Rates & Barrels - Pearson's Debut, Javier Shines & Cleveland Does It Again

Episode Date: July 30, 2020

Rundown3:30 Nate Pearson’s Impressive Debut12:26 Cristian Javier Shines Against Dodgers16:45 David Peterson Gets the Call From the Mets19:21 Aaron Civale & Zach Plesac Dominate In 2020 Debuts24:35 Early Surprises On the Updated Stuff List28:14 The Royals Call Up Another Pitching Prospect: Kris Bubic36:37 Pitching Injures Are Way Up41:00 Running on the D-backs Continues47:44 What Are We Looking At This Early?54:54 Beer of the Week! Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiperE-mail: [e-mail] Get 40% off a subscription: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's episode of Rates and Barrels is brought to you by Dugout Mugs. Dugout Mugs is a company that was started in a college baseball dugout, hence the name Dugout Mugs, and they take the barrel of a baseball bat and turn them into 12-ounce mugs, plus the barrels are licensed by MLB so you can get your favorite team laser engraved right onto a birchwood baseball bat barrel mug. It's perfect for the big game or to put on display that makes a great gift for any baseball fan in your life. Go to dugoutmugs.com slash theathletic

and use promo code MLB30 for 30% off your first purchase. That's dugoutmugs.com slash theathletic and code MLB30. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 118. It is Thursday, July 30th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we have lots of new pitchers on the scene, plus a debate that we had back in the winter that has become a lot more interesting in the last couple of days involving two pitchers in Cleveland. We have some young pitchers getting the call this weekend that we're going to talk about,

some role changes, and a follow-up on something that really stood out to us over the weekend. We saw the San Diego Padres running wild against the Diamondbacks. We kind of wondered, would more teams follow suit? So we'll check in and see how the second series of the season has gone. Eno, how's it going for you on this Thursday? What? Blah, blah, blah. Blah.

Are you the sweet a chef now? No, I can't decide. Like I said recently, the arrows are all pointing up and down at the same time on everyone. It's really awesome to have baseball going. It's really not awesome what's happening in Philadelphia and Florida. And having both those thoughts in my head at the same time is causing me intestinal distress, I think. I did some yoga today. I'm going to watch some baseball.

It's date night. I'm going to just try and breathe. I think those are all good things. And yeah, just slowing down. Look, we use sports to cope. We use baseball as a distraction from real-world problems. That hasn't changed. It's just this is the type of real-world problem that's intertwined with baseball.

So it's going to be a roller coaster. And as bleak as things appear to be on Monday, as rough as they appear to be this afternoon, there have been a few highs along the way. As rough as they appear to be this afternoon, there have been a few highs along the way. And maybe, just maybe, after these outbreaks are contained, there's still hope that everything else is actually working well. If this outbreak happened not because of a breakdown in MLB's protocols or anything like that, that's different, right? protocols or anything like that, that's different, right? That's at least a sign that things are mostly working and we have to focus on controlling, changing behaviors outside of when players are at the ballpark, right?

That's probably the greater takeaway, at least for now. But we'll keep an eye on things. We have another show coming up tomorrow. Britt Giroli is back with us on Friday, so we'll dive into some of the broader non-fantasy topics when We have another show coming up tomorrow. Britt Giroli is back with us on Friday, so we'll dive into some of the broader non-fantasy topics when we have her on the show tomorrow. Let's talk about Nate Pearson, because he looked really good in his debut

against the Nats on Wednesday night. And we talked about the big fastball. I think the secondaries are really what jumped off the page. He was getting a lot of swings and misses right away, struck out Trey Turner, the first batter he faced. Just seemed like he was really comfortable on the mound in his debut. Yeah, yeah, and I enjoyed speaking with him. He's definitely got his wits about him, not the crazy youth that I was.

So he knows where he's trying to go, and he's going to get there. A couple notes. I did say that the command on the changeup was inconsistent. Brooks has him throwing 13. Stat says he threw three, so it's possible. Maybe there were some sinkers in there. It's hard to tell, but the command was a little inconsistent, but he still got whiffs on it.

And the command plus I hear from stats, got an update today, was 88 on the day. He did have some foibles where things leaked in different directions. It wasn't necessarily a master class in command, but it wasn't stuff. I mean, he sat almost 97 with ride. It's really hard to get ride when you get over 94, as Walker Bueller pointed out to us. This slider had excellent depth for an 86 milemile-an-hour slider to have that kind of depth. He threw 60 of them at least and got whiffs on 10 of them, I think. So that's a lot of sliders to throw and still get that many whiffs.

The curveball looked pretty good as a change of pace. And overall, really, really impressive package from the young man I guess he must have learned a lot in the last last six days the question I have for you as you were looking at the pitches from Pearson last night and the discrepancies between Brooks and Savant what do you do in these situations how do you rectify those differences I mean you can obviously go back and watch the start is that the best way just to kind of go back and see what was actually happening and say you know what the data eventually will will crystallize a little bit more over time don't sweat it but they're so different right now yeah i mean it's a little bit

to do with uh you know people were kind of bellyaching a little bit about stat cast this year. The real-time pitch classifications are no good. You know, this data gets washed, and it gets washed a first time after the game. So about an hour after the game, you get data that was better than it was during the game. And that was true of TrackMan and will be true of Hawkeye. And after a first start, now you have, okay, well, Maricola doesn't throw a slider, throws a cutter, whatever it is. You have the pitch classifications down to every starter. So the next start, even the real-time stuff will be better, right? oh, there's an interview with Pearson, and he says he doesn't throw any sinkers. So those are actually all change-ups. And once you hear that interview, people at Brooks and at Stats and at Savant will actually go in and hard-code different pitches based on what the pitcher says.

So there's really sort of three big moments, and that can make it difficult because nothing stabilizes better than velocity and movement. However, our pitch classifications are the lens through which we see these things. And so if they are going to improve, that means that our understanding of a pitcher does improve over one, two, three starts. But I would say that by the third start, usually you've had those interviews, you've watched it, you've seen it. I would say that even after two starts, and when it comes to velocity of an injured returning pitcher, Jeff Zimmerman showed that one start describes 60% of the variance,

two starts describes 80% of the variance, and three starts describes 95% of the variance. That's how I would sort of describe this whole process. After one start, you're pretty sure you understand what they throw and how they throw it. After after two you're almost there completely after three you know like if there is a change it was a change that was enacted by the pitcher and they actually changed something um so i don't know that might help uh people understand i think that you can stay with absolute certainty that pearson has good ride on his foreseam and has a really good slider.

