Rates & Barrels - Fernando Tatis Jr. is Awesome. Unwritten Rules are Stupid.

Episode Date: August 18, 2020

Eno and DVR discuss Fernando Tatis Jr.’s greatness despite a violation of ridiculous unwritten rules, the ongoing pursuit of steals from the waiver wire, the Tigers’ top pitching prospects, spin rate increases, and more. Rundown1:10 Fernando Tatis Jr. is Awesome. Unwritten Rules are Stupid.6:05 Looking for Speed in the Wake of More Injuries14:12 Concern About Yordan Alvarez’s Ongoing Knee Trouble18:22 Tigers Promote Skubal, Mize & Isaac Paredes27:02 Keeper Considerations: Alec Bohm & Casey Mize32:51 The Importance of Timing When Trading Away Great Players41:39 Trevor Bauer & How Pitcher Can Increase Spin Rate Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiperE-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

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 126. It is Tuesday, August 18th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris on this episode. We talk about the unwritten rules which were broken somehow by Fernando Tatis Jr. on Monday night. We're going to talk about cheap speed in the wake of a lot of injuries league-wide. It's not just pitchers. We're losing a lot of really good position players recently too. So trying to find stolen bases is even more difficult than usual because a lot of those primary sources are the guys going down with injuries. We're going to talk about the Tigers' decision to push up a few of their prospects, which obviously we've been hoping for on this podcast for a while, and we'll

talk about when to move on from very good and previously elite players in long-term leagues. It's a really tough decision to make, so if you're playing in a keeper or dynasty league and you're getting some trade offers, this is the sort of time you have to start thinking about how you're going to handle all those situations. You know, welcome back from your little trip. And, you know, I'm thinking about what's happening in baseball, and it's kind of like momentarily refreshing in that it's normal stuff that we talk about. But this isn't the normal thing that I want to talk about.

This is stupid. Fernando Tatis Jr. hit a grand slam in a 3-0 count when the Padres were up seven on the Rangers. And Chris Woodward didn't like it. And Fernando Tatis Jr.'s own manager, Jace Tingler, didn't stand up for him. And I think that's the thing that's actually bothering me the most as we start talking about it,

is that Tingler is on the side that is wrong. His own manager is wrong. Why are we still doing this? Why is this still part of the conversation? Well, first, Jace Tingler deserves a little...

... Because that was stupid. I think that mostly he should have just done things behind closed doors if he felt it was a learning moment. In fact, I think there's probably other better learning moments out there because there's got to be a moment when he took a defensive playoff. He definitely still has some defensive issues. There's other ways you know, a defensive playoff, you know, he definitely still has some defensive issues. There's other ways you could have made the point that, hey, I want you working hard every day. And just because you're super exciting and everyone's paying attention to you and you're

like basically the lead guy in the MVP race right now, like I need you to still work every day. And I think that's probably the energy that was behind Tingler's version of it, which is trying to be a teacher and realizing that maybe there would be ramifications for other players on his own team if he did something like that, like Manny Machado was thrown at. But that whole

thing is just so stupid. Why do we have to have these unwritten rules that if someone violates them, now they get thrown at? Being thrown at seems much worse. know throwing a ball at a person at 90 miles an hour seems much worse to me than running up the score especially when like the Mets lost an eight run lead this year like a seven run lead in the eighth is not unassailable and then on top of that all these guys need to make their money dude they need to make their money, dude. They need to make their money. And in arbitration, it's going to matter a lot more that you hit a homer, a four-run homer, than it is that you took a 3-0 pitch and made your team happy.

There are times when you can look out for yourself and not really hurt the team. And maybe Tatis was doing that. And I don't think i should really hold it against him it's going to be something that'll go into uh his his career the numbers for his career so uh tingler i think should have sort of next questioned that one um and uh found a way to get through that answer without implicating his player um and then maybe behind the scenes said, listen, like, you know, miss a sign or ignore a sign.

That doesn't make me happy, but I can live with it. But you also see with the Machado thing that, like, that's the sort of result that can come from kind of running up the score, quote unquote. So I just want you to know that like that that's the calculus you're making. It may not be right, but that's sort of what happens. So, you know, like I think that's what I would have done instead of, you know, joining in with all the like and making baseball look bad, you know, instead of talking about how exciting Fernando Tatis is, we're talking about

old, you know, kind of conservative minded, possibly racially tinged nonsense. So not a great moment. It could have been a way better moment for baseball. Yeah, the conversation should be focused on the fact that Fernando Tatis Jr. is the NL MVP if the season ends today. He probably edges out Mookie Betts for that. He passed Mike Trout for the season lead in home runs with 11. He's edges out Mookie Betts for that. He passed Mike Trout for the season leading home runs with 11. He's chipped in five steals already this season,

