Rates & Barrels - Big Misses & Re-Thinking How We Project Future Fantasy Value

Episode Date: September 8, 2020

Eno and DVR discuss the collective 'miss' on Shane Bieber, the challenge of using the 20-80 scale to set expectations for players from a fantasy perspective, the demotion of Dylan Carlson, and more. Rundown5:12 Why Did I (We) Miss on Shane Bieber?10:55 What Is the Most Important Tool for a Hitter and for a Pitcher?16:34 Hit Tool as a Measure of Future Success20:44 Listener Collin Turns Our Secret Sauce Into Z-Scores28:13 Is Hit Tool Too Subjective?35:29 What Do We Make of Forrest Whitley Now?41:11 Dylan Carlson Demoted45:36 Choosing Keepers in Shallow Long-Term Leagues49:13 How Much Will We Value 2020 Results Going Forward? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's episode of Rates and Barrels is brought to you by Manscaped. Manscaped's here to make sure you're well-groomed above and below the belt. Manscaped promotes clean hygiene when it comes to shaving with their Lawn Mower 3.0 Personal Trimmer. Manscaped is the only men's brand dedicated to below-the-waist grooming. And the Lawn Mower 3.0 is a waterproof, cordless body trimmer that makes it safe and easy. Subscribe to the perfect package and get a new replacement blade refill for your trimmer delivered to your door every three months making sure your trimmer always stays fresh and clean. Get 20%

off and free shipping with the code TheAthletic20 at Manscaped.com That's 20% off with free shipping at Manscaped.com and use code TheAthletic20. And for a limited time, subscribers get not one, but two free gifts, a travel bag, a $39 value,

and the patented high-performance Manscaped boxer briefs. So go to manscaped.com today and use code THEATHLETIC20. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 135. It's Tuesday, September 8th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we are going to discuss why I missed on Shane Bieber as a prospect. Why maybe all of us kind of missed on Shane Bieber as a prospect, using that as sort of a launching point for looking at the 20 to 80 scale and tools and what we're looking for in minor league players, and maybe how there are some problems with how that traditional 20 to 80 scale

is used and how we as fantasy players are looking for very specific things from players as we stash them away in Keeper and Dynasty leagues. And as we set our expectations for them in Redraft leagues as well. So we get some great emails that are related to that topic. And I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about Dylan Carlson getting sent down to the alternate site. That happened just before we started recording on Tuesday morning. So we'll get to that and a few other topics along the way. Eno, how's it going for you on this Tuesday?

It's going great. I had a meatful weekend. We made some tri-tip tacos with that Santa Maria rub on it. So good. We had some steaks, went to the beach. It was generally pretty good. I'm hoping these fires clear up, though, because it looks positively yellow outside right now. Yeah, I've heard some pretty bad things.

I know there's a fire that started up in Montana a couple days ago, too. It seems like all my co-hosts are surrounded by wildfires right now, which is scary because things have been so dry everywhere, too. The conditions are just ideal for those to continue. And hopefully you get some rain, get those things under control as soon as possible. It was a really nice long weekend. I got to see my family a little bit on Monday. I had a nice little grill out with them. A lot of meat here, too.

I don't normally eat like that. It was kind of a combination of the long weekend. My birthday was on Monday. I had a nice little grill out with them. A lot of meat here too. I don't normally eat like that. It was kind of a combination of the long weekend. My birthday was on Friday. Happy birthday. Thank you. 36. Closing in on 40 slowly. Closing in on more gray hair.

Don't stare too hard at it. I'm trying not to think too much about it. It'll be here before I know it. Exactly. Did the steak thing. Got the reverse sear going again. It's the only way I can make steaks now. I have to reverse sear them if I'm going to make them.

That's the only way. But honestly, I eat steak two or three times a year now. I'm not the guy that's out at the butcher shop every week buying myself a nice steak. I really wish I'd done the reverse sear like you talked about on the tri-tip even because i burnt it i didn't burn it like inside like it was cooked pretty perfectly on the inside like almost just perfectly 130 so like you know nice and a little bit red and so i guess being crunchy on the outside is not that big a deal but it's burnt right And so if I had done the slow part first, you know,

and gotten that over with, then I could have been on top of it better. You know, I kind of put it down, close the, close the grill and came back and it was like 900. And like the whole thing was on fire. Yeah.

It just like sprayed fat all over the inside of my gas grill. And like the whole inside of my thing was on fire yeah it just like sprayed fat all over the inside of my gas grill and like the whole inside of my grill was on fire and and it was burnt and i was just so upset it's just so sad uh it still tasted really good but it was way more burnt than i wanted it to be i think that's what it comes down to with that reverse sear. You get a little more control over how the state comes to temperature. The grease fire on the grill doesn't happen with that. But yeah, it was a good weekend. I feel a little bit more rested than usual with the extra day. So I needed it.

