Rates & Barrels - Reach Rates, Getting Hitters to Chase & Streakiness

Episode Date: August 6, 2020

Eno and DVR take a look at reach rate leaders and laggards, as well as chase rates leaders and laggards, and try to determine what thriving (or struggling) in these metrics might mean for future performance. Rundown1:41 Water Is Good6:09 Reach Rate Leaders9:52 Reach Rate Laggards15:47 Re-Thinking Cavan Biggio20:20 Trent Grisham in Keeper/Dynasty, Projected 2021 ADP25:49 Concerns About Rafael Devers’ Sluggish Start?30:27 Why Teams Don’t Buy In on Corey Dickerson37:05 Chase Rate Leaders47:20 Chase Rate Laggards52:07 Josh James’ Quick Move Back to the Bullpen55:49 Streaky vs. Consistent Players in Short Season Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiperE-mail: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Everything you could possibly want, all for the best deal in sports media. 40% off at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 121. It's Thursday, August 6th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. And on this episode, we're going to talk about reach rates a lot because Eno said something that kind of blew my mind on the last episode. I didn't freak out on the air about it.

I sort of just let it go by and decided we should explore it on another episode. But we want to know who's thriving and who's flailing right now in terms of not swinging at pitches outside the zone or swinging too much at those pitches. We're also going to look at the pitcher side of that metric. We'll see who's getting hitters to chase, who's not getting hitters to chase. And we're going to discuss the concept of streakiness versus consistency and how that may or may not be helpful in a shortened season. This is inspired somewhat by the early season struggles of Justin Upton as well as a mailbag question that came in a few weeks back.

So we'll try to make some sense of limited samples for guys that have pretty volatile track records of production. Eno, how's it going for you on this Thursday? It is good. I'm going to the beer store today. Always a good day. That is a good day. Do you have a ritual?

Do you have a fixed appointment with your beer vendor, your local beer keep? Unfortunately, he gets the best stuff, I think, earlier in the week, and I go later in the week. the best stuff i think earlier in the week and i go later in the week but you know i have dry mondays and wednesdays and often dry tuesdays um so i just don't feel like going to the beer store on a day i'm not gonna drink anything that i buy that is sort of disappointing to go to the store and buy a few things and come back and go, okay, you're for three days from now. Exactly. So I usually go on Thursday and Friday. It costs me a little bit,

but usually he holds on to something exciting for me. And so that's good. Excited for the weekend. I'm going to probably try and find a lake and jump in it. Good plan. Good plan. I'm going to do that probably about two or three weeks from now. I had some days off where I was going to move.

Now I'm not going to move, so I'm going to take those days off and probably rent a boat and spend some time on a lake. There you go. Not think about anything for a few days because I feel like my brain has been just running overtime right now. I was talking about this on Tom Tolbert's show on the radio the other day. You know, we went from zero to the fire hose. And if you like any other sport other than baseball right now, it's very difficult to decide what to do with your time. I mean, hockey is playing.

Is hockey in the playoffs or almost? They're kind of doing like a qualifier thing for their last few spots. So, yeah, they're basically of doing like a qualifier thing for their last few spots so yeah they're basically in playoff mode and basketball is like just finishing up the season to to get to the playoffs but they're you know everybody's playing this is almost never never happens i don't think it ever happens that these three sports are all playing at the same time and football is like making news in terms of like you know who's opting out and who's going to play and they're about to start so it's going to be every sport at once which is just ridiculous and within baseball since there's this whole 2.7 thing where like every moment is 2.7 moments this is math uh it just feels just

like uh we went from you know staring at walls to staring at walls because we can't decide what to put on. So it's a little crazy. And one thing I like is just I think and this might be true for everybody, but large bodies of water are magical. There's something about and I think, you know, I kind of grew up on a beach, but there's something about, you know, a large body of water that reminds you how inconsequential you are, but in a good way. Where you can feel connected to the world and a lot of the stuff that was bothering you can kind of wash away, pun intended. Because you're just like, I am nothing against these thousands of tons of water, you know. Anyway, that's that's something that I felt recently just going to the beach for for a few days, even as I was working while I was at the beach, like going to the beach was very sort of uplifting and relaxing. Just the sort of cadence of the water you know i don't know

there's there's something about large bodies of water that uh i i have to live near one like i cannot not live near one yeah i'm lucky you've got a little lakes here in the upper midwest so i've got a few options but i think it's just the quiet you. It's not being tethered to computers or a TV. And then it's just not having a lot of road noise. In most places, if you're on a large body of water, there's not an adjacent highway. I mean, there's a few random exceptions, of course. But it's very tranquil, I think, is why it just calms everything down. So looking forward to that in a few weeks.

All it is, this isn't a complaint about how busy things are because compared to the alternative, it's horrible. I think it's realizing that in order to keep up in a four sports running simultaneously sort of world where my responsibilities overlap to those sports, like I need to just step outside, take a day off here and there. Like I need a few more maintenance days right now than I did in August and September's past. So I'm just going to do that, and it'll be fun. So let's start talking about some reach rates

because the stat that you threw at me on the Tuesday show was that Trent Grisham leads the league in reach rate, leads it in a good way, and he has the lowest one, 15.1% is the number. And I thought, well well who else is doing really well in this regard because i i know grisham's got great plate discipline but elite of the elite i mean this is the kind of category that someone like joey vato probably at his peak was frequently either at or near the top of the leaderboard there and if you're able to do that

but you also bring power and you also bring speed that's the foundation for a star level player when you put all of those things together so the grisham thing really stood out to me when you said it the other guys who are in the same category early on this season max muncie 15.4 anthony rendon right there at 15.5%. Mark Kanha at 15.6%. Tiny little break and you get to Mookie Betts. Brian Goodwin, I would say, is another surprise being this high on there. He's not a whiff machine by any stretch of the imagination, but I don't think of him as a low strikeout rate guy.