and he's just crushing the ball. Everything I was worried about with Fernando Tatis Jr. has been debunked through the 24 games we've seen so far this season. He's kind of picked up right where he left off as a rookie and even improved a little bit in some ways. So I'm hoping, 35 years old, I'm hoping that I live to see the day where a player can hit a home run up seven and everyone's like, cool, the guy hit a home run. That's what you're supposed to do. It's not a big deal. These are pros. They're playing for money. As you said, arbitration, taking 3-0 up seven doesn't get you paid in arbitration either from the most basic economic angle. But aside from any of that, this is just a completely dumb situation. And we're talking about one of the best players in the game in literally the worst possible way, the collective we, not you and I. I think we appreciate Fernando Tatis Jr. for the player that he is. But as I hinted at the top, we are losing a lot of exciting young players. I mean, Ronald Acuna is down right now with a wrist injury. Beau Bichette suffered a knee injury over the weekend. To begin the season,

it was mostly pitchers that we were seeing piling up the injuries, but it's been a rough year on the injury front all around at this point. Bichette's injury sounds like it might keep him out a lot longer than Acuna's. Acuna's more of the 10-day minimum variety, at least at this point. His teammate Ozzy Albies went on the IL about a week ago now. So the Braves are playing really shorthanded. As you start scrambling to the waiver wire to find steals are you finding anyone or anything that looks like a useful pickup who's been ignored to this point or is just now starting to get an opportunity to

play one guy that i think is bubbling to the top and doing a good job of kind of aggressively making sure that his playing time that he'll continue to play is Tim Lopes. He's a 26 year old outfielder. He's short, you know, has a spotty track record for power and may not have increased it much this year. He's still hitting 52% of the balls on the ground, but he's got speed. And the other thing that he's got that's kind of cool is versatility. So far this year and last year, he's played second base, left field, and right field, and in the minors, he played some third base. So a good sort of plug-and-play guy that he has also more power than someone, like tony kemp who may hit the ball weaker than anybody in baseball um and so uh you know he'll run into a couple homers and the

playing time is there speed is so tough right now that there really isn't a great option if you want the robust playing time. I mean, I guess Rymel Tapia otherwise seems to be taking some of Sam Hilliard's. Rymel Tapia and Matt Kemp somehow in a weird Voltron situation are taking Sam Hilliard's job right now. And so that could be a different way you could go. But sort the waiver wire for stolen bases, and it's a pretty dire situation. Yeah, one guy who's actually available

and playing a little bit more because of the Acuna absence directly is Ender Enciarte. And I think if it weren't for that injury, Enciarte might be losing his roster spot. I mean, this is bad. He is struggling in a big way to begin this season. Even defensively, too.

He's made some gaps. Yeah, and that's usually where he adds a lot of his value. So it's like you look at this guy. He's got a 36 WRC plus through 21 games. It's just been empty at the plate. And you look at the way they could bring up prospects there too christian pache is there drew waters is there i mean you could easily call up one of those guys and just say you know what we're going to play one of the kids because we're going to get

plus defense from pache we might get a lot more from the bat than what we've been getting from inciarte who you know in his defense is often a slightly below average hitter and maybe this is just a really long slump to begin the season but i'm worried about him i've got him a lot of places because i thought he was a good source of 20 plus steals when we were looking at a full season i thought he was going to be a nice bounce back candidate this year in this braves outfield. And instead, I think he's really trying to keep his hold on that opportunity at this point. Yeah, he already represents a type of player that does not get a lot of money, does not have a lot of trade value, which is a defensive

first player. If you are in deep leagues, I just would like to send you a box of beer and say, I'm sorry, because you're looking at, you know, my sort of rubric for deep leagues is like being owned in zero or 1% of Yahoo leagues. And Andres Jimenez is already in 8%. And with he's on the Mets and with Robinson Cano coming back yes Cano is going to DH sometimes but I think Pete Alonso is fine and will be fine and is on is going to go on a tear soon and Dominic Smith has proven himself maybe with the Jeff McNeil injury you have some time with with Smith in the in left field but it looks like Nem like McNeil's already back in the lineup. So I think that Andres Jimenez's time is going to be relatively back up and may even be sent down because Luis Guillorme is like their kind of jack of all trades defensive guy.

So that leaves injury replacements in other places, like Andrew Velasquez is the injury replacement in Baltimore, has some speed. And then Santiago Espinel is the injury replacement in Toronto, has a little bit of speed. And then Magnus Sierra was an injury replacement in Florida and has a ton of speed. He would actually be the

fastest player in baseball, depending on how you cut it up. I mean, all those guys have speed. The problem is for Velazquez is Iglesias is going to be back soon. He's in and out of the lineup, and Velazquez himself is not that young and also does not have that much upside. Espinal is just totally a replacement. he may hit 230 for you i think magnus magnus era could hit for the best batting average but now uh with most people back i think he's a fourth outfielder uh and not in the mix for any time at dh um so i think you know with um somebody coming back today who was it that was coming back today? Dickerson?

