Rates & Barrels - Pitcher Rankings Risers, Fallers & Hitter K% Concerns

Episode Date: August 11, 2020

Eno and DVR discuss Eno's updated pitcher rankings -- including prominent risers and fallers -- hitters with early-season strikeout rate concerns, buy-low targets for dynasty leagues, and more. Rundown2:44 Pitcher Rankings: Early Risers9:35 Streamlining Game Prep Process18:41 The Dylan Bundy Adjustments21:31 Continued Concern About James Paxton25:59 Hitters Striking Out More & Offense Down Early30:46 Swing Rates Outside the Strike Zone44:09 Looking For Changes in Astros' 2020 Hitters47:17 Dynasty League Trade Targets: Hitters53:46 Dynasty League Trade Targets: Pitchers Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail: [e-mail] Get 40% off a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 123. It's Tuesday, August 11th. Derek Van Riper here with Eno Saris on this episode. Strikeouts are up. Scoring is down. Where has all the offense gone? We'll talk about that. Going to discuss a few movers on Eno's updated pitcher rankings and some trade targets for dynasty leagues as well. Eno, how's it going for you on this Tuesday?

It's good. It's good. I've got puppies in my life. I've got two tiny little puppies they're mutts that we got from a shelter so we don't know exactly what they are but they may be chew weenies um and they are very weenie and they are eight weeks old so they're like maybe two and a half pounds or something. They're very small at this point. The pictures are great.

Very cute pictures. Eno Saris on Instagram, right? That's where you got to go for the dog pics. Oh, yeah. I'll do more dog pics there. I can't run up a third vertical on my Twitter. We're already doing beers and sandwiches. If I put doggies in there i'll lose some followers but yeah i'm gonna put some pictures over there and the kids are being super cute with

them the only problem is that um they wake up early and they're a little bit like you know like baby human babies and you know where they sometimes wake up in the middle of the night. And so I'd like to get past that phase, but, uh, you know, not too fast because there's just so dang cute. I can get, I can fit both of them and I can have one in each hand. That's a good way to go. I kind of wish I'd got two puppies when we got Hazel, if we'd got one of her little puppy brothers or puppy sisters, we never would have known what having one dog is like. I'm sure my family would have thought we were crazy if we'd done that at the time. So we were in an apartment, but yeah, the puppy phase is the best. It takes, it took about a month, I think for Hazel to get

out of not sleeping through the night. She got up early, probably for the first, well, at least six months that we had her, she was like a 6am riser and she was just hungry because she was growing so fast that she just wanted to eat first thing in the morning. And now she doesn't want to get out of bed. She's such a lazy dog in the morning. She just wants to lay there and she'd wait until noon to eat breakfast if we let her. So it's funny how much they changed in a few years. So yeah, enjoy the puppy phase. Let's dive into some pitcher rankings changes. You came up with a new list that went up, I believe, on Friday.

Who are some of the biggest risers? Let's start on the positive note because it seems like so much that happens in our world and in baseball is negative. But who moved up the most as you were making those adjustments? I think maybe the guy, at least in terms of, you know, it's funny when you talk about moving the most, the lower you are in the rankings, the more you might move in a raw sense, right?

So maybe somebody who moved the most would be someone like Aaron Savali who uh moved up to 40 from I think like 75 80 um is just that uh I think it's maybe more impressive that Max Freed uh moved from 40 to 24 I think that's true yeah because we've talked about how there's not that much of a difference once you get past that top 30 maybe top 40 range the difference between 41 and 73 is very small but the difference between 41 and 21 is comparatively a lot greater especially yeah yeah in terms of like how much we actually know and how how how strong we feel about our ranking and yeah definitely and also like i was thinking about this in in response to like zach gallen and We actually know how strong we feel about our ranking. Yeah, definitely. And also, I was thinking about this in response to Zach Gallin. And this is going to age really poorly or really well because he's pitching in Coors tonight.

And I was like, somebody was asking me, do I pitch Zach Gallin in Coors tonight? And I was kind of looking at, where's the line for where i would i would pitch somebody in cores and it's somewhere around that line where i feel very confident about their ranking so it's like somewhere between 30 and 40 right because like once i get past 40 like would i pitch andrew haney in cores no you know as much as i love love Spencer Tunbrill and Griffin Canning, would I pitch them in cores? I don't think so. So Zach Gallin is all the way up at 26,

and so I feel like, okay, he's good. I'll chuck and duck. So we'll see how that ages. But, yeah, Max Free just, you know, what I was looking for was command based on the new slider. His command plus numbers and just generally his command numbers haven't been amazing. But the slider was possibly a pitch he could command better. And he continued to do so.

Also, I really loved just watching him. I really loved his pace. do so also um i really loved just watching him i really loved his pace um and that's not something that like we've proven has great value anywhere in fact a slower pace is related to better velocity because you can kind of rest up between um but um generally i just love the pace. I love what I saw as good command, and then also the velocity is good, which has been up or down, I think, over the course of his career. So just the slider's there, the command is there, and the velocity's there,

and it just made me think I had ranked him too low to begin with. It's wild to see, when you look at a player's complete body of work, though, going back to the minor leagues, it's wild to see a strikeout rate that is so much higher at the big league level right now

from a guy like Savali than it's been at any other point in his career. But players are constantly changing and you get better game plans as you move up to the big leagues. So I think you can start to talk yourself into this idea that he has at least raised the baseline considerably. Maybe he's not a 10Ks per nine, 30% K rate sort of guy in the long run.

But when we first started talking about him back in the fall, I think we looked at him and said, you know, the ratios were good, but he might be more of a 20% K rate guy. Where do you sort of project him with strikeouts in particular, looking at the changes he's made, looking at the velocity, looking at the command, do you see him as kind of a 25% strikeout rate,

a seven and a half, eight Ks per nine sort of pitcher going forward? Um, yeah, I, the one thing that's interesting is he had a really, uh, really crazy pitch mix. So all he did, he had a really, really crazy pitch mix.

