Rates & Barrels - Rising Hitters & Early Round Starting Pitchers

Episode Date: September 22, 2020

Eno and DVR discuss another wave of rising hitters with an eye toward 2021 before contemplating some of the projected early-round starting pitchers as forecasted by friend and brilliant fantasy baseball mind, Vlad Sedler. Rundown1:53 Buying Conforto's 2020 & Machado's Push Back Up the Board9:31 Thinking About Position Eligibility Again18:06 Luke Voit is Mashing Despite ‘Foot Stuff’21:54 Game Show! (wRC+ Leaders Since 2018)25:49 Nitro: A Large Bucket View of Hitters30:55 Makes Sense of Teoscar Hernandez, Ian Happ & Dominic Smith43:35 The Early Round SPs60:03 Trevor Bauer’s Workload Dream Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic for $1/month at theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is episode 141, Tuesday, September 26, 2020. Derek Van Riper here with Eno Saris on this episode. We're going to talk about some hitters who did not make the cut last week as locks for early, early round status. We talked about top 25 hitters overall. Several hitters fell short. We got a few emails about that. We have a nice prediction tweet that came out from our friend Vlad Sedler at RotoGut taking a stab at early starting pitcher ADPs. So we'll talk about a few surprises in Vlad's group there and a bunch of other great mailbag questions. One about a strategy that was employed in the head-to-head league that I think is pretty interesting as well.

So let's get to it right away here, Eno. We looked at a lot of hitters on our last episode, and there were plenty of notable omissions, right? We had our next five guys that had cases to be top 25 hitters. We talked a lot about those guys, but there are a bunch of players who've had great seasons. Guys like Jose Abreu, Manny Machado, Luke Voigt, who have put up great numbers, and they were not part of that conversation at all. And as I went through and kind of looked at a lot of those players, most of the ones who fell out of the next guys in conversation don't steal bases. There's a few very tricky players sprinkled in. I would say Will Myers

is probably the most surprising player who's had a great season this year that very few people expected. Like if I go back to the winter and spring, I don't recall anybody touting Will Myers as somebody that you really wanted to have at the price because some sort of massive bounce back was coming. So as you start to look at the players who fell short, is there anybody that you feel has a really good case to be considered an easy top 40 sort of overall player who we didn't cover on our episode last Thursday. I mean, I was always waiting for this sort of breakout from Michael Conforto. And I think it mostly came from an ironing out of the splits,

a little bit better results against left-handers. Because otherwise there's not... And some bad ball luck maybe. But that could be a big deal because Conforto, who plays every day, is better than the Conforto who sat against lefties a lot. I guess I saw this coming to some extent for Ian Happ. I thought Eloy Jimenez could do this. And Kyle Tucker, I think, puts the power together

with the speed in a way that should be here. And then I think Manny Machado, this is more of a return to grace than anything. So it's just a question of how his age interacts with his projections next year. So those are the names that pop out at me as being legitimate risers that we should discuss for sure. And one thing that's really been kind of funny in the last few days as teams have

hit the 54 game mark, that of course is 162 divided by three. I think I've heard just about every announcer or baseball analyst out there just triple up the numbers and say, this is the pace everyone's on. Manny Machado is on a 48 homer, 18 steal pace. And I think it's a little bit dangerous because it's difficult to sustain your best 60 games or your best 54 games over three whole segments like that. But look, I think with Machado, you hit the nail on the head. He was one of those players that the decline last year didn't really make a lot of sense. And I think the surface numbers made it seem a lot worse than it was. I think there was some interesting evidence to suggest that maybe he was pressing a little bit,

trying to earn every dollar of that contract in year one. Obviously, the improvements to the lineup around him have helped the counting stats a bit. But I think the thing that really surprises me the most is that Manny Machado has the same number of steals as Ronald Acuna. That is something I would not have expected at all, and I was someone who thought Machado was a really nice early mid-round target, kind of going around that pick 50, pick 60 range as someone that you knew was going to play every day. He was going to bring run production, and his batting average floor was probably a lot higher than what he showed us a year ago.