Dickerson. Corey Dickerson is going to be in the lineup today, and that kind of erases most of Magnera Sierra's time. So I don't know what I would do except for maybe put in a real tepid bid for Espinal and hope that he steals you three bases, and then you can drop him. Yeah, it's really difficult to find steals on the wire right now. Anybody who shows a glimmer of upside in that category has been scooped up,

and Jimenez is a good example of that. I talked about him as a guy that I kind of missed a few weeks ago, and he's been great in that regard, but still not doing much else. I mean, you're really just kind of patching that one category and taking a bit of a hit across the board in the other ones i think you do have to keep a really close eye on just depth chart fluctuations and maybe consider streaming right we talked about the angels as a team i think last week that have been horrible controlling the running game the d-backs have had some trouble in that regard as well and that might

actually be the better way to go just finding those kind of fringy especially outfield bats a lot of times that are available on the wire who match up against teams that just don't stop opposing teams from running as much yeah um then you have to like kind of do that tricky analysis of like are they is this sort of part-time player gonna play in this series but but if that part-time player has speed and they're going up against a team that gives up speed, gives up stolen bases, then maybe the team that's playing that player

will be like, oh yeah, let's get Lopes in here for this because we're facing a team that's going to let him steal. So I think that the teams are probably on that a little bit and probably not a number one thought process for them because stolen bases are so far behind right now and so not a target for people. But I'm sure there's teams that look for an edge in any possible way. There are definitely people that are just trying to engineer the crap out of every single

lineup. And so they would know how many stone bases the other team gives up. So let's talk about a couple other injury related matters. Jordan Alvarez came back from the IL prior to the weekend and is now sitting for the third consecutive day on Tuesday because of lingering soreness in his knee, it just makes me worry about him in the long term. You come back from a lengthy absence. I know this was a problem that came up early in spring training for him as well. I worry that he's just going to deal with this for his entire career. We're talking about a guy in his early 20s who's mostly a dh already there's not really a lot more the astros can do to protect him in that regard what do you do with alvarez if you

have him in a keeper or a dynasty league you just ride this out for the rest of the season hope he's able to kind of deal with it and continue to mash the way he did last year or do you say this is actually very bad he's got a great track record so far. I'm going to sort of cash him in and make a big deal now. I think with his age, you stick with it. We put the injury prone tag on players too early. Injury projections are terrible, noisy, not very effective. And even with a player that now we can say is injury prone, like Giancarlo Stanton, there were a lot of really great years in his peak. And so I think jumping off board would be premature here.

It does make me think, you know, they, the Astros got Alvarez for a reliever rental to the Dodgers. I don't even remember exactly who it was, but Josh Fields. Yeah, was. No, Josh Fields, yeah. That's it, Josh Fields. And it wasn't even a long-term asset for the Dodgers.

And you wonder if the pairing of the defensive value, maybe there was, we all thought, oh, well, they gave him up because he didn't think he could play a position for them. And they're an NL team. Maybe that's part of it. But maybe also part of it was the medical. So that part is a little bit worrisome. But in a year where every little

injury is going to take you away from the game for an outsized portion, so like a three-week or four-week injury is a half-season injury, I think that we're going to maybe over rate, um, how bad an injury was and how injury opponent player is based on, um, how short the season is this year. When we talk about next year, um, let's say he only ends up with a hundred a PA this year because of, uh, injury and the COVID, um, you know, I don't think that, that um that should have an outsized effect on our projections going forward is basically what i'm saying so i think he'd still be a top asset uh in keeper leagues next year frustrating but something to uh to deal with and to hold on to for now i mean i just got him back in the rotowire online championship in the week before the weekend he homered his first

game back i thought all right you're like yeah it was worth it i got this right this was injury optimism that was handled correctly got a nice discount he's gonna come up he's gonna mash for the rest of the season i basically got a second rounder five or six rounds later than i should have all is well and three days in a row not in the lineup and in a weekly league like that you're really hoping it's not one of those things it's just up and you know like he's healthy he's in the lineup this week oh we had to rest him for two games you're like ah i gambled on him for the start of the week even though he was out on monday because they've got two in colorado on wednesday and thursday i just couldn't pass up on that even if he sat monday i thought he might come back tuesday he might get me three out of four to begin the week and two are at coors how could i possibly pass on that and uh at least the newest

note from allison footer is that the results were negative on an mri so i don't know what that means it's like they can't find an actual problem there's no knee there's no knee just missing parts yeah who was it r.a dickie didn't even have a ucl wait where's the ucl we're kind of like is that good like is that is that preferred like should we not be we can't tear it if you don't have it right should we just take this thing out would that would that make things easier on a brighter note we kind of wondered for a few weeks if the Tigers would be aggressive with their pitching prospects, especially. And they're going to bring up two. Tariq Skubal is going to make his debut on Tuesday. And Casey Mize, I believe,

is set to make his debut on Wednesday. Isaac Paredes came up with them as well. He's one of their top position player prospects. And with this group, I think all along we've said, it's important to make sure you get the development right. Because with pitching, you're fighting against the current of dealing with injuries anyway. They're going to be the foundation of the next great Tigers team. So to have those guys working at the alternate site all season and not really getting a chance to fail at the big league level

and not having to work on things against top-level competition, that was probably going to be a major downturn in their development or at least a setback as they tried to get those guys ready. So I think this is the right call, especially because they're pitching prospects. And I know with Scooble, he's not fully stretched out. He's probably only going to throw like 60 or 65 pitches in his debut on Tuesday night. So he'll go again this weekend, and then he'll hit waivers over the weekend in a lot of leagues where he wasn't held on to.

