Rates & Barrels - Is Hitting Catching Up to Pitching?

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

Eno, Trevor, and DVR discuss the return of Spencer Strider before digging into Eno's recent story with Britt Ghiroli and Jen McCaffrey examining the progress of hitting tech and development and the efforts to close the gap on pitching. Plus, they discuss the challenge of game-planning for Jacob Wilson, and the early struggles of Gavin Williams. Eno's story with Britt & Jen ($): https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6270614 Rundown 1:00 Spencer Strider's Return From Internal Brace Surgery 8:56 Fatigue Likely a Factor on Wednesday 15:35 Is Hitting Development Catching Up to Pitching? 29:25 How I'd Pitch This Guy: Jacob Wilson 43:54 What's Behind Gavin Williams' Early Struggles? 51:38 Ambushed! Eno-Proof Trivia?! Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.social Follow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.bsky.social Follow Trevor on Bluesky: @iamtrevormay.bsky.social e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris With: Trevor May Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Get the RBC Ion Plus Visa. Conditions apply. Visit rbc.com slash ion cards. Welcome to Rates of Barrels, Thursday April 17th, Derek Van Riper, Eno Saris, Trevor May here with you on this episode. We have the return of Spencer Strider. We'll dig into what looked different for him the first time back out on the big league mound on Wednesday against the Blue Jays. Eno was part of a co-written piece at the Athletic looking at the gap between hitting development and pitching development, possibly closing thanks to some new tools and different

things. We'll dig into that story. We're going to talk about Jacob Wilson and have our How I'd Pitch This Guy segment focusing on trying to get out one of the guys that strikes out less than anybody in the league. It's a bit of a unique challenge, so we'll dig into that. And time permitting, we've got a mailbag question about Gavin Williams who had a rough outing against the Orioles on Wednesday. So we begin with the return of Spencer Strider. He's back from internal brace surgery and you know the VELO is down a little bit which I think comes with the typical caveat well it's the first start back off of an injury, so maybe we're not going to get all the way there right away. But what else looked different to you guys?

As you watched Strider yesterday, Trevor, was there anything that caught your eye, something that he had changed considerably since we last saw him in a competitive situation? Other than just like maybe the stuff lagging a little bit because he he the big caveat being away for a while and not pitching, it's less about like not remembering what it, what it's like, then it's just the intensity that you want

to bring out there. So, uh, I get, I would give them a couple, uh, in the big leagues before we start to talk about maybe, uh, if, if, if, you know, if this is just what Strider is now or what have you. But it did look, he looked like he was attacking guys the same way that he attacked them before. He was going right to the slider right away,

he wasn't worried about that. I think that the interesting thing is gonna be watching him see where he can fit the curve ball and the changeup in, because I just don't think that's something that he's, he's just been mega mega power, like pitching like a reliever for six, seven innings. And you know, that's only going to last so long anyways, even without the surgery. But, uh,

you can, you can see just a little bit. He's a smart guy. I think he's gonna make the adjustments. No problem. It's just going to be a learning process. Probably the game's going to have to tell them how to change some of that stuff. So I did see a little bit of like looking at his face. He's just like spinning a little bit like, okay, so how can I use the change up in this situation? A two one count to a righty or something.

Like, is this where I wanna go and start to work this stuff in? Because his natural inclination is I get crazy with right on my forcing fastball and my slider's gonna be my outpitch and those things aren't gonna change, aren't going to change. And he's right. Those are going to be his two best pitches.

Probably. I doubt the other two are going to be better, but he's going to need to set them up more instead of just like bulldoze people like he has before. I think there's some in the pitch movements, there's some difference. And I agree with Trevor that maybe that's, it's going to be a one game blimp or it'll take a little time, but I kind of think that you've done all this work to get back that this is probably the shapes he wanted you know to some extent and so the good news is that the change-up is way better and I know that in terms of execution in terms

of how many he threw and what it looked like he only threw like six of them I think and probably like three of them, I think, and probably like three of them were like legit ones and three were just bad ones. So that one he's not on top of, but it is a different shape. It definitely has more drop and less fade, less sort of arm side movement to it. So I would assume that maybe he had switched

from a two seam change up grip to a four seam, or maybe he's splitting it to some degree because this is has the potential to be his best change up. And that's the good news. The bad news is the slider is different to the slider used to be a kind of power slider, gyro slider that did not have much that much horizontal movement, did not have as much vertical drop as other pitches. And so it was not unique, but it was a rarer slider. He, if you look at the pitch movement charts on savant, his slider now is much more conventional in that it has more drop and more arm side movement.

And so that should, that could theoretically make it worse against left hand hitters. Yeah the more horizontal movement you have the general rule with sliders is the more horizontal movement you have on the side of the worst it is to throw to an opposite handed hitter so. Could he with the new curve ball and the new change up. Become more of a conventional picture that's like you know throws more change ups and to lefties. That's, that's how we used it in the game. Maybe he's see some advantage in that, but it's not quite the same strider. It's not the, you know, it's not the same fastball V lo and it's not the same slider V lo and it's not the same kind of slider shape. So he's, there's a little bit of pressure now

in the rest of his career I think for his change up in curve to be good. If this is the shapes he's going with. One thing we've talked about with Strider over the years is that he is frequently among the league leaders and fastballs thrown in the heart of the play. He gets away with it because the velocity when we broke through is premium velocity and the more that diminishes over time, we've seen about a tick per year going back to 2022. We averaged 98.2 on that pitch that dropped to 97.2 in 2023, 96.3 for the brief time we saw him last year and 95.4 on Wednesday. So I think that's where those other pitches are going to be so important. Like if he levels off at ninety five these next couple of seasons, that's still really fine. It's just going to put more pressure on the change and curveball to be a bigger

part of the mix than they were in that first start back. And again, it's the first start backs. You take that with the necessary grain of salt. I also wondered, too, though, if we saw the two charts you're looking at if you're on YouTube or the location maps, again, 2024 on the bottom, 2025 to start from yesterday is up on top. He elevated that fastball more consistently in his first start back. That's also to me really important with less velocity if he's going to use the pitch as often as he did on Wednesday. velocity if he's going to use the pitch as often as he did on Wednesday.

