Rates & Barrels - Buy-High and Buy-Low Trade Candidates

Episode Date: August 27, 2020

Michael Beller fills in for the vacationing DVR on this episode of Rates & Barrels. Beller and Eno dive into buy-high and buy-low trade candidates on this episode, but first they address walkouts across the league, as MLB players use their platforms to give voice to the call for racial justice.Rundown1:52 Eno and Beller on the Walkouts9:26 Taijuan Walker Traded to the Blue Jays12:15 The Effects of Cuts to Player Development Staffs17:34 Buy-Low Candidates, Led by Mike Yastrzemski20:23 Teoscar Hernandez and Cavan Biggio24:20 Ian Happ and Kyle Lewis28:51 Lance Lynn33:50 Who NOT to Buy Low: Christian Yelich, Francisco Lindor or Nolan Arenado?40:00 Javier Báez41:51 Eugenio Suárez43:39 Ketel Marte44:22 José García45:45 Gleyber Torres48:48 Chris Paddack and Luis Castillo52:22 Listener Questions: Sell Dylan Cease?54:31 What's up with Zach Davies?57:02 Trade Walker Buehler, Blake Snell, Kenta Maeda or Germán Márquez?59:52 Beer of the MonthFollow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow Beller on Twitter: @MBellere-mail: [e-mail] Get 40% off a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Interested in picking up a Dugout Mug? Go to dugoutmugs.com/TheAthletic and use promo code “MLB30" for 30% off your first purchase! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello everyone, welcome to Rates and Barrels here on The Athletic, it is Thursday, August 27th. If you're thinking to yourself, that's a similar baritone to what I'm used to hearing, but not exactly the same, you're right. This is Michael Beller. I am sitting in for the vacationing Derek Van Riper DVR on a very well-deserved time off here this weekend. So happy to jump in with a guy you know and love on Rates and Barrels, Eno Saris. Eno, what's going on today? Oh, man. I'm pretty tired to the bone.

And, you know, it's funny. You know, I'm tired for a funny reason. I've got these two puppies, and they're just adorable. But they're crapping all over the place. And they wake up, like today was 545. They either wake up in the middle of place and uh they wake up like today was 5 45 they either wake up in the middle of the night or they wake up early and it's just like having babies again and um you know i i'm laughing a little bit but i'm also you know i call my mom crying uh this last weekend just because with covid out here in california we can't do anything really uh indoors um and uh with the fires i haven't been able to go outside most of this week um

so i just feel really cooped up um and then these protests and and um the violence and like i don't want to like create a false equivalency um what i'm feeling is perhaps temporary um and maybe not on the scale of um of the injustice that people of color see in this country. But the reason I bring it up in the same sentence is that I think that we're all hurting. And I think that we all have some pain right now. And I think that we all have some pain right now. And the reason why these things are linked is there should be empathy born of that connection. The response I understand the least is there is no racism.

This guy deserved it. Blah, blah, blah. This other kid with the AK-47 was just doling out justice. I don't understand that at all. It seems inhuman to me. And perhaps they are just bots. I mean, there's more bots online than ever um because it it just negates that human connection which is like like you're hurting and i'm hurting and what can i do for you brother what can i do for you sister and how can we do something about this if i think i feel like if we just came from that beginning stance,

we could get further than we're getting. Sort of belittling the victims, belittling the issue. Talking about NBA players as wanting a night off like what what it is pretty ridiculous

I don't understand it and I know that like puppies and fires and COVID and economy I actually think that pales in comparison to a lifelong mantle of sort of just like what it is to be a person of color is to deal with everybody else's problems. Like deal with everybody else's problems like deal with everybody else's issues they're put upon you you know i mean like ah and i just i just think about you know my mother's husband who's who's black and all the things he's dealt with and two of my best friends that you know stanford educated black folks that

um have just had to deal with just stupid crap it's stupid crap from other people and it's stuff that they don't they don't they shouldn't have to deal with and for someone who hasn't dealt with that to say oh racism doesn't exist it's just mind-boggling, man. And like, you're just not listening to all these people. What are they all trying to tell you? Dom Smith is crying. You know, Dom Smith is crying, trying to tell you something. And you're going to turn away and say, nah, that doesn't exist. Nah, Dom Smith's a millionaire. You know what? Dom Smith is not a millionaire. and even if he does have more more more money than most black people that just means that he has more opportunity to say something more of a platform and it still affects this dude you know money in a lot of

places is like the defining thing right you get treated better with more money right we've got these rich black people that are still being treated poorly and they're still crying about it like they're still gotten to the point where they're crying about it that this is just such a weight on their shoulders uh to turn away uh is incomprehensible to me so uh we always have to make this awkward transition to baseball stuff. But I guess, you know, the NBA is going to resume and baseball is going to resume. And I hope that, you know, something comes out of this. And I hope it's just not more yelling into uh the abyss i guess

i'm right there with you you know it's very well said and you know willful ignorance has become something that is almost weaponized at this point and it's just really upsetting that it's something that has to be dealt with every day there There aren't even the right words for it. Nothing feels strong enough to wrap around everything that people of color have to deal with. That does not describe you and I. And we can sit here and say these things and empathize these things. And empathy is a hell of a starting point. It takes us a long way. but you just have to listen you have to listen to what these people are saying

because they're not making any of this up they don't want to be living in this world they don't choose this this is foisted upon them yeah century after century uh yeah uh yeah it's yeah it's centuries old um the weirdest thing is that like we're willing to throw away good things that are centuries old um and ignore the bad things that have been centuries old like like habeas corpus you know it was in the freakingging Magna Carta, dude. Yeah. Yeah. It's just bizarre. It is. It is. But as you said, it's good to see these teams and these players use the platforms that are available to them.