Savali did. He had a really crazy pitch mix change in his first start, right? And then now you look at it and you're like, oh, he must have softened that a little bit because at some point he wasn't even really using a sinker and now he's at 30% with a sinker. He is throwing more cutters than sinkers still and that's, I think, part of

what's going on, is he's establishing with the cutter using the sinker a little bit differently than people expect, and then finishing people off with the slider and the curveball and the change. It's a legit five-pitch mix without a four-seam, and it's

a little bit of pitching backwards, which always makes me a little bit nervous when someone's pitching backwards, which always makes me a little bit nervous when someone's pitching backwards. But given his level of command, given the level of demonstrated command in the minor leagues and the major leagues, it's possible that he's kind of doing the Hunjan-Rio approach, right?

It's like, I've got lots of pitches. I can command them all. I'm going to keep you on your back foot. So him and Plesak both, I think, were big movers. And I hate to fall into like, oh, the Indians know what they're doing with pitching development. And just get because they did make Josh Tomlin, too. And a lot of these guys like somehow strike me as Josh Tomlin guys. Like they don't they don't necessarily draft for a big fastball.

They draft for a slider command, multiple pitches, pitchability, and they groom them as best they can. But both these guys have made small tweaks to their pitch mixes, even a little bit of change in their movement, and are just optimizing really well. You know, it's a weird thing. So in the minor leagues, you kind of want people to work on something, right? So you're like, okay, let's work on your four seam and see if we can, like, let's work on

your four seam, see if we can get some ride out of it, see if we can make a legit pitch. You get to the major leagues, everything, only results matter, out goes the four seam and in comes this new cutter strategy. But at the same time, you also want players to be used to prepping as best they can. And so some teams don't really prep their minor leaguers the same way they do their major leaguers. And that's bizarre to me. I think you'd want everyone to kind of have this ingrained in themselves

that they need to prepare for every game this way. Even if they're working on things, they need to prepare as much as they can to prepare for preparing in the major leagues. Yeah. Wouldn't you want the process to be as similar as it possibly can be at low way in the Midwest League as it is eventually in Cleveland and at the big league level? That seems like something all teams would want to strive for, just for that consistency and to low way in the Midwest League as it is eventually in Cleveland and the big league level. That seems like something all teams would want to strive for just for that consistency and to maximize development and to make sure that guys understand game planning consistently from start to start by the time they arrive. Because if you don't throw a lot of ideas at a pitcher prior to a game until

he reaches the big leagues it might seem like information overload it might be overwhelming it might be the kind of thing that actually works against the pitcher even though it's information completely designed to help them now i imagine that most of the big movers here are going to be fast starters guys whose numbers look good on the surface but then guys who also are doing something differently they've either picked up velocity they've added another pitch, the command looks better, or some combination of those things. I'm curious, did Austin Voth make a little move up the rankings here too?

Probably not as much as a Savali or a Plisak or anyone in that group, but is Austin Voth the guy that you've kind of moved up to the point where you now trust him as a quality back-end starter for the Nats? I think that sometimes you know, sometimes, you know, sometimes, you know, you get, you get somebody right, you feel, and then you don't want to push them too hard. Do you know what I mean? I think, I think that Voth is a win for these ranks because he's totally a usable starter. And a lot of people didn't have him on their radar to begin with. Right. So I'm good with him there. A lot of people didn't have him on their radar to begin with, right?

So I'm good with him there. Turnbull's at 55, which wasn't maybe... I thought that's 78. So I'm moving him up 10, right? And I had Turnbull at 72, and I'm moving him up 10, 15 to 55, right? Those are not big moves, and you kind of want to be careful that you don't then like, remember Nick Pavetta? Like, I thought, you know, there was enough stuff there that before his his good year, I had him ranked, you know, in the 75 to 80 place where I put all these kind of sleepers that I like for another reason or another.

Right. And then after that season, people saw his great strikeout minus walk rate and thought, Oh, this is going to be even better and had them up in the fifties. And I don't know where I put them in the end. So I can't, you know,

pat my back too hard. But I remember really resisting pushing him up because I was like, I don't know, man, the command seems really bad., I don't know, man, the command seems really bad. And I think that there's just, there's something that's less than the sum of the parts here. And I'm,

I'm not sure I'm getting it. I think it's maybe just the home run rate and the command, but I don't know what it is. I'm not pushing me in the fifties. I'm going to keep them around 70 where I had, because I think he's a usable pitcher with some flaws. And the seventies rank represents that better. So Voth, I like him.

The splitter, the new splitter looks great, but he still throws like 92, and I want to know a little bit more about how good the breaking ball is and how good everything's going to play together now that he's got this new splitter before I move him much harder than that. He, for example, had a whole start where he did well, but he struck out one guy, I think. Yeah.

There's not a good track record in the upper levels of the minors for him either. You see a lot of four, five, six ERAs in partial seasons at AA and AAA. So I do think the gap between the success he's had in parts of really two seasons now with the Nats compared to the larger body of work as a 25 and 26 and 27 year old he was missing bats in the minors for most of the time he was in the upper levels but it doesn't all add up so I think you're right to have have some pause and moving him up high. I think he is very usable in large part because of the team he plays for. He's got an offense that provides plenty of run support. I don't think they're going to use him incorrectly

and try and push that extra inning out of him. I think they kind of know that if they get five good innings, that's probably something to be happy with and time to go to the bullpen and try to protect the lead that way. something to be happy with and time to go to the bullpen and try to protect the lead that way yeah you know and everybody in that sort of like 60 plus uh grouping is just right now like a four four inning pitcher it seems right like just like you're saying like even nathie novaldi who's looked pretty good uh is not going deep into games. Kevin Gossman, for example, is pitching really well.