Yeah, I think maybe in an ideal world, he has two sliders, you know, and he has the slider for right-handers and the slider for left-handers. That's totally possible. He throws so many sliders, he's going to have feel like that. I see two pretty distinct places on the heat map he's trying to throw the slider to. So if he has two sliders and a four seam and an improving change, there's still, you know, there's still a peak Strider, you know, possibly in here where he's got a more developed mix. Given the situation, not a bad return at all for Spencer Strider got to go five innings, had five Ks looked at least something like himself, even if he wasn't all the way back first time out,

much needed return for Atlanta too as they try to dig their way out of a brutal start. I mentioned that at the heart of the zone and then the fastballs that are being in that part of the zone too often, Justin Steele's in there a lot, Kevin Gossman's been in there a lot. If you cut that leaderboard down and just look at the last four seasons combined and have no pitch threshold, only look at starters. Roki Sasaki is number one in fast balls thrown, four seamers thrown in the heart of the zone. 22.9% of his pitches are four seamers that end up in the heart of the zone.

That's interesting. I don't know if that's- In four starts? Yeah. Yeah. He hasn't been a lot's. And four starts. Yeah. Yeah. It hasn't been a lot, but he's just living in the middle of his own. Which is not going to benefit him long-term, but you can throw splitters off that at least

or fork balls. That's what I'm saying. Like it's the splitter thing maybe. Yeah. He just aims the middle of zone for both and some of them arrive in the middle of zone and some of them just drop off the face. And I think there's just again like we'll see where he's at in 10 starts. You know Yamamoto wasn't very sharp at the beginning of last year too. He had some growing pains and this year he's looking like an absolute stud. So and he was more polished so like that's

one of the things with him. Back to Strider real quick too. One thing I did notice, I think that at least watching the first inning, he looked like that was pre start. That was, you only need your fastball on Slider. So 97, 98 and his slider was 85, 86, 87. And then after that, it kind of fell a little bit and there's some endurance things is gonna happen. He's gonna go through 97 pitches. That was a big deal.

Also his horizontal movement started to bump up and his ride started to lower too over time, which means that's just like a fatigue. His slot is lower. Slot is lower too. So the first inning he was eight, horizontal 20, like every time. And then by the end he was like 15, five, 16, 11.

And that just means that you're like getting, he's getting tired probably. So all of that, you take that into account, like that's gonna probably improve. But I think that this is a really valuable time for him to learn how to pitch a little bit more. And when you mentioned how to throw to lefties, like you could see how he threw to Santander

versus like Bichette. Like he was yanking the slider more to Bichette to get it off the play, but he's throwing, trying to throw it more middle down below the zone to the lefties. He's probably aware of the way that that thing is moving, which is great. I agree on the changeup too.

It's got the depth. Like he might have like a little kick change thing going on possibly. That wouldn't put him past him to just try that because that's what a lot of people are getting. One thing that's interesting is what if he, there's two things maybe through the, as the year goes that he could probably implement because they're also kind of come along with like the Joe Boyle, Joe Boyle, Splinker, like Strider could throw a Splinker.

It's just, it's a, it's a slightly wider grip. It's for guys with guys that have pretty good ride because Boyle's got pretty good ride with that natural like glass now cut. Sometimes Strider does that. He might be able to do that. Or because he has that natural supination that where sometimes when he pulls it up

in a way to variety, it kind of seems like it takes off a little bit away from him. He might be able to have a little wrinkle cutter thing where he can throw a low 90s at some point too. That would be interesting to see just because he backspins the ball so well. So just get tilting the axis a little bit. Like maybe those things will help him with lefties as well. But you're right. There is going to be another phase. I think we're going to enter phase two of a Strider kind of developing into a full pitcher. I think that some of this, like the change up and the curve, like, I think some of this is like, I think it looks better than Gossman and Robbie Ray's tries at third pitches. You know, like, at some point you're like, okay, Kevin Gossman is not going to have a great breaking ball ever.

You can sort of just give up, you know, it's like he's tried and tried and tried and tried and he's come to, he's come to one that's okay. And that's good enough for him. And Robbie Ray, I feel like he's tried every changeup grip under the sun. And, uh, maybe it's just not going to happen for him. Striders like less of a decided thing that he's just a fastball slider. There's enough here where I'm like, well, that changeup shape is different. You know, that curveball shapes a little different. So I think he might have a touch to add pitches.

And Trevor's point about fatigue likely being a big factor is Strider sort of gets that endurance back. I think the nine highest velocity fastballs we saw from Strider were all in the bottom of the first inning. That's when he maxed out at 97, nine. So we saw the Velo tail off a little bit, too, which speaks to that fatigue kind of building up a little quicker on Spencer Strider. Nick Pollock even pointed out that the Velo was going down and then there was like a steel

attempt. Like maybe they were challenged or something that he had like a... Vlad had tried. Yeah Vlad had tried and they had like a moment where he got to like walk around the mound and I guess also was feeling like, I don't have that many pitches left to throw and I better, you know, I want to win this game. His Vila went up again. So it kind of went down, down, down, down, down, down. And then there was like this crisis moment in the game and it went back up again.

I don't know how to read that, but I assume that that's decent news. He had, it's almost like a sprinter getting that third wind or whatever where it's like, okay, now I got it. Now I'm closing, you know, now I'm finishing it off. And he, and he had that left in the tank. So I think that's good news. You should just follow the Justin Verlander model. Like that's a really good comp.

Sit lower and like, they pitch harder for two strikes, throw harder when you want the swing when you need it and just like be nasty with your other stuff to get ahead, like set it up. And then if the situation dictates it, go for it. I think Strider's got the same kind of temperament, like same type of pitches, like, like good breaking ball depth and ride is more of a thing. Uh, and, and, uh, Verlander learned that ride is more of his thing. And Verlander learned that really early though in his career.

So, and I mean, it is really early in his career. He's not like, what is he, 25, 24? He's really young. So yeah, there's still a lot of him to go, but. I think part of Verlander's, you know, fall drop off by the way, is that he doesn't, he can't do that anymore. Like he's pretty much sitting close to his max.