If it was not them, then a lot of these discussions would go undiscussed and completely unresolved. And it's unfair to a point that this has been put on athletes, but the way that we revere sports in this country, that's unfortunately the way it falls. And so big hats off to the NBA as a whole, the Milwaukee Bucks getting this started on Wednesday, the Milwaukee Brewers following this started on Wednesday, the Milwaukee Brewers following closely behind, and the six MLB teams that decided to take a seat on Wednesday, Jason Hayward, Dexter Fowler, Matt Kemp, Jack Flaherty, their teams played, but those four players chose to sit out. I know that Hayward at least was already in a lineup that the Cubs had

released, and when everything started happening, he asked out of the lineup, encouraged his teammates to continue to play, but said he needed to take the night off. So a courageous stand, and we have to hope at least that these are discussions that are moved forward, are advanced, and that there's some real solutions and that it's not just something we talk about for a week or two weeks or a month or two months, and then it is completely brushed aside. As you said, we do always have to make this awkward transition

because we still do have a job to do, and there was baseball played and baseball to be played, but we couldn't possibly have this show, have any show, in any real way, in any honest way, and not at least address that right up front. There was some news on Thursday morning, Taiwan Walker being traded to the Toronto Blue Jays. So that is something to keep an eye on. Can you explain exactly what the deal was with that trade?

I think what's interesting is that a lot of it looks it looks like good on the in terms of peripherals like the strikeout minus walk rate is okay uh but then you you kind of notice the bap is really low and you're kind of like is he actually any good and when i when i go down to the pitch level pitch type stuff what strict strikes that strikes me is that the only pitch of his that gets above average is the fastball and i guess if you were going to only do one, that would be, I guess, a decent one because you still throw that more than any other pitch type. But he's throwing the slider a lot more, and it gets like 10% whiffs. He's throwing the split finger a lot more, or he's throwing the split finger a a decent amount and it gets like 10 percent whiffs so um i actually i've seen some analysis to the contrary but to me he's actually a decent fastball

what else you got kind of guy um and i don't think he rises any further than a fifth starter in real baseball. And I guess that would make a streamer in most leagues. But something that I guess the Blue Jays needed. The Blue Jays kind of have their top guy in Ryu and maybe Pearson when he's healthy again. And then they have their meat and potatoes with Chase Anderson and Tanner Roark. So they just need to kind of shore up the back end and um walker might be their only move i mean mark shapiro is a guy that uh that keeps it close to the vest you know and basically

uh tries to hold on to any amount of team control that he can yeah yeah he absolutely has pretty much always has been over his entire front office career. And I'm with you there on where Tymon Walker slots in in a fantasy context. Probably just a streamer. Definitely a move that made sense for this Toronto team for where it stands. And kicking off what could be a somewhat active next, well, we got five days until the trade deadline. Trade deadline coming on Monday, August 31st. So a lot of teams are out there in the market. Hard to determine necessarily

who is going to be buyers, who is going to be sellers with the extra playoff teams this season. A lot of teams who would traditionally be more on that sell side could find themselves staring ahead at a month where they only need to go about 500, maybe a game or two over, and could get themselves into the postseason. So maybe they end up not necessarily being active buyers, but not quite the same active sellers that we expected them to be. Some other news, and this unfortunately takes us back to the bad side of things, that was coming around over the first few days of this week. Player development staffs being cut across Major League Baseball.

A few that jumped out at me. We heard from our own Sahadev Sharma, one of our Cubs beat writers, that the Cubs are going to be conducting some layoffs in that side, in the baseball ops side of their operation. Same for the Yankees. Coming from our Yankees beat writer, Lindsey Adler, I guess it felt as though this was always a possibility, going back to when the sport first shut down in March, just two weeks before what was supposed to be regular opening day.

To have it actually happen is a different thing entirely. Yeah, and it's kind of hard to read the tea leaves on this because it comes at a weird time. We're playing baseball. Things seem to be normalizing to some extent. It's kind of hard to read the tea leaves on this because it comes at a weird time. You know, we're playing baseball. Things seem to be normalizing to some extent. We thought maybe the furloughs that happened early, you know, a lot of that stuff was behind us. And these are some of these cuts are cuts that will happen after the season.

They're just sort of announcing them now. And, you know, this kind of there's the other side of this, which is that there might be they're going to be fewer minor league teams next year with the minor league contraction you could make an argument that you need fewer player development and scouting personnel however from what i've heard a lot of teams will just house more players at their instructional league compounds to make up for the loss of teams. Because they still, most teams, especially teams like the Yankees and the Phillies, want as many, this is rude, but like lottery tickets. They want as many young players as possible to see who can,

who will pan out to be, to be great major league players. And so you still need the scouts and you still need the player development. So what I read from this is perhaps even scarier for baseball is that this is nervousness about what the state of baseball will be in 2021. nervousness about what the state of baseball will be in 2021. This is nervousness about how much in stadium income teams will get. Will there be fans in the stadiums? And even if there are fans allowed in all stadiums, what will the economy look like and what will that allow for in terms of

attendance? So, you you know that's just another thing another thing to worry about i guess how many people could a team have at its instructional facility like realistically how many players can that house how many it's all if it starts to feel like an overcrowded overcrowded classroom at some point. Are there enough teachers to go around for these players? From what I heard, the Diamondbacks were maybe the most egregious. And I think someone said they had up to 75 players there once. Yeah, that seems like a lot.

75 players there once um yeah that seems like a lot i doubt that going forward uh 75 is most likely and i you know we're gonna see some attrition in within the ranks of minor league players where some minor league players just hang it up after this year either they didn't play all year um or uh they came to an end or family dynamics required that they get a better paying job i mean these jobs are so badly paying um that no one can be a minor league baseball player and support a family and so if through other problems in their own families, it requires that they actually make some money instead of $4,000 a year or whatever it is. We may lose some players.

But I do think that if you lose two or three, the Yankees and Phillies may lose two affiliates, which would nominally be 60 players. I still think that maybe 20 or 30 of those will find their way to Instructional League. All right. Let's take a look at some fantasy trade discussions that we can have here. We talk about the MLB trade deadline coming up in five days, expected to be somewhat active over these next five days over the weekend leading up to Monday the 31st.

