Rates & Barrels - Luis Arraez to San Diego, Hitters on the Rise & Christian Scott's Debut

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss the five-player trade that sent Luis Arraez to the Padres, the Marlins' return from the trade, a few hitters that made significant moves up in DVR's updated hitter rankings, and how aggressively Christian Scott was pursued in weekly leagues after an impressive weekend debut against the Rays.  Rundown 3:35 Luis Arraez Traded to the Padres 8:05 Dillon Head & Betting on Best Long-Term Outcome 19:56 Injuries News & Notes: Trea Turner, Joe Musgrove, Wyatt Langford, Christian Yelich, Grayson Rodriguez 31:46 Is Robert Gasser the Next Pitching Prospect to Get the Call? 36:23 A Few Big Risers in DVR's Updated Hitter Rankings ($): https://theathletic.com/5344859/ 44:59 Christian Scott & Massive Weekend Bids 59:59 Frequently Dropped Players From The Weekend Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! https://www.youtube.com/c/ratesbarrels Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On May 17th, I actually like this so much better than a motel. I bet the people who live here are really happy. witness how the strangers Hello? became the strangers. You have to get out of here. What the fuck is going on?

Oh my god! Why are you doing this to us? Because you're here. The Strangers, Chapter 1.'s Monday, May 6th. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Monday, May 6th. Derek the Ripper, Inosaris here with you on this episode. We have an early May trade to talk about. Luis Arias on the move since we last spoke.

We'll dig into that along with a few injuries. New hitter rankings dropped prior to the weekend. We'll talk about a few of the big risers from that update. We're also going to look at where the money went this weekend as far as fab leagues and rankings drop prior to the weekend. We'll talk about a few of the big risers from that update. We're also going to look at where the money went this weekend, as far as fab leagues and some of the players that were dropped with dig into why those moves were made in both directions. You know, how's it going for you on this Monday?

It's going good. Uh, you know, an update on, uh, my elders, uh, elder sons, son's little league career. He got put into the game in mop up duty, but struck out the first hitter he saw or the only hitter he got, but he struck him out on three pitches, fastball, fastball, curve ball. And his team rushed out of the dugout

to give him high fives. So that's why you play right? Moments like that. He was in a, he was in a great mood. Saturday was the fourth. So we finished up the Mandalorian, which we hadn't finished. Uh, and, uh, we were hoping to get to a Soca, but that's for another weekend. And then Sunday was, we were hoping to go to Ahsoka, but that's for another weekend. And then Sunday was, we were hoping to go

to the batting cages and the closest batting cages I could find with an arcade attached to it was this place called Scandia in like Vallejo. So we drove an hour, got there and they said, oh, because of all the rain, the batting cages are flooded. So we played some mini golf and did some VR, arcading and had some fun. Anyway, I did find it weird when I lived near you that there were not batting cages nearby. I looked for them because one day I just wanted to go hit.

I just wanted to go swing the bat and just kill an hour or just shoving quarters into a machine. And shouldn't there be more like top shot type things for batting cages? I was like a place that has like an arcade, like it's like bowling, you know, like has an arcade and it has beer and has batting cages. Like, why does that not exist? I love the peninsula. It's not at all like the Midwest. There's something like that in the Midwest, like every 50 miles.

Right. You guys have like, you can get drunk and throw axes. Oh yeah. We got, we have, we have rival businesses in the region fighting for your business for you to come and throw drunken axes in their establishment. Seems like the, the, the, the, what is it? The waiver form you have to sign is probably pretty legit. Probably similar to when you go rock climbing.

About the same as ours, just waving. If I get hit in the head with an axe, I won't sue. Yeah. You're out there drinking haze throwing axes. Probably. I like drinking beer. I would probably like throwing axes. I'm not sure I want to do those things at the same time.

I'm not sure I want to do them at the same time. Yeah. I think I'd want to be very sober for axe throwing, but just my personal preference. You can hang with us in the Discord. Haven't been in there much over the weekend because my weekend was caring for family. I'm learning as a dad, when one person gets sick in the house,

everyone gets sick. So just a matter of- Oh, just wait for the noro. No, we're not doing that. Well, let's move on. Let's talk about Luis Aray, who was traded over the weekend. He goes to San Diego as part of a five player swap. Tons of layers to this one.

The return is Dylan Head, the 25th overall pick in the 2023 draft. Jacob Marci, who was the MVP of the Arizona Fall League last fall. Nathan Martarella, a first baseman who really has to hit to just make it to the big leagues. And then Woosuk Go, who was a reliever signed out of Korea by the Padres, who has not pitched in the big leagues yet. All four of those players go to the Marlins. The Marlins also sent about $8 million to cover Arias' salary. Keid Law referred to this return as an impressive haul.

I saw a lot of people kind of panning the trade on Twitter. And I think at the root of it are probably some questions about Luis Arias' real life value. And we have this in fantasy too, where we see a number from the auction calculator or an earned value calculator. And it might say Luis Arias was a $20 player in a five by five league last year.

And we have this sort of skeptical eye of, yeah, OK, but he might not repeat that. And the way he got that $20 was a little bit shaky. How much can we rely on that? The same thing happens with war. All I really saw was a lot of analysis about the limitations of Arias defensively, the variance that comes from being a player

dependent upon batting average being his carrying skill, like putting the ball in play and finding spots where defenders aren't. But it seems like a skill that he owns about as much as anybody owns it. So just curious, what did you think about the trade from a value perspective? The Padres give up too little, too much,

or actually a pretty fair return to the Marlins to acquire Arias. I love the trade. I don't understand. I love the trade. I think it makes sense for the Padres. For the Marlins, sure. I guess when you start talking about these war limitations and where does he play defensively and you doesn't have power on stuff maybe maybe there wasn't gonna be a really good prospect on the table. Maybe this was the best idea was to get some that could become good prospects or at least be useful. good prospects or at least be useful but when I look at this group of prospects I would easily give them up for a player so just to run through them real quick Jacob Marcy topped out of one hundred and one miles an hour at the Arizona fall league. I just don't trust someone you know who's supposed to play in the outfield that looks like he has power, but doesn't maybe have power. I mean,

one Oh one is worse than Nolan Shonwell who I keep breaking up, you know, like one Oh one by the way is much worse than Luis Arias. I mean, this isn't a guy who hits the ball hurt hard, but, uh, in terms of max CV, he's never been lower than one Oh four basically. So, uh, that's weird. You're going to get a guy who does not have the hit tool of Luis Arias, who has like maybe the best hit tool we've seen, you know, recently. Uh, and so Jacob Marcy profiles is an up and down guy for me.