That's all he's got left. He doesn't have like another level in the tank anymore. Which is, I'll say it, probably when you're 41, that should probably happen. You should probably fall. How do you have it? Like it's been a long run, brother, 20 years. At some point you gotta be like, that's, that's a good amount.

I'm pretty good at that. I wonder, I wonder if his, like, I do think he'll do better, you know, Verlander in the next couple of weeks. Um, the schedule changes and there's some of the stuff is all right, but the fastball is not what it was. And he still pitches like the fastball is what it was. Like it's still a little bit of like, no, I still got it. Like the grandpa being like, I can still whoop.

You know? And, and I just wonder if he has just like a mediocre year, is he just going to sign up for it again? That's a great question. Is it the competitive drives? Like, no, I can do better. I'm coming back again. Or is it the, all right, I really don't have it. I mean spring, he's talking about 45, you know, he's like,

how are we going to keep going? Or do you just keep going with- Good luck getting him and sure as out of the league guys. That's all I got to say. he's talking about 45. He's like, how can I keep going? Or do you just keep going with- Good luck hitting him and sure as we're out of the league, guys, that's all I gotta say. That's what I feel like, yeah. As long as someone hands me a major league contract, I'm in, is that the rubric? Some things never change, but I think you're right.

I think we'll see maybe a little more willingness to make some tweaks over the course of the season too, aside from the schedule easing up a little bit on Verlander. We talked about this last week he was he's getting more swings and misses in the zone than he has in a few years like there's a little bit of hope just in that alone so we'll see what the tweaks end up being in the near future. My parents have had a lot of time on their hands lately at first it was nice. Hey mom can you drive me to soccer practice? Sure can. We're having slow cooked ribs for dinner. It was awesome. And then it became a lot. Some friends are coming over to watch a movie. Ooh, what are we watching?

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and Brichie Rowley. Is hitting development catching up to pitching? And the more I've thought about this, I'm like, well, yeah, like the pitching tools and information we have, it's like having chisels and hitters are out there using hammers. And maybe the gap is beginning to close just a little bit. But where do you see the biggest shifts, you know, as you put this piece together, where do you feel like hitters have actually made

up meaningful ground? Well, I think the data is a big part of it. So in 2007, we started tracking pitch movements, you know, 2008, we started pretty tracking pitch movements and pitch velocity. And what have we seen since that day? We've seen the proliferation of VELO. We went from 91.1 the first year we tracked VELO to 94.1. So, so like when you track it, it becomes a value, uh, that you can, that you can study and you can train for and can become part of these sort of key performance metrics that I talk about.

And so pitching has had that much of a head start where they started getting this kind of information 2007, 2008, and hitters really only started getting valuable information from public tracking networks at 2015 when we had track man and they started getting exit velocity and launch angle. Now since we've gotten exit velocity and launch angle, what hitters have done is hit the ball harder most years, hit the ball harder in the air more steep most years, barrel rate has become like a thing we care about, a thing we train for, you know. So that's what was happening since 2015.

Now the newest inflection point is 2020. We put in the cameras, uh, we put in Hawkeye and since we've done with Hawkeye, now we have all the stuff we've been showing you on this podcast about stance information, uh, the intercept point, the contact point, the attack angle stuff, attack angles coming in, in a few weeks I hear. Um, and once we have attack angle and bat speed, we will be able to do what they have already done internally for teams, which is bat path grades.

And once you have a bat path grade, that's a little bit like stuff. That's like, is he doing the right things to succeed? And teams have had this internally and one general manager I talked to said, a few years ago he said, we have a Bat Path grade but I don't believe it. And I was like, well that's interesting.

Because you're the general manager, we have it, we don't believe it. So are you training for it, are you not? Or what are you doing with it? Or didn't you build the team of people that made the Bat Path grade? Didn't you build the team of people that made the BatPath grade? Didn't you assemble that group of people? And then I checked back in with him.

He's like, well, it's better every year. Uh, but he's like, it still doesn't seem to match up with stuff plus in terms of like how good the lists are. You do a list of stuff. Plus you're like, yeah, those guys have great stuff. You do a list of BatPath grades and you're like, who's that at number three? You know, yeah, it is a developing science, but it's become more of a science. And I think that's where the big leaps forward have been.

It's like, you know, you had the Boston Red Sox out here, very obviously training for bat speed and that's a little bit like teams five, six years ago, having the arm farms, you know, the, the, the, the gas camps, you know, that's what they used to call it. And, you know, sending all these young guys to these gas camps to like, to like get as much V lo as they could, you know, on out of their arms and, and doing the weighted ball training and all that stuff. Now we have weighted bat training.

So just the fact that like we got to wait weighted bat training, like, I don't know, eight to 10 years after weighted ball training means that there, that's the gap, but they are closing it because there's also like, like we talk about how, how little an edge works. So in this piece, we talk about torpedo bats and literally like two weeks after the torpedo bat craze, the Baltimore Orioles announced that they are having a partnership with Johns Hopkins to do computer vision, to, uh, to better, uh, figure out their

bats for all of their players. So the edge lasted two weeks. And you could argue that the edge wasn't even as extreme as it appeared to be for that one series. Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, it looked like a bigger deal at the time than it has in the time it's passed since. Yeah. But so, so hitting edges now, like the, uh, another way to talk about it is the sweeper. The sweeper comes out, um, you know, 2021, I write an article, 2022, there's start, there's more sweepers, 2023, it write an article 2022, there's more sweepers 2023.

It's a designation on savant and by 2025. I'm not saying the sweepers done, but the sweepers possibly overrated by stuff plus, and batters have gotten better at the sweeper year over year at, you know, swing decisions and hitting it hard. They've gotten better at the sweeper, you know, since the sweeper came. So if that's the case, like, Oh, kick change, Oh, kick change is going to be great for a year or two. And then the batters are going to be like, I've seen enough kick changes.