I think everyone needs it as we kind of continue to move through this pandemic. Hopefully, we can have a few more long weekends, even though there are none actually on the schedule. Maybe it's a good use of the occasional vacation day as we move through the rest of 2020. Let's talk about our main topic today. It was inspired by the question I started asking myself, why did I miss on Shane Bieber as a prospect? What about him kept me from picking him up relatively cheaply in keeper and dynasty leagues when he came up a couple years ago? Why wasn't I all over him in redraft leagues last

year when he was going in that 120 to 140 range overall? A very affordable ADP, obviously a guy that was like a top 10 starting pitcher a season ago, and now he's unlocked this level that's even higher than that. And there's a lot to unpack here. I just remember when he got called up, I was hosting the Roto-Wire XM show with James Anderson. It was one of our Farm Friday episodes. We were talking about Bieber and we were talking about Joey Lucchese. And James was getting a little frustrated because a lot of players with future value 45, a lot of pitchers like that had been called up. And he said, I'm sick of answering questions about these guys who are all pretty much back-end starters. And one thing we discussed at the time was with Bieber,

it seemed like there was a good chance he'd be in the strike zone too much to get by against big league hitters without having an overwhelmingly high home run rate because if you looked at his profile in the minors you saw pretty good strikeout rates but not elite excellent walk rates and you thought all right the stuff based on the grades is okay good even the command is the carrying skill and that future value 45 means he's still more of a strike throwing back and starter. And the thing that I think I got most wrong in this one, you know, is probably using the 20 to 80 scale in a way that it's not really meant to be used. Like the 20 to 80 scale is great. And this is not at all, it never is about disparaging people who grade prospects. That's a really

difficult job. But I think we do have to pull back again and say, wait, what are they looking for? What are people who put scouting grades out there actually looking for? They're looking for big league contributors, and they're trying to grade them on how good of a regular big league player these guys are going to be. It's probably just too blunt of a tool for us to use when analyzing players from a fantasy perspective. So that's probably on us as fantasy players for saying, okay, we're using this tool in a way it's not really meant to be used. And now we have more information. We have more data. We're starting to get a better sense of how hard guys in the minor leagues hit the ball or how much spin they have on their pitches. And I think it's been nice to have that, but we're still not far enough along

to where we can completely build around that either. So my question for you is, is there something we are all doing wrong by using that particular tool as we try to figure out what players are going to become from a fantasy perspective? Yeah, I was thinking about, you know,

some of the obvious mistakes that you can undergo or fall into when you do something like look at Keith Law's rankings or Eric Langenhagen's rankings, prospects, is that players that, you you know like a back-end starter or a glove first shortstop or even someone who has enough of everything to be a really good contributor like say Jorge Polanco you know if if Eric Langenhagen finds Jorge Polanco, and by finds I guess means ranks him higher than everybody else, that would be great for the team signing Jorge Polanco. That would be great for him as a scout. He would have found a really good major league player.

I don't think Jorge Polanco is moving the needle in most dynasty leagues. Like he's literally my shortstop in my 20 team dynasty league, you know, and I'm in like, you know, fourth or fifth. It's like, you know, I,

that would be a place I would love to upgrade if I could, but it's okay for now, but it's just, you know, it's fantasy though. Everything is, the stakes are so much higher because you just, you need to beat,

nobody's not, no, most of us are not in 30 team leagues you know so right right there you can't you don't really want a below average major leaguer like very very likely that's not a useful player in fantasy um and so a back-end starter but then that kind of flips on itself like yeah like in fantasy sometimes a back-end starter who's pitching in Seattle this weekend is fine. You know what I mean? So the context matters so much more. I think Prospect Rankings, their idea is that I'm just trying to find a good ball player. I'm not going to think about how this ballplayer necessarily fits into this park because this ballplayer could be traded three times before he makes it to the major leagues.

And I'm not going to think about how he might steal bases because stealing bases is not really that valuable of a real-life skill. However, if you look at how stolen bases age in fantasy stolen bases are like one of the very number one things you need from your young players that like you kind of need to go young to get stolen bases and um and so all these things kind of come together in this weird way where it's like well players that have the speed might be undervalued by good prospect rankers because they're looking past the speed and wondering how it will help their game in other places.

And they might miss this or that about a park's context or something. But there are also, I think, maybe deeper concerns with how prospect value is attained right now that is also interesting. I mean, to you, like if I just said to you, like, what is the most important tool for a hitter and for a pitcher? Like, what would you say? I think it's hit tool for hitters, right? I think that's pretty clear. Like you want hit tool first for hitters. For pitchers, I think it's command. And I think I'm maybe leaning a little bit into the why I was wrong about Bieber here, but stuff versus command is a debate that you and I have a lot. I think we both really like pitchers with good stuff. They're gif-able. They have high ceilings. They do bring something to the table that we're looking for. They bring off-the-charts strikeout potential. We need that. That's a category we're chasing. Big league teams don't care as much how pitchers get guys out.

If you can get guys out consistently and you do it with pinpoint command and weak contact over strikeouts, I think teams will live with that. Would they prefer to get 12 Ks per nine from an ace? Sure. Why not? I mean, nothing bad could happen if you strike a guy out. But I think we tend to lean a little too aggressively sometimes on stuff we've seen it go wrong with josh james and and

dylan cease this year where the command just hasn't been there you need command for the stuff to work so if you said pick one pitching tool i think it's command that actually is the one tool that i'd want the most and if you'd looked at command back when Bieber was a prospect, I would imagine he was either at or near the top of the scouting leaderboard that Fangraphs has for that command grade because he had 55 present command and 70 future command. Now looking at the board right now, there's one player in all the minor leagues

that they have on their board right now with 70 future command. And he's a lefty who doesn't throw hard with two pitches in Pittsburgh's organization, Blake Wyman, he's not the next Shane Bieber. That's just not going to happen. There's only two pitches there, and they're not that good. So it's messed up,

because I think elite command is actually pretty rare. Yeah, well, the good news is, I asked Jeff Zerbin to send me, I know he's been looking at the relationship between the different tools and their outcomes in the major leagues for a while now. And on the pitching side, really the only one that he found much relationship