But fantasy trade time is high as well. I've got a month left in the season, so this is the time certainly to strike. We talk all the time about buy low, sell high, the sort of obvious discussions that you're going to have when you are looking at trades. But I always think that there is an argument to be made for buy high players. We see these guys who break out, and it seems unlikely that they keep it going. But a lot of guys end up keeping it going. That's why they become breakout players rather than Chris Shelton of the 2020 season. And so even if they only keep it going at 85% or 90%, that's still someone who you are

very happy to have for the remainder of the season. So I thought we could talk about a few buy high guys, and we'll get into some buy low guys a little bit later. So I put together a list. You threw some guys in there. Who's someone that has had a good start this season that you go into a trade discussion knowing I'm buying him high, but I'm still willing to do that? Well, I think you had at the top of your list Mike Jastrzemski. One thing I do like about him is that his batted ball stats are relatively unchanged. He's barreling the ball about the same as last year. Maybe his exit velocity is down a little bit, but that's average exit velocity, which is not the best one to use.

If you look at his hard hit rate, which is how many balls he hits hard, it's 42%, and last year it was 43%. His expected slugging is about the same as last year. So, yeah, maybe he's not a 6'12 slugging guy. Maybe the bat last year. So, um, yeah, maybe he's not a six 12 slugging guy. Uh, maybe the batting average will come down a little bit, but with the new fences in San Francisco, uh, the DH creating more opportunities with runners on base, um, and just the, the, the general sense that he's in his peak and now being more patient and really waiting for his pitch. You know, I believe it. I believe in Mike Yastrzemski.

You know, with the caveat that like, I don't necessarily think that he's someone that is as attractive in Dynasty Leagues. Considering that he is 29 years old and took so long to get here. I have a feeling it may be a shortish peak, and you may only want him for another two years or so before it starts to fall off a little bit. You know, he actually just turned 30. Happy birthday, Mike Ostromsky, August 23rd. Happy birthday!

Happy birthday, Mike. I didn't just say something negative about your age. Happy birthday, Mike, from the crew here at Rates and Barrels on The Athletic. On an episode of the Athletic Fantasy Baseball podcast early on, I believe it was pre-shutdown, so we're talking sometime in February or early March, we had David Adler on from MLB.com, one of their stat cast gurus, and he was really singing Mike Ostromski's praises because of a lot of those stat cast numbers from 2019 that you mentioned.

And to see him carry that through here in 2020 does make me feel pretty good about him for the rest of this season. And then, as you said, maybe the next couple of years. So if you're looking to make a move in a redraft league and Micah Stramski feels like the sort of guy who whoever has him right now maybe feels like they're a little bit above their head so not only do I feel comfortable about where he goes from here but feels like an actually attainable guy right everyone wants Fernando Tatis on their team probably not super attainable at this point but Mike Rastramski feels like someone who you could go out there and and make a move for how about a couple of Tywon Walker's new teammates in Toronto who have started off this season very well?

Teoscar Hernandez and Kevin Biggio. Either one of those guys jump out to you as someone who can keep it going. Again, just to restate this, by keep it going, we're not expecting them to do what they've done to this point for the remainder of the season, but to be 80%, 85%, 90% of what they've been to this point for the remainder of the season, but to be 80, 85, 90% of what they've been to this point for the rest of the year. Yeah. I mean, the, the, with BGO, the whole deal was, um, that he just, um, uh, was like maybe extremely passive. Um, and, um, he's still he's still pretty passive in terms of um he's amazing at taking

definite balls he's amazing at not swinging at chases at chase balls uh but by not swinging at heart of the zone stuff um he actually costs himself a little bit still. You know, by stat cast, they have this sort of heart, shadow, chase, waste situation, and he's minus three runs in the heart and minus 14 in the shadow, and I think that's mostly because he takes so much there. He takes 29% of the time in the heart, the average is 27. So, you know, the

heart is where you do your damage. That said, I think he's made some progress there. And if you combine that with his elite ability to make the most out of his batted balls, he's very good at barreling the ball. He's very good at knowing when to steal despite just decent speed. at knowing when to steal despite just decent speed. You know, I believe in Biggio, and I think he's made the strides that he's kind of getting past the stuff I was worried about. Teoscar, I mean, I like him because he's a guy who hits the ball really hard, and I like guys who hit the ball really hard.

He's barreling at top 5% of the league. He's hitting the ball 94 hard and I like guys who hit the ball really hard. He's barreling at a top 5% of the league. He's hitting the ball 94.6 miles an hour. But I also think that, you know, remember Jonas Cespedes had this like stretch where, um, he was hitting the ball 95 miles an hour on average, and he just carried the Mets to the playoffs. And, um, it was an amazing stretch, but it was not sustainable. Like I just don't see an average exit velocity of 95 miles an hour is sustainable. It's there's like two guys who've ever done it. And they're always injured. I don't know if that's related. But you know, it doesn't something that doesn't seem to hold up in large samples. So to Oscar's problem is still

the same that he's has now now which is hits the ball really hard when he makes contact and he just doesn't make contact enough so what do i think of in like the context of this year i might make a tepid buy attempt um but um in the context of like a dynasty situation i would be especially if i wasn't going to necessarily win at all this year, I would be selling him pretty hard, I think. The point you make about Kevin Biggio is pretty interesting. Whenever you talk about guys who are too passive in the zone and who start to rectify that problem, frankly, I always think of Freddie Freeman, who, you know, became one of the most super aggressive hitters

on pitches in the zone a few years ago, and it coincided with his big breakout season. And I always wonder why more players don't do that. You know, working the count obviously has its charms and its virtues, but you want to attack and strike when you have that opportunity. And I feel like Freddie Freeman really provided the blueprint for why you want to do that and how to do that. And so I always like to see players who already have that play discipline skill established start to break down some of their

passiveness on pitches in the zone. So that does have me intrigued by Kevin Biggio. There are two other hitters that I want to talk about, and I think we have enough time to talk about them. I'll run through one guy really quick. Ian Happ seems to be having the season that the Cubs thought he could have. The Cubs thought he could have maybe a couple of years ago. His struggles, especially on strikeouts, have been well-documented. But the Cubs are having a weird year where, as a team, they are playing pretty well and doing well,

and it would take a disaster to strike for them to not make the playoffs at this point but you look up and down their offense and there's really no standout numbers the one guy who does stand out is Ian Happ at 287 422 564 6 homers in night or 110 excuse 117 played appearances 94 at bats um I think this is something that's real and you love the fact that he's going to be in the lineup for the Cubs every single day no matter where he's playing no matter if he's playing center if they have Albert Elmore out there and they push him over to a corner he's going to be playing uh for the Cubs every single day so he's someone who I definitely like 21 walks against 27 strikeouts to something that always seemed like he was going to be able to get under control it's nice to see that happening this year.