I have him 84 or so, and I moved him to 70. Maybe it's just the park, but he's also pitching four and a third innings at a time. Makes him ramp it up to 98 and 97 a lot and gets for good results but we're all chasing wins here too and that has been the most difficult part of this new season yeah it really has been for a while they haven't really been coming from those multi-inning relievers the way that we expected either at least not from the multi-inning relievers that many of us were targeting any other big movers up the list as you went through that process? I think there's some obvious ones like Dustin May, where I had him 50 representing basically, hey, once this guy gets a starting spot, you really want him. He has stuff. But I can't rank

him higher than 50 because I don't even know if he has a role yet like I don't the starting role yet and then you know stuff happened and it looks like he's he's got that that role for good and so I moved him into the top 40 and the only thing that's keeping him from the top 30 is just a sense that his command isn't great and that his command isn't great. And there's something about sinkers that are as exaggerated as his, that have as much movement as his. Historically, a lot of them haven't done well. Like if you're talking about like a stuff ranking or comparing, you know, his stuff to previous stuff. And I think part of it is if people find a way to start taking that sinker.

How many of those gifs that you've seen of him, like where the ball ends up like 18 inches off the plate at the end, right? Yeah, it's almost too much movement in some ways. I think so. And it's side to side movement where the plate is smaller. So, you know, in order for him to really dot the inside corner, he almost has to start it on the outside corner.

Man, it's such an extreme power sinker. He's up almost two ticks in velo so far too. Yeah. And I, maybe I'll look silly for, you know, uh,

saying anything bad about our Lord ginger guard but um the it is also interesting look at his strikeouts they're not like in terms of strikeout rate it's not really there not for like compared to what you think you'll see when you when you watch him pitch um but you know i still have in the top 40 i like him. He should suppress homers. And as long as people are still swinging, it looks pretty good. Then another kind of obvious move was Dylan Bundy, which I still think that ranking him in the top 70 felt like a pretty good indication that he was going to be good and we should watch him and we should take some chances on him.

But I think now he's gotten very much closer to an every start guy, and that's the difference with moving up. And then one that might be surprising to people, Lance Lynn. I was a little bit worried that Lynn's fastball does so much better when it's over 94. You know, most fastballs do better when they're over 40 um and 94 and and uh most fastballs do better than over 90 over 94 we talked about this before that like once you get over 94 swing strikes go up precipitously uh and um home runs go down precipitously. And this is all relevant to Lance Lynn

because he used to sit 92-91 for the longest time, and then with the Twins for a little bit, and then with the Rangers he sat 94. And I just felt like it's 94-2. What happens when he loses a little bit of ELO? Maybe that's the concern for next year because he's down a little bit to elo uh maybe that's the concern for next year because he's down a little bit to 93.8 um but that's factoring in his sinker his his fast his forcing fastball is 94.8 last year

94.8 this year so he's managed to not lose velocity however the rule is that people lose velocity so and because his secondaries are not that great, I still think he may not age that well. But he is 33, and he is still throwing 94. So at least for this season, I'm going to move him up in my rankings. Yeah, hanging on and getting it done at a high level yet again. It seemed like he was a little underpriced after what he did last year because I think the market as a whole was pretty skeptical. Circling back on Bundy just for a second, I just like that the Angels kind of

turned the dial another couple of clicks on the adjustments that he was already starting to make last year in Baltimore, right? They got even more away from the fastball in these first few starts, down to 32.4% fastball usage, maxing out the slider a little bit, 29.3% there, a few more change-ups, more curveballs. That was the way it was going to happen for Dylan Bundy, right? I mean, when he was a prospect, he threw a lot harder. He's had arm trouble. I think this can work. What is the ceiling for a guy like that, though, who's averaging 90.4 on the four-seamer, even when you've sort of optimized the usage and only throw that pitch about one-third of the time and lean very heavily on a good mix of secondaries.

Yeah. I think that the, the things that we know that that go well with aging are just having, uh, more secondaries and having great command, uh, which makes me just kick myself again for trading Aaron Nola. God damn it.

Uh, but, uh, to be fair, he only has two secondaries and one fastball, so it's not like he has a million different pitches. But good command, multiple pitches, the Zach Greinke way, that's how to age well, I think. Yeah, seems like that's the path that Dylan Bundy has at least started on here in 2020. So happy to see it. He's a guy that I've wanted to get a look at in a different

environment for a long time. It's nice to see the Angels making the changes that we were all hoping for. On the flip side, we won't spend as much time on fallers, but let's just say healthy or presumably healthy fallers. Guys who are not on the IL at least, who have dropped

in your rankings, who's moved down the most yeah that's that was a difficult one um that they throwing that presumably healthy uh tag on there because a lot of the people that dropped um I thought weren't healthy and have turned out not to be healthy and now that I'm looking at them I thought I picked good ones and they're all just injured ones. So I moved Charlie Morton down to 27 based on the VLO drop, and I don't think that even the good start that he had was enough for me to push it back up because the VLO wasn't quite there, and he was obviously struggling.

He looked a lot more hittable. So Charlie Morton was a big dropper. And then the other two that I have listed, oh, this is kind of hilarious, actually. The other one was Madison Bumgarner, who dropped from like 60-something to 80-something based on his VLO drop, and now he's hurt. And then Yanni Chirinos dropped a fair amount,

and he's hurt. So I will have to keep looking. How about you? Do you have any healthy droppers? The guy that I worry about is Paxton because he's still down like three miles per hour. I know he had a good start. Was that Sunday? Man, the days still, even with baseball happening, the days are still blurring together quite a bit.