So I think the strikeout potential alone probably makes him the guy that I'm more interested in than Casey Mize. But both of these guys have the talent to be mixed league viable immediately. That's why Scouble was a stash, and that's why Mize was even a late round consideration for a lot of people. Yeah. I mean, should we just throw in that question real quick? Yeah. There was a mailbag question that came in before this call-up happened, and it came

from Adam. He wrote, recently, James Anderson of Rotowire provided some reasons on why he thinks Matt Manning is actually the better prospect and pitcher compared to Casey Mize. However, he thinks that popular baseball outlets rank Mize higher, which has created the misconception. So he wanted to know if we have spin rate, command, and velocity data to compare those two pitchers. We could throw Scooble in there, too. I mean, Scooble, Manning, Mize. It's worth talking about all three, really. Who do you think will have a better real life and fantasy career?

Yeah, I think it's a really interesting question because, you know, Manning, like what do you value the most when you have limited information? So Manning has the best fastball compared to Mize, but Scooble probably has the best fastball of the group. And I think that goes with the fan graphs rankings are 65 fastball for Scooble, 55 for Mize, 60 for Manning. So right there, you're like, okay, if fastball is the most important thing, then Scooble is the big guy. Okay, so now you look at spin. Scooble has the best spin over Mize, and then Manning is last when it comes to spin. So that is important. However, you know, I just wrote a piece today about spin efficiency. There's a possibility that Manning or Mize is more efficient with their spin than Scooble. But I also have, you know,

a growing respect for some of the developmental aspects of the pitching program in Detroit. And so I doubt that they have terrible spin efficiency. Now you look at how many pitches they have. Casey Mize has the fewest pitches. Van Graaffs only has a grade on two of his pitches, the fastball and the slider. Matt Manning has a 60 fastball, a 60 curveball, and a 50-55 change. So I would say that he has probably the best depth of arsenal. However, Mize has the best command out of all of them. Scooble has a 65 fastball, 50-55 slider, 40-45 curveball, 45-50 changeup. Wide arsenal, widest arsenal, but the grades on each of them are not as good. And he is the worst command of the group.

I would say that command is important because he has, Scooble has 40-45 command according to fan graphs. And what I found from command plus was that if you have under a certain threshold 90 Command Plus, it's very unlikely that you're going to be a starting pitcher. So if Scooble comes up and you see a lot of wildness, I think I wouldn't put a ton of money on him. But to my, I think to what I like is Scooble's upside of the three, um, and Manning's floor of the three and Mize fits in there somewhere in between. Um, and your time to pick up Scooble is probably over. Uh, I also wanted to throw in one thing I heard from a scout. Uh, he saw, uh, He saw Scooble sitting 95-97, which is higher than Fangraphs has. They had him 90-94, and they still gave him a 65 on the fastball.

And he says that if Scooble can get a 50 change, Fangraphs has Scooble having a 45-50 change. He says, the scout said, if he can get a 50 change, he's a top 10 pitcher in the game. And he's head and shoulders ahead of Casey Mize. That's one eye. One eye, no, it's two eyes, but it's one person's eyes on the situation. But I think it kind of jives with what I'm saying.

And I think that you have a similar sort of thing going on in San Diego where I think that Luis Patino's ceiling is higher than Mackenzie Gore's, but Mackenzie Gore's floor is higher because he has that command. So Gore is maybe slightly more likely to be a starting pitcher, but if you say they are all starting pitchers, I want Patino. So if you tell me that Scoble can be a starting pitcher but if you say they are all starting pitchers i want patino so if you tell me that school can be a starting pitcher i may want him over manning and mice so it's pretty crazy to see all of this and unpack it all and i think it kind of comes back to the zach gallon

conversation we've had a few times too it's like if you have command and you've got three or four pitches like that goes a really long way even if all those pitches are just kind of like average or slightly above average too like that can unlock a lot of interesting possibilities i do think the thing that was mentioned in the email though like pedigree and where a player was drafted i think has more of an influence on rankings than it should. If you remove where Casey Mize was drafted, where Matt Manning was drafted, and where Tariq Scooble was drafted, and you look at all these guys and say,

okay, just watch these guys pitch and write a scouting report not knowing who they are, I do think you'd get more evaluators who are like the one you spoke to who look at Scooblele and say this is the best of the three this guy has the absolute best stuff of these three guys yeah yeah i mean it might be worth mentioning that scoobles had tj and the two haven't um but uh owning pitching is i think of a short-term game so i don't you know there's a very few pitchers that have the longevity of a Justin Verlander. You mostly just want a guy to be good for the next three, four, five years.