Um, I don't know that much about Marta Rella, uh. You know, did I get that right? Yeah, you said Martarella. You didn't say Mortadella. You said Martarella. Martarella. The WRC pluses were good. He had a little bit of down first attempt to double A. From scouting reports, I gather that he's not a great body.

He's going to have to do his best to to stay fit and that that keeps him sort of in first base dh territory going forward. high for that. You know, the league average first baseman is like a 108 WRC plus. So he can't, he can't be a league average bat. He has to be a special bat really. And there's a, there's a potential to combine the strikeout rates with power, but I will say the isolated powers are not exciting to me. Uh, he has not had an isolated power over 200 since complex ball. And that's something I would kind of prefer to get from my first baseman. So Martirella has his flaws and then Dylan Head is I think the big question mark in this trade and of course there are reasons to like him.

He's got power, he's got at least potential power, he's got speed, he seems to have the tools, he's young. You know, Eric Long and Hagen pointed him out as someone who he expects to make the 2025 top 100. He was listed right next to Robbie Snelling, Arjun Namala. These are interesting young players, you know, that that that could you know George Lombard junior you know these are these are these are players that could make the hundred next year he says himself that he has about a 30% track record on on these picks to clicks of even making the next 100 that's not even becoming a majorly right? But I did look in the past and some picks to clicks were, oh, I'm gonna say his name

and you're gonna overvalue this all the time. Julio Rodriguez, you know, was a pick to click. So good job there, Eric Langenhagen, Kevin Alcontra, also Bryce Turing. So that seems like a really exciting thing to say about Dillon Head. And it might be, that's the people who are excited or they're thinking along those lines.

I look at him and I say, I've fallen in love with 19 year olds in A-ball before that had good numbers. And Dylan Head does not have good numbers. You pointed out rightly, the sample size is terrible, but I then did this enterprise where I went and looked at low sample under 20 year olds from 2017, 2018 and 2019 just to see who we're talking about. These are all the names in those three years

that had a sub 90 WRC plus at 20 or younger, like Dylan head. These are the best names I could come up with to Capita Marcano, Parker Meadows, Wensil Perez, Oswaldo Cabrera, Jose Barrero, a Rodolfo Castro, Trey Cabbage, Mickey Moniac, and before you think there's no good news, O'Neill Cruz is on that list. So I'm giving him about that kind of a shot. I'm giving Dylan Head a one in 10 shot. A one in 10 shot of becoming an impact player or a one in 10 shot of becoming a regular in the big list.

I don't think I named a major league regular on that list other than Cruz. Yeah. And even Cruz, of course, we've seen the wide range of skills and flaws that he possesses so far. So I think the thing, the thing about making a trade this early, there's a few factors. Like what was the market for Luis Arias? We don't really know how many teams were interested in trading for him, what other offers were out there. If you let Arias stay and play out a couple more months

and wait to the deadline, I think there were arguments that suggest that they would have got a similar return at the deadline, probably. There's always the possibility he gets hurt and you can't trade him. So the now versus later aspect might favor now if you don't think the return is going to get a whole lot better. And my argument would be that I don't know if there's one more level beyond last season.

We could easily look at the season that Luis Araya has just posted the 354, 393, 469 and say those are high water marks for every part of his slash line, even if he's a good player going forward. So then you say, OK, last year with the high water marks, the plate, he was a three and a half war player at Fangrass. I think he was closer to five using baseball reference. Let's just say he's a four win player at his peak. He's probably more of a two to three win player in a typical year.

That's good. That's a good player. And you need that sort of upgrade for most lineups. He's a free agent after next season. And from the Marlins perspective, if he's a two and a half or three win player, and he's a 15 plus million dollar player in his last year of arbitration, you're probably not that excited about it because saving that much money here. Yeah. You're not saving a lot of money.

And the market for him next year will be even cooler. So this was your best chance to get quantity and players you like. If you w yeah, it might be. If you wait, um, I'm going to name the teams that could emerge as more of contenders and want to pay that haven't decided that yet. It's a very short list. It also have a bottom 10, a sort of second base projection. Wouldn't that be sort of emerging contenders for Luis

Arias? Yeah. The, uh, the Royals, uh, could want to do something else. The pirates could play bad, play well and may want to do something at second. Uh, the Mariners are, I think, probably the best place that you would want to be looking, because the Mariners have talked about wanting

to improve their strikeout rate too. And the Mariners need offense, and maybe even a guy who just dinks and dunks singles is something that could help that offense. So you're looking probably pretty hard at the Mariners, maybe the Red Sox, but they are about to get Von Grissomers and back i think they want to give him a shot and look at him so i need the mariner's of the team that you would be looking at for. You know prospects that you like and you know you maybe you maybe they just looked at the mariner's prospects decided what would be the most likely. Prospects that be offered you know cuz it, it's probably not the the top two guys.

It's probably not class a, you know. So then you look down the list and you go, I like the Padres down this better than than you take the deal. Yeah, I think that's how they got there. I think with the rise again, the debates about how good he is as a big league player, they're going to rage on for a while. A super low carry guy with a great hit tool going to San Diego.

Kind of nice since Tony Gwynn, Mr. Padre himself. That's right. Probably the most similar type of hitter, although Luis Arias has to do it for like 10 more years before you could really actually compare those two guys to each other. I was looking at one other thing, because when you have a K-rate as low asayas, 7.5% for his career, it was 5.5% last year at 6.9% so far this season.

You put that many balls in play, your hard hit rate is going to be low. And people say, Oh, he just hit the ball hard. Well, he hits the ball hard. He just also hits the ball soft because he hits everything. The big denominator problem. So I was looking at the, the hard hit ball leaderboard, not by percentage, but just by total. Luis Arias had a hundred and forty batted balls last year at 95 plus.

And that puts him, that ties him at 124th out of 258 players. It kind of puts him in the middle. That's better than you'd expect if you look at his percentages. Yeah. So, I mean, I think there's some things that we can get fooled by with players as unique as Luis Arias. Oh, he doesn't have any power. It's like, he's got some power.

Like we saw, we saw 10 homers last year. We saw eighth year before that. It's, it's probably in that range and San Diego is not a park that's going to help him in that regard to another place where left-handed power gets suppressed, but that's not why part that's going to help him in that regard. It's another place where left-handed power gets suppressed, but that's not why he's there. I think Luis Arias is also interesting from a lineup diversification perspective.

