Rates & Barrels - Ben Clemens of FanGraphs Joins us Live from Barebottle Brewing

Episode Date: March 29, 2025

Eno, Trevor, and DVR are live for Day 2 from Barebottle Brewing in San Francisco. Ben Clemens of FanGraphs joins them for this show. They break down some of the box score fun things they saw from Opening Day, standout pitching performances from the opener, what they are looking forward to this season, and awards predictions for the upcoming season. Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.social Follow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.social Follow Trevor on Bluesky: @iamtrevormay.bsky.social E-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris With: Trevor May Producer: Brian Smith Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey I'm Robert Vinlow and I'm from New York Times Games and I'm here talking to people about Wordle and the Wordle Archive. Do you all play Wordle? I play it every day. Alright I have something exciting to show you. It's the Wordle Archive. What? Okay that's awesome. So now you can play every Wordle that has ever existed. There's like a thousand puzzles. Wordle Archive. Oh cool. Now you can do yesterday's Wordle if you missed it. Yeah. New York Times game subscribers can now access the entire Wirtle archive. Find out more at nytimes.com slash games. Welcome to Rates and Barrels.

It is Friday, March 28th, our second live show here at Bear Bottle Brewing Company. Thanks to all of you for joining us live. Yeah, thanks for coming. Thank you Lester Koga and the great team here at Bear Bottle taking great care of us this week. Be sure to try some Kayakers Cove if you haven't done so already. It is delicious. It smells really good. It is delicious.

Smells really good. Smells amazing. You know, just trying to sniff every glass that comes out. Want to put my face in it. A lot of ground to cover today though. Fun first day of the stateside version of the Major League opening day. The real opening day as we like to call it here. And it's just great to have box scores.

Lots of box scores to peel through, right? There's something very relaxing about digging through that. And we're gonna talk about some pitches we noticed, all sorts of good stuff here. We've got a guest, Ben Clemens of Fangrafts is here today. So we're gonna pick Ben's brain a little bit, talk about some things that he's thinking about for the upcoming season.

And we're gonna start today with some trivia. Tyler O'Neill homered again on opening day for a Rates and Barrels hat. How many opening days in a row has Tyler O'Neill homered on? Six. That's six. Very good. That's ridiculous. Six in a row. That's ridiculous.

And we talked a little bit about the Orioles yesterday because we're going to go in division by division and they had the Orioles offense is still good sort of opening day, putting up 12 on the Jays. Adely and Mullens, each homeward twice in that game. O'Neal got his. I still look at this Orioles team and I'm pumped to see what they can do. Like they're just, they're at full strength right now. That's the thing for me. The Grayson Rodriguez will be back soon. But I look at that team and I think they still have that 90 plus win ceiling they had a couple seasons ago. It's all still in place. But I want to focus more on the pitches that we saw, like the pitching performances that really jumped out.

You know, you were talking this morning, Hunter Green has more VELO now? How? Where? Where did it come from? Number one and stuff plus on the young season, which is not unfamiliar territory for Hunter Green. He is, as I say, almost like a five or six-in enclosure.

I mean, he's just got nasty, nasty stuff. He sat 99 yesterday on the fastball, but the pitch I noticed, 86 plus. He was sitting like 86 and a half on the curve ball. And I mean, that's a power curve ball. And everything from him is power, of course. But the magic number on breaking balls is around 85. So this is going to be a really intensely good pitch.

Of course, he didn't locate that amazingly. And that's still part of the picture, too. But I think if he has four amazing pitches and throws them to the middle of the zone, I don't if he has four amazing pitches and throws them to the middle of zone I don't know if that last year was definitely his ceiling you know like he could add more bulk to what he did last year he could add I think he could be more dominant than he was last year so he's definitely an ace that can handle pitching in the toughest second toughest park in baseball for pitchers.

I'm pretty excited about him. Is there a Cy Young award caliber season in Hunter Green? You think it's possible? Yeah, I think it's just more about getting into 170 innings, you know? Do you have a different opinion on Hunter Green? I mean, I don't think the Cy Young ceiling is likely because like he I don't know he Most these pitches he already had yeah, very good but I feel like it's more of a like very good all-star and The step that he needs to take forward is really hard and he can do it

But I don't feel that different from last year where it's like if he can figure out how to use these together He was already gonna be basically unhittable So I think I mean still true that that was that's a good's a good retort. Because when he added the splitter last year, you're like, oh, good. Another nasty pitch that, are you going to command that thing? You're going to steal strikes with the splitter? He's not going to necessarily have more touch on an 86 mile an hour curve.

I really want to see a lot of these 86 mile an hour curves. I didn't see that game yesterday. I'm so curious what that looks that sounds wrong. Yeah. I mean, the power curve that I remember, I think Craig Kimbrell is the main power curve. But Lance McCullers, before he really started throwing the sweeper and the slider,

was a power curve guy. He was like an 85-mile-an-hour power curve guy. And he was untouchable when he was on the mound. I think that Hunter Green just needs to throw it towards the middle. Yeah I agree with that. And just sort of let everything you know land in place around that. Yeah electric enough he can be in the zone and still beat a lot of opposing hitters. The thing I'm curious to see if the home run rate stays down. It dipped a lot last year. Was that a

true talent level sort of improvement where the stuff got better or was it just a good year by luck, right? Cause that could be a big part of how those ratios got so low last year for Hunter Green. Let's talk about Paul Skeens for a moment, Trevor. Did Paul Skeens get nasty here too, based on what you saw on opening day? It's frustrating, but in a good way, yes.

So he, you know, I had thought he not scra scrapped his change-up because he throws a splinker and his change-up and a sinker and a cutter and a foresane now. And it's funny, when he come out of college, a lot of people were talking about his slider, his sweeper, and it's probably his worst pitch, or the pitch he throws the least in the least situations. But he threw a change-up yesterday at like 17 inches of arm side run and five inches of vert and then he threw a splinker at negative five inches of vert at 96 so which is a curveball so I don't I don't understand it's to the point where he's literally just wants to

design a pitch and does it. I mean that that change up sounds like a reverse sweeper. That's what it looked like, and that's what it swung at, too. And the guy throws 99. So it's. Is that like a record for the most the pitch has dropped during that speed? It's got to be. It must be, right?

Oh, we got to compare it to John Duran has thrown the hardest off-speed pitch. I think he threw a 100 mile an hour... I feel like he gets a little ride on it there. His does not drop near as much. I don't know how he throws it so hard. And one thing that we did, there is this study from Drive Line that I go back to a lot because it was with the motor sleeve

and they looked at stress on the elbow. And of course, the top line takeaway was more V-Low looked at stress on the elbow and of course the top line takeaway was more VLO equals more stress on the elbow. And so Driveline was like, you know, this is why people can go to places like Driveline, add VLO and then get hurt, is because the VLO is the stress, you know, it's not these other training tactics.

But there was a secondary takeaway that I kind of focus on a lot, which was that if you would just four miles per hour, there is actually more stress on the elbow with breaking balls. Yeah. So if you theoretically threw a hundred mile an hour slider, then that would be more stress on the elbow. That's less theoretical these days. Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah. And you're like, who throws the hardest slider? It's Jake Dick Robb.

Hmm. So you're like, oh, a 96-mile-arce blinker, awesome, but not awesome that he's kind of flexing his arm and looking uncomfortable on the mound. Yeah, a little bit. Sometimes. With Skeens, it seems like there's a change in the approach a little bit too, right? He's trying to be more efficient, trying to widen up that arsenal. Yeah, he's, well just listening to him speak in spring because everyone was raving about him adding two more fastballs and he was very clear, for a guy being 22 and saying this stuff is incredible, but he was very clear on I want to throw, I need to throw as many innings as I can, I need to get my inning total up as fast as I can.

And the way to do that is not try to strike everybody out. I could very easily go down that path and just be worried about that, but it'll be a five and dive guy. And you don't want to, aces don't throw five innings. They throw, he needs to get guys out earlier. If you're gonna hit the ball, you're gonna hit it early in the at bat.

And if you're not gonna hit the ball, then I'm gonna strike you out in a few pitches and not throw nine. As a guy who was okay throwing 12 pitches to every guy as long as I struck him out, like that the I never learned that so for him to know that. You were going in an inning. Yeah even when I was a starter I didn't learn that either. That's probably why I ended up doing one inning. So it's it's he's doing that on purpose he knows exactly what he needs to do for the to be to be the guy that he's supposed to be.

It's really interesting. He threw more splitters, blinkers, whatever you want to call it, than ever before yesterday. And did that to be efficient? I think he's very in touch with what he can do because of what hitters will be swinging at. Because you wouldn't normally say, this guy wants to get more efficient, so he's gonna throw his off-speed like way more Yeah, but it like it works for him because he knows got like you don't go into the box against Paul Skeen's I think I'll just take for a while. Yeah, so aggressive I mean there but there is something weird there are certain pitches that get more swings than you expect Kodai Senga's splitter Yeah, you know it's in the zone like 35% of the time never in the zone. You're just like don't swing And everybody's like I got this one like 35% of the time. Never in the zone. You're just like, don't swing. And everybody's like, I got this one.

Yeah, he's had a couple outings where no one swung at it. It wasn't good. Some of that is just that if you throw a splitter 96 miles an hour, they're deciding pretty early. Yeah. Yeah, and it looks like the basketball. I think one of the biggest things is that first piece of information is like that first like five milliseconds

Out of the hand or whatever over there like oh, it's here or it's here, you know, and like, okay It's kind of funny our thoughts like how people throw like their 90 mile an hour cutter with their 93 mile an hour fastball And like get some soft contact off that he's doing it just with the Unreal pitch. Yeah, this fastballs unreal you bring something off that unless you have that stuff? If you took four miles an hour off of him, or five miles an hour off of him, he would be a pitch to contact guy. I think so, yeah. He wouldn't have these 30% strikeout rates.

Because he's kind of like this, he's like a sideways guy. And his fore seam would be a lot less effective with less V-load. And that is one thing he knows, though. I think he knows that if this drops if this drops to 95, 96, it's way more hitable than it is at 99. Because the only picks that is an elite movement profile is his first basketball. It's kind of dead zone a little bit at times. But I was interested in a similar pitcher that did drop a bunch of V-Load, Clay Holmes. We knew he would. You know, he's leaving, we're leaving behind.

So he went from 96.6 on the sinker to 94.2. And I think that's in the realm of possibility. Some people lose less, some people lose more. And he was really effective. You were showing me the first two pitches of the game. And it was really banana peel where the first pitch was just this amazing sweeper that like started middle and had like 17 inches 21 21 inches of

sleep which is kind of amazing and then he had a like a 10 plus inches of 17 17 all right so now you got wild you talk about 38 inches of banana peel where it's just like wang. The swings were not good. The swings were not good. Do you think they're going to limit his times to the order? Because I watched that game and he looked good. And he also looked like he was like, I have to face this guy again? And the box score wasn't amazing.