I think it's not super relevant if they have had TJ or not in the short run. Yeah, that's a good point as well. Hopefully that helps as you're trying to hash out your bids for the Tigers pitching prospects where available, of course. I know in some deeper mixed leagues, they've just been held the entire time. Obviously, those guys are all very much rostered in keeper and dynasty formats. Interest rates have hit record lows, which means it's a great time to refinance your student loans and see if you can lower your monthly payment. your student loans and see if you can lower your monthly payment. If you've been making the same monthly payment on your student loans for the last couple of years, odds are you could reduce

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you refinance your student loan at earnest.com slash ratesandbarrels. Not available in all states. Visit earnest.com slash ratesandbarrels for more details, terms, and conditions apply. All right. We're at that point in the season where if you're in a keeper league or a dynasty league, even though it's only a few weeks, you're still thinking about whether or not you're going for it this year or possibly building for the future. And we'd received a question.

This is also from Adam. Two great questions from him this week where he was looking at Alec Boehm and Casey Mize as possible keepers. His scenario is a keep eight in a 12-team 5x5 league. And it's basically a question of, are those guys already close enough to being top 96 players, if you think of how many players are kept, to actually justify planning on keeping them when you have alternatives? In Adam's case, guys like Jose Abreu and George Springer, who are still producing at a very high level, but could be nearing their respective declines. That's at least the concern that you're thinking about as you have players who are reaching that stage of their career.

So let's just focus on Boehm and Mize for a second. How good are they right now? How good are they going to be in 2021? And maybe you can look at 2022. I think even in a keeper league like that, you're only looking at two, three years max at a time before you're kind of getting too far ahead. Unless you're talking about the elite of the elite sort of prospects.

Yeah. In my hometown, um, 12 team, it is dynasty, but you know, with the, you you know sort of the smaller your league is and the smaller your list of keepers the more their stardom matters and the more people you know players become fungible and all you need to do is kind of work your way up the wire so that

you are keeping eight superstars basically you know what i mean you know like win every trade consolidate and try to get it down to to eight of the best stars in the game but i do think on are keeping eight superstars, basically. You know what I mean? You know, like win every trade, consolidate, and try to get it down to eight of the best stars in the game. But I do think on the fringes, something like a Jose Abreu versus Alec Baum decision does make sense because Baum's ceiling may be better. Abreu's floor is getting lower with every year. And there's not that much positional value from Abreu.

I'm going to leave the pitcher out of the discussion because I just it takes a lot for me to keep a pitcher you know and so demonstrated track record does matter and sometimes age matters a little bit less if you think you've got a pitcher that has good command and a wide arsenal they can overcome a lot of that fastball drop-off. So I would rather have demonstrated results from a pitcher. I'd rather not keep a pitcher through all the struggle bunny phase. There just seems so many pitchers come up, and even as someone like a Nate Pearson is blowing the doors off the league, we're seeing that the command is borderline

and that it kind of goes, it waxes and wanes and it causes problems in some of his games. So I think I would leave the pitcher part out of a keep eight discussion. If you keep your pitcher or two and keep eight, it should just be, you know, guys in the prime who have demonstrated that they can do it. But Baum versus Abreu, I think it's something to think about. You know, at the end of the season, Bomb still has like a 14% strikeout rate and has improved his power. That combination of a great strikeout rate and power and the age, 24, is a big deal. And the number that sticks out for me when it comes to, there's two numbers that stick out for me,

30 and 34. 30 is when you start declining, but you could be good enough that your decline phase is fine, right? So you could still be good for a couple more years like Josh Donaldson. But Jose Abreu is now 33. And Josh Donaldson was eminently available in my league at 34, despite how excellent he is when he's in the game. And I think that just around 33 and 34, there's a cliff there to trade value, and that will occur even in an 18 league. So I wouldn't be surprised if Abreu has little or no trade value in season this year and almost none at all going into next season

which means bomb would be the player to keep right you think about the adp in 2020 for a bray you was right around pick 75 he probably falls a couple of rounds off that he becomes pretty fringy he becomes the sort of guy you're getting with one of your first picks after you hold your eight players if you want to get them back and you're not that worried about finding an alternative right that skill set that type of aging player is often available in drafts once you move especially around yeah those people want people don't want to be a year too late to move away from a player so i think in that case boom versus abreu i mean that's a great toss-up because we probably are at the point

where Abreu is clearly in decline. Boehm might not show us a ton this year. He might show us a little. He might show us a good strikeout rate and some really good hard hit numbers, but it might not come with a great slash line yet, so you're really just kind of betting on the future. But I think he's a future middle third of the order bat,