I want to throw it to you for Kyle Lewis. Of course, if you have something to say about Ian Happ, go ahead and say it. But Kyle Lewis, another guy who, you know. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, Lewis I had as my bold prediction rookie of the year. Yeah, exactly. Of course, like Lewis, Robert is probably still going to run away with it. But, you know, there's been some regression over in Chicago.

And Kyle Lewis keeps doing it. The batted ball stats say just the same thing they said last year, which he hits the ball hard. And the one difference between him and Teoscar Hernandez, which was, you know, you saw with Kyle Lewis, like, you had – I thought, like, Teoscar Hernandez was kind of a floor where we don't know how good he's going to be on defense and we don't know what his swing –, like his contact is going to be like, what his discipline, what his plate discipline is going to be like.

It could be bad. It could be kind of seven and 30 like Teoscar Hernandez. Right. And with all the knee surgeries, he could have been just a corner slash DH guy. However, now we're seeing what Kyle Lewis can look like when he's healthy. He's playing center field and he didn't get those reps when the knee was hurt. And so now that he's getting daily reps, I think we're seeing his true talent, plate discipline, and contact ability come through. Yeah, I mean, that September run to turn to this year, it really, I think, confirms it almost.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, walk rates take a little bit long on strikeout rates, but strikeout rates are in that zone now where you can start to believe them. And so I kind of believe that Lewis is distinctly a better player than Teoscar Hernandez. And even though he's similar in that, he hits the ball really hard. And the one thing that's interesting for me about Happ is that in the face of fewer fastballs than he's ever seen, he could have,

he could have folded, you know, because he's seeing more junk than he's ever seen. He has a natural whiffiness in his swing and it could have ended up as a, you know, like 2018 even, which was a decent year, but he's had a 36% strikeout rate.

And instead what he's done is just completely change his swing profile and go from swinging 50% of the time last year to 38% of the time. And along with it, that's gone down to a 22% O-swing. Both of those numbers are now positives, like real discipline. And he hasn't tanked his zone swing percentage to the point where he's too passive. So I really think this is like they're coming together. It could be a peak years or 26 is kind of the new peak by the numbers. And this could be his peak year.

But also he's showing the kind of skills that I think will allow him to be a successful player for five years or so, five, six years more, because he's playing center field. That gives him the opportunity to still be useful when he's in the corners. He's showing discipline. He's not reaching at pitches outside of the zone, which contact outside of the zone ages really badly. So Hap is, like Hap compared to Teoscar, I think, if you're talking dynasty, I would much rather buy high on Hap than Teoscar right now. You mentioned Kyle Lewis as your bold prediction AL Rookie of the Year candidate or AL Rookie of the Year pick.

I remember another one from that off the top of my head. You Darvish as the NL Cy Young, I believe. So it's looking pretty good with those two calls. Yu Darvish putting together one heck of a season for the Cubs this year. Let's move over to pitchers really quickly here. I did throw three guys into the list. Lance Lynn, Max Freed, Denelson Lemaitre. I think the problem, potentially, with buying Denelson Lemaitre and Max Freed high

is that it might not be realistic. Those are two guys who, no matter what league you played in, draft, auction, no matter who's in this league, they had their big backers. You had to be aggressive if you wanted Denelson Lament and Max Freed. So whoever has them in your league, loved them six months ago, two months ago, whatever, they still love them today. Lance Lynn feels like the sort of guy who is gettable. What interests me about him, and I would love to get your take on this, is how much of Texas's new home park is

playing to his advantage, and should we be concerned if he ends up getting traded in these next five days? That's an interesting point. He hasn't necessarily been a guy who suppresses home runs. You know, in the 2015, like sort of the juice ball era, he's, you know, you've seen the home runs go up for him, just like everybody else. His projections say he's going to give up more home runs in the future. And so a move, different move to another park could be there. And there's also the risk that I thought is that if you just look at Lance Lynn's fastballs, I wasn't necessarily all the way in on Lynn to begin the season. And one of the risks is if you look at his fastballs, he does way better on fastballs over 94. And then he does on fastballs under 94. And he averaged 94 to last year. And that was the most of his career. And I just thought

he's going to have he's going to slough off that a little bit well he did but he only dropped down to 936 and he's also added uh more breaking balls than he's ever thrown yes well yes more breaking balls than he's ever thrown before um and um they've been okay so uh maybe i wasn wasn't as positive about his breaking stuff as I should have been. And he's still throwing a lot of balls over 94. And he looks like a solid bet, even though that BABIP should regress and he might give up more homers in the future. I mean, what a late career turnaround that we've seen from Lancelin over the last few seasons.

And it's gotten to a point where it feels bettable that this is the sort of guy he is. I'm not worried. I wanted to ask you because I'm not worried. If he does end up getting traded, and it does feel like he's one of those needle-moving starting pitchers who potentially could be available. I believe if the Rangers did make him widely available, that they would be getting a ton of calls on him. Atlanta is a team that jumps to mind that maybe would be interested in acquiring Lance Lynn. The White Sox, another team that could potentially want to make a move like that.

So I wouldn't be worried about him making a move out of Texas and going elsewhere with what we've seen from him these last few seasons. Definitely feels like a guy who Major League teams and fantasy teams would be fine buying high, even if this does prove to be a peak in his 2020 season. Seems like somebody the Braves could really use. Right, right. I mean, with everything that's happened there. And Ian Anderson coming up and looking as good as he did against a still good but depleted Yankees lineup obviously is a nice thing for this Atlanta team. But, I mean, they could definitely, even with Ian Anderson there,

they need, they need, they have to be active in the starting pitcher market these next few days. Yeah, I thought maybe they'd get Tyjuan Walker. I have a piece coming out today about trade stuff. I thought maybe they'd get Tyjuan Walker and Kyle Seager as a package. But maybe it's better to break those apart because Kyle Seager is paid like, but maybe it's better to break those apart because Kyle Seager is paid like 19 million next year. And if you just focus on trading for him, you could talk about the money and give a lesser prospect for Seager because you're basically taking on 20 million dollars or whatever from the Mariners.