We saw the big strikeout performance. It was against the Rays, 11 Ks still blurring together quite a bit. We saw the big strikeout performance. It was against the Rays, 11 Ks and six in a third inning. He's only walked one, three earned runs on four hits. That's about as good as it can get with the reduced velocity from him. And I think part of it with Paxton is I look at the other pitches and wonder, okay, we just talked about Dylan Bundy as a guy who's averaging 90.4 on his fastball. He's going so heavy with the secondaries. It's all working. Do you like James Paxton's secondary pitches enough

to see him adjusting to the reduced velocity and being more curveball happy, more cutter happy? Because the problem I think here is that the arsenal isn't quite as deep with secondaries. It never had to be because Paxton in the mid to upper 90s from the left side could lean pretty heavily on that fastball. But you take that away from him, we're always asking ourselves, how quickly can this guy adjust?

And when you don't see two or three above average pitches that he can turn to away from the fastball, I think that's what gives me some pause about believing he's going to figure this out quickly. Yeah. I think we're going to see a DL stint. I think Paxton was a huge dropper in mind that I moved him from, I think, 15 down to 35.

People didn't think it was enough. And in particular, down to 35 people didn't think it was enough um and in particular i got into a twitter conversation that uh nate pearson who i have at 60 mostly due to just wanted to know a little bit more about his command um uh that they would take nate pearson over james paxton going forward i i you know i guess it's fair um i i don't know that I did something wrong process-wise because I really docked Morton, Paxton, and Bumgarner a lot based on those velocity drops. And kind of moving Morton from 10 to 27 and Paxton from like 14 to 33

and Bumgarner from like 40 to 77, those feel like similar moves moves right because we're just talking about the difference between um you know top and bottom of the rankings and um there is a chance that paxton could gut his way through this season my dynasty rank for him would be lower than my yearly rank for him and yeah i do think that there's a possibility he's hurt but you know the good news is the strikeout rate is still there the walk rate is still fine uh the curveball is good and he has a unique arm angle that i think is difficult for people um and uh you know if he can push it back up to at least 93 or something. Maybe there's some aspect of this that has to do with the downtime.

He's just slowly building up. We also know that James Paxton has a difficult time staying healthy. That's always looming in the background, but it is surprising to see that the Ks have been there. He's up over 30%. 12.1% swing strike rate too. It's down from where it was the last two years, but it's not bad. If you see a guy with a 12.1% swing strike rate, normally that gets you a little bit excited about what he's going to bring in the strikeout category.

So he's definitely a mystery wrapped in a riddle as far as the magnitude of that velocity loss and how he might be able to try and get out of that problem in the weeks ahead summer is here and our sponsor today manscaped is here to make sure you're well groomed above and below the belt manscaped promotes clean hygiene when it comes to shaving with their lawnmower 3.0 personal trimmer manscaped is the only men's brand dedicated to below the waist grooming and the lawnmower 3.0 is a waterproof cordless body trimmer that makes it safe and easy subscribe to the perfect package and get a new replacement blade refill for your trimmer delivered to your door every three months making sure your

trimmer always stays fresh and clean get 20 off and free shipping with the code the athletic 20 at manscape.com that's 20 off with free shipping at Manscaped.com and use code THEATHLETIC20. And for a limited time, subscribers get not one but two free gifts, a travel bag, a $39 value, and patented high-performance Manscaped boxer briefs. So go to Manscaped.com today and use the code THEATHLETIC20. All right, you know, we've got a theme here in this 2020 season. Hitters are striking out a lot. And if you look at the historical trends, of course, 2005 was the last time that the league strikeout rate didn't increase from the previous season.

We're at 8.85 Ks per nine. That was at least through Sunday. That was actually a slight uptick from 2019. There's a few reasons for this. I mean, heavier reliever usage would certainly contribute to more strikeouts. Those guys come out of the pen, they throw gas, they have nasty breaking stuff sometimes. So that certainly makes some sense. Hitters maybe being a little bit behind at least when the season first started, ramping back up in summer camp, not quite the same as

going through a full spring training. But on an individual level, there are a lot of good players striking out 30-plus percent of the time. If you look at the war leaderboard for position players, Fernando Tatis Jr., who's been almost a two-win player already, he's having a great start to the season. He's up over 30%. Luis Roberts over 30%. Will Myers, don't laugh, five homers on the season,

35% K rate. Kyle Lewis, Ronald Acuna, Matt Chapman, Wilson Contreras, Devers, and Ben Intendi, who we talked about, I think, on our last episode. Jelich and Keston Hira, Pete Alonso. It's a long list. These are guys that mostly don't strike out that much in the first place,

and this is a big spike early on. And we did have a question that came in related to this topic from Ryan. He wanted to know what secondary stats can I use to properly evaluate hitters who are striking out this much going forward? So when do we worry about a player's strikeout rate being this high? Because I look at Tatis, and I think that was part of why back during draft season, I talked about him as a guy that I didn't like as a first rounder in Snakes. I thought there was a little bit too much swing and miss there.

