Rates & Barrels - Is Julio Rodríguez an Adjustment Away?

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

Eno, DVR, and Jed discuss news and notes from around the league including injuries for Emmanuel Clase and Cristopher Sánchez and MLB's biggest three-team rivalries, before digging into the new-look Mariners' offense and Julio Rodriguez's slow start on the heels of a slight downturn at the plate in 2024. Rundown 4:20 MLB's Biggest Hate Triangle 9:17 Why Night Games on Getaway Day are Suboptimal 15:52 Astros Considering Cam Smith in Center Field? 20:13 The Mariners Hitters Are Changing (Related Reading from 'Leaky Barn': https://swingsandtakes.com/250421-the-mariners-offense-is-rolling) 25:51 Will Julio Rodríguez Click Again Soon? 31:28 Time to Make Another Adjustment on Pitches Away? 42:38 Does Closing Up Stance Help Slim Your Platoon Split? Follow Eno on Bluesky: @enosarris.bsky.social Follow DVR on Bluesky: @dvr.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: Jed Lowrie Producer: Brian Smith Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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wherever you pod, we're there. ["Race and Barrel Theme"] Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Wednesday, April 23rd. Derek Van Riper, Unisaris, Jed Lowry here with you on this episode. We take a spin around the league at some baseball news you should know, but then we're going to dig into the Mariners hitters. Some things are changing with those bats in Seattle and they're doing it despite a slow start from Julio Rodriguez.

We'll dig into some of the early struggles of Julio Rodriguez, which are probably connected to a downturn in power that we saw from him a season ago. We'll try to figure out if there's a way for him to make some adjustments and quickly get back on track here in twenty twenty five. So a lot of ground to cover today. Be sure to join our discord. If you haven't done so already, you can do that with the link in the description. A couple of injury related things to get to real quick off the top. We wondered with Cade Smith getting saves on consecutive days against the Yankees to begin

the week if something might be wrong with Emmanuel Classe and just before we started recording, Stephen Vogt told reporters that Emmanuel Classe is dealing with some shoulder discomfort coming off of his most recent appearance on Sunday. Did play catch on Wednesday so for now no IL stint but more of a day to day thing that we're going to keep an eye on here in the next few days. And then we did see that Christopher Sanchez who left his start early with forearm soreness will not have an MRI at this time. So maybe some good news, a little sigh of relief there if you are a Phillies fan or if you've had Sanchez on your roster, you know.

I definitely was like, oh no, I mean, it was so nice to see him come into camp throwing so hard, but we have seen some research from Louis Polis on these VELO increases and how sometimes they can lead to injury. And we also just know that generally more VELO increases and how sometimes they can lead to injury. And we also just know that generally more VELO means more stress on the elbow. So as soon as I saw that, I thought all those things at once and was worried about it. But hopefully he'll, he'll right the ship and come back because he's a really exciting pitcher. I love his change up.

Just a, it would be a really, really sad thing if we lost him for the year. I'm taking some big steps forward here each of these last two seasons so hopefully things are on the upswing. I did see a note that Ranger Suarez is progressing in his rehab assignment so if Sanchez goes down we could see Suarez back in that spot in the near future otherwise he'll take the spot of Tywan Walker. I did want to mention about Emmanuel Classe, which is interesting is that his vertical release point has dropped steadily over the course of the season. And how that fits into

our longer conversation, we started with Trevor May about how arms angles are maybe dropping around the league. And that maybe a lower arm angle is healthier is that I don't know. I mean, sometimes a dropping arm slot is bad news. You think that if it's year to year maybe it's something they worked on the off season and it was this only they did on purpose but within the course of a season it feels like it's the arm searching for a place that doesn't hurt and so I just find it interesting to see that Claucer's vertical release point is dropping and then we get this note.

And I do know that Josh Kalk before he went to work for the twins had an injury zone finder that included changes in release point as a precursor to injury. So maybe there's something there going on with Klaus A. And I think the one question we had about the Guardians, Jed, was for as heavily as they leaned on that bullpen a year ago as a major strength for that team. Would there be a price to pay in 2025 from those workloads? I'm far from the expert on workloads for pitchers, but I think that's there's a pretty direct correlation there.

You know, that these things are cumulative. So you know, over time you get used one year, it's gonna be, you know, it's gonna take longer to recover and maintain that same workload year over year. So I saw a post on Reddit this morning that I felt like Jed had some maybe unique insight to. The question came from NaturalBornSlayer on Reddit. So shout out to natural born slayer

for putting this out there. And the post just said, is Metz Phillies Braves MLB's biggest hate triangle? I started thinking about it and I'm like, yeah. That might be right. Well I got a West Coast version. You got a West Coast version. Okay, what's your submission for the West Coast?

Dodgers, Giants, Padres. Padres for sure. Because the Padres have entered the fray. I don't know, and you would say maybe, I don't know that the Padres hate the Giants Padres. Padres for sure. Padres have entered the fray. I don't know. And you would say maybe I don't know the Padres hit the Giants. They hate each other because the Giants fans will come down and they used to when San Diego couldn't fill their own park, Giants fans would fill their park for them. And so I remember multiple series where Giants fans were outnumbering Padres fans in

San Diego late in the season. And that really upset San Diego. And so I will put the West Coast version out there is, but it's, it's a good question because I think all three of those teams hate each other for sure. There's no doubt about that. They, uh, yeah, I think on the East coast, without a doubt, if we're talking about triangles, Mets, Phillies, Braves, I mean, there's not a lot of love lost there. Is there a central one?