Like, hey, you got this guy that is a really tough out. He's a pest. He's going to wear somebody down. He's going to get on baseline. He's going to wear a pitcher down. And now you've got a more tired pitcher pitching to the next couple of guys behind him in the lineup. Like those types of things, it's value added on the margins it's not off

the charts but if you if you take Jackson Merrill and you take Luis Araya's and you put different types of players between them you also change the the potential types of plays that could happen at those moments right like if you just had a bunch of Fernando Tatis juniors, you could be a lot of strikeouts in one game and nobody hits a homer. But if or the one homer is with nobody on base. Right. But if you kind of alternate Tatis junior with Jackson Merrill and Luis Arias with Manny Machado, then like the opportunity for single

walk power, you know what I mean? Like it just I think this is a pretty good lineup i really like it because for contact you got compass on a maryland arise for power you got to teach machado increasingly cronin worth. that it's a little weak is is power, but Tatis and Machado are pretty good source of power in the middle. And profile is a non zero guy. Kim's a non zero guy and Cronowar is a non zero guy for power. So this is a team that's going to make a lot of contact. It's going to score a lot of runs and they have Dylan Cease. Like I kind of like them for for a wild card now. One below 500 entering play on Monday at 18 and 19. The Diamondbacks look a little down right now.

Corbett Carroll just doesn't look right. The Giants haven't really been able to get it going yet. They're five below five hundred. The Rockies are still the Rockies. So maybe the NL West is a little bit softer than we anticipated based on some early season developments. Out of in terms of games out of the wild card, they are they're the number one team not in the wild card right now. Or they're behind the nationals, I guess. Among the teams that are benefiting from the Cardinals not bouncing back at least yet, right?

The Cardinals are 15 and 19. Those are one of those teams that most people thought, I thought they would rebound, they still could. But when a team like that sinks to the bottom, that helps some teams in the middle, increases their probability just a little bit too. And I love the mentality for AJ Pirellar, just as far as continuing to try and find ways

to upgrade the roster. I wonder what would happen if there were more GMs like this, if we'd have more early season trades, if teams with even more resources than the Padres would actually benefit from this level of aggressiveness because he's still an outlier. It does really go hand in glove with the fact that he's really good at scouting. You know, I do think there are parts that he's not so great at. Like I don't, I think the Bogard steel was a bad idea.

Yeah. That's a lot of money for a guy who was already moving up shortstop. You know, I don't, I don't know if 280 million was a great idea there, but in terms of, and he's traded away a lot of talent, you know, you could, you could say that as a bad thing, but the nice thing is that he's restocked so quickly, like the fact that we're not talking about the podgers is having like a bottom five, uh, farm system after all the trades he's made. No, really impressive. No, they've got a good system. like a bottom five farm system after all the trades he's made.

No, really impressive. No, they've got a good system. I mean, Jackson Merrill is graduating off of most lists, but Ethan Salas, one of the best catching prospects in the game. Snelling, we've, Robbie's known, we've talked a lot about before. Dylan Lesko, Graham Paul, another fall league guy that he actually still have him. He's been part of the big league roster this year. And then Leo DeVries, a really interesting player that might shoot up a lot of prospectus of the course this year.

Like they're still in decent shape for all the moves they've made. So that does speak to the quality of the scouting in that organization. And the last thought here on this trade with Dylan Head, if you're the Marlins, if you're any team and you believe in a player, and this applies to fantasy too, you have to sometimes go out and make a deal before you have proof. If you wait for proof, it will cost you more or the player won't be available. So if you trust your scouts, if you trust what you had for Dylan Head going into last year's draft, you have to act on that now. So that's a huge part of it, too. If they wait till summer and Dylan Head goes off for two

months, he's not on the table or they're getting less back in the return. So that's the other thing that I had kind of thought about when thinking about the timing of the trade from the Marlins perspective, probably more to come from Miami here in the months ahead. Some injury updates to pass along here as we get going. Trey Turner out at least six weeks, Kind of a big deal for the Phillies. And they're a deep enough lineup where they're still going to score plenty of runs without Trey Turner. But who do you see sort of stepping up to take over and fill the void during his time on the shelf?

Yeah, I don't know that it's like easy for fantasy teams to figure it out, but I think for the Phillies. What did they do? Did they put Bryson Stott at short yesterday? I think that's the first adjustment, right? As you slide him over and you play with Merrifield for now. They still have Edmundo Sosa as a backup around the infield. So maybe Merrifield versus Sosaa is kind of an ongoing battle. They're both righties. So I'm cautiously wondering if Whit Merrifield is going to play again. And I finally gave up on him because he was struggling in a big way,

even in deep leagues. He's been a cut for me. And of course, he homered over the weekend. He homered on Saturday against the Giants. So maybe it's Whit getting one last last look given that they gave him that deal, like $7 million this winter. Yeah, I mean Sosa's $28 million, strikes out too much. But I guess they played start at second on Sunday. So they may just plug Sosa in.

Maybe depends on who's pitching too, could be the other variable. Comparing what they've got between Merrifield and Sosa versus like Vidal Brujjan, who now looks like he's gonna play a lot more in Miami. Are you interested in Brujjan now that he's finally got a chance at a long runway? I feel like most of his opportunities during his time in the majors have just been an up

and down extra guy for the race. This is the first chance he's had to play every day for a stretch and show that some of the things he did in the minors might actually be legit. Yeah, I am a little bit interested in him. I thought at first that it might be Nick Gordon that gets the chance. But I do think that if you are the Marlins, you'd rather give Brujahn more opportunities. Yeah, just in terms of how long you have team control. And I think possible ceiling might be better for Brujahn.

I mean, we've seen Gordon hit the ball hard some, but he's not hasn't done that in a while. Something tells me they could find ways to play both if they really want to. There's enough there's enough sogginess on the depth chart. They do have Jake Berger coming back, so Berger will obviously play a ton as the regular option at third. But they have been using Brujhan occasionally at short. I think they may be comfortable just moving on

from Tim Anderson relatively soon too, if they don't like this even. Yeah, I mean, we got 116 play appearances of 46 WRC plus from Tim Anderson. He's letting the ball travel in the worst way where he's hitting opposite field grounder straight into the ground with zero power. He's chasing like half the pitches he sees outside the zone.

He's pressing and striking out more than he's ever struck out before without any walks down. No power. Um, I think he is played his way into sort of a defensive replacement, uh, territory. And I don't think since he was spending the off season saying I'll play second base if you want me to i don't think that. You know he's necessarily a strong option for defensive replacement you know i don't think he'd be in demand from a team that lost their shortstop like i don't think the phillies are calling the marlins about to manerson. I think the marlins are a little different right now than they have been in. Marlins are a little different right now than they have been in pre Kim Eng regimes. Like I think they might be willing to eat some money and say, well, we signed them for five million, but the roster spot is more valuable to us playing guys like Gordon and Brujhan, who might still

bring something back in a trade eventually or be on our next competitive team. Like those those thoughts have to be on their minds. or be on our next competitive team. Like those, those thoughts have to be on their mind. The evidence for that is that in the Padres deal, they paid arises salary and took on who's so go. Yeah. Which means that they basically paid $10 million on top of Luis Arias to get Dylan head and Jacob Marcy.