When it comes to how good his changeup is, that's a question that will be debated a little bit as we go forward in terms of movement and also in terms of command. I also think when we're talking about a guy who just debuted, I mean, Nate Pearson is very young. There's still room for that to improve improve he's not like a high school guy debuting at 19 he's 23 but he can still get better in that regard like i think there is a little bit of room for the field to develop for some of those secondary pitches especially as he has to throw the more against top level competition like i think it was probably very easy for nate pearson in the minor leagues just overpower everybody you can go so heavy with the fastball and slider

that your curveball and your changeup could lag a little bit. That was probably the development challenge that the Blue Jays faced with him was probably getting him to use those pitches enough to be able to trust them as he moved up. Yeah, and speaking with him, he's a driveline guy, Pearson is, so it was

good to hear from him how much he focused on how much he wanted to improve his secondary pitches. I mean, he talked about, you know, wanting to get to 90 percent spin efficiency on the curveball and wanting to get more depth on his changeup. And those are his third and fourth pitches, you know. So I think he had a good head on his shoulders in that way. way. But, you know, I was speaking to Philly's analytics, the Philly's analytics squad about, you know, they were asking me, it was like a Q&A session with a little bit of a about me at the beginning. And one of the things they asked me is like, what do I think are the most important organizational positions? And I said, you know, obviously, I think president,

general manager, because the president in these days is kind of the guy who makes the phone calls and is the media guy. That's Farhan Zaidi here in San Francisco. And then the general manager, Scott Miller here, is the kind of X's and O's, you know, get the trade down, get the contract right, get all the analytics in front of the president, and basically cross the T's and dot the I's. So those two are very important. But I would say the third most important position in third and fourth are director of pitching and director of hitting, sometimes referred to as pitching coordinator and hitting coordinator.

Because, you know, otherwise, if those two aren't your best, because basically 40% of the league is on the minimum salary, and that means that player development is huge for those 40. It means that they are coming up and they're here and they're only going to be as good as your director of pitching and director of hitting can make them because they coach the coaches and they get these players ready. But there are some organizations where maybe the major league pitching coach

is telling the player something that they haven't heard before. So there definitely is the opportunity for players to improve when they get there. Also, they're talking to major league pitchers on the side. So like Cole Hamels got to the big leagues and he was fastball changeup, right?

He learned his cutter from Cliff Lee and he learned his curveball from Roy Halladay, I think. Is that right? I forget who he learned the curveball from Roy Halladay, I think. Is that right? I forget who he learned the curveball from. Maybe A.J. Burnett, dude. I think he throws the knuckle curve from A.J. Burnett. Yeah, he throws A.J. Burnett's knuckle curve and Cliff Lee's cutter. And that's part of why he got better in the big leagues.

So, yeah, I think that's a good point, too. I guess that's noise because we're just trying to look at Pearson and how good he is, but he could get better because now he's talking to a major league pitching coach. He's talking to even Tanner Roark can teach Nate Pearson something. Well, yeah, I think when you look around the league at who these coaches are, these coaches generally were not star players, right?

Barry Bonds being a hitting coach is unusual. Usually, you're hitting. Andy Haynes is the first. Right, yeah. Who remembers Andy Haynes' big league career? And it's not me trying to make fun of Andy Haynes. But, yeah, I think you can learn a lot from guys that have had to grind it out and find different ways to be successful.

It's taken a lot more for Tanner Roark to sustain his time in the big leagues than it will take Nate Pearson to do that. But if the things that Roark has learned just staying in the league for a few years, if he can help Nate Pearson along, that's going to elevate Pearson and enable Pearson to probably stick around a lot longer because the baseline talent is so much greater. But let's talk about Christian Javier for a moment because I think people are going to be really excited about him in fab this weekend. I snuck him in cheap in a couple of leagues on Sunday. I had no designs on actually putting him in my lineup this week, knowing that

the vacancy in the Astros rotation was going to first lead him if he even got the start to face the Dodgers. So I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I was on Christian Javier for this matchup. And he comes out and pitches really well in a difficult spot. At least it was a home matchup, but the Ks were there. Eight strikeouts last night, one walk, five and two thirds innings, Only damage really coming on a solo home run. I think with Javier, you could kind of see the velocity really tapered off in that start. He did not hold velocity well as he got a little further into that outing. But mostly a four-seamer and curveball combo looking at the savant numbers today.

How sustainable do you think he is as a big league starter i mean is he a true like back end guy that's going to struggle because the third pitch isn't far enough along are there command concerns i do see a 35 grade on his command over at fan graphs so that would be one red flag to keep in mind yeah and now that we've seen uh christian javier and josh j James come from the same team, I think that it is fair to say that the Astros are stuffists. They are willing to kind of shift around the movement profiles, go for velocity, and worry about the command later.

And we saw James kind of struggle through it. Javier did not, but he did run sort of regular 11% and 12% walk rates in the minor leagues and should struggle with that later. His breaking ball and his changeup have 18 inches of difference in movement horizontally. So if he threw his changeup, and, you know, Brooks says curve, other people say slider, but if he threw those towards the middle of the plate and they went in different directions, they go nine inches in either direction. And this is coming from a guy

who has great ride on his foreseam. It's really kind of amazing that he can do both these things. In fact, you know, it's basically like he has a Kluber curveball and a Justin Verlander changeup. I mean, those are the closest comps you can get for those two pitches. And with the Verlander ride comparison, you know, he doesn't quite have the velocity of Verlander. I'm not saying he is Justin Verlander. But, you know, other than velocity, if you could sort of build the next Verlander, you might try like this. Or if you wanted to build a sort of Kluber-Verlander hybrid monster to destroy us all, this is what you would do. So, yes, 92.6 is not the most amazing velocity.