It was like four walks and four strikeouts and two runs and four innings or something. But there's also this other thing that I wanted to talk about which is that so you might see on Fang Graf's that he has a 93, 93 or 96 stuff plus below average stuff plus and yet we're talking about amazing movement on these pitches. Well I discovered today that the stuff plus in Fang Grabs does not have Arm Angle in it because Tom Tango runs Arm Angle weekly on Sundays and This is because he wasn't sure that there would be a demand for skeletal statistics on a daily basis Because I've been pestering him. He's like, okay, I'm thinking about doing it on a daily basis That would be very good for us

We don't really want to wait a week to find out if these are good numbers or not. And so right now we're dealing with a philosophical choice which Ben you might be interested in, which is this like, do we return a null value? We have three choices here. One is we don't give you a stuff plus until we have arm angle. Just so you know that the number you get is the full model. The second choice is return a number without arm angle in it, because the models can be like, well, I don't have this information. I'm just going to keep going, you know?

And then the third one is we have a mini model that we can stick in there that can come up with a guess's arm angle. And it has a 0.86 r squared, so it's pretty good. Pretty good guess. And we can stick that in there, and we can guess arm angle until we get it. The problem is, let's say we got a Clayholm Stealth Plus number with a guessed arm angle, and he's got a pretty extreme arm angle to be throwing these

banana peel things like this from up here is very weird. He's very arm angle dependent. As soon as arm angle's in there,, Stuff Plus is gonna go up. In the meantime, if we're guessing Arm Angle, we have to sort of tell you that this is sort of a guest number. Is it in italics? You know, like, do we just make an announcement that until Sunday night, like, every Stuff Plus is a guest? I'm hoping the problem goes away soon and he just starts running it nightly. But we're stuck at a sort of philosophical point here. I think we know what the solution is.

And that might be just do it every night. Yeah. Just keep texting him until he does it. And then we'll take care of it. He actually realizes it's on you now, because you're not sending him enough texts. Oh, yeah. I'll do more texting.

But it does call into question what you do with imperfect models and imperfect data coming in. Yeah, I mean, I think, generally, I think more stuff's better than less stuff. So I don't dislike having more data before it's fully available. But yeah, it is kind of awkward because it's not like there's a long disclaimer about what these numbers mean.

It's like, here's some numbers. Have fun. And what if somebody looks on Saturday night and is like, oh, Clay Holmes had a 96 stuff plus and looks on Monday and is like, why is it 105 now? Trust me, enough stuff moves around like that. If they were like, these numbers are moving, they would have called me so many times already. That's the secret. Some more observations, pitches we noticed, box score related things yesterday. We talked about Mackenzie Gore looking great.

His stuff is different. More Velo and increased movement on the slider, right? So is this a breakout happening? Are these the adjustments Gore needed to make to get to that next level? Is that what you needed to see in the underlying numbers once you get a closer look at the Velo and the movement? I mean, he's been a little bit of a fastball guy looking for that secondary stuff.

But there are similarities to him and Kershaw when it comes to slot and fastball. And there could be a moment where he's just like, oh, I figured out Kershaw's slider. And this is closer to Kershaw's slider. It's a harder, less movie slider. It's way figured out Kershaw's slider. And this is closer to Kershaw's slider. It's a harder, less movie slider. It's way closer to Kershaw's slider. And if it ever clicks that way, we'll wonder why it took so

long, but the answer is Command, because Kershaw is like one of the preeminent guys in Command, and Gors is much more scattershot. No, you're the world's going, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was what really held him back, right, when he he came up is that it just took a long time for him to match the Like how incredible his stuff was with like the with getting it to where he wanted. I Feel like it's just gonna be I watched that game if he was amazing like if he could if he threw her team

I'm strikeouts no walks against the Phillies. I mean, it's not like you know against the Rockies or something It's like exactly Kershaw pitch mix too, right? Yeah, right. Fastball slider and then the occasional curveball to like change things. And like the shapes all look pretty similar. I'm with you. Like, it gives you that vibe.

Yeah. I mean, like you said, not the same command because Kershaw feels like he's the gromask. He's like, he knows where the ball's going. Yeah. And Gore, when it goes where you're expecting, you're like, that's unhittable. There you go.

And also not stats related, maybe the best strut after strut, he just took his glove off every time. And I was like, I love this. I love this so. Adjusted his pants, took his glove off every single strike out. You're saying I don't need my glove. You don't even need this.

No one needs gloves right now. This is not like, I can't't prove this but the guys who look more confident after they throw it I feel like just perform better. Vessia. I was talking earlier one of my biggest misses of all time was Alan Webster and I thought he had great stuff and I was like this Diamondbacks group and it was Alan Webster and the guy who ended up being a like a relief they all ended up being relievers there's like three guys who came up oh and the guy anyway I don't remember the names but Alan Webster is one I remember and he would stand on the mound just like

you know standing very awkwardly for people who are older slumped and like bad posture I had some coach tell me that face everybody behind him is just like we're gonna lose this game Like look at him They clocked here in the headlights quick Yeah, so how does Pete Fairbanks do it Ben you were talking before we started recording that Pete Fairbanks always looks uncomfortable. I feel like he's the exception that proves the rule. I don't... I think it's just something about his face looks uncomfortable, though he is not. Because I don't think he's that uncomfortable.

Just a resting, uncomfortable face. Yeah, exactly. Like, I just think... like he's obviously pretty comfortable with the pressure. He would have crumbled by now, right? He pitches a lot of high leverage innings. Maybe he's just in pain all the think, like he's obviously pretty comfortable with the pressure. He would have crumbled by now, right? He's been in a lot of high leverage innings. Maybe he's just in pain all the time, like physically. That would actually fit his history. That is 100% true.

There is always pain. For sure. He's like, everything still hurts, damn it. I still think he's got one of my all time favorite injuries. Dunking in the pool over his three year old. Went on the IL. I mean, that is just... How long till this happens to Trevor? Three years.

About two years? Two years. And I will be dunking on him. Eno pulled a great trivia question. Mackenzie Gore's 13 Ks yesterday got me thinking about this anyway. And we'll do another hat giveaway here if anyone has the right answer. Who is the only pitcher to have a 15-strikeout game on opening day? This is a deep cut. No one's gonna get it. I don't think anyone's gonna get this. It happened in 1960. I'll even tell you the teams. Oh.

No, that's a good guess. The team was, he did it for the Washington Senators against the Boston Red Sox. Yeah 1960 He had a he led the the league in strikeouts that year and he had an 8.5 K 9 No still down I mean I thought that was gonna be a stumper for sure Camilo Pascual Yeah, yeah 1960 we'll have better easier I mean we've really done the gamut there from Tyler O'Neil six Yeah, 1960. We'll have better, easier trivia questions throughout the rest of the show. We've really done the gamut there from Tyler O'Neill's 6th.

We'll aim for the middle. Every website for a whole day. We'll aim for the middle. We'll aim for the middle. We confirm Jason Stark is better at making trivia questions than we are. We didn't really need to run the test, but we made sure anyway. One other box score observation, Aroldis Chapman pitched the eighth yesterday but it was a tie game and it was Justin Slayton getting the save so I think as I try to analyze what the Red Sox are

likely to do I'm still looking at Aroldis Chapman as the closer given the circumstances right even though Slayton got the opening day save. Yeah, I mean, we can depend on managers lying. They lie all the time. But there is this weird, I guess what you would want a guy to do is the reverse of the Buck Showwalter, you know, not using, who was it? It was Zach Britton in the playoff game where they were like tied. The wild card game. The wild card game. Someone else blew the game. You're like why didn't you use Zach Britton? So in this game it was tied and you use your best reliever to sustain the game and then you use the second best reliever if you

get ahead and I think that's what happened. In that game is sort of pitch to notice. I think it rolled his Chapman, broke a hundred again and he's gonna do this until he's 45 or something Like what is it when he's gonna stop doing it? I think he's just the walk rates gonna go up every year in some point just matches For the 30% of both the torque he generates in his delivery is that does anyone generate more torque? No, he's the strongest man in the league still. Yeah Yeah, I don't know if you guys have seen him warm up, but he has this heavy ball that

he warms up with the catcher. It's black, I don't know if it's wrapped in tape or something. Dude, it's like a pound. But he makes the catcher catch it, and it's the funniest thing ever. You can just tell their life is flash, they're actually throwing a five pound ball at him, they're just catching with bow hands, throwing back, And he does it like five times, and then he starts throwing a baseball. And we're just, it's like a shot put.

Yeah. Like the original weighted balls were thrown in the Dominican were just made. They would just tape a bunch of crap together and make it heavier and throw it at it. Yeah, you got some heavy stuff, and then just make a ball. You can really tell that his velocity is not really going

to go down that much. He's just going to take longer to throw it. Like As you watch people steal on him over the years, it's like the delivery is just getting longer and longer and longer to generate it. And if there is something to that, it's the hip-shoulder separation. So he's reaching further and further back. He's getting it. And I don't know, he's always been easy to steal on. It's not that much of a cost for him. Which is why he's an awkward, like, we we're not gonna give you a three-year deal and make you the closer

for three years like it's not gonna work like that he's gonna get a bunch of one-year deals but another thing that I think about when I watch Chapman is when I was writing about could someone throw 110 or 115 the guys who were obsessed with conservation of energy and the physics of like how pitchers pitch and move energy up the kinetic chain to their arm said you know you got to be a big guy and I hadn't seen you in a while and you do have quads of steel yeah yeah yeah I'm a big person yeah and and so they talk about that like blocking leg yeah and they say that's one of the one of the leading indicators for how

much V-Log you can create is how much force you can put into the ground. And one of the answers was like, we will cross the sort of 106-107 barrier when a guy like Giannis is throwing. Because Chapman is 6'4, 6'5, 240 or something. So we need like a 6'10, 300 hundred pound or oldest Chapman to get to 110 so will a guy like that ever pick up a baseball? Yes, yes, eventually. Eventually there will be more people that are just that big. In America he's playing basketball or he's the lineman. Luke Jackson had a blown save we've been wondering what the Rangers are gonna do with their late inning approach. Three consecutive sliders wondering what the Rangers are gonna do with their late inning approach

Three consecutive sliders really were the problem What do you like about the Rangers bullpen if anything and who actually leads this team and saves like is there anyone you think? That's gonna take that job and run with it Ben man really put me on the spot Tackled this one before we've come up by naming another guy that's not Luke Jackson in the brain you can do's not Luke Jackson. Sign him from Boston. Man, I'm like completely blanking around now. Is Chris Martin really a closer? Chris Martin. Could Chris Martin be a good closer at this point in his career? Like matchup dependent? Yeah, so it'd be a committee probably if they do that.