Yeah, you know, I don't think I'd be comfortable pacing out those steals. I think in a full season, Manny, like, listen, I think that people make too much of a big deal of this when, like, someone doesn't run out a ground ball, you know? There are ground balls where you are 99% out the minute you see it happen you know what i mean and as an athlete you know especially an aging athlete i mean he's 28 so he's not too old yet but like you know as an athlete who has to think about years and years of production and getting

the most out of those it doesn't always make sense to fully run out something, maybe blow out a hammy and lose a month of playing time for a 0.1% chance. I just don't think that's, you don't, you don't actually have to run your hardest on every ground ball. And I think that if we had a full season, Manny would have some ups and downs in the season where he'd be like, Ooh,

you know, I'm feeling something barking. I'm not going to try and steal bases for the next two or three weeks. You know what I mean? Um, and I just don't see a guy who last stole 20 in 2015 and who stole 14 in 2018. I would not feel project. I would not feel comfortable just being like, Whoa, he would have stolen 20 bases this year. Nah, dude, he would have, if it'd been a full year, he would have stolen eight bases this year nah dude he would have if it had been a full year he would have stolen eight that's how i see it so um it is nice that he stole any bases it is nice that you can put a non-zero number in his projections i think you could probably projection project him next year for three to five stolen bases um and that is not nothing it keeps you afloat it's it's

something that adds to your if you only need 100 or 120 to be competitive in your league, five matters. I'm glad to see that. I'm also interested to see that if you... I don't want to pace him out to 48 homers, but let's say we pace him out to 35, then his homer totals are remarkably linear. 35, 37, 33, 37, 32 32 give him 35 this year boom that just makes sense so if the power's there every year the contact is there every year the

patience is getting better you know he's a really good player and i think he deserves to go i don't know we'd have to do a more stringent analysis of doing some auction values and kind of see where it goes. But I think he deserves to go on the top because his floor was obviously that 260-32 season, and that wasn't that bad. So he's kind of a high floor, high ceiling guy. Yeah, I think he got lumped in a lot of times with Chris Bryant in ADP. I think those two guys were sort of clustered together. And I might have made some dumbass argument on this podcast about taking neither

when I obviously should have said Manny. But at 28 he's not too far gone and this is enough of a resurgence to be like, okay, I think next year I'd project him for a 280 average, 33 homers and 5 steals. That's really good. Yeah, I mean project him for a 280 average, 33 homers, and five steals.

That's really good. Yeah, I mean, he was going a little behind Vlad Jr. in draft season, right next to Bryant, behind guys like Matt Olsen, who really won't run a whole lot. I think if you said, what do you expect Machado's 2021 ADP to be, I would push him back up probably into the 35 to 40 range. That's where Jose Altuve was going this season. I think that's probably the kind of floor that Machado has. Maybe he falls just a little behind that, but easily inside the top 50, a clear year-to-year

ADP riser, given that there's a long track record prior to this as well. Here's a really interesting would you rather. Would you rather, would you rather, would you rather Manny Machado or Alex Bregman? Hmm. The fact that I'm even pausing to think about it is a little bit of a surprise, right? I mean, Bregman was a late first rounder for a lot of people. And he's kind of like you put 10 stolen bases in your head for him, but maybe not. I mean, five last year, zero this year. And the gap between the Astros offense and the Padres offense,

you start thinking about 2021. Is there even a gap there? They're pretty comparable. Yeah. I mean, you might want to give. So Bregman's hidden advantage in this discussion is the OBP, right? And in that OBP are extra runs. So in 2019, Bregman scored 122 runs and drove in 112.

You would project him in a normal season to have really excellent runs in RBI totals. And I think that might push him past Machado, but as the Padres' offense gets better better I think it's a legitimate discussion and it may be worth passing on Bregman if he's still like a late second rounder and taking Manny in the third yeah I could get down with that sort of logic I mean I think Bregman straight up over Machado it's an auction scenario or they're both available and I'm addressing that position I'm taking Bregman but it's very close at this point. Neither one of them is going to be shortstop eligible next year. Yeah, levels the playing field a little bit.