Yeah, exactly. So there's your there's your indicator. The Marlins are willing to eat some money and accept a sunk cost for what it is. They got to be getting close to that point already with Tim Anderson. Joe Musgrove is on the aisle with elbow inflammation. This one caught me by surprise only because last time out against the Reds, six innings to earn nine case, no walks. It was clearly the the best all around

performance from Musgrove so far this season, kind of right up there with that start against the Cardinals back on on April 3rd. So I'm hoping this is a little bit like the Grayson Rodriguez situation where they just back off him for a couple of weeks. And he ends up being fine. Grayson Rodriguez already throwing for your your Grayson Rodriguez follow up. But Randy Vasquez was the corresponding move that was promoted. So maybe we'll see Vasquez get a quick look in Musgrove's rotation spot.

Yeah. And the other thing that's doubly annoying is that, um, you know, it was maybe the, it was actually the best velocity, the best average fastball velocity he's shown since Mexico City. Hmm. Yes, his last season season. Yeah.

Okay. It's been a while. Yeah. And that's an ever since Mexico City. He's been basically down a full tick. And that continued this year where even this early this season was some of the worst below we've seen out of just Joe Musgrove in his career. So, um, yeah, I wonder if to some extent he was just like, you know, okay, well,

I got to throw harder and he threw harder and then he's like, Oh, that, well that hurt, which is sad, even more depressing story than the story that was being written, you know, in the beginning of the season, which was just that Vito was down. So it's weird to put this up against like stuff plus it says that like, Oh, Joe Musgrove still has what it takes to be a good starter. In fact, he has he has really good stuff plus. But if you kind of look at the components of it it's like all his breaking balls and change ups and.

Is fastballs down to eighty six stuff plus people made it work but if you can you can look over to Detroit and can't my data. For somebody who has a similar problem which is that you, overall his stuff plus looks, I mean, it's 89, so it's worse than Musgrove's, but he has a good splitter and a good slider and his forcing fastball 68 stuff plus. So I don't think he's gotten that far yet. Musgrove has, but, um, there is some point at which I think your fastball. Takes you out of the, out of the running to being like a sort of every starter. You've become like a sort of a maybe a three, four inning guy or something.

Yeah, that's definitely something to be worried about. Looking forward with Musgrove. I just want to see if he can bounce back and show some of the VELO we saw in that last outing. That'd be huge if he's able to do it. But definitely an open question at the present time. Wyatt Langford has a hamstring strain. He's going to miss three to four weeks, suffered the injury on Saturday.

Bruce Bochy made the announcement on Sunday. It looks like the adjustment for now until Josh Young comes back is that we'll see both Ezekiel Duran and Josh Smith on the left side of the infield because they can mix and match, move guys around. It means Ataliz Garcia plays more on the outfield, doesn't DH as much, they can DH Seager.

Still some flexibility there, but not really like one player that I'm excited about as a result of the opportunity for Langford. Give the Rangers some credit, they've been pretty patient with Langford to this point in the season. I wonder if this will be an opportunity coming off of the injury for him to go on a slightly longer rehab assignment, come back up to the big leagues and kind of see how things are going because they don't necessarily have to rush him back given that they have that rehab assignment window

at the end of the injury. I think this is a little bit rough on him for redraft and I might drop him in redraft leagues. And my reasoning is this, it's a leg injury and the reason you might keep him, if you look at certain, some of the projections is, projections is oh he still got sort of like a a 13 like if you did a consensus projection you'd be like okay 13 more homers and 10 more stolen bases I want to keep that right that's something I want to keep around. Unfortunately like he's stolen one bag and now he has leg injury so I'm gonna take the hard under on that projected 13 stolen bases or 10 stolen bases rest away I think he might steal five more bags or something and so now

you're talking about okay do I want to stick around for a guy who might hit 250 with 10 homers and five stolen bases that I think you can is much more replaceable on most wires you know that's something you can find I think long term in leagues, especially if I was out of it, I would love to make a sort of Godfathery offer for Langford right now. Yes, this is a rare opportunity to draft a player who has a lot of ways to be good. Isn't necessarily going to be out that long. Yeah, may underperform in that category when he comes back, but 98th percentile sprint speed.

Yeah. Pretty good swing decisions overall for his first run against big leaguers. form in that category when he comes back, but 98th percentile sprint speed. Yeah. Pretty good swing decisions overall for his first run against big leaguers in the recap that I posted before the weekend. If you look back at some of the best prospects that have come up, their worst month, usually of their entire career, but at least of their rookie season is often their first month. It's a huge adjustment, right? It takes 30 plus games and we're right on that threshold where

instead of getting the, I'm more comfortable in figuring it out stretch. It's the, I'm on the I L. So I have to kind of come back and figure it out later. They're 100% agree with you. If you're in a longterm league and you're not winning this year, try to make that Godfather offer to get Langford. The good news is the 7.2% swing strike rate. That's a decent sample. That's pretty good. Uh, you were, you're right about the, the chase and, and swing rates. Those are good.

The barrel rate is boring, but it's, it's the start of his career. And a one 11 max CV is. It's not like standout plus power, but it's above average, you know? So right now so right now you know given all this stuff i'd say he has above average raw power average ish demonstrated in game power. Well above average contact rates and the potential for well above average walk rates with great strikeout rates a A little bit like what you expected out of Evan Carter, but I think more power upside than Evan Carter. Yeah, well said. And Evan Carter off to a little bit of a slow start himself. I mean, it's still good enough to be patient with him.

Also running really well, 99th percentile sprint speed for Evan Carter, kind of a by-low long-term window on him right now too. Maybe even easier to get him because he's not on the IL. Feel like the person that has Langford's a little more likely to say, let me just see what I have. I'll just wait a month or two and see what happens. And maybe if things aren't going well later in the summer, they'll trade him.

But hey, you got to try. A couple of Brewers notes to pass along. Christian Jelich hitting again as he tries to work his way back from a back injury. I'm really curious to see what happens when he comes back. Who gets squeezed for playing time? It's probably like Blake Perkins outright, but then you still have more mixing and matching going on with a lot of that roster than you ordinarily would. So a lot of fluid situations that need to be hashed out in the next couple of weeks

before Jelic is really back on that roster. And then if you're looking to stash a pitcher, if you missed out on Christian Scott, whose debut we're going to talk about here in just a little bit, Robert Gasser probably coming up soon for the Brewers. They've had a ton of injuries to that pitching staff so far. Some significant ones, you know, like Wade Miley having Tommy John surgery leaves a pretty big void there. They've got a Freddie Peralta suspension that needs to be served coming up. So a long stretch of schedule without an off day this week too. So don't be surprised if Robert Gasser ends up being the next pitching prospect to get an opportunity.