That doesn't sound terrible, but I mean that seems like not great But with shape fatigue, you know One thing that can happen is if you throw your slider 60% of the time you go through the league a couple times More and more guys have just seen Luke Jackson slider Yeah And like and they might even in the at-bat be like I've seen it and now he just threw it to me two times in A row so I've seen it today Yeah, and I'm putting together the mental Rolodex and what happened today and this one I'm just gonna sit it

I was talking yesterday about Wilmer Flores and he just sits fastball or slider And I think that happens more in baseball than people want to admit and I'm sure the person I don't I forget even who hit The walk-off on him, but I'm sure that person was sitting slider Ian Gabow, I think yeah. Yeah Yeah Ian Gabow is with the Reds. Yeah that's who the Giants are playing. Oh yeah that's what Wilmer Flores hit on. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Freddy Peralta last in the pitches we noticed group more right on right change-ups that was nice to see yesterday. Throwing them early in that game too. I just think to see a guy like that continue to evolve

gives me hope that even as the V-Lo continues to wane, like he's one of those guys that kind of reaches back for a little bit more when he needs it, but he's getting closer to that, living in that average velocity range. Those secondaries become increasingly important, but are we gonna continue to see more right on right changeups in general? Is this something that's kind of coming back?

I hope so. I love that. Well we saw the year the splitter last year. Everyone learned a splitter or some version of a change-up. They could throw seam-shifted and now we have kick changes so more guys are gonna throw change-ups as well so you're just gonna see especially we know we're talking about starters but relievers are gonna have some version of a change-up as well. We will see more of them I think right on right that's the like one Area that's left that we haven't seen a ton of that will get adjusted to eventually because it is if you're if you know What change is coming right on right? That's not a great. That's not a great thing a long term

So if it becomes your number one pitch right on right that that'll probably never happen But I think we will see more. I remember when we were breaking down how to face Mookie Betts last year and I came with all my blue zones and I'm like, oh, you got to do this and this and this and this. And you're like, put away your information. Just throw a change up. Just throw a right on right change up. He never sees those. And he hammer sliders. And I don't know why we're doing this. Don't throw him any more sliders. And I think that the Yankees have really leaned in on this. They've got a bullpen full of guys who are going to throw

right on right changeups. Luke Weaver, Devin Williams, Mark Leiter Jr. And the twins have long led the league. You've come from twin stock. And they've long led the league in right on right changeups. There are analysts out there who are screaming, stop doing this. The pl, you know, the platoon splits say you shouldn't do this, but there are certain types. I mean, you sort of hinted at this.

There are certain types of splitters, I'm saying splitters, but like there's certain types of changeups that lead to better right on right, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. This actually reminds me of a conversation I had with Josh Kauf with the twins, and because he was telling me about, this was in like

2019 so we were like, fastballs up and your slider, depth slider is better now, throw that. So what about change ups? Because I threw a straight change at that time. And he goes, I got to be honest with you, we're not there yet on determining value and change ups because it's not a movement pitch. We can't figure out depth in a statistical model. But now everyone is throwing movement change ups.

So now it's becoming... That's. Now the VLO difference is not even a thing anymore. Jason Adam was a guy that I always watched back. He's throwing a 95 and he's throwing a 91 mile an hour changeup and guys are swinging at it like it's 80. Because it was movement related. It was seam shifted. He didn't even know what that was at that time but that's what he was doing and then people have kind of built off that. So yeah, we're seeing, and they're designing them now. Now people are designing splitters, they're designing the kick change and the seam shifter, and this has all happened in the last two years.

So three different change-ups. You can throw one of them, probably, if you're a pitcher. Do you guys think this is a little bit like how you shouldn't throw sweepers right on left, but good pitchers should? Because they can command it. You shouldn't throw it right on right left, but good pitchers should, because they can command it. So you shouldn't throw it right on right, but if you command it. Oh, Luis Severino threw a backdoor sweeper

that just came in. It's a rowdy. Ah! It just came out the mouth screaming. I'm telling you this, pitches are good if you can move the ball around well. Even though you look at the models and they're like, don't do this, it's bad.

But the models are aggregate and they don't care about specific ability to put it where you want it. I feel like right and right changeups are like that. That's the big change that Hulk made last year. He just started throwing his sweeper and started arm side and just threw it to left and righties and just throw it over the plate.

Yeah, because he didn't throw more pitches. He just threw his pitches that he had. They literally moved him over and just like throw it farther that way. And he's like okay. Moving on the rubber I would like to have rubber position more explicitly than but you have to kind of guess it a lot with the release point. That's the next one they're gonna do. Here's one of my favorite pieces of all time everyone should read this piece Max Marchi who is a legend and now works behind the evil for a team and we can't we

don't get him anymore. But Max Marchi wrote a piece in 2010 called Platoon Splits 2.0 and he broke all the pitches into heater jumping fastball sinker cutter rider rising fastball like you know many many types and then he looked at platoon splits and Sinker and Slurve had the biggest regular platoon splits. The biggest negative platoon splits straight change. So you don't want to throw that right on right. You don't want to throw a straight change right on right. But the most platoon neutral pitch in baseball, the power change, the power change

and right around that are a tight curve. So I think that's kind of a gyro slider or like a power curve, like a little thing like this. And then rising fastball, which we kind of knew, rising, riding fastballs, force theme, riding force theme, that can kind of work. So those platoon neutral pitches have really taken off, I think even since this piece, where people are like,

oh, you need one of those three pitches. And Granky at some point was like, oh yeah, I know that. I barely have any pitches, but I have the power chain. Do we have a classification problem? Do we need more distinction between pitches? Is that part of where things get lost? I'll let Mike Petriello know that we need him to start classifying things more. He's groaning so hard.

You're going to bug Tango and you're going to bug Petriello. But what about a Fangraph? How cluttered would Fangraphs get if we started doing that? I mean, we probably should, but it's difficult to fit it under the page. The page is only so wide. And people throw out pitches. And no one wants to scroll right. I mean, we probably should, but it's difficult to fit it under the page. The page is only so wide. And, like, people throw a lot of pictures.

And no one wants to scroll right. We need bigger phones. We need wider phones. I mean, your phone is not remotely going to contain it all. You might need wider computers. I'm having trouble at home. Fourth screen. They gave me the giant MacBook, and this still probably isn't enough. We're 23 pitches to be on the screen at Vagraphs which is is disappointing.

Then we get a philosophical question for you. Ino was kicking this around earlier today. In terms of hitting development, you know, would you rather take the approach of a team like the Guardians or a team like the Yankees? Let's just throw in a piece of trivia real quick. Yeah. So here we go. For a hat, give me the hat. Where do the Cleveland Guardians rank in hard hit rate in the Staticast era?

So this is back to 2015. All years combined? I'll take one above or one below. One above or one below. Yeah, just casually one below Yeah, just casually over the last decade No, I mean give me It's not 20 huh? No It's only 3324 numbers out my force close though

No, no No The score is close though. No. Nope. Nope. Nope. I heard a 30. There we go, 27! 27th in hard hit rate for the entirety of the StatCast era. And that, that is the Cleveland Guardians.

28th through 30th? That was the other, that was gonna be, if anybody can get any of them, I mean, you wanna throw someone out, we can do another hat. I hope it's the Rockies somehow, in like the best offensive park in baseball, and just nobody who can hit the ball.

It wasn't the Rockies, but- That would be surprising. It was teams that you wouldn't be surprised by actually. Does anybody wanna throw a guess out there? I heard a Marlins. Yeah. Marlins? Who said Marlins? Marlins. Oh you already got one. Alright. Alright. One more team? Yeah. Anyone else want to try another one? Heard White Sox and Royals? Hold on let me get it real quick. Oh come on. You know I thought you had the answers. Oh I know. I know. I seem like I always have the answers.

Oh, he's literally manually putting the filters together. He's doing a search. He's going to call Tom Tango, tell him it's not working. It's happening right now. Here we go, here we go, here we go. He can't move him around. What was the next guess? White Sox? Nope, not White Sox.

Can someone guess Royals as well? Not Royals. Think, like, really White Sox. Someone guessed Royals as well. Not Royals. Think like really bad player development. I heard Tigers. Angels! Who said it? Angels! Right up front? I heard Angels from two people.

Did someone else say Angels too? Just to tell you the bottom, it's Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Giants, Angels, Marlins, and very last, the Cincinnati Reds. Man, wrong park for that. Yeah, so where do you land up? If you were gonna be the director of hitting or the player development director and you said, these are our key performance indicators,

you come from the consulting world. Yeah, yeah, close enough. Yeah. What would your key performance indicators be for your riding system? So the number one thing I feel like has to be, whether you want to do it as bat speed or exit velocity, like how hard you hit the ball. I have a reason for that too, as opposed to just picking randomly. And you wrote about it. I have, yeah, so this is very convenient. So if you look at the variation in a league,

in terms of everything, how good you are at swing decisions, how good you are walking, how good you are at striking out, every stat, but including exit velocity, the amount of times that people jump, a few standard deviations, is much lower in exit velocity. It's real, it's atomic, you can't fake it. Was chase rate close to that? Chase rate is one of the higher ones, but it's in terms of... and one of the harder ones to change. Yeah, okay. But it is

meaningfully behind exit velocity in terms of like how hard is this to change? Well, it's like you just can't fake it, right? There's lots of stuff where you could just be seeing the ball well for a week or anything like that. I mean how hard do you hit the ball? It's really hard. The Red Sox are making a bet that it is, you can transform that with weighted bats and... My guess is that as the league continues to get better at like training essentially, that it'll change. But then you'll be looking for the guys who can improve the most, right? You're looking for like sort of biomechanical markers. Yeah, like I am not this. I'm not good enough, like I don't know enough to figure out which guys could improve the most.

But teams employ a lot of PhDs to figure that out for them, you know? Like they're probably good enough at that. And what I would be doing is looking for guys who can hit the ball hard. Like that's got to be number one. So that's very Yankee-like. The Yankees I think were number one in 95th percentile maxity. And I mean they are the kings of like, let's just like do a linear regression

and figure out what traits are the best. Look at them teach their pitchers, right? And they have an ethos in the minor leagues and they're just like, this is what we do, do it. And it works. I think it has some downsides too, but if you're just looking for like a consistently high level of your minor leaguers, they're very good at that.

Like, they figure out something that works and they do the math and they're like, let's do this. They're very good at implementing ideas. Yeah. I've been always very impressed by their pitching development in just terms of like they teach guys V-Lo very well and they teach them to do it without like sacrificing their other stuff. Guardians too, similar. But like the Yankees are very smart about figuring out what they can teach guys and teaching it to them. Alright, what if I give you a second Kp? You really don't want to get to like three or four, you start losing people.

No, I want two. I want exactly two. And I think the second one is basically like good swings minus bad swings. So chase ratey. It's like chase rate, but you can't be LarsNootBar. As a Cardinals fan, I just sadly feel this a little too much. You can't be a not-swinger. If you are so worried about chase rate, if your team's giving you a report every afternoon and it's like you chased three pitches, that's awful, dude,

it's not going to work, right? Because you just won't swing. You've got to give them something for swinging at the good ones. And not to promote baseball prospectus, but they're like Seager thing, which doesn't really work real time. It's not very easy to update.