between the future value scores and the, and the outcomes was command control, um, uh, depending on how you, uh, you call it, but the, the, the, the skill is the same that we're looking for is, is the ability to put the ball where you want it. And, uh, you know, look at something like I've got in my last command and stuff report, uh, the command plus laggards, and there's just no, um, there's no unqualified win on here except for maybe tyler glass now and even he had a tough beginning of the season tony gonsolin's on this list but it's pretty early in his career christian javier these are the best names on this list do you want to hear and corbin burns those those are the the the uh the good outcomes and i have the

top 25 so it's four out of 25 and the and i guess lamette, so that's 4 out of 25. And I guess LeMet's on here, so 5 out of 25. 1 in 5 terrible command pitchers does something good with it. The rest are Sean Newcomb, Yusei Kikuchi, even Shohei Otani's on here right now. Michael Fulmer's got no command. Jordan Yamamoto, Kyle Wright, David Peterson, Patrick Sandoval, Joey Lucchese. These are a lot of players that have underperformed their stuff and um so i do think that command is interesting i think the the indians as an organization have shown that their command first what they will do

is take a guy and try to build josh tomlin out of him We're going to have five Josh Tomlins. One Josh Tomlin is going to turn into Shane Bieber. Because he's going to go to 94.4. If you look at the velocity right now, Bieber is at 94.4, and that's top 30 even if you reduce the minimum innings pitched. So basically top 30% of starting pitchers, Shane Bieber is suddenly in the top 30% of starting pitchers with velocity, which I don't think is anything

that anybody saw coming for him. So that's the part I think that makes him go from kind of like Tomlin-esque to Bieber is that he got up to 94.4 and he did kind of refine those pitches. But there are organizations like the indians who say hey like let's just make a factory of josh tomlins and uh the good outcomes will be shane bieber and the bad outcomes will be josh tomlin still pretty useful you know yeah and we

can base this on the fact that we looked at the different tools and we found that the command was actually the the the the tool that correlated the best with future success. And that may not always be picked up by your track man. So everyone else is track manning. And we're going to try and take it a step further. We're going to track man and edutronic and build your pitches and try to send you to gas camp and try to get, you know, two more ticks. But we're going to start with everybody having command because we just have seen that this is the fuzziest thing that is related to outcomes but you know um being able to the one thing that i do like about the way that fangraphs does it you know some people don't want to put a future value on a player but the way that they do it where they have a future value and then they have uh the components

um you know you can then do this kind of analysis that Jeff Zimmerman has done, where you take each tool and put it up against up against outcomes and say, therefore, this is how I'm going to weight it. So then I might surprise you. Hit tool did not do well. That's interesting. So I wonder why. Like, so what did well on the hitter side before we dig into hit tool power? Um, glove, I think glove is, that's like a real baseball thing, but still important. If you think about, we talked about Roddy Tillis how he had to be such a bat to make it, you know, um, because he he doesn't have any defensive value.

So Glove is going to matter for fantasy a little bit more for real life. But speed is in there too. And I think we had this on the podcast a little bit while back where we talked about how speed can affect your outcomes of the plate. Like they're going to play you in different places based on how fast you are. And if you're really slow, like Vogelbach, I'm guessing they can stand really far back, but Byron Buxton just made an infield hit out of a ground out to short. So that means that guy's got to come in further next

time. And that means more balls past him. So speed matters, but if you looked at just speed correlated to outcomes, I think you would find that a Baseball America speed tool evaluation may not mean much for the outcome of the player because there's so many speed-only guys. If you have stuff in command and you don't have that base level command, like 90 command plus has really shown up for this. Let's say you have 85 command plus, then you have to have Tyler Glass now stuff to make it work. Because you just have to blow by everybody. But if you have that shelf, then all of a sudden all the stuff means more. If you get up to 90 command plus, you all your stuff your stuff course score stuff means more um and i think it's the same way uh with hitting it's like um you need to have a

representative representative amount of speed so that you're not like getting into the game running into molasses right away right and once you have that base level amount of speed it matters a little bit less beyond that it's a theory but it's something you can test. It's something that people can look at. Yeah, I think this is all very interesting. I'm just unpacking a few different things that you said there and kind of going back to hit tool being less important than we think. There's a player we've talked about on this pod a couple of times as a prospect of the week. I think you've talked about him as someone that you and James Anderson actually sought out in Devil's Rejects as a prospect of the week. I think you've talked about him as someone you and James Anderson actually sought out

in Devil's Rejects as a prospect you really liked. And it's a guy that James is higher on than I think just about anybody I've ever seen with prospect rankings. People probably know who I'm talking about. It's Tyler Freeman, the shortstop prospect in the Cleveland organization. And the scouting grades there,

35 hit right now, future 60, game power, current 20, future 30, raw power, current 40, future 45, speed 55, current 50, future, these all according to fan graphs, 45 field, 50 future, and a 45, 45 arm for a future value of a 50. That to me, that profile scares me more thinking about what this research is telling us right like that's a that's a troubling profile not enough power not enough power for a guy who's hit tools not so far advanced already like you're banking on future development of a tool that's less important than we think for him to reach that future value 50 and again maybe this is just trying to fit analysis for fantasy into real life analysis

and it doesn't perfectly come together the way we want it to but that's a troubling development for tyler freeman i think and here's the other thing about all this the bieber thing players get better. Players change. Organizations find a weakness. They correct them, right? This is what Tyler Freeman is as a player who was scouted last year at high A as a 20-year-old. Age to level, I think that's still important to consider, and just how much more development there could still be. All of that matters, too. just how much more development there could still be. All of that matters too. But if you look at that profile and you think about some of the similar players in the big leagues, that's more David Fletcher or Luis Arias than a future star for us as a fantasy player. Well, I think this is a good time to segue

to something that one of our wonderful listeners did. Colin, I don't want to out your last name. That seems like aggressive. Colin sent in a thing where he took our secret sauce and he made Z-scores. And so he basically took player age, I think as just a limiting factor. I don't think I see it as a Z-score thing. But he has player age a, just a limiting factor. I don't think I see it as a Z score thing.