I don't think he's quite as polished as Christian Scott from a command perspective, but there is big strikeout potential there. Yeah. And 55, 60 command grades from the team over at Fang graphs. And I would mention that the longest, the biggest walk rates that gassers had have been a AAA with, with ABS. And it's not ABS all the time. Sometimes it's, you know, beginning of the week, end of week. I mean, they're, they're,

they're messing around with it just to try and get some basically some AB testing to see, you know, you know, what happens. And to, to, to really test it out. But what that does mean is, you know, inconsistent umpiring of a different kind. You know, like, uh, some days it's super, super precise and some days it's, uh, a not good umpire. Um, and so between those two things, I am really excited about the strikeout rate. Um, and, uh, I don't know the, the stuff plus, I don't know that it's been super standout, but if you have a 30% strikeout rate in the minor leagues, I am definitely

uh, listening to what you've got to say. Yeah, yeah. It's an organization that's done well developing pitchers to see kind of get that extra little nudgery. So to believe they're going to put him in a position to be successful once he makes that move up to the big leagues. But it is interesting to see the caterer, the walk rate jump up that much. Maybe there's a little bit of the the pitcher side of what we talked about with Joey Loper Fido last Monday, where the walk rate could be lower than AAA even though it's harder to pitch in the big leagues.

Right. You kind of split the difference between what he was doing at double A. It becomes it at 10 percent instead of in that 12 to 13 and a half percent range that we've seen with Nashville. Although the Loper Fido K rate counter. Not good so far. Not good so far. Not good so far, 43%. It's the first week. That's the hard part about doing this

is that you have to take, he has to get enough time to make adjustments for it to even pay off. If he only is up for a couple of weeks and strikes out too much in those two weeks, then we don't know until next time. I've had some people question Mike Commonsardo versus Joey Loper Fido,

because there, you know, there's some there's some chatter that that Mike, that the man's are going to be up. Yeah. Is that not official? I thought I thought they made an announcement. Yeah, I don't know. But if Manzardo's up, I prefer him to Lopofito. You had something that you had spotted about Manzardo. Yeah, so Manzardo actually is doing well

in terms of racking up barrels at AAA. He was second, I believe, to Kobe Mayo. Yes, there it is. But didn't we also figure out what pitches they were on? Yeah. Well, it's a little bit weird because. He's three on fastballs. It was only three. The rest are on non-fastballs.

Well, it's more than three on fastballs. It was it was a high velocity fastballs, I think, is what we're looking for. And it's like, OK, well, how many how many high VELO fastballs is he going to see? Right. The quality of pitching right now at AAA is lacking. So that's where I'm kind of like, sure. It's a oh, maybe you maybe didn't even see it. It's like the rise problem in reverse.

I mean, I didn't see that many high velocity guys. So he has three barrels off of them or whatever. It was high. It was high velocity and high fastballs. It's like, well, how if guys don't throw hard and they don't throw a good fastball up that you can even hit. And what's the sample on that? Yeah. Yeah. So that's still the what's going to happen in the big leagues question with Kyle Manzardo. But being second at the level to Kobe Mayo in barrels, I think is a good thing. I'd be pretty excited about that.

Zach Meisel from the Athletic does have the expectation is that we will see Karl Manzaro get that call on Monday. So by the time you hear this, it should be official. Real quick, I want to talk about a few big movers from the updated hitter rankings that went up before the weekend. It's a strange collection of players that were the biggest movers, but Taylor Ward, Michael Garcia and Jordan Westberg, I think were the hitters that took the biggest levers, but Taylor Ward, Michael Garcia, and Jordan Westberg, I think, were the hitters that took the biggest leaps up the board.

And at one point, I had a gun to dial back on where I put Taylor Ward. He was in the top 40 range for hitters, which seemed a tad high for a guy that doesn't steal a lot of bases. He's two for five as a base dealer, part of the everybody runs angels. We did see some movement on his in season projection a little bit, too. I think the bat X is up to like a 269, 344, 466, 20 homers the rest of the way. And I think we've seen it from Taylor Ward when he's been healthy. You go back to twenty twenty two.

That's the type of player he was. Low K rate. Good eye at the plate. High quality of contact. And maybe a guy that ends up getting traded at some point this year and ends up in a better lineup. But I just kind of saw him as an all round undervalued hitter that was out there quite a bit later than he'd go in a second chance draft. If you go back and look at where he was going all winter and spring.

Yeah, what I had, I we had some beginning of the year, we have these like sleepers that we have to turn in all the time. Uh, the non, the nando or like, I think it was, um, Jake was asking for sleepers sleepers round two. Let me see here. Is this the one where I did? Well, one of my answers was Taylor ward. I can't find it. Um, but, uh, yeah, I just, he was a top 30. The reason I wanted to find it was I think he was a top 30, uh, preseason bat by bad X projections.

Yeah. Uh, and nobody had him ranked as such, but I was like, you know, sometimes you just take a guy because that, you know, it's like, um, and I don't know, is it, is he like restaurant oatmeal? Yeah. He's, he like restaurant oatmeal? Yeah. He's a nice hotel oatmeal. He's you're staying at the Weston and getting oatmeal. I mean, is the Weston a good hotel?

Does the Weston sponsor this podcast? He's oatmeal Jason. I mean, it's, there's no one thing you hold onto, um, that he's at lead in, but he's, he's good at everything. Uh, I like that one. Michael Garcia has been a guy that we've liked for a while because of his hard hit rates, his defense will keep him in games and the foot speed is there but what he's doing this year is pulling the ball more.

Not necessarily a lot more in the air but just enough more in the air to turn some of that max EV into barrel rate and this is is basically we wanted out of him. I think there's one more level when the batting average on balls and play reflects his skills better. I mean, he sprays it, he makes contact, he's fast. Why would he have a 262 babbit? That's why he was a big mover for me. Like the slash line at a glance, you're like, ah, yeah, maybe something's still not quite right. It's like, no, everything looks really good good as far as the underlying numbers go for Michael Garcia

I had him up in the 60 range among hitters so that would mean if we were drafting today he's a top 100 guy pretty easily I think he was about 17 18 dollars as a earned value player up to this point in the season when the rankings were made the projections still even seem probably a tick light for him. I wouldn't be surprised at all if he exceeded because I think the average is going to be good. OVP is going to be fine. And I think that Royals lineup is better than I expected to be going into the season.

I think that's an overall like team upgrade that also bodes well for Garcia's counting stats. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, they're playing, they're playing decently. I would have expected. I think MJ and Melendez, some of the other guys, will get going.

I think they might even have another level offensively. Michael Massey was, we'll get to this later, but one of the people on the move in 15 team leagues that was being picked up this weekend. And everybody that improves around him makes him better. So I think that was a good one. What was your third one again? The third one was Jordan Westberg.