Could you give us a Brewers like the Brewers Cubs Cardinals? Brewers Cubs Cardinals for sure. Yeah, I think that one. It's the same kind of thing that you were talking about giants and Padres were, you know, Cubs fans come up to Milwaukee and it's at least it's often 50 50. So it's our stadium. Yeah. And they call they call they call Miller Park. They call it Wrigley North, which gets really upset around here.

And I get it. I'm caught in that fray. I feel like because the Cardinals are usually for a long time, they've been the class of the division. Like they're just hated for winning. So I think that's a big part of it too. But I think that Mets Philly's Braves call might be the absolute consistent number one.

Like where the other ones kind of wax and wane a little bit depending on the quality of all three teams involved. Jed, can you feel it on the field? Like, can you feel the palpable tension in the rivalry games when teams like that are matching up, especially when the stakes get elevated during a pennant race?

Oh yeah, I'm thinking back to my Red Sox days with the Yankees, the energy in the stadium. Obviously the amount of coverage matters too. You got more eyes on it. You got more people from the media in the clubhouse. So I think the players, you try to just treat it like another game because you're a professional and you're trying to win. But it's hard not to embody the energy that is coming from the fan base.

That's Philly's Braves. I think I'm going to put at the top of the trio. I don't know who the third team would be if there was a third in Yankees Red Sox. Yankees Red Sox Jays, maybe? I think, you know, a lot of that just has to do with the performance. We talked about those right now. Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, you could say the Orioles, right? Like, but the Orioles, you know, for my tenure with the with the Red Sox weren't, you know, they weren't the most most formidable opponent. And so, you know, the Rays were actually really good in those years. And the Rays and Yankees mixed it up. I mean, you know, the, the rays were actually really good in those years. And the Rays and Yankees mixed it up. I mean, they, they used to throw at each other for sure.

Exactly. And that was, that was more of a, a player driven rivalry than it was more of a fan driven rivalry. Like I would say, I would say the, the, what we're talking about Mets, Phillies, Braves, Dodgers, Padres, Giants, you know, Brewers, Cubs, Cardinals. This is why, by the way, this is like all national league. I don't know why there's no American or teams in this. I would say the three that we're talking about are more fan driven and the players kind of feed off of that versus player driven. Tigers, White Sox, Guardians might be an underrated one.

That would be my speculation. I don't think I mean, people in Michigan hate people in Ohio as much as any two groups of people hate each other on the planet. So just get a third. There's no other football reasons for that. Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. I have met people from Michigan who won't buy gas in Ohio because they don't want any tax dollars to go to the state of Ohio.

I mean, it's like real intense. What a world. Yeah, it's out there. I forgot you had that Missigander connection. But let us know in the Discord if that's right. I think it's met Philly's Braves as far as three where everybody just hates each other on each corner of that triangle. I said a good story from Sam Blum on the Athletic Today, looking at the Angels as a team that plays very few afternoon getaway day games.

They choose to play night games. They start at the last possible minute, allowed by the collective barking agreement. And it traces back to having a bigger attendance number on a weeknight. The later you start the game, the bigger the attendance is gonna be. So there's a financial incentive for it.

But the cost comes from the travel on the players. Both teams, like it hurts the angels, but as the home team, you have a decision to make. And the road team is kind of upset about it, too. Yeah, because they're going to get to their next stop later than they want to. So, you know, what are the reasons why this is a big deal? Jed, where does this actually hurt you on a day to day basis as a big leaguer trying to prepare for the next series?

And, you know, what's the what's the problem with this? Why are players so upset about this? I wouldn't say so much preparation as just recovery. When you're landing at two or three in the morning and waking up the next day and playing in a new city, it might not be as apparent when you're 22, 23, 24 years old. And, you know, the adrenaline is so high just being in the big leagues. But, you know, as you get older and, you know, as adrenaline is so high just being in the big leagues. But you know, as you get older and you know, as those miles add up,

even through the course of a single season, it takes it out of you. But that's you know, that's part of the you know, that's just part of the gig to playing in big markets. You know, we had with the Red Sox, I remember some guys would come over from smaller market teams who hadn't done that before and they would these are veteran players that had been around for, you know, a handful of years or longer. And they would, they would complain about how many night games we would play Sunday night game every week. Yeah. That's it. I was just not to say Sunday night. Baseball is a specific, that's a big market. That's usually correct. Cubs,

you know, red Sox, the Yankees, like you get to one of those teams, all of a sudden you're playing Sunday night when you never used to play Sunday night. You know, that's, that's a difference too. Yeah. Huge. And then, and, and those games, you know, especially back in my day, used to go long before the pitch clock, we were playing some four hour games, you know? And so you've got big games that mean a lot to fan bases, to mean a lot to the viewership, and with games that were taken forever. I mean, there's some 4 AM arrivals, the next morning, Monday morning,

and you wake up and you don't know where you are the next day. Yeah, this is where the intersection of science and performance could really do a lot like you sleep quality has to be down because you know you're getting less of it. And then the physical recovery components of this, how often are players suffering minor injuries after these types of tight turnarounds? And I think, you know, load management's become a much bigger

conversation in professional sports in the last decade especially, but that seems like a unique spot where you'd say, we're definitely leaning on our bench more heavily after a late night getaway, early morning arrival, and then maybe a day game. That's the worst case scenario. At least if it's a night game the following day, you get a little bit of extra time built in there, get to the park a little bit later,

but if you have a day game coming off of the night game. That's in the CBA though, you can't have a night getaway in a day the next day, can you? That's very rare. I did it one time in my career where we played a getaway game in Houston as a night game and played a day game the next day in Chicago. And we were not a good team, so you know,

keep that in context. But I think, I think we lost like 10 games in a row after that. We're like, you know, we, I mean, it just like, it was, you know, I think you could just see everybody like, I think we had a, it might even have been like an early game too in Chicago, like a noon game. And we, we landed at, you landed at 2 or 3 in the morning.