Speaking of eligibility, just real quick, where should the thresholds be for next year? Only played 60 games this year. Should it be 10 games to qualify to position? Should it be a bit less? And how should we handle players who had brief call-ups, right? The rules for how position eligibility is determined is one of the things that really frustrates me about the old Roto rules. And a lot of times, guys that don't qualify anywhere default back to where they played most in the minors. There

was no minor league season this year. So we have to choose something to go off of. Are we going to go off of 2019 positions played that seems kind of ridiculous to me as well we should probably fix this this is the time to get this right going forward the al labor rule is if you didn't play enough in the big leagues last year then you're it's your minor league position eligibility that matters right and it's like well we didn't have a minor leagues if you had a season-ending injury in the past you'd look back at previous years so it sort of follows that mindset if that's how you want to go about it 2019 minor leagues yeah i kind of felt like we were already at a weird spot with

position eligibility we talked about all the ut only guys coming to the season like and duhar and nick solak i mean like obviously chris davis is actually a dh and nelson cruz is actually a dh but maybe those thresholds over 162 were too high where the default for most leagues was 20 games played the previous year over 162 if you're gonna just try to keep it close i think seven or eight would end up being the cutoff but maybe it should just be five like maybe five games the previous season at a position is enough for our purposes to say that, yes, this player is eligible to play here in fantasy the following year. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, players are getting played more around the diamond.

And it is more of a thing that teams are emphasizing. of a thing that the uh that teams are emphasizing like for example the giants have kind of a i think it's a fairly formal policy within their minor league system that like everybody plays more than one position and it came up with joey bart where they were like he's still he's gonna play first he's gonna play the outfield and it's not that we don't think he's a catcher, please don't report that, but it's that it just makes our whole team better if people can play at different places. So in the context of that, you would more likely see players that are eligible in different places because I think it's happening.

I mean, even a guy who's not a very good defender like solak you know he's played three or four positions this year so um i i where i'm struggling is this so yes it's happening more often so should we lower the threshold and then we'll have a lot more position multi-position eligible guys is is that what we want um i do know that multi-position eligible guys this year were hugely important yeah i'm trying to kind of settle in just on a what do i think before i look at how many players are eligible at various spots like i want to decide a little bit about the philosophy before i yeah exactly yeah what's your philosophy do you want more of them or i don't want to decide a little bit about the philosophy before I... Yeah, exactly. What's your philosophy?

Do you want more of them? I don't want to fit the philosophy to match the numbers. I think more eligibility is good. Having options is good, right? Because we already deal with enough problems in season with various injuries. Being able to replace a player with the best possible guy on your bench because you can move a few guys around, I think that makes our game better. Being squeezed out of even having a replacement because

position eligibility rules are too stringent, that's bad. You shouldn't have to take a zero because someone got hurt on Tuesday and the way position eligibility worked, everyone only qualified at one position and you didn't have a replacement on your bench that's not a fun game to play right yeah but then there's always the interaction between what you can cover on your own roster and how the waiver wire looks you know what i mean so like maybe you would drop an interesting player to go get a short stop for the week because there was a crunch and that makes the waiver wire a little bit more palatable right yeah i mean i think i have always looked at this though and thought that there's not enough of a premium or a bonus placed on players who can play all over and if you make that more common then you don't really have to have that conversation anymore i'm looking at a pretty

interesting chart there's a new tool over at Rotowire. It's called Starts Over Time. You can customize any date range and see a depth chart and see which players started the most games at those positions. That's kind of cool too. Yeah, it's a really nice visualization of what's going on. And I think what it will do, if you go over there and

start scrolling through, you're going to find some players that should qualify a position who won't really quickly because they're just listed in a very logical sort of way. I mean, where someone played the most in the big leagues is a pretty good default as long as they played in the big leagues. I still kind of wonder, like, okay, so here's a good example. And I know he's not that important in most leagues, but Franklin Barreto, just as a random example, the guy doesn't play a lot and has played a little all over. He's started two games a second. He started a game at

third. He started a game at short. He started a game in the outfield. Clearly, he's viewed in real baseball right now as a good enough defender or a versatile enough defender to play multiple spots. or a versatile enough defender to play multiple spots. Under the old rules, he would only qualify as a second baseman. But kind of based on logic, he should qualify at multiple spots because even though he's played a very limited number of games, he's spread them out over multiple positions. We want – well, so there's two arguments here. One is maybe to have some sort of percentage, right?

