Rates & Barrels - Playing Through the Mess

Episode Date: August 4, 2020

Eno and DVR discuss the chaos that has become weekly pickups every Sunday amidst the constantly dwindling pitching pool before getting excited about the arrival of Jo Adell and Luis Patiño to the big leagues, pitchers working with significantly reduced velocity this season, and more! Rundown1:47 It's All a Mess9:03 Listener Jim Expresses How We All Feel13:12 Concerns About Kirby Yates?18:20 Pitchers Dealing with Significantly Reduced Velocity26:40 Expectations for Pablo López30:49 Jo Adell Gets the Call39:47 More Closer Concerns45:28 How Will Atlanta Replace Mike Soroka?53:02 What Is Fastball Ride?57:26 Where Have the Wins Been for Multi-Inning Relievers? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail: [e-mail] Get 40% off a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Check out Dugout Mugs: dugoutmugs.com and use promo code 'MLB30'  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's episode of Rates and Barrels is brought to you by The Athletic. Yes, we are sponsoring our own podcast because we have an amazing deal right now. You can get 40% off a subscription at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. You get Eno's columns, you get all the fantasy baseball stuff we do, including the ads and drops column I write every weekend. It's a labor of love. Plus, you get all the coverage from the NBA bubble, the NHL's dual bubble system, the upcoming attempt to have an NFL season, and everything we're doing league-wide with MLB. It's really the best deal in sports writing. Get 40% off at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 120.

It's Tuesday, August 4th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris on this episode. Several things to talk about as teams are crumbling every single day, mostly because of physical injuries, though. I think the Cardinals outbreak that we talked about on Friday, the full extent of that, of course, is now known. That was not at the end of the week when we had our last episode with Brichiroli. But the Braves pitching staff is now reeling following the season-ending injury suffered by Mike Soroka on Monday night. The concern level about the health of Shohei Otani's arm has reached new heights.

And it's time to make some difficult drops. So to do that, we're going to take a look at some pitchers who've lost a lot of velocity. And we're talking three, four, five ticks in velocity, which you don't normally see in terms of big declines. So a lot to get to on this episode. Eno, how's it going for you on this Tuesday? It's a mess. It's all a mess. I have like one team that's not a mess.

My TGFBI team is in decent shape and has Joe Adele. Whoop, whoop. But just lost Mike Soroka, and I'm sure it's all going to go to crap. I mean, you should see even this team that I think is doing well, the bench is Tim Anderson, Jake Odorizzi, Jose Urquidy, Ken Giles, Luis Urias, Austin Voth, and Joe Adele. So four out of the six are just injured or COVID related. And this is the good team.

I'm telling you about the good team right now. So I don't want to throw in the towel. I'm sticking here with you guys. I'm here. I'm playing. I'm just trying to plug holes left and right and trying to, you know, my general tactics is to kind of think about the season as a long game. I mean, if there's any way to describe me as a player, it's like he's probably going to drop the guy a week too late. But that's not going to work this year.

So I'm trying to be more aggressive. Maybe it'll be good for me as a fancy player in the long run to kind of up my aggressive factor. But I'm looking at the same messes that you guys are looking at, and it is difficult to look at, I'll have to say. Sunday was a slog, getting everything prepared on the waiver wire for my leagues. It feels like no one really knows what to bid. It feels like because there's so much desperation when key players are lost to injury, when games are missed, entire series are missed, and you can't replace those players in some leagues.

You're just chasing. And when that desperation sets in, the bidding becomes erratic. When the bidding is erratic, you overspend. Sometimes you completely overthink or underthink a situation, and then you just miss out on a player by a lot. I've seen all the extremes. I've been a part of all the extremes. I'm looking at my NFBC page right now. I've got a few draft and hold leagues.

I'm in the Raz Slam and the TGFBI League. I signed up for an online championship before the season started. And my league rank from top to bottom in those leagues is 10, 8, 14, 8, 1. That's TGFBI. 9 and 11. So I'm bottom half in pretty much all of my leagues on that site right now. And I thought to myself, am I bad at fantasy baseball now and i started clicking through all my rosters and i said oh actually no my teams just aren't playing because i have i have a lot of phillies i have a lot of nationals i have a lot of brewers and i have a lot of cardinals and i realize those teams are all in the nl but what happens is i tend to go after

underpriced veteran players in good lineups and in good parks. And that describes every one of those teams except for St. Louis. And I still felt like there was value with a lot of Cardinals. So if I look up and down my rosters, I see Howie Kendrick as a common thread on a lot of rosters. I see Gene Segura and Andrew McCutcheon and Avicel Garcia. And then that doesn't even mention the possibility of early round stars from those teams. And I'd like a lot of those players. I like Trey Turner as an early round guy. I have Max Scherzer a few places. So it's just a bad break for the most part. I'm sure those teams would be more like 6-4-10-4-5-6 instead of all bottom half. I'm sure I wouldn't

be winning all my leagues if those guys were playing i'm sure i made mistakes on draft day but to have mistakes then compounded by absences makes everything very frustrating and i don't feel like i'm equipped to bounce back from it especially when you think about if you get these games made up you get double headers there's seven inning double headers so even if a guy plays both games, it's going to be fewer at-bats. It could be fewer innings. The pitching might not be as much of a problem. But it's going to still screw things up.

You're not getting full nine-inning games that you were expecting if you even get that at all. And by the time those double headers actually happen, if they happen, it might be later in the season when players do need a little bit more rest, too, even though it's a shortened season. So I just feel like I'm going to be chasing in leagues where I'm flush with players from the teams that have already missed a lot of games. Yeah, yeah. It's really difficult just to stay. And it's difficult to stay on top of the news. And, you know. At some point, this last weekend, we had eight teams that weren't playing.

At some point, you're kind of just like, well, it's over. I literally got a text from an assistant GM this weekend that said, it's over. You're like, okay like okay i'm gonna go outside and grill some meat or something you know what i mean i'm just gonna do something else but of course you get pulled back in you're checking your lineups and you're trying to do something and then you then you come up on like

okay it's a weekly league lineup what do i I do with Tigers? They don't necessarily have an outbreak, but they, they're not going to play. But what if we wake up on Monday and baseball is like, Oh, because for schedule flexibility later on, the Tigers are now going to play the Royals for this, for the next three days.

You know, that's how ridiculous the schedule is. That wouldn't actually, like, if you look at some schedule, people that like the public schedules, the Yankees and the Phillies are simultaneously playing three games this week and also are postponed from other games.

It's like you can't even read the schedule anymore. The schedule used to be something pretty easy to read, and now you don't even know what these things mean. Yeah, fantasy baseball was a little more fun when we knew who was playing who on what day. be something pretty easy to read and now you don't even know what these things mean yeah fantasy baseball was a little more fun when we knew who was playing who on what day like imagine that that seemed like a very basic thing i guess i never realized how much i took that for granted in the past but um wow i mean we knew like we knew there was going to be a lot to unpack as the season rolled along, but I think it's been even worse than anticipated in terms of the number of players and teams who've been affected by the virus this quickly. And then on top of all of that, the pitching injuries piece that you wrote, I think that was last week now, I think that might be underselling what's happening with pitcher injuries. That keeps getting worse.

Otani over the weekend had a meltdown in the second inning. Velocity dropped. They checked out his forearm. He's got a problem. It's a flexor pronator mass strain, I think, is what they described it as. So he's not going to throw for four to six weeks. He's day-to-day as a hitter. James Paxton's out there still missing velocity.

It's bad. And then Mike Soroka, of course, as I mentioned at the top, I mean, Achilles injury in Monday's game, that could cost him time going the next season as well. So it does feel like each day just brings this new level of disappointment and injuries league-wide. And one of our listeners, Jim, summed up how everybody's feeling perfectly. Here's the email. Hi, DVR. You know, I dropped Luke Weaver yesterday.

Last year, I held him most of the season after he went on the aisle and definitely even kept him in the keeper league that has salary cap and players' salary increases year over year. Rich Hill pitches well, goes on the aisle. Paxton loses velocity. Morton is a sell candidate. as well goes on the IL. Paxton loses velocity. Morton is a sell candidate. Nola may pitch today, but I don't have the fortitude, we'll say, to start him. Other than Cole and Turnbull, my pitching is a dumpster fire. Three weeks ago, I had four starting pitchers in Eno's top 40 and Luke Weaver was in the top 60. But this is not a rant, rather a question. Where is the replacement level where we stop grabbing anything on the wire despite my dumpster fire anytime cole or turnbull pitched i still won

my head to head due to everyone having their own dumpster fire yes this is really a nesting doll of dumpster fires in a points league that has losses and earn runs providing negative points i had to be judicious about who to start at the same time. I'm fully aware the next strong pitching could emerge just due to attrition. How do we balance that with the tiny sample size and no minor leagues to work with? Thanks so much for what you bring to us. I think one of the hardest things for me about this season, you know, is even knowing when someone comes up from alternate camp, we don't know how much they've been throwing exactly. We don't know if they last pitched four days ago and threw 80 pitches in a simulated game, or we don't know if

they pitched yesterday and only threw 30 pitches because they're going to come back as a 40-inning bulk reliever. So I feel like part of the challenge here is the reinforcements are complete unknowns at any given time. And maybe that gets a little better as we get further into the season. But at least right now, it's really hard to even set the bar, expectations and workload-wise, when someone comes up from the alternate camp. Yeah, we have no knowledge of the minor leagues. It's so bizarre. There's news that Luis Patino is coming up, and we to rely on some and that's really exciting and so

you might run to get him and think well he's a starter and they're grooming to be a starter and they're you know there there is room in that rotation Joey Lucchese is is is I think losing the job like I predicted for a couple years so I'm finally right um but uh uh maybe he could be there so we have to rely on the uh sort of leaked quotes that we get in terms of being like oh i think it's for the it's for the he's coming up as a reliever but in the past like that hasn't always lined up like what managers say and what the team leaks or devon hasn't always lined up with what the eventual role of the player is, right? But we're in this position now where we just have to take that piece of knowledge and treat it as gospel. So Luis Patino is up.

Yay. It's for the bullpen. It's for the bullpen for now. I mean, I think long term, we still look at him as a guy who's definitely going to get an opportunity to start. I don't think this is a young phenom who's just going to shift into relief, be so good in relief that he's going to stay there. We do occasionally get that with prospects, but Patino's only 20 years old. He has three pitches. The command is good.

He really kind of ticks all the boxes already for being a good starting pitcher starter kit. That's the last bit. Not to heap on the sort of Otani thing, it is bad news. I've always wanted to see more of him. I find him exciting to watch, both as a hitter and as a pitcher. But he always had near bottom shelf command,

at least by command plus. And so I think that eventually his role will be to be a reliever um and more of a more of a hitter that relieves um rather than try to do both things going forward and that's not that that that caveat is not there for for patino um so i do i do have high hopes for him in the future but for this season uh maybe it's just in get there, get competitive at bats. And the back end of the Padres bullpen is probably their biggest source of

issues right now. Kirby Yates looked okay last night, but still kind of gave up some contact behind him. Javi Guerra, the guy who used to be a shortstop, has gas but no secondaries, and he's kind of been exposed. Pomerantz is solid, but Craig Stammen is down two or three in velocity. So they're looking for an extra arm in the back of that bullpen.

And if they get it, it might just be what they need to make it through the season. Otherwise, they'd look pretty exciting trent grisham is amazing he's one of the answers to to my quiz question today where i i gave different fantasy uh different stats and it tried to ask people to guess it was based off of the who could it be now uh segment on on uh mlb central and uh trent grisham currently has the lowest reach rate in baseball and the second lowest swing rate in baseball which i'm not sure is something that we anticipated we knew that he had some patience but um that's like vatoian it really is do they play the men at work track for that segment too i have to assume they do and it is stuck in my head i've seen it before they do like pixelated swings and i actually

really enjoy it because i'm terrible at it like i watched these players growing up and when it's very obvious like a tony batista type situation i might get it but like i say i get i get like five percent of those right and and mark derosa's on there just like oh that's you know you're like what like he did brandon phillips the other day i was like what i feel like i could get phillips though like i but derosa played for a lot of years and against a lot of those guys and with a lot of those guys too. So he's kind of in his sweet spot for getting that right at this point. Drew Pomeranz might be one of the league's best relievers too. I know you mentioned Grisham with some of the lowest reach rates in the league.

That's absolutely a good sign if you are doing really well in your leagues and he's a big part of the reason why. I think he's going to continue to hit at a pretty high level. But Drew Pomeranz, and we've talked about him ever since the giants made him a reliever he looks like one of the league's best relievers like that's that's a really good profile if he ends up getting saves on top of that and i think he fits into that group of pitchers who doesn't always get saves but is still valuable enough in rotisserie leagues to be rostered and in lineups frequently, even when he's not, if he falls into a closer spot because Kirby Yates keeps struggling, Drew Pomerantz can be a top five closer.

He absolutely has the ceiling to do it. He's got the K rate up over 40% ever since he became a reliever with the Giants last season. 40% ever since he became a reliever with the Giants last season. Yeah. And I'm doing that thing that Chris Pratt does in Guardians of the Galaxy. He's rotating the machine and the middle finger comes up to that guy that engaged me repeatedly about how bad Drew Pomerantz was. He's an announcer in the minor leagues. I couldn't believe that someone would be this rude to someone in the industry

and be an announcer in the minor leagues and be in the business. But he was super rude about it and super wrong. And anybody who listens to this, we know that teams make bets on movement and velocity before, when they make small sample bets they make it bet they make it based on on movement and velocity right we know this we've seen it so many times rich hill got like six million dollars in a one-year deal from

the a's and their manager the billy bean actually, we have to make small sample bets like this when we see somebody that reaches a new velocity level or does something different. Then we have to make moves like that because we have to outsmart the big guys. And that's what we're all trying to do is outsmart everybody in our league. So it's just another,

Pomerantz is just another level of like, oh crap, he's one of those relievers that goes to the pen and adds three ticks that's really interesting i mean going from 91 to 95 you know with this with this with this hammer curve and now it doesn't matter that he has no third pitch like that was like one of the easiest calls i could have seen i would have signed him to that deal in a second. And I'm glad to see him succeed. Decently nice guy. But, you know, that's, I think, a lesson for us all. And maybe this is a good time to get into the velocity list.

I think it is because part of the problem this season has been rapid velocity loss. We're talking three to five miles per hour. You pulled up a leaderboard or ran a search and put some names together. I know we've talked about Paxton. He was also mentioned in Jim's email. Thank you for the email, by the way, Jim. Hansel Robles has been down a lot. And I think if I'm looking for a reason to make that quicker decision to let a player go who I might have paid a lot for in an auction or drafted fairly early in a snake draft, a big velocity drop is on the short list of things other than a major injury that would give me that nudge to go ahead and take that risk.

And sure, maybe a couple ticks come back. Maybe in the case of Paxton, especially as a starter, the other stuff he has, he can find a way to make it work. But that's a tough game to play in a shortened season. It sometimes takes a half season to make adjustments if you don't have the same velocity you're used to. We're not talking about one to two ticks. We're talking about three to five.

So in addition to Paxton and Hansel Robles, who I am very worried about right now, who else has lost a lot of velocity here early in 2020? It's literally a graveyard. I mean, it is literally a graveyard. So let me just take this year's velocity, fastball, forcing fastball velocity minus last year's. fastball lossy minus last year's. And I put zero there's zero innings required. No, it's not qualified. So this is stars

and relievers, but it is just terrible. So Tony Watson down five ticks from 93.5 to 88.5. Lost his job as a closer if he ever had it. James Paxton minus four ticks down from 95.7 to 91.7. Not the same person. I don't know

if I'm putting a drop on him, but I'm definitely putting like a spot starter bench type player on him. Like I'm thinking about what his starts look like and not playing him all the time. Kyle Crick, down 3.8 to 91.6 on the DL. Martin Perez down 3.7 to 97, but last year it was a bit of a velocity bump. Zach Greinke down 3.6 to 86.4. The one thing about Zach Greinke is that he has excellent command in a lot of pitches, and he's kind of made it work at 88 before, so I'm hoping that he gets to 88 and it's okay. Madison Bumgarner down 3.5 to 88.2. okay Madison Bumgarner down nine down 3.5 to 88.2 um this to me puts Bumgarner in that sort of 60 to 70s place which is droppable in 12 teamers and becomes more of like a bench uh you know

matchups play kind of like John Lester at this point yeah yeah Mike Voltinevich, down 3.4. Released. Ronaldo Lopez, down 3.4. DL. Sean Doolittle, down 3.3. I don't think he's the closer there. I saw some people picking him up recently. I'm not doing that. Matt Magel, down 3.2. I don't think he's in the closer mix for the Mariners. Carlos Martinez, down 3.1. Possibly droppable. You have no games from him in the foreseeable future. He's down 3.1. Possibly droppable. You have no games from him in the foreseeable future. He's down 3.1. He's not.

He's definitively not a command pitcher. He is a power pitcher. I don't think it'll work at 93.5. Brian Moran. Down 3.1. Sitting 81.5. Jeez. Let me put the worst possible set of words on his gravestone.

Nulia Marlin. Yeah, you don't want to be there. Tanner Rainey down 3 to 94.9. That is significant. It's still 94.9, but I had kind of had some hopes for him taking the role from Hudson, but Hudson's sitting 98, so I think Hudson's actually pretty safe. Hansel Robles down three. Brad Week down three.

I don't think he's really in that mix anymore. I think it's either Rowan Wick or Jeremy Jeffress, and I kind of have a little love for Rowan Wick here. Mike Montgomery down three. 88-7. I'm not touching him even as a spot start. John Gant down 2.9. Not in the mix for the end. John Gant, down 2.9. Not in the mix for the end there.

Roberto Asuna, down 2.8. DL. Tommy Hunter, down 2.7. Not a late inning option for them if Neris struggles, I don't think. Mike Fiers, down 2.7 to 88-1. I always thought he was pretty borderline, but now it's really borderline. Ryan Stanek down 2.5. I had hopes that he would steal that closer roll.

He's still at 95.3. Maybe he's still in the mix. But really, there's no good news here, really. The only good news is Kyle Zimmer's down 2.5, but that's sort of good news because they're stretching him out. Yeah. If the role changes, how much buffer do you leave? Is it two, two and a half, even three in some cases

to go from being a bullpen guy to actually being a starter? The old piece that came out from Jeremy Greenhouse, who now works for the Cubs, it was on baseballanalyst.com suggested, I think the average change in velocity going to the pen was .7 miles an hour. Wow, that's way less than I would have thought. And I almost feel like that needs to be redone as a piece of because i think the pitchers pitch closer to their max now um and i think there's something that has to do

with a pitcher's maximum velocity and being able to predict that they could uh they could get more of a bump when they go to um when they they can go to the thepen. So it's obvious that some people get more. I mean, remember Jabba Chamberlain was kind of, he was in the news when this research was being done. And Jabba Chamberlain was like 91, 92 as a starter and like 96, 97 as a reliever. And I just think there's more guys out there like that. And so I think that, yeah, moving from the pen to, I think nowadays,

I would say two miles an hour would not bother me. Either direction, you know what I mean? That would seem like a normal range. But, yeah, Patrick Corbin is down 2.3 to 89.9, and nobody's talked about it yet. And maybe he can make it work because that slider is down 2.3 to 88, 89, nine, and nobody's talked about it yet. Um, and maybe he can make it work cause that slider is so good, but, uh, I think he's going to have to go down in my ranks a little bit. Mike minor down 2.2 to 90.5.

Um, like we've seen his results when he throws 90, right? Like that was why he wasn't, you know, people weren't in love with him. And then he, he started throwing 93,, people weren't in love with him. And then he started throwing 93, 94, and people fell in love with him. So Mike Miner is going to drop my rankings. I'm going to have to update my rankings today and get that out to people so that they can see the effect of some of this velocity. But to answer the real question, it's still difficult to know when to drop somebody. But Carlos Martinez, before the velocity drop drop was, I think, around 50.

So I think around 50. If you were like 50 or below before velocity drop and then you had a velocity drop, I think you become droppable. hardest ones on our list so far that we've talked about to decide what to do with are mike minor and uh carlos martinez yeah i'd throw paxton in there too like i want to be aggressive and drop him but i think he's the kind of guy that i'm reserving and then taking one more look and then maybe making that decision after the third start i mean he, he may also just end up on the IL. That's always the concern, too, with a drop like this, is that the guy won't stay out there and just keep getting hit. That could be good news for you, though.

You might want to hold him to get the IL, especially in a keeper league. You could put him on the IL and then go get someone new. Yeah, let him get right, potentially, next season in keeper leagues. In leagues that have fab redemption i feel i feel terrible but it's like sometimes when guys are just not right i want them to go on the il because i can at least get fab back and then maybe they come back and they're fine later but at least i didn't completely waste 15 bucks in the auction or an eighth round draft pick i mean i felt really good about paxton he was a roller coaster player much like his teammate Aaron Judge.

Al Melchior was joking about this the other day on Fantasy Baseball in 15 with me. He said, remember when we were worried about Aaron Judge? Yeah, that was a fun time. That was a lifetime ago, it feels. Now he seems ready to rock. Deet, deet, deet, deet, deet, deet, deet. We have breaking news, breaking news. Deet, deet, deet, deet, deet, deet. Breaking news from the wire.

The Marlins have emerged from their COVID saga with Pablo Lopez, Elisir Hernandez, and Jordan Yamamoto as their top three available starting pitchers on the Octave roster, reports Mr. Barry Jackson. Oh, so that's actually good news. I was very afraid that you were going to drop bad news. Well, I mean, I guess, yeah, Pablo Lopez survived. What I'm saying is that means that the Marlins have lost everybody but Pablo Lopez

out of their starting rotation to the coronavirus for the time being. It's unbelievable, and I think it's going to create a lot of opportunities and lead to even more chaos with that roster, a lot of players being claimed. I can't tell you that I like. I mean, Pablo Lopez is interesting, but he just doesn't show up as a positive in the numbers that I look at. He's below average in stuff in command.

Sometimes I look at him and watch him and I'm like, is that really true? But I think basically the four I'm like is that really true but I think this I think the basically the four seam is straight uh the sinker is not even like a plus sinker so he's a bad fastball guy with some with like like a decent change up and like an iffy breaking ball right so I could see how that would add up to below average stuff and yet still be kind of interesting. Pablo Lopez is kind of interesting. Jordan Yamamoto is actually kind of interesting as a Tanner Roark guy with lots of different pitches. The problem is he just doesn't command any of them.

It's hard to recommend any of those three, but they're on the wire and they're pitching. You may just need a body, I guess. I think with Pablo Lopez, it is that it's four pitches. He's only 24 years old. He had some pretty good numbers in the minors. Just a little bit of everything that gives you optimism because the draft day cost is always very low.

We're talking about a $5 to $7 guy in an NL-only auction, a dollar days guy if he even gets drafted in a mixed league, often available on the waiver wire. And he has a pitcher friendly home park. So then when you get to the in-season portion of even like a mid-sized mixed league where he's not drafted, he always looks like a good option because he'll draw the home start against kind of an average offense. And you just tend to feel good about pitchers in that spot even if the skills are shaky. Yeah, yeah. I keep being drawn back to him.

Like I tried to shop him a little bit in my dynasty league and then just actually ended up just keeping him, just being like, you know what? He doesn't fit my analysis completely, but he's somewhat interesting as a live arm. I should keep him around. Yeah, I'm still in. Still still gonna take my occasional chances with him but yeah the yamamoto thing i'm glad he's getting other opportunity it's unfortunate of course that it comes this way i'm

just not expecting a whole lot from him either it's really frustrating because they have a really interesting young pitching prospect edward cabrera, and he's hurt right now. So I think if he were healthy, he'd be getting the call. And I think he has a chance to be their ace. Maybe he's not an ace league-wide by some of the criteria that has been discussed on this show and written about on the site in the last couple of months. But I do think Edward Cabrera is one of those guys that could have success right away in the big leagues, even though some of the ratios early in his minor league career kind of scare you. Like the walk rate, especially. You see some pretty high whips in there.

But look what he did at high A and double A last year. Really had a breakout at those two levels. And hopefully he gets a chance later this season. But if not, Edward Cabrera is a guy that i'm kind of filing away for 2021 yeah yeah but uh you know there is you know through all the mess and the muck um today is is uh there is something fun going on today uh jesus lizardo is starting a game luis patino is in the big leagues and Joe Adele is starting in right field for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim of Orange County yeah of the Republic of California so I'm excited for that and it makes my overly aggressive Joe Adele bids before he came up feel better. My stash in TGFBI. And of course, it could still not go well. I mean, just look at the projections. Projections, obviously, there's someone saying,

now we're looking at the projections for Prospect. I get it. I get it. But they still kind of give us a middle of the road of what the numbers say. It's something to look at. A 242 average with power and speed, with basically average-ish power and above average speed. The hope, I think, is that some of the better contact numbers he's shown in the minor leagues comes together with some of the better patience numbers and some of the better power numbers. He definitely, in terms of skills, has everything. And I talked to him at the Fall League.

I was listening back to our interview today in honor of his debut. And he was an interesting cat because he was talking about wearing the K-Vest and doing all the wear you know, doing all the wearable tech and doing everything he needed to do on that level. But when he, when I asked him about his cues and what he thought about at the plate, um, he was much more intuitive and he said that the pitcher has a rhythm and I have a rhythm and the pitcher has a windup, then I'm going to have a windup. And I just want to match my, uh, my tempo basically to that of the pitcher. Um, and, and that's something that I've, I've seen, uh, a fair amount. And

one person that actually kind of crystallizes that, that, that, that thought to me is, have you ever watched as Drupal Cabrera set up at the plate? More times than I would probably even want to admit uh and yet somehow i don't recall it off the top of my head well so what what's unique about it he does this thing where he points his bat at the pitcher and he's a he's a lefty so he points his bat at the pitcher, and with his right hand, yeah, with his right hand, and his left hand is adjusting, his left hand is like by his left nipple,

and it looks like, you know, people do something like this, but he freezes, right? And he freezes like this until the pitcher starts their windup. So there'll be some uncomfortable moments where someone's trying to play with them or whatever. You know what I mean? Like where someone's being slow or whatever. And just as Rubo Cabrera is just like sitting there pointing his bat at the pitcher.

It's like, he's like, come on, come on. And it's like, it's like a really slow version of people that do something where they kind of point or they kind of have some hitch in their kind of setup where they're trying to match that to the moment the pitcher starts but he will actually get stuck there with the bat pointing at the pitcher until the pitcher

starts his motion and then he brings the bat back and gets into his thing so anyway think about that. He's still in the league. Check out Azdrubal Cabrera next time you see him and watch how he kind of starts his thing. And I think that there are plenty of hitters that kind of,

you know, like Mitch Handiger told me once that he waits for the pitcher to break his hands. And he says once a pitcher breaks his hands, they have nowhere to go. You know, they, they have to bring their, their, their starting their, their motion towards home. Like that's, that's a, that's like, there's no doubt they have to go home. And so he has a whole timing structure that's based off of the pitcher breaking their hands. Yeah. I think there's a lot of little things within those setups that you don't realize are being timed off of something very specific

that hitters are seeing. I've always wondered, Ryan Braun's got a very long pre-pitch routine, kind of like, looks like he's calling time with his backhand, slowly steps into the box one foot at a time, checks the gloves, takes a couple of half swings. It's a ridiculous setup.

I don't think I would enjoy going golfing with Ryan Braun. It would take seven hours to play 18 holes if he hits a golf ball with that kind of setup. I think it is interesting to see with a guy like Joe Adele, we have this pretty sharp difference in what he was doing at AA and what he was doing at AAA. And usually the bigger promotion is from high to AA. The bump from AA to AAA doesn't seem to cause hitters that much difficulty. And we're always talking about 27 games at AAA. But Joe Adele was 73% better than a league average hitter at double a last season as a 20 year old got the triple a strikeout rate went up he was only a 67 wrc plus guy at the triple a level so 33 worse than league average obviously the angels

are playing service time games so they had to say he had to work on his defense and right field, the bogus. He learned it in like 10 days. That's amazing. No, and I actually was listening to my interview of him at the Fall League, and one of the people asked him what he was working on in the Fall League,

and he said corner outfield defense because he'd been playing center in the other minor leagues. So he just spent the whole fall league working on it too. But he needed the fall league plus about 10 days. But, you know, this is dime store psychology stuff, and I don't have the scouting to back this up or necessarily a knowledge of why Adele was actually below league average in AAA after that ascension.

And I will say that just based on the type of pitchers that are in AAA, most of them are not young prospect-type pitchers that are on their way to the big leagues for the first time. Pitchers in AAA are former big league pitchers that are waiting to get back in. And so the difference for me would be, in AAA are former big league pitchers that are waiting to get back in. And so the difference for me would be I would expect that AAA pitchers generally have slightly lower velocity, but wider arsenals when it comes to starting pitching. And so

there is some part of me that wants to say maybe Joe Adele would do really well against someone like Denilson Lumet. But maybe Joe Adele would have a hard time with Zach Greinke. That makes sense. That type of pitcher is very different. So maybe that's the key. Maybe off-speed and breaking pitches initially are going to give Joe Adele some fits. And even with that concern, I think the power-speed combo he brings to the table,

the ceiling for a player like that, he should be rostered in all formats. I think he's that good. If he's still on your wire, he's not in TGFBI. I got him. But, no, if he's still on your wire, like, you know, I put $400 out of $1,000 on him last week. Yeah, I think that's what it's going to take. It usually costs even more once the player is actually up. Did you see the runner-up bid last week when you bid $400?

I didn't want to look. Probably for the better. But if you have anybody in your league who hasn't spent a lot of fab, this is the type of player they're waiting for. They're waiting for the top prospect who hasn't come up yet. Or if Dylan Carlson wasn't drafted, unlikely, or was dropped in the first week of the season,

more likely. Maybe he's the guy that people are waiting for. You might be right to do something cute and um you know throw 300 on adele and 100 on 111 or something like that on patino um and just come away with patino and and let someone spend 500 bucks on adele because yes it's a short season but season, but there are going to be other guys that come up. There is going to be Dylan Carlson at some point, and you do need money. In fact, I'm going to admit something here, and it's a little crazy.

I put two bids in for Adele and Carlson in this league, and I put, actually, I put two bids in for Adele and Carlson in this league. And I put, actually I put like 360 bucks on Adele and 230 on Carlson, thinking I would only get one of them. I got both. That's pretty fun. It's fun, but now I have $111 for the rest of the year. Yeah, you're going to live in that bargain bin. A lot of $2 and $3 bids for you the rest of the way. How am I going to get any closers? I need closers. I might

have to trade an outfielder for a closer. Oh, if you can trade, then yeah, you're going to have to trade. In a non-trade situation, I think you just have to constantly speculate for a dollar or two one week early and just hope that you guess right early enough for it to make a big impact.

And that the last guy I guessed on that I'm dropping for the next guy I'm guessing on didn't get the closer roll after I dropped it. You know what's even worse than the starting pitcher thing? It's the closer carousel. It's the closer carousel. Dude, I put a leaderboard up here of saves, and it's, you know, whoever had, you know, Zach Gritton as the early leader in saves, congratulations, man,

because behind him is Cole Sulcer. Drew Pomerantz has two saves. I'm telling you, man, Drew Pomerantz is really good. I mean, not that you don't know that, but he might just take that job away and we're all going to look back and go, huh, we should have saw the guy with the 40% strikeout rate becoming the closer.

It gave him a whole bunch of money, and here he was available in reasonably small mixed leagues for the first couple weeks of the season all right so here are some names i believe in i believe in hiro diaz i believe in tyler williams i believe in rowan wick and i believe in james korinchak those are new guys williams i i believe i understand like why i i think i'm not as certain that Scott Service and the Mariners are going to commit to one guy. They seem a little bit more like what Mike Matheny and the Royals are doing,

where the roles are a little more flexible and it really is a committee, which for all the times I've ripped on Mike Matheny, that's actually the right way to manage a major league bullpen. So I guess I can't be bitter about that if he's going to play the matchups correctly uh but jairo diaz i mean oberg and wade davis are on the il i don't think oberg's out for the season if i'm not mistaken yeah i think so and senzatella like you know it sends it no it sends it tells in the rotation who's the other one carlos estevez yeah he just doesn't have the strikeout right i don't think i don't think so either i mean i think he'd be next up if if diaz falters but i'm with you on this group

cole sulzer i don't know what to make of that guy i saw some pretty big bids on him i think chandler was on him i think our friend nando dafino was on him i mean you look at where he was last year cole sulzer was at triple a with the Rays, 89 Ks and 66 innings, so 12 Ks per nine. Numbers were pretty good, right? K rate over 30%, walk rate under 10%, head swinging strikes. But you look at this stuff, and it's not bad. I mean, it's 94 on the fastball. It's got a slider and a change.

So he's a three-pitch guy with average velocity for a closer. That can work. It's a team that is really bad, but winning a few games more than expected early in the year. Michael Gibbons is still there, so should we even really believe in Sulser?

He's just a traditional journeyman reliever who's just finally getting a prolonged opportunity. Yeah. It's kind of amazing also to see the whiffs and the swing strike rate and the strikeout rate next to each other. Right now, he has a 16% whiff rate and an 18% strikeout rate.

Yeah, it's weird. It's really weird. And if you look at his per-pitch numbers, the slider doesn't get average whiffs. So he's actually a four-seam change guy that has added a passable slider, and he's 30 years old. But I think this is the kind of thing

that he could just get the saves because he's found money, right? 30 years old. But I think this is the kind of thing that he could just get the saves because he's found money. Right. And they're not too worried about making it expensive because I think they'll probably assume that he'll lose the role due to his abilities in the future. It's like, let's let him close for a while.

I, I, I, I, if you send some ambivalence, there is ambivalence. I bought Cole Solcer in a couple places just because he was cheaper than Jairo Diaz and the other guys, and he fell to me.

But other than that, I can't say that I'm in love with him. Sometimes you back into extra saves going that route, though. The contingency bid ends up being the best thing that could have happened to you on a list of players that had two or three guys ahead of that guy like that's that's just the way saves can work sometimes well baseball is in full swing and you need a better mug you know you don't have a good mug you got lots of good beers you don't have a lot of good mugs and there's a company out there called dugout mugs who takes the barrel of a baseball bat and turns it into a 12 ounce mug the mugs are licensed by mlb so you can get your

favorite team laser engraved onto a birchwood baseball bat you can get them custom made as well if you want to have them for you know like a wedding or if you got your own logo for your fantasy baseball team they can make those too dugout Mugs are perfect for the big game to put on display or to be the life of the party. They're good on Zoom calls too. And they make great gifts for any baseball fan. Go to dugoutmugs.com slash The Athletic and use the promo code MLB30 for 30% off your first purchase. That's dugoutmugs.com slash The Athletic and use the code MLB30. We should talk about the Braves for a minute because I mentioned Soroka's injury and they're in a bad spot. They have pitching depth, but they already were using a lot of it

because Cole Hamels was on the IL. They've got prospects to trade, plenty of depth in the outfield. Are there going to be trades this summer? I mean, are they kind of in a position where they have to go out and make a deal for someone like a Matthew Boyd, even though the Tigers maybe are going to say, you know, let's push our pitching prospects up. Let's actually see if we can make the playoffs. Can you trade for pitching right now?

Are their teams actually willing to deal away quality starting pitchers if the Braves are willing to move a prospect or two or possibly three to get a deal done I do think I do think so I mean that I am going on a sample of one but I did talk to a player that I mean an assistant GM that would have described his situation as being on kind of a yellow seat as opposed to a red seat. Red seat being like, we got to win right now or we're out. And being on the yellow seat, he said, we don't get any excuses. If we lose this year, next year is red seat. If we lose this year, next year is red seat.

So I think that people will still try to win. I think the prospect hugging and the idea that the prospects won't be as good as you expect and that sort of deal, that will be fairly aggressive. So I doubt that any sort of top 15-ish type prospect gets moved this year. I think that makes sense. The elite of the elite probably stay put. But I do think the Braves have guys outside that group that would interest other teams. I mean, Christian Pache, Drew Waters. I don't see it.

Pache is close enough that I'd say he's not going anywhere. But Waters maybe because people don't agree on Waters. Some people say he strikes out too much and it's just not going to play at the big league level. I think Keith Law is famous for kind of taking that stance. I think he left him off his top 100. But other people say there's more swing and miss in today's game and he does everything else right,

and if people believe that the power is there, then they'll take a chance on him. So I think Waters is kind of one of the, maybe the best type prospects that would be moved. Yeah, I could definitely see that being the course that they choose i think the tricky thing with the braves if they try to go the internal route you know it's going to be pushing up ian anderson or uh maybe putting bryce wilson into a more prominent role and those guys are interesting we've talked about bryce wilson and kyle wright and ian

anderson on this show before josh tomlin's in their bullpen right now, but he's not looking at this as a playoff caliber team, one that has World Series aspirations. Freed, Newcomb, who wasn't even in the rotation at the end of last season, Wright, Tukey Toussaint, and then any one of Bryce Wilson, Kyle Wright, or Ian Anderson, that's not a starting five you'd expect to see doing really well in October. Yeah, and they haven't, and there's something about the way they've acted in the past that makes me suggest that, that suggests to me that they don't necessarily trust these guys or like think that they're going to be amazing. Like Soroka, they kind of, they're like, hey, go, you know, but Bryce Wilson hasn't thrown

a pitch this year. Kyle Wright keeps getting these three-inning things, and we can see why they maybe didn't trust it, because he doesn't command the fastball or the slider well enough. He just doesn't have enough command, and he gets in these 3-2 counts all the time, and it's kind of painful to watch, honestly. As much as Kyle Wright has stuff, the 3 three two counts just kind of got to me um and then

ian anderson obviously is known as like having a low spin curveball uh and there's all these this data on like how low spin curveballs don't do that well and there was rumors that ian anderson's been being shopped so maybe it's ian anderson and uh drew waters for matt Boyd and... Do they have like Gio Gonzalez or do they have like a veteran starter they can just... Like Daniel Norris, they could send him back. Maybe Daniel Norris, like swing between the bullpen and the... Yeah, something like that.

I mean, I think that would qualify as a blockbuster this year. That's what I'm trying to describe. And neither Ian Anderson or Drew Waters is a top 50 consensus prospect. Yeah. I'm right there with you, though. I think that's about as much as you can expect on the trade front this year because everybody's mostly trying to go for it. And actually, I have a corollary for this. Everybody's mostly trying to go for it. And actually, I have a corollary for this.

So I'm in it. And I'm not trying to say that we're all GM quality and my league is amazing and blah, blah, blah. I'm just saying that sometimes better dynasty leagues can track how major league teams work, right? Because in this 20-team league, we have people who are rebuilding. We have people who are trying to go push for the future. We have prospects that people can own 15-year-olds and prospects before they're signed and stuff. So there's a fairly large pool of prospects to be traded around.

And in a normal year, you would see people outside of the top 100 being traded for pop-up closers or I just need a catcher this week. Some of the stuff that you might see in the major level. What has the most gold right now are young major leaguers. So I have on my team Rowdy Tellez and let me see what people keep asking for. I know Rowdy Tellez is in every offer now because the stack cast is great. He's in the major leagues. We can see some of what he's doing. But I also have Sam Hilliard, Derek Fisher, Michael Chavis, Mike Tauchman.

And Tauchman's not so young. But that first group, Chavis, Fisher, Tellez, those are the types of people that are being traded because we have data on them like major league teams cannot see into your your alternate site they cannot scout them they're not getting any data from them not getting any video from them so it's really risky right now to trade for a prospect. So even in the case of our trade, this fictional trade that we're making, maybe it's more likely that they have to trade Camargo

or maybe trade Riley, just Riley straight up for those guys because at least the other team can see Riley. I kind of like that for the Tigers. I think Austin Riley. They need bats, right? Maybe that's the deal. Yeah, that'd be a fun trade.

And I think getting someone just after they graduate from the prospect list in real life and in fantasy is actually a little bit easier than getting them when they're sitting at the top of that list or near the top of that list. Or in a normal year, right? Like Rowdy Tellez should not have that much trade value in a league like this. But he has more because things are on their head a little bit. Yeah, it is strange. I mean, I think everybody is leaning on less information and the same information to try and make good decisions.

Yeah, and you're in the case of prospects leaning all on 2018, 2019 stuff that we've seen. We had a question that came in and it was about fastball ride. The question comes from Matt. He writes, you know, in DVR here, you mentioned fastball ride fairly often. Do you mind explaining what it is? Is that late life on a fastball, like finishing velocity versus the

velocity out of the hand? Yeah, this is one of those things where it's completely unintuitive and it's kind of hard to explain uh but i think you got pretty close with late life it's late life it's just not measured in velocity it's measured in movement in inches so um a fastball with great ride shows up higher at the plate than the batter expects so when you're a batter you kind of step in, you see the average fastball, you see balls that drop with gravity, and sort of, you know, there is such thing as like a 0-0 slider. That slider basically just like is a ball that is thrown and only moves with the effect of gravity, right? So off of that zero, zero, you have, uh, guys like Mike fires, Frankie Montas, Zach Gallen, Dylan Bundy, they get 10, 11, 12 inches of ride over

that zero, zero slider. And that basically means that they're 10 inches higher that the, the spin on the fastball counteracts gravity to such an extent that the fastball arrives 10 inches higher than your brain expects. Now, you can, like, Bregman has talked about this and other people have talked about this. You can kind of try to counteract that by, okay, Mike Fiers is in the lineup today. I have to aim for the top half of the ball. And that's like an adjustment you can make because the ball appears higher than you think

and you just sort of trick your brain into saying, okay, I'm going to aim at the top half of the ball and you're going to hit it flush. So that is an adjustment that the players are making. But generally, ride leads to pop-ups and to whiffs on the fastball. And that's part of the genius behind Mike Fiers, why he's still around at 88 miles an hour.

But it's part of why Trevor Bauer's increased sprint this year has put him as number six in the big leagues on qualified starters with his ride. Griffin Canning's on this list. Urias, you know, ride is good. And it's, you know, Tyler Clippard in the, in the past has been a guy who's, who's, um, made his bones off a ride. Um, but, um, I hope that helps. It's like, it's a, it's a late movement and, um, uh, like a finishing

movement thing as opposed to finishing velocity thing. And how directly is that related to spin rate? Is it higher spin, generally more ride, lower spin, less ride, or extremes you get more or less ride? Like how does that actually all tie together? In general, high spin leads to ride on fastballs and drop on curveballs. And low spin leads to sink on the sinker and sink on the changeup. However, the only thing that kind of the caveat that I should say is spin efficiency is part of this. So there are some people that, like Sonny Gray, has a lot of spin on his fastball,

but not a lot of ride. And that's because his arm angle is kind of two-thirds or something. and that's because his arm angle is kind of two-thirds or something. He's not turning that spin into ride because the spin axis is not vertical. But if you have a perfectly vertical spin axis and you have a lot of spin, then what you're going to do is all that spin is going to contribute to ride on the fastball and drop on the curveball because they're in opposite directions. But that's sort of the idea of how spin relates to ride and relates to movement in general. All right.

Hopefully my follow-up question to Eno didn't make the answer to Matt's question more confusing. I think it all hopefully makes sense. Generally, ride is, it appears to play it higher than you expect, and it's generally related to high spin rates walker bueller is another name that's on this list now that i changed the uh numbers who are clayton kershaw has great ride um you know nate pearson as a young guy great ride um zach gallon's part of why i like him. Ride is good. Ride is good. Let's talk about multi-inning relievers for a moment.

Jonathan sent us a question. He's curious what we think of Trevor Richards, Jonathan Loaiziga, other bulk relievers in the majors this year. He writes, it seems like the team's focus when they use these players isn't exactly to optimize ratios. It seems like they're being left in a bit too long, and their ratios fall apart. Do you think the managers have a different objective when deploying these pitchers as

opposed to other pitchers, such as are they waiting for getting as many outs as possible versus how they use short relievers and closers? It just seems like these guys are asked to soak innings, not necessarily throw shutouts. So I was kind of thinking about this in the context of what i saw from the brewers last night sorry it's brewers again it's usually gonna be brewers if i can come up with an immediate example but brett anderson started corbin burns followed burns ended up pitching from like the third into the seventh and he was cruising along and he stayed in maybe a batter or two too long and he'd give up a game-tying home run to Jose Abreu. And I think it's still one of these things where the guys who end up in that situation

to be bulk relievers, they have a flaw. Usually it's a missing third pitch or it's low enough command where they're going to make a mistake eventually and i don't think it's how they're being managed that's causing this to happen i think it's just the nature of who they are as pitchers if that actually makes sense i don't know if that's a satisfying answer to this question but like you know i don't think managers are totally changing the objective because right now they have the benefit of larger rosters. So if they feel like they don't have the best possible matchup after Richards or Loiciga or whoever it is goes through the lineup once, they can make that change at any time and they can go righty or lefty and they can still have plenty of relievers left to spare

because we're still at the part of the season where teams have 30 players on the active roster so i don't think teams ever like managed to ratios per se but they are managing to minimize runs like run prevention is the game as it comes to managing your pitching staff so i don't know like i i think you just have more volatile results from this type of pitcher because of who they are and how they achieve what they do. Yeah, but I think at the same time, I think he's got his finger on the pulse, which is, you know, I was wrong. I thought that we would see more of these guys being used to get wins, right? And it's just not turning out that way. If you look at the relievers that have pitched the most,

you know, basically these bulk relievers, you'll find a bunch of interesting names, but you won't find any wins. You'll find very few wins. So Jalen Beeks, eight innings, four starts, one loss, no wins. Ross DeTwiler may end up showing up in that rotation now that everyone's gotten hurt. But Michael King, seven innings, two games, no wins, no losses. And I think it has to do with the model they're using them. I think it has also, they're baby starters. So they're putting them on like three-day rest routines and stuff, and so they're not available a lot of nights. So you can't necessarily go to Michael King when you want to.

You go to Michael King the days that you can. And that's what I saw with Jesus Lizardo. Jesus Lizardo could have been the best bulk guy ever, and instead they used him in two losses to soak up three or four innings. I'm like, this is Jesus Lizardo. You're just wasting seven innings of this. Come on.

Those are the days he had to throw in order to stay on his rotation, in order to get expanded out to be an actual starter, which is happening today. There really isn't a bulk guy that pitches multiple innings that has more than one win. I mean, Chad Green kind of sometimes pitches a little bit more than one inning,

has one win. But if you actually now sort by wins, the guys that had two wins are all basically the fifth or sixth best reliever in their squad. So Adam Kolorek on the Dodgers has two wins. Why? Because he's the guy who comes in in the fifth inning. And he's a lefty specialist in the fifth inning.

Jonathan Hernandez has two wins. I actually think that Nick Goody is maybe out in front when it comes to being the closer in Texas because Jonathan Hernandez keeps getting used in places to win the game. Bert Smith has two wins on the athletics, and people don't even know who he is. The only guy who has two wins right now out of the pen that pitches more than an inning per start is Brandon Velak on the Astros.

Yeah, and he's a guy that was a starter in the minors, so he's interesting for the same guy that was a starter in the minors so he's kind of he's interesting for the same reasons that we were interested in richards throughout the draft season and why lois siga is on so many rosters brandon beelick could be that kind of guy i don't know what to root for in terms of role right now though because i think late inning relievers just like they were last year have been struggling like crazy and when give up leads, your bulk guys who are really good, yeah, they give you good ratios, they give you Ks, but they lose their wins anytime the bullpen behind them falters

the same way a starter would, right? I think they're maybe getting kind of lost in that so far this season as well. And the only semi-predictable bulk reliever that's actually acting the way that I expected is Dennis Santana. And he has one win. And he's stolen the role that we thought Tony Gonsolin, we thought Tony Gonsolin would do that.

Honestly, you know, we had the wrong guy, but when Gonsolin was gone, I was like, okay, I guess it's going to be Santana for them. So,

and they're treating Gonsolin more like a regular starter who has stayed stretched out and is now coming up to start. So, um, it's a tough year, man. It is a tough year, and it's not, you know, as much as we tried to prognosticate and get ahead of this, I do think that it's possible that you could identify somebody like Adam Kolarak.

I don't even know if it is Adam Kolarak, but somebody that is like the fourth or fifth reliever on a good bullpen on a good team. That's the kind of person that might get in there in the fifth inning, and then the rest of the bullpen gets holds and saves and keeps it together, but the fifth inning guy gets the win. And I guess it could be Kolarak, Ryan Buchter on the Angels maybe, but the Angels bullpen's not that great. You could look around, and maybe Tyler Matzak is that guy for the Braves.

It's a great story, by the way. Really great story. A guy that was a big-time prospect in the Rockies organization a while back and set a long road back, but he's pitching really well out of that Atlanta bullpen right now. So long answer, shortened.

Too long, didn't listen, Jonathan. I'd actually stick with those bulk relievers. I think it's a little bit fluky that they're not winning as often as we expected them to. I think the usage is there. And if you want to change your approach, the only two names I'll give you is Tyler Matzek and Diego Castillo. Those are just good pitchers in loaded bullpens

on good teams that should steal some wins, give you three or four wins by the end of the season. I don't know. That seems like nothing, but it's also could win you your league. I think Castillo could leak into occasional save opportunities too. Just generally a good pitcher. I have a few shares of his, yeah.

Yeah, I'm right there with you. I like Diego Castillo quite a bit. If you're enjoying this show on a platform as much as we enjoy Diego Castillo, you can leave us a rating and review. We'd really appreciate that. Always good to send those our way. And again, if you're not already a subscriber to The Athletic, you can get 40% off

at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. That'll include Eno's articles, all the baseball coverage, team-by-team coverage, fantasy stuff, both for football and for baseball, of course. And we really appreciate all of the support. You can reach us via email, ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com.

If you'd like to send us a question that way on Twitter, he's at Eno Saris, I am at Derek Van Ryper. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Thursday. Thanks for listening..