And by the time you get to the hotel and get to sleep, I mean, I think it was like four or five hours of sleep. And you're turning around. We showed up an hour, hour and a half before the game. Nobody's gone through their routine to get ready for the game. And that circumstance is very rare. I don't even know if it's allowed now in the CBA,

but I remember doing that one time and just thinking to myself after that game was over in Chicago, like it's gonna take us as a team a week to recover from that. That happens sometimes. You add a bad team on top of that, and it was a recipe for disaster. Spirals a good bit.

Friendly reminder from our good friends at Massen, keep an eye on the old credit card statement. Apparently some fans were charged $8,900 instead of $8,999 for the season package to watch the Orioles. So, you know, always keep an eye on that old statement. The Orioles are definitely not putting out a $ thousand dollar product right now for you on TV. Yeah, that's the insult to injury right there. That is rough. They got to find a way to pay some of these young studs.

That's what it was like. Hey, you, you fan, you can help with the Adley Richmond extension directly. Take it right off your credit card. Did see a classic classic we at Wrigley Field on Tuesday night. Miguel Amaya hit a game tying homer with two outs in the ninth. Cubs came out and won it with an Ian Happ walk off single in the bottom of the tenth. I feel like the Cubs and Dodgers have played each other for like half of their games already this season. So that's been kind of wild, but had to throw that graph up on the screen because it's one

of the best ones we've seen this year as far as a fun roller coaster win probability. It also reminds me that the Cubs were involved in something very much like that with the Diamondbacks and both of them were like, what do we do about our bullpens after that game? So I guess it behooves the Cubs to do something about their bullpen. I mean, the Dodgers at least have multiple options. And if Tanner Scott needs to slide to the eighth for a little bit, they have other guys that can pitch the ninth. But Cubs right now are bullpens kind of hurting and needs some help.

Needs a lot of help quickly. One of their headline I saw that got my attention is a note from Chandler Rome, the athletic. The Astros are considering Cam Smith in center field. Is there anything they're not gonna try with Cam Smith in year one? Like that, he just started learning the outfield a few weeks ago.

Gonna close. A few months ago. Yeah, is he gonna become a two-way player in July? When does it end? I've seen a couple plays where I didn't know that the read was great but the out above average are good and the sprint speed is surprisingly high. I guess he's a young man who can fly. I'm looking at sprint speed now. I mean I think that closing speed is there. You're in the 95th percentile for sprint speed. You got the ability and then it's just building those instincts,

which I guess the analogy would be, he's kind of building the plane while he's flying. But Jake Myers is a really, really good center fielder. So. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that's where you have to balance the defensive run saving capability versus the offensive production. Maybe it's something you do if you need to give Jake know, balance the defensive run saving capability versus the offensive production.

Maybe it's something you do if you need to give Jake Myers a day off. You want to figure out if Kamsmith can play it. Maybe you do it on a day or the backup center fielder is from her pitching. So you're getting a ground ball machine on the mound anyway. You know, maybe that's the day you try it. I don't know. This seems like it's still more of a thing they're exploring than something they're actually going to do in the near future. But I was just surprised given that he's a rookie who cruised through the minor leagues, is still trying to figure out big league pitching

for the first time, holding his own, doing that while learning right field in the first place. Maybe their thought was, well, you're already learning a new position. You're taking that well enough. Let's bump it up. Let's turn the difficulty up another level. It's the kid throwing you the third thing after he's thrown you two things already. How do I catch this? You know, I think there might be some long-term, you know, strategy in this too, right?

Like, you know, Jake Myers is 28 now. Looks like he'll be going into second year ARB next year. There will be a time where, you know, they're going to have to make a decision on Jake Myers and, you know, to have a backup, you know, if, if they choose not to continue with Jake Myers and center or with the organization, if, you know, if he ends up somewhere else, having somebody that they, they obviously trust the bat.

And so if they can get them some experience at center field, it kind of sets them up in the next two years to take that position over if they move on from Jake Myers. That's really interesting. I mean, there's definitely people in a front office that are tasked with sort of thinking about the organization in three and five year increments and like, you know, not only just like, what do we do today and tomorrow?

You know, you have different parts of the front office that are focused on different, like the advanced scouts are like, what do we do next week? You know, and like, you know, then you have, you have guys who are just the capologist, basically, who are like, how do we keep our balance sheets clean? You know, then you have, you know, the player development guys, how do I feed you as much as possible for the next years, five, six and seven and somewhere in there, someone's thinking, yeah, who's our center fielder in three years?