Yeah, that's one way to go about it. Maybe just be like, if they played a certain percentage of their games, that could still get tricky, I think. And the other is, we want our game to mimic the real game. Right. Where can this guy play? And it's almost more than one, I think. Once you do it once, I think once sometimes can be like, oh, well, there was this game. It went 20 innings.

Or there was this injury in a double header. Or, yeah, an appearance where we moved a guy. Where Sergio Romo played first base or something. Anthony Rizzo with the shifting, I think, got credit for playing second base at some point. Which that seems weird, actually. He never actually played second base. But it does open up a whole other can of worms.

It's like, you know, if Mike Moustakis or if your shortstop is playing where the second baseman normally plays, should you give him some credit? But I think generally, I think what we're arguing is that this is what the real game is like. The real game is more about mixing and matching, and so therefore our game should be about mixing and matching. A secondary argument that I'm not sure is relevant,

but I want to bring up for a second, is that there aren't that many positional adjustments that we make anymore in the stats. The play has come to the point where since you put your youngest guys at shortstop and, you know, they're often in the peak of their career and then they have to be a good enough bat as they age. We've actually found out that like, you know, positions don't matter as much anymore. You're not like the positional adjustments become smaller and smaller almost every year much anymore you're not we're like the the positional adjustments become smaller and smaller almost every year unless you're in a two-catcher league you know it's like so if position adjustments don't matter that much maybe you

should give then maybe you should be more liberal with your positional awards you know yeah i think that's a good point to to mimic the to mimic the real life game maybe i don't think we need everything we do in fantasy to mimic the real life game maybe i don't think we need everything we do in fantasy to mimic the real life game but i do think terminating eligibility is some something that should actually kind of walk as closely to reality as it possibly can so i just want to bring it up because i think it's a topic that should be addressed sooner rather than later as someone who's going to put out some 2021 rankings sooner rather than later, I'd like to at least be in the range of what most people are going to try and do with their leagues. I mean, again, it's always a salt to taste sort of thing anyway.

Every league's a bit different. Some leagues only require one game all the time. They think that's enough. That might be a little bit too extreme for me. But I think lowering those thresholds is definitely something that has to happen in a bunch of leagues. Let's go to some more of these bats, guys who had great seasons here in 2020. Luke Voigt didn't come up in our conversation yesterday with Brichiroli. We were talking about MVP candidates, and I heard his name come up. I think it was on MLB Network Radio. I was driving to the grocery store this weekend, and I kind of laughed at first. I'm like, Luke Voigt, MVP?

I know how good he's been. I've got him on my Tout Wars team, and he's hopefully going to get a championship ring at the end of this week because he's been awesome. 21 homers down the season, 283-41, 640. But he's the prototypical masher who doesn't steal bases. I don't know if there's really much more he can do in the batting average category over a full season. I don't see him hitting better than.280.

The projections are all between.263 and.274 for the most part. Steamer's kind of an outlier on him at.251. But if you think about him compared to some of his teammates, Stanton, Judge even, is Voight going to be drafted before either of those guys, or is he definitely going to be drafted behind both of those guys, even though he's been the healthiest and most productive of the three this season? Well, I think it's a really interesting one word that kind of almost seems irrelevant in that last sentence you said,

but healthiest. irrelevant in that last sentence you said, but healthiest. I have a feeling that a lot of his, that there may be too much helium on him going into next year based on that health factor. I don't know if you've watched him recently. He's hitting home runs and then like limping around the bases. Not as bad as Kirk Gibson. He's not as bad as Kirk Gibson,