I was a little bit cautious about being too aggressive, but everything looks really solid across the board. Like, yeah, he's chasing a little more outside the zone, but the hard hit rate, it's up from where it was last year. And it was good when he debuted last year, 52.1%. He's hitting the ball in the air when he hits it hard. He's got a double digit barrel rate. He's running a little bit.

He's playing every day. He's clearly a big part of the plan there. So it's really more of just like proof of concept that all the underlying numbers being at least decent last year were pointing to something that is in fact real. So I'm, I'm all in on Jordan Westbrook. This is a, he, he, I think he more than actually the rest of, uh, these guys, um, you know, kind of speaks a little bit to their development process.

Now he still was a first rounder. And there were some other, I think there was a fourth rounder, maybe Kouser was a fourth rounder. Or is Kouser a first rounder too? You know, these guys were all first rounders. Yeah, they hit on a ton of early picks. Kouser was a fifth pick overall. Kouser I believe was part of the, if I'm, maybe the draft folks out there will

correct me, but I think they saved a little on Khauser from the pool they had, because they took them fifth overall and then they spent a little more on some of the other early picks they made in that class. Yeah. So who was I, who was I seeing that was not a first round pick? Maybe it was Hayes. Hayes is a third round pick. Gunner was a comp round pick, second round, her first pick around two, 42nd overall.

So Gunner and Westberg must have, were they the same draft? Westberg was 2020. Gunner was 19. A 19, okay. And then Ratchamun. So these are all first round picks, man. Like most of these guys are first round picks.

Mountcastle, first round picks, man. Like most of these guys are first round picks. Uh, Mountcastle first round pick. Uh, right. Make those, he was a rule five guy. Who? Santander? Yeah. Oh yeah. Rule five back in 2016. But that was like previous administration.

So, right. Uh, well, anyway, the thing that I hear about Baltimore Orioles player development is that they draft guys that make contact and have good vertical bat angle, um, and then basically run them through overweight and underweight bats through most batting practices, uh, in the minor leagues. So it's just part of the process. It's not something, Oh, do you do weighted bats or not? It's just, those are the bats that are there and we do them all the time

at every batting practice, you know? Um, and so what you see is a guy that never really, I mean, just a little inkling and high A of a 51% ground ball rate, but since then has had a really even ground ball fly ball mix, um, and surprising power, I think, um, you know, like if you, you fixate on the nine home runs or something, you missed the two 25 ISO that he had in AA the first, the second time he tried, you know, so this is a guy who, you know, again, two 27 ISO. He's gonna, he's going to hit like 25 homers this year and steal like 15 bags.

Really good where he was going. He was basically a draft day toss up against Colt Keith, whose big league career has gotten off to really slow start. So glad I held onto him in my 12 team. It was just uncertainty about playing time for Westberg. Initially, it's a crowd. So if you don't play well, you can lose your spot or at least lose a share of your playing time.

And so far he's played really well and kind of locked that down at least for the first, the first chunk of the season. So yeah, I jumped him up quite a bit. Nick, he's in the 69 spot overall on the hitter list now. So another top 100 sort of player if we were drafting for today. And the hardest thing about the exercise, I've kind of mentioned it in the writeup is just staying patient with guys like Labor who we really like or Alex Bregman who's got this long track record of of putting it together even Xander Bogart who I like more than you.

I I don't want to bury guys like that after 30 bad games and sometimes that is to my detriment. So we shall see in the case of these three players. I'm right to be as aggressive bumping them up after these first Month and change or so game for the games that we've got into the books Let's get to a few Movers from the weekend where the money went Christian Scott was on the receiving end of pretty much all of the big bids that were Out there because pitching is hard to come by and the debut was impressive I thought Christian Scott looked really good against the Rays and kind of settled down

after a little bit of a bumpy first inning. You talk about a guy that goes six and two thirds against even a watered down Tampa Bay lineup. It's your first big league start, it's on the road. The VELO looked good. The overall secondary mix looked pretty solid and one thing I didn't realize with Christian Scott is that his sweeper is a relatively new pitch. Like he has not been throwing it very long,

but it actually looks like a good one. Yeah, no, it's a, it's a cool package of, of really good command with a new breaking ball. That's making it all really work. I think the changeup is good. The splitter is, I mean, the sweeper is really good. Um fastball is not, you know, stand out, but I think it's good enough, especially at this level. He's also like a really cool story because, you know, he's a fifth round pick in 2021

and he was a reliever in college. And so they saw something they liked in terms of, you know, I think the command was probably the thing that stood out. Because if you are a good reliever in college, but you have good command and you've shown the ability to to shape a secondary like his change up, then adding, you know, adding a sweeper to it seems like a total possibility. And I think we saw basically he was came as advertised. I mean, you know, didn't really. He walked one guy, I think, and. You didn't get hit hard and, you know, ninety five mile or below is I think it's good enough. So I think the projections are a little light on him.

I would take even maybe better on the steamer projections, 378, 119. I at least want to give him that, I think. Yeah, I think that's a fair place to set it for now. The case might even be a tick on the low side too. I mean, like the swinging strike rates have been consistently good underneath 30 plus percent K rates at most of his stop.

I think this is going to be a really nice run for him. Now I think the challenging thing in a lot of situations is if you're dealing with injuries or you don't have a lot of other good matchups, you have to decide if you're going to throw Christian Scott out there against Atlanta for his second big league start. That is a real test. Usually when you throw 15 plus percent of your budget, in some cases it was more like 25 to 30 percent, when you throw that out there on a player, he's in your lineup.

You say, I don't care about the matchup because I believe I spent that much money and I need this guy so I'm going to throw him out there. But I think it's going to be a really fascinating test to watch to see how he does. Now, there is some question that they could send him back down, but I don't if he pitches even reasonably well for these first few turns, I think they keep him up. Adrian Howser had an era above eight when they promoted Christian Scott. Like, what are we doing here?

Yeah. Yeah. And this is a team that has given Budo a fair amount of chances, you know, with much worse stuff plus numbers and, you know, I mean, like good results. But I think you can point to that as like they'll keep giving you chances if you put up good results. Yeah. You look at Tyler McGill trying to work his way back from injury.

I mean, you don't have to use McGill over Scott. You could say McGill versus Budo is a toss up for the last spot, but I think Christian Scott should be pretty safely in this core five for the Mets. Other recipients of big bids, Tyler Black, I think was a tricky player to bid on. We talked about him at the end of last week. It's only because you just don't really know how sticky his role is right now. Where they're using him in the lineup, I think, makes him worth the risk. In addition to the played skills, the speed, he's already got a stolen base. Only been up for five games.