and he's going to be in a hitter-friendly park. Would not surprise me at all if we say, who's the better player in 2021, Abreu or Baum? They could push, but Baum could just be better by next year. That's at least a possibility at this point, and that's with a lot of things to like about Abreu, having a better lineup around him and having a good floor as we kind of hinted at before. Yeah. And then by year two, you know, in 2022, you're talking about almost, it's like 60, 70, 80% likely the bone is better than a brain. Yeah. But with my eyes, I think you're right. I'm more on the side of a key to keep eight scenario. I want to see a guy actually prove he can be kind of elite to hold a pitcher

in a keep eight scenario. I'd rather go year to year there. I think you can find young pitching that can take that step forward in just about every year. I'm going through a similar thing in a deeper league than that in the Roto-Wire Dynasty Invitational. Actually, I had Jose Abreu trade him away as part of a big deal last year, kind of thinking forward about it. And I've got Chris Bryant, who's a bit younger than Abreu still. Is showing warts in recent years? I think it says a lot about a player's floor when

you can do what Chris Bryant did last year and we're still nitpicking. 31 homers a year ago, hit.282 with a.382 OBP. There's long-term concerns about the health of his shoulder. He's probably going to be a good player in the league eight years from now. That's actually a reasonably

safe bet. About as safe of a bet as you can find in terms of middle of the order run production. At 36, Chris Bryant's still going to be a good big leaguer. Maybe. I'm saying, think about where we draft Ryan Braun braun right now like a oh yeah yeah okay good team like probably hits fifth or sixth plays almost every day like

that that kind of player like eight years from now that's what he's going to be on the way there he's going to be a better player at most turns but i think my question that i'm wrestling with and i think i even started wrestling with this a bit last year, is what's the sweet spot? If you know you're not going to win a Dynasty League in the next year or two, should you be looking to unload your previously elite and still very good players who have a lot to offer?

Because two years from now, he might be an Evan Longoria type fantasy player, right? Yes. That's not a very valuable player in a deep dynasty league, in the trade market, even though it's a helpful player in a 20-team mixed league. Yeah, and a year from now, he may not have the same trade value he has now. So there is that sort of, what am I going to get from him on the market?

And I think exactly that kind of player at 28 and 29, that's time to move him. And I guess there's also the question of what you would want in return. And, you know, I think you're getting offered right now a little bit of the poo-poo platter where it's three or four okay guys and i don't know um there is a there is a part of major league baseball when they make trades where they take the poopoo platter you know they want to have more bites at the apple right and so they say i'll take four grade b prospects over a grade a prospect and you know a grade d prospect right a grade D prospect, right? Because maybe I can play or develop these guys into A prospects or it's just four chances to get an A out of these Bs, right?

But I've also seen people in my leagues, Tom Trudeau for one, have a great success targeting like a top five prospect and just blowing the person out of the water with an offer. I think after winning a league one year, Tom Trudeau traded Paul Goldschmidt, Corey Kluber, and this was before the injuries. It was like Paul Goldschmidt two years ago, plus Corey Kluber, plus somebody else,

just for Ronald Acuna Jr., who was in the minor leagues. Pretty smart trade though. In retrospect, looks amazing. And I think if you do those enough, maybe getting your next superstar is worth more. And I think superstars generally do come from top prospects. That's one difference that's very interesting. You can find a lot of credible major leaguers in the bargain bin, but when it comes to the superstars, just look around at the superstars. Most of those guys were top five prospects. No, they were. I think if you got ahead of anybody and someone,

it was because you only had rookie ball performances to look at. I think that's where it gets really tricky, right? One of the players that was thrown in this offer, which has included four players now, Luis Matos, right? You get guys like that as one of three or four players you're being offered, and you have to really make a tough decision based on limited data on a guy who was 17, played a handful of games at rookie ball, looked really good in those handful of games.

Yeah. But you're totally glued to the scouting report. You're dependent on everybody else's observations. And players like that, as exciting as they can be, they can fall apart real easily. Yes. One of the things that we'll do, and I guess if someone in the league is listening, they'd probably be like, oh, yeah, we knew you'd do that.

One of the things that we do with James Anderson and I in this Devils Rejects League is we just pick up those guys. They're on the wire. They're there because everybody knows they're so far away, and we don't know if we can trust their rookie ball stats yet, and they're not listed in anybody's top 100 um you know usually and um so you know i don't know that that has a lot of trade value this is the type of player like we picked up um benyamin bailey i'll just read some of the guys we've got because this is exactly who you're talking about luis mato so they're interesting prospects to pick up and that's what you know you should pick them up in your leagues if you're rebuilding, but I don't know you shouldn't trade for them.