And I think that's kind of where my mind goes when I think, who do I expect to see on this leaderboard? Low strikeout rate guys. Carlos Santana is on this leaderboard? Low strikeout rate, guys. Carlos Santana is on this leaderboard. Yoshi Setsugo, Kevin Biggio, Yandy Diaz, Mikey Stremski, Brandon Nimmo, and Matt Olson, all in the mid-18% range. I think you bring up a good point. I think the expected strikeout rate for all these guys

is actually maybe higher than you expect, right? Like Grisham's at 24 percent um you know the lowest strikeout rate is probably bets and rendon maybe but like tsutsugo biggio you know santana these guys strike out you know um and i think what happens is uh not swinging at balls is also not swinging and not swinging is correlated with power and overall production but also and walks but also strikeouts um and so i think a guy like brandon nimmo is a perfect thing to sort of bring up as maybe not a cautionary tale but like that this is not just a one stat where you're like if you are good at this you are good and i'm not

saying brandon nimmo is bad what i'm saying is that he can sometimes be a little too patient and can kind of watch ball strike three sometimes. And some when he's at his best, he actually kind of ups his aggressiveness. So there is a relationship between your natural ability to make contact with the ball and how patient you want to be, I think. There is a sort of too patient for some people. But looking at Grisham and seeing a 5.7% swing or strike rate, and he's leading the league in not swinging pitches outside the zone, that's the combo I'm looking for.

Okay, so you're looking at overall swing rates in concert with swinging outside the zone and contact rates like if you have a high swing strike rate and never swing it stuff outside of the zone you can still be a very valuable player i think that's probably i'm going to pick up uh muncie or like biggio's a little bit like that but let me muncie seems a little bit more stereotypical in this regard let me see so his swinging strike rate is 10%, which is more like league average. So he has a 25% strikeout rate, but what he gets for that is a really high OBP. And when he's, when he makes contact for power, a lot of, a lot of power. So, um, you know, I think that's the sort of way for a lot of people, but that is a little bit of kind of old man baseball.

Um, and, and the reason I bring this up is actually because of the laggards. I don't know if you want to jump into the laggards or if you want to kind of look at more of the leaders and, and dice them up a little bit. Let's throw the laggards out there just for some good counterpoints, right? As a good way to support the idea that being great at this doesn't mean you're necessarily just going to be a good hitter across the board.

The laggards, the guys who are swinging the most at pitches outside the zone, Jonathan Scope, up above 50%, 56.3%. That seems very high. Yadier Molina, wouldn't expect to see him on this list, 55.2%. They've only played a handful of games, so that could be part of it with him. Luis Robert, who is very aggressive. You look at his overall swing rights,

he swings the bat a ton, 49.6%. He got Jose Peraza in there. Bo Bichette, 46.4%. Sal Perez, Anthony Santander, Jeff McNeil, Eduardo Escobar, Rafael Devers, Eddie Rosario, Corey Dickerson, Hanser Alberto. Now, a few of those names really stick out to me because they're good hit tool guys. Like Bo Bichette is hit tool overpower, uses the entire field. I don't think that means there's a problem here when you see him on this leaderboard. I think it sort of sheds some light on maybe just how much he can attack pitches that aren't even in the zone and still get good results. Jeff McNeil, I mean, yes, low strikeout rate. Hanser Alberto isn't a great fantasy player, but he's another Jeff McNeil. He puts a ton of balls in play, right? So you do have to start looking at this and saying, okay,

not an automatic ignore trade away, you know, sell high sort of situation. If you see these guys on the laggard end of the board, this is actually, I think it's fascinating. It's very interesting, but it's also very hard to use in a fantasy way and to kind of say things that are monolithic. Like, for example, Josh Hamilton always swung a lot, right? And he swung at pitches outside of the zone. And he did not have a great hit tool. But one of the problems, A, you can say this does not age well, and that is a true thing if you look at how people that depend on contact outside of the zone, people that swing at pitches outside of the zone, it does not age well.

So if Robert continues to do this, it will not age well. If Bichette continues to do this, it will not age well. If Bichette continues to do this, it will not age well. So these are important things for dynasty leagues. And you can do say that monolithically. But when Hamilton was going well, one of the things that he did was swing so aggressively that he got out in front of some of his problems. Like he swung three times and finally made contact before he struck out. You know what I mean?

Like it might not have been a good thing to tell Hamilton, wait on more pitches. If he does not have great sense of what the zone is, he's going to wait on more strikes and just strike out more and not get the power. And I'm looking at a historical leaderboard. I just went from 2010 to 2020 just to see like what kinds of names have done this in the recent past, right? The first name that popped

into my head when you said this doesn't age well was Pablo Sandoval, which he was one of the better bad ball hitters in the league at his peak, but it was a short-lived peak, right? And there are other reasons for that, you know, potentially body type could maybe make a player age a little faster anyway, but you take that approach. That's the main problem. Vlad Guerrero, not a surprise. Senior, not junior. Number one, if you look back at 2010 through 2020,

45.3% O-swing percentage. This is a guy that would hit pitches that bounced on occasion. Not a surprise to see him there, but AJ Pruszynski. 45.3% swing percentage. This is a guy that would hit pitches that bounced on occasion. Not a surprise to see him there. But AJ Pruszynski. But also maybe not amazing aging. A lot of these guys didn't age amazingly, right? No, a lot of them didn't.

Javi Baez is pretty high on this list. Some randos like Jimmy Paredes is in the top 10. Reed Johnson. Eddie Rosario. I mean, that's just kind of who Eddie Rosario is. I think the reason I wanted to bring this up is I think a lot of times we get fixated on players who are very productive, but they don't do it in the sabermetrically ideal sort of way, and they get dinged for it.

They kind of fall into this range where they keep producing top 50 players, but because it doesn't look pretty in all the ways we want it to look pretty, they fall into that 51 to 100 or even the 100 to 150 range. I think that actually describes Eddie Rosario the last few years. Brandon Phillips was always my thing. It doesn't look like he should be good. There's all these things that are wrong with him. He strikes out too much.