You're basically taking on $20 million or whatever from the Mariners. And then you finally get a league average third baseman in Atlanta where they are bottom of the pack. As much as I think Riley does have real power, the plate discipline and the defense has been terrible. Camargo swinging out his shoes. Put Seager and Lynn on the Braves, and you're talking about a World Series contender. Yeah, Kyle Seager, another guy who is having a great season

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and I almost don't really care what it, I am a let's get stars, and I almost don't really care what it's going to take me to get stars. It would be hard for me to pick one of these guys to not buy low if I had to pick one, and this feels almost blasphemous for me to say because for years now in my home league, which is long-term keeper, I have had Nolan Arenado, and my team has been named after him, rolling with Nolan. I think he'd be the one, though. I think he'd be the one though. I think he would be the one who I would pick if I'm not going to chase one of

these three guys. I think Nolan Arenado would be the guy. Yeah. You know, I was, I was trying to look at them through the lens of StatCast and you know, the reason that I think StatCast is so useful is that it's so immediate and directly measurable and process oriented versus outcome outcome-oriented to some extent. I mean, yes, they're still judging outcomes, but it's a little bit closer to process, I think. And, you know, the one thing that I saw with Arnauto

is he's still barreling the ball about as much as he normally does, and I kind of like the extreme, um, change in strikeout rate. Um, and I think that, um, perhaps he's, he's launching the ball a little bit too high in the air, but otherwise, um, I see most of his expected numbers as being better than his actual numbers. Um, actually that is not true. Uh, but I could see him kind of returning more to a hard hit and whiff profile um and still benefiting from what he's learned from this like right now he's got a seven percent strikeout rate like at the very least uh the batting average should go up um especially with with games at home so um i might be picking lindor uh here as the not-buy low.

You know, Yellich is still hitting the ball really hard. There's still a ton of red ink all over his StatCast page. Lindor, he's only hit the ball a week or once. We're talking about average EV, and that's not the greatest number. But also his barrel rate is the second worst of his career since his rookie season. And his hard hit rate is worse than it's been in the last three seasons. And strikeout rate, which I said earlier, is like something that's a fairly stable stat right now, is the worst of his career.

So it's just none of the metrics are telling me that something good is happening here. Is there anything to explain why this is happening to Francisco Lindor? No. I would assume that it has to do with pitch selection and perhaps how he's being pitched because one of the things that he realized when he got to the major leagues, one of the things he's talked about in the past

is that he could just pick basically high pitches. He could just pick pitches he could drive and hit them out. Right now he's seeing a ridiculously low amount of fastballs. His overall fastball rate is down to 45% from over 55% career. His four-seam rate is down to the lowest from over 55% career. His four seam rate is down to the lowest of his career. The sinker rate went from hovering around 20% to 12% this year. So there's an adjustment needs to be made. And it's not all breaking balls that he's getting. In fact, the biggest growth has been in change ups. So maybe he'll just he just hit some pitchers that had a bunch of change-ups. He's not that great against change-ups.

He can't lift the change-up that well, and he'll get back on track when he stops seeing change-ups. Here's the problem, though. If he's been seeing a lot of pitches with great change-ups, he's going to keep seeing them because the way the schedule is set up this year, you're just going to keep seeing the same guys over and over again. You know what's interesting about that, and we've talked about this. I produced our Cubs podcast and mentioned how they've you started this season

well and Sahad if Sharma has mentioned a few times on that show how you know we're caught in this weird position this year where in our brains we know that it's just 20 whatever baseball games and that in a normal year this would be like april 20th april 22nd and we would be like saying these things about these players but you know 162 games we have good reason to believe things are going to level out but we don't have that this year and so we are having these discussions that feel almost forced but we still have to have these discussions about guys like francisco lindor yeah and when you only see your division and then some of the national, like the other leagues version of your division,

you just don't have that diversity. Like that's, that's part of what you're talking about. Like the diversity in what you'll see, you know, he's seeing a lot of change ups. Normally he would run into some teams that had pitchers that don't have great change ups.

Cause there's not a lot of great change ups in in the league you know but what if he just keeps seeing lucas giolito you're gonna see a lot of change-ups yeah exactly so um you know so you know with the other guys uh with uh yelly and uh and arenado like i just i saw enough uh that i that i could grab onto that was positive and i just don't have uh something i can grab onto with lindor right now that's positive and i don't know that that's necessarily something that's really um a problem uh in terms of like buying low in a fantasy league in a dynasty league yeah yeah i would buy low on all three of them they're in the right age range they would be the kind of players i would give a godfather offer to right now if you are out of it and you can send someone lance lynn and um uh edwin diaz

and uh you know uh an old outfielder i don't one's not coming to brain right now but like just send him everything he needs to compete this year. That's the God of it. I'm Charlie Blackman. And you give me back Francisco Lindor? Or you give me back Nolan Arnauto? Yeah. Yeah, I'm doing that. How about a guy who is frequently mentioned alongside Francisco Lindor for obvious reasons, Javier Baez, a guy who has started this season very slow.

What's interesting with him is we see these swings with him a lot, right? And a lot of times the underlying numbers don't make sense to him hitting the ball as well as he does. But it's happened now year over year. The one thing that does concern me when you look at his numbers under the hood is the strikeout rate because it's one that he got under control. Early in his career, it seemed like something that could totally submarine him as a hitter, and he was just going to be a strikeout rate because it's one that he got under control right early in his career it seemed like something that could totally submarine him as a hitter and he was just going to be a strikeout guy who hit for decent power and had a really good glove wherever the Cubs decided to

play him he got it under control the last two seasons this year it's back up at 32 percent that is what jumps out at me the most but again there's just so many years where we've seen from him where you look at the underlying numbers and you would think this is a middling hitter at best with maybe some power and then he's contending for an MVP. I mean, he's cut his reach rate this year. However, it's a bad reach rate and it's a bad swinging strike rate. Like it just is, you know? And when you combine those two, you have a walk to strikeout ratio that puts a lot of pressure on his power and defense. And what ages terribly? Contact on pitches outside of the zone, defense, speed, a lot of the things his game is built on.