The command is not that great. But I would pick him up in all leagues. I picked him up in a 12-teamer. I picked him up everywhere I could as soon as I could because I was very excited about what I saw. And this morning, when I opened up Brooks, I was just as excited. Yeah, I think the thing that also makes this pretty interesting is he should line up for a two-start week next week, too,

having pitched on a Wednesday. So I think pitching well against the Dodgers, being an Astro, having a two-start week, we're ticking all the boxes for someone who's going to cost quite a bit in terms of fab bids this weekend. We went through this last year with Corbin Martin. I know he struggled and ended up getting hurt, had Tommy John surgery, but I'm willing to go down this road again. I think we're talking like 15% of your budget. It's going to take an aggressive bid to get him, but the stuff that you see and what you're talking

about backs up what scouting reports have. 55 fastball, 50 slider, 60 curveball, maybe a changeup that's a little bit undergraded on top of that. The flaw is command. We've talked about this before. Sometimes it clicks or sometimes the stuff is so good, guys get away with not having great command, and that might be what we're looking at here. I'm pretty excited to watch the next one.

You know, I have a new stuff number coming out tomorrow, and Javier only profiles as 100. I don't know how that happens. We'll have to see if the second start improves on it, but I'm excited about the profile,

and the strikeout rate in the minor leagues was definitely there in the 30s. Let's go to the opposite end of the spectrum, rate in the minor leagues was definitely there in the 30s. Let's go to the opposite end of the spectrum, just in terms of a guy who debuted, who at one point was a big deal because he was a first-round pick of the Mets. It's David Peterson. Different kind of guy.

I mean, more command, less stuff. Definitely cut from a different cloth. 6'6 leftyy i think he was drafted because people thought he'd be quick to the big leagues and he'd just be a stabilizing presence in the back of the mets rotation did you see anything exciting that was a little bit unexpected with peterson or does that kind of initial scouting report from a few years ago still really hold up as a fair baseline for expectations for him he did basically what i thought in his uh debut not in terms of like necessarily the results but in terms of like i thought he'd be okay i think he'll be okay i don't think that he'll be

great one thing that he does that's kind of amazing, and I did not know this about him, is that he releases the ball seven feet plus close to the plate, like from off the rubber. And there are only about 10 players in baseball that do that, that are able to release the ball that close to the plate. And it does increase the perceived velocity on his pitch. It does increase the perceived velocity on his pitch. He sat 92 on the radar gun. That might be as much as 94, 95. I saw one report of him hitting 96 in perceived velocity. So that's maybe what helped his fastball play out. However, he got 2% whiffs on the fastball.

It's a little bit more of a sinker than a foreseam. he got 2% whiffs on the fastball. It's a little bit more of a sinker than a four seam. It's not necessarily the kind of fastball that baseball has been desiring. You know, recently it's not kind of the high spin, high ride, high velocity four seam. So I would expect there to be bumps in the road where, you know, he gets hit around a little bit. maybe not as many homers, but by singles and doubles. He could still have some trouble with singles and doubles. So I think that Peterson will have a fairly long career and will be a starter for most of it. I just don't see him as being a front-end starter. Sounds like kind of a outside-the-top-90, fringe-top-100 sort of guy. Even with that opportunity, some good news from the Mets. I think Marcus Stroman has been at least throwing at 100% effort.

So maybe he gets back and takes that spot back sooner rather than later. But Peterson has a spot to call his own, at least temporarily, in the Mets rotation. I saw Twitter just light up with a few performances this week. I think Aaron Savali and Zach Plesak were also a part of this, aside from Pearson, who debuted, and Javier, who was a young starter on the rise. I mean, these are two guys that were on opposite sides when we talked about them a while back now. I was on the Plesak side, kind of citing more of the minor league success and expecting the strikeouts to tick up a little bit. Both looked fantastic in their first darts against the White Sox this season. This is the

Cleveland pitching machine, really, at its finest, getting the mileage they're getting out of these two guys. I don't get it, man. Both have below average stuff. I don't get it. I don't get it. stuff. I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't get it. I mean, what? Savali is at 91.7 with the fastball, and Plesak is, he's got a little bit more velo at 92.9, but I will say one thing. I interviewed Trevor Bauer once when he was with the Indians a while back. And I said, oh, I just wrote a piece that someone should throw 80% breaking balls. And he said, I read it and I agree with you wholeheartedly. And I only wish that my organization agreed with you as well. So I will have to say that even though the Indians keep turning out pitching and have perhaps the best pitching coach in baseball in Ruben Niebla,

he's their kind of director of pitching, and are amazing at finding guys with good command and improving the stuff, I have so much respect for them. I think that they even learned something over the years. And maybe even from Trevor Bauer. I don't want to give Bauer all the credit. But if you look at what Savaldi did in his first start, he didn't really throw a fastball. He was all cutters.

And like here on Pitch Info, it says 0% fastballs, 21% sinkers. And I guess you could say he threw some sinkers. But if you watch that, he was establishing with the cutter and then going to the two breaking balls to get people out. The sinker was a surprise pitch. It was like his fourth pitch, honestly. And it was a really impressive debut, but also an anomaly, I think. Maybe he's going to be better than his 4'6 projected ERA,

especially if he's going to push the envelope on, you know, be a kind of, what if Godley had good command, right? Yeah. That's kind of what Savali was doing if godly could control his curveball again if he could command that throw it where he wants that unlocks a lot for him the problem for godly has always been that he just doesn't have anything else to really do that gets hitters out yeah and i think you know like i'm looking at plisac and civali both are down about a mile per hour with their fastball velocity.

That's not that big of a deal if you're not going to use that pitch that much. I mean, it's not good, but it's not. But both up huge in breaking ball usage. Yeah. It just seems that they came out with a different game plan. Now, is that a specific game plan put together because of the White Sox and some young hitters that they felt were more likely to chase those pitches? Is that something that you see as a pitching coordinator, as an org? You see, wow, this game plan worked really well,

better than we ever thought. We weren't necessarily going to do this all the time, but maybe we should try it again because it worked really well. I just think this is a really interesting start for both of these guys. They were very affordable in drafts. They don't have overwhelming stuff, as you said. Zach, please, Zach, the fan graph splits has them at

a 41.8% slider usage in that first start. That's Shasin territory. It's way up there. Yeah, and even though this new stuff number I've got, and I'm really excited about it. There's a Command & Stuff report coming out on Friday. I worked with Ethan Moore, so you'll be able to see the stuff numbers this time. Savali actually, in this stuff number, has a top 60, a 102 stuff.