That kind of uncharacteristically striking out a little bit to begin his big league career. But again, it speaks to the difficulty of making those adjustments and even just the differences in the zone between AAA and the big leagues. Three hitter though I think this is a really good point they're showing some faith in him. They're not trying to hide him in in the eighth spot or something. So yeah he's been playing I went out there and I decided So, yeah, he's been playing. I went out there and I decided I'd go aggressive on Christian Scott and so I put down what I thought was pretty aggressive bids of about 10 to 12% of my auction budget. He went for 20% plus in all the leagues where I could have gotten him.

But with Black, what I did was I had some early bids that were over 10%, but then I thought, mm, you know, what happens? And then I also liked Jordan Beck a little bit behind him and Joey Lo Perfito. So I decided because, and this is something you can do, if you look at a thread of pickups and you like the second and third options, you should make your first option cheaper.

Is how I think. So I was looking at this and being like, well, you know, Jordan Beck is going to get six games at home in Colorado. He could take that job. Lopofito might be in the middle of taking this job. I think there was there was one other name that was kind of interesting on the on the bat, on the bat threat, I think maybe Massey. So I just had like I was like, well, if I like these other guys as backup plans

and then Black may not keep his job, then I shouldn't be going 115. So I dropped Tyler Black down to 67 in one league out of a thousand and won him 67 to 48. And in TGFBI, I dropped him down to 57 and lost him 131 to 57. But it's like as a funny thing here, the dropper for Tyler Black was Ezekiel Duran, who's now a possibility for me to pick up next week. Um, and, uh, uh, so I won Jordan Beck, uh, $33,

unfortunately $33 to one, um, which made me feel bad. But, uh, I don't know, Jordan Beck has got six games at home and a potential to take a job of his own. So I'll take it. It's not just a streamer bat for me in that situation. Yeah, I think the other thing that's kind of fun when you're trying to bid on players is when they have a stretch like black, like Beck,

like Lil Profito where the first week is just packed with K's, because it sort of shakes the faith of the entire room. It brings numbers down for the most part. I think in the case of Tyler Black, maybe there was a little bit more confidence because he's always been a low K rate guy. The other two you could kind of see.

Remember, Pahez's bids were a little bit low. Andy Pahez in LA were a little bit low because he did the same thing. He came in and struck out every day for like three or four days and then he stopped. Yeah. Any other pickups from the weekend that you thought were particularly notable?

I mean, the other kind of deep leaguer that just came back and I don't know how much he's gonna play is Johnny DeLuca. He was part of the Tyler Glassnow trade and some of the things he's done in the minors have been really interesting between AA and AAA in recent years. There's been power, there's been speed, there's been low K rates. Not ridiculously hard contact,

but for someone that's gonna strike out maybe 20% of the time or less, you don't have to hit the ball hard 40% of the time. You can sort of get away with a little bit less than that. Yeah, the Rays to me are in flux. hard 40% of the time. You can sort of get away with a little bit less than that. Yeah. Uh, the Rays to me are in flux. They have been shut out. They had a really bad season, a series against the Milwaukee

Brewers, um, where they just got blown out of the water. Their offense is kind of struggling right now and they're looking for offense. So if DeLuca gives them that, then he will get the playing time. Um, and, and so anybody in Tampa is interesting. I think eventually Junior Caminero is the most interesting name, but he may just stay down for until the next injury or something because he hasn't been up yet and they're going to DeLuca over him. So and that may have something to do with DeLuca

playing the outfield and so on and so forth, but I'd rather have Caminero up. I'm slightly interested in DeLuca. One thing that happened is that we got Matt Chapman in the main event for 113 bucks. Surprised he was available. Probably shouldn't have been out there for 15 team leagues because the top end maxi-vilo is there, He was available. Probably shouldn't have been out there for 15 team leagues because,

you know, the top end Maxie Velo is there. The bail rate is not where it's been, but it's good. And yes, he's not pulling the ball, but he could. And he has in the in the in the recent past, if he starts doing that, he'll hit for more power. But even it's almost just a projection play because most of projections have him hitting two thirty five to two forty with another twenty homers. So that's something that shouldn't be out on the wire i'm pretty sure. names that I've seen I've been trying to acquire in some keeper leagues and this is I think a choir a bowl and I don't know how interesting but is Michael Copac and like I'm pretty sure he's the closer there I'm pretty sure that his stuff will will translate to being a really

good closer I think he will actually be a really good closer. I do think it's fair to wonder how many saves will get if they will try other people like leisure you know the white socks. You know do have a copac for a couple years still but you know. There have been some usage patterns a little bit weird other people have gotten chances it saves in that same bullpen and so I think personally I would use this time as a time to maybe try and get cheap what I've what I've been. Running into those that people have been wanting more firm than I would like to give some. I did get him as a throw in in a recent trade in autumn, where I traded away Pete Crow Armstrong, um, who, uh, if I have a spicy take, my spicy take might be that Pete Crow Armstrong reminds me a little bit of

Harrison Bader. Oh, okay. That's fair. It's fair. I mean, it's from the left side. So maybe it'll work out a little bit better because Bader was always righty on righty not doing enough, but at least Crow Armstrong, if he were to ever fall, he won't fall into a full-on platoon. His defense is too good. But as far as like underperforming offensively, that is a comp that would make me nervous if I had high expectations previously. Anyway, I traded him away for a super big win now package with verlander and and like a row and copec in it so.

We'll see if that one comes how far that one comes to bite me but flags fire forever copec is someone that I would pick up and then another one that we got. Another one that we got Slade Ciccone just again out there not a good schedule this week But if you like him, and I think he's got enough secondaries there and just enough fastball To to be a good pitcher I'm willing to take him and put him on my roster and wait till next week Yeah, yeah coming off of a disappointing start last week got a little bit of a discount I think if you picked up Slade over the weekend. Daniel Hudson got some late boosts because Evan Phillips is hurt.

That was maybe the consensus best available source of saves. Probably didn't cost that much because is it a certainty that Hudson is the guy? Is he just the favorite in a committee? How do you see that situation playing out while Phillips is unavailable? We thought it would be Daniel Hudson on our, on our main event team. We did have a debate about how to rank Hudson and Copac, uh, because Copac would be maybe more of a season long thing. Whereas Hudson would be more saves in the short term. Um,

and so depending on how you manage your teams, if you're more, just like what's happening this week, then, uh, then Hudson's your guy. If you, if you think that Copac can hold on and get you 20 saves and, and, and, you know, you know, you'd rather do that than I, than I feel, I feel you. Um, it's just a hamstring strain from Phillips. I feel like. I don't think it's going to be a long time.