You're looking at a, you know, organizational depth chart and you're saying, you know, hey guys, we got Cam, he's got the sprint speed. Can we get him some, can we get him some reps that will get him some experience? And, you know, maybe that's some additional work in the off season. But yeah, it is. They're throwing a lot onto a young kid in that situation. They do have that, we'll call it security blanket in Jake and he's off to a pretty good start offensively,

putting the ball in play, not hitting for a ton of power, but the defense is hard to argue with when you're fielding values in the 96th percentile. Yeah, that's the baseline that you get from Jake Myers and they're probably just getting to that point where they're not sure there's one more level with the bat, which would make them more of a steady backup option. So I guess that's where this whole thing is coming from. I'm like I'm all for outside of the box solutions and trying

new stuff. But this one caught me a little off guard. Let's take our deeper dive into the Mariners and their hitters are changing. You pointed out a post from swingsandtakes.com and they got a new approach. I thought there was a really interesting chart looking at their ex-WOBA going back to 2023. A lot of the same personnel there during the time,

during those years. So it's not like we've got a whole new group of hitters that are changing the production and they're running about as well as they have at any point in the three year window right now, striking out a little bit less, tied for fifth in WRC Plus at a 1.16. They're walking more, they're getting to their power. Everyone really except for Julio Rodriguez, who's been OK, but not quite the Julio we're expecting.

But what do you think about this change in approach? And is this generally a sustainable step forward for a group of bats that were underwhelming a year ago? Yeah, Leakey Barn was the same guy who was detailing the sun related park factor in the stadium there. In his newest piece, he kind of lays out that, you know, before last year, early last season, they were all about pulling the ball in the air as a team. They pulled the ball in the air among the top two or three teams in the league and they struck out a ton and they were

bottom of the league in opposite field grounders. So like they basically had this one approach they were going for and it cost them a bunch of whiffs. And then they went to Edgar Martinez and now Kevin Seitzer and they are still like top 10-ish top there I think it was I don't forget what it is top five top ten in pulled in the air but they are also now top ten in opposite field grounders and their strikeout rate has gone down to some extent. So you know the finding here is to me that Edgar and Kevin Seitzer have proposed more of a two strike at least if it's a two strike approach or if it's maybe it's just a general let's play both offense and defense you know like let's like pick our pitches to pull in the air,

but also be able to fend off, you know, pitches on the outside corner. Maybe it's a selective, if it's inside, try to pull it in the air. If it's outside, try to go with it, that sort of mentality. It's kind of quote unquote old school. There are some teams like the Boston Red Sox are like very high into,

they're two kind of KPIs, key performance metrics that they're really into are bat speed and pull in the air. They want you to do both of those things. And, you know, they do have some guys who strike out, but maybe it's more qualified than I know from the outside. Maybe they're all like, I don't know. We also want you to have a good, good PA and we want you to go the other way. If you have to, you know, that sort of deal, But this is working better for the Mariners it seems like and it seems like most of them got the memo

But maybe maybe one hitter needs to hear it a little bit more So we'll talk about that in a second I guess if we're gonna go to the Red Sox, you know with with the green monster there, you know, that is perfectly logical to Identify players that are gonna hit the ball, pull side, and the air, particularly righties. You just have such a competitive advantage to pull the ball in the air to left field at Fenway.

So I think just as you, that's what makes baseball fun too, right? Is like the dimensions are not the same, right? You play basketball, the dimensions are the same, football is the same, everybody's competing on that same playing field with the same dimensions where individual clubs can literally build around the dimensions of their ballparks. And so it makes sense to me that the Red Sox would pull, you know, identify guys that can pull the ball in the air consistently. And,

you know, if we're going back to the Mariners, I think a lot of it has to do with intent and I think the most successful hitters I've played with and the approach that I tried to take was take what the pitcher gives you. And that's kind of the baseline. There are moments where you have to kind of let it rip, right, like you have your moment and it's okay to swing and miss, right,

if you're gonna let it let it eat but at the same time you got to pick your moments and so you know that that whiff rate or the chase rate that we're going to talk about i think is okay you know if you have the bat speed to back it up and then just from a Mariners you know if you look at their run scores this year their 101 runs scored this year. And the surprising thing from a team perspective, they have allowed 101. So, this is this pitching staff that everybody points to,

but the offense right now is really keeping them where they are in terms of standing. And I think a lot of that has to do with the recognition that there has to, like, you have to score runs consistently in the big leagues. And if you're gonna go out to win consistently, and sometimes it's gonna take a day where you're manufacturing runs to get that win. And if you are trying to dictate the results of a pitch

before you go up there, meaning the intent is to pull the ball in the air every single, every single at bat, every single pitch, and you don't get the pitches that allow you to up there, meaning the intent is to pull the ball in the air every single, every single at bat, every single pitch. And you don't get the pitches that allow you to do that. You're going to end up with some poor performance. And I think that's the perfect segue into asking a broad question about Julio Rodriguez. Is he going to click again soon?

And I think it's it's important to sort of pull back and understand like why we're even trying to pick Nits here. I mean, Julio is ninth in F war among all position players since he debuted in 2022. This is a top 10 player since he entered the league. He's got a three forty two Wobo during that span, a one twenty nine WRC plus. He's popped eighty three homers. He's stolen ninety one bases. So he's phenomenal across the board.