But you can do it on Van Graafs with zone minus chess. Yeah, yeah. Just any kind of like, how much you swing at good pitches minus how much you swing at bad pitches is the way to go. Because I also think that that is easier to teach and people respond well to games in that way. You know, the Orioles do this, right? The Orioles do this.

I mean, this is a classic thing that I would be doing as much as I could if I were for a game. They post like daily leaderboards. You come back to the clubhouse, everyone's like, I'm number one! Do you know how much, so I worked at a bank and a hedge fund for a while before this.

Oh, sorry. Do you know how much putting a leaderboard up where you could make fun of your friends if you were better than them changed people's outcomes? Like, so much. Those guys are also 23, and you're 23. And feeling better than them at something matters so much. You'll do whatever you can be better at. Does everyone rush to the leaderboard?

Oh my god, yeah. Then the chance, the like, the trash talking starts. Yeah, if you want to find a way to like teach people to do skills better, like measure the skill that you want like pretty well and post to leaderboard and like slap in the clubhouse. And I guarantee you that'll drive people. No one responds better to that that athletes also. They want to win at anything. Oh they just you hold things over each other like you're together all the time too. Yeah. I did like a vertical jump once for the Mets. No one had jumped in like three months and I was the first one to do it. I had the highest

one of the year and I was like wow and then Terrence Core came the next day and beat my record. Because he hadn't even done it. But he hadn't even done it. But he saw you and he wanted to beat you. And it was like six inches higher. Like it wasn't even close. He saw the board and I could jump higher than that. But the highest guy was like, exactly, yeah. But there was like nine total. But I loved it. I was like, you told me now I'm going to jump 16 times because I want to get my highest jump. I heard a story about Brian Wu. Do you know how Brian Wu got his his sinker? His his his pitching coach said I will buy you a 30 pack of Keystone light Not 24 that's not enough. I Only comes in a 30 pack

30 black of keystone light if you can get you could get a 13 side Like if you get a 13 sideways and he was like any rules Can I do any grip any pitch and he's like any rule any group any grip any pitch and who was like? I will do this and just like You gotta be realistic like don't do this with exit velocity because then the guys who can't hit the ball hard Just gonna feel like crap. Yeah We kept trying and I didn't improve But like something that is based on your decisions that you could maybe change by trying harder

It's perfect for this and that would be number like number two for me by a mile Like you draft the guys so you think can develop the EV better But you really want people to want to win and set the things to where what you think is good for their long-term development wins. Do you think there's a little flaw in the Guardians approach then with regards to their... Yeah, I wouldn't do the same thing as them. I don't mean that like it's a bad overall approach, they're really good at what they do, but I mean maybe they've thought about it and say like we'll never retain these guys anyway.

If they hit the ball too hard, they're gone. Yeah. I think a lot of it just goes back to Jose Ramirez. Like you hit on a Jose Ramirez as an organization, you think, let's pull more rabbits out of the hat like that. Right. I mean, the funny thing is, like when I'm looking for unheralded minor leaguers, they're always Jose Ramirez.

They're always some version of that. K minus BB and could add power. Like that skill. Mookie Rats was that. Yeah. That skill, I think think is still underrated, even when we can see it all. I think the Blue Jays are trying to do that too. I mean, Carson Sastoli loves that stuff. He'll tell you about it for hours and hours. He was a Mookie Betts guy.

He was big on Mookie. I had all the Mookie Betts shares. Beiber. Blackman. Who did the same thing on the pitching side. Yeah. I think it's like one of those things where you wouldn't want to live that way But hey if you have these guys like this is an important skill to not miss on like obviously you just prefer to have Otani, right? Yeah, like just like K-BB isn't great But he and also he does other weird things like his contact point is way deep and you you're kind of teaching people powers out In front but Otani can get like premium bat speed So quickly that he can wait a longer and like hit it I want the guys who break the rules who make the rules bad

But those are hard to get so like you make the rules for the rest of them I wouldn't show a tanya leaderboard. I just like We're trying to guess what the Guardians KPI has been for hitters for a long time It's strikeout rate. Yeah, K-Bb or strikeout rate. In the stack cast era, where do Guardian's hitters rank in strikeout rate? Just strikeout rate. Just strikeout rate, just for hitters.

Is one good or bad? Is one high or low? Low. Are we doing trivia? Yeah, it's a trivia for a hat. Where do the Guardians rank in the stat-cast there and strikeout right as a team? 7 5 3 4 No, no, no. Any other guesses? 11 15. Hey, who said one? Is it one? It's not one. It's not one. Two, who said two? There you go. Free hat, two. Only the Astros have struck out less.

All the Astros. But there's a big difference in WRC+. The Guardians have a 99 WRC+. The Astros hit it hard. And the Astros have a 112. You should just have Jordan Alvarez. That seems like a big miss by the Guardians. Yeah.

Well, it was a big miss by the Dodgers. Yeah, that's true. That's an all-time bad, bad miss. That seems like a big miss by the Guardians. Yeah. Well, it was a big miss by the Dodgers. Yeah, that's true. That's an all-time bad, bad miss. One other thing we were talking about, we wanted to ask you about this, Ben. Are there better ways to model Strength of Schedule?

Yeah, so you know I asked you. This came from your piece about, should we believe the Guard? Was it the Guardians, or was it? It was like the whole AL Central, honestly. And just throw the NL Central into because we want to annoy him he's a Brewers fan. As a longtime Cardinals fan I'm with you. Yeah, are you sick of the slander? Every year, every single year. They mostly keep proving it acceptable to keep the slander going. The Cardinals. So you know asked this question this morning and so I did a little looking into it. Not like a full amount, but I spent some time on it.

And so what I wondered was how much tougher is the toughest set of pitchers of batter face last year than the easiest? That's basically what we're wondering, right? What do you use as your true talent identification for the pictures? FIP or what? I just used Woba. I feel like in a big sample, most of the noise is going to come out. Since I'm doing all the pictures that everyone faced, I just picked something quick and dirty.

And I basically wondered, like, hey, if you happened to face the White Sox a million times last year, how much of that really helped you? Right, like how much should you have changed your opinion based on who these guys were going to face after you already knew how good they were? So I thought this was interesting. Otani faced one of the top five easiest slates of pitchers. I think that a lot, I mean a lot of Dodgers did. And so then I thought I'll come back to that later, but that's interesting. Who faced the easiest pitch or the toughest pitchers and That was essentially a bunch of white socks

And it was actually that was more mixed but a decent number white sucks at the bottom So I think there's a few factors here first Well, how did they how did those pictures get the world but maybe by facing the way so that so first the gap small get the Wobba maybe by facing the white socks. So first the gap's small. It's like 15 points of Wobba between the easiest and the toughest schedules if you face 500 guys, either as a pitcher or a hitter. I did both sides. The second thing is, yeah, do you know what one thing

that all the pitchers who Otani faced have in common? They had to face Shohei Otani. And here's, let me give you two conjectures. First, guys who face Otani more probably do worse overall Let's accept that yeah second how much of how much could Otani represent of your total workload? I mean for a picture who faced 500 guys I don't know six or seven percent would be like a ton, but your spread 15 percent is what is that? It could be a bunch of it

So that was my next question like how likely you think it is that the guys who did this are basically counting themselves twice? So I stripped that out. I said rerun everyone's Woba if they didn't face Otani, everyone who he faced. And that cuts the gap down to like 12 points. So it's like meaningful. But then you're also facing other Dodgers.

Yes. And so then you're also facing other Dodgers. Yes. And so then you're like, well, OK. In the top 10, there were six Dodgers. They're the easiest, like, worst pitchers they faced. And it's because they faced the Dodgers a lot. Did you cut the team out? This is really easy. So then I was like, cut the whole team out.

And then the gap shrinks even further. The point is like, even the first gap, before I did any controls, it was pretty small. It's like 5% of your OPS, like a little less. And then by the time you account for the fact that yes if you face Otani you faced Mookie and Freddie Freeman, then it's like, this is not that real. Like you can't actually put that much stock into which pictures you face. Now if you did it at 100 played appearances that's different because then you could face a bunch of bad guys. But I don't know about you guys, I'm not good enough to predict who's going to face the 100 bad pitchers of the guys who

don't play that often. Right? It just depends. Like, did you get your day off yesterday or last year when the White Sox were pitching Garrett Crochet? Great. Did you get your day off when they were pitching, I don't know, like their double A starter who is not even good double A, then like really bad for you. And so I think for the big sample guys, it's like small enough of an effect that I would not change my view of guys. It's just, it's a tiebreaker at best and it's really going to be divisional. Like, so much of it is, do you get to face like a ton of Rockies pitchers? Do you get to face a ton of White Sox pitchers? And honestly when you looked at it from the other side, like which

pitchers had the easiest slates? I mean they were all in the AL Central and a lot of that is just that like the Tigers didn't hit that well last year and the White Sox hit poorly. But it wasn't big, like these effects are much smaller than you think. I thought it would matter a ton. You asked me this question this morning and I was like this is great, like I'm gonna have something fun to talk about. me this question this morning, and I was like, this is great. I'm gonna have something fun to talk about. And then I did the math, and I was like. I think this is actually, my intuition was in this direction because from a different reason,

which is that if you are, let's say we're talking about, we wanna know the true talent of this batter, right? That has X amount of noise. We know this, we know that we think it's this, but it could be this, and it could be this, right? So then you're saying, like, now I want to say the strength of schedule, which is teams, where there's noise around teams,

or just players, which is noise around players. You start multiplying noise. You know, where you're just like, don't know, you don't know the true talent of all these people. That's why I asked you, what did you use to do their talent? It's like, woe but oh god, you know? Yeah, I mean, that's like one of the big problems with this is doing it at the big aggregate level is always like, okay, because I don't know, like, if you look at the broad population

of baseball, like, ERA is a great stat because the good pitchers have good ERAs on the whole and the bad pitchers have bad ERAs. Now, like, if you go down to one guy, you can be like, well, he got unlucky this year. He got lucky this year. But if you look at 100 of them, like, the 100 pictures with the NRA below 3 on average, they're good. But I still think there's, like, a sort of multiplication of noise effect. I talk about this with player development. Like, one of the hardest things about player development

is you have to know the true talent of the player before you did the stuff. And then they're like, and then we did weighted bats and all this stuff, and then you have to do the true talent of the player after. And it's like, noise here, noise here, noise here. I mean, one of the biggest problems is that you can do all these things in the aggregate, right?

Statistics in the aggregate are not hard. Like, now you can just ask an AIO model. They'll do it for you. Like, you don't have to be good at it at all. I've never been good at it, and it's still super easy. Why, hey, hey, hey, Fangrass Rider says. I guess I shouldn't have maybe said that recorded. Here we are.