I think that's based on his breaking balls. This number loves breaking balls for good reason. So maybe I underestimated Savali's stuff a little bit. But Plesak, you know, comes in a little bit behind him, but also at 63 with a 101.7 stuff. So I will say this, I think maybe I underestimated their stuff a little bit. Their command has been a big part of this, and their pitch mix change was huge. Some of these things are my fault, and some of these things we couldn't know until they first happened. And we're not sure how much that has to do, like you said, with that singular game plan,

but I would expect having so much success with it that we will see much of the same in the next start um and uh we'll see a very much a reduced fastball usage uh from those two backhand starters uh on the on the indians and uh mea culpa man you can't get them all right you mentioned that stuff list uh coming out on friday any really big surprises around the top of that list well Well, the old stuff, the driveline stuff number had Max Scherzer kind of low, actually, at like a 101, and that always kind of surprised me, but this stuff number has Max Scherzer number one.

So that kind of, I think, fits a little bit more in line with my perception of Max Scherzer. Sonny Gray is number two. Sonny Gray was like number six or something on the old list so that's not surprising to me number three is Homer

M.F. Bailey what? how? how? I have to find this out before I publish the report but you know I have to find this out before I publish the report. But, you know, I would say that one thing that we did spot before the A's got him was that his changeup, his splitter had come back.

After injury, he lost the vertical movement on his splitter, and that had come back. Second thing that he has done is increase the use of the splitter as that splitter has come back. The second thing that he has done is increase the use of the splitter as that splitter has come back. And it was a question we once got from an excellent listener that said, how can your pitch mix change your stuff number? And this is exactly it.

If your pitch improves a little bit and then you use it more, you're going to improve your overall stuff number. If your pitch improves a little bit and then you use it more, you're going to improve your overall stuff number. So I would expect that that's the major driving force. It's not the foreseam. The foreseam is still straight and 91.

He's just using it less often and going to the slider and split more often. I think, again, though, it comes back to the organization. The team that took the chance on Homer Bailey, that to me was a signal that there might be something there that i was not previously seeing like that at least opened my mind to the possibility that there could be something good there and i don't know like i kind of trust them probably more than i should at this point because i trust the twins and that's that's not complete analysis but I feel just validated by the stuff number being that high even though that seems exceedingly high so I'm really

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shot at millions of dollars with your first deposit. That's promo code RUN to get a free shot at millions of dollars with your first deposit only at DraftKings. Minimum $5 deposit required. Eligibility restrictions apply. See DraftKings.com for details. You know, let's give some credit to the Kansas City Royals because they're pushing up another one of their

pitching prospects. It's going to be Chris Bubich starting the home opener on Friday. I believe that matchup is coming against the White Sox. So Bubich is a lefty, and he's 22. Hasn't pitched above, I believe, high A. It was the highest level we saw him at last year. High A Wilmington.

Pitched really well there. 230 ERA, 102 whip, 110 Ks, and 101 and two-thirds innings. Also had 47 and two-thirds innings. I also had 47 and two-thirds innings last season at low A Lexington. I think there's a ton of strikeout potential. That's very obvious from the numbers. It's a big leap going all the way up to the big leagues, skipping AA and AAA entirely. But we talked about development in a shortened season and the downside of not taking pitching prospects and getting in the face live competition that isn't just the in-house intra squad matchups at the alternate camp. And for all the teams out there that are cheap and delaying service time and not even calling prospects up at all this year, I feel like when a team actually takes that chance, we should commend them for it. I feel like when a team actually takes that chance, we should commend them for it.

And I think in the case of Bubic, he's not a top 100 guy, but he might be a better fantasy prospect than a real-life prospect because of that strikeout upside. Yeah, I'd really like to see what his fastball percentage is like because he's going to sit 92 or so. He's not going to come in even looking like jackson kowar or brady singer who sat 94 but he probably has a wider array of secondary stuff um you know fangraphs gave him a 55 on the curveball and 60 on the change up 55 command so he's going to be more of a kitchen sinker but in today's game like there's a clear path in front of you. There are the people that do the Hyunjin Ryu, Ross Stripling kind of, I'm going to have five pitches and I'm going to throw them each 20% of the time and I'm going to try and command each. So I think Buvich does have a chance to succeed based on that sort of a profile. But I would not say that I think that

any of the Royals' top pitching prospects, including Daniel Lynch, are must-gets for me, based just on the fact that none of them kind of hit these movement profiles that we are expecting from people. And the Royals seem to have like a different philosophy. They're much more sinker forward than other teams. They're also much more likely to throw a guy like Brady Singer in the rotation who only has two pitches. So I hate, I don't want to, like you're saying, you know, the twins, you know, I like Homer Bailey a little bit more because he's with the twins. I don't want to say I don't like any of them. And, you know the twins uh you know i like homer bay a little bit more because he's with the twins i don't want to say i don't like any of them and you know i'm going to hold the royals against them uh but at the same time uh each of the each of the guys that they're going to bring up has question marks i think that the royals here are saying you know maybe it's not for this year

but we like you said we have to develop these guys. We have to get them ready. There seems to be a collection of arms that's going to come up and meet Mondesi and Solaire and these guys that we've got in the big leagues. We're kind of moving towards a moment again, and so we just need to keep marching towards that moment. We're going to bring these guys in. I guess that also means that Jackson Kowar is, is, is, uh, is on the menu at some point. Yeah. And I wonder, you mentioned Daniel Lynch. I wonder if they'll just say, you know what, he's coming up to like, why not? And if they do that, that makes things very interesting,

even with that sort of development difference that the Royals have compared to a lot of other organizations. I mean, Lynch has missed some time with arm soreness in the past. So I think just getting him a lot of innings is going to be really important this year. I thought he looked pretty good in the fall league when we saw him. So even though it's not necessarily the way we would build the ideal pitcher, I'm intrigued enough to, in deeper leagues, kind of throw some speculative bids out there and see if I can't catch lightning in a bottle. And a lot of it's going to come down to matchups, too.

I mean, we're still talking about very young pitchers. In the case of Bubic skipping over AA and AAA, I don't expect him to be a guy we're going to start in fantasy leagues in all formats. That seems excessive, right? There's going to be bumps in the road for almost anybody who skips over two levels to debut, regardless of what they bring to the table.