I thought he got a little bit lucky on balls in play last season. And he's made me look really stupid so far. He's followed up and just been like, no, dude, I can strike out 30% of the time. It doesn't matter. I mean, he's played 101 career games entering Tuesday. And he's got 30 homers and 20 steals. And he's hitting 319, 384, 621. How on earth could I possibly not like this guy? It's just a matter of maybe being too preoccupied with one flaw in his game and using that to kind of wash away all the strengths that he brings to the table, which are pretty much everything else you could possibly want yeah i think that he's a good entry point into this discussion because i once looked

at like the relationship of like uh walk to strike rate and viability in the leagues and as power goes up as the ball flies further you can tolerate tolerate worse BB decay rates, right? And so Paul de Jong was a part of that discussion, and Louis Brinson, and a couple other players. And Paul de Jong actually turned out, I think, to be the example of how it can work how a 30 strikeout rate can be viable even with uh maybe not the best walk rate and i think the the answer is you have to do everything else well right so that's one answer one answer is do you do everything else well so wilson contreras he's better at framing this year he's been a pretty good catcher he's a catcher he's doing a lot of things paul de young still on this list great defensive uh uh shortstop uh does a lot of other things is walking more is

is a good player yasman ingrindal that's fine where does it get iffy it gets a little bit more iffy when you're talking about will myers maybe you know because he's not going to bring you a lot of defensive value and he's not bringing you a lot of walks. So if the power tones down at all, then you get these bad Will Myers seasons, which we've seen. It could be more worrisome with Kyle Schwarber if he didn't have a great walk rate. I think it is worrisome for Ryan McMahon, even with the walk rate. Nico Goodrum, this is worrisome because without the power, Nico Goodrum doesn't necessarily have a great home defensively. And so, you know, you could see why maybe teams weren't on Nico Goodrum, how the Tigers ended up

with him. The other thing I want to point out that I think is really important is how they get to the strikes. And so I think zone contact is important here because if they have a decent zone contact, but a bad strikeout rate, then we're talking about strategy at the plate and selectivity, right? Because they're probably just reaching too often. And what happens with aging in baseball? You reach less often. You swing less often.

And so if you have a young player that has an outside strikeout rate but an okay zone contact rate, then maybe it's not that big a deal. So Wilson Contreras, again, he has a terrible walk rate and a terrible strikeout rate. 2% walk rate, 38% strikeout rate. This seems like, holy crap, run the other direction. Don't want this at all. However, his zone contact rate is 84%. It's the best other than Dexter Fowler on the top half of this list. It's the best other than Dexter Fowler on the top half of this list.

And then look at this. Will Myers, Victor Robles, good zone contact rates. So there's a chance that they just settled in a little bit. There's two confounding factors, I think, to this list that make it look worse than usual. One, pitchers are ahead. It kind of came out today in this piece that I wrote about why offense is missing, why strikeout rate is through the roof. Pitchers are ahead because It kind of came out today in this piece that I wrote about why offense is missing, why strikeout rate is through the roof. Pitchers are ahead because of what training was like.

Spring training, not only is it about getting your swings in, but it's about seeing different looks. And so you play in spring training, you see a lot of the pitchers, you'll see the rest of the season, but you also see guys come up over the top from the side, from the left, from the right, and you just get used to seeing different looks and you and you settle in that way all the batters basically saw their own pitchers over and over again in in summer camp and so uh they weren't so the batters are behind the second thing is there is an umpire um there's an umpire situation here and so what's going on

with the the umpiring is the umpires are not. And so what's going on with the umpiring is the umpires are not moving. They're not traveling like they used to. So normally, umpiring buyers would kind of get washed away by the fact that everyone sees every umpire eventually. And that keeps things kind of the same for everyone. However, right now, what's happening is umpires are staying regional.

And something like the D-backs what's happening is umpires are staying regional and something like the D-backs have seen the same umpires for four or five straight series. And so the D-backs have, the D-backs pitchers, for example, have 79 called strikes on balls outside the zone so far. But the, you know, a team like Boston has 48. Now there are confounding factors there too with the framing ability of the catcher, the control of the pitchers. But Washington has great control from their pitchers. They only have 52 extra strikes compared to Arizona 79 or the Giants 88. So umpiring has something to do with this.

The batters being behind has something to do with this. The fact that there's an endless parade of relievers, you know, starting in the fourth inning has something to do with this. You can't even get the same. You can't even get a third look at the starting pitcher anymore. So third time through the order, it used to be something that batters saw 30 to 40% of the time this year. It's 14% of the time. Does a batter get to a third look on the starting pitcher?

So all those factors are leading to this. I think the one way out is to focus on zone contact and reach rates and see where maybe someone has just been unlucky in taking the wrong pitch that they might be able to toggle that and do better in the future. Yeah, it's weird because I'm looking at the Brewers again. It's always the Brewers with me,

but Yelich is high on this list. Here is high on this list. And I'm looking at the zone contact percentage leader board or laggard board to be more accurate keston here has the second worst zone contact percentage among all hitters with at least 20 plate appearances a season only 62.3 percent and he's done some damage this year he's actually hit a little bit uh four homers already i think on the young season but you start looking at what he was doing last year. Okay, how much has this changed from a season ago? Last season, Keston Hira made contact in the zone at a 76.9% clip. That's a massive drop. And it seems weird to me that Hira and Jelic, Avi Garcia, and I think there was one more brewer I saw in there.

Maybe it was Justin Smoke. The brewers have a lot of players who are not hitting pitches inside the zone and I can't really make heads or tails of anything there other than to say, I mean, they're all facing the same guys, they're teammates, so they've had the same matchups. So whether that's a team ramp-up situation that was different or matchups that have just been tough for them,

they've caught maybe better pitching overall than people expected i don't think it's that they did play the pirates and they had some series that weren't that ridiculous they they've struggled against guys like tyler chatwood and kyle hendricks in starts they've struggled last night against randy dobnak like i don't know really what to make of it when I see several players from one team kind of clustered high up on this leaderboard. And I do think this is the metric that paired with K percentage, this gives me an indication that something really isn't right. And Jelic, I mean, the drop for him, 87% zone contact percentage. He's been 87% or higher every year since 2014.