I know what it looks like. I know who throws one. I know what the profile is like. I know how to look for it, you know, um, and they'll get better at it. And the, the, the trajectory is part of that, you know, I think, you know, just doing the types of training and then also developing these key performance metrics. So you have KPIs for pitchers. There are very obvious like stuff or, you know, strikeouts, contact rate in the

zone or whatever it is your KPIs are, you know, the hitting is now catching up and being like, oh, our KPIs don't have to be like slugging or batting average. You know, they can be exit VLOS, barrel rates, bat speed, you know. And so I think that's been a, I think in some ways I try to set up a parallel between what pitching has done and what hitting is doing now. And they're looking more similar in terms of when you're developing them, what do you do? You use all the tools, use all the KPIs, and you use all the advanced data to inform your best practices. What do you think, Trevor? And what do you think is the most important, or what are the most important things hitters have access to now that are going to help close that gap? Yeah, I think it's it's I think the trajectory does go a long way for getting like building that that connection between like

What you're being told metrically and then what it looks like I was just so I just had a little bit of a daydream thinking about like what Roki's Sasaki's forkball looks like in the trajectory machine. And if that machine can even replicate that. I mean, the trajectory does have problems and that's, that's an interesting one. Like Tyler Rogers, I don't think the trajectory can do that. Oh, it can't get, it can't go low enough for him.

I don't think it can do Tim Hill either. I don't think it goes below the zero, zero degrees. So, uh, that is one issue, but, uh, and there's, yeah, there's certain guys that are so funky that you just like, they can't, they can't replicate it and you just got to do your best. Uh, lucky, lucky Rogers, I guess. Um, but, uh, all like it's funny. You see, we see this kind of like how I'm pitching you mentioned the velocity and stuff. The core V lo belt was one of the early things, the force plates in the mound,

they wanted to understand where velocity and stuff. The Corvillo belt was one of the early things, the force plates in the mound. They wanted to understand where velocity came from. And then once we got 10 data points that could be associated with any individual guy, then you kind of just ran down the checklist and checked out what they were. And then guys got good at like West Johnson was the guy who saw it for me. And he got really, he was one of the pioneers

for a lot of these movement patterns and stuff too. So like he just looked at me and saw thought that this might be a thing So that's kind of I think that now they're getting enough collection on hitters and they're starting to analyze hitters in this way where they're Getting their checklist of things to check to maximize Maximize how good that hitter is based on what they where they, where they struggle or what the organization wants from them too. So if it's like you want, we want you to make more contact. We're not worried about, we're not as worried about your bat speed, especially if you're a guy who misses a lot because your bat's so fast. Uh,

like you don't struggle there. We want to get him a contact. Maybe it's slowing the bat down and they have ways to do that. Heavier bat, you know, now, now they're starting to take the bat and be like, we can use the bat. This is the issue, this is a way we can fix it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's happening, that's becoming much more robust and there's more people in the game now

that are able to look at you and say, these couple things might be, let's check these out, then they have tests to see if it's true or not and they can do that quickly. I think that was the issue. A lot of this stuff has been developing, but like you said, they're behind because pitching, pitching was just easier to, it was easier to see it.

It's just the ball and the spinning, like it just, and the velocity. We had these metrics that we were able to get for decades already, and we knew that we wanted higher numbers, we just didn't know how to get there yet. We're just now measuring bat speed in a way that where people are like actually know how hard they swing the bat now. I've known how hard it throws thrown since I was 10. Realizing how hard they swing and but but the way this

works is there's a lot of smart people they can go from oh I have a bat my bat speed is this to a week later implementing a lot of this stuff because you just it doesn't need that much lag because there's lag because now there's a lot more information out there, which is awesome. I think that we're gonna see a level of baseball. People talk about, oh, people can't hit a 95-mile fastball. That gap between the people watching in the stands and the people playing the game is just gonna get wider

and it's gonna be more impressive, which I think generally is good for the game. Strikeout rates have actually kind of plateaued. They're not getting worse. Um, and that's interesting cause fastball VLO is still going up. So that's another little piece where you're like, okay, maybe this is coming to fruition now where batters to have the tools they need to kind of, to, to battle and, and to get up there and, you know, just agreeing that

bat speed is good, it might actually help us get to the point where hitters can, cause if the pitchers are throwing faster and faster, maybe the batters have to be swinging faster and faster. You know, it's like kind of, kind of makes sense that way, but there, there's also like, there is some lag time in having the data out and having what, what, um, Trevor's alluding to kind of these getting in having the data out and having what, what, um, Trevor's alluding to kind of these getting comfortable with the data, you know, uh, being able to trans transform that and, and translate it to the player.

Um, and then getting sort of second and third order. Cause the first time we ever did force plates for hitters, we were like, Oh, front foot force plate is really associated with, with trunk velocity and like bat speed, right? That makes so much sense because it's the same thing in pitching. The amount of force you put in with your front foot has a lot to do with how much energy you can turn and how, how fast your arm comes around. Right?

So that was the first one, but I just saw a recent thing where it did the force plate analysis for high school, college, and pros. And the correlation between bat speed and front foot force into the ground was tighter in high school, less tight in college, and even less tight in the pros. And so that suggests that there's something, maybe there's a cliff. Maybe there's like, you need to put this much force into the ground, but then there are other things going on that separate the pros. Then you need to stack other things on top of it. You have to generate more power everywhere else. And also you're,

as you get older or bigger guys and the burros are just bigger, stronger, full grown men as well. So they have stronger arms, they have stronger core. Right, they're getting something from their shoulders and from other places. Where the young guys might have no real, like their legs are getting stronger first, but like then the upper body is lagging behind.

And that's probably mostly what's happening. And it's about stacking all those things together. I do wanna to make a prediction because this call just kind of, this is going to be a hot take prediction here on rates and barrels. I don't do this often. But as I think as hitting now catches up and like the three outcomes thing was a reaction two ways. Pitchers saw that we have an advantage now and so strikeouts are something we can go for. that advantage closes strikeouts are no longer as valuable or like as as yeah as valuable to go for all the time and hitters don't just need to compensate with home runs they can just hit they

can hit the ball now more so we don't have to focus on that now we're gonna go all that's gonna go in a big circle and we're gonna get back to these guys who are like yeah I throw 96 but I'm a 96 pitch to contact guy. And I'm trying to get the ground balls. And the hitters are like, I'm trying to put the ball in play because I'm not so worried about striking out as much anymore. And I can hit like this.