He doesn't wait on pitches. He doesn't walk. But I do think it is important when it comes to aging. I mean, when he talked to Joey Votto, he says, I'm doing everything I can to age as well as I can. And I think he's right to say that by not swinging pitches outside of the zone, where ozone contact is one of the things that ages the worst,

because I think it relies the most on athleticism. If you think about it, hitting a pitch at your nipples, that's really hard to do, and you have to have really kind of supple wrists and a lot of flexibility and the ability to make bat speed really quickly. You know what I mean? Like these things are, I think, athletic things. But like hitting a pitch down the middle, I think you can do for longer, right? So if you kind of just concentrate on just pitches in the zone,

just pitches down the zone, in the middle, you can age a little better. So I do think that like a Grisham and a Rendon and a Betts, I think they're going to age better. And even Biggio with a little bit less contact ability, I think they're going to age better than Eddie Rosario and Robert and Javi Baez. I think that's true because I think their game is a little bit less just dependent on athleticism. So Biggio came up back in the fall, I want to say after the 2019 season.

I think we talked about him on our live episode at First Pitch Arizona in November. He's such a strange player. It's extreme fly ball at the approach. It's off the charts high walk rate. It's off the charts, high walk rate. It's the potential for a high K rate. I mean, the very early returns of the season, he's down a little bit compared to where he was last year. He's got a couple of home runs. He's still on a base in the first nine games. And I think the main concern that we brought up in November was that he

does not hit the ball hard, but he hits the ball in the 8 to 32 degree launch angle range. So he's really good in the sweet spot percentage metric. So even though he's not hitting the ball hard to get the elevated barrel rate, he's in the range for the barrel rate all the time because of his approach. And I think because he's so selective, he's able to do that. That's a skill that he really seems to own that makes him a very unique sort of player and i'm already wondering if the way i was looking at cavin biggio just seven or eight months ago was actually wrong if i was looking at maybe only 50 of the puzzle and now that i kind of see how this approach you know merges together blends together with the way he's able to control the strike zone i'm a little more

comfortable buying in despite that flaw of low average exit velocity because part of launching the ball like that is you're going to hit some soft fly balls like that's just going to happen with an approach like the one that he chooses to employ yeah there is something that seems borderline about him to me i don't know if it is athleticism i'd like to see his sprint speeds for example like he he steals bases um let me see if i've got sprint speed on here around another sprint speed 130th in the mlb it's kind of amazing that he steals bases and he's 130th in sprint speed how much of that though so I mean this is where it's like his dad played in the big leagues for a long time, great big leaguer. How much of that

is just knowing things, having higher than average ability to read pictures and get jumps, right? There are things we talk about about stealing bases that aren't directly tied to sprint speed itself. I think we've even found with some of Jeff Zimmerman's research

that sprint speed doesn't really correlate as well with stolen bases as we all think it would. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that he like knows the game really well. You know, that's something that I would say. I think he knows his game really well. And I think he gets a lot out of it. But you know, there is like now, his launch angle is 23, and that's getting a little bit high. And, in fact, his barrel rate is down. He only has one barrel so far. Not that this is something we should be talking about definitively in small samples,

but there's something that does smack to me is, like, getting the most out of what he's got and what happens when he's got even less. Yeah. But not a guy that's going to have a 12-year career where he's still fantasy relevant in year 12. That's probably the long-term projection, right? It's probably a three- to five-year sort of run

and then bench duty for a long time because he can play multiple spots and just kind of does everything well enough to hang around. And I don't want to hang untouchable or get at all costs on trent grisham you know 241 plate appearances into his career but he does check these boxes where he has the low swing strike rate so i think he has that's a as close as we have to a kind of understanding hit tool for hitters right and he has the amazing plate discipline and he has athleticism because he's he's stealing bases he's playing center field defense like i think he could age really well the only thing is like right now 55 fly ball right that's a little aggressive uh but it's working out well for him and that is something that i think he can toggle over time um hopefully it's not set in stone just

yet uh but that's the only sort of asterisk I have on him because as he ages, he can move to the corners. And he still has enough power and patience to be useful in the corners. So he really checks a lot of the boxes when it comes to aging well. And this is the beginning of it, I think. And why does Mookie Betts get a ton of money? It's not necessarily that he's the best player in baseball. It's that he's got that speed. He's got the all-around athleticism that will help him remain relevant as he gets

older, the kind of Curtis Granderson with a better hit tool, right? And Curtis Granderson was one of the better kind of late career signings that I can remember. I'm trying to think, you know, if I had Trent Grisham in a keeper or a dynasty league what would i want right now it it seems like a very good time to deal him just in the most basic by low sell high yeah right i mean like his projections coming into the season were basically all 240 for the average like high 240s at best 330 340 obp which isn't bad and then 440 440 450 slugging something in that range like that's pretty consistent across the board with all the projection systems slightly above the average bat yeah he's a lefty in a park that squashes

left-handed power like that works against him being in petco i think the truth is always somewhere in the middle like is he a star well he could be is he way over his skis maybe but could he maybe age really well and be really and be really good while he's while he's doing it like yeah i think there's a chance that someone in your league thinks that they're selling high and would trade him away for less than they probably should that's the way i would describe it i don't think he's an obvious yeah like you said not a go get him regardless of cost kind of player but i do think someone might be looking at him more as found money than i don't know maybe a top 100 player going into the next season. I think if you said try and project Trent Grisham's 2021 ADP today,

we're talking 13 games into a shortened season on August 6th, what is Trent Grisham's 2021 ADP? I would set the over-under at 100 overall. That's about where I expect him to fall based on what we're seeing right now because i don't think he's four homers and three steals for every 13 games he plays it'd be insane he'd be a first rounder if that were the case right like he's having a great start to the season and he's got a lot of good skills to fall back on so i see him in that 100 range yeah i think that's uh i think that's like i doubt that he holds like a 300 iso basically

right i have no reason to believe he's gonna hold that even though like triple a last year in a brief stint he did that but that's pcl and super happy fun ball yeah yeah yeah and it's kind of hard to figure out what the ball is doing i'm excited for kind of like a rob arthur uh breakdown on this because um you know what we're seeing is like perhaps the hitters are behind uh the pitchers generally uh in terms of preparation and readiness uh but also we're seeing that the the league is playing more shenanigans with regards to relievers are pitching more than ever. And that's got to suppress offense a little bit. And then on top of that, you've got, you know, just league wide trends in pitch design and pitch velocity, which are, you know,