Uh, but, uh, but he has player age in there as a limiting factor and he's got average exit velocity, reach rate, um, outside contact rate and in zone contact rate. Um, and he's turned those into Z scores and, uh, created a player index out of it. And what I love about it is that Juan Soto is the number one young player in terms of these skills. I don't think there is another bat in baseball that I would bet on more. I think he's probably the number one dynasty player in the nation. And the reason I say that is just, I think that all the skills he's got are going to age wonderfully.

And he's basically a young Miguel Cabrera that has shown flashes of even being better than Miguel Cabrera at times, you know? So like the only, the only thing that's sort of missing is that Miguel was still playing third at this point. But other than that, like I'm all in on Juan Soto.

The thing that's funny is second place is luis arias there he is there's my guy and david fletcher uh shows up seventh so um i mean i think this is an argument for um some a little bit of clunkiness of z scoresscores because z-scores are basically taking these pieces of information and treating them as equal and i think that ariah's being right after soto kind of speaks to the chance that maybe soto hitting the ball 94 and for what it's worth i would have changed the average exit velocity component. I would probably have done barrels or hard hit rate or something instead, but that's okay. My point is, Luis Uribe hits the ball way softer than Soto. He does a lot of the other things as well as Soto, or even better in some cases in terms of the contact stuff.

But he doesn't hit the ball very hard. If that's the most important thing, then this ranking is going to be off. And so that's something that you, like, for example, in our stuff, quality of stuff metric, we like people, readers and other people have noticed that like it doesn't rate velocity well enough because we just basically put everything on

almost like Z-score-ish type footing and velocity needs to be up and beyond that so you really need to do something that's kind of dynamic that connects these things and says okay i'm going to take 10 parts of exit velocity and three parts of o swing and one part of o contact and then you know this and that and this um and And that's the secret sauce that would rule them all, I think. Right. It's been a one cup of brown sugar, but not one cup of vinegar and not one cup of molasses.

Like it's carefully weighting everything. If we're still making sauce, even with the Z scores, I think that's the key. So this is awesome that Colin took the time, put this together and sent it to us.

But yeah, even if you look at the tools, this is another way you can kind of say, okay, well, I think Tyler Freeman might be Luis Arias. Look at Luis Arias' tool grades. 45 current hit, future 60, 20 game power, future 30, more raw power, 45 and 45 there, 50 speed, so a little less speed than Freeman. 45 current field, 50 future field. A little less arm. 40 arm, future and current. It's very similar.

Are Arias and Freeman going to be useful in fantasy leagues? They're not right now. Luis Arias is not right. I'm holding on to him in one dynasty league, but I'm kind of staring at that spot. It's important for guys like Nico Horner and I and you know i don't

know who else i guess jay cronaworth you could have put on this list but then it kind of speaks to what you were talking about too is like what is teachable and what is not um and it seems to me that maybe adding power is easier than adding contact ability or adding ability to discern balls and strikes right right and a good example, I think, of that, let's take another middle infielder since we're kind of in that bucket right now. Anyway, think of a middle infielder who added a lot more power than we expected

as they moved into their mid and really just still mid-20s. Quetel Marte is that player, right? When he came up, flip the power and speed we've been seeing last season and this season, it's actually been kind of quiet for him this year. He's only got two homers and one steal. Very odd underperformer, but what Kettle Marte did

year over year, going back to 2016, he started nudging up the exit velo every year, and he would have had that blue ink, low power, not a bright future sort of look. If you go back to 2016 85.8 mile per hour average exit velocity x stats that sucked low k percentage kind of a low walk rate at the time that was an outlier season for him he's always had a pretty good eye at the plate so

like there are cases where we see players unlock that over time so I do think we can't completely discount the possibility that Luis Arias as a zero home run player right now in 2020 still might be a future 15 or possibly a 20 home run guy down the road. If he does a few things differently, or if he hits the weights and adds 15 or 20 pounds, and if he can find a way to attack pitches differently, right? Like some of the things that he does well might be some of the things that keep him from getting that power. If you're a good bad ball hitter, you're probably not going to hit for as much power,

especially if power is not a carrying tool for you in the first place. You're hitting pitches all over the field, but you're not really able to drive a lot of the pitches that you're able to hit. So there's a problem, I think, that does come with having excellent coverage. Like there's a downside to that tool if you're not a player who can kind of patiently wait for a pitch you can actually drive in the air. Yeah, look at Jeff McNeil's, you know, sophomore effort, right? He reaches a lot of pitches outside of the field and he it now looks a lot more like an arias than he did last year makes a lot of contact though but it's it's a very limited uh group yeah as a group of skills you know yeah it's so weird because if if mcneil's 2019 had never happened we

wouldn't be sitting here necessarily saying more power's coming there's going to be a big home run season the ball changed of, and then changed again, which, by the way, what ball are we using right now in 2020? I think it's 2018, but Rob Arthur had another piece saying that the ball-to-ball variance is worse than it's been in the StatCast era. Gross. Basically, you might get anywhere from a 2015 ball to a 2019 ball at this point it seems like cool that's awesome that's really cool that we just have a really easy to evaluate players in this situation

but i think it's a little bit you know it's a little it's a little bit command stuff right like i think that as much as i call myself a stuffist i i want there to be a base level of of command because i just think that better command leads toist, I want there to be a base level of command, because I just think that better command leads to better outcomes. I'm going to be chasing stuff, but better command leads to better outcomes, even on the level of Hugh Darvish. He really improved his command year over year better than almost anything else, and he's having the best season of his career. So as much as I am a stuffist, I want a base level of command to his career. So as much as I am a stuffist, I want a base level of command to get there.

