable sources within the marlins and has shown that to be the case in the past uh is reporting that the marlins season is on hold and it even looks like the philliesies will be sort of quarantined. They're not going to play the Yankees, it looks like. And I actually find this a little bit hopeful.

I think that this is the way to go. I think the Marlins should be paused for at least four or five days. And in fact, the Phillies were right there. So I think they should be paused for the least four or five days. And in fact, the Phillies were right there. So I think they should be paused for the gestation period, the four or five days to make sure that they aren't holding on to five, 10 people that can then go spread it. So I think this is the right thing to do. In terms of fantasy, fantasy really difficult i have like a pablo lopez share in one league it's a keeper league but i'm running out of space on my roster and i'm just like when is he going to pitch again uh is he one of the people that has you know on top of this like we

don't even know they haven't even announced who on the marlins has it right but still uh players kind of trickling in yes Yes, Miguel Rojas was announced while we were recording, for sure. Right. And with Craig, he does a show about the Marlins, a podcast called Swings and Mishes, if you're interested in checking that out. Does a really good job getting a lot of good news from that team. And this, of course, is not actually good news. It's very bad news. But I think, as you said, this actually seems somewhat hopeful because I think for the first time, the advice of medical professionals might be applied here. This is what people who specialize in epidemiology would suggest, isolating the team, shutting them down. I think that's what Dr. Zachary Binney, who was on the Starkville podcast, and he was quoted in Jason Stark's article. This is in line with what he suggested.

I think you are also right to point out that this could happen with the Phillies too. One thing I just saw scroll by on Twitter is that they may have the Yankees and Orioles go to Baltimore and play since they were going to play, you know, the Phillies and Marlins respectively. That way you get some games in, maybe make up games later, at least give yourself the possibility of pulling that off. So everything's kind of being determined on the fly, given the unique nature of the situation.

As Britt said, building the plane as we fly it. But I don't want to, I just want, I want to express a little bit of sympathy for the side because we knew that something like this was going to happen and some of this stuff can't be written in ink before the season because you don't exactly know the shape of it.

You don't know exactly what you have to do to react to it. So, yeah, is it weird that the Yankees will go play the Orioles? Maybe, but they're the two teams that hadn't yet been visited uh by the teams that are in quarantine so play each other you know like get some games in because it may be difficult to get all the games in this year and I really hope you guys are mostly in daily transaction leagues boy I really regret for leagues that I'm in that I'm not the commissioner of and even the ones I commission,

not pushing to make that change. It seems very obvious only five days into the season that having more flexibility is necessary. I mean, obviously, what to do with Marlins and fantasy baseball is, in the grand scheme of things, not really important at all, but it's part of what we do. I think if i'm

the commissioner of a league i'm probably allowing people to make changes like i'll use the commission tools or something for this lineup period to swap players out and this is unprecedented right we've never seen anything like this before yeah but what about soto where like you kind of knew going in that it's gonna be an issue this week but if you played him and now you're like well hey i want him off you know i don't know it the daily lineup thing just puts a lot of that out i think i wish in that it's going to be an issue this week, but if you played him and now you're like, well, hey, I want him off. I don't know. The daily lineup thing just puts a lot of that out. I think I wish that I had contacted Justin Mason and yelled loudly for TGFBI to go to daily because I only have about two leagues

now that are weekly. I mean, look, I don't think it's too late to even just make that change for the rest of the season. You could implement that either next Monday or Friday or tomorrow or whatever. Maybe. On some sites, you can anyway. But even if people are saying, well, you're moving the goalposts, we're adjusting the plan.

We're doing the same thing that baseball is doing, just trying to figure out how to make this work for everybody. What if the next breakout? I would say to that person, what if the next breakout has all your stars in it? Yeah. Again, we expect more things like this, hopefully more contained, of course,

and less severe than what we're seeing with the Marlins. But that is the update that we got just before signing off for this episode. If you're enjoying this show on a platform that allows you to rate and review this podcast, take a moment to give us a rating and review. We really appreciate that. It helps new listeners find our show. If you don't have a subscription to The Athletic, you can get 40% off at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels.

That'll get you Eno's articles, all of the baseball coverage on the site both league-wide and team by team all the fantasy coverage as well gets you coverage to all the other sports that we cover here at the athletic too and as always you can reach us via email rates and barrels at the athletic.com if you want to reach us that way you can find eno on twitter at eno saris i am at derrick van riper that is going to wrap things up for this episode of rates and barrels we are back with you Thursday. Thanks for listening.