No, like, you can figure these things out pretty easily without being that great at stats. But then if you want to get to what should I not pay attention to, how deep can I dive, how quickly can I learn things, then it's super hard. And the job of a team is not to say like on average How will this group of 30 hitters be like dude? You're drafting one of them Like it matters a lot more how much you can dive in So I feel confident in saying it at the broad scale that if you were like I want to have this fantasy baseball model

I want to just if we think your schedule don't yeah Don't if you are better at it and better than I am at it and can dive in more That's a more promising Avenue like figure out Like the Mookie Betts thing right that he's not good at right right change-ups That is thing that will disappear in the broad numbers. How in the world would that be in there? We're looking at every righty hitter. He's not there some guys are good at the little stuff is more important I think to actually driving performance And yeah, that's a lot harder to do. I think it's a satisfying answer because it just seems real and you're following the numbers. But

you know, as a player, you know, you went through a couple different organizations. I think developing, it was mostly the twins. But what do you remember from, like, when I'm talking about KPI, is like, what do you remember in terms what I'm talking about KPI is like what do you remember in terms of like key? Numbers that were presented to you because you had different development plans of different organizations What were some different numbers that were presented to you that was it just you know like we want your ex-lobo to be better Or like do you remember any of these numbers they were they movement based or I'll have to be honest even with the even when I was with the Twins until 2020, numbers weren't being... Players don't know as many numbers as you think.

But you do get plans. Yeah, you get plans. They're usually very general and then everything beyond that. Throw more strikes. Basically, like, let's start with throwing over the plate in the air. And just don't give things for free. And you'd be surprised at the number of guys that just need to be told to throw strikes. But then where the actual value starts to be developed, guys start to develop their own processes and they spend their own time.

And they'll get their own types of things they're interested in. So you had some numbers that you tracked a little bit. So I had some numbers that I tracked and it was always like how guys hit, because we were learning about movement profiles and pitch design was getting popular and then we were getting bucketed and the types of guys we're getting. So like ride guy, north to south, east to west. And then you'd be like, okay, I'm north to south. So let's, what other guys north to south have similar stuff to me?

How do these, and then you try to build, make the sample size big enough to where you can see some stuff. So that's where I got into it, and I go, okay, now I know where to throw things. That's how I learned about the Mookie thing. Like a comp machine approach, where you're like, I mean, that's what Stuff Plus is,

that's what a lot of things are, is like, how do players like me, how do players like me? We care about me, so you are worried about one player at the end of the day. And then how do you put yourself in a position to not make... It was less about strengths versus strengths. It was like, how can I avoid the big dumb mistakes that if I just know about it, I just won't make that mistake?

And as a reliever, I was always like, just got to avoid giving up the three on homerun. I'll give up a single over a homer. That seems like an easy way to get a lot better quickly. Just to focus on avoiding, because the big stuff matters so much. It does. Yeah, that's not an easy insight. It's like a fear of ERA change. Small to always start by as a reliever.

You're like, you have one bad outing and you're just like, I'm working on that. Season killers, that's what we call them. Season killers. You give up seven one time and you could throw 30 squirrels and still have a five. Yeah, it takes a long time to erase an inning that bad. One more question for you, Ben, then we'll let you relax and drink some more beer. What are you excited to see this year that's not like top level stuff, right?

We all want to watch Roki Sasaki and different things like that, but what's like the nerdiest thing that you're excited about for the upcoming season? Oh, that's a good one. That's a very good one. So like I mentioned, I'm a kind of a Cardinals fan by like birth and raising. It's tough to keep it up. I'm sure you're familiar as you get more like into like, I don't know, working in baseball. Like my

fandom is like limited because I'm... I have to watch everybody. I have to watch everybody. I'm not gonna root against the team the Cardinals are playing. Like that's weird. I cover those dudes. Like I mostly like them., because I'm... I have to watch everybody. I have to watch everybody. I'm not going to root against the team the Cardinals are playing. Like, that's weird. I cover those dudes. Like, I mostly like them. I want everyone to succeed.

But I love Mason Wynn. He's like, probably my favorite player to watch. And I want to see him basically continue to evolve how he uses his enormous arm to play defense better. Because I think he's like, plus in a lot of things a little bit. But he just has like the best throwing arm, maybe, of any infielder. And I love how he's kind of building his game around that.

Like he's staying more in the hole because he knows where he can make the throws. Like he's changing his positioning. I find watching his defensive highlights like the most satisfying thing I do, I think, think watching baseball and so I just want to see more. So he can play deeper and further from second? Yeah, he's definitely cognizant of the fact of which throws are hard to make, which throws he can turn and just let it rip. And I think he thinks about it quite a lot and watching him make plays that he's making not because of his range

But because of his arm I think is just like really satisfying You don't I think Angel Tim Simmons is the last guy who really made me feel that way Where he knew like I can stand here because I have a big arm and an accurate arm and like do this and Most guys would not do it this way, but I will because it makes sense for me So I think that's really fun as like a little watcher of baseball things. Can I ask you about his legs? You know, isn't he close to elite with sprint speed too?

Yeah, yeah. But he had like 11 bags last year or something. Yeah. Is that just like breaking in and then he's going to do more? He's not been great at stealing in the minors. A lot of it's like pitcher reading and not that easy skill. Yeah, if I'm him It's definitely down the list of things to focus on right? Yeah, like I think if he becomes a consistent gold glove shortstop

Like he's probably an all-star for a long time and if he gets better at stealing bases, you know Like that's nice. So I'm guessing that some of that is that he's young, this is hard to learn, it's really hard to like learn how to play Major League caliber defense even if you're physically talented. So I'd like to see him just get better at that. He's a good, not great, hitter. They're batting him ninth. So that's like way up there for me. I want to see Jacob deGrom pitch. I guess that's high end so that's cheating. But I used to live in New York I had Mets season tickets and I watched de Grom pitch so often and he wasn't like throwing that hard then he was like sitting 94 95 and like really good but not Jacob de Grom like long hair Jay.

Yeah it was long hair Jay. I was gonna say all caps but like the last letter is lowercase it's not working well But yeah, like I want to see like is he actually gonna throw in 97 again? I kind of doubt it But he's not not doing it even he's talking about like maybe I'll step off Yeah, I will see right like is he gonna go way down is he still gonna try to throw a hundred I want to know because I personally think he's the best per inning pitcher that I've seen ever pitch like it's just it's so impressive when he's on I want to see what that's like can he reconcile it what does he decide what is an aging Duran look like yeah

what does an aging Duran look like is he up down like neither is he just gonna try to replicate what he did when he was on the Mets basically? I don't know and I'd love to find out. I think he's also such a competitive dude that like he might be like yeah in spring training Yeah, I'm gonna step off the Velo and then I saw him in the in the last you know the last game before the you were there and playing in a major league stadium and first his first pitch was like 96 to Jonathan, India. And India like rode him to the wall.

And I saw DeGrom turn around and just be like, screw that. Never taking the ticks off again. Yeah, exactly. I'm gonna be 97, 98 from here on out. Yeah. I mean, after what you told us last season, we were talking about Mason Miller,

and you said DeGrom's a lot like Mason Miller, and that some guys can't take Velo off. It's very hard for them to do. The first bullpen I threw as a met was with Jake and Castro and Dillon Patonsus, and these guys were all throwing like, Jake was throwing 98, 99 in a bullpen, and I'm like, what?

And he's like, I don't even know. You know bullpens must be 80%, right? He looks exactly the same, he I'm like what and he's like I don't even know bullpen supposed to be 80% he looks exactly the same and I'm like 90 91 there's no one in the box and I can't give up a home run so that fear is what gave me my velocity so I was just like these guys are crazy and some people are just he's he's just that athletic and and when he plays catch he's just can't throw it soft this is this actually is kind of important I think to the injury conversation because I was on a panel with Glenn Fleissig and a bunch of Dr. Kristen Nicholson, some people we were

talking for Sabre about injuries. I think that in some level throwing more could be useful because you're building up your chronic ability to throw more. But I'm talking about throwing more. I'm talking about 80 more. I'm talking about like 80%, 70%, you know, easy. I want to normalize the idea of like soft toss for pitchers. You know, just get in there and you know, get it in there and like build up the chronic workload to get that acute, you know? And I replace some of these high intensity pitch design sessions, replace some of these high intensity bullpens. Replace some of these high intensity bullpens

with kind of a soft toss of some sort. And I think I got some negative pushback from this trainer that was on the thing where being like, we're not babying our pitchers, they don't need to throw more, like you're crazy. And I think what he was talking about was like, I get pitchers in, I get pitchers in, you're all alpha. And they're all just like, I wanna, I wanna, ah!

Yeah, we can't slow them down. Yeah, like they kinda like, I get pitchers in, you're all alpha. And they're all just like, I wanna, I wanna, ah! Yeah, we can't slow them down. Yeah, like they kinda like, I can't, it needs to, ugh! I need to just always be at 100%. If I'm doing pitch design, I need to throw it 100% to get that right shape and get it into the games. I just, I think that everyone's just wildly different. I think the spectrum of guys that need to take that, there's guys who just don't throw the day after their start. There's guys who never, I never stopped

throwing. I couldn't take a day off because I turned into a cockroach. And I think it comes down to like body composition, your flexibility. I had to throw all the time. I love throwing, even when I was super sore, it was important for me. Yes, perfect timing. There's like a ton thing there too. We're like, thank you. Lester Koga, everybody. The thing we all value the most. We're like throwing hard. Thank you for hosting us. And that makes it really difficult to be like, oh, I should ease off here.

Like, you know, your team, we're talking about KPIs like they're like, they want you to throw hard, right? Yeah, yeah, they want you to hit the ball hard. And then they're like, but also like maybe to go 80% in your practice. It's like, well, that's tough. Like, you guys are giving me that just seems like a tough thing. The best baseball athletes are often these like fast Twitch explosive dudes who can, like who can get the ball that fast. And also are, a lot of them are alphas.

Like a lot of the best ones are just like, cannot lose, will not lose. A very difficult thing to balance. Like, it's difficult to balance for me. Like, I topped out in high school, like not playing baseball even like as an OK athlete. I was like, how in the world are you going to have the best 200 baseball players in the world? These guys have been crazy their whole life, right? Like as competitive as you can imagine. It's very difficult to be like, let's do 80% of these to manage your health.

There's also a lot of traditional eye wash going on where there's a lot of things that you do because you just said they've always done it. Like the towel drill? Well that's one. But like mine's conditioning generally for relievers at all. Like I didn't run at all. Lifting or running?