He's at 72.4% right now. That's just weird. At what point is this more than limited sample noise? When does this actually become meaningful? Do you think we've reached that point? We're getting close when it comes to swing rate, which is just how often does the batter swing. And that is just a beautiful per-pitch metric

that is super solid, and you haven't done anything to the denominator, right? You haven't chopped it up in any way. It's just swing rate. Does he swing or does he not? And last year, Kesson Hira swung 51% of the time. This year, he swung 50% of the time. So there doesn't seem to be a big change

in his aggression to the plate. One thing that you notice is that Hira has seen double the change-ups that he saw last year but like you just mentioned at least Hendrix where he could have gotten a ton of uh change-ups in one start right and if he's seen them if he's seen Hendricks twice I don't know exactly who he's seen this year but like if he had seen Hendricks twice then early in the year would look like oh my god he's seeing all these change-ups and uh he's not you know it just happened to you know run into guys that throw change-ups it's not and there's not a lot of players that like they're like oh I, I could throw Hira these two

breaking balls, but instead, I'm going to throw him this change-up because there's not a ton of pitchers that throw change-ups anymore. So, yeah. I don't know what to say. His exit velocity on change-ups right now is 76.5.

And his exit velocity in every other bucket is and fastballs and breaking balls is over 95 but now we're really kind of uh breaking it down because he has six batted ball events against change-ups now we're going too far right too too granular in this case i mean yelich is swinging a lot less though yelich swung 45.2 of the time last year he's down at 35.3%. And I wonder if he's not being as aggressive early in the count in particular. He's falling behind right away. And then he's just not getting the pitches he's looking for, right? Like that's just the

sequence is just a little off for him. And that's why things are so different. But it's weird to see an MVP caliber player come in and just swing a lot less. But realistically, if this weren't a 60-game season, we'd be in the third week of April, second week of April. I mean, we haven't seen that much yet. And apparently, taking pitches is a thing that batters do more at the beginning of the season and less later on. That's something that Craig Edwards of Fangraphs found.

I never figured that out, but it makes sense because you're like, I'm going to take pitches until I get a handle on what pitchers are trying to do to me, what's going on, what stuff. I'm going to get more looks, and then I'm going to mash, right? But just generally, he has the best reach rate of his career, and you would think that would be good, but he also has the worst or second worst zone swing rate of the last five six years so you know he's just not swinging enough and i kind of think that somebody with his level of track record is just

going to become more aggressive and get hot i mean that's i know that that sounds like base-level analysis, but he's 28, and I don't think the knee is going to change how he sees pitches. the section 422 podcast. It's like, just let it happen. Just be you because you're going to earn double that contract if you just be yourself for most of the life of that. I thought Matt Chapman was the other surprise name on this, by the way. I know he had a huge game on Monday night, but I don't look at him as a guy who I expect to see striking out all that much. He's up more than 10 percentage points this season, up over 30%. Because StatCast is so favorable for him, I'm not really worried about Chapman either.

It's just a funny thing to look at a guy and be like, yeah, you know what? No big deal. He's up a lot in Ks. I'm not worried. Then look at another guy and say, I'm paranoid that this is a major problem, which is the case probably more with probably like a Luis Robert, but is the case probably more with like, probably like a Luis Robert,

but I think Robert ends up fitting more into the, what we thought was going to happen. Right. Like we knew that was going to happen to some degree that there's going to be some swing and miss upon arrival. I mean, it's got to head up. Van Graaff's had him down with a 35 grade hit tool, the future 45,

everything else plays up. And that was going to be the, the one weakness. And he still might bring that down over time. 32.9% when you have power and you have speed and you do draw walks, that's fine. You can live with that. And I just keep going back to that idea. Am I getting fixated on one flaw and overlooking a bunch of strengths with players who strike out too much?

flaw in overlooking a bunch of strengths with players who strike out too much. And I think that might be a legitimate weakness in what I do as an analyst and as a fantasy player. Yeah. I did get a text from a major league hitting coach in response to the article. They said they liked it, but they thought that the pitchers being ahead was the major thing, that batter's timing was just off. And I think that it's worth pointing out that we will get an answer to some extent about why offense was down early because there's all these different factors. The ball is not flying as it used to, there the pitching usage is been accelerated the reliever usage so there are these different factors but if offense takes off from here there is an important

milestone that we've kind of reached which is we're two weeks in and two weeks is like literally the number that hitters will tell you they need to get timing. Last night there was a ton of offense. Great time to publish a piece about where the offense has gone. But maybe this is the beginning of hitters hitting the ground. Maybe this first two weeks was their spring training because they finally got to see these different pitchers, and they are getting their timing down now. So if there is a bit of an offensive takeoff from here, then we'll know to some extent why. Yeah, we saw some big numbers Monday night.

We saw a 10-9 Angels game. We saw the Mariners put 10 on the Rangers. We saw a Coors game that was very typical, a 12-8 between those two teams. We saw an 8-7 Red Sox game. We saw the Nats drop 16 on the Mets. We saw the Phillies and Braves put up 21. Great time. Shut up.

That was good. We did have a question about the Astros' early season results that I'm going to get to in just a second. First, a quick word from Indochino. Let's talk about the Astros. This is a question that came in via email, ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com, if you'd like to reach out to us. This question came from Wes,

and he wanted to know if it's too early to glean anything from the Astros' underlying stats for their hitters to suggest that they were doing things in 2019 to get an edge? Is there anything in the underlying numbers early that supports things being different for the Astros, that the edges that they may have been getting last season are now gone? I think that the main thing when it comes to the advantage they gained was how they reacted to breaking pitches and breaking pitches outside the zone. Because that was the main thing that was being told to them. The bang was, here's a breaking pitch. And that changed their whole attitude. Because if you know it's a breaking pitch, even if it looks like it's coming middle, middle, if you know it's a breaking pitch, you

know it might break out of the zone. And if it's low at all, and you know it's a breaking pitch you know it might break out of the zone and if it's low at all and you know it's a breaking pitch you just spit on it that's something that for example marwin gonzalez who had one of the best years of anyone during the the the bang thing compared to the rest of his career one of the things he did during that period was stop pitching stop swinging at breaking balls down in the zone and so i the best one-stop shop query that I can do is to look at how often the Astros swung at breaking pitches outside of the zone. And yes, last year they were very good at it. They were probably the third best team in not swinging at pitches outside the zone, third to fifth best team, depending on if you look at raw versus percentage, they swung at 28% of breaking balls outside the zone last year. And this year, they have swung only at 26% of balls outside the zone. However, the league has,

for some reason, has gotten better at not doing that. And so they basically are middle of the pack this year. So you could say that they got a little bit worse relative to the league, and yet they're swinging at pitches outside of the zone about the same rate. So what I'm saying is maybe there was an effect in the year it was happening, but that we've also put a fair amount of daylight in between the year that this happened and what they're doing now. And so either they've found a better way to cheat or their true talent has normalized and we know who they are.