I can go oppo. I don't need to try to hit the three on home run because it's really hard to hit. Right? So we're just going to get back to that golden age that everyone talks about all the time where it's more pitching and hitting more even. It's just the reason it was like that is because pitching discovered some stuff

and gave them the gap widened for a while. But now we see that gap coming back together and the game's going to become more complete again. I think a lot of those things are going to solve themselves. I think we're going to go back not to like Greg Maddux throwing nine inches off the plate and getting the call. That's never, never coming back. But people trying to do that. Will come back more like we'll try to hit that edge and work on freezing guys and try to get them to push and pull off and on like the Roy

Halliday, like that type of pitching. Even if you're throwing 96, 97, you're going to have to do it. Cause 96, 97 can be hit more. That's true. And I think that's actually a pretty good segue to, to our, how would you pitch a guy because this is this guy that we're, that we want to talk about Jacob Wilson is like. A throwback. I mean, he's swings at everything and puts it all in play.

And we've seen a little bit with Lisa Ryas and Steven Kwan and other guys before, but, um, right now, I don't know. It feels like we're in the middle of Jacob Wilson, like you can't get him out or at least you can't strike him out. And you know, I don't know if is this the future of hitting? I mean, I think he's an extreme. Yeah, he's an extreme. You need to stack a little power on top of this. And he does have a couple homers.

He's just one of those guys like, you know, the up and in box is the only place he hits the ball hard enough to get it out of the park. So like, you just don't. And to be honest, Arias, same thing, down and in though. He's a lefty. So like, just if you avoid down and in, he's not going to take you deep. But he might flip it into left quickly.

The thing about Jake, and I think it's important to mention, he is a legacy. Jack Wilson is his dad. Another guy who was good at putting the ball in play and also shortstop. So he learned this somewhere as well. Like a lot of the dads are coming, the guys who played in that golden era were talking about,

now their sons are coming up and playing like they did, which is understandable, makes a lot of sense. But I do like watching the kid because I love seeing the ball put in play. But the interesting thing is, and we were talking about this when we were getting ready for this show. Let's see how he develops his more of a big league approach and where he chooses his spots a little bit more.

I mean, Arias is still really aggressive, but he's definitely, Arias will take walks. He relishes, if he gets O2 and works a walk, he loves that as much as hitting a single. Like he's like, yeah, I'm good at this. And Wilson does not have that. That's not something he's trying to do. He's swinging at everything, yeah. He's swinging at everything.

So like Williams Oste-Dio is my comp right now because the guy had like 4,000 minor league at bats and struck out less than a hundred times and walked like a hundred and one time. Like he didn't do either one at all all and he was great back to ball skills, but you could not pinch hit the kid because he's gonna walk up and he's gonna hit a ball an inch off the ground the first pitch and roll over. And you're like, dude, we need you to like at least get two balls on you. And so you get a good pitch, but he just could he just like to swing and hit.

So it's gonna be interesting to see how he develops that, especially if he's gonna be in a lineup where it has more pop around him. We got Soderstrom leading the league in homers, which is awesome, by the way. If he turns into Olsen, by the way, again, I'm gonna be so blown away. I don't know what they, I don't know how the A's do this. But if he turns into a guy who it's 30 plus

every year somehow, I'm just gonna throw my hands in the air. I don't know. I don't know what's going on. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. I do think they're hitting development is all right. I mean, they've done pretty good in the past of hitting development. I think Bush is a pretty good hitting coach. And so I think so too. Wilson though, like this, I laugh when I saw this, this is Jacob Wilson's, um, uh, contact percentage on the left swing percentage in the middle and

average on balls and play on the right. They're all the same thing. So at least on some level he's making the right decisions, right? Like he's swinging at pitches that he can make contact on, that he can put balls and play that are successful. So that part is good. What I don't get so far is that looking at these heat maps, I don't get why people aren't throwing them high in the zone more or low and low and low and inside more.

Cause those seem like, you know, places he doesn't necessarily want to swing, but it also we know that he swings at everything. So they're not pitching him there. So you did have a little thing about high and tight. You say that he can, um, he can hit the, the high and tight for, for power. Yeah. He, his two home runs are both a little bit higher and tighter to him. Um, and all of his extra bases, I believe are up there.

That's where his highest Woba is. But look like, look straight across his belt on the, where he's being pitched right now and there's not that much above it. You know, I would be throwing more high fastballs up there. Maybe, maybe it's dangerous. Cause if they come in, then he can maybe hit it for a homer and also low and inside you have a video, don't you? Uh, of, uh you of this slide?

I would say this slider is pretty close to low inside. So yeah, I wanted to see like, okay, like I figured big league pitchers can do more in the shadow zone than other pitchers. Jacob Wilson is seen up to this point in his baseball career. And I thought, okay, you're going to beat him somewhere around the edges, right? He has one swinging strike this season in the shadow zone and it's on a low slider. Victor Vodnik got him. He's so mad he missed it.

He struck him out with that bitch. He's so mad he missed it. I really should have dropped a frame hold in there because he just, he was irate about that. And I think this is a strange profile for all the reasons he mentioned though. I love that Williams asked to do. I haven't thought about Williams asked to deal in a couple of years, so I'm glad he's back on the brain.

But take that player and make him a good major league shortstop too. That's an interesting real life player to have. And if you have other guys that hit for power, the question is going to come down to probably becoming a little more patient, like luring pitchers to keep testing him further and further away from the zone and then drawing walks off of that. And I'm not sure how you project that, how you see that from a scouting perspective. Do you see Jacob Wilson as a guy that will consistently hit 280 plus, but eventually walk 8% of the time and carry a good enough OBP where

you actually like him as a contact heavy table setter in front of your bigger bats. Like is that where he eventually kind of settles in or is he the guy that because he can hit so many pitches he will always try to hit everything and he's just gonna keep that K rate as low as possible regardless of what happens with the walk rate and the OBP. It's tough. If he what happens with the walk rate and the OBP. It's tough.