What's happening to the first 23 games this year he's hitting 191 with a 314 371 line okay three homers five steals underlying numbers have some things in it that we've seen a lot 40.3% o swing percentage that's always been there even when Julio has been extremely productive rookie of the year Julio year two elite Julio, had a lot of chase so he's 39.7% for his career. Not a big surprise. Barrel rate's down slightly. That might be the function of not getting the pitches that he drives most effectively so we'll get into that in a bit. Hard hit rate though, right in line with career numbers,

51.6%, little above his career mark. Ground ball rate a little higher than usual, 48.4% but 46.2% his career. I don't think we need to worry about their pull rate is down right now. 34.4% pull rate early on for Julio career 39.5% and the reason we're wondering about this is because the power was down last year too. He slugged 409 last year, only hit 20 homers in 143 games after hitting 28 and 30, or 32 the first two years in the big leagues, and with slugging percentages at 509 and 485. So all of this is to just kind of say, okay, what's different about Julio? Has the league kind of come up with a game plan against him that has made him less able

to get to his power on a regular basis. And is there an adjustment that simply needs to be made for Julio to get back to being 30 30 Julio again? Like, what's the first thing you notice when you watch Julio Rodriguez in his current form, Jed? A lot of it is intent. And I think we have some videos that show that, you know, some of some of the swings he's taking right now you know a lot of these pitches are

pitches that if you're trying to pull 98 away you're gonna have a hard time and don't get me wrong these pitches are dotted away at high velocity you just look at the finish he's falling down over the plate his head is going one way his body's going the other the front shoulder is pulling out the intent of this swing is to pull the ball in the air on pitches that quite frankly, you're not going to be able to pull in the air consistently. I think that there is a difference between, like I said, trying to dictate the results and taking what you're given. And there are some days in the big leagues that quite frankly, you are not going to get the pitch that you can pull it in the air and have positive results.

And so I think with Julio, this is a guy like we talked about still like a phenomenal player, still 24 years old, a guy that I would buy a ticket to watch play, right? Like that type of excitement from a player. But if you look at, you look at the chase rate, you look at the whiff rate, I get a little concerned as he gets, as he gets older and the bat speed starts to drop. If you can't make that adjustment to stay in the zone and then, and then on top of that, not swing and miss as, as frequently as he has the production is a concern for me

if he can't find a way to either stay in the zone more or basically hit the ball more, right? I think we're looking at a guy who has always had a high chase rate, a high whiff rate, but the bat speed is elite and so you can get away with that. But long term, as he gets older and as the bat speed starts to drop how you sustain that production I think is gonna be something that he has to

You know approach head-on, but even short-term. What was that that you found about the all-stars? I mean you were talking about a guy right now Who's whiffing at what percentile and and chasing what percentile and you you compare that to all-stars and? granted 25 we're talking about a small sample size, but if you include it in the four year average, you're talking about a guy who's in the 10th percentile in the league for chase rate and the 17th percentile for whiff rate.

And if you go and you look at the last, 2023 and 2024, the position players, all-star team, there's only two guys in those years that have a lower chase and whiff rate. And it's Nick Castellanos and Luis Robert from 2023. The only other guys who had a lower chase rate than Julio or had a higher rate. Sorry, a worse chase rate.

Sorry, like lower in the sense of percentile. Beau Bichette is a guy who is in the 10th percentile for chase, but 73 percentile for whiff. Jose Altuve, sixth percentile for chase, 66th percentile for whiff. So these guys might chase, but they're not swinging and missing as much. Yeah, it is a worrisome combo.

And then to put that in hand with what we're seeing with the video, I just looked at some heat maps and these heat maps show bat speed on the left and exit velocity on the right. I thought I had one more with, there you go, with Woba. Look at that. There's a big blue hole out there

and he has not changed his bat speed. As you see, it's like 77 down the middle, which is primo primo bat speed. It's 77 away, which is suggesting he's putting the A swing on those mid-away pitches, but the blue woba shows you he's got like a less than 100 woba, I think, on pitches that are thigh high and away. So I agree. I think there needs to be a little bit of a B swing scenario here. Maybe do the thing where you the first round of BP is how many hits can I do to the opposite field? You know, like just spend a round of BP doing that maybe some T work Maybe some just some just get it in your head. But like sometimes when the pitch is out that far

I'm gonna I'm just gonna poke it out there, you know Oh, you know push back a little bit on the idea of just taking the ball the other way. It's hit the ball where it's pitched, right? And that's why we, one of the first episodes, I think it was the first episode we talked about, my routine, I wasn't taking a B swing. I practiced my A swing to each one of these nine spots, but my A swing to middle in is different

than my A swing down and away, right? So the A swing down and away produces a result that is determined by the pitch location and my contact point. So I'm taking my A swing to all nine of these spots. It's just that the outcome, the result is dependent on where the pitch location is and the contact point with which I make it. I'm not practicing my B swing per se. And I would never advocate for somebody to go into BP and try to take an inside pitch and just force your hands to hit it the other way. That's not productive either.

I'm saying that you should be taking an A swing to whatever the pitch location is, but with the intent of taking what the pitcher gives you. So you also said you moved that contact point around. So if you were looking at thigh high away, would you be expecting the contact point to be deeper? Deeper, but not to the point where you're getting beat, right? There's still a leverage point on the away pitch.

But he could be trying to get that pitch out in front to drive it. And so there could be some miscalculation sort of of where the contact point should be on that. Correct, like what is like maximum leverage point to drive the pitch away, right? Cause if you are going out there and you're trying to pull everything in the air,

you already predetermined on what your mechanics are gonna be. And like I said, in order to pull a 97 mile an hour pitch, 97 mile an hour fastball on the black away, or what ultimately would lead to a lot of sliders away too, the only way to do that is to open your front shoulder up, right? And that, like if you look at the swing, the head's going this way, the body ends up falling over, because the intent is to pull it in the air, right?