And this is nothing much more than maybe missing Ventura and not being ready necessarily bat-wise. Maybe they're feeling the being behind at the plate more than others. So in any case, I don't think that I'm comfortable saying that we're seeing the Houston Astros without cheating. Yeah, we'll see if anything changes, of course, in the weeks ahead, but nothing really scandalous, I guess, about the results to this point. Thanks a lot for the question, Wes.

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potentially build around as always keep up the awesome work. All right. Thanks for the email, Jared. Looking for a non-elite player, not a prospect who can actually be a cornerstone in Dynasty. I have a guy who's not even close to the top 100 right now, who I'm pretty intrigued by early this season. So I'll throw one out here first on the hitting side. It's actually Ian Happ. K-rate's down a little bit, showing a good eye, still drawing plenty of walks, hitting the ball in the air a little more often. He has pop, he has speed, and he has a job right now. And he's one of those guys that in a long-term league, I don't think it's going to cost much at all. I think he's one of those guys you can even get maybe as like a secondary piece.

Like if you're not playing for this year, you're trading away a more established veteran, trying to get some young talent back. Maybe you focus on a prospect plus Ian Happ. And Happ turns out to be one of those guys who's a great long-term fit, especially in a league as deep as a 26-team league is a massive league. I always think of the Roto-Wire Dynasty Invitational and Devil's Rejects. I mean, those are 20-team leagues where the quality of players in the waiver wire is really low. But we're still talking about a guy in Ian Happ, 25 years old, turns 26 here tomorrow. Happy birthday, Ian. I know you're a big fan of the podcast. I just think he can tick all the boxes. He can be a good long-term player. I don't know if center field's really his long-term defensive home, but he's good enough

to play every day in this lineup and maybe even has a chance to start moving up in the batting order at some point too. Love it. Loved it. Loved him to, uh, to begin the season. Um, and, uh, you know, definitely, uh, happy to see him, uh, doing what he's doing. Um, you know, there's guys that I like, um, that are doing okay. So like, I don't know exactly what the uh numbers would look like in terms of the rank in your league but i have to think that somebody like lords griot uh or jd davis would be guys that are on the outside of your uh ranking systems you know top. And they're both guys I like because they hit the ball well. They have some flaws, Grails health so far. And JD Davis's defensive value are small dings, but I think those are dings that make them more attainable. And I just see Davis getting enough time at third base

to kind of give you like a Justin Turner-esque outcome that is just super useful going forward. Like, I don't know if he's going to turn into a star, you know, much more than what he's already doing, but I think he's very dependable as a high batting average. I think they're both dependable as high batting average, good power guys. Gurriel might even steal a few bags, but between the two of them at 26 for Gurriel and 27 for Davis.

They're right in the right period of their lives for you to get the best outcomes from them. And I think they still haven't established enough of a baseline to be that expensive. And so I like both of those guys as being well-rounded enough that they have different skill sets and that their flaws are just not that big a deal. Yeah, I like those options as well.

I think there's one more name that came to mind because he's off to a great start this year and he played better than I gave him credit for a year ago. It's Mikey Stremski in San Francisco. Pretty nice pickup for Farhan, of course. A 132 WRC plus since the start of last season. And it puts him in company of bats like Trey Mancini, Chris Bryant, Max Muncy, Ramon Laureano. Think about how much more excited we are

about all those other hitters. And then Mike Yastrzemski, we're just like, eh, late bloomer, San Francisco, whatever. I think there's a little bit of the Ian Happ thing here where he's going to be cheap. He's older than you think. So I think that's maybe one of the downsides here he's already 29 he'll turn 30 later this month uh sorry mike yeah i think you only want to you know really roster him for two three years but yeah i think that that a lot of players a lot of times players like those are easier to get in dynasty because they just have none of that prospect sheen right and they're

just useful you know uh that's kind of where i was getting with gary ellen they just have none of that prospect sheen, right? And they're just useful. You know? That's kind of where I was getting with Gurriel and Davis. None of them are top prospects. None of them kind of tickle people in that place. So, if you want a true buy-low, like someone who's really struggling that I still believe in and is younger than the guys we've mentioned, Willie Calhoun

is still doing things that I like. He has a minuscule swingy strike rate, and I just think that he has the ability to pair a 15% strikeout rate with like a 250 ISO, which would lead to something like a 280 batting average and 30 home runs in a full season. And no, he won't steal any bags. And no, I have no idea where he'll end up playing,

if it'll be first base or DH or whatever. And yes, there's some risk because he got hit in the face and he's having a little trouble turning on pitches on the inside part of the plate, and that's something that he does very well. At the same time, he still has a 4.5% swinging strike rate right now. He's still hitting 50% of his balls in the air. I see a lot to like here still. I just traded for him with Jason Collette over the weekend in AL Labor, gave him Heimer Candelario