up again, you know, as always. And so, you know so these things are all kind of pointing in different directions. And yeah, it's concerning that right now we have almost another percentage point higher. We're almost at 24% as the league average strikeout rate. And the batting average right now is 232. I just don't know how much this is going to continue. And I don't know how the ball fits into that. We do have Masahiro Tanaka and other guys saying, well don't know how the the ball fits into that we do have masahiro tanaka and other guys saying well you know the ball feels different uh but i don't even know if

that's still true uh because we we can't right now it's really hard for us to kind of survey a lot of people on things because they're all these zoom chats and chats and access is just really fundamentally strange right now. So I think we have to wait for the drag numbers to come in to tell us a little bit more about how the ball is playing. And I don't think it's going to take that much longer to get that read on how much the ball has potentially changed or if it's still the same. We're not that far away from being able to figure that out. I think back to the analysis that was being done in the postseason last year, that was turned around pretty quickly.

So I don't think it's going to be more than, what, a couple more weeks before we have some pretty good insight into what the 2020 ball really is like. Yeah, no, I think he's close. He's been talking about it, and I think we'll hear about it perhaps next week. The one thing that is making his research more difficult perhaps is that they, because of COVID,

are throwing more balls away. And I think we're talking about two or three times as many balls being used per game as usual. And that means that the sort of ball-to-ball variation is higher. And so that means that you kind of want a larger sample. It's also batch-to-batch variation. So they're going through more batches. Ideally, to get the best drag numbers, you'd have the same ball thrown over and over again, right?

to get the best drag numbers, you'd have the same ball thrown over and over again, right? Then you would know, well, you want some relationship between the same ball so that you kind of know your drag metrics are correct and different balls so that you kind of have more sample of different balls. So I don't know. There is something to the fact that they're throwing more balls away and they're using way more balls. So I think next week we'll probably hear more about it i've got one player on this laggards board for hitters that i want to ask you about rafael devers is off to a terrible start

12 games so far one homer 32.7 k rate walk rates down a little bit from where it was last year maybe just be a slump there's plenty of players who are slumping to begin the season christian yelich doesn't look like christian yelich right now it's easy to find players that are just off to slow starts right not a big deal but when you start to look at underlying numbers and you if you see a big change in something like this if you see a hitter being a lot more aggressive and swinging at pitches outside the zone more often, are we getting close to a point where you'd look at that and start to look at year over year differences now that we're a few weeks into this season? Does that start to move the needle a little bit and suggest that something

could be wrong? To me, it's kind of like a caution light in a car where the problem might actually be pretty small, or it might be a couple grand to get it fixed. And in Devers' case, I'm a little bit concerned because it looks like the approach has just not quite been what it was a year ago in the early weeks of the season. Yeah, it's a little different. These sort of metrics have a fairly high uh year-to-year uh correlation and um you know in the in the case where someone has a kind of a demonstrated um you know other way of being then i would say um you know we were looking at for example the stabilization of this sort of stuff and uh when it comes to oh swing and swing you kind of you do want more sample than we've gotten so far.

There are things that become more meaningful early, but you also kind of want more sample. And so he hasn't been this bad in his past. But I will point out that his reach rates have been above average in every year of his career. They haven't been as bad as they are now, but he's always been a guy who reaches a little bit more. I was hoping that he would kind of continue to make progress that he seemed to have made last year. And so this is a little disappointing, but it also kind of talks about how improvement is not linear

and you can take steps back and kind of revert to old ways. So Devers does strike me as someone who might be in this pool of not actually aging that well. You look at his natural play discipline is not that great, and his athleticism is good, and his age is good at 23. But what will he look like at 30 and 31? I'm not sure that I want to find that out on my roster. Yeah, I do think the longer view is key here. I think with Devers, how much of this is just complications from his ramp-up, right?

Like getting back into the fold. And I don't know. I just think everybody is going to handle these things differently too. This is an abnormal season. And I can't hold it against the player who comes out and struggles for 12, 15, 20 games. It's just going to look so bad in a 60-game season. It's going to drag down production so much more than it would over the full 162. But he struck me as a guy that just doesn't seem quite right. 16Ks against just two walks in 12 games so far this season. Anybody

else on either of those lists really jump off the page to you in a good way or a bad way? I mean, I've had a few looks at Luis Robert in this series against the Brewers. He looks phenomenal. He just looks so good. Yeah, yeah. And I think that when you're in this age range, 23 and debuting, I do think that it's possible we might overvalue some of his production this year going into drafts next year. If he continues to have a huge BABIP and not be penalized for his 25% swing strike rate, 28% KK rate, and ridiculous reach rate, I think he may end up being overvalued next year and we may not understand the batting average risk as well as we think we do but I think that he's shown so much athleticism

in terms of his max exit velocity, sprint speed and his ability on the field, the base pass and at the plate that these are concerns for five years, six years from now mostly, other than that kind of Babbitt-type progression next year. One guy that sticks out to me as being sort of the modern-day Josh Hamilton, someone that you should watch out for in terms of aging, is Corey Dickerson. He's not as good as Josh Hamilton, so it won't be as obvious. But if you look at his career, like he has a 117 WRC plus for his career, right?

17% better than league average. And he hasn't been worse than 16% above league average since 2017. So he's got a four-year stretch, including this year, where he's like 15% to 20% better than the average. There should be a lot of demand for his services. You know what I mean? Like, this is a very good bat. And yet, the Rays have him for one year

and trade him away. They basically DFA him, you know, instead of paying him more. And the Pirates have him for one year and don't re-up him after he has nearly three war. I think they traded him? It was a late season trade. And then he got a two-year deal with the Marlins at least.

He got a two-year deal. But you'd think somebody coming off, somebody who's like a demonstrated 20% above the average bat. Why is he scrounging for a deal, right? And it's A, defense. Never been good at defense and kind of seems on his way to first and and and a dh but b every team knows how o contact ages you know and it's gonna fall it it's not even just that it ages badly it falls off a cliff and and let me just read his o contacts for you.