And so it's not even that you're trying to get your A swing off, he's trying to get one swing off. He's taking the same swing regardless of where the pitch is. And my suggestion and what I was able to work on was take an A swing to every single contact point. But the result will be different. That's interesting. There are guys in the big leagues who have three different humps on bat speed. Right, which is kind of like a two strike approach sometimes that you see in there.

Or, yeah, just like maybe it's going with the pitch outside and taking a little off. Oh, that's also bat speed. The way we're talking about is bat speed with different contact points. So, ah, so that could just be different contact points as well. Yeah, that's the other variable I think that's really important. I think when you look at the entire career of Julio Rodriguez, you take the rolling 15 game average of his Woba and his pull rate, those lines are just all over each other, right? And I think that's part of the challenge is like, he knows he does damage when he pulls it in the air.

So like he's going up there with intent to do damage as much as he possibly can. Like this is how good things happen. So this is what I'm going to do. I can understand how you fall into that trap when that's been the way you've produced up to this point in your career. But once you show a hole,

you have to do something to get them back to giving you something you can do this on. Exactly, exactly right. And the peaks are not quite as high in 2024 as they were in his first two seasons. And the valleys are as low as they were when he first broke into the league. So I think that's the sign of the league has a better game

plan for him. And now he has to kind of go into that second phase of his career with his next adjustment, which the question then is, do you believe he can make it? I mean, just based on raw ability, my snap assumption is yes, like we're we're diagnosing what's not working right now. But based on the overall body of work that Julio's put together in his young career so far, it's easy to sort of give him the benefit of the doubt, right?

It's going to be a few years before he loses top end bat speed. He has a pretty long window to make changes before the raw ability starts to fade since he's only 24. I'm looking at spray charts now too. And if you look at, you know, 2022 first year in the league, there's a lot more pull in the air because, you know, nobody knows who he is, right? And quite frankly, 2022 first year in the league, there's a lot more pull in the air because nobody knows who he is, right? And quite frankly, that rookie year,

you're gonna get challenged a whole lot more to see if you have the ability to hit at the major league level. And a lot of that starts with fastball, proving you can hit the fastball, right? And so they're gonna challenge him in the zone, right? And probably off the plate. And so you see in his spray chart in 2022, in his, his spray chart in 2022, there's

a lot more pull in the air where you know, he produced a lot of home runs, then you go to 2023, which you know, that's his 30 30 year. And now he's got 13 home runs to center on right field. So it's in there, right? Like the ability to drive the ball the other way is there. And if you look at 2023, that whiff percentage, even though the chase rate is in the eighth percentile, the whiff percentile is in the 32nd. That's a more, to me, that's a more reasonable spread, especially with the bat speed in the 98th percentile. And you look at 2023 and these pitchers are saying he's driving the ball out of the ballpark the other

way and driving it to the pull side as well. Where am I going to pitch this guy? And so now, if he's looking at it and saying the majority, if he's looking at that chart and saying my Woba on the pull side is, I need to pull the ball in the air. Well as soon as that happens to E's point, and he's starting to show more of a weakness, he's not going to get any of these pitches inside, and trying to consistently pull 97, 98, and then I'm assuming he's getting sliders off the plate, starting his strikes, ending away off the plate, those pitches are nearly impossible to pull in the

air consistently, because as soon as you start leaning out over the plate trying to do that, then they bust you in, and now you're spinning up there in your mind, and you don't know where to go. His opposite field percentage right now is the best it's ever been, but it's also pretty low still, and it's not driven balls.

He's doing lazy fly balls, the opposite field right now. And I don't, that seems like a, that seems like a. An inch or two. It seems like it's, it could be just a little. That's all intent, right? And it's all intent and it's, and it's having the, like the ability to take your a swing to hit it away, right? Like you, if you're stepping up into the box in the big leagues and taking a quote unquote

B swing, you're not going to get good results either, right? That's not what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting that you have A swings no matter where it is, right? And so, and to reiterate, it's an A swing away, but it's producing a result based on the pitch and the contact point that is a little bit out of your control, but you're still taking your A swing away. It just might not lead to as much damage for the majority of the league. But Julio's proven in the past that he can do damage away, right?

Hitting opposite field home runs. And so I think it's getting back to the A swing away, but not like not with the intent of just pulling everything in the air. What other adjustments do you think you could make along the way? I mean, is there something you can do? Can you close off a little bit to take away the outside fastball? Keep the same mentality or similar mentality, but just change something mechanically to compensate for what pitchers are doing right now.

Is that a viable consideration? We'll start talking about some of these splits and stances here, which is really compelling. We start talking about guys that are closed off and have these reverse splits, but as a right on right, no matter what adjustment you make, there's gonna be some upside to it, there's gonna be some upside to it

and there's gonna be some downside to it, right? And so I think with Julio, you don't wanna limit the pull side power, but you also want him to stay on plane on the pitch away. And so I don't know if there's a short term adjustment that he could make to stay on plane a little bit more on those outside pitches. But once again, that's why I'm a big advocate for the T-work early on when you're really

removing the variable of a moving ball and you can focus on the mechanics of your swing alone. Because if you're trying to think about the mechanics of your swing while the ball is in error, there's too much for your mind to process while that's happening. And those lasting mechanical changes are going to take longer than if you're isolating the mechanics of the swing and removing the variable of a moving ball. He's also at zero, which I took a look at stances, I removed switch hitters, and then I adjusted it so left and right so