I lifted. I didn't run. Why would you run? You're out there for 12 pitches. Yeah, it made me worse. I'm going to throw to get in shape. I'll just sweat really. I'll throw a lot because that's what I like to do. I'm not going to run. I realized that running made me worse. I'm gonna throw to get in shape. I'll just sweat really I'll throw a lot because that's what I like to do. I'm not gonna run and I got pushback from our strength conditioning guys

every day for the entire season on every team I was on. They were just like give me they would give me crap about like the guys would go run their sprints and I would just go in and I'm like I don't I'm telling you right now what I need I haven't gotten out I don't lose my breath out there I can throw three innings yeah like it's full adrenaline that's how I just don't need it my back hurts when I run I'm not gonna run and it took me years and years to get them to just let me not do that and that's that type of stuff too where they're like, hey, everyone else is doing it. And you're like, okay, I want to be able to pitch. It's surprising that it's the one size fits all approach

for something like that. But if you think of it, it's usually a couple guys in charge of dozens and they want to do, and they're trying to have their job. Some of them are former players. Some of them are former players. Kind of aspect tough too, right? Because there's even a little soft pressure.

Yeah. And it's even a little soft pressure. Yeah. And it's pretty difficult to be like, I don't feel like running if your closest friend of the team is running and you want to beat him. Yeah. The more that guys like you are doing it, the more you're just going to feel like you should even if it's not a great approach. I find that very difficult about all teaching very good people at anything to do anything.

Because they're freaks, like, to be a make-believe pitcher, you're like 0.01% or whatever. I found that coaching, the best players I had were the hardest players to coach, because I felt like I couldn't teach them as much. Yeah, exactly. I did have a slight variation on the question for you, which is, if you were going to watch a game tonight or if you were going, like, Carson Sestula used to have this thing that was like the nerd score. Nerd score is like, you know, how do you decide who you're going to watch tonight? Like, if you're going to watch a game, how do you sort of sort of...

I have a pretty easy like waterfall here. This is very easy. That's an easy one to answer. Thank you. Because I was not prepared, but super simple. First, if there's a pitching matchup I really want to see, that's just number one. I'll put that one first. If Paul Skeens is facing Sandy Alconra, I'll find a way to watch that game. MLB TV makes it easy. I will always watch two aces facing each other. That's always number one. After that I try to watch teams with interesting players I haven't seen recently. You watch a lot of

baseball like I've seen Aaron Judge a lot of my life like I've watched him a bunch I don't need to watch like Aaron Judge against like no offense to us but like some NL Central team. You know maybe with the Cardinals I'll watch but I kind of look for interesting matchups next. And then if there's no, like, I must say this is the first time this happened, and there's no great pitching duel, I'm kind of leaning for the announcers. I try to watch every game with the home announcers. Because I write a lot of, like, little observational stuff.

And they are watching the team and they... They watch the team a lot. Yeah, they get better info usually. You'll, like, learn a little interesting stuff from... I'm not going to name any names, but like figure out some ones you like. Figure out one to watch baseball in the way you like. I know who you're thinking of, so it's fine. Well, there are different booths that are...

They're good for different reasons. Like the Padres booth is like you're hanging out in a bar with two guys that are your friends and they've been friends forever and they're just joshing on each other. But it's not that good for watching to learn something. Yeah, like Jim Edmonds has the numbers of all the former players, and he gets these text messages from recent Cardinals during the game.

And he'll just talk about the text messages he's sending. And like, you know, I don't want that for every game, but that's kind of cool. I kind of pick based on that because most of these booths now, like most of the bad guys are gone And I'm gonna be spending a lot of my hard-earned free time watching this baseball game I mean honestly, I do it for work too But you guys will be spending a lot of your hard-earned free time watching a baseball game

I want to be like a vibe I like and That matters a lot to me because I will like be more focused pay more attention learn more stuff If I'm not like listening to the guys me like, yeah,, eh, I don't know. This is not appealing to me. So I care a lot about that. Nice. Well, Ben, we appreciate you coming on, joining us for a whole hour today. I thought we asked for like 10 minutes.

Toast to Ben. Toast to Ben. Cheers, coming over, Cheryl. Toast to Bear Bottle. Yeah, I was telling you, you know, this is my favorite brewery in the world. I did not know that you guys were recording a podcast here. I just saw the writing of your here, and I DM'd you like, this is awesome, man.

Wandered on the right day. We really appreciate you. Thanks so much for coming on, Ben. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Ben. We're going to take some questions here in just a few minutes.

We've got a few predictions to get out first. I've got a piece of trivia. You've got trivia? Yeah, I've got trivia. Do you have to do a search first? No, I got it. You've got it ready? Come on.

I'm a professional. I had a stall for time ready to go. Yeah, all right. Here we go. Goodbye, you minute. So we are doing Four Rates and Barrels, a pick six thing. It's called Six Picks. This is actually a little bit of funny backstory.

Niv Shah used to work at SBN, and he created a game called Pick Six, where you just had to pick six players and it was a little bit like a proto DFS thing where you just they had prices, you had to pick six players and SBN owned that so when he left them and started, I don't know, he started a game called Six Picks. So we've been calling it the wrong thing ever since we announced our league. I always thought it was Pick Six, I was like, oh no, you can't call it that. No, it's six picks. Six picks. So we're doing a rates and barrels group on six picks.

And there's like an auto picker so if you're not there every day, you can kind of just set the auto picker. And that'll basically be almost like a replacement level, just to get you some scoring while you're not paying attention. I have not yet picked, so I'll be on it any day. But, so anyway, there's a big board here for us. Right now we've got about 200 people playing on a daily basis, but we're gonna push that number north as I tell more people about it. And we, and so I'm telling you about it. Please, please play with us, it'd be fun.

Doesn't cost anything, you can join. And you're just picking six players, it's not that hard. It's just hard, you gotta do it before the game starts. So anyway. This is a trivia question? It is. Who, and so now think, think Rates and Barrels. Think, like to some degree, Inosaris,

and think Pitchers, and then think Today's Slate. and think pitchers, and then think today's slate. And who among rates and barrels picked sixers, or six pickers? Six pickers. Six pickers was the number one chosen starting pitcher for today. That is a good guess, but it's not at the... Yes!

Pepeo? Yes, who said it? There's a hat. Yes, it's not at the... Yes! Pepeo? Yes! Who said it? You? Yes, it's Ryan Pepeo. Of course it's Ryan Pepeo. Not Tyler McGill. Not Tyler McGill. Tyler McGill is in the word cloud, for sure. It really is.

But Ryan Pepeo is probably the most, in fantasy season, the most expensive picture that I have, like something like eight chairs of. I'm all in on like a change-up guy who developed a power slider and has a rising fastball. He's got everything he needs, except not great command, but... That comes... Do you like Pepio? I really do. I don't want you to get mad at me. So I really... No, no.

I... you know, anyone who goes from the Dodgers to the Rays is interesting to me. Yeah. It's pretty good organizational, too. Because they both know something. And if they both know something, there's probably some diamond under the dirt there.

Yeah. Jake Reed has like bounced around. You might have to press it. Oh, there you go. No, it's good, you're good, you're good, you're good. Jake Reed like bounced around between the Dodgers and the Rays. This guy must be amazing. I still think he is.

Even though it never worked out, I guarantee. He's one of the best people ever, too. He has the strangest delivery you'll ever see. What is it? He's got the short arm. He looks like he's rolling plays rolled like side like this I'll give it short arm. It's the shortest short arm I've ever seen it like I almost don't understand how you can throw a ball But yeah, I always assume that you must have something

Something that you can't see because like the stats aren't great But like the Dodgers and Rays kept being like he. Once he dropped down, he came up with the Twins. He used to throw 97, 98 from up, but he threw Sinkers, couldn't throw a Force Seam. So for whatever reason, they dropped him down. And it was 93, 94, and it's moving like crazy. And then that's when he got to the big leagues. The amount of wind up to throw 93 is unreal. Like, it's so little.

It looks like it's a dart. I think we need more awards. Like the Ryan Pepeo situation, like fantasy is like, you know, you kind of feel rewarded because you're right about someone, but they don't get a real life award for most improved player. It's not a thing. Like we don't have a trophy for that.

And I don't want trophies for everything. But I just- Isn't there a most improved player? No. No. There's a comeback player. Comeback player. Comeback player. But if Ryan Pepeo is like a 5-war pitcher this year, there's no award for that unless

he's good enough to get a Cy Young. Right? That's not going to be enough to get it. Right? It's the arbitration award. It's an arbitration award. He hasn't done money. It's not at all.

It's a money award. We do have some award predictions. I want to start with the NL Rookie of the Year. Roki Sasaki, Dylan Cruz, Matt Shaw. Go a little further down the board if you wanted to. Who's going to win the NL rookie of the year? I mean, I have Sasaki, but I came with some dark horses too. I think when Bubba Chandler comes up with the Pirates that he's going to be really good right away.

Despite the spring, not a great spring. Not a great spring, but he's got, I think, electric stuff and being around Skeens all the time. I think it's one of those competitive, he's a very competitive kid. And I mean, they all are, which is great for the Pirates. Hopefully they can start squirts runs, but like. But the Skeens being really sort of intellectual.

Yeah, yeah, he's going to, I think, he's going to glom onto him and learn a lot. So Paul Skeens was on Starkville, I think, a week or two weeks ago. And apparently Bubba Chandler sent Skeens a text saying, what's it gonna be like starting Game 2 next season? Being the number 2. I love that. That's a lot of confidence. I love that.

Jared Jones is like, hey man, I'm here. So you're on Roki. Are you in on Roki? As the Rookie of the Year favorite? Clear cut? Run away? I mean, I'm not an unreasonable person, and so I will acknowledge that he is the favorite. But I've been coming out against Roki Sasaki. And it'll hurt me.

It'll hurt me if he's great. But the fastball's not great. We talked about some of the comps on that pitch. Maybe it was on the craft. Some of the comps on Roki Sasaki's fastball are Johnny Brito and Carmen Muzenski. Not bad stuff, but not what you want. Not the fastball comps you want.

Also, those are sinker guys. And I'm comparing the four-seam. But not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not not from AAA to the major leagues and you were quoted in it as talking about it and Ben studied this whole thing and he had basically a chart of OPS, like true talent OPS in AAA relative to the big leagues and it's always somewhere between sort of 75% and 85%. You know, it's close. These guys are close. And right now people are saying, oh, the gap between AAA and the major leagues bigger than it's ever been. And the ideas are pitcher injuries, COVID, making the minor leagues smaller. It's all bad. And he's, he produced a graph that said, yes, right now, AAA OPS is at sort of 75% of the major leagues and it's one of the

worst it's ever been. But the kicker, and Ben Limber is a great writer, the kicker at the end was I wrote this same article 10 years ago and if you look at the graph, 10 years ago it was at 75%. So this is just something that comes and goes and we don't need to worry about it. But as a sort of, you know, what are you doing for me lately? My takeaway was, yes, the gap is bigger between AAA and the major leagues right now than it's ever been. So I am mostly fading guys that haven't seen the major leagues yet. So I'm all in on guys that had a chance last year.

So my pick for National League Rookie of the Year is Dylan Cruz because he came up, he didn't sink, he swum, he swum. Yeah. It's a weird word. He swam. Swam. Yeah I don't think it is a word. Swam is not a real word is it? No it's not. Okay he swam. Sometimes my tournament comes out. Anyway so he swam. He kept his head above water. He did not show the promise that we thought he had with the highest pick and all this stuff. He did not show the power. But I think sometimes the power is just gonna...