And as much as I love chasing power, I think that I want a base level of, and I'm going to use strikeouts minus walks here instead of hit tool, because I think the thing that's funny about this finding that hit tool doesn't work, I think that it's a dual-edged sword because I still think that hit tool is the most important thing. I'm just not sure that we are either A, that great at evaluating it, B, that great at defining it, or C, that great at defining it in the stats.

And that makes it, I think, basically the biggest source of chaos when it comes to evaluating hitters. source of chaos when it comes to evaluating hitters um and i'm just going to kind of use like strikeouts minus walks or you know strikeouts and walks as a as my way in because i'm not sure that i can define it better than that i mean even look at castellanos who everyone says has an awesome hit tool he does not have the greatest strikeout to walk ratio right so i bet if you asked 10 different scouts how would you define hit tool how when you put a hit tool grade on a player what are you doing what are you looking for you would find slightly different explanations from the 10 if you stretch them all out you'd have some pretty extreme differences i think at both ends so i think part of it is the

subjective nature and part of it is just what's this scout looking for? What is this particular analyst looking for? Number scouting, it might provide more consistency, but it's going to leave a blind spot, as any one singular focus will. A lot of times, also, people are battling injury, and we don't necessarily see it in the numbers. Like, look at the Kyle Lewis situation, right? And we don't necessarily see it in the numbers. Like, look, the Kyle Lewis situation, right? You know, I think there were a lot of scouts saying this guy's good and his hit tool looks better than it looks in the stats.

And then, you know, but the projections. And I think, you know, people get mad about projections and stuff like that. I think it's actually pretty interesting to think about this because a lot of what we're arguing for, even within these scouting grade sauces, is a projections-based approach, right? lot of what we're arguing for even within these scouting grade sauces is a projections based approach right is that let's take these different scouting grades and like see which ones are most valuable and which ones we should wait the most and and use that to kind of project future performance and i know that people get mad about like oh tatis's projections when he first came up or this or that and yes tatis worked out really well but just put tatis in the perspective of all these other young players that came up this year i mean for every tatis there's a joe adele dylan carlson i'm not saying these guys are done what i'm saying is this is what it looks like to

hit the major leagues for the first time for the large part of young players right and that's where it's like on the one hand the 20 to 80 scale having most players sitting at the 40 45 range that's the truth most players are at the 40 or 45 range but we're looking for outliers and i think the hardest thing too is figuring out which players are going to figure it out fastest like figuring out the difference between tatis and adele and how quickly they reach their respective peaks that's one of the i think most difficult things about analyzing players you can watch them for a handful of games as prospects you could see the tools right a trained scout can see them even an untrained scout can see high-end tools on display or i guess at the

other end of the spectrum i think we can all spot a 20 grade runner when we see them but i don't know if anybody just watching from afar i think it would take people in the org who are around a player every day to know how quickly they are likely to make adjustments and figure things out there's kind of a problem solving grade that is not written up right right? It's intangible. It's part of the very vague makeup, I guess, if it appears at all. But I think it's really, really hard to discern that about a player you're watching when you're in the stands if you don't really know that player, if you haven't seen that player fail at something, even something small, right? Like the competitive drive, even within a range of people who are all extremely competitive, that range is a lot. And how people cope with failure. We've talked about all these

things at various points in the past. This is all part of it. This is part of how quickly players can improve and how much players can improve in some cases. There's some guys that they just think they're awesome already. They don't need to add another pitch. They don't need to go to gas camp. They don't need to do these things. And if they're not pushed by their respective organizations hard enough to actually make those changes, then those changes never happen. Yeah, so it's like you can sort for command on Fangraphs, and you can see that Mitch Keller has the third best, or he's rated 50-60.

So there's a, I say third best, there's a ton of 60 future value guys. But he's in that group where you'd say, oh, 50 present value command, 60 future value command. Maybe that means he figures it all out. But then you have to also watch Mitch Keller on the mound. And I think the more that I watch Mitch Keller on the mound, the more I'm concerned about his ability to turn it into success. And then you look at someone like Tristan McKenzie, who also is a 50 present value, 60 future value, came up, did not get great command scores in his first go. And I wouldn't put that in stone just yet

just because it was one start or something. Yeah, there's a lot of noise early on. I think I asked you a while back, in debuts especially, is there a noticeable drop in command for players feeling that extra pressure, right? I think we talked about it maybe when Nate Pearson came up that you could have good command throughout your time in the minors, feeling that extra pressure, right? I think we talked about it maybe when Nate Pearson came up

that you could have good command throughout your time in the minors, come up in debut and not be yourself. Either trying to execute something different or yeah, there's a lot of factors. There's a definitely like a one mile an hour velocity bump in your debut. And if there's a velocity bump like that,

I would assume that there is a command thing with that. And from what I heard from stats, they thought it stabilized around 200 pitches, which is about two starts. So maybe McKenzie only has, right now he has 94 command plus, maybe he only has about league average command. I think that's good enough given his stuff. Right, and that kind of goes back to the problem

with the scale of a being too blunt and it's not precise enough, right? We can't drill into those numbers enough as they stand. We have to look for other things to kind of guide us along and separate those two players in our evaluations when it'd be so easy to look at those grades and lump them together for, for fantasy purposes.