that positive, if you're looking at this graph right now, positive means a traditional platoon split and negative means a reverse platoon split, no matter if you're left or right. And then I just looked at how open your stance was. It's not the strongest relationship, but you do see that the closer to zero, the closer to closed you are, the closer your platoon splits are. That speaks to the sort of give and take that Jed is talking about,

that like you can open up and make yourself better against one hand and make yourself worse against another hand. And what you'll see is if you look in particular at righties, the righties who are the most closed, none of them have traditional splits. They're either at zero or have reverse splits. And even Lawrence Butler is a closed lefty, but Alex Bregman is a really closed righty. Pete Alonso is a pretty closed righty. A lot of these closed righties have reverse splits or not big

traditional splits. And so the more open guys have a bigger spread of platoon splits. So I think this is also interesting because we can look at Ellie De La Cruz and Ellie De La Cruz is the number one guy who's opened up the most and I think you look at this heat map you see okay it's made him a little better on high and tight pitches maybe and he's evened up his bat split splits so maybe it's allowed him to get to his bat speed as a right-hander more often and then there's this this weird idea that if you're a switch hitter you want to have big splits because you're never going to see the opposite you're never going to

be right on right and you're never going to be left on. You're never gonna be right on right and you're never gonna be left on left. So you wanna have like traditional large splits. You wanna be as big as possible. So it might be an argument to open up a little bit if you're a switch hitter because you're never gonna see that same-handed slider that's going away from you

because you're never gonna see a same-handed slider. And so if you're not so concerned with a pitch going away from you in that quadrant at that speed with that kind of break Then you can open up a little bit get better on the inside Maybe it has some good bat speed ramifications for you and you don't care about platoon splits But if you're Alex Bregman and you're gonna always be right-handed and you're gonna always see like sliders that go away from you right on right, then you should probably be pretty close. You should probably be pretty close to neutral because you need to be able to reach that outside slider sometimes to fend it off two strike counts, you know, like you also need

to be able to see it right. You can't just be like super open. So this has something to do with Rafael Devers too. He's like the most open guy and you know you wonder what his splits will look like. You know if he remains as open as he is, what that does for him low and away. He has tried to improve his eye maybe just be I'm gonna spit on those pitches. But in any case, if my memory is correct you were not that open as a player and I wonder if you were ever tempted to open up more as a switch hitters, you could be more open on both sides.

So left-handed, I would say I was more open than right-handed. And I think a lot of that had to do with my natural move to the ball and what my comfort level was. Because we've talked about, generally, if you're opening up your stance, it's because you struggle a little bit more with the inside pitch. You feel more confident with the pitch away.

And that's the way I felt. Left-handed, it wasn't my natural side. The way I was wired, I was just a little... I don't know if this is true, but it felt like I produced more bat speed from the right side. I would be a little bit more closed right-handed because I knew with that quickness that I had, I wasn't gonna get beat in very often from the lefties.

Plus there weren't a whole lot of high V-low lefties. It was a lot of off-speed away, you know, and every once in a while you'd get a high velocity lefty. But I knew that I could get to the ball inside, right handed, but the majority of the pitches and where I needed to drive the ball right handed, the majority of the time with the lefties that I was facing was back up the middle and the other way.

So I was a little bit more closed off because that's where I, A, I needed to kind of force myself to get on plane with that pitch to drive it the other way and just react in. Left-handed, I was a little bit more open because I was facing higher velocity. I needed to give myself a little bit cleaner lines to open up my hips from the left side to get to the higher velocity. I felt comfortable driving the ball the other way

from the left side. So I would give myself a little bit more, you know, room to clear my hips from the left side. There's something when you're open, there's something about your momentum that's different, right? Because you have to close. Like you're moving towards the plate, right?

Does it lead to diving at all? Or like, what do you, Like you're moving towards the plate, right? Does it lead to diving at all? Or like, what do you, because that's a different move. Like if you're close, you just sort of like, you open up your legs and you're kind of, it's very in one dimension. But if you're open, that leg is coming towards the plate. Once again, I think this really what it comes down

to like the timing aspect of it and how you time the pitchers. My timing mechanism was a leg kick. And so I wanted my leg in the air when the pitcher was throwing the ball. And my land foot would actually, like depending on where the pitch was, my land foot was going to where the pitch was, right?

So if my leg is in the air, it's dynamic, the pitch is coming in and I recognize that. land foot is going to land in a different place depending on where the pitch is and where I perceive it's going to end up. Then me just putting my front foot down and reacting. It can help your perception to some degree, right? Because your leg is, if you are more open and your leg is up and the pitch is coming in, then you will feel that your leg is that if you're more open and your leg is up and the pitch is coming in, then you will feel that your leg is, that if you're trying to, if you're going towards the pitch, then it gets going further.

So then the outside pitch, you're like, oh, wait, this is far. And you might hold up on the outside pitch if it's too far. Yeah, a lot of that is just pitch recognition, the ability to recognize a pitch and see the movement. And quite frankly, no, the movement. But your body helps you recognize a pitch sometimes, right? Absolutely And quite frankly, no, the movement. But your body helps you recognize a pitch sometimes, right?

Absolutely. You see people like in Little League too, like they're like watching the pitch and it's like they'll actually, the whole body will go down and then they'll start, they won't swing because they're like, oh, that's too low. You know, like my whole body went down.

And once again, I think a lot of that has to do with the timing that you implement with your swing, right? And mine was lift my leg up to get my timing and then let my body react. And a lot of it is just making sure you're on time. And so whether that is getting your front foot down early, you have to, if you're going to do that approach, your front foot has to get down early enough for you to recognize the pitch and let your body move to the ball. With me, it was the exact opposite.