I'm not going to do all of them. But it's like 77, 70, 70, 70, 70, 73, 70, 70. Last year, 2019, 71, 72. Oh, everything's fine. Oh, my God, it's 57 now. And that's what happens. It just goes. Your ability goes. And his O swing rates are the worst in baseball year in year out so he is the modern

day josh hamilton with less athleticism so it's an even worse aging process i mean if there is if you are selling and there is and even if you think that you're going to be uh a competitive next year like cory dickerson is absolutely the kind of guy you should sell even for an A-ball pitcher type deal. Yeah, and he's maybe a throw-in type guy just to sweeten up a deal, get something else done because you're trading even a better player to get a big deal done. But interesting player for all those reasons.

The league seems to have figured it out. Yeah, he's been good, but he's not going to continue to play well especially now on the wrong side of 30 yeah and so think about jeff mcneil at 28 years old uh it is a really exciting story and it's great but this is now two years in a row he has a really big outsized um reach rate and contact rate outside the zone that's good. It could fall out at any moment. And people kind of think of him as young, I think, because he's 28. Because he hasn't been around as long. But he's old because he's 28.

So Jeff McNeil may be another person that you may want to actually trade this year. It's interesting, though, because McNeil, I kind of touched on it in passing before. I think of him as a guy with a very good hit tool. And in my mind, hit tools should age really well. Bat to ball broadly should age well. Bat to ball broadly should age well, but if it ages well only in the zone and not outside the zone, that becomes a bit of a problem. I think

McNeil is just one of the more fascinating cases league-wide. He started playing baseball late. People know the story by now. He was a really good golfer in high school and ended up playing, I think, as a junior for the first time. So definitely wasn't one of those kids that was playing baseball from the time he was eight and just traveling all over, just totally comfortable with it

and obviously has done extremely well. But like Bo Bichette, I'm surprised he's on this list because in my mind, Bo Bichette's the kind of player who would age very gracefully. He has a lot of different tools to fall back on, and the hit tool is probably his best tool. Yeah, but look around the league and how many 29-year-old shortstops are there? So will his bat play? Right now he's projected to be kind of league average to like 4% above league average with a bat. What kind of positions will that play at? I mean, I guess it would play at second, but what would it look like too if he's still striking out 23-24% of the time as much as I

think he has a great hit tool too he may end up at that point being a guy with below average power below average patience, below average contact, below average strikeout rate, and just good enough bat to play with the defense at a lesser position. So it may not be that exciting for us. I hate to be a damper. I mean, I'm just saying, like this is also, he's 22. So we're talking about like six years from now. So he's good to go. Just generally, I think reach rate, I'm more worried about in the context from now so he's he's good to go and i i just generally i think reach rate i'm more worried about in the context of aging that's that's sort of what i wanted to get across because it's a little bit harder to kind of suss the value of this in the short run

sometimes a person like cavendishio can could maybe have a breakout by being less aggressive that's sort of what i'm talking about, right? And by kind of being more aggressive. Like Nimmo has been better when he's been more aggressive. So there is a toggle. There's a personal toggle for each of these players. But in terms of aging, I have to think that all the signs are good for Trent Grisham. Well, if you're like Eno and you're picking up some beverages for the weekend, we've got some good news for you. There is a

company called Dugout Mugs, started in a college baseball dugout, who make awesome mugs. They take the barrel of a baseball bat and turn it into a 12-ounce mug. Dugout Mugs are licensed by MLB, so you can have your favorite team logo laser engraved onto a Birchwood baseball bat

barrel mug. You can also get custom logos put on the mugs as well they're perfect for the big game or to put on display and they make great gifts for the baseball fans in your life go to dugoutmugs.com slash the athletic and use the promo code mlb30 for 30 off your first purchase that's dugoutmugs.com slash theathletic and code MLB30. You know, we should look at the other side here. We should look at pitchers and see how they're doing as far as getting hitters to chase pitches outside the zone. So we're looking for high O-swing percentages for pitchers and looking at low O-swing percentages and trying to decide if that's a concern. I think before we even get into this conversation, one thing you were talking to me about before we got started is that this metric, O-swing percentage, stabilizes faster for hitters than it does for pitchers. This isn't necessarily as helpful on the pitching side, in a vacuum at least, as it would be for the hitters that we just talked about.

that we just talked about. I think we saw that it was around 1,600 pitches for pitchers, which would be like 16 starts at least. I mean, starters aren't even going to get there this year. No, they're not going to get there this year. It's not going to happen. But looking at this, I do think there is some value to it, and I want you to read the leaders because – and then tell me – I'll tell you at the end of it what i think it's

measuring okay so here's the leaderboard these are guys who are getting lots of swings and misses outside the zone qualified pitchers ryan yarbrough number one 44 percent aaron nola 42.9 jack flaherty at 40.7 louise castillo at 40.2 randy dobnik at 39.9 sandycantara at 39.3, Jacob DeGrom at 38%, Dylan Bundy at 37.5, Shane Bieber at 37.4, Adam Wainwright down at 36.8, Matthew Boyd 36.3, Kyle Hendricks at 36.1, and then Merrill Kelly at 35.9. I cut it off at 13 for some weird reason. I don't really know what that's all about. What skill do you think that's measuring? I think that's measuring the ability to fool a hitter into swinging at a bad pitch.