And again, that's not what those were for. So a lot more to discuss going forward, of course, with this kind of thing. And I think the one other guy I want to ask you about who fits this, doesn't have command, still has good stuff, but I don't know what to do if I have him in a Keeper or Dynasty League. I don't think I have him anywhere anymore.

But Forrest Whitley, I still see him getting traded and being a really good trade ship in Keeper and Dynasty League. I don't think I have him anywhere anymore, but Forrest Whitley. I still see him getting traded and being a really good trade ship in Keeper and Dynasty Leagues. I think we've got to be close to the point where our faith should be shaken at a minimum in Forrest Whitley living up to his lofty potential. Even if he's

really still dealing with more injuries than actual decline in skills, it's very problematic that he's not contributing in Houston right now, given their organizational needs and how deep they've had to go to find starters this season. Yeah, it's really hard to do this in this season without the minor leagues, but there are some times when you can watch how an organization treats its own guy and use that as a kind of insight into like how you should think about them.

Right. And in this year, given that who's who's pitched, who started for the Astros, Brandon Belak, Jose Orkady, Christian Javier from Reveldez. Jose Urquidy, Christian Javier. Frambois Valdez. They've all passed him. You know, and that sort of tells you as much as maybe even knowing what Whitley's stats are right now at the alternate site. But now looking back through the lens of what we're talking about and perhaps the one weakness in the Houston Astros approach, looking at Whitley and being like, ooh, 60 fastball, love it. 60 curveball, 60 changeup, love it, love it, love it.

35 command, 45 future command. Hmm. Yeah. And there's also health outcomes that are tied to this. Like Billy Bean says, I like strike throwers, I like command throwers. Theyers they've been proven he said this publicly they've been proven to stay healthy better and as far as we could like jeff and i looked into it and as far as we could like it seemed like he was right so anyway i don't want to turn everybody into commandos that would be a hard turn everybody being stuff is but i will say that this this season and just generally i'm have a softer ear for uh the importance of command how it can lead

to these other things command also strikes me uh command of the strike zone command of your stuff uh also strikes me as one of the softer like like one of the harder, fuzzier things like hit tool to put a grade on. If you think you can do that as a person, like you should be able to beat players, you know, to young players that you figured out that you like. And also that's opportunity for baseball in general. If they think they can evaluate hit tool and command better than anybody else, they should go get those guys because those are the hardest things to put just in the numbers and have StatCast spit out a list of players you need to acquire. Yeah, I'm right there with you. And I think the other takeaway here, just to kind of close the

book on Whitley, if I'm in a situation where I'm getting an offer and I can still get close to full value for him in a trade, I'm more inclined offer and I can still get close to full value for him in a trade, I'm more inclined now than ever to actually trade him away. Again, I saw him in one of my keeper leagues. He went to a non-contending team for Max Scherzer as an upgrade down the stretch, and I thought that was a pretty interesting trade. Prospects are for trading. I mean, that's my general take in Dynasty Leagues, man.

I mean, you want to hold on to those top five type prospects, but almost every other prospect is for trading. Yeah, especially with command issues like Forrest Whitley has shown. Now is the time to celebrate. Football is finally back, and DraftKings, the leader in one-day fantasy sports, has millions of reasons why you should be excited. To kick off the football season,

DraftKings is giving new users a free shot at a $1 million top prize with a total of $3 million up for grabs for this Thursday's football contest. Get in on Thursday night's single game showdown. You can do that by going to DraftKings and using the promo code Maze, M-A-Y-S, like Willie or like Robert, who hosts our NFL podcast. Draft six players from the season opener. Stay under the salary cap and see how your team stacks up against the competition. So head to the app now and start making it rain. Plus, new users who sign up today on DraftKings using the code MAYS will receive a free shot at the $1 million top prize with your first deposit.

Nothing adds to the sweat of watching the game like having a shot at a million dollar payday. Download the DraftKings app now and use the code having a shot at a million-dollar payday. Download the DraftKings app now and use the code MAYS, M-A-Y-S. For a limited time, new users can get a shot at $1 million and $3 million in total prizes. Don't miss this extra special week one bonus. Enter the code MAYS and get a free shot at the $1 million top prize with your first deposit. That's code M-A-Y-S only at DraftKings. Make it rain. Minimum $5 deposit. That's code M-A-Y-S, only at DraftKings. Make it rain. Minimum $5

deposit. Eligibility restrictions apply. See DraftKings.com for details. As mentioned before, Dylan Carlson sent to the alternate site on Tuesday. We'll talk about that in just a moment, but first, a quick word from another one of our sponsors. All right, we mentioned this earlier. Dylan Carlson was sent down by the Cardinals, optioned to the alternate site, which is really puzzling, not because of his own performance, but because the Cardinals are not getting a lot

from their outfield so far. In this shortened season, especially in their shortened season, with so many games left to play, I thought Dylan Carlson would have a chance to just play regularly all season long. I did not see a demotion coming. I wonder if this is about service time in the future, if they're going to keep him down for the rest of this season, keep him down for a little while

next year, and then try to extend that service time one year further into the future, even though they waited long enough to preserve the extra year from waiting this season to call him up. long enough to preserve the extra year from waiting this season to call him up i don't know i don't think that his performance on the field um pushes us to that cynical of a reading on the situation i mean he has a 25 wrc plus and uh has been below replacement by your nerd metrics um why did i why did i yell you um but anyway my point is my nerd metrics yours not mine no one thing that

one of the things that I feel like is one of the worst pieces I've ever written was a piece I wrote about Willie Calhoun being sent down being being like service time manipulation. And I just don't...