but he's hitting homers and then kind of limping around the bases not as bad as kirk gibson he's not as bad as kirk gibson but he's hitting homers and then kind of limping around the bases and i think there's a lindsey adler uh tweet that kind of reads funny uh which is um she i think she asked him about it he said oh just some foot stuff um so he's got some foot stuff going on. I think I saw a funny tweet with the Jets coach, the former Jets coach, the big guy that got in trouble. Oh, Rex Ryan? Yeah. Rex Ryan had some foot fetish. But anyway, Boyd's got some foot stuff, and he's frankly had a fair amount of injury. I mean, I'm looking through the seasons, 2017, 430-ish at plate appearances, 2018, 400 plate appearances,

2019, 500 plate appearances. This year would be his healthiest in a percentage way since 2016 at AA. So I think there's something about this um, this, uh, violent, like kind of not violent, but he's got a very, he's got a lot of bat speed. Um, and, um, he doesn't have a lot of, uh, that kind of, um, young man's athleticism. I mean, he's already, uh, 29 and kind of looks like, uh, uh, like a zombie type, you know know what I mean just like big dude who has a lot of bat speed may have a fair amount of injuries so I don't know that I project him next year into

700 plate appearances or 650 or whatever and I don't know that I would give him a league leading home run like you know a number either I mean I think he's a very good hitter but I think he's obviously a little bit beyond his skis right now. And it's just a really good, you know, collection of, I won't use the word luck because he's kind of deserved what he's gotten from batted ball standpoint. But you'd also, like I've said in the past, even if you say he has a great barrel rate or whatever, you'd still regress it to pass barrel rates. And, you know you know, uh, I, I, I think that, um, he's a very good player and I was really happy to have him this year. I just doubt that I'll have as many shares next year because I think he'll have a ton of inflation. That's very likely to happen, but I think there's

something that I found is pretty interesting and we're going to turn this into a game show. So congratulations. You just became a contestant on the game show that I made up in the last two minutes. We have a leaderboard in front of me that I trust you're not going to pull up. And it's 2018 to 2020. So going back to the start of 2018, minimum 500 plate appearances. Who are the top 10 hitters in WRC plus the key there? Minimum 500 plate appearances total over that span. Alright, well Voight's on there. Naturally, he's the reason why I searched. He is 10th. Alright, one for one. Trout?

Trout is first at 182 with a 20 point edge in WRC+, over the second hitter on this list. It has to be a consistent performer so like i don't even think bellinger's on there freeman freddie freeman's 11th so i'm gonna say that doesn't count as a strike because he was the first one out jeez you're still alive god second i didn't even get i thought i would get third three through five at least okay you're gonna

go on a roll here am i oh yeah yeah yeah. Yeah. I'm confident you got this. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I just have to think of the obvious ones. I,

I don't know why my brain like only wants to say Cody Belanger. I'm not going to say it though. Um, I'm not going to say it though. I'm going to say, uh, Christian Yelich. Yep.

He's second. Um, Alex Bregman. Fourth. Oh, tied for third. Actually. Nelson Cruz. He's fifth uh anthony rendon eighth

it's on fire that's what i have left you've got three and six seven and nine so you have four to go what was the positional thing because i want to say Juan Soto, but I don't think he made it. No, he qualifies. He's 6th. 500 plate appearances total is the cutoff. Oh, okay. All right. So now I need like 6th and 7th or something?

You got 3, 7, and 9 for the win. 3. You should get 3. You should definitely get 3. J.D. Martinez? Nope. Second out. Right behind Freeman.. You should definitely get three. J.D. Martinez? Nope. Second out, right behind Freeman. So you're all over this.

What did I miss? Who's three? Mookie Betts. Oh, come on, Eno. Come on. What a failure. Anthony Rizzo? No, it's not Rizzo. The lowest plate appearance here on the list is 6'12".

Fernando Tatis Jr. is actually on here at 7'. Tatis, there you go. Right behind Soto. And then Voight's teammate, Aaron Judge. This is what really stood out to me. So Judge, since 2018, has about 160 more plate appearances than Luke Voight. He's only got six more home runs. They're very similar as hitters.