But he does have two secondaries that are good pitches. And you could be sneaky smart here, especially if you have a bench. Let's say Christian Javier goes for $300 in your league, and you're just not willing to spend all that money yet, maybe put a reasonable bid on Christian Javier. Put a 170 or a 210 on him and then follow that up with Bubic down a little bit lower. Yeah, I mean 5% of your budget on Bubic might end up being the smarter play. The difference in the results, even though you clearly like the way Javier attacks hitters and the way the Astros handle pitchers a lot better, the difference in initial results might be a lot smaller than the gap

between what people are willing to pay for those guys over the weekend. And also remember, this is going to be a huge famabalooza-type weekend because we've got six days. Six days are done. And after six or seven days, if you bring up a prospect, you have that extra year. They don't get a full year of service time this year. So it's possible we see Joe Adele this weekend. I think it's probable we see Dylan Carlson this weekend.

I tried to get out ahead of that and and got some of those guys last weekend uh just just thinking i'll sit on them for a week and then put them in um but uh there's gonna be a lot of money to kind of spread around i think some people will come out of this first out FAAB with like 10%, 20% left of their money. So you can be smart about it and say, actually, my pitching staff is doing pretty well. I have the luxury of putting like a 170 on Javier just to stay in the game and then putting a 5 on him. Then maybe I can go harder at Carlson.

Maybe I can put 340, 400, 500 on Carlson. I do think Carlson is going to be worth spending the extra fab on where available. And so many of my leagues, I think he's already just rostered. Either I have him or somebody else is still sitting back and waiting. I think the difficult thing though for all of our leagues this weekend, if players don't get the call, if we don't get the news item of the actual call up or that it's going to happen early in the week we don't get that by sunday night we have to start thinking about letting another group of players go that we generally like can't wait forever like the season is just so short that if the teams aren't going to make that happen this weekend or early

in the week and there's not really any clear evidence that they're going to make that promotion by the end of next week it's time to start moving on and i think that's just an extremely difficult game to play especially when we're talking about players you actually believe in talent wise i took a huge gamble in one league um and got uh joe adele and dylan carlson for a combined $500 out of my $1,000 or something, maybe even $600 last weekend. And I'm down to like $200 for the rest of the season in this league. And I didn't mean to get both of them. I thought I would only get one.

So, yes, I agree with you. This weekend's going to be a big one, and I'm going to cry a tear if I have to drop Joe Adele just to kind of roster a team on Sunday. A ton will change between now and Sunday night, so we do have a Sunday morning show, the Athletic Fantasy Baseball Podcast. Michael Beller and I go through

and talk about the waiver wire in great detail. So I highly recommend checking that out because every three days in this season will be the equivalent of like three weeks in a normal one with the amount of information. Oh, my God. Injuries, too. You were telling me before the show, like the number of pitching injuries is just off the charts right now. Yeah, I've got a piece that's probably publishing as we speak, and in that piece I found that five times as many, nearly five times as many pitchers were put on the DL

in the first week this year than last year. So, you know, it's sort of expected that five pitchers will go on the DL between now and Sunday. Hopefully not one of yours. Hopefully that just ends up being wrong, but I don't feel like it will be because something about the shape of ramping up, slowing down, throwing on your own, ramping up,

something about that seems like it's caused some pretty major problems for pitchers. As I point out in my piece, it's not just that because relievers are going on the DL too. And that has to do with an amazing amount of stress being put on relievers right now. Relievers have just as many wins as starters for the first time ever. Starting pitchers are averaging around 75 pitches per start and last year was the least that they'd ever averaged, and it was 87 last year. Pitchers are not even going four on average. The Giants are getting 10 outs from their starting pitcher on average. Oh, that's brutal.

I mean, they're not a particularly well-constructed rotation, but wow. Yeah. So there's some aspect of me that says, OK, yes, this is a weird year. It's 2020 virus. Yes, yes, I got it. Some part of me saying, hey, you know what happened in 2020? Every sort of thing, every kind of trend that we had in terms of social media, politics, economics, every trend that we had, once the virus hit, I feel like every trend got turned up to 11. If we were divided on Twitter in 2019, we are divided on Twitter

in 2020. If we were taking starters out earlier in 2019, we are taking starters out earlier in 2020 we are taking starters out earlier in 2020 so i just feel like you know that is true almost in all aspects of our life and so it does make me wonder what 2021 looks like and if this is like to some extent just part or part of a larger trend and it makes me wonder if we need to really change fantasy baseball um if they're not going to change the scoring uh we're just going to no steals and no saves and we're just and no wins the tampa bay rays are destroying fantasy baseball are they though like

all of them are but But the Rays started it. I'm blaming the Rays. They don't get blamed for a lot. They get lots of credit for almost everything. So it's kind of interesting to see them on the... I'm putting this at their doorstep. My teams have no wins. Dude, Oliver Drake pitched in the sixth inning yesterday.

I didn't think Oliver Drake was going to get a lot of saves. The game in which he got a save, Nick Anderson I think pitched in a tie game in the sixth inning yesterday. I didn't think Oliver Drake was going to get a lot of saves. The game in which he got a save, Nick Anderson, I think, pitched in a tie game in the bottom of the eighth. And then since Anderson had pitched already, Drake was just the guy that matched up best against the Blue Jays they were facing at the time. He was the guy that matched up best for that inning.

So that's just what a smart team is going to do. So I'm really sorry to everybody out there who did spend the money on Oliver Drake, expecting him to be the closer, but yeah, that... Let's just say if we're playing Mario Kart, I saw the Rays drop that banana peel and I swerved around it with ease. I did not hit that

one and spin off the rainbow road. I was so sad that I dropped Ryan Presley and then I was like, it didn't matter. And there's all these, the closer moves, I feel, I just, I'm throwing my hands up a little bit, man. I just, there's like Sergio Romo over Taylor Rodgers, and then so people think, oh, it's Sergio Romo, and then the next day it's Taylor Rodgers. Yeah, Rodgers got one yesterday. I think the Twins did that a little bit last year. Well, and apparently there was something to do with Romo was warm for a tie game,

and then they went ahead or something like that. And so they were just like, hey, he's warm. Let's throw him in. He's warm. We like these matchups from anyway. Let's just do it. I mean, there's something to that as well. He did this at the Open.