Sometimes it's a light bulb that turns on, and even if he doesn't, he's gonna show great play discipline, great speed, great contact ability, great defense, and he's gonna float his war even if he only hits like 15 homers. And we've become a sort of who has the most war-voting crowd. And if he just uses defense to get to, like, three, four war, he's gonna be fighting with a lot of guys

who have, like, two, one and a half, and he's just gonna play all year and be, like, a credible, you know, corner outfielder, and he's gonna float to the top so my it may be dark horse whatever He's not as good as we thought he was but he's Dylan Cruz, and he's swum Yeah, I looked at my picks, and I picked Dylan Cruz to oh nice I do think the concerns about the rookies workload will work against him potentially in this and I think your logic is pretty sound given that you want to see someone that's been in the big leagues before.

So I'm with you on the Dylan Cruz call but they're pretty close by the odds. On the AL side, there are way more directions you can go. Jason Dominguez, Camp Smith, Christian Campbell, Jackson Job, all four guys, prominent roles right out of the gate. Who do you like on the AL side? I was flip-flopping between Campbell,

because I think the Red Sox in general is going to have space to be solid, and they're not going to need him to do everything, which is important. They call him up after a bad spring, so they're cool with him. You were the guy, you were always going to be the guy, and he's got a pure bat tool so he can hit. But I really like Jackson Jobe. It's just when he gets figured out or has a tough one, how bad, like where's he going to go?

Because he kind of has super power stuff and it's not really finesse. So you can't just bull rush usually your way through the major leagues that way Skeen's did but he has finesse also so you got feel so it'll be interesting to see so I have Christian Campbell win in it But there's no runaway. I think that's pretty clear But if I would be I'm I was leaning towards pitchers because that's just more interesting to me. So but I'll say Christian Campbell Ian Khan Like three or four years ago in one of the leagues we were in, made a trade for Jason Dominguez as like a 17 year old then and was like, this is Mike Trout. And

I don't know if he is Mike Trout anymore. I mean, he's not playing center, but he does look a little bit like Mike Trout. He's kind of compact, like he's a safety. He's a tank. He's a safety, you know? And he's fast, and he hits the ball hard, and I don't think he's going to strike out 30% of the time. So I'm all in on Jason and Dominguez. They seem like they're finally just going to give him the position, and the park is

good for him, and he's come out of this development system that we know produces guys who hit the ball hard and I think he has pretty good plate discipline he's not a guy who swings at like 50% of the pitches outside the zone so I'm calling for Jason Dominguez I know he's kind of the favorite so it's chalk but he also has seen some of the major leagues he's already had taken some lumps and he swum I think the Yankees are less likely to go to depth than the Red Sox are with Campbell. I think you have a little more floor for playing time with Dominguez which makes it probably the safer pick of the group and it does feel like there's a lot of pressure on Cam Smith. Yeah. Right. Huge part of the Kyle Tucker

trade. Very high ceiling. Rusing through the minor leagues quickly. But you can also just Jeremy Pena just be amazing right away. We wouldn't put that past anyone on the Astros. A young guy coming up and just being ridiculous from the beginning. They've done it before and as I pointed out a couple weeks ago, I think it was Dana Brown that scouted and drafted Michael Harris. Harris flew through the minors in Atlanta and hit the ground running so maybe they can do the same thing with Cam Smith. I have a question for you guys on that specifically. So like I was pretty in on Jeremy Pena and

I've kind of been out on Camp Smith because he's trying to learn a new position. Yeah, that's a lot. That seems really hard. I mean I don't have any like direct like practices. I mean third to right. Jordan Walker. It's not a lot of crossover. The Jordan Walker experiment. Weren't you saying, yesterday you were kind of fading the Astros a little bit. Yeah and you were saying they're doing it with two their left fielder is trying to learn a new position their right bill

It's really hard to me bad for Jake Myers like what's gonna happen? To bay on a ball that's very much the center fielder's ball I mean, I don't like I think cancer that is great But I can imagine that the degree of difficulty is much higher for him. Because he's trying to do something really hard. None of us have tried to do that. Like, learning such a new thing that old. There's a video that came out,

and it's like celebratory, it's like the telling of Cam Smith, like telling Cam Smith he's made the major leagues, and the entire clubhouse is going crazy crazy and Jacob Melton is like I really hope I like you're like in right field and he's like Jacob Melton is like I'm a good outfielder her what about me you guys just got this guy up in here Straight up leapfrog. Yeah, and I'll say young you know who do you like? I mean, I'm on glass now. I'm sticking with that was a bold prediction so I can't okay

I guess we were bold how many you had to? 165 165 he hasn't turned more than 135 in his career You did it in a year of split between triple a and the big leagues, okay? And those count I don't have to imagine a world where Paul schemes is Hurt I don't say the word. Yeah, but it's that's what it would take Yeah, then he's got it. I don't he could have almost got it last year

Yeah, Paul Skeens is amazing But I make all these predictions for like fan graphs because we have the whole website breaks people and I always try to break The dark horses, right? So what'd you do boring if you pick like Shohei Otani to win MVP. I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm not crazy. I was like I'd love to get crazy. Oh you did it anyway. Yeah. This is too far.

You gotta be reasonably bold. It's unreasonably bold I think to not have him as your friend. Okay let's put Paul Skeens and Tyler Glassman outside. Who are we talking about otherwise? Sael just won it last year. Yeah. It'd have to be someone who'd kind of done it a little bit before. of guys from outside, like who are we talking about otherwise? Sale just won it last year. Yeah. It'd have to be someone who'd kind of done it a little bit before.

My, and you kind of crushed him the first thing we said at the show, but I was like my outside looking in and you know this is just because Rick Porcello won a Cy Young once. So anything can happen. And I'm like you know if Hunter Green's around and a couple guys have a couple clunkers And he doesn't and he's got just a little bit better stat I like he showed me some stuff last year and he's got electric stuff So it's just about like are more things gonna go his way than maybe a couple other guys It's kind of like that over in the ale for my my choice to I guess chalky second would be Wheeler

Yeah, Wheeler or sale. We're gonna be in be in the top three. There's kind of a sneaky one, because I think he's getting under-appreciated. Blake Snell. He's won two Cy Youngs. And he's the Dodgers' number one pitcher. But I feel like because they have so many pitchers, it's like, eh. I think they're going to top out at 135 innings, I think.

I did a math where it's like, if you have a five starter thing, what would you do with six starters? And it's about 135. I mean, we were just talking about how great Tyler Glasner and Roki Sasaki were. Like, you think they're pitching more? That's important. I wonder if there's a split the vote.

We should study that. That's definitely possible. I just think because they are so, like they have so many stars and so many good players, he's like a little forgotten. He was amazing after his, like, ramp up last year. Amazing. He might've been the best pitcher ramp up last year. Amazing. He might have been the best

pitcher in baseball last year after he his first like three outings right. So I think that not that he's the favorite but I think he's probably underrated. Yeah he is. I have a good one and I think that he's sometimes the Cy Young is like the Oscars where you have to like like maybe earn it a different year. You have to have your best year earlier and then be good enough later to win. And then win the Saiong. Yeah, exactly. And so, Logan Webb. I think one of the things that's been holding Logan Webb back is the strikeouts.

It's been obvious to the strikeouts because the volume is always there. And I think with Logan Webb, the thing that makes me think there might be the strikeouts. It's been obvious to the strikeouts, because the volume is always there. And I think with Logan Webb, the thing that makes me think there might be more strikeouts is he's been, he used to have a cutter that he only threw Shoei Otani. And I was talking to somebody yesterday about this, and they were like, well, if it works against Shoei Otani, shouldn't you throw it against other lefties that are like, not as good as Shoei Otani?

So that's what he's been doing this spring. This spring he had a 28% strikeout rate. Like if Logan Webb did what he did last year, but just added a 28% strikeout rate, he might have won the Sion last year. So like, yeah, I'm in on Logan Webb. I mean, it wasn't amazing yesterday, but you know, it's just one start.

I think Logan Webb has a thing going for him that's not great, which is that I always rank him as one of the best pitchers in baseball, so I do like our trade value series every year, and he's always one, two, or three. Yeah. Because his... His... 180 innings. Yeah. His baseline, or like his average case is very high. But the problem is he cannot spike a year. The way he pitches is not... It's not... Unless, maybe you add a cutter and you get more Ks somehow. Yeah, it's almost impossible without an increasing K rate. It's very hard for him to win a Cy Young despite being one of the best pitchers in baseball,

because he's less volatile than these other guys. Like, he just does his thing. There is a narrative here where the Dodgers all have 130 innings, you know, and maybe Skeens has to just take a little break, and then Skeens only has like 140. Why would he do 140? A little break, he's just a little nap. He took a little break. And then Skeens only has like 140. What? 140? He took a little break. He took a little hamstring.

He's a big guy. Not a full break. And if they're all 130, 140, excellent, and Logan Webb is like pretty excellent, but at 185, 200, then you kind of maybe get the narrative machine going. I mean, I feel like if he looked like Zach Wheeler, he would get more credit. He does not look like...

You mean like physically? Yeah, like he's taller and like broader shoulders and stuff. People like broad shoulders. Yeah, man. You're right, he is the smaller Zach Wheeler. He looks like he's an innings eater, and he is. It's just those innings are at like 30% better than league average, which no one can do. It's a very weird skill set to win a Cy Young.