I think that perhaps his projections were pretty good. That was my point. His projections are good. He seems like he's ready. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Some of the concerns that they had with him have been borne out. He is bad defensively. They have had a hard time finding a place

to put him. In this case, I would say Carlson, they were just throwing him nothing but breaking balls early on, and the one nice thing was that Carlson did hit a couple balls pretty hard, and he did find his way to three barrels, and he did hit a couple balls pretty hard and he did find his way to three barrels and he did hit a slider for a home run so I don't think that the book that was out on him that you know throw him a bunch of breaking balls and he won't be able to hit him I don't think that's the case I don't think it's a long-term book I'm still very excited about Carlson I would I would look

to acquire him if the if your trade deadline hasn't passed I would look to acquire him if your trade deadline hasn't passed. I would look to acquire him in the offseason coming off this because I do think just reading between the lines of some of the things that he's done that he looks like a good hitter. He doesn't reach at a league average rate. He doesn't swing a lot. He's very patient, so he's going to have good walk rates. And he's now proven that he can hit sliders, and that was the book on him all the way coming up in the high minors,

so he's been hitting sliders for a while. So I just think it ended up being not the greatest beginning, and Tyler O'Neal's plate discipline looks good, and Bader is a good center field defender, and they're going to mix and match and figure out that outfield rather than run Carlson out there every day right now in the middle of a pennant race while he's failing. Yeah, Tyler O'Neal, it's kind of strange.

If you look at the underlying numbers he's putting together, he's doing things right with the plate skills. He's cut the K rate down. He's drawing more walks. That's exactly what you want Tyler O'Neal to do, and the results haven't been there yet. A 184-276-368 line through 27 games. I do think this is a little vote of confidence for him. season, long-term leagues, wherever it's possible. Because this is basically, if you look at what he did, it was 23 games. This is a slow start to a big league career. This is basically a September

call-up where the guy didn't do a lot of damage. That happens actually kind of a lot. And it doesn't mean that a guy won't come back the next year, lock down a regular role, and be the player we expect him to be all along. Mike Trout hit 220 with a 390 slugging

and basically the same kind of walk-in strikeout rates, basically, in his first attempt at the league. So it doesn't always just fall into your lap, but I think that it is a chance for other people to acquire him. Yeah, it's a good window at this point. We've got a question here from Michael, and it sort of ties into our first topic, so I wanted to throw this at you.

So much is written about deciding between fringy players and prospects in keeper and dynasty formats, but how do you choose keepers in a super shallow format or parse between a bunch of studs and formats with only a few keepers? Also curious, how much will 2020 stats factor into your decisions for next year? shallow format or parse between a bunch of studs and formats with only a few keepers also curious how much will 2020 stats factor into your decisions for next year my top 40 type players include trout bregman lindor jordan elvarez bieber bueller and darvish lindor bregman and elvarez are not

living up to their preseason ranks for a myriad of reasons, but how much does 2020 change your opinion? So this type of league, I think, is an eight-team league where they keep three. So the threshold for being a keeper in Michael's league is insanely high. And that's where it's like, it's the elite of the elite, right? In that league, you really would never hold on to the prospect who hasn't done it yet, which he doesn't really have within his particular group. But if you were also trying to include Wander Franco in that group, right, there's no chance that you would hold him in a league where you're keeping three and there's only eight teams.

Yeah. I mean, I think that basically the, the minute you have a question, you move that guy down, you know? And so you're done Alvarez's knees. I think that counts as a question, you move that guy down, you know? And so, Jordana Alvarez's knees, I think that counts as a question. Buehler and Darvish, given their up and down performances the last couple of years,

I'm going to throw that in as just question marks. I'm not necessarily saying that they won't be answered correctly, but if you're in an 18 league, you just eliminate the question marks, right? And once you winnow it down, I think Trout and Bieber are the two players in his group that just have the fewest question marks. I don't really have any question marks for them, right? The only question mark for Trout is how many more years, but I think in this kind of year, really just think about the next year or two. So Trout and Beaver in, and then it's up to you to kind of figure out which question marks are more important to you for Bregman, Lindor, and Alvarez. And given Alvarez won't be giving you

much positional value, I do think I would be choosing between Bregman and Lindor. And now you're asking, like, how much does it matter about this year? And, you know, I would just kind of fall back on things like steamer rest of season projections and projections in general because the trickiest thing is, and it's not going to be really easy to do just looking at it, even though we talk about the special sauce and all this stuff um the the thing that you need to do to value this season correctly is value the parts of this season that were more meaningful than the others right so you

shouldn't be valuing like a player slugging percentage or or ISO as much as you should be valuing his fly ball rate or his stack cast hard hit rate or his reach rate and his contact rates. So you really need to be valuing those prospect, not those prospects, those process stats best in order to get value out of, to understand what 2020 taught us about these players. So, I don't know, for Bregman and Lindor, you might be looking at something like, well, Bregman's underlying process stats were better than Lindor's in this season, but the health was worse. So, which one do I value higher? but the health was worse. So which one do I value higher?