So I was arguing for Copac. Yeah, there was a chance at the longer window for Copac. So I think that was sound logic. But if you just needed someone to get you through a few weeks, Hudson should be that guy. So Taylor Nevin, Tyler Nevin pop up on a lot of rosters. I don't think there is a Taylor Nevin. Tyler Nevin has been taking advantage of an opportunity in Oakland, right?

It's the first time he's really had a prolonged run in the big leagues, short of maybe a brief stretch with the Orioles a couple of years ago. And he's done really well. K-Rate's nice and low. Barrel rate's solid. I think this could be, I don't know, 15 or 20 homers, if it all continues to click. I don't know if he's going to hit 289 the rest of the way. Projections point to more of a 230 240

guide and that's even with some pretty good AAA strikeout rates baked in. But I don't know, man, this is, this is the land of opportunity in Oakland. One thing I really don't understand is this pull percentage. Um, you know, going back to even his, his stint in Detroit last year, you've got a sub 30% Pull percentage and for his major league career, which is only 415 play appearances. You have a 30% pull percentage That's a really low number and it's going to erode the efficacy of his barrel rates It may help him a little bit when it comes to batting average and balls and play and keep his batting average up a little bit.

But I don't trust the power. There is no speed. I don't know if I trust the batting average, you know, given that ballpark and given the fact I don't trust the power or the speed. I think it's a schedule volume chase, probably like 15 Team League, fifth outfielder because of the way something lines up six, seven games in a week. I don't know if we're talking about a true like impact guy. You mentioned the shortcomings, right? We haven't seen them run that much. The average might not be there, or if the average is there, it might come at the expense of some power.

So he's a right hander, so he's not going to get the platoon advantage a lot. Yeah. So tread carefully there. If you were looking at Tyler Nevin. Looking at the drops from the weekend, real quick, most of these names made sense. Yariyel Rodriguez, right, they're gonna use Alec Manoa instead. Bailey Falter's coming off a two-step.

Steven Matz is hurt. Adbert Alzaleh is not closing, and he's really struggling. Henry Davis got demoted. Meryl Kelly's hurt. Those are all guys you expect to be dropped. The two names that stand out to me as non-injured guys in a world where we just need pitchers are Trevor Rogers and Hunter Brown. Do you have a case for holding on

to either one of them right now? I had Rogers as a drop even in 15 team leagues over the weekend because he's got the Phillies coming up this week and just nothing, nothing really looks good right now in his mix. His K rates way down, his walk rates kind of at the higher end of his range. Like I just I couldn't talk myself into it other than being a guy that maybe against average teams at home. I'd throw out there's a streamer.

I couldn't justify holding him in a week where I wasn't using him. Yeah. I mean, I think going into the season, I thought, you know, even a team like Philly at home, I'm going to start at Trevor Rogers, but if I dropped him in most of the places I have him, I think I went from, you know, six shares to one in one weekend. Partially because, you know, at Oakland, I know Oakland's been playing better,

but eight runs at Oakland, that that feels like you're getting an almost a home start like Oakland and Miami are the two best places to pitch as a pitcher. So he's not going to if he's not going to do that, then I don't trust him. And in terms of good starts, he has just home against the Giants. I guess that home against the Braves was decent but at this point he's become a sinker change-up guy. I would almost do what was it called the who was the guy that the lefty with the John Danks I would John Danks theory him this at this point. I would put lefties in the lineup against him.

It's that bad. Well, I just, you know, the other stuff, you know, like he has a 90 stuff less sinker and a 127 stuff less change up. So that's fine. You know, but he has a 64 on the fastball and a 76 on the slider. So he's, he's going to have way hard trouble against lefties. Yeah. Well, that makes sense. And Hunter Brown just seems so lost right now. I'm just more willing to buy because I see strikeouts still. because I see strikeouts still. I see decent stuff plus across the board. I see him trying to get out of this situation.

I see differences in what he's doing game to game. I see sort of a burgeoning strikeout rate and this in the last three starts, the strikeout rate's been good. So it's a little bit of sort of the I'll bet on stuff idea. Urging strikeout rate and this in the last three starts the strikeout rates been good. So It's a little bit of sort of the I'll bet on stuff idea but as he twiddles with his pitch mix and he's Throwing more cutters throwing more sinkers throw fewer cutters. Like I think he still could find some

Mix that works for him Fortunately, the next start is on the road at Detroit. So if you're still holding on to Hunter Brown and a redraft league, you might actually be using him this week just to see if he can get through that, get you five innings, get you five or six K's and maybe actually help the ratios go back in the right direction. But I see an interesting drop in my main event, which I shouldn't talk about, but you should not talk about that. Jack Sawinski deserves someone to talk about him. I did talk to him in the clubhouse about how

improvement is not linear. And so what I see is someone who is maybe letting the ball travel a little bit more and playing around with that. And and it's really cut a strikeout rate but it's also cut his power. So though it's interesting to me about that is that he's shown that ability like he walked off a game recently where you know there were battles on the base but it was two outs and he just hit a single the other way you You know, in this, in this big moment because he wanted to make contact and he wanted to put a ball in play. So I, I still see the opportunity for him to like take that package that. You know, didn't produce power and then put it back together with the old package

and kind of, you know, kind of read the game a little bit and be like, okay, this is the time for the opposite field swing and this is the time for it to go get it. And if he's able to put those two timing packages together, I don't know, like he's got a 20% strikeout right, right, right now. And last year at a 16% barrel rate, if you put those two things together, he's very good. Right. It's just the question of whether he can do those things simultaneously. At the same time.

You have to unlock one, you have to sacrifice the other. I wonder how long he sticks with the new approach before he tries to go back to the old one. And then if he gets caught in between approaches, that could be a problem too. Then it could be the strikeouts come back and the power doesn't come all the way back, right? So I like what he's doing process wise, I'm with you.

But I do think he's doing process wise I'm with you but I do think he's got to he's got to stay patient with it to see it through because it seems like there's some bad luck baked into his start through these first 34 games a lot of good stuff under the surface for Jack Sawinski. What you see with the rolling charts is the uh the 50 game rolling a 15 game rolling strikeout rate right now is 25 that's above his 20 and uh 15 game rolling strikeout right now is 25%. That's above his 20% and 15 game rolling pull percentage is 40%, which is above what he's demonstrated to the season. So he is sort of tweaking it back the other way.

See where it goes over these next 30 games, because I think that's going to have a lot to do with lots of say in how he's going to play in the final four months of the season. That is going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. On our way out the door, just a reminder, you can get a subscription at theathletic.com slash rates and barrels. If you made it all the way to the end of this show, be sure to leave us a nice rating and review.

Smash the like button. If you're watching us on YouTube, find Eno on Twitter at EnoSaris, find me at Derek VanRyper, find the podcast at rates and barrels. We are back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening. Bye!