So we have Briner Bonacci, shortstop in Boston, Benjamin Bailey, outfielder in Chicago, Isaiah Green, Hedbert Perez, an outfielder in Milwaukee. These are all guys that you can tell when you're in the CBS system they have the lowercase letters for their names. The unlisted players. Yeah. Yes. Yes. They're not in the system yet. So I think Luis Matos is the same way and awesome pickup, not so awesome to really consider the trade value of. I think it's more something that you can find on the wire. That's why, and I don't want to offend anybody who gave you this offer. There are other better

pieces in the offer and there's potential pieces that would make it better but a piece like that would set off alarms for me as a poo-poo platter right well the yeah so the problem with the offer and i don't know if tom listens to the show i've rejected the trade already oh it's from tom trudeau oh yeah yeah it was Tom. He's the king of poo-poo platters. If you're listening, Tom. Well, it's because he's got a ton of prospects. The benefit of being as good at Dynasty League as Tom is is that you have a ton of prospects to trade.

So I'm just looking at it and I'm saying, you know, okay, so Hunter Bishop was in there. Matos was in there. Nate Lowe, basically a big league ready guy that should play soon jim and choi is not hitting how much longer the ray is going to wait there before they make the move like nate low is a nice player but i'm looking at all this and then think luis camposano is the other player who's added that's a one catcher dynasty league also i don't want to trade for catchers ever yeah exactly they just break And you can get them on the wire in this league.

This is a 20-team dynasty league. I mean, I picked up Will Smith off the wire, I think, early last season, maybe late the year before. It wasn't long before he came up. So it's kind of easy to find catchers in this league since everybody sort of punts it. And I don't know. There's nothing in there that really stood out to me and said, yeah, I got to make this deal. And frankly, I think when you're trading away someone who's 27 or 28 years old, who's still an early round guy, basically a top 50 player in redrafts, you need something that puts it over the top. You need a top 10 prospect or you need a big league ready guy. If Gavin Lux was the headliner of this offer,

I don't think Tom has Lux in this particular league, right? But if it's Lux plus a couple guys, then you can move on it. But I just, I didn't see enough there to justify it. But I do think the idea of trading Bryant away, his window is opening up because he played this from the start looking to 2021. So for him to add Bryant now and to get rid of some prospects, I totally understand why he's doing that. I think he's still looking for some pitching too. I'm probably three years away. So trading Chris Bryant two or three years from now is not going

to be a good idea. That's why I'm entertaining the offer right now. And I'm just not convinced that he's gonna be playing at such a high level that I'm not better off just getting young talent now while I still can get it. Dugout Mugs is a company that was started in a college baseball dugout, hence the name Dugout Mugs. They take the barrel of a baseball bat and turn it into a 12-ounce mug. Plus, the mugs are licensed by Major League Baseball, so you can have your favorite team logo laser engraved onto a Birchwood baseball bat barrel mug. They're perfect for the big game to put on display or to be the life of the party, and they make a great gift for any

baseball fan. Go to dugoutmugs.com slash theathletic and use the promo code MLB30 for 30% off your first purchase. That's dugoutmugs.com slash theathletic and code MLB30. Alright, you know, we've got one more great question. This one comes from Derek.

It's not me emailing the mailbag. It came from a different person named Derek. He wants to know, we've got one more great question. This one comes from Derek. It's not me emailing the mailbag. It came from a different person named Derek. He wants to know, could you possibly discuss what is likely behind Trevor Bauer's increased spin rate? And what are the chances that he's not achieving it with Pintar? And if there's anyone else you've seen who's also juiced up the spin rate this season, he's curious if there's any other explanation that could satisfy how that's been happening. Yeah, I mean, I can tell you what the research was at Driveline where Bauer trains and is part of the process there and that you know driveline told me they could not find any way to increase to reliably increase spin rate increases we've seen on players point about the Astros and Garrett Cole

and some of the spin rate increases we've seen on players coming to the Astros. So that's Exhibit 2. Exhibit 3 is that he did an entire HBO special that had like a good five-minute part of it that was about how everybody's using substances to improve their spin rate and how that improves performance and that baseball was doing nothing about it. So I think if you connect the dots, it's pretty obvious what's going on.

I think he basically just got to the point where he's fed up with baseball not doing anything about it. And it is inherently unfair to have a rule that you don't enforce. It's just it's unfair because you'll have some people that come up and are very rule based and say, I'm not going to do that. It's against the rules. But then you have this uneven enforcement where it just never comes up unless someone is egregious about it or if people don't like him. Brendan Donnelly got caught once, and it was because he was a replacement player. He came across the picket lines. I'm sure of it because he was kind of fingered by a former teammate of his, and then they found out he was doctoring the ball.

I think probably 75% of baseball is doctoring the ball. And I've seen pitchers doctor their, like put the pine tar on their glove before a start in front of me. I mean, you see stains on the hats all the time and stuff too. Everybody. It's very obvious. Your whole hand got stuck to his hat the other day. His hand got stuck to his hat.

Okay, if you're going to do it, you just got to be more subtle about it. Your fingers can't get stuck to your hat. That's when you're just going too far. Yeah, definitely. You generally just won't see large increases year to year like the one that Bauer has undergone.