The Rangers have been running on Carson Kelly and the D-backs. This is something that we saw from the Padres over the weekend. Isaiah Kiner-Falefa had a couple steals. I saw two from Nick Solak. It's actually kind of funny. We're like, oh, those guys don't run a lot. They run a little. Maybe they'll run, and they did.

They both had two steal games, which I don't know if anything jumps out of a box score to me right now more than a player having two stolen bases in a game because that's gonna be a season for some guys oh my god like fam fam getting four in the first weekend just like i'm like thanks man that's about half of what i expected out of you, or even more. So you've got that in the bank. So Dodgers this weekend, do we see? Yeah, I think it's the Dodgers this weekend is the matchup. And Astros. Teams are just going to keep running on them.

Mile straw. Deep, deep, deep, deep league. Mile straw. Well, can we do any better? I mean, the other problem is that just like the stolen base is so devalued that's like i don't know like the dodgers have one stolen base from jock peterson and one stolen base from mookie betts i don't know that i can tell you to go get either of those guys for this weekend maybe pollock will decide to steal a base this weekend yeah i mean it might

not be actionable outside of fringy roster guys who are just going to happen to get playing time because of the pitching matchups. Maybe there's a little nudge in DFS, but it's one of those early trends that I'm pretty confident in at this point because that's a big uptick in steals for both of those teams

in those first couple of series. Yeah, Falafel got me too. The Nick Goody save was a little bit of a surprise. Apparently, Jose LeClerc was warming up and his shoulder tightened up. So it could be another reliever to bid on this weekend. I want to see how the next couple of days play out. But Nick Goody wasn't even, if you said,

name three guys who could get saves for the Rangers if Jose LeClerc is unavailable Nick Goody's name wouldn't have come up I think there was a point not that long ago where people were excited about him missed a lot of time with injuries in 2018 in Cleveland kind of bounced back last year 50ks and 40 and two-thirds innings if he gets the opportunity like why not there's there's no reason why he couldn't be good as a closer with the chance to do it. I love how there are, let me see, 28 relievers with one save, four relievers with two saves,

and Ho Jimenez is the unquestioned value leader when it comes to closing. He has four friggin' saves. He's a machine. He might not freaking saves. He's a machine. He might not get four in the next four weeks. That seems bad enough to not even set up enough chances for him. And then Brad Hand has two and looks like toast.

Yeah. Sourdough? Raisin? Something less interesting. I don't know. It's mostly velocity that I'm worried about with hand because production is really tied to velocity for relievers. If you've got two pitches, it's a lot better to be 94 than it is to be 90. So you can see it in his swinging strike rate,

which is half of what it was last year despite having an okay K-9. I think the Reaper's coming for him, but I'm not sure who it is behind him. I mean, it should be Karin Czach, but let me see who has holds in this. I mean, the standard refrain is usage, velocity, strikeouts. That's how you find saves. But the problem is the usage is kind of all over the place right now. Adam Simber and Nick Whitgrin have the most holds in that bullpen. Yeah, remember those Mario Kart banana peels? Sometimes those happen in the form of guys just having to get their work in.

And the example I have for this one is David Ross throwing the old banana peel at us with the Rowan Wick usage. He didn't pitch in the opening series. He pitched in the sixth inning of a blowout against the Reds, I think, on Monday. Craig Kimbrell looks bad. Rowan Wick, I think, is still the next guy up. Jeremy Jeffress was the guy that cleaned up the mess

when Kimbrell struggled the other night. But it was like the order matters. The order matters because Jeremy Jeffress wasn't going to pitch in a win. He was going to sit on the bench in a win. Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's really easy to get tricked just based on usage trends that are guided by game flow from the last couple of days. And then all of a sudden, the guy ends up in this role that you don't expect

because the manager says, look, he's got to throw. It's been a week since he's been in a game. We have to have him pitch in a game. So I totally understand that, but it skews our perception of the hierarchy of things in a bullpen. Yeah, I mean, James Norwood has the best velocity in that pen, but he's also pretty definitively being used in the middle of games. Dylan Maples has second best, but he just does not know where the ball is going. Craig Kimbrell still has the third best, but he has

the same problem. And then you get Rowan Wick and Rex Brothers. So that's your velocity leaderboard. And then your strikeout leaderboard, Rowan Wick doesn't have a strikeout yet. So obviously not him. Yeah, it's just... Oh, isn't it fun making decisions with no data? I know. It's like, well, what do we use to make decisions?

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But I wanted to call it Get Inside Eno's Head or Get Inside DVR's Head. It feels weird when I speak in the third person. And the question is basically, what are you looking at right now? What are you using to make decisions? What types of leaderboards? What are you using to make decisions? What types of leaderboards? What are you sorting by? And we were talking about it before we started recording. My boring answer was plate appearances.

And your boring answer was plate appearances. But frankly, that's kind of all on the hitting side. That's most of what matters right now is we're just getting a sense of who actually is playing a lot, who's now a part-time player, who's an everyday player. Driving me crazy right now is just the usage of Ryan Braun of all players. He's only started three out of six games so far. They have a damn DH and he's started three out of six games and he's apparently healthy, which is really odd and really frustrating. And if you have him in a 12-team mixed league, it makes you want to cut him because a guy who plays half the time in a 12-team mixed league kind of doesn't fit anymore.

But it's fun. If you go to Fangraphs, you just search the leaderboards. Probably the last thing you would sort by at the end of the year is plate appearances because it's not that interesting when you have more numbers that mean something to work with. But when you start to see, oh, look, who's playing every day? Oh, Kyle Seager plays every day and he's available in a bunch of mixed leagues. Oh, weird. Kyle Seager is only striking out 3% of the time this year. That's different. You start to dig in on players just based on where they fall, right? And I think

you're going to find some guys who are more under the radar than that, of course, who are playing every day. Maybe they're buried in the bottom of the order, but they are at least secure in their role. And that means as much as it's ever really meant in fantasy baseball, having either guaranteed or nearly guaranteed playing time to begin the shortened season.

Yeah, I mean, plate appearances, it's kind of almost old hat for anybody who's played in an AL-only league or an NL-only league. Plate appearances is one of the number one things that you search for in one of those leagues because you're looking at a terrible waiver wire that you just don't have any idea, like only three people are playing.