If he doesn't improve the walk rate, it's hard to, if you think about a lineup and how they're constructed, like that's a six, seven, eight hitter, like, because you just can't count, because if he goes into a slump and he's hit 250, he's gonna be at 260 on base. Is it like, he's gonna be Uniescu Betancourt. Like you can't, there's a name drop for you.

Well, he walked four times in a year and 700. Yeah, without running in a Homer. So like you either need to, if you don't walk, you have to hit for juice. It's not something that you can count on with him. And you can't really lead off because you're not getting on enough. So like, but he's a lead off profile in other other way or like a top of the order.

And you can't hit him second because you need more production there for RBIs. It's pretty good for like a fifth, six hitter though. Like it's, you know, the guy coming up with the guys on base, you know, but yeah, he can, might hit you some double plays then too. Exactly. So like, it's like, it's what kind of production will you get? And what kind of, where does he profile? And he's got such good bat to ball skills. You want him batting six, he's one of your better, you know what I mean?

So like he, it's something he's gonna have to add. He's gonna have to add the ability to be willing to walk. That's gonna have to be part of his thing. But if you're a guy who hits 290, 300, and then you can add, you know, 60 points or 70 points on OVP, like you're a nightmare. Like you're a nightmare to face. face if he adds he's this close And I just want to touch on one other thing that just occurred to me the high throwing him up in the zone more

The thought process guys you throw up in the zone and throw up in his own regularly Spencer Schreider is a great example We've already talked to him about him a lot And I did it I only threw up in the zone with fastballs. You do that because you feel good about a swing and miss, as opposed to when you're throwing sinkers down in the zone, you're like, this could be a miss, but it'll probably be a ground ball. You're not trying to give up a pop-up,

like you're not, because you know that fastballs, especially ride fastballs, they get swung under sometimes, yeah, but they also get barreled if they're slightly lower. So like, it's just a high risk situation. So you throw up there a lot when you're confident that someone will be swinging a miss, then you got a guy who's swung a miss half a percent of the time and you're like, well, I'm not confident

this is gonna be a swing and miss, so why would I throw this pitch up here all the time and just come throw my breaking balls? Because he's just gonna hit it on the ground. So they're just like, he's not gonna, basically guys are like, okay, this guy does not swing a miss, I'm a swing and miss guy. Why should I give a contact guy a fly ball?

Like it could be a home. Why give him a chance to go deep? Why? Like there's no point when he's just gonna probably hit a single best case scenario with the breaking ball. So I'm just gonna throw him a bunch of breaking balls. His exit velocity graphs are a little bit different, a little bit different from this.

You saw that he's good away. Um, and he does have a nice exit velocity mid away. Um, when I wanted to pitch him inside, I guess one of the reasons they're not pitching him low and inside is his best exit VLOs are actually low and inside. So he does have a lot of, uh, things in common with the rise, um, in that he can drop the hammer on the, on the bat. And so if you're looking at exit velocity, uh, holes actually in on the hands, he's up, he's good high and middle, but in on the hands is a, is a missing one

and, and low in a way, like all the way down in a way, except he makes contact on those pitches. And if he makes 75 mile an hour contact on the pitch and you don't want that contact, you don't want to pitch there either. So there is a chance for him to kind of put this together where he, he knows where his happy zones are. And he waits, he waits a little bit to make contact in the happy zones. And then he can always go to his two strike battle it out approach

with two strikes, you know what I mean? But I think that, I think the thing for him is to kind of wait out something that he can drive early, you know, yeah. Take, take the opposite of new bar. New bar needs to swing sometimes. He takes everything. He needs to go the other way, but like both guys, that's, that's, that's kind of the, yeah, take a shots. That's what you learn to do as a big leader.

It's like the A swing thing. Like like that get in his ear and be like, hey, can you wait on a pitch that you can put your A swing on? Like, can you like like Nitro zone? Like they think Nitro for at least until one strike. Yeah. And then and then after that, you can do you do your battle. With Prev's bold prediction earlier and wondering, you know, is the future prototype hitter more like Jacob Wilson?

I think our consensus answer would be no, probably not that extreme. That's still going to be an outlier even as contact maybe becomes a bigger part of the typical hitter's profile. Is Christian Campbell maybe the prototype, the bat that every team's going to want to try and replicate in these next 10 years? Oh, I mean, the story here is you've got an athletic dude who makes a ton of contact and has a great eye at the plate in college. And what do you do? You train the heck out of bat speed for him and his ISOs went from 150, 170 in the complex league and I a ball to 220, 250 and high a ball. And now he's got a 200 ISO in the big leagues.

And that's the dream is that you're taking somebody who already has great bat to ball and you give him bat speed and that's everything you need. But I think that the future is also a little bit in Fernando Tatis Jr. who had an A swing and came up doing his A swing every time he could and hit 42 homers and struck out 28% of the time. Now, when you look at his distribution of bat speeds, he has two or three swings. And that's, that's like the idea of I have two or three bats. I have the, I'm tired bat, you know, in my holster.

I have this whole, and the swings are the same way. I have the a swing, I have the B swing and the C swing. I have getting the best advanced scouting and Tatis cuts his strikeout rate. So the future is somewhere in between. Take the guy who does the A swing every time and coach him into, you know, two strike philosophy and this and that, and find ways to cut the K right. Or take the guy who has great bat to ball and add bad speed and add power to it. Like there, it's the same way as like we can take Will Warren and find a way to add a usable foreseam,

you know, to this equation or, you know, take the sinker slider guy and either add a four seam or add a curve ball, whatever it is. Or we take the over the top guy and we give them a splitter. We give them something that, that has a little bit of wiggle. We give them a two, like the Frankie Montas, we give them a, we give them a, a sinker with, with seems to have a way to give them something that moves differently. So that's the future is it's both things. It's, it's taking Jacob Wilson and saying, how do we coach up your power?