I had to get my front foot up in time and be on balance so then I could react to where the pitch was. And so that's where the athleticism and the dynamic aspect of hitting came in, is like I'm kind of hovering in this spot. I'm, you know, I've trained, I'm strong enough to like be balanced on my back leg to then react to the pitch where it is.

So it allows my body to move to where I want it to go in space, right? So there's a ball coming at me, my leg is in the air, and I'm reacting in space during that mid-pitch, we would call it a mid-pitch adjustment, right? So I'm timing the pitch, I'm timed off the fastball, I'm adjusting to off-speed, and a lot of that is happening mid-pitch while the ball is in the air.

Yeah. One thing that I did notice also was that 10 out of the 15 guys with the most pronounced reverse splits last year opened their stances up. So, you know, reverse splits can also be a problem. I think that as a player, you kind of want to be, you kind of want almost zero platoon split. You kind of just want to be as good as possible

against both sides, you know? As a righty in particular, right? Cause the majority of bats you're going to get are right on right. And, you know, left on left, a little bit different. You can get away with having a below, like be an everyday guy as a lefty and have slightly below left on left splits.

But as a righty, if you're below average right on right split, you're just not an everyday guy. So they had the most pronounced reverse split. So this would be a righty that was doing really well against righties. I think they would just keep it going. I bet you if I look at this closer, it would be a lot of lefties who were like,

hmm, I'm hitting lefties well with my open stance. I should close up so I can hit righties better. I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, okay, got it. That's a, that's an, and once again, they opened up, so okay, that's it. They opened up. So this is probably lefties who are seeing,

seeing lefties well. And so they open up hmm there's no like clear math I mean I think that's I think what you say when you say this happens in a vacuum and this has to do with how your body moves and stuff there's no it's not surprising me that we can't be like oh this stance means this because if we were able to also like do something We're like this stance equals this most of the teams have done that and by now every hitting coach on every team would be like Oh, this is the stance you have to have because we have mathed it out, you know So there's there's probably no like smoking gun where you're like this angle means this happens

But I also think about you know, when you're opening up and when you're closing, your eyes might be in a slightly different position with respect to the pitch coming in. And so, you know, that means something because you're gonna see the ball differently. If you're opening, opened up, your eyes are gonna be in a little bit slightly different spot.

This is something that's actually, I think the most advanced teams are doing more of, which is kind of this idea of computer vision or at least tracking eyes, gaze tracking. They're doing a lot more gaze tracking where they're trying to see what it is like to be in the box and see what your eyes are seeing and see if they can kind of science that out a little bit. So I think there's probably the teams that are furthest along on gaze tracking probably have some idea of how that relates. Oh, you see the ball this way,

like, you know, and I don't know if you ever had to do that, but I've seen teams do this where they're putting these like goggles on and they're actually gaze tracking and at spring training, they'll run everybody through the gaze tracking and then they'll be able to say something about your gaze and maybe now or maybe in the soon future, they'll say, oh, well, you're this type of gaze player

and so you should be open because your eyes are moving like this and you should be more closed because your eyes move like this. Exactly, and that's to me, that's the compelling part, right, is that this stuff is deeply individual and if you can optimize the individual's performance, that's what's compelling to me. It's the same idea of long ball labs, right, with Keenan. He's optimizing for the individual.

It's not a blanket approach to this. And I think that's where if we know, if we can harness the technology to optimize individuals' performances, that's where the magic is. And that's where I think even having a team philosophy for hitting gets a little bit slippery fast. If you have something you're trying to make everybody do, it might not work for everybody.

And then you're missing on maybe really important players that just don't quite fit into that philosophy Because of their approach their swing how they see the ball all of those different factors the way they're wired as a person the Biomechanics right like that's there's some basic biomechanics that are going to happen But then as you develop your swing and you know, you're gonna have little quirks that work for you Just the way that you're gonna have little quirks that work for you just the way that you're wired. Now I just wanna go to the cage. One player once told me that he thought the worst pitching coaches only had one idea.

He was always like, this guy was just like, cutter, cutter, cutter, cutter, yeah, I get it, cutter, got it, fine, I'll do a cutter for you. And I bet you there's a similarity in hitting where there's hitting coaches or just have one idea and you're like, I actually have an example. It's Teacher Man to some extent because Teacher Man has a really strong feeling about knob, like sort of knob to it's like knob. Like he really wants you to like it's about dumping the barrel and like knob. It's like it's not knob to ball, but it's like something similar where's like, he's got one idea and it's really worked for Aaron Judge.

And it really worked for Carrie Carpenter and it doesn't work for other guys at all. And I don't think that he has the sort of flexibility to be like these other guys that it's not working for. What do we like, let's find something that works for you. The man that has one book is dangerous. You know, the man that has one book is dangerous. That's a good proverb to end on. Perfect note to end on. You can give us a follow on Blue Sky, you know, you know, Sarah's got it

social on DVR, not be scared at so you can find Jed on Instagram. That's the better way to go. Jed's not on Blue Sky. Good choice, Jed. Shoot us an email or a text or a message on Discord if you've got a question for a future episode. You can't actually text us, I don't know why I said that. Discord mailbag channel is the place to go. You can join the Discord link in the show description. Thanks to our producer, Brian Smith, for putting this episode together. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels.

We're back with you on Thursday. Thanks for listening. The man that has one book is dangerous.