And I have to say this, I think the peak is gone. Wow. I would not do a godfather offer for Javi Baez in a dynasty league. I would be trying to maybe even sell him low. If I had a hint of rebuilding, he might be the first that I would put on the block to try and get, coax one of those big offers out of the league. In a redraft, some of that pressure is off me, and if I could get him at a good price, I would, but there are other names on this list that I like better as by-lows. Who is one of those names? I think that Cattell Marte or Eugenio

Suarez are guys that I really like. Eugenio, in particular, is still hitting the ball hard when he hits it. And, you know, I just think that, you know, with the barrel rate the way it is and with the expected slugging, 120, 130 points over where it is actually right now. I can ignore some of the other flaws and jump on board, expecting not necessarily a 280 average and 45 homers, you know, pace of that kind, but much better than what he's producing right now. It's a weird team this year.

I just expected so much more from that offense and he hasn't delivered at least in bottom line production. Mike Moustakis, of course, been in and out of the lineup, had a trip to the IL, but he hasn't quite delivered on a per game basis what you would expect from him. The Castellanos started out very hot, but it slowed down a little bit. I really thought this was going to be a year where the offense put things together and I still think it could. This is another one of those teams that 162-game season, I would still be buying the Reds. This year, it starts to get to a point where it's concerning. They just called up Jose Garcia, and it sounds like he's going to get to play mostly every day at shortstop.

Freddie Galvis will work in the lineup wherever they get him time. But it's an interesting team to watch for the rest of this year, almost with an eye on 2021, because so many of those guys are going to be back next season. Yeah. Yeah. Suarez, as a long-term acquisition, scares me a little bit more because of his age. Ketel Marte would be a little bit more attractive at 26.

There was a spike in barrel rate last year that Quetel Marte has not sustained this year. However, the expected batting average is still around 300. The expected slugging is still at 440. I still expect him to be a guy that next year you might project into sort of 2010, 300 type numbers, which is super valuable. I still think he's going to steal bases to some extent. And the batting average these days, league batting average is like 240 or something. So a 300 guy is definitely still worthwhile. Jose Garcia is really interesting.

I didn't think he was interesting. I didn't think he was ready. I didn't think they would call him up. And now they're just handing him the keys. So I don't know what to expect from him.

He had high A experience. Right. I do like the strikeout right down there at high a and the the power speed combo um and they're going to give him a shot and in the reds uh one of the things that i did for my piece today um was kind of look at um which are the biggest holes in baseball. And the Reds did show up at shortstop. Their shortstop situation was 29th in baseball by the depth charts. So this is an attempt to take their biggest weakness. I think it's their biggest weakness.

And throw some youth at it. So we'll see if that's enough for the Reds. It could be. I mean, there's still plenty of time with these eight teams making the playoffs. And they're so close together. Yeah, right? I mean, they're so, so, so stacked up, those last few teams that are currently in playoff position in both leagues, but I think especially in the NL.

Well, let's move this over to – well, actually, you know what? You put someone in here. I want to get your take on it. The only reason I didn't was because he's still sitting on the IL right now, but Gleyber Torres in here, another guy who – big target of mine in draft season, and I didn't end up with him in as many leagues as I wanted to. But what's your buy low case for him at this point of the year? So the book on him seems to be out

in terms of how he's being pitched. And what we're seeing right now is his response to that. And I actually think it's great to see this response. So the book now is, and it's a similar book to everybody else, no fastballs.

And it's a huge drop. From 2019, 35% four seams, 25% this year. 12% sinkers, 16% this year. And it's coming in the form of change-ups, curveballs, sliders. They're all up. Cutters. Everything has bend when it comes to Glibertores this year. And instead of focusing, I think, on the power,

even the EV or any of that, I'm instead focusing on the swing response to that. And the swing response to that has been to cut his swing rate from 52% to 42%, to cut his reach rate from 30% to 23%. So basically, he's laying off of the junk. And I see that 13% walk rate and the 19% strikeout rate, and I still see a really excellent young player, 23 years old.

I have no doubt the power is coming back. And I see this as part of an adjustment period that he is overcoming. We're seeing the adjustment happen. If we didn't see the adjustment and he instead had a 7% walk rate, his old reach and swing rates, a 25, 26, 27, 28% strikeout rate, all things that are possible for him. He had 27% strikeout rates in AAA in 2017. If he had that going on, I would say, let's wait until we see the adjustment. But he's already made the adjustment. we see the adjustment, but he's already made the adjustment.

So I think Gleyber Torres is another one of these guys that I would send a godfather offer for in a dynasty league. And I might even, in a redraft, take the risk of trying to acquire him in Wyze on the DL because everyone's DL is screwed.

Right, right. Gleyber Torres. If you've got room on the DL, man, like, I would... And especially if you're one of these H-to-H or Roto, where you're a contender, you're near the top, and the guy with Gleyber Torres is at the bottom, and he just needs to do something to get up. They just need to do something to get up into the middle of their fantasy league. Go send him your credible guy for Gleyber Torres,

your credible middle infielder for Glibert Torres, stash Glibert Torres, and then go to the wire and see if you can't tread water until Glibert Torres comes back. Yeah, investing in super talented 23-year-olds who already have a little bit of established track record is never a bad thing, right? That's the sort of guys that we don't exactly expect to grow on trees. So Glibert Torres, IL, no IL.

Definitely someone who feels like a good buy low candidate. Let's sit on at least one pitcher before we get out of here. I threw Chris Paddock in there and I threw Luis Castillo in there. We're not done just yet. We're going to get to some listener questions also after this. But Chris Paddock, Luis Castillo. I was really into Luis Castillo coming into the year. Obviously, it's been a pretty slow start.

I understood the concerns with Chris Paddock also coming into the year. I was fading those concerns. Another guy who was similar to what I just said about Torres. I felt like a guy with his pedigree and with his level of accomplishment already at such a young age in his rookie year, even with some of those concerns needing to be figured out in year two, thought he was someone who was worth betting on. Both of them have not been very good to this point.