Is it that's be training or is it a, a swing training, you know, that sort of stuff, because it, there was no one. Pitcher of the future. Once we got this data, it was more about how do we take, you know, Trevor May and make him better and less about like, how do we make Trevor may into Jacob de Grom? It's not, not happening. Sorry, Trevor. I mean, I was once called a, a dollar dollar store version of Jake Rom.

I'll take it. But it was like, yeah, you throw everything he throws just like five months on our slower and guys hit him more. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, and we give up the same number of home runs. He's like, that true. Yeah, you guys both give up bombs. Thanks, Jay.

Thanks, Mac. Appreciate you. I'll never forget that. It was a pitching coach that said that to you. No, no, it was James McCann. McCann. Oh, okay. Captain America. Captain America said that to you. No, no, it was James McCann. McCann. Oh, OK. Oh, you're Captain America.

Your catcher said that to you. Yeah, the catcher told us. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha in your toolbox, different situational things you can apply. Maybe your A swing is your primary good thing and you're gonna strike out a lot, but you're gonna get a lot of power. But as long as you're not hopeless with two strike situations, I think that gives you a longer term chance of sticking around and being a productive player.

So maybe that's the pivot, like you said, just adding a little bit more to the approach, but also that swing types, maybe finding different ways to get to the pitches that are more problematic is also the part of the answer in all of this. There are two kinds of people in the world, backward thinkers and forward thinkers.

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Guys want to answer this mailbag question about Gavin Williams? Absolutely. All right, Manny wants to know what's wrong with Gavin Williams? I think that was a Dark Horse Cy Young pick or a bold prediction Cy Young pick for Eno just a few weeks ago and hey, there's still plenty of time, but it's not the start you were hoping for with a prediction like that, Eno. So what's been the issue so far? I think the first start I saw from Gavin Williams was the Royals start the very first weekend

of the season. He looked good that day. I have not actually watched any of his starts since then as closely as that one. But what are you seeing in Williams that's kept him from clicking so far? I don't know. You know, the the the sweeper may not be the best move for him. He does not have the kind of traditional arm slot of a sweeper. And so I think he's actually still kind of searching for the ideal slider. He'd said that he had, he threw a cutter last year that was 91 and he hasn't really thrown

it yet this year. And I'm wondering why, because he has told some people that the cutter will come out over the course of the year. But I think a hard cutter would do him, do him wonders in terms of where his fastball is It's just about where it was last year has more vertical break and more V lo So I'm happy with his work on the fastball and I thought everything would go where the fastball goes But I don't know that this is the perfect mix for him. I think he should break out the cutter again.

And so I want to reserve any doomsday predictions, you know, until I see that cutter as is I do think he can just be better than he is right now. I don't think he needs to have a 12% walk rate. I don't think that's who he's been in the past and I don't think this home run rate is necessarily where he's right now. I don't think he needs to have a 12% walk rate. I don't think that's who he's been in the past. And I don't think this home run rate is necessarily where he's at either. So I would expect the home runs and the walks go down, but I don't know that the strikeouts will go up until he throws that hard breaking ball again. That's what I'm saying.

Uh, just quickly, to be honest, I haven't seen him throw, uh, I think I, we actually, I was there for his debut. Um, and I remember being like, that's a big boy. He throws pretty hard. And then, you know, about four or five innings in his Velo dropped like three or four miles an hour. And he does tend to kind of lose Velo as starts go. But his fast ball that he throws over half the time is hard.

He's averaging 97 on it this year, but it just doesn't get miss hit much. He's got a 19% whiff rate, he had a 22% whiff rate on it last year. To have a four scene that has fairly good ride at 13, he's got 13 of a drop, a vertical drop on according to Savant, but like he does have too much horizontal. You remember you told me about,

Wellenbach told you like, Hey, I'm trying to keep, I need it to be straighter. I need to be straighter from throwing it up in the zone. And he's got one of those two plane high fastballs that are easier to put the bat on. Without that, with that, you gotta have really good off speed pitches, which you made a great point.

And I see it here, he's searching. He's just, what's my pitch that guys can't, what's my elite pitch? He doesn't have one. Um, even though the sweeper is being with 44% time this year, uh, it's not, it's the sweepers, not a pitch. You can just throw every like go to all the time. It right. He needs to reduce the, like as much as the fastball is good, he needs to reduce that percentage. You're right. 55% is too much.

Gotta find a way to reduce that. Yes. 100%. And that's, that's where he's getting hurt. And that's why it's just kind of like, you're watching, you're like, 55% is too much. It's too much of that. You gotta find a way to reduce that, yes, 100%. And that's where he's getting hurt. And that's why it's just kinda like, you're watching, you're like, this is good stuff, but it's just kinda like underwhelming. It's cause he's still searching for that, like when I have a good one of these breaking balls, then the fastball plays better. When I'm locating the fastball well,

then my breaking ball, I can go to this other pitch well. And he just hasn't gotten that kind of continuity going yet because he's still searching for that whatever his breaking ball or his even change up whatever it is whatever his off speed at pitch is going to be still searching for for what it's going to be long term that's why he's got different pitches over here yeah it is yeah but but it also there's some hope there's like well what if he just takes last year's 91 mile an hour cutter and puts it back in this mix, you know, can he, can he throw the cutter and sweeper at the same time? I feel like those mechanics are different enough. In fact, the sweeper mechanics are probably closer to his curve mechanics and

he's right now throwing the sweeper and curve. So having a cutter in there doesn't seem like it would screw with anything except maybe his fastball mechanics, but we want him to throw fastball less anyway. So I think there's a solution for him. The VELO being the best he's had in the major league so far is I think a good sign. He's out there. He's healthy. I think he's a hold, you know, in all formats because I still see this opportunity even

this year to maybe even just take a pitch that he just threw last year and add it to this mix and then, and take off from there. And, and having him say that, yes, I will throw the cutter at some point this year is like, I'm like, okay, now's the time. I don't know what you're waiting for. Maybe you were hoping to dominate out of the gate and then this would be your second act. But at this point it's no, no, like all hands on deck. Let's, let's do better than this.