And so you need to get them to the top to be like, oh, do I take this terrible backup or this terrible backup or this terrible backup? Um, that's, that's something you can learn from having, uh, uh, just awful, awful waiver wires. Uh, and I guess that's sort of true for everyone right now. The difficulty is that, you know, a nagging injury or just a couple lefties can make an outsized impact on somebody's plate appearance total right now too. The only other things I'm looking at right now are maximum exit velocity and pitch velocity. Those are definitely decent in small samples. They're numbers that matter. So for example, Charlie Morton,

I pointed him out in my 4,000 word 20 pitcher omnibus that I published earlier in the week that he was down almost three ticks and that was really worrisome. I showed that the whiff rate on pitches over 94 was more than double the whiff rate on pitches under 93 and 93 and under. And that was really important because now he's sitting 93. And so he comes out, Charlie Morton comes out and has a second start. In that start, he has seven strikeouts and two walks, I think, two earned runs, got through six or something. Definitely looked like you could say that it looked like a decent start.

I would say if you have Charlie Morton and you can that it looked like a decent start. I would say if you have Charlie Morton and you can convince somebody that was a decent start, I would sell him. And I don't know exactly how you do it. You have to play around with, um, you have to play around with, uh, disguising your intentions. You can't just be like, uh, you know, give me this for, for that. You know what I mean? You can't just like take, you can't just be like, give me this for that. You know what I mean? You can't just take Charlie Morton and be like, hey, give me Jack Flaherty for him.

Yeah, that's not going to work. But you can maybe do a two-for-two where you throw in a hitter and you make it look like you're trying to improve your hitter, right? And then the pitcher you get back, you feel a little bit better about even than Charlie Morton, or you feel about the same as Charlie Morton. You're just getting out from under the velocity issue. I feel the same way about James Paxton. James Paxton's release point has dropped, and his velocity has dropped, and the movement profile has changed. I would be shopping James Paxton if

you were either in a league where that wasn obvious to your league mates or you could maybe disguise your intentions. Yeah, I think that's the key. Find what your trade partner needs, categorically speaking, and address that as part of a two-for-two, two-for-one, some kind of swap where it's not just a challenge trade. If you're trying to make a challenge trade with somebody, it's pretty obvious what you're trying to do. They'll go over to Brooks or Fangraphs and be like, oh, look, Charlie Morton's velocity is down. All right. That's weird.

Why am I getting an unsolicited offer to trade for Charlie Morton? Yeah, right. Yeah, no thank you. I'm going to pass on this particular offer, but thanks for trying. So yeah, again, do your homework with regard to what your opponent needs. The other player that kind of stands out to me, by the way, just sorting by playing time is Tommy LaStella.

And I think his playing time just became more stable because David Fletcher is going to play shortstop. Angleton Simmons is hurt. Anthony Rendon had that early injury. Rendon's back. But Tommy LaStella has been locked in as the Angels' second baseman. And there was a good chunk of this winter where he just looked like a guy that was going to fall out of a regular role, even though he was playing really well before suffering that leg injury last year.

So I think I'm starting to warm back up to Tommy La Stella's situation in Anaheim being as good as it was last year, where for a long time, it looked like his playing time might've been dropping. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I don't know how that interacts with Joe Adele coming up.

If he does, that would be, I think they've played a lot of brian goodwin and taylor ward in right fields i think those two guys would just fall out of their roles ward would fall out of his role but then you got madden saying ward ward has to play uh so what if he thinks ward has to play on the infield maybe a little bit fletcher's playing good enough that he needs to play too. Fletcher's hitting just like Stella. They're both hitting.

So, yeah, I don't know. I think probably safe with Joe Adele comes up. I think it would be Goodwin and Ward that would feel the pain the most. But you never know. If Ward comes in the infield, then there could be cascade effects. So that's a couple of things that we're looking at right now as we're trying to make some of these early decisions. It's not easy, as we've said time and time again. Interest rates have hit record lows, which means it's a great time to refinance your student loans and see if you can lower your monthly payment. If you've been making

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get a $100 cash bonus when you refi your student loan at earnest.com slash rates and barrels. Not available in all states. Visit earnest.com slash rates and barrels. Not available in all states. Visit earnest.com slash rates and barrels for more details, terms, and conditions apply. All right, you know, it is the last Thursday of the month, which is our Beer of the Week segment. And I'm going to kick it off this week. I picked up a couple of random beers yesterday. The dog had to go to the groomer,

so while Hazel gets cleaned up, I wandered through the old liquor store, the Steve's on University Avenue in Madison. Always has a nice selection for me. Picked up a few different things. The first one I tried last night was called Lost in the Sauce. It was made by Explorium, which is a brewery based out of Greenfield, one of the suburbs of Milwaukee. They're actually opening up a tap room in Milwaukee. I don't know if that actually opened yet. This was like right around the time the pandemic was just starting to shut things down in March. That story broke, so I'm assuming they haven't opened it yet.

But I like Explorium for a couple of reasons. One, they try a lot of things. for a couple of reasons. One, they try a lot of things. And two, they basically took over a space in a shopping mall that would just sit empty forever. Shopping malls, for a whole bunch of reasons, are just decimated in a bunch of cities.

They're half full. Anchor stores, anchor restaurants are disappearing. And I feel like businesses that effectively utilize that space are doing a service to their communities instead of just letting them become these rundown concrete messes that nobody uses at all because there's literally nothing there. They're actually drawing people to the area. They're actually providing good food on top of

the great beer. So I just think the very concept of taking an old space that doesn't really have a current function, popping up a nice business there and really giving people a reason to continue frequenting that space is a really cool thing for the community. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty sweet. um i mean that's one thing that i really miss about about beer is uh the community that the people that i that i see when i go but also the way that it fits into a community and the unique tastes that a brewery can provide the unique sort of feeling that the spot can provide and how that fits into the community. I think of places like Wynwood walls in Miami, um, uh, where like you have these little pockets of, of art and culture and beer, you know, and how they, they kind of just like fit together,

uh, in these cool ways. And like, I'm really, um, I hope that most of these places make it through and that we can revisit these places soon. I think there was a place in Arizona that was repurposed that I went to with our friends, Clay Link and James Anderson a couple of years ago. I think it's called SIP. This is the one that I was actually at. It looks just like it in the pictures. And what they did is they took a Jiffy Lube, which those drive-through garage oil change places, and they repurposed it as a coffee shop beer bar. So, you know, 20 or so taps plus coffee all day plus your usual cafe-type food.