And that's what I think it is. But I think there are a few guys on here that... There's another word for that. Deception. Oh, that's interesting. I was thinking command. Yeah, there's some command elements here, I think, too, because to get a hitter to chase a pitch outside the zone,

it has to be convincing. It has to be close. It has to look like a strike. Yeah, it has to look like a strike the zone, it has to be convincing. It has to look like a strike. It has to look like a strike, yeah. It has to have command. It has to look like a strike. So I think we're on the same page. I think what's interesting, though, is that you see Yarbrough and Dobnik and Kyle

Hendricks. I mean, yeah, sure, those guys all have good command. It doesn't necessarily mean you have great stuff. You don't have to have great stuff to get swings and misses outside the zone that's where great command could come in and get you there so i think it's a really fun leaderboard just because those are not 13 pitchers who all attack hitters the same way yes yeah yeah and i think that um it's an undervalued skill it's a undervalued skill. It's an undervalued skill by baseball itself, command is, and that it's undervalued to some extent

because pitchers can't, no, statistically, we have a harder time putting a number on it. And so it's a lot easier to look at the radar gun, look at the pitch FX and say, this guy has great stuff. Let's improve his location strategy. The whole problem is if you have a great location strategy, i.e. heat maps and hey,

throw this here and throw this here to this batter. It still takes command to execute that. So even if you can be like, okay, we're going to adjust this location strategy so that if you're misses, if you miss, you miss outside of the zone or outside of the hitting zone. And that's basically, I don't think that people necessarily improve their command. This is where we're getting past the numbers a little bit. And my personal bias is that command is a little bit more inherent than stuff. Stuff we found in these days, like you can improve velocity. You can improve the shape of pitches. You can work at pitch design. You can change the grip. It seems like stuff is more malleable. Command, it seems

almost like the inherent thing, like how good are you at putting that ball where you want it and shaping it the way you want it. So this, this to me is a group of undervalued players. And yes, it includes Jacob deGrom. It's impossible to undervalue him i understand but also uh you know maybe matthew boyd isn't going to have these problems all year maybe he just needs to start throwing the change up a little bit more maybe uh you know maybe a little bit more gas would help him and then randy domnack to me is just fascinating because the guy who throws with that arm slot should have way problems against lefties. I went into it in a thread on Twitter yesterday, last night, where we kind of tried to examine how he got lefties out.

And basically what happens is Dobnak is dominant against righties because that arm slot is just so hard for people to pick up. So he's got deception and command, and he's got a really good breaking ball, and the fastball works from that arm slot against righties. Against lefties, the breaking ball still gets whiffs. Nothing else gets whiffs, not even the changeup that he throws, which is rare from that arm slot. What happens is all he does is focus on getting ground balls, and so that's how he had a six-inning strikeout yesterday where six-inning, one strikeout shutout basically yesterday um and that it all has

to do with just limiting the damage from lefties and some guys will go out there and just walk lefties it's kind of what denison lamette does dominate righties and walk lefties you know i don't think it's a great long-term strategy you you end up if if a righty gets a hit, it's a lot of runs, that sort of deal. But for Dobnak, I'm kind of interested to see... I think he's a pickup in almost all leagues, and I'm happy that

I have a fair amount of shares, because he was going to be my glue guy. I thought he was going to be kind of like a six-starter that got wins. But he definitely belongs on this list. He has command and funk and deception, and he has both of the things that we thought this list was measuring. And he's got three injured pitchers in his rotation, so he's squarely in that rotation.

Yeah, he looks safe for the foreseeable future. So with Dobnik having a lot of value, pretty much universally rostered, I think, after this weekend once Fab runs again. But yeah, I think this is a good group. I mean, I think Adam Wainwright could also potentially be undervalued in that I think everyone's kind of just done with him. But maybe as a streamer especially,

he's a guy that you shouldn't just completely write off at this point. I think I used him for his start against the Pirates the first weekend, and that went perfectly fine. I think picking your spots with a guy like that can still be pretty helpful. Yeah, and I think this

is actually sort of amazing that there's a core like this. I think this speaks a lot to aging. I think this speaks a lot to how well you're going to age. We'll see it a little bit on the laggards, and I want to do the laggards in a second, but Adam Wainwright,

man, the dude is throwing like 87 miles an hour at this point. And he's kind of barely a three-pitch pitcher. He's kind of a two-pitch pitcher. How is he even relevant? How are we still talking about Adam Wainwright? Because he has great command.

So all these pitchers on this list may, and it pains me to say this, because I did actually just trade Aaron Nola away in the Dynasty League, and I'm kicking myself today, man. He had a great start. But these pitchers may age well, and if you want sort of a command plus on some young pitchers,

Jesus Lozardo has above average command plus, but some injuries. Zach Gallin, to me, is the Trent Grisham of pitching. I think he's going to age amazingly well. He has four good pitches and really good command. So Zach Gallin is my good ager that I'm picking. Let me look at some other young pitchers that have high. Ross Stripling has a 115 command plus.

I think that bodes well for him. Andrew Haney, but he's like Lizardo where it's like, I have to put that injury asterisk on there. Luke Weaver has a 108 command plus. Still have to put that injury asterisk on there. Griffin Canning, 103. Huge injury asterisk. Austin Voth, 108.

And has that new splitter that I wrote about. So Alec Mills, 110. Some of these guys are like, ah, but they're just not exciting in terms of gif-ability and just bite and movement and velocity, and that's true. But you may find out that they age a lot better than you expect. I'm looking at the same kind of 10-year thing I talked about earlier with hitters to see, like, okay, who's done this really well over the past decade? Masahiro Tanaka, among starters, is number one.

Number one in Command Plus. Number one in O-Swing. I think we've found something here a little bit. Yeah. Myles Michaelis, a little higher up there than I expected. He's only been in the league for a few years since coming back, of course. DeGrom, right there, number three. All great.

Syndergaard. Yeah. Syndergaard, yeah. Carlos Carrasco, high on this leaderboard. Surprising. Carl Pavano. I mean, he had a long career. He hung around for a while.

Butt strain. Patrick Corbin is up there. Yeah. Butt strain. Yes. Definitely on Corbin. High command. Hisashi Iwakuma pops up on here.

Kind of tricky because he didn't start his career. Yeah, we got the end of his career. Chris Sale, Corey Kluber,e musgrove shane bieber dylan bundy kyle gibson kyle gibson high command plus uh marco gonzalez yep brandon mccarthy oh sean mania and then there's walker bueller josh tomlin i mean josh tomlin's still around. He's still getting guys out. Tomlin and Minaya demonstrate where the line is with stuff in command, I think. That's the sort of, they're pushing it. You know what I mean? Minaya at 88 is pushing it, man.