and Randy Orazarena for Willie Calhoun. I'm betting on him in the short term. I'm betting on him in the long term. Yeah, I do think that's a good profile to buy into. He's still quite a bit younger than a few of the guys we talked about, too. Easy to see how that could go right. On the pitching side, I feel like things are a little trickier in Dynasty Leagues because buying low on pitching oftentimes is buying on a guy that doesn't have a rotation spot or is hurt or he's the stuffiest with no command. I mean, this time last year, I made a trade with our friend Ian Kahn and got Josh James back. And I thought, okay, he's got a rotation spot at the beginning of the year. This worked out the way I planned. And they gave him a pretty quick hook. I mean, I think those are the buy lows

that I'm most likely to target in pitching because until my team's ready to compete, I don't want to hold on to too much pitching because it can all just unravel so quickly. So with that disclaimer in mind, some names that I'm thinking about on the pitching front. We talked about the Cleveland guys. I think they're probably a little too expensive in trade right now. They'd have been great targets a month ago because they wouldn't have cost nearly as much as they would right now. I keep wondering if we're going to see Freddy Peralta kind of get the nudge back into the rotation. I love the way they're using this.

I had an internal bet for how long it would take you to mention his name. I had to. I had to do it. But look at both of them. They're pitching really well right now. And I think this is a great question in player development. I think this is a great question in player development. If we were playing this shortened season 10 years ago, would we see Corbin Burns and would we see Freddy Peralta going three and change,

four, even five innings in a long relief role like that? Or would we see them going two as a short reliever? I feel like it's the latter, right? And I think for development purposes, if your problem is that your secondary pitches aren't that good, or your command's not that consistent, more reps is a good thing. And you're seeing it in the form of the results from these guys. We're seeing tons of Ks. We're seeing good ratios. They both, I think, have the potential to be legitimately good starting pitchers. They're both young. I think the fact that they're having success in their relief role means you can actually throw them in your lineup, especially in a league that deep. But relative to what they would cost if they were starting every fifth day as opposed to working out of the pen, I think they're still actually viable trade targets right now. Yeah. The one thing that I might suggest also thinking about is not necessarily a strict buy low, but the kind of godfather offer that you can put together in a dynasty league when you're building towards the future,

where you give them three or four vets that fit right into their spots and you get the one young guy you want. I mean, I don't know if I'm reading between the lines, but that could be a solution to the same question that you're asking here. If there was one pitcher I could do that for right now, it would be Zach Gallin. I just see every piece of the puzzle there in terms of Velo, decent injury history, great command, many pitches, good situation in terms of what his competition will look like over the next few

years. I believe in the Diamondbacks pitching organization, their pitching coaches. I think Dan Heron's great and some of the other guys they've got there are great. So if there was a godfather offer situation, I think Zach Gallant is the kind of maybe for a few more weeks the most attainable kind of young pitcher that could be your ace and could be your ace as soon as this year. So I think that's – and I think Gallin versus May, May may cost you more right now. But Gallin checks more bosses for me yeah the deep arsenal secondaries with command is just huge right comes to long-term value but if you're if you're talking about you know just trading a veteran and trying to get one guy back um you know i think spencer turnbull is an interesting combination of league average stuff

and great command and multiple pitches. And why do we care about multiple pitches? We already see it in Spencer Turnbull this year, which is he kind of went from the sinker to the four-seam high in the zone more, and that's led to more strikeouts. It's something that I kind of saw coming. You have more ways to toggle the strategy switch if you've got more pitches. So I think that says something good for Austin Voth. I think Tyler Molle is an interesting guy to go get right now because I think the slider has developed into an out pitch. He always had great command and all these years in the wild where he's looking for that out pitch have given him secondaries that he can use. So now he's got a split finger that he can pair with that slider. And yes, right now he's been mostly fastball slider, but I think

that's because part of the issue is that he's going three, four innings. And so the fastball and slider are good enough. But I see enough in that split finger that I say, okay, he's got three or four pitches that he can use. If he gets longer stretches, he'll mix them up. He's got good command. The slider is an out pitch. So Molly, I think, is a good guy to go get. And then somebody like Alec Mills pairs good command and good velocity in youth. Adrian Hauser could be a guy that is attainable, that pairs these things well. You could bet on Jonathan Loizaga staying healthy. I don't know. I think those are some names that I would go for just because they have that good combination of stuff in command.

Freddy Peralta actually is showing 100 command right now, league average command, and he's got better stuff than that. I'd love to see it. You have no idea how happy I was watching Freddy on Monday night, even though it was part of a loss. He pitched really well. The other guy I would add to this conversation is Jose Urquidy. I think we've talked a lot about him on this podcast, but several pitches, command, getting close to returning,

get a little bit of an injury slash illness discount just in terms of him not being out there right now. Hasn't made a ton of appearances in the big leagues either. being out there right now. He hasn't made a ton of appearances in the big leagues either. Compared to someone like Gallin, who I think will take more of that godfather sort of after in Dynasty, I think Urquidy's a little bit easier to trade

for right now. I don't think the ceiling is that far off. I think he's capable of doing a lot of the same things. I think Jose Urquidy would be probably above even the Brewers guys, just because I think he's more firmly in the Astros rotation plans than Burns and Peralta are in the Brewers plans. Once he's healthy, he's in. Yeah, so definitely two thumbs up on Jose Urquidy at this point.

Thanks again for the question, Jared. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. If you're enjoying the show on a platform that allows you to leave us a rating and review, please take a moment to do that. It's a way to help support the show and it helps people find the show who have never heard it before, so we really appreciate those of you who've taken the time to do that. If you don't already have

a subscription to The Athletic, you can get one for 40% off at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. Get Eno's articles, his updated pitcher rankings all the baseball coverage we have league-wide team by team and on the fantasy side as well as always you can reach us via email rates and barrels at theathletic.com spell out the word and if you go that route on twitter he's at enos saris i'm at derrick van we are back with you on Thursday.

Thanks for listening.