Yeah, I think for me, it does drill into the how much do you value 2020. It's a little bit. It's less than a typical season. It's probably almost a little less than half as much as a typical season because it's less than half the length of a typical season. It's something that Todd Zola and I talked about a little bit on the Friday episode

of the Athletic Fantasy Baseball podcast. It matters. It's just a matter of not overcorrecting for it. I think this is going to be the hardest thing about playing fantasy baseball in 2021. If we get a normal season that starts on time and we know the rules of the season, like universal DH, we have all the variables. If we actually know what's going to happen, the most challenging thing is going to be not reading too much into a 60 game season i think about this exact same question imagine if you had christian yelich in there as one of your possible three keepers like are you somewhat considering the possibility of not holding him as one of your three or is he still a lock to be held it's only been 37 games obviously it's two-thirds of a season of a shortened season nine homers power still kind of there but he just

doesn't look himself at the plate he doesn't look like he knows what's coming next it looks like he's guessing a little more than usual or even a lot more than usual does that mean he's going to be in that same sort of position when 2021 gets here? Maybe he answers the question before the end of the season too, but I just wonder, if you had a guy ranked first on your board or top three on your board going into 2020, and he was presumably healthy all year and just turned in a 60-game clunker relative to those lofty expectations, does that bump him outside of the first round? Does it bump him outside of the top 25? How much could you possibly lower a guy like this

coming off of a season like the one he's having? Because Jelich is not swinging. He's not swinging more than ever before. He's swinging less than ever before. I mean, his career swing rate is 42%. He's at 36.5% right now. And, yes, that's come out of his reach rate, but just generally his contact rates have gone down with this patient,

so it hasn't been great. Also, at 28, you could see a reduction in strikeout rate. So you look at the rest of season projections, and they all have a higher strikeout rate than he's shown since his rookie season. Zips is 23.9 rest of season. Steamer is 22.3. His career strikeout rate is 21%. So we've already, yes, we've already learned a little bit about Christian Jelic, and it's in the not good category in terms of his strikeout rate. But if you look at his projected ISO and his projected power numbers, they're on track with what he's been doing the last three years. So we haven't learned that much about his power.

He's still hitting for power. We haven't learned that much to say that he's not going to hit for power in the future. We have learned something about his strikeout rate. He's probably not a 300-hitter next year as a projection. I'm looking at the Bat-X rest-of-season projections over at Fangraphs right now, just sorting by WOBA.

Among hitters, Trout, trout number one still by a wide margin 438 woba projected for the rest of the season mookie bets at 412 aaron judge is third at 400 then you got yelich and soto both at 395 acuna at 393 bellinger at 390 rendon stanton and freddie freeman rounding out the top 10 and then Bryce Harper, Justin Turner, Luke Voigt. There's your, there's your big surprise, right? He's mashing right now. Uh, Marcelo Zuna too, two guys that, you know, were affordable. Zuna cost more than Voigt, but two guys that could be big difference makers this year based on the way they've been swinging the bat so far. And what's, I think the reason Voight and Azun are on there

is because their stack cast is so good. I mean, that's what the Bat-X is tracking. It's got that stack cast juice under the hood. And I would say that that's a really good way to measure how healthy a person is and how well they're doing in season. I hope that it's as good season to season. I think so. I've made my bets on using StatCast as a tool. But another thing that's interesting is this crowd, this group has done this No Doubt

Leaders, the No Doubter Report created by the Data face they sent me they basically took home runs and looked at which home runs would be home runs in every park and called those no doubters Marcelo Zuna leads the league in no doubters with 7, he's tied with Trevor Story second is Pete Alonso tied with Luke Voigt, Trent Grisham and Mike Trout who is 6 and then Matt Chapman and Luis Robert and Fernando Tatis tied with Luke Voigt, Trent Grisham, and Mike Trout, who is six. And then Matt Chapman and Luis Robert and Fernando Tatis have five. I think it's an interesting way to look at it.

Those guys are still hitting for a lot of power. And even though guys like Chapman and Alonso have had some other problems bubble to the surface, I think you can believe in their power. George Springer, who seems injured and does not have a great year, he leads the league in no doubt a rate. 80% of his homers are no doubters. So I don't know that this is just an interesting sort of side tack, but I would say that, you know, rest of season projections right now are a good proxy for how much you should learn from the data so far, from the season so far. Right. You're looking just to see who are the outliers, who's fallen a bit, who's risen a bit, kind of get a sense for how much the projections think that what they've done so far is indicative of future performance.

So with Jelic, slight drop, but not a massive drop. With a guy like Voight, pretty big increase. I think the projections liked Voight quite a bit anyway. I think you and I talked about him pre-injury last year. He was outstanding, and then he had the abdominal injury in June. He was just a different player after that. So hopefully people heard that episode and have Luke Voigt everywhere because he's been great interesting that Alonzo was in there on that that no doubter thing too like Alonzo it wasn't about

me not liking him as a player it was me looking at him and saying he's great but other players at this position do something pretty similar at a lower price so I don't have him anywhere might end up with him a few places in 2021 though because i imagine that price is going to come down uh it's not so much about what he can do it's about not necessarily being a batting average boone not going to steal any bases and you know being picked in the second round so slightly different uh question but he could still fit into your team, and I believe in his power, and for what it's worth, I think he's going to hit for a better average going forward. I think he'll at

least be a 250 to 260 hitter kind of going forward. Yeah, and the strikeout rate is actually down slightly from last year, so it's not like he's falling apart with those plate skills. I think this is just within the ranges of how a player like Pete Alonso can work over any 40-game stretch, be on pace for a 40-home run season. So as you said, absolutely no doubts about the power at this point. If you're enjoying this show on a platform that allows you to rate it and review it, we'd really appreciate it if you take the time to do that. We thank everybody who's already given us a rating and review. If you don't already have a subscription to The Athletic,

you can get one for 40% off at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. We had a bunch of great emails again this week. Ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com if you'd like to ask us a question that we could address on a future episode. On Twitter, he's at Enoceros. I'm at Derek Van Ryper. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you Thursday. Thanks for listening.