He is pushing it. Yes, he might have some good command but like he's he's he might lose his rotation spot like if aj puck was healthy i think the next person out of the rotation would be sean mania not chris bassett i feel like we're very critical of sean mania i know that's i'm sorry i love him not at all yeah it's so bad hopefully he can turn it around now some laggards on this guys who have been really low in terms of getting swings and misses outside the zone. One of our favorite pickups of the year, Christian Javier, number one, 21.1%. Robbie Ray, Spencer Turnbull.

You're like, uh-oh, this is a bunch of guys that we kind of like. No, it's not. Eric Fetty, Matt Shoemaker, Antonio Sensatella. There's Lucas Giolito, who I think you were probably lower on than just about anybody out there doing rankings this draft season. Rick Porcello, Mike Clevenger, Ross Stripling, and then you get Kyle Freeland, John Gray, Denelson Lemaitre, and Alex Cobb kind of rounding out the bottom of that list. Yeah, and this is, I think, where our correlation to command falls apart a little bit. think where our correlation to command falls apart a little bit um or maybe it sort of just talks about how difficult it is to kind of tease out stuff in command right because kyle freeland has has pretty good command and he's gotten it back a little bit if you look at his command plus

it was good in 2018 bad in 2019 it's above average again and i think he kind of yo-yos around based on how good his command is ross stripling has good command um and uh alex cobb has decent command so it it's not a straight one-to-one turnbull has decent command it's not a straight one-to-one correlation here but generally this is a list of stuff over command i, that's what I would say is what we're seeing with Stripling, Gray, Lamette, Senzatella, Ray, and Javier at the top. High stuff, low command. Yeah, that's a good general summary. And again, I think we should remind everyone this is still not as firm

as the hitting O-swing percentages, comparatively speaking, too. So you might have a few other surprises. Or some laggards on the 10-year list. 10-year laggards in O-swing percentage. Anyone come to mind? Anybody you think that would be on this list? I think Lamette belongs on this list and has a decent amount of sample.

I wouldn't be surprised if Lamette and Ray were on that list. So here are some names david phelps jared cozart uh give me starters and zatella give me starters i mean i filtered on oh i guess phelps you start okay jonathan sanchez oh hey there you go all stuff no command here we go here we go cj wilson oh that's surprising. Aaron Sanchez. Yeah. Giovanni Gallardo. There you go. There you go. Baldo Jimenez.

Oh. You know what? These are guys that have frustrated us for years. Oh, my God. I really think command is an undervalued thing. I hate to jump all in, but think about how hard it was to rank Josh James going into the season, right? We all saw how amazing the stuff was and how bad the command was.

This is just convincing me. What happened to him this year is just convincing me that if a guy has an 80 or 85 or lower command plus, they're not going to make my top 100 starters. They're just way more likely to become a reliever. For clarity, I think you pointed this out before. Was Tyler Glass now in the 80 to 85 range prior to his time at the Rays? 90.3, it says on there. So he was a little higher.

Just barely. I think I put a line at like 85. Yeah, because I kept looking at Josh James, and I kept seeing Tyler Glass now. I'm like, this is a smart team. They're going to figure it out. It was worse, and it kept seeing Tyler Glass now. I'm like, this is a smart team. They're going to figure it out. It was worse, and it happened to be worse.

Here are the worst Command Plus guys that I put in my top 100. Denilson Lemaitre, 89, and that's why he's on this list here. Dustin May, 91, where you're just like, oh, so much stuff. It's probably going to be all right. Garrett Richards, 89. So I think that's where my line is, around 90. Then Tyler Chatwood, 86. But I think the cutter has really helped him improve it. Dylan Cease, 89.8.

So 90 is a really kind of significant area. Nate Pearson was 88 in his first start. It'd be interesting to see, for debuts, are guys quite a bit lower because it's their first time out? Yeah, on average five or ten points lower than the rest of their season yeah that's it might be something i have enough sample to do i'll look into that that seems like an interesting article sean newcomb 89 but this lines up with what we think right took you to saint 87 but he's he was uh he's just sneaking into my 100 now because of opportunity.

So I already did this, but I did have Josh James in around 55 or something, and he has an 87 going in. Joey Lucchese, 88. So I'm not going to make a hard line at 90, but it's getting harder. I really turfed Joey Lucchese because of this, and it feels like I did the right thing. I think part of it with Josh James comes back to game theory, though, where at the price, I think you can gamble on someone like that, but you have to know if they didn't pull him from the rotation,

if this were a full season, they may have given him a little more time to figure it out. Would you have benched him? Would you have cut him? Do you have the discipline to do that? I don't know if I'd have that. I think I would have had the, no, the stuff's too good.

Got to keep rolling him out there. Yeah. And you keep taking on water in the form of those bad ratios. I did. I got one share of him and I definitely ran him out there every day. Do you keep him as a multi-inning reliever, especially with Ozuna out?

Although, yeah, I mean, he could be in the mix for closing, but I just think that it's mostly Presley. I think Presley's so good that as long as he's healthy, he's the guy. But if we were talking about rostering Trevor Richards on every episode for 27 straight episodes, I mean, Josh James out of the bullpen could be really good. Sneaking some wins in there, plenty of Ks,

but could be a bumpy ride as we've seen already in those first couple starts. And I would say that all the names that you mentioned did not age well. No. No, they did not. So Tyler Chatwood was on that list, and you mentioned the cutter being a big difference for him. I think he was in your stuff and command report last Friday. That's why pitch mix changes are so big

because pitch mix changes can change not only your stuff number but your command number because you might command this new pitch better. Should we trust Tyler Chatwood? How much should we trust Tyler Chatwood? Is he legitimately a top 50 starter the rest of the way with that adjustment? I'm not going that far. I put him 65.

Okay, 65. So in a 12-team league, he's your SP6. He's in the lineup a lot. You'd sit him in tough matchups, but you'd still use him more often. If Milwaukee's offense gets going and you pitch Chatwood in Milwaukee, I'm... Yeah, tough park. Good lineup when everyone's healthy and playing well. Beatable right now.