But like, it's a very good skill set to be one of the best pitchers in baseball. How about the AL Cy Young? Cole Reagans. Reagans, I like it. He's gonna edge out Scoobl. So all the things we said about the Royals were that they couldn't get better than last year because there were too many things working Against them naturally the Bobby wit jr. Not being as good pitchers

Collectively staying as healthy as it had last year Secondary piece of the lineup not quite coming through But Reagan's winning the Cy Young would be on the short list of things that would Help kind of fight against that right if you post that kind of season Yeah, actually, I think him and Bobby wit are gonna be the at the end for both the awards I'm just worried about the rest of the team and and you know I Regans ended with a 3-1 era I mean he was he wasn't as good at the beginning and then he threw really well at the end but no one lost more V lo among qualified starting pitchers than

Cole Regans did not know that that is concerning As a starter in the previous year because I know you know over the course of the year Yeah, so maybe that's just because he'd relieved in Texas. I mean, it's probably just he was also like innings levels that he Be worried if he lost more this year. That'd be scary. I like Logan Gilbert. He was showing me, I can show you the grips later. There's no way to show you right now. He's throwing three curve balls. He showed me grips for three curve balls, which is funny because he came up with one curve ball that he was like, this is the pitch and I'm going to be good at it. And then everyone's like,

no, this is not a good pitch dude sorry and so he's developed since then like a knuckle curve but he has a knuckle curve where he's like this is the downer and it just seems it's like one knuckle grip and he just changed those seems like this is the death ball whap and then this is the one that goes like this and this is the one that goes this I think what he's actually doing is throwing two curve balls right now. I looked at the spread from his first start and he's throwing a kind of a deathball-y this thing and he's throwing a more like a side or like whatever. It's like a more sideways thing. So I think he's throwing two curveballs

which I think is it's just what I think about Logan Gilbert in general, which is I will bet a lot on guys who have great fastballs and just maybe a little bit of makeup or a little bit of like I can Add a pitch and you know Gilbert came up with this curveball that people said that sucks and he was a sweeper and he couldn't command it and He but he had that fastball in that extension and now he's a completely different pitcher And I kind of love that when someone's just like I'm gonna remake all the stuff around it And I'm just gonna keep pushing and keep getting better. He told me in spring. I have three curveball grips I don't know what I'm gonna go to like I know what's gonna happen in the regular season This is a spring training thing I had three curveballs

But I think I saw two curveballs and if he has two curveballs the power slider I think I saw two curveballs and if he has two curveballs the power slider the fastball the cut it You know like this split like he he's now like a very large arsenal But everything's like seven feet off the mound and he's gonna get the Mariners Park boost Yeah, where he's gonna have he could have like a 2-5 ERA this year, and I think people still like the shiny numbers I like that Gilbert call. I mean Garrett crochet with more innings to work with I think people still like the shiny numbers. I like that Gilbert call. I mean, Garrett Crochet with more innings to work with, I think, is really interesting. I'd probably make that call. It's a lot of the innings conversations.

A lot of guys are like, I've only thrown 130 max, but I'm really good. And, God, I just missed 200 innings. It used to be that, it used to be the line. Now, we might have zero guys throw 200 innings. Yeah, like 175, 180 might be easily enough. That's what wins now. Chris Dale last year was, I think, 180 or something, 175.

Yeah. You don't have to get the full 200. Yeah. Trevor's got a flight to catch. We've got to keep it moving. NL MVP? NL MVP. Shohei?

Ask somebody else. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Shohei. Shohei and Lacey, if he plays, he gets it. Yeah, I have a for the AL. I don't have an AL. I just like Shohei. Who could it be other than Shohei? Soto just hit his first home run as a MET. Yeah don't know. I was just like showing who could it be other than showing

So don't hit his first home run as a man. It's not a second now my odds that he's second to tease his third I think Tati says a good one. I think we haven't seen that that year from him. He's 26 Yeah, we're not a gambling show, but I mean if you're gonna place a bet on it I think it's a good odds on a 50s. We don't want that. Yeah, that'd be fun I wouldn't be I wouldn't mind. Plus I just, you know, like he's like the, what's it called? The like mascot of the Padres in a way. Yeah, he goes good, they go good.

Yeah, he's the energy. He's the straw in the drink. Yeah, he's the wind that blows the sails. So on the AL side, co-favorites Aaron Judge and Bobby Wood Jr. And there's people that are down on Judge, down on the Yankees, so I wonder if he'll just get kind of ignored a little bit relative to the other names on the board. There's a pretty big odds drop before you get to Gunnar Henderson at plus 800, Corey Seeger at plus 1,000, Vlad Jr. is not that far off.

You haven't said my name yet. Who's your guy? Julio Rodriguez. He's plus 1, 1800 on Bet MGM. He just needs to do those two months. He needs his two months to be six months. That's it right there. The name of my Julio Rodriguez film is Boy, Interrupted.

He's had these great seasons, these little great two-month sprints, and a lot of times he'll be going super hot and then he gets injured. And you're just like, what if he didn't get injured and just finish that out? And what he did is he had a great hot spring, and Dan Zinborski just announced that spring is not irrelevant and that he's going to start incorporating spring training in his Zips numbers going forward. and it's more like 75% relevant like if you have 50 played appearances in spring that this good

It's more like 37 played appearances of spring of regular season So you got to discount a little bit But you know, he's slugged like 600 in spring and he's running around the bases and he looks real good And if he just stays healthy all year, you know year you know he's another he's another straw and drink guy. A lot of straw and drink guys in the MVP conversation. Big Reggie Jackson fan. I'll go Gunnar Henderson even with the early injury I think he's gonna have a huge year I'm all in on the Orioles man got to keep backing that up I got Bobby. It's good when you're when your wards and your calls like all tell a story. They have to be together. The Orioles are good. You really don't want them to tell a different story.

You're thinking right about everything or wrong about everything. Usually for me it's wrong about everything. If anybody's got questions we can come on up. The mic that Ben's holding right here is available for questions. He's the question guy all of a sudden. Yeah we gotta make them quicker though. Do we have any more? Do we have name that dude? Do we have any more Trevers? We'll squeeze that in. We'll let Trevor go in a minute too. All right. What's up guys?

We got a question. We've been talking so much about your Cy Young picks, et cetera, et cetera. How many innings are they going to pitch, right? The old sports adage, the best ability is availability, right? My question is what is the difference among the Major League teams in terms ability to keep players healthy? I feel like everybody knows now, oh, analytics, this team is good, this team is good, but are there differences between the teams in terms of they're known for keeping guys healthy because of these programs or whatever, and

this team is not. One team that was leaning really heavily on the core, Atlanta. We've seen the Braves core last year get really banged up. Austin Riley got hurt, Austin Albies got hurt. They are not load managing. Right, they're just pushing as much workload as they can on that core. That's a relatively young group of players. That's probably why they do it.

But as far as teams that haven't done well year over year over year, for a while, the Mets had that reputation. Bad training staff, unable to avoid those nagging small tissue injuries and things, soft tissue injuries. What do you think? Are there teams that are clearly good at keeping players healthy? I have a story about this. A former White Sox pitcher, he pitched for the Giants,

and he pitched for the White Sox. And I quoted him a lot. You might know who this is. He was talking about Cooper, who's the pitching coach, legendary White Sox pitching coach, Cooper. Don Cooper? Don Cooper. And so the White Sox pitching coach Cooper Don Cooper Don Cooper Don Cooper and so the White Sox for a while like had the lowest IL numbers and

I was I brought that up with with this person. I'm so sick And he goes oh, yeah, that was BS, and I was like this is eight years per cup was that he goes Yeah, he just told us not to report our injuries One way around it That's real Years per cup, what's that? And he goes, yeah, he just told us not to report our injuries. One way around it. That's real. Just don't say anything. I'll give you a blow.

I won't use you. They'll give you 10 days off on the roster. My arms are barking, you need a day off? I'll give you one day off. I'll give you one. And you're like, I don't know if it's going to work. And we'll check in a day. And yeah, so there are teams that are operated like that, for sure. Was there a team that you thought, I don't know if it's going to work. Let's check in a day.

So there are teams that are operated like that. Was there a team that you thought, was there a reputation as a player? I kind of want to go there. I think they keep them healthy. To be honest, we would have these conversations and then we'd talk in circles for a bit. Then we'd be like, it's kind of a crapshoot. Because just the nature of the game. You're always acquiring players. Perhaps you. Because just the nature of the game. You're always acquiring players and.

Also just like the way the season's going. Sometimes you lose two starters in a week from injuries or a guy gets sick and then your bullpen gets destroyed. And then two of those guys go down and then it just snowballs for a month. And you can't remember when it started, but everyone's hurt. Or why it started. And there's nothing anyone could have done

because we play 162 games in 183 days, and that is ridiculous if you think about it. Yeah. Everyone, like if you don't get lucky, everyone's gonna get somewhat hurt through the year. I don't know if there's a clear answer to that question. It's worth pursuing, but we've really noticed how that Atlanta approach really backfired on them. It carries you when it works, but when it backfires, you can miss the playoffs,

or get to the playoffs with 80% of the team you want to actually have on the field. Another story that I think of is that Roger Craig, the longtime Giants manager, at some point was teaching, the Giants, the longtime Giants manager, at some point was teaching everybody the splitter and then all of his pitchers got injured and was like, oh the splitter, it's the splitter's fault, it's the splitter's fault and I interviewed Roger Craig and he's like, I'm not a dumb a**. I wouldn't teach everybody the splitter if I thought it hurt them. He's like, go back and check it. One guy tore his hammy, one guy got hit by a pitch,

one guy got sick, these aren't splitter injuries. I'm not doing this on purpose. He was like, y'all are idiots, basically. I love you, Roger Craig. Tripping over the bag and breaking your ankles, not a splitter thing. Yeah. Random injuries.

One thing I do want to point out is there are teams that are really zooming in on fatigue. And so the Cubs signing Dr. Mike Son is, I think, very interesting because he has a big fatigue model. And he is right now engaged in making a workload model for every Cubs pitcher and really making them stay on top of it and internalizing it so that everybody is aware

of where they are on the workload and the team is aware of it. And teams that do that, I support and I think could be in a good place. That's the best way to do it. Just the more comfortable players are to be open about how they're feeling and then going off of that, that is when it gets really good. Because I think the talent-wise, every training staff I ever had was extremely talented and

knowledgeable and were willing to try all kinds of stuff. Especially the Mets. I was blown away actually by the Mets and the amount of resources they were giving to us and the number of different perspectives they had. But it came down to Jeremy Hefner was my pitching coach and I could go to him and be like, I wear a whoop, I've worn one of these for like four years and you have red, yellow and green and we had a thing where he'd look at me and be like, how are you feeling?

And I'd be like, I'm red. And he'd be like, all right. And I could just, like he could go, Trevor, when I'm playing catch up back. And I'd be like, all right. And I could just, like, he could go, Trevor, when I'm playing catch up back, and I'd be like, OK, who's next? And it wouldn't be like, you're not manly, and like, oh, put some dirt on it, kid. Yeah, and that's the thing. They were, they're trying to move away from that.

But Wilbond came down into the clubhouse and was like, hey, you're not hurt. Yeah. Some players are like, hey, you're not hurt. And yes, I am. You're the owner? What is happening here? like, hey, you're not hurt. And yes, I am. You're the owner? What is happening here? Actually, no, they'd be like, am I?

I don't know. Oh, no. Yeah? But Wilbond's telling me I'm not. Yeah. It's very weird. I want to keep my job. Yeah.

We're going to hang out for a little bit longer. We can't take any more questions. We do have to end the show. Trevor has to get out to get a flight. Sorry. Yeah. But thank you to all of you for being here. This has been an amazing experience

for us. Thanks to our great host Lester Koga here at Bear Bottle Brewing. It's been an awesome two days. Give us a follow on Blue Sky. Trevor's I am Trevor May. That's B. Scott at social. You know his email is enocerous.b. Scott at social. I am DVR. B. Scott at social. This is our producer, Brian Smith. Shout out for Brian for making a sound good. Thanks to Bear Bottle and Lester Koga, have some Kayakers Cove, thank you so much for coming. Yep, that's gonna do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels, we're back with you on Monday. Thanks for listening and attending.

He had bigger hams than I thought he would.