The, the best I'm looking at too, the best product, most, at least by run value, the most productive pitch he's ever thrown was 20, 23, his slider and they hit one 57 against it. And that was a hard slider, right? Yeah. It was an average, uh, 80, 85, but it was somewhere between his sweeper. It was a dire sweeper and his, and then last year's slider was like 89, had eight inches less drop. And the same, I'm like, what did, why? Why'd you change it?

What happened? That's a completely different change. Yeah. Cause so he could either add the 2023 slider or the 2024 cutter. I want either one of those back in the mix. I'm just interested. He's, he's a guardian. So like there's, they have great pitching development there. I'm like what, how is he implementing? He seems like he's the only one who's been implementing information either incorrectly or they just keep getting it wrong with him. But

everybody else is figuring their stuff out like immediately. So it seems like maybe there maybe there's a like miscommunication happening here because he's changing things. Like he's everything he's changing is the thing he had best from the year before. I don't, I don't understand. Cause all metrics say that he has no feel for spin, right? Like his curve ball is the curve ball is a pitch he's had since he was drafted. The curve ball is that forever. And the curve ball is good. He's tried every breaking ball. If you put them all together, then he's Seth Lugo. But maybe he can't throw them all.

I don't think he has that kind of feel for spin. Altogether, but yeah. But pick one from your smorgasbord, dude. Like add it to the curve ball. The curve ball's been there forever. And the curve ball's good. And the curve ball he's happy with. It's the harder version of that that he hasn't settled on.

And I think curveball, sweeper, those things are kind of similar in a way. Find a hard breaking ball. I want the 90, 80, 89 mile an hour, jar of slider, cutter thing. I want that. Yeah. I would fill in a little bit of space Velo wise too. That would be, I think, part of the way of keeping timing thrown off for opposing hitters. It's the two start week coming in fantasy against the Yankees and Red Sox.

Gets them both at home, though. So it's going to be kind of a good test week for people who've been losing their faith. I like him at home. I don't like those offenses, but. I think they can be pitched to, I think. in 15 teamers, I'd be throwing them. Yeah. And 12s, you're looking closely at your next best option, trying to just hold them on the bench and see how it goes.

I think before you turn them loose. All right. You know, more career strikeouts, John Smoltz or Greg Maddux. Don't think about it. Greg Maddux? Don't think about it. Oh, Greg Maddux. He's thinking about it. Yes. More career homers, Terry Pendleton or Ron Gantt? Ooh, Ron Gantt.

You're thinking too much. Two for two. Oh, okay. You're just, you're disappointed because this is really my wheelhouse and I should know these things. More career B-war, Jose Ramirez or John Carlos Stanton. Why is it not Jose Ramirez? Is that your answer?

Oh, because Stanton's been around longer. No, it's Jose Ramirez. Yeah. Three for three. Hey, look, all right. We found a trivia game that Eno can play. All right, Trevor, lower career ERA Felix Hernandez or Randy Johnson. Felix. No, Randy Johnson. Randy, really? Yeah. I was surprised by that one. More career homers, Mike Cameron or Brett Boone. Mike Cameron. Yeah, it's Cameron. More career B war, Aaron Judge or Francisco Lindor.

Francisco Lindor. Judge. I was surprised. I thought Lindor came up in what, 15? Lindor's definitely played more years. Lindor's played more games. I just couldn't, I couldn't remember how many more. He needed more years, I was pretty clear, but I didn't know. If it was like three or four more years, maybe he'd have the edge, but.

All right. Well, we're going to call that game Ambushed. I'm never going to say we're playing it ahead of time. It's just going to happen randomly. But the main premise is just don't think of time. It's just going to happen. But the main premise is just don't think about it. If I just ask you a question like that, just go. See, you know why I'm better. I'm a little better at that is you're telling me the names.

And so at least I can like go through the, I can, I, if you can tell me the names, I can go through the Rolodex of stats that I can remember some of. If you just tell me stats, I don't look players up and be like, you know, maybe that could be my practice for me, that dude is just like, look at someone's stats and try to decide who it is. Your random player name recall is like the beyond section of Bed Bath and Beyond.

You're just out there. God knows where. Exactly. I like also like read bios and like register like what weird teams they were. Like that's the type of stuff that I remember about them or like patterns. I've just actually added that to my pregame. You know when I go in, usually when I go in to talk to players, it's almost all like numbers based where it's like, oh, you have the best stuff plus on sliders and baseball. Did you know that? Or like, oh,

you throw the most high forcing reserves, you throw the most high slider, whatever it is, there's some little thing that I want to talk to them about that comes from the stat thing. And I usually just, that's my thing. I've researched something, oh, you're, all these pitches are different. Like Mackenzie Gore, all your pitches are different this year. How did you do that? But the last what I've been doing is the last thing as I'm running out the door I just throw up their Wikipedia page now and just try to read through and be like Oh, he went to college there or he didn't go to because I can I can't make the stupid mistake of being like

Oh, did you learn that in college and then be like I didn't go to college and be like, oh, yeah I knew that you know, so at least I want to like And they'd be like, I didn't go to college and be like, Oh yeah, I knew that. You know, so at least I want to like have Wikipedia to be like, you went to college. Where do you go to college? Maybe there's like a, Oh, he went to college in Georgia. Like I can tell them that I grew up in Georgia. You know what I mean? Like there's, there's like, just so I know some basic facts about their life, you know? So I don't stumbled into some idiotic things.

So hopefully that'll, that'll help me on more modern name that dudes. But maybe I could do that going back for some, some practice from now. I do just like look through old people, like older people's Wikipedia pages and be like, Oh yeah, practice for name that dude, however you want. I don't think any of it's going to be effective, but maybe it'll help you in other aspects of your life. I don't think you can do anything to get better at that game. I think it's just the to get better at that game.

I think it's just the natural, natural sort of thing. That's my hunch anyway. Let us know what you think in the discord. You can find us on blueskytrevor's. I am Trevor May. Bsky.social. Eno is EnoSaris. Bsky.social.

I'm DVR. Bsky.social. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening. He's thinking about it.