So it's not something that you can really watch out for that much. It's much more likely that you'll see a huge increase in spin efficiency. That's one of the ways that a pitcher will get a ride out of their ball that they didn't get before. So like Jalen beaks right now is pretty much dealing he's going to be part of the solution going forward in the raised bullpen that they're having some issues beaks is going to get more uh high profile i don't think necessarily saves uh but maybe some holds and it was part of this piece that i did today about spin efficiency

where you can change um the way you place fingers, the way the ball comes off your hand, your cues, your grips. You can change that to get more out of the spin you already have. That is the kind of name of the game in Tampa right now, is they'll get guys who are not spin efficient, like this recent acquisition that we were just talking about before, Edgar Garcia, who had to be released to put Alec Baum on the 40 man. He ends up showing up in tampa

guess what he has an 84 spin rate uh spin efficiency and the average in tampa is around 90 so if they can get the spin efficiency up on edgar garcia's fastball then you'll see more ride and you'll see a picture where people like why did the did the Phillies let this guy go? The race kind of seemed like the king of that. So it is much more normal to see someone improve their spin efficiency because that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to get more out of the spin they've got. In terms of adding spin, there's one reliable way and that's why most of baseball is doing it. It's just funny too to see Bauer's pitch usage chart where the four seamer goes from 38.5% last year to over 50% this year when most pitchers are going the other way. They're going more to the secondary stuff. He's done that with less velo. A lot more spin but less velo. Short answer, is this

sustainable? Is this who Bauer is now? I mean not the the crazy low ratios, but is he back to being the guy that he was in that one really kind of standout elite season that he had in Cleveland? Yeah. I think that there's no way to know because it has to do with enforcement of the issue, right? It has to do with how baseball would enforce it. I think if baseball doesn't do anything to enforce it,

and baseball said before this year, we're going to try and force it. Well, what have they done? Nothing. Has there been a single person, even the egregious ones? We've seen catchers with pine tar so bad that there's just like this brown... We've seen Yadier Molina had a ball stuck to his chest

because of this pine tar on his chest. had a ball stuck to his chest because of this pine tar on his chest. You know, I've seen infielders put pine tar in their glove. And I asked around, I was like, why did I just see an infielder put pine tar in his glove? And they said they'll put it on the ball before they throw it around, which is not so much a thing you can do right now. But, you know, everybody's in on the game is my point. You know, like the infielders are putting on their gloves,

the catchers are putting it on their catching gear, and everybody that throws the ball to the pitcher at some point is putting some pine tar on it for the pitcher. So if Bayfield doesn't do anything about it, yes, I think Bauer will continue to do this. I want to make sure that I don't know this. You know, I obviously talk to Bauer sometimes. I have not asked him about this.

I do not want to ask him about this. I don't think it's that important for him to admit it publicly because of the ubiquity of this across baseball. Yeah, this is MLB's problem. Right, this is MLB's problem. He's tried to tell us about it. He tried to tell MLB about it. He tried to tell the media about it.

He told the media, and then he went out and did it, and all wrote about it like he's trying to like put it out there and then he was just like fine you know fine fine if you're not gonna do anything about it fine it's like watch this watch what i can do with this these are these are all guesses on my part and i don't know these things uh they've never come out of bauer's mouth in that way. But I'm connecting a lot of the dots that are there to be connected. Yeah, and I think that holds up for pretty much any pitcher who's showing that much increase in spin. What you'll usually find, I think, is that they've joined a new staff, right? And they come to a new pitching staff.

And it's not the pitching coach. I don't want to put it on the pitching coach. But what you do is you go and you talk to a guy, and you talk to a guy that you're like, oh, man, you get so much right on your fastball. You know, veteran starting pitcher has been in the league for 20 years. You know, how do you do it? And then they're like, well, I take the Coca-Cola and I boil it down. And I and I like one team out there is using CBD oil because it's it's it's clear.

Oh, yeah. I saw one of the Rockies relievers last night pitching, and his forearms, they're gray. And I was like, what did he slather on his forearms? It's some mix of who knows what, sunscreen and pine tar and God knows what else. Chili powder. I don't know. I'm not a dermatologist. I don't have a medical degree like you do, but I'm looking

at it and I'm like, I don't think that's a skin problem. I think that's a foreign substance from wrist to elbow on both arms because it looks like he's got gray sleeves on. What's going on with this? Well, if you're enjoying this show on a platform that allows you to rate and review it, we would really appreciate a rating

and review. It helps us find new people who would enjoy the show if you don't already have a subscription to the athletic you can get 40 off at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels get enos articles all of our baseball coverage league-wide team by team and fantasy stuff as well and as always you can reach us via email rates and barrels at theathletic.com if you'd like to email us spell out the word and if you do that on twitter he's at enos eris i am at derek van riper that is going to wrap things up for this episode of rates and barrels we are back If you'd like to email us, spell out the word. And if you do that on Twitter, he's at Eno Saris. I am 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.