Lots of swing and miss, though. I think the Brewers are temporarily at least a team you can stream against, especially outside of Miller Park. They'll probably figure it out, but I don't know. It's rough. Who are the Cubs? Who are the cubs stand up and take a bow if you had the cubs for being like you know the team that would take this short sample high

variance thing and just write it into the sunset man just like just be like oh you thought our pitching staff was bad guess what we have great starters really you have great starters. Really? You have great starters? What? I mean, Chatwood and Mills both like, and I believe in Mills. I believe in Mills. It masks their greatest flaw.

They, they, they to me are not a playoff caliber bullpen. They are a bullpen that will, but it's going well now too, even with Kimbrel falling apart. Yeah. Rowan Wick.

He's the real deal. Let's move on to a question that came in from Andrew. It's a question at least inspired by Andrew. Justin Upton kind of seems like he's in the small side of the platoon because things are getting crowded in Anaheim. They brought up Joe Adele, like we talked about on Tuesday. Brian Goodwin, not swinging at pitches outside the zone, kind of on the big side of that platoon with Upton right now. The question from Andrew was about streaky players,

and it was in a season like the one that we're having, doesn't it make sense to devalue the boring and steady players and find the players with the record or capacity, not just for high-soaring single games, but for six, seven, or eight-game stretches, guys that just go on fire for a while. And Justin Upton was one of his examples. I think Rugnet Odor was also an example that he brought up.

So he was kind of wondering, who else is streaky and for the longest period? Those are the players I'm looking for. Do you think that's the right way to look at the pool this year to try and find lightning in a bottle? The guys, I mean, Chris Davis with a K, I think when he's hot, he looks as good as any player in the league. when he's hot, he looks as good as any player in the league. When he's off, he's striking out uncontrollably and you want to drop him. You're afraid to drop him because when he bounces back, it changes your team for a stretch of 10 or

15 games. Do you believe in this whole concept? Yeah, it's a tight wire act. You just nailed it with Chris Davis, I think. In a season where we have to make decisions faster and teams are going to make decisions faster because like chris davis is now sitting against righties you know um that makes them easier to drop like i think chris davis is droppable i don't know al only maybe you just have to hold on but in most other leagues like if he's not going to be starting against righties like only maybe you just have to hold on but in most other leagues like if he's not going to be starting against right he's like we got to move on and so you could actually kind of chase this a little bit because um in a short sample a volatile player could do well or do badly and in this situation if they're doing badly their team is likely to sit them and they're going to be it's going to

be easier to be like hey i'm just going to drop this guy. So if a door starts out badly, then just drop him because his team has other options, and they may go to those other options, just like the A's have done with Chris Davis. The way to find these players, and I think you might have noticed it just by the examples we've given so far, is strikeout rate.

Bill Petty did a stat called volatility, which measured how wide the range was between your best kind of rolling 15-game Woba and your worst. So your best and your worst, like how wide is that gap? And the biggest normal stat that correlates with volatility is strikeout rate. So you can just sort by strikeout rate. You got Domingo Santana. This is last year's strikeout rate,

but Domingo Santana, Danny Santana, Suarez, maybe seems to be on the opposite end of that sort of streakiness right now. Luke Voigt, Javier Baez, Juan Mankata, I think is a streaky player. Jackie Bradley Jr. is 11th in strikeout rate last year. The definition of streaky. Totally unusable at times and totally top 10 player at other times.

You could look by strikeout rate. The problem is picking them up right now. If you pick a guy up right now that has a high strikeout rate that is struggling you may find that the team chris davis is him right uh but if you have a guy that's a high strikeout rate let me switch over to 2020 high strikeout rate but doing well like maybe he's overvalued and how available is he? Let's see. High strikeout rate, but doing well. Ryan McMahon? Easily replaceable if it

goes south at all. Wilson Contreras? Not easily replaceable, but not on wires. John Birdie? Hitting 222. Dansby Swanson? Not on wires. I'm trying to find a guy who's doing well, high strikeout rate, and on your wires.

Oh, Will Myers, maybe. Will Myers might have a great season. He could. He seems to be on the right side of the volatility right now. He's got a lot of ways to make value, too, because he's got power and speed. It's basically you don't expect a good batting average. I think that's where we're at right now. He is running hot.

Those plate skills look identical to last year in terms of strikeout rate and walk rate through the early going. Yeah, he's hitting 302 with homers. But even last year when it wasn't going well for him 18 homers 16 steals in 155 games which is why he might not be on the wire right yeah i think people were still chasing that power speed combo so who's on the wire then kyle schwarber if someone dropped him uh you know cj crone is not doing well but the power's there and he could go off once the Tigers start playing again. Benintendi looks like a mess.

Yeah, that's surprising. I thought Benintendi was going to be a good value where he was going. I'm a little nervous about that. It's early, but it's not that early. That Boston team is falling apart. they have major issues pitching

that we talked about but they they just they look like they are folding right now jdm is complaining about jd martinez is complaining about uh not having video in between at bats hitting poorly it's all it's all messy in boston at point. But thanks a lot for the question, Andrew. We've got one more Twitter response that I wanted to get to on this episode. And this was a suggestion for the name of your sandwich shop. And it came in just the other day. The suggestion was that you name your sandwich shop wraps and barrels works pretty good it works pretty good but then what about the sandwiches that aren't wraps yeah yeah that's that's the

problem right like wraps are just sometimes they're not all the time well it kind of inspires me oh no i can't do a wrap today i might want to do a sandwich today but i've got brioche and when you have brioche you use the brioche i actually actually use brioche for Sloppy Joe's now. Oh, and I made some grilled cheeses. The brioche was amazing. I made French toast. The brioche was amazing. I made a roast beef with brioche.

Oh, I really like it. It's a magic bread, really. It's probably not good for me. Oh, it's definitely not good for us. It's one of the best breads you can readily have available so you have to do it if you're enjoying this show on a platform that allows you to rate and review the podcast please take the time to do that we greatly appreciate it if you don't have a subscription to the athletic already again get 40 off at the athletic.com slash rates and barrels get eno stuff all of our baseball coverage

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rates and barrels as always you can reach us via email rates and barrels at the athletic dot com spell out the word. And if you go that route on Twitter, he's at, you know, Sarah's I'm at Derek van Riper. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of rates and barrels.

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