Do either one of them interest you more as a buy-low pitcher? You know, what's interesting with Paddock, there's actually a change in stuff. I don't see that with Castillo, but with Paddock, he added a cutter and he improved his curveball. And those things are good. What happened, though, I think, is he got around side his fastball. And what you've seen is a drop in ride. He's got two plus inches less ride on his fastball this year. And what's happened is he's lost 30% of the whiffs on the fastball.

And the isolated slugging percentage is three times higher this year on the fastball. So even as the curveball got better, and that's great because the curveball needs to get better to get next to that change. And if he has cutter curve change, he's going to be better than if he's just fastball change. All those things are really good. And I think they're great for his long term. And I think in a long term capacity, I'm willing to buy him. But I also think that it might be hard

for him to add those two inches of ride back to his fastball in season. And so I think this may just be a season of transition for Paddock. I would be watching the ride on his fastball on Brooks baseball. Right now it's about an 8.8 and last year was 10 plus. I'd be 8.5. I think I'd be watching that.

And if it ticks up, then I'm much more interested in him. Castillo, you know, I think Castillo, you know, his slider isn't amazing. And,

and it relies more on command than stuff. But this year, Castillo still has good command of his changeup, his slider, his fastball. His command plus on everything is above average. And so I would say that that walk rate is coming down. The strikeout rate is great. And if the walk rate comes down and the BABIP comes down because he has a little bit better command, the ERA is coming down. The strikeout rate is great. And if the walk rate comes down and the Babbitt comes down because he has a little bit better command, the ERA will come down. And I see him as very useful right now with a 390 ERA

and a great strikeout rate and even more useful in the future. So Castillo, to me, is a clear buy low. Paddock, there's like a mechanical component that i'm kind of waiting on as much as i still like him long term yeah like him long term like that team long term like that team short term with everything that they've been able to put out on the field this season we've got some listener questions we're going to get to but first a quick word from our sponsors all right you know let's get to a couple of listener questions here first one uh comes from dan says hey derrick and you know sorry dan you're gonna have to settle for michael

and you know on this question uh what's your take on dylan cease his era has been elite thus far as walk rate is down pretty much everything else looks pretty bad k rate uh homer per nine uh harder per hard hit rate up, ground ball percentage down. Currently has him in a 14-team keeper league and is considering banking his performance thus far and just dropping him. Good call, or am I giving up enticing long-term upside?

I've been trying to sell Dylan Seas so hard in every league. Oh, my God. Oh, I did succeed in selling him in two leagues. And the third league, I'm still, still shopping. I'm pretty hard. If you can't, if you can't get anything for him, if you're in a league full of sharps, I suppose. But I also think that the central is one of the weakest divisions in terms of schedule. So, you know, throwing him out there against the Indians doesn't scare me. Throwing him out there against the Royals doesn't scare me.

Throwing him out there against the Pirates. Tigers. Tigers. So there's got to be, if you play the schedule game, I would just look at his starts and see if you can kind of be like, one, two, three, four, five, you know, and find out what the rest of his schedule looks like. If you can identify, you know, two of the next four starts that you'd start him,

then I think you just, he's a guy you keep on the bench. You know, they're definitely guys that i think are better than streamers and i don't have a like a name for them yet but they're kind of i need a name i know exactly where you're going you know like keep them on your bench play them sometimes don't drop them because they're better than your typical streamer situation uh but don't start them every time so that's what i think yeah maybe something with cease in the name could work for these guys something like that um all right question number two comes from nick uh what is zach davies doing so differently this year that has brought extra success well one reason that i like that trade uh the Padres was that Zach Davies, I like Zach Davies better than Eric Lauer.

And one of the things that he does have that he's always had and he still has this year that makes him more than the sum of his parts. And this year is kind of being an eye-opener for me, I think, in terms of the importance of command and the use of Command Plus. Just look at the Indians and what they've managed to do with pitchers that they drafted mostly for command and good secondaries. They've been able to pump up their fastball velocity a little bit with modern techniques. And Shane Bieber, of course, is the patron saint of this, going from 90-ish to 94-ish in the major leagues

and showing so much slider command that he's just so hard to hit. The opposite end is also true. Josh James, no command. Dylan Cease, no command. We're seeing how much it can take away from your stuff. So here are the command pluses for Davey's pitches this year. Two-seam fastball, 118. Change-up, 132.

Curveball, he's only thrown 10 of those but still 119 uh cut fastball 125 um so he is like above and beyond beyond when it comes to um command i think that's most of uh what makes him good the other stuff that makes him him good is a slight uptick recently in velocity. And I think a little bit of a winnowing in his pitch mix. The curve has never been an amazing pitch for him. I think focusing on cutter change sinker is the last piece that sticks out to me in terms of what's different this year. Happy we were able to get that question

and do an episode that did not include DVR. I feel like he doesn't need to be reliving that trade every single day of his life. We shoehorned Freddy Peralta into every other episode. All right, we got one more question here. This one coming from Andrew and he didn't even want DVR involved. He just says, my question for you,

you know, is which pitcher would you try to trade of this group of pitchers for a high level hitter? This is a stack rotation that Andrew's got Walker Bueller, Blake Snell, Kenta Maeda, and, and Herman Marquez.

He also has Shane Bieber, but doesn't plan on moving. Him says he's first or second in every pitching category in his Roto league, 12 teams, but bottom third in every hitting category, except for average. Yeah. Bueller,

Snell, Maeda, Marquez. He's looking to move one of those four. It doesn't want to move Bieber. Understandably. Yeah. So I think the Bueller is a hard one to move.

He, I don't know if he went on the DL, but he has a blister and he missed a start today and he just doesn't haveueller is a hard one to move. I don't know if he went on the DL, but he has a blister. He missed a start today, and he just doesn't have the numbers overall to want to use him, I think. Snell, for me, is like a top 20 pitcher, and I want to hold on to those if I've got them. So I'm looking at Maeda Marquez.

Of course, I think Marquez is the ideal one because he's just always going to have Coors in the back of his head. However, when you're trying to sell him, the person buying him is always going to have Coors in the back of their head. So maybe you could pair Maeda and Marquez and get two or get a hitter you really want that could make a real big impact. As much as I love Maeda, he's been good at contact management. He has a good wide pitch mix. He has a great command. Something occurs to me about the way the Dodgers used him. We all kind of want to be cynical and say that the Dodgers, you know, moved Maeda to the bullpen

in order to save money because of the incentive-laden contract that Maeda has. And certainly that's possible. They may have just used their depth to do so. However, when I look at his last two seasons in terms of velocity, I see a sloughing off of velocity that arrests once they move him to the bullpen. And considering that he's starting this year at 91.5 on the sinker, you know, the closer that gets to 90, the results will change. I'm not predicting, like, a falling apart for Kenta Maeda. But the projections being around a four ERA and a strikeout per inning is more replaceable than what he's currently putting up there. Perhaps sellable, too, after a couple of nice starts.

That was two starts ago, right, where he had that great, the no-hitter he took deep. So could be even more sellable after a couple of nice starts here for Kenta Maeda. Let's wrap this up here. You know, I'm excited about this, getting to participate in the, was it Beer of the Week or Beer of the Month, since we're at the end of the month here on August 27th?

What do we call this? Do we call it Beer of the Week or do we call it beer of the month? Well, it was born as beer of the week, but then we had prospect of the week and, uh, just got untenable. Um, so it's beer of the month. Um, and, uh, I got, uh, some beer in the mail from forest and Maine that, um'm really excited about that I had while I was up in the mountains. When I went up to Yosemite, I brought up this beer. And it's called, let me see, I'm getting the name here. Ghost Marius. Let me see here. Here it is. Ghost Marius.

Yes, Ghost Marius. And I had the Peach Ghost Marius, which is a 6% alcohol barrel-aged saison with fresh peaches, second-used plum, third-used cherries. And so the plums and cherries are more of an aftertaste since they were used before the peaches come through the most what was so amazing about it was it was so restrained i would say like you hear all those peaches and those fruits and you're like oh this is like a fruit smoothie hey that's not how it came across a saison in the the wild is uh just like a bubbly um it's not lager-esque because it has some funk to it uh but it's not an ipa it's distinctly not an ipa and if somebody is uh turned off on beer because they do not like ipas saisons are the things i point them to. And so this Ghost Marius was, I think, one of the five best beers I've ever had in my life.

Like, Forrest and Main really hit the ball out of the park with that one. And there are plenty of other, like, I also had some similar tart saisons from Birds Fly South in Greenville that I would also recommend. So that's Birds Fly South in South Carolina might be able to get that in the Carolinas and Forest and Mains in Pennsylvania might be able to get that up and down the coast a little bit. They're just really, really excellent tart saisons that are just completely different than IPA. So I just wanted to go in a different direction with the beer of the week this week. Beautiful. I love it. I'm actually going to go with an IPA. I got to give some love to a brewery my wife and I found toward the

beginning of COVID called Burning Bush. So I live in Chicago. We're here in Chicago and we live along the Chicago River outside the heart of the city, but still in the city on the northwest side and the river's beautiful. And we sort of one day when at the beginning of COVID couldn't really do a whole lot, you know, stumbled onto a trail that we didn't know. You know, we knew obviously the trails along the Chicago River are really, really well built out, but we didn't know that it was all the way as far north as it came. And so we just stumbled on this and having this lovely walk along the river and, you know, watching the ducks swim by and people kayaking. And it was great. And then we get to the end of the trail, and we start to turn around, and we're back out on normal streets.

And as we're turning around to go to the other end, to go across the river and then walk the trail to the other side, we walk past this brewery that we didn't know existed called Burning Bush and went in and started talking them up. And they had just opened in January, so obviously not the most ideal timing to open up anything. But yeah, still going strong, still in business. They have an IPA I love called Smooth Serpent that they describe as a refreshing blend of citrus notes and hot bitterness. So pretty standard IPA, but really nice, a really, really high quality IPA, not an overwhelming IPA also if you are, you know, not quite think that you, not an overwhelming IPA also if you are, you know, not quite think that you're not an IPA person.

Really nice. And I also just learned that the owners live in my hometown of Skokie, Illinois. So really just bringing it all together for me. So Burning Bush, you can definitely get it in Chicago. Check it out. It is a great place in Smooth Serpent, a really nice IPA. Like at some point, maybe patios will be open, and the patio there, does that look over Corner Park and the water there?

It doesn't quite look over it. I think that they are planning on building it out to a point where it could, but they're going to have to turn it around. Right now, it looks to the east, which looks away from the park and the river, so they're going to have to turn it to the west Towards the road. Yeah, turn it to the west. But it's a great place.

And we've been going back there. We've still been doing that walk and been going back there and picking up stuff, picking up growlers and bringing it home. Well, that's really fun too. I got a delivery of beer. I was going to try and use it for a beer of the week, but I'm not going to drink beer

at nine o'clock in the morning on Thursday. But I got a delivery of beer., but I, I'm not going to drink beer at nine o'clock in the morning on Thursday. So, uh, but I got a delivery of beer. Uh, one of them is Bodum. Oh yes. Love Bodum. Uh, which I think has actually been a beer of the month, uh, on this, on this podcast before. I believe it. Um, and I wasn't for me actually. I think, um, uh, uh, DVR and I talked about it once. So I'm excited to have my first. And then I also got 18th Street and Phase 3, which I've never had before and are supposedly the hype haze water. So I'm ready to try that. And next beer of the month, hey, I'll get right back on it. It'll be something hazy.

I promise you all. Well, that's great. That's a great way to wrap up this episode of Rates and Barrels. Thanks for letting me join you. You know, this was great. This was a lot of fun. DVR should go on vacation more often. Yeah. We should have had more fun at his expense. Just one Freddy Peralta joke. That was it. Right? I mean, we just weren't thinking about it, really. But maybe next time. If you're enjoying this on a platform that allows you to leave a rating and review, we would love that. We would greatly appreciate it.

And if you're not a subscriber to The Athletic, you can still get 40% off that first year if you go to theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. Spell out and, not an ampersand, rates and barrels. Get everything we do. All of Eno's articles, all of our baseball coverage,-wide team by team fantasy every single sport obviously there's a lot going on in the sports world and we've got that all covered for you at the athletic you can always reach us by email rates and barrels at the athletic.com again spell out the word and their

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Thanks for listening.