In a warm environment, you can pop open the garage doors, and it's a really good like indoor outdoor space with a bunch of seating both inside and outside. So I hope that people can continue to find these sort of creative uses for these spaces because unfortunately I think we're we're deep into a situation where more spaces are going to become available. It's just the unfortunate part of the downturn that we're going to be experiencing all over this country. So being creative and taking those resources and repurposing them is really something that I'm excited to see

as the eventual end of all of this that we're dealing with. Yeah, we're used to, you know, as beer drinkers, we're used to often going to industrial parks. Yeah, we're not spoiled as far as the environments we drink in. A lot of times it's all concrete because it's the cheapest available real estate. Exactly. So I did have that thought because I've had a beer venture in mind for myself. And I've thought that walking around Palo Alto,

there are now open storefronts where you would never have thought before. And, you know, in crisis, there is opportunity. I just wonder when the right moment is to jump, because I'd love to start a place. I've thought about calling it Eno's, you know, just make it simple. And it would be a taps and caps place.

It would have, you know, just make it simple. And it would be a taps and caps place that would have, you know, beer to go and beers on tap and sandwiches, of course, because not only does that make it easier to get a liquor license, but I like sandwiches. And I could probably come up with two or three sandwiches that were interesting enough and had enough variance where we wouldn't have to necessarily train a ton of people to do them. Right. And that way, as a business, you have three different ways to be popular. Lunch spot, bar spot, liquor store. Right. Basically a beer store, which is always really good for business. These places have mostly done well in the cities that I've seen, San Diego, San Francisco have mostly done well in the cities that I've seen, San Diego, San Francisco, and New York.

They've all been successful. And I love beer and I love sandwiches. So it would be great. And now there's spots that are like right nearest to University Avenue where there's a demand, I think, for that sort of thing. But my beer of the week is from Tombstone, which is in Arizona. is from Tombstone, which is in Arizona. Their Norwegian farmhouse IPA is great. I had it a while ago, so it's not something that I can really wax poetic on like right now. And I was trying to figure out which beer it was that I had recently that was like this. But one thing that's cool about a farmhouse IPA is that it can have, you know, some interesting body like a hazy IPA. It can have like very fruity aroma, but then it does actually crisp up a little bit more than most of your hazy IPAs. And it has often a kind of, if you've ever had Brett Tanamyces, Brett beer, it has its own sort of qualities

that make it what you call a farmhouse ale, a little bit like a Belgian pale ale, more than an American one. But people are playing around with this yeast called Kvik. And it's like a Norwegian old school thing that comes in interlocking, like you kind of put it in the beer with interlocking wooden, in this interlocking wooden you kind of put it in the beer with interlocking wooden

uh in this interlocking wooden circle that's like really cool looking um and it's like one of the oldest brewing technologies that exists that kind of has fallen away that people are bringing back so um you know tombstone has one of these and look at this door county uh door county brewing uh has a beer or at least i had a beer uh called ex-cowboy nordic pale ale um that uh used uh the kveek has a little bit of a lime zest character so uh if you see the word kveek uh on a pale ale uh give it a shot, man. It's different, and it's going to stand out. And you may hate it, and don't buy the four-pack. Buy the one. Yeah.

The single cooler, I think there are some purists out there who frown upon that, and I think the single cooler is the best way to go. Oh, my God. And I think the single cooler is the best way to go. I mean, like if we're talking 16, 18, 20 bucks for a four pack of pint cans, I want to try different stuff. I don't want to be committed to four of every single thing. I want to try something and then go back and get four later most of the time. Yeah, four packs and six packs are for A, a brewery that cannot miss.

Like Alvarado Street, I'll buy you a four pack, you know, like I'm on board, right? Or for a beer that that cannot miss like alvarado street i'll buy you a four pack you know like i'm on board right um or for a beer that can't miss like okay hubert melvin like that pale ale i'll buy a six pack of that yeah blogging is daytime yeah give me a six pack that'll we'll crush those they'll be gone you know but i'm not gonna go take a chance on a four or six from a brewery i haven't had in a long time or i haven't had that style and then you got those three beers just sitting in the back of the fridge just staring at you you should put googly eyes on your beers i do have like a bad beer um drawer where i've just put all the beers i'm not going to drink and it's's up to like 20, 25. I don't know what to do with it. You can't cook with that much beer.

That's way too much, and I don't want to just drain pour it. I don't know. One day I'll have a bad beer party, and then we'll just all play like Flippy Cup with 10% double IPAs that we don't like. 10% double IPAs that are four months old too. Four to six months old. Probably at that point a year old.

I mean, come on. They'll mellow out a little, I guess. They'll be a little more sessionable by accident. More sessionable doesn't always mean more enjoyable. I think that's an important distinction that we have to make. Otherwise, we'd all be drinking Miller Lite all the time. Yeah. Well, if you got an idea for what Eno should name his beer and sandwich shop,

Eno is a good name. It's a unique name anyway. But it might give the impression that it sells wine. Yeah, because we got a place here called Enovino. Yeah. There's one here. It's awesome. It overlooks the entire city.

It's on top of one of the Marriott's. A Weno-phile or an Eno-phile is a wine lover. Or an Eno-lover. Maybe you guys are all Weno-philes. If you've got any ideas, though, for Eno to name that shop, hit them up on Twitter. At Eno Saris. I'm at Derek Van Ryper. You can also email those suggestions, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com.

Just spell out the word and if you go that route. If you don't have a subscription to The Athletic, you can get 40% off at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. That includes all of Eno's articles, all of our baseball coverage, league-wide, team-by-team stuff, fantasy stuff. So my ads and drops column is a part of that as well.

As we say all the time, if you're enjoying this show on a platform that allows you to leave us a rating and review, please take a few moments to do that. We really appreciate it. It helps new people who want to listen to the show actually find it because we do really well in the charts and everything. So a little peek behind the curtain of how podcasting works. Those ratings and reviews are very much appreciated. That's why we ask for them all the time. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels.

We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening.