Rates & Barrels - Promotions, Triple-A Strikeout and Walk Rates & Early Hitter Movers

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss promotions for Joey Loperfido and Pete Crow-Armstrong, the impact of the ABS strike zone and Triple-A, big movers among top hitters in DVR's upcoming hitter rankings, concern about Corbin Carroll's power outage, and fallout from another weekend of waiver-wire adds and drops. Rundown 2:33 Joey Loperfido Promoted to Houston 7:35 The Impact of Triple-A ABS Strike Zone on Strikeouts and Walks 17:32 Injury Updates: Kyle Bradish, Vaughn Grissom & Taj Bradley 25:55 Elly De La Cruz Moving Up Redraft Rankings 33:11 Concern Level About Corbin Carroll's Shoulder, Lack of Pop 39:24 Nolan Jones Struggles + IL Stint 41:53 Where the Money Went: Jo Adell & Pete Crow-Armstrong 51:26 Tempering In-Season Bids w/Streamers vs. Players That Might Stick 58:03 Frequently Dropped Players From the Weekend Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! https://www.youtube.com/c/ratesbarrels Subscribe to The Athletic for just $2/month for the first year: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, it's Monday April 29th, Derek and Rhyper Enocerous back here with you. On this episode we got some news you should know. We got a promotion in Houston that might be of interest to a lot of folks. Got a recall of a prospect on the north side of Chicago that we'll talk about later on in the show. We got some injury follow-ups. We got hitters moving up and down.

A couple of high-end hitters that people are excited about and worried about that we're gonna talk about on this episode. We got a mailbag question we're going to dig into and then we're going to take a look at where the money went this weekend, who were the big pickups and who were the big drops. I think we're to spend a little more time going forward discussing the players that were dropped because there can be hidden treasure that pops up on the waiver wire or guys that maybe need to

come off of your own rosters. So a lot of ground to cover on this episode. You know, how's it going for you on this Monday? Good. We're like right into the little league playoffs. So we've been having a bunch of eight 15 in the morning games. Um, they had followed up by like six 30 at night games from the older kid. Uh, so it's kind of hard to like do anything but baseball yesterday. I just did woke up, did baseball, watched baseball at home in between, and then went and did more little league baseball.

So yay. Oh, and then Sunday I woke up and threw batting practice for an hour and a half. So how's your arm? Good. It's good. I did short box. Um, so I didn't have to throw as hard. And, uh, but the kids are getting bigger and some of the balls I,

you know, my internal things shriveled, you know, like the ball is that I almost, I feel like I almost died one time. Paul just cause I'm, I'm also like, I'm throwing from like 20 feet away from them when you do short box. Yeah. It's like throw it in there. And I started, I started throwing and like, instantiately just ducking behind the screen after every throw

I had this like weird throwing motion where I ended up under the screen Yeah, you gotta watch out with these kids as they're getting bigger Modern bat technology making that the role of throwing BP to children a little scarier than it used to be Other notes here before we get rolling you can join our discord Be sure to jump in using the link in the show description. Also smash the like button if you're enjoying this video. Let's get rolling with Joey Loperfito.

He was mentioned in our position preview series much earlier than he should have been because I think he was the last player that showed up on the ADP list. And here he is in the big leagues before the end of April. So the Mr. Irrelevant or whatever. He was Mr. Irrelevant by ADP, but I liked him a little bit just as someone that could find a way to fit in Houston.

He plays a lot of positions defensively. He's got interesting tools for fantasy purposes. There's raw power, there's speed. At previous levels, before AAA, we saw low strikeout rates, low 20% range K rates, like kind of 21, 22% pretty consistently. We saw an ability to draw walks, a little like for the level old at times or at least age appropriate now that he's been in AAA. So it's not like you're talking about a guy who's crushing a level at an age way ahead of schedule,

but he's doing what he should be doing to earn this opportunity. They've obviously had a lot of trouble getting production out of Jose Abreu. I think the question with Joey Lopofito is twofold. It's like, one, how much is he going to play? And then two, with the strikeout rate jumping up to 30% at triple A, last year and this year we're talking about a 57 game sample size.

What is his strikeout rate going to be in the big leagues and how much of that K rate jump given that he was in the low 20s before was the result of triple A and the automated balls and strike system in the unique zone there. Yeah. I, you know, uh, there's a lot of things going on. I mean, one thing that I would say is just sort of, uh, aside from the league context, a 10% swing strike rate is a surprising number to have next to a 30% strikeout rate. So, you know, low profito's swing strike rate was 10, what was it?

10.4. If you look at, you know, Loprofito's swing strike rate was 10, what was it? 10.4. If you look at guys that had a 10.4s to 10.9s, you've got Jeffers 18%, Real Muto 26%, Manny Machado 23%, Corey Seeger 17%, Walker 24. You don't have any like 30s and 40s down here. You know what I mean? In the 10% range, the highest is 25 or 26. So you put that aside, you say, okay, his, according to the swing strike rate, his projected strikeout rate should be around 25%. Let's say that. Then you look at the context that automated balls and strikes creates, because he had automated balls and strikes at AAA in 23 and balls and strikes at triple A in 23 and 24. I went back and looked at the numbers as they came out.

I found a bunch of stuff on Baseball America and Jason Stark also had something on this and I basically what I found was that when these things were first introduced walk rates went from 3.2 to 9 to 5.8 per 9 and strikeout rates went from 8.6 per nine to 10 plus per nine. Um, in, in the leagues where they, they had automated balls and strikes. And I think the way that you understand this, especially when you look at low profito, as you say, here's a guy that has a high walk rate. So on some level, he's not an aggressive swimmer, swinger. And so what happens is he's going to let a ball go by thinking it's a ball.

Sometimes that's going to be a strike because it's just called differently. And so that's could be one of the sources for his swing strike rate going up. If you take this translation, this 8.6 to 10 plus, if you take that rise and then contextualize the strikeout rate from this year, his 30% strikeout rate in AAA per low profito, if you contextualize it using the rise that has happened in the past, it's basically the same as the 25% strikeout rate. Now projection systems aren't going to necessarily know all that. And they're also going to project Loprofito to be, not bad, it's not the right word, but

like, you know, a rookie. Like they're going to regress him hard to league average. So they're saying 30% strikeout rate. There is actually a chance that he comes up and only strikes out 25% of the time. And if that happens, you're talking about a guy with 250 type batting average, maybe, which is closer to league average for your, for your, uh, for most fancy leagues. And then somebody who could in a full season,

hit you 25 to 30 homers and, uh, and steal you five to 10 bags. So automatically more interesting if he can strike out 25% of the time. And there's some evidence that maybe he could. Right. And if, for whatever reason, if somehow Jose Abreu comes back to, I don't know, 80% of the player he used to be, I don't think this is going to happen, but if it were to happen, Loprofito is versatile enough to move around and keep the roll. I think he can actually stick on the roster.

If he hits enough, he's probably going to find playing time. And I think he could just claim a spot outright if Abreu continues to struggle. But the impact of the ABS strike zone at AAA was something that we had a question about from Andrew, because sometimes we attribute a higher walk rate for minor league pitchers to that zone. Sometimes we talk about a higher K rate for hitters. And the reason why is because it's a different zone, right? walk rate for minor league pitchers to that zone. Sometimes we talk about a higher K rate for hitters. And the reason why is because it's a different zone, right?

Like you highlighted that very well, the big jump in Ks and walks. It just messes things up because it's different. And I think that's the point of emphasis. It doesn't have this perfectly seamless sort of effect. And I think a lot of times we talk about it, we're just wondering if that's, hey, but maybe this guy doesn't have the right combination

of skills to quickly adapt and post the same kinds of numbers he did at lower levels. It might not, the things we ordinarily look at with strikeout and walk rate that would indicate skills changes might not be actual skill change to AAA because of this. It's hard to, it's hard to parse. Super hard. I guess it is a little bit interesting that both strikeouts and walks one up. I, you kind of think there'd be an inverse relationship, but I think it's,

I think it's just, I think you've got it right. It's just the changing nature of the zone makes it everyone have to read. It makes it harder for everybody. It, you know, there are new strikes that are called, uh, that where it's called strikes before that makes it hard on the hitters. They're also more precise in places and they're there. There are more balls called. So, you know, the pitchers are, are going to be focused on why these now balls

and the hitters is going to be like, why are these not strikes? And both of them are struggling to figure it out. Like maybe things would, if you gave them five years, would re sort of settle to where they'd been before. The weird thing is what I like about ABS is that you can be precise. And so you can say, oh, we did this, now walks exploded, let's change it.

And so that's what they did. So once these walks and strikeouts exploded, they changed things, they made it. They made it more narrow. 17, 15 inches instead of 17 inches. They they changed the height. They started making it so that the height was related to actually where your shoulders are. So if you're crouching or whatever like that, they actually were. They changed the zone dynamically.

But what's interesting is that, like now that I'm talking about this, is like why maybe you should wait a couple years because you don't know exactly if it's maybe it is just it's cool you just needed to wait a couple years because if you keep changing the zone maybe you're just going to keep creating more walks and strikeouts. Oh, I thought that was a walk. That's how that was a ball. Oh, now it's not a ball.

Okay. No, no. I thought that was a strike. You know what I mean? So if that's the source of why walks and strikeouts both went up, then changing it over and over again in the name of precision, um, might be like fiddling too much with the, with the knobs. We've also had Trevor on the show on Fridays, most weeks of this Trevor May

talking about how the strike zone is lower in the minor leagues and that wreaks havoc on some players depending on where their hole is, where their minor leagues. And that wreaks havoc on some players, depending on where their hole is. Where their strikes are. Yeah. If you struggle. With Menzardo a little bit. If you have a problem with high fastballs, even the

minors, that's probably going to get worse as you go to the big leagues, cause those are going to be called strikes in some cases on top of the ones that, that you're not swinging and hitting. So. And Menzardo said in his interview with us that he had to, that he had to confront his more of a hole at the top of the zone in triple A because they started getting called strikes and they hadn't been called that before.

So we've heard that from a couple of different sources. It also makes sense. You're, if you think Angel Hernandez is bad, then what do you think's happening in single A? True. This is, this is very true. Now this is interesting too, because Pete Crow Armstrong has had a similar jump in strikeout rate with his move to triple A he's a lot younger than low

profito, but 24% K rate or lower at double A and the levels prior 29.7% last year at triple A when he got there just 34 games 28.9% this year for 19 games now he's up because of injuries for the Cubs and you look at him and say yeah you know what maybe something similar is going on here because he seems to have a decent idea what the zone is he doesn't walk as much as little profito but he walks enough the same kind of thing could be happening he does have a higher swing strike rate base though. Right. And I think that's probably one of the key indicators you should use to differentiate what's likely to happen next, at least in the short term. Long-term improvement from Pete Crowe Armstrong could still be there because he's a few years younger. But I do think the

swinging strike rate is going to give you a better idea of what the possible magnitude of improvement could be against better pitching, even though you don't expect K-Rates to come down with the promotion of the big leagues. Yeah, I mean, if you look at him, let's say, you know, his swing strike rate is was up this year in AAA But let's give him like a 15 and look for comps in the 15 range Now you're looking at players that are more Who are they in the first page? Yeah, they're kind of on the first page in terms of swinging strike rate

Brenton Doyle Cal rally John Carlos Stanton strike rate. Brenton Doyle, Cal Raleigh, Giancarlo Stanton, Elie de la Cruz, Teosca Hernandez, Dulis Garcia. Those are the comps for swing strike rate for Pete Crowe Armstrong.

So I do believe he's got a swing and miss. Problem. And, you know, the thing that he's got to do, the things that he has to do to counteract that there's the Paul de Jong way through the solution, which is just be great defensively. Right.

That's might be part of the package for Pico Armstrong that might keep him on the field. But as we learn from Paul de Jong, that doesn't mean that you necessarily want him in fantasy. The other ways out for Pico Armstrong are just hit the snot out of the ball, like a Jose Siri or John Carlos Stanton, some of the other guys that I've put on there. I don't think he's a hit the snot out of the ball kind of guy. So I'm a little bit pessimistic about Pico Armstrong, if I had to be honest. Okay, I think he's got a few ways to be valuable and because of his defense playing times early safe. So that's the built in sort of cushion for PCA in the short

term. I think it's interesting. I have not looked at the swing strike rate leaderboards for hitters in a while. I'm not surprised to see Ezekiel Tovar is number one, given what we know about him before, right? I mean, he's got a 46.9% O swing. That's the sports info solutions number, but they vary slightly from source to source. But Tovar has been fine from a slash line perspective. I mean, 284, 336, 422 is a little bit of a step up for him compared to what he did last year.

But the approach looks the same. He's all resting on a 412 Babbitt. 412 Babbitt, more hard contact this year. He's up to a 40% hard hit rate. So there's some small signs of growth, but the top of that list, Tovar, JD Davis, Michael A. Taylor, Byron Buxton, Paul DeYoung, Jose Siri, Brent Rooker, Chris Taylor, Bobby Dahlbeck, Nick Castellanos. This is not a place you want to live.

Generally speaking, you do not want to be high on that list. Those are all like 19% and higher. I think, you know, you've got Gorman and Giloff. That's where I'm a little bit more comfortable. They're at 17% and they hit the ball super hard and they have some speed or they have some defensive ability. That I do get nervous at 17%. I get nervous at 15%, but there's a lot of good players if you go from 17 to 15.

Jachurio's in there. Julio Rodriguez is in there. Michael Harris, you know, Westberg. There's a lot of good players from 15 to 17. But yeah, Buxton, Tovar, Siri, that makes me super nervous. And Casiano's with the fact that he's, he's chasing outside the zone and not making contact outside the zone anymore. Um, that makes me even more nervous.

I'm flipping the board upside down for a second. Anthony Rendon, 2.7% swinging strike rate this season. Number one, the qualified filter on just so I don't have to see that. No, what you'd have to see that I set the number to 50 plate appearances. Yeah, well, if you're, if you have it on a qualified, you got Quan Lee, Arias, Pascantino. Now that's why, that's why you're intrigued by him. It's not the greatest batted ball stats, but if he could have eight, if he could have natural 18 home run talent, I think if you make this much contact, you put this many, uh, lottery tickets out on the field.

I think you could sort of generally just maybe hit 22, you know, I mean, like an 18 might turn into a 22 just because you're, you're, you're making more contact and a couple of times you miss hit the ball, but it goes out. You know what I mean? I see a name on here that is very intriguing just because of how inexperienced the player is. Wyatt Langford, 6.2% Mason Wynn, also 6.2%. I love to see players that have very little big league experience

popping on this list. But yeah, Vinny Pasquentino. We even talked a lot about him really since draft season. I had a lot of questions about how his shoulder would bounce back from surgery. The start to the season isn't great on paper. I mean, it's not terrible either. He's hit four homers. He's driving in some runs because the boys are putting runs on the board, but this isn't quite what we were looking for at the same time, hard hit rates back where they were before he got hurt. Yeah. K rates are still low. I think this is a pretty good up arrow here. Look at that Max CV. He's already hit a ball two miles an hour harder than he did last year. And that's a really good indicator of health being

back where it needs to be. So I would say if you liked Vinny Pasquentino back when he broke in, you should probably like him now. Yeah, I would buy a lot. To get to some injury follow ups, got a few things to pass along. Kyle Bradish will make his next start for the Orioles, a spot back into that rotation. Still got a couple injuries there, but obviously Bradish is in so long as he's healthy. When you're looking at a guy like this coming through a rehab assignment, is there anything beyond stuff numbers if you get them that you think kind of matters? It serves as a good indicator that we can trust someone in their first start back off

the aisle. By results, Bradish looked really good last time out. Six Ks, one earned run, five innings pitched. That was against the Braves AAA affiliate at Gwinnett. So a really nice outing like that to me is kind of a nice little confidence boost if you were thinking about throwing him back in your lineup for the upcoming week. Well, I'm cheating because these are all basically different ways of talking about stuff, but fastball, VELO and also pitch mix. If he's not throwing a pitch that as much as he did before,

wouldn't you find that a little bit disconcerting? Like he's backing off the slider or something. Is that what he's doing? No, I don't know. No, we don't necessarily have those numbers. I think that this will be one of those ones where I think if I had him on the IEL, I might be happy to just lose one good start just for the ability to like leave him on the IL and see that start without having skin in the game. You know what I mean? Yes. I would like to see his Velo coming back. I'd like to see him throw the slider just as much.

I'd like to see how long he goes into the game. It looks like he'll get the Yankees as part of the last game of that series. It's home instead of on the road, so... Another good reason to leave him on your bench for that first start. Having seen what the Yankees did in the last two games of that series against the Brewers, yeah, I think you could be a little cautious throwing someone coming off the IL against them. Oh, there's another one of my bold predictions that's going well. What's that? I said that they would have the best offense in the American League or maybe the best offense,

I forget what it was. It looked good this weekend. What are we talking about here? Run scored, they are sixth and second in the AL. There's a chance there. WRC Plus, they are fourth and second in the AL, so them or Baltimore. It just occurred to me that there might be a way to get that Kyle Bradish pitch mix on the fly.

You might remember that once upon a time we learned that you can get the game ID from the MILB box score. That's right. And you can go to Baseball Savant and open up a different box score and then just change that little six digit number at the end of the URL and let's see what we got. Yeah we do have some numbers from Bradish. 95-2 is where he topped out in that start at triple A. Here's what I got. I got 90, minimum 90.1 max 94-6 is what it's showing in the in the box down below. That's not good. 92.5 for the average.

That's not good. He threw 15 sliders. That's okay. That was down. Everything looks like it's down about a tick or two for the most part. I'm a little worried about it, man. I mean, you're saying that like the guy with that didn't have a great fastball is going to come up throwing 92.5.

I can't figure this out, though. So in the top of the box score, the top pitch velocities are above what's showing up in the the player breakdowns. I've never seen that on savant before. I wouldn't be surprised to have some technical glitches on my numbers. Yeah. So I was looking more for the slider usage, 19% slider usage in that last. But even the best number that you've seen that you've said that he topped 95-6, he, he, he averaged 95 before he went down.

Right. Well, we'll take a little more of a wait and see with Bradish if we can. Something good news though, for the Orioles to get him back, given the initial diagnosis, I mean, I think more people were expecting setback surgery before a possible return to the big leagues. I'm saying it could still be,'s going to still be bad news. It still still could be. But at least he's coming back to actually pitch.

At least you have one more shot at it. Von Grissom should be back soon, probably early part of this week. I think Tuesday is their first game of the week. If I remember correctly, they don't have a Monday game. Much needed for return for a team that's been just ravaged by injuries. Pretty excited about Grissom, got him stashed a few places. I think you activate him right away. If you need the MI help, especially.

I'm curious to see if they actually look at he's had the worst strikeout rate of his career in AAA. Yeah. Right. And he spent a little time there. He really hasn't spent a ton of time at AAA, but he spent some time there last year and kept it right in line with what he did AA. 14.1% over a long sample last season.

I think he'll have a good strikeout rate and a good batting average. I think the big question is, is how much power? Right. I'd love to know how much he's going to hit the ball in the air. I think he's got the kind of hit tool where even if it's not a lot of power, he's going to fit really well in Boston. Average will be good. OVP will be solid. Lineup position is going to be good. And he's going to get to some some steals, too.

And this is a guy that just hit a bunch of doubles off the monster and not not necessarily hit homers, but have a good batting average. You know, 10 to 15 homers, 10 to 15 steals. Pretty efficient base dealer. Most places to 13 for 15 last year at AAA, 20 for 24 at high 10 to 15 homers, 10 to 15 steals. Pretty efficient base dealer most places too. 13 for 15 last year at AAA, 20 for 24 at Haiye back in 2022. Had a 7 for 8 at AA in 22 games before his big league promotion. A lot of ways Von Grissom can be good.

One other pitching rehab note to pass along. Taj Bradley. Got him stashed anywhere? He's actually working at AAA now. And it was very good in his first rehab start. Seven Ks over five scoreless innings. I'll take that. Yeah, I'm excited for Taj Bradley.

I have him stashed in some places and I stashed him in some places. Him and Max Meyer are kind of like, you know, and Shane Baws for what is worse. Shane Baws is only pitching sort of like two inning stints and maybe a little bit behind Bradley. But all three of those are names that I'm surprised that you could still get them. I think this is the perfect time to get them in almost any league,

because they have that kind of top end upside. Yeah, they're skeezing it a little bit with Shane Baas right now, just trying to back load the innings probably a little further into the future. Looking at Bradley, same trick on that box score by the way, 12 swings and misses, it was five, no hitting things, of course the numbers are gonna be good.

Velo numbers, he had five pitches over 97 8 so he had five hardest throwing pitches of the game based on the actual leaderboard and then looking at the mix here what was Taj Bradley throwing four seamer splitter cutter curveball it's about 50% on the four seamer, 18% each on splitters and cutters and a 12% curveball usage. His VELO numbers look good. His best pitch is still his fastball but it's good to know that his VELO is there. Yeah, so that stash might be bearing some fruit here in the near future given that he threw five innings. I mean he's probably more of a, whenever they need him they could bring him back in. I guess then the question is, you know, what is who's who's losing their job in the rotation or

they're just going to wait for injury because right now that would be Tyler Alexander is the is the worst in the in the rotation. You've got the tell Efflin Sav Savali, Pepio are 100% in. And they've been doing some Sean Armstrong, Tyler Alexander kind of pairings. I think they could bring them up anytime. Wouldn't you rather have Taj Bradley over, you know, that sort of pairing? Yeah, I think they could use Tyler Alexander

the way they've used guys like Jalen Beeks for a long time. Just use them as that bulk guy, stretch them back out if you need him, but it may only be one more start in the minors before Taj Bradley gets another look with the Rays. Let's talk about a few hitters that we're actually adjusting expectations for. Three in particular, one fun, two a little sad. Simple question for you. Ellie De La Cruz, you've got a month's worth of data. He's been fantastic. I saw a Sarah Lang's tweet looking at the power speed

from Ellie in the first month. And he's in rare company with what he has done to begin the season. How high do you move him up? If we're doing a second chance draft today, is Ellie De La Cruz a top three pick? Is he a top five guy, top 10 guy, top 20 guy? I mean, it's up from where he was for sure.

Where are you comfortable taking him as someone who was already perfectly content to draft him at price throughout the winter and spring? I'm glad to say, see that, you know, the playing time projections have been adjusted. And that the projections are now more in line with what I thought. But I'm a little surprised that with the bat X in a 12 team with an MI, he's the 21st bat right now in the auction calculator. That seems like a

floor for me. I think he'd be in my top 20. Who would I take him over? That's when you actually start to have to ask tough questions. It's like, who are you? Are you taking Ellie De La Cruz over Kyle Tucker?

I don't know. Kyle Tucker is like the safest bat ever. You take in very safe. Like, are you taking them? So I think I think I might take him over Corbin Carroll. And I know that's jumping ahead on the on the on the rundown. I had Carol at five at the first or final set of hitter rankings that I put up. Projections have to have met 12 by the bad acts.

Do they meet? Like does Carol fall and Ellie moves up and that becomes a would you rather? High actually, because behind Corbin Carol's Austin Reilly. Freddie Freeman, Jose Ramirez. Devers. Listen, Vlad Guerrero Jr. I'm starting to be out on where it's just I don't know that the top end power, I don't know if we're going to get the glad we had once.

And I don't know if it's just recency bias. Maybe I should stick with it. But I'm going to take Corbin and Vlad and put them behind Ellie. So now Ellie's in my top 20 at least. But I think Ellie versus a Freddie Freeman or Ellie versus Julio Rodriguez is really hard and I think I would just defer to having the veterans ahead of him. It's a tough exercise. I think top 10 is the highest I could go with still having an up arrow there.

He's laying the foundation. Ellie De La Cruz laying a foundation through one month. Yes, it's only one month to be a number one overall pick in 2025. That's not saying he's the number one pick right now for the rest of the season. But what more do you want from from a player? Well, I think there is there is there is something to say for what more do you want for, for example, Tango has been, Tom Tango is the chief data architect for MLBAM,

has been putting out bat speed numbers for LA de la Cruz and his bat speed is like 20% better as a left-hander. Stop switch hitting, man. That's what Tango keeps saying. If To says stop switch hitting and you'll be even better I think that's worth pointing out is just that like his strikeout rate Against lefties is is higher His his isolated slugging is lefties 143 of course. That's a small sample number But like you know it lines up with the batsman numbers we have.

So, you know, that's one thing I would also say that, you know, he does still hit the ball on the ground a lot. 54 percent. And he does strike out a lot. Thirty one percent. But he's really refined his approach and making

better and better decisions of the plate all the time. And I think he's just going to be, you know, like, he's going to be like Stanton with speed at shortstop. And I think there's some good and bad things in that sentence. I just said, you know what I mean? I think it's, that's a great thing for like the next eight to 10 years. And then it maybe becomes a problem later.

And I'll worry about that. When we have flying cars and. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've been, Santin also put the ball in the air. So, you know, it's not, it's not a perfect comp, but, um, yeah, I mean, right now, the most pessimistic projection is for 24 homers and 54 stolen bases with a 255 average full season. So 260 average full season.

Yeah, there's still some concern about the average being a little light because the strikeout rate is still higher than you'd like it to be. And if you pull back and say, well, what has Ellie been doing in those splits going back to last season? It's a problem. Like hitting, hitting from the left side is clearly better for him. And you look full, full career now. It's again, still a limited sample.

His numbers against lefties. Ellie's got a 195, 26 to 89 slash lines of 49 WRC plus with a 38.4% K rate against righties 266 345 510 123 WRC plus that's within like less than a calendar year in his first exposure to big league pitching that's really really good so that little side is if he does have some growth against lefties, then maybe you'll see that strikeout rate come down. It'll be even another level. And the last thing I'll say is, you know, um, I had got some pushback in TGFBI. I drafted Ellie and Tatis as two of my first three hitters and, um, some I'm in first place.

Your first overall or your first first in your league? I'm first in my league and I'm, uh, like six or seventh overall. All right. Yeah. You're single digits overall. I'm 27th overall. Yeah. So it's going well.

And I would say this, consider punting batting average in more leagues. Uh, I'm not punting batting average, but you can get lucky in batting average and there are so many players that are available to you if you consider punting batting average. It was sort of a soft punt of batting average for me. I did spend some time. I drafted Yoshida and some other players later to try and massage my batting average sum. But, you know, it's not a league that hits very well for average. And you can buy too many Arias, Yoshida, Verdugo types. You can actually, and fall behind in home runs.

So consider punting batting average. Related to all of this is the Corbin Carroll conversation. What is your level of concern? One to 10 with Corbin Carroll's shoulder, not being right. Given the power has been down kind of going back to the all-star break of last year, right? And it's been a, a rough start in terms of slash slash line 189, 295, 236. That's horrible from any player, let alone someone you took with your first pick. The barrel rate's down from where

it was a year ago. The hard hit rate's also down a lot. He's got a 23.5% hard hit rate. Swing decisions are still good. He's still a burner. I looked at Carroll throughout draft season and said, I'm not that worried about the shoulder because he played a lot in the second half last year and I feel like if it was really bad, he wouldn't be able to play through it. Now, I'm starting to say, okay, he's a completely different player if we're getting a lot less power. I'm going to pull the actual numbers up again.

It's one homer so far this year and he had seven in the second half last year. So we're looking at a stretch of 300 or so plate appearances where he's hit eight homers and only one so far this year. So what's the level of concern with Corbin Carroll? I mean, it's not a zero, but it's not a seven through 10 either. And one thing that you mentioned, he's a burner. He's got eight stolen bases and i think he's gonna get he's gonna see play i think there's no risk of being sent down. He's he's kind of a natural born leader and you know i think that they they want him to kind of work through this. The other thing that i have as evidence that the shoulders not completely far gone is he still hit a ball hundred eleven point five. So that is down from last year, but that is above average. And if you can tell me that I might get average power from here on out,

then then he's almost a buy. Because if someone's selling him saying, I don't think he's going to hit 10 homers this year, I will take the over on that. And if you're showing me these projections, I'm going to take the worst projection he's got. I'm going to take the worst numbers in all the projections. I'm taking, I'm cherry picking the worst numbers to 61 average 15 homers, 31 stolen bases.

Still a good player. Still like a second rounder if it's not a first rounder. Yeah. And let's say you want to be more pessimistic and just be like, I think he's a guy who can only hit 15 homers over full season and he's only hit us one so far. So really I think, you know, 13 or 14 more homers is the very top end. That's still non-zero power as evidenced by the 111.5 max EB. So I'm a little worried. I'd say a three to four. If someone was playing auto new with you

and you had Ellie and they had Carol and they offered you Carol for Ellie straight up today, a trade you probably wouldn't have been offered a month ago, would you accept that? or would you reject it and keep Ellie? No, I mean, I just said that Ellie was ahead in our rankings too. OK, but I mean, it's like. I don't know, Corbin for Vlad, like, yeah. Oh, I mean, that's that's still that's still core. How about Corbin for.

Like because we had like a we were looking at the the top 20 players, I'm trying to make it a little bit harder. Jose Ramirez because of the age. 31 might take Jose Ramirez over Corbin for the rest of the season. That's a good level of like how far down does. Corbin go.

Leak. Maybe you take Carol. You take Carol and you give them Jose Ramirez and they get the benefit of this year. But then, you know, going forward, Trey Turner versus Corbin Carroll. That's a keeper, obviously Carol. Redraft, maybe I'd take Turner.

Yeah. All right. So we got it. We got to go move our sights down. I mean, Vladdy was a yes. Devers. Devers has been banged up. I was worried about him

because he had that collision with Tyler O'Neil and he had a little ding before that too that was causing him some problems. But he's actually been productive these last handful of games. He missed about a week. He's got three multi-hit games in the last five. If there's something physically bothering him, it's not evident in the results right now.

So I think Devers is mostly healthy despite all the bumps and bruises. And showing a little bit more plate discipline than usual. Yeah. Great place to draw the line. I think I'm on the Defer side of that one too. Michael Harris. I think Harris does a lot of things that Carol does, but he seems healthier right now and do you see? Yeah. So I mean, there's a, there's a case for Corbin Carroll to be like a top 20 top 25 player as a clear obvious. I think I'd rather have Harper than Carroll today. I mean, it keep really gets pretty obvious.

I think I've take care of. Yeah, I guess Harper's got the back that was bugging him this spring too. So it's not like you're getting a completely clean bill of health from him. Yeah. Also he's just, I don't know. He does have a steel and he's three years of double digit steals, but you'll wonder when that sort of dwindles. Yeah. Okay.

So it's a little bit of a dip for Carroll in second chance leagues and on the trade market. There's, there's more to more that could actually get done with him now than there has been. If he fell to like the third round or something for me in a 15 team. Oh, I'd be real happy with that. Cause you're banking on the speed being there.

The only thing you're really worried about is the shoulder getting worse to the point of it putting them on the shelf and requiring a lengthy IELTS day or some kind of surgery. So that's built in. Third round discount seems pretty appropriate for Corbin Carroll. Last name for this cluster, Nolan Jones, who appears to be heading

to the I.L. with a back injury. It just hasn't been the same for Nolan Jones so far this season. Thirty five point nine percent K rate. So that's up. Walk rates down a little bit. Only one home or a couple of steals so far. Hitting the ball on the ground a bit more. What's going wrong for Nolan Jones? Like the IELT thing kind of makes this even more problematic.

But what do you make of this start to a season that I liked Nolan Jones by the end of draft season? I talked myself into it as a good idea. I thought most of what he did last year was real, even with the swing and miss concerns, probably taking his batting average from the two nineties and lowering it to like the two 52 60 range, despite playing half his games in Colorado. Yeah, that's really strange. I mean, his swing strike rate is down, but his K rate is up big.

He's not, he's not letting called strike threes go by. He's not, he's not being too passive. I would say that I would say it's probably, uh, you know, a lot of times to a hitter in a situation like this and they'll just be like, Joey Votto said this, Lars Newbar said it recently. Just I can't really talk to you about strategy right now because I'm not feeling good. And I guess I can kind of see that across the board because his pull rate is down so much. His high end maxi B is still there. I guess every once in a while you can feel good in terms of you know connecting on one but. You know not pulling the ball not putting the pull and pulling the ball in the air and then striking out this much it all kind of then with the IELTS and they all kind of I'm willing to. If I can hold him through the ice I'll stand because I do think there's a lot of.

hold him through the IELTS tent because I do think there's a lot of upside there. And then I guess, you know, in 10 and 12 team leagues, this is maybe the type of bat that you just have to move on from because there's stuff on the wire. A 10 team or I could see it maybe because the the wire offers up a lot. A 12 team or even where you're starting five outfielders. I'd be I'd be finding every way possible to hold on if it's a Three or four week timetable for his return. We don't have one just yet

because There's a top 50 player here in terms of opportunity and skills that he showed for most of last season man tough spot to be in if you for most of last season man tough spot to be in if you drafted Nolan Jones and certainly a tough rerank now that we add a IELTS tent for this back injury to the equation Take a look at where the money went over the weekend in our leagues Did you think we'd be talking about Joe Adele as one of the most? Heavily added players even down to 12 team mixed leagues like that. That is not something I thought we'd be

talking about during the final week of April. But Joe Adele, if you look at the underlying numbers early on, seems to be making some changes. I mean, the K-Rate's way down. We've really only seen one stretch in his career back in 2021, the big league level where he's kept a K rate in the low 20% range. Are you buying this quality of contacts way up 51.4% hard hit rate, hitting the ball in the air more than ever. Like those are things we generally get pretty excited about. Yeah, it's an interesting, it's an interesting line.

The swing strike rate is the best of his career at 13.7, but that's also pretty high. When I think of 13.7, I mean, we were talking about 14 and 15 makes you 25. I mean, I guess you could have a 13.7% swing strike rate and a 24% strikeout rate. That's possible. Um, but it, it's only sort of possible paradoxically if you don't, if you aren't very patient. And that's what he's that's he hasn't been that so he's trying to go get that ball. Maybe this is the best way for him to be just be super aggressive and try to basically float

your OBP through your quality of contact. You know, have a great batting average on balls and play because you hit the ball so hard in all these angles. And so therefore get to a 330 OBP by having a 340 batting average on balls and play, you know, that is part of his skillset considering he hits the ball super hard and he's, he's fast too. So I know the projections aren't in love with him. They've got a lot of sample of him striking out closer to 40 percent.

And so the projections are mostly around 230 for Joe Adele with, you know, like 25 Homer Power and, you know, 15 steals in a full season. I'm willing to think that he could maybe hit 240 and have like a 310, 320 LBP at least. So I guess I'm I'm into him. I love that. I've always loved the tools. And when you talk about a guy who has tools like this and is 25 years old,

sometimes it just takes, you know, an extended chance of everyday playing time to unlock that. I can't help but wonder, just given the power and the speed, especially in questions about the hit tool, like could Joe Adele be this year's Nolan Jones, the guy that didn't get the job right away, but got a delayed start, got an opportunity, consolidated some of his best skills, took a step forward with the swing and miss. And we're talking about a month from now as a risky early round pick next year. Like that could that could happen.

It wouldn't be the strangest thing we've ever seen in fantasy baseball if it played out that way. So it's nice to see it. I think in 15s, you have to take the shot now where he's basically played in six straight games and you have to think, OK, this is this is the shot now where he's basically played in six straight games. And you have to think, okay, this is this is the direction the angels are going, he's going to play every day. I think in like a 10 or 12, you can wait three, four or five, like wait a couple more series even, to see if the strikeout rate goes up with the playing time and and and see what the playing time does. Because just because we think the angels should do something,

doesn't mean the angels are going to do it. Just cause we think anyone should do something. Doesn't mean they're going to do it. We. Well, no, I think that's a, it's a, it's a lesson because sometimes you, you'll be like, Oh, you, you hear like bet on roles, a bet on skills, not roles, you know, and that is the way I, I believe you should bet on skills, not roles, you know, and that is the way I believe you should bet on skills, not roles. Most of the time, opportunities, everything. And so without the opportunity, you could just be, you know, the 12th best hitter on

the Dodgers. Like would Josh Outman be a by low in any other situation on any other team? Probably. On the Dodgers I'm like, I think they're going with Pahez. See, I think that, yeah, if Pahez is going to play center field,

that's a problem. That's a problem for Outman. Yeah, that's where Pahez is playing. We saw Joe Adele get added in 12s. And Pahez this week in 12s where he had previously been added was a pretty popular pickup too. And then of course, Pete Crow Armstrong, we talked about earlier and Tommy Fam, who's now up with the White Sox who actually swept the Rays this weekend and still have a miserable record for the season.

Adele Fam, PCA, Pahez, if you were ranking that group of four outfielders for the rest of the season, who would you rather have the most out of that bunch? I'm going to go with fam. He's just going to strike out the least. I do think that the power and speed will be there. And I, it just, he just, he's like catnip for my risk aversion. Okay. Tendencies. You know what I mean? And I, he just, he just, he's like catnip for my risk aversion tendencies. You know what I mean?

You get the old guy save projection. Yeah, exactly. I would never call Tommy Fam an old guy to his face. Like a zero percent chance. And Tommy, you're listening. You're, you're, you're bright and beautiful and young. You're the youngest 36 year old on the entire planet. You're smart.

I'm dumb, you know, but I understand where that's coming from because the power was still there last year. The speed was still there. It's an average that won't hurt you. It's max volume playing time. Whereas everybody else in the group has playing time risk, every one of everybody else could lose their job. All three of Pies Adele and Pekora Armstrong could be basically injury replacements.

Right, they could get bumped back to either AAA or just two bench rolls. That's entirely possible. Of the young guys though. Yeah, so of the next three is Pais. Team context is a factor. And I think they've had enough weakness in the outfield where even if Outman gets going,

I kind of like Outman as sort of a deeper league stash. He's more schedule dependent though. I wrote about him as some of that week to week, you really have to monitor the schedule. So he might be someone you drop one week and you pick them up two weeks later. It could be a Hayward, it can't be a Hayward outman platoon really.

Pahez is a right-hander. Pahez hits the ball hard. Yes. He's patient. And he overcame that gross, you know, strikeout right binge that he started on. And now he's, you know, I mean, what is it? Someone texted me. He struck out.

Oh man, what was it? Can you give me the strikeouts here? While you're looking, I might be Pete Crow Armstrong last of them right now, even though he's probably the best player of the entire group in the long, long run. He struck out nine times. He struck out eight times in seven, 10, 14. He struck out eight times in seven, 10, 14. He struck out eight times in his first 14 plate appearances. And since then he struck out twice. Yeah. I mean, it happens. It's a big adjustment.

Yeah. But yeah, what I like about Pahez is I think the strikeout rate is going to be the best out of the three is how I guess, although projections have it a little bit closer than you might expect Pahez on the upper ends, but I think Pajas' strikeout rate is going to be the best of the three. His bat of ball quality is going to be second best to Adele, and his speed is going to be third best. It's fair. Okay.

But it's a balanced package, and and strikeout rate has outsized importance because you know all three of these guys could hit 210 except Pahez is really has a higher floor he's not going to strike out that much on the pitching side. Where did you see money going in your leagues? I saw a lot of Eric Fetty in 12s because he was great again over the weekend. Bailey Falters got a two step. I think that's just streaming a play. I don't think there's like this increased interest in Bailey Falter.

We talked about the K rate still being low, even though the results have been good. Jameson Tyon, I was surprised to see him out there in a lot of leagues, but I think he made the adjustments already last year. I've said this a zillion times. Some Slade Ciccone shares popping up. Got to get Slade's mentions in here because he's becoming our guy, given our struggle to pronounce his last name properly. Yeah. Well, I just I like I like his stuff.

I think that, you know, it's not a great fastball. There's a lot of people that have this problem, but it's not a terrible fastball. And it's it's two to three good breaking balls, two to three good secondary pitches in a 91 stuff plus fastball for a for a starting pitcher. It's it's not quite like, for example, Brandon Fott has an 81 stuff plus fastball, and that's a little bit of a problem. That's why he has this issue against lefties. So Slade has a better fastball than Brandon Fott

and, you know, two good secondaries, maybe three. Like, I think he's he's pretty interesting, actually. And I think they need him. So Slade's of. And what's interesting about seeing these bids is that, like, Slade and Jameson are worth bids where you think you'll keep them for the season. And, you know, I'm just going to talk about this in a thousand thousand dollar sort of bid numbers, thousand dollar free agency money. I think you can spend 50 or 60 dollars on a pitcher you think you'll start the rest of the season.

You know, I think that's worth it. I struggle when I see like 25 to 30 dollar ones on Bailey Falter types because I did the math and if you spend 25 dollars a week on your streamer, that's 600 dollars out of your thousand for the season. And so I think that's too much. That's probably twice as much as you want to spend on a streaming spot for the season. Because you have to think you need saves, you need you need hitters, you need other things, you know.

So for me, the magic, the magic number for streamers is sort of 10 to 15, 10 to 17. I want to keep it in there. Maybe 17 if I'm like, oh, if he does have a good week, maybe we will keep them. You know what I mean? But like a Bailey falter type, I wouldn't want to spend more than I almost like seven, eight, nine, maybe 11. And if I really want to feel like falling behind in case like that's where I want to be. Maybe 11 and if I really want if it's like falling behind and in caves like that's where I want to be

So I saw I think some missteps when it comes to bidding too much on streamers I try to stay out of that and then lastly one of the things you can do If you do want to stream is try to stream a week ahead. So I bought some Landon Nacks for five dollars even He's a one-star pitcher this year. He's going to be coming up on, on two starts coming soon. Simi and Woods Richardson is something you could get for very cheap right now. That's going to be a two-star pitcher the week after this. But that, that starts being a whole nother rant was to start pitching,

which is Simi and Woods Richardson in, in, in two weeks is going to get Seattle and then be at Toronto, which You know, I know Toronto is scuffling but that that would be one that would be nervous about throwing him and Who was the the two-star? Oh, we have kenta maeda on my bench in in our main I don't think we're starting him He's the brass ball says he's the number two pitcher this week because he's got two starts and he's a veteran, he's projectable. The second start is at New York, dude.

I see a seven spot, dude. I don't want any part of that smoke. Would you be starting Kenta Maeda at New York to get the two-step? I'm not trying to do it. If I have to because other guys are hurt, I missed out on bids, you know, whatever, then I think that's where projections can rationalize our thinking a little bit. But the broader trend with Kenta Maeda for me, I wrote about it in our recap last week.

I think he's a drop and that was focused mostly like a 12-team league and a 15-team league. The fastball is just so bad now. He was already a hide the fastball guy, now the fastball is worse. Like what other adjustments can Maeda make? I think you're looking at two steps that are both at home where the matchups aren't that bad, streaming opportunities in that home ballpark against average or worse teams. Like those are, there are use cases for him. The bigger thing that comes up though, is like in a 15 team league that you're in a 15 where you're thinking about sitting him, he's harder to cut in a 15

team league because the, who are you going to add question is scraping another layer down below the bottom of the barrel in those deeper formats around like maybe a whole have a Cleveland in Detroit, you know, game soon. Because like think about a league like that where Ryan Feltner, who has good stuff, but has the unfortunate. He got picked up this week. He's a Rocky and he's got two on the road this week. So people were excited about him and he could miss bats.

Like, I totally get it. But if you are chasing a guy with a six career ERA in a two start week on the waiver wire. Then my ADA is keepable. My ADA becomes keepable. Another way I did the math was that I like to have, so I usually go with a seven, two, uh, if you were allowed to have nine pitchers, I usually go with like a seven, uh, starters and two relievers. Uh, and then I really liked to load up on my bench with starters because I want

to have those options every week. And so I think typically I will have 11 starting pitchers in a 15 team league. That means 165 pitchers are relevant and I don't know if this is by accident or not, but my rankings went down to 165. And that means Bryce Elder, Steven Matz, Kyle Gibson. These are relevant in 15 teamers. Yeah, so my takeaway is that I want even more pitching in those leagues that I'm not having to deal with this problem.

Like I wanna change the balance of the roster because I feel like it's a little easier to find some useful bats that don't scare you. And it's much harder to find quality pitching right now in 15th, at least in the early part of the season. In this league, in my main event, I think we're in second or third right now. The best starting pitcher, Bryce Elder went for $82.

That's out of a thousand. That's pretty aggressive for me. And then, you know, around him are a ton of hitters. Bo Naylor, P. Crow Armstrong, Mark Kana just went. Andrew McCutcheon, Mike Tocman, Nick Senzel. Those seem like pretty good. The next pitchers are Bryce Wilson and Bailey Falter going for 27 each, which I thought was a bit much.

Simeon Wood Richardson for 27. See, I would might do that because maybe you get someone you get to play for longer, you know, um, and, uh, and Ben Lively. So I think the quality of bats, uh, we ended up getting Davis Schneider and Lawrence Butler for a combined $5. Yeah. I mean, bargain bin bats that you think might actually play enough, whereas bargain bin pitchers that have bad matchups or bad skills,

you don't even feel good about using them. Yeah. So I don't know, maybe my push towards pitching is going to be even more aggressive in 25. It's just in leagues where you can't trade especially, what are you gonna do? You wanna fight for these same pictures with everybody else? I find that I don't really like doing that. So one other thing here to talk about before we go,

I was looking at the most dropped players from the RotoWire Online Championship 12 Team League, which is a very competitive 12 Team League format, has an overall prize pool, same as like the NFPC main event, just smaller leagues, smaller entry fee, big old prize for top spot overall. These cuts all pretty much make sense.

Gavin Williams was the most dropped player. He had a setback working his way back from that elbow injury, which he suffered with like a weighted ball workout. It wasn't just like normal, completely normal pitching injury, but I agree with that one. It's like you just can't wait. Like we'll see if he gets healthy and you can be excited about him later on this season.

There's no reason to wait this out, given that this pause might take longer than the first one did. And we're already a little bit of wonder of what his actual true talent is as a pitcher. Yeah, there's a little bit of that. You know, like you'll wait a little bit longer for like a verlander than you will for Gavin Williams, because you're like a little bit more sure of what's going to come out the other end. 100 percent. Tristan Cassis, I totally get it.

You just can't wait on players. Did you see some of the stuff about that? They were saying he was told by his doctors that it was like he created his own car crash with his rib injury. Yeah, cartilage tear in his left rib cage. Players rotate so fast. This is part of the injury discussion that is uncomfortable because there's no real answer for it, which is we are asking so much out of the modern athlete.

We're asking them to do things to really push it as far as they can, you know? And that's true in any sport, you know, more Achilles tears and NBA more, you know, like there's more you were asking them to be bigger, faster, stronger to the point where it was like a car crash inside him just because he's rotating so hard. Yeah, he is. He's gonna be out until late June and they already put him on the 60 day IELTS. I think that's why you saw him get dropped. Charlie Blackman, 12 team, we're not a guy that gets rostered all the time.

That was probably for the schedule being in Mexico City, getting those games at elevation. Jonathan Classe, we talked about him when the Mariners promoted him. He was a heavily dropped player. It's because he is going back to AAA, so it makes sense to drop him. Henry Davis, I think this is sort of a preemptive one with Yasmine Grandal getting close to returning and Davis's struggles that we talked about a couple weeks ago continuing plus Joey Bart is there, Joey Bart's playing well. So that confidence boosting reset. He could go back down. Yeah, I mean

Henry Davis has only spent 14 games at AAA. He destroyed it when he was there but a few more weeks at AAA to sort of get right mechanically. That could be in order. And you can't play him right now in most leagues. You have to wait for him to turn it around anyway. Jordan Walker was a big cut. J.P. Crawford injured, right? I mean, that's a J.P.

Crawford's a good enough player to stay on the roster, but he has no bleak injury. So and this Walker cut is in 12 teamers, 12 teamers. Yeah. 15, I think think is a little tougher because I Mean who you're gonna replace him with there. I Don't know man. I would probably held him underlying stuff there. That's okay I like enough about Walker's underlying numbers where if I have a healthy enough roster, otherwise, I would have tried to hold him That's that's my general approach Crawford because he's her Abner Uribe. I noticed something with Abner Uribe,

watching him again this weekend. I've seen it a couple of times. There's something he's struggling with, with the engagement, you have to engage the hitter by a certain time. And he's getting also, he's getting warned for that. It seems like every time I watch him right now. So he's a slow paced guy?

Yeah, like a little bit slow, but just like, he's not adjusting to that very quickly. And I wonder if that's just like a blip for him. But obviously, the usage hasn't been there as far as closing games. Really, really bad command. Yeah. So he was cut a lot of 12s. I completely get it. I traded him in a keeper league. I actually traded him for Tyler Black.

See, I seem pretty squarely ahead of him. Yeah. Yeah, I just think that someday, Abner Rebay might be a fantastic closer. That doesn't seem like it's happening next week or next month on a regular pace is based on what we see right now. A couple of more at the bottom. Colt Keith off to a really rough start so far.

Has that long-term contract extension that he signed with the Tigers, but also it's not impossible that he'd get sent down. 67 games last year at AAA kind of comes back to confidence. The thing that's interesting, he's not striking out that much. An 18% K rate, 8.4% walk rate. We saw something similar.

Didn't Spencer Torkelson have that run at the beginning of his career where the plate skills, the swing decisions all look good and the results were bad? Some of it's the ballpark. You can't blame it all on the ballpark. I also think that maybe some ballparks just have like different seasonal splits that are pretty aggressive. It could be, it wouldn't be surprising to me if Detroit is like, like one of the coldest parks in April and one of the hottest parts later on. Right. Like Cleveland, we know, for example, plays like a pictures park for a month and then it's actually kind of a hitters park. Right. Surprisingly. So I would, I would hang on to Colt Keith even in redrafts. There's a lot to go there. I mean, if we're talking tens, yeah,

you just gotta keep moving. 12. I'd like to hold as long as I could, you know, I think this could turn around pretty easily. Like a lot of the plate stats are good. Yeah. I think with Colt Keith and a 12, it's a little more of a luxury stash even than like a Jordan Walker. And I think that was reflected in the difference in what they cost to get on your roster in the first place.

When you say luxury stash, yeah, I've got, I'm winning and I'm first in TGFBI, I'm first in BARF, and second in Maine, we have luxury stashes. So if you're first in your league, you can hold onto Colt Keith on your roster a lot more likely than if you're last in your league. You're probably healthy. You just gotta keep, you gotta catch something, you gotta keep moving.

Yeah, and you're probably healthy, yeah. It's probably a big part of it if you're at or near the top of your league right now. Probably. You just got to keep, you got to catch something. You got to keep moving. Yeah. And you probably healthy. Yeah. It's probably a big part of it. If you're at or near the top of your league right now, Jose Soriano got dropped in a few leagues. He's got good stuff. We talked about some of the concerns as someone who's had multiple Tommy Johns and command.

Yeah. Pitching really close to the top end of his V lo, but I would give him another shot. That looked like a pretty reactionary drop for a lot of folks had a rough start against the twins over the weekend for earned. But he gets at Cleveland next. We just talked about how that is a decent park for pitchers and then at Pittsburgh after that, so like the schedule looks pretty good verse St. Louis. Are you scared of that?

You know, not at the moment, I think at Texas, May 19th is the next start I'm scared of. So that's three straight starts that I would start Jose Soriano. So I'd pick him up if he if he got dropped. Probably going to end up on someone else's roster. Then Jackson Holliday. I made the list 11 deep just to include Jackson Holliday. So the 11 most dropped players from the online championship. He got dropped in my main event.

So I got dropped in some 15 as well. So I think I think that is a luxury stash of, you know, if you are in these leagues where he's dropped and you're in you're in the top three, find a place for, you know, Jackson Holliday. You know that he was if he's dropped

in 15 teamers, that makes him, teamers, that makes him pretty interesting. We also saw... Who else have we seen that we got to drop? That's interesting. Kevin Bigeaux, JP Crawford got dropped. So you know, there's some interesting names that get dropped. And if you watch the drop wire you can you can sort of you know find some gems but I think the hardest thing for me anyway is I think the easiest thing is

the way that I first go through all my teams and identify droppers is who's hurt who's hurt right are they going to miss more than a couple weeks uh or even sometimes even if their talent versus their their yeah like Wade Miley's hurt oh okay well I I had him just in case there was a good two-step I wanted yeah man unfortunately for Wade Miley too it's Tommy John surgery I think so that could be yeah it's really sad could be the end of the line saddest picture of him he looks like a sad who's the the actor that he looks like? The Wonder Woman actor? The guy? Looking at his face right now. He does. Like the kind of French guy, the Canadian guy,

the Wonder Woman bad guy. No help there, sorry. Oh come on. Not my wheelhouse. I'm gonna have to ask the internet. Wade Miley's gonna be a pitching coach someday, I think. Hope that works out for him. Yeah, yeah, I could buy that, you know, people were saying that he's Pedro Pascal, dude. How did I not come up with that? Yeah, how did I not? It took too long. Anyway, so the first thing is who's injured. And then the second thing is, like, how desperate am I? Like, do I did I have a two starter? You know, these are the easy ones. And you're like, did I have a two starter that I'm not that into? Then like, okay, keep it moving. You know, and then the last is how bad is my team? Let me start looking at the luxury stashes. You know, like, can I, if my team is bad

and I've been, had Cole Keith on my bench for a while, but I need to do something there or my team is hurt, you know, my, and I need a, I need an active VAT. Like, and then the hardest one is a healthy guy who's playing that you liked for some reason that you'd need to move on from. So the hardest cuts for me in these 15 teams were J.J. Bladay and Gavin Sheets.

Now, how do I make that decision after a while? Some of it is, well, Lawrence Butler is doing a lot of the things that J.J. Bladay is not, and they're on the same team, and they're both playing all the time, and Butler has speed, and Butler has more top end exit below. So if I like Bladay at all then i probably like butler a little better

so that's an easy one sheets was a was one where max meier i think it was max meier was on the thing and i just i thought i can make more out of no max meier was for rey and marley what did i do sheets because sheets is not

striking out a lot. I picked up Jesus Sanchez over Sheetz. Oh that's kind of bold because Sheetz is doing a lot of things we like. He's not striking out. He's got some bad ball oomf. The schedule Jesus Sanchez gets four games Monday through Thursday. Mm-hmm. And I think there's none of them are lefties. So you just saw an excess of playing time for at least part of one week. And you're kind of saying this spot on the roster is pretty fungible. So I might as well. Sheets is a more almost like a streamer for me. He's not a luxury stash.

I'm not going to stash him if I'm not playing him. Yeah. And so you kind of I think one thing that I do mentally is kind of streamer for me. He's not a luxury stash. I'm not going to stash him if I'm not playing him. Yeah. And so you kind of, I think one thing that I do mentally is kind of sort guys, as you can hear. Yeah. And so I sorted Gavin Sheets into hitting streaming or fungible spot, spot I'm going to play with, hitting streaming. Yeah. So he's a hitting streamer for me. If I like the schedule for him, one of the things, one of my tools that I use is the rasball streaminator. It's just a good way to like at least get a sense of, you know,

am I going to sort these guys in different buckets? Is he a top 150 bat this week? Is he a top 200? Is he a 300 this week? If he's a 300 this week and I've got something out there. That's a top 150 I got to make this move. Yeah, the Gavin sheets projections are solid, but they're definitely not must-keep They're a little better than a lot of waiver wire guys But they're not and I would say like, you know, he also like his batted ball Villas are are only okay Like for a slugger to have an 8% bail rate and a 107 max EV is kind of boring.

It'd be nice if he stole some bases. He's kind of boring and it's a bad team so how many runs an RBI is he going to get? So that's part of my thought process. The last one that is the most difficult is maybe in the more shallow leagues where, like I think that if you run a projection for the rest of season and what I noticed was, for example, Christian and Garnasso in Strand right now is rated the 18th best first baseman in 12 teamers with CIs going forward. Right.

That's really borderline. That's really borderline? That's really borderline. That's really borderline. That's surprisingly borderline. And if you are looking at low profito and it seems like ridiculous to make that jump, remember it's not as ridiculous if the projection, the sober projection that's better than what he's doing right now is for the worst CI in your league. Right? Do you want to hold on to the chance of having the worst CI in the league? Or maybe take a chance of having better than the worst?

So if you run your projections, that's why I use the option calculator regularly during the season. It's like a sanity check. It's like a, what would this guy do the rest of the season? What is the baseline? What are projections saying? And if they're saying that's pretty boring, what you've got, maybe picking up a little more Fido for, for CES is not crazy. It feels like it is to me. It feels crazy.

It does. I liked CES a lot. We got actual proof of concept last year in terms of the power. It was like 30 home run power almost in the time that he was in the big leagues. That was after a bit of a slow start. Maybe some questions about plate skills. I mean, there's been some runs during his career where he hasn't walked a lot. So if he continues to strike out a lot to the real world value dips a little bit, he

ends up in the bottom half of the lineup at least. That hurts him a little bit. He ends up in the bottom half of the lineup at least. That hurts him a little bit. I thought the thing that made Christian Cardassi on Strand a good target throughout draft season was that it felt like he was getting dinged in playing time because of the crowd more than he actually would. So far he's played a ton, just hasn't cashed in yet. I still see him as a little more of a guy I want than a guy that I'm cutting, but your broader point is a good point.

Like you wanna be looking at the bottom end of startable players and saying, how close is this projection? And then we talked earlier in the show about how with low profito, the projection systems might be pulling something in that's a little bit wonky because of ABS, and you have to sort of correct for that.

If it's close, you can at least justify it. And one thing I have noticed from people asking me questions and the difference between sort of players and analysts and have had this thrown at me as a failing of most baseball fans, baseball analysts that we are fence sitters and we tend to take too long to make a decision. That's because we tend towards projections and tend towards what happens most of the time. And so that means like holding onto players. What I have noticed is that I think that people that listen to us and people that play baseball are more aggressive than we are, you know, for better or for worse. And so I'm trying to find a way to kind of help you along to a place where you

can be more aggressive, but you're also keeping, uh, if, if it's not the Encarnacion Strandland, then let me tell you, Brandon Juree is the 20th best, Heimer Candelario, Jamer Candelario is 21st, Josh Bell is 22nd, Andrew Rana is 23rd, Anthony Rizzo is 24th, they're all droppable. Yeah, I think everybody out of that group, the only one that I would think twice about maybe is Rizzo.

Yeah. Because of the concussion and how that kind of complicates everything. But yeah, generally that CES feels like the line. Like I'd say CES is in, I'd keep him. Everybody else below that, like, yeah, I think I would take the shot in low profito over pretty much that whole group.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, Rizzo's hitting two times seven with the powers back and things look pretty good, but he's definitely not gonna steal any bases. You know, he's gonna take the seat some weeks. He doesn't have great barrel rates. It's it's kind of a volume play. And the projections don't really appreciate it that much. Yeah. And Andrew Vaughn, who I'm

frustrated in a deep league where I've got Andrew Vaughn and no one better to play or pick up in his place. So once Lo Proffito has first base eligibility in that particular league, I actually think Lo Proffito might take Vaughn's spot on that roster. I don't know. I'm not suggesting he doesn't listen, but I think that Vaughn like a new voice, like like a new hitting coach or something. Like if he's working with somebody on the side and not listening

to his own hitting coach or not, you know what I mean? There's like try a new approach coach or something? Like if he's working with somebody on the side and not listening to his own hitting coach or not, you know what I mean? Like there's like tech try a new approach, dude. Like, well, why don't you go up there and just try to pull everything into the bleachers? Let's just, can we try that? All of the previous versions of Andrew Vaughn, the big leagues were better than this. More hard contact, you know, lower strikeout rate. Like I just I hope and his pull percentage just keeps going down and down and down.

And so does his heart it and barrel rates. And it's like, come on. Yeah, I think that's a pretty simple connect the dots situation that it could be correctable. It's like, how long do I want to wait with it in my lineup in a deep league, though, for that light to come on? It says between the slugging percentage on a pole fly ball and an opposite field fly ball.

Oh, it's like 400 points, isn't it? Oh, it's even more. I think it was more than that. It was 700 plus slugging. Yeah, it's a lot. I mean, I know we've talked to it's a lot. It's a big difference. Well, there's also like knowing that

and being able to execute it to like he may be fully aware of the problem and just like needs. That's what we're talking about. Torkelson is some like trying to figure out that contact point. Right. Some of that can be going on with Andrew Vaughn as well. We are going to go on our way out the door. A reminder to get a subscription to the athletic at the athletic dot com slash rates and barrels. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you haven't done so already, we go live at one o'clock Eastern on Fridays. Give us a nice rating and review.

Wherever you listen to this podcast, you can find Eno on Twitter at EnoSaris. You can find me at Derek and Riper. You could find the pod at rates and barrels. That's going to do it for this episode of rates and barrels. We're back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for watching!