Voigt doesn't run at all. Judge runs a little. But I don't know. I think the concerns about Voigt and having these nagging injuries is also very real. But I do think if you compare him to someone like Max Muncy, I think Voigt's a better hitter than Max Muncy. And Muncy was going pretty early in drafts this draft season, right? Muncy was probably in that 60 to 75 range.

Multiple eligibilities. I mean, that did occur to me when I took one or I had like two shares of Muncie, and I kind of was like, you know, especially in like NFBC kind of TGA, FBI kind of format where you have a middle infield, corner infield, and a short bench. I thought like being able to move Muncie from corner infield to middle infield and back again might be really useful. It would have been useful if he'd played better. But yeah, you know, Muncie, I have this stat called Nitro where, you know, I stole from Andrew Perpetua, where it just looks at exit velocity over 90 miles per

hour and launch angle between zero and 40. And it's meant to be a large bucket to kind of just get a sense of who's kind of generally putting balls in the right place because zero to 40 and 90 like those are good balls for the most part uh not a lot of ground balls or flat or or or pop-ups in there uh 90 miles an hour you know generally this these lead to good outcomes like a 1000 slugging type situation um and you know freddie freeman is is atop the board uh most years muncie um had uh 37 percent um this year and he had a 41 last year so you know his batted ball quality has gone down just a little bit and it's been fairly rough on him. Voight last year was at 41%, just like Muncy, and instead went up to 43% and just, you know, blasted everybody. So I think the distance between Voight and Muncie next year is going to be smaller in terms of the value they give in the end versus their draft price.

I'm kind of looking at the 2020 ADP, figuring out where Voight sort of fits in. I think the highest end spot for Voight would be Matt Olsen's 2020 ADP. Olsen was going 52nd overall. I think that's about as high as you can go. And honestly, I think he would be a slightly better bet than Olsen at that same price. A slightly riskier bet from an injury standpoint, perhaps. But in terms of batted balls,

Olsen is a very extreme fly ball guy. And so it actually doesn't really surprise me that much that he has a poor batting average this year. We've talked about going past 50% fly ball rate kind of means you're going to have a lot of pop-ups. If you look at Voight, he does not hit pop-ups, dude. It's pretty... His batted balls are pristine. Like, he hits 40% fly balls and 5% of those are pop-ups.

He is way below average when it comes to pop-ups. He hits smoking line drives. And so I think, you know, even though the projections, some say 250 or whatever i think he's fairly safe actually from a batting average standpoint i think you'll have a 260 to 280 somewhere in there uh where olsen is more prone to ups and downs based on uh if he's hitting pop-ups i know you've mentioned it before the both of those guys pull the ball like crazy like very high almost 50 plus i think for voight and a little less than 50% for Olsen.

It's much worse for a lefty pulling the ball that much because of the way teams shift. I wonder if that will ever change. Here's the problem, and there are ways around it. I mean, you can just leave the first baseman at first and shift everybody else. I think that's what most teams do, but the problem is covering first base. You have to have someone at first base to throw to. I tried to ask a bunch of pitchers if they thought they could cover first base on an extreme shift.

Every pitcher I ask says yes, but if I ask them about other pitchers, they say, no, I don't know. I don't think everybody could. I think about like uh just like just think i'm not i'm not picking on rich hill i love him but like rich hill like falls off the mound and is 40 years old do you really want to depend on him running over to first base before luke voight um to take a throw from from all the way over at shortstop you know or behind the bag at second that's a really tough play to make like maybe if you practiced it with all your young guys and you just sort of assume that like jesus lizardo could get over there that'd be one thing you also don't want a bad collision with your pitcher and luke voight or a blown hammy on the

pitcher trying to get over to first you know yeah i'd love to see a creative solution to that problem though i think it's just put take the second baseman and put him between uh like move the short stop closer to the bag the second base bag um and then put the second baseman in the outfield grass in left field it's it's like the it's like the left shift, except you can't do as much of it because you still have that first base. And then the first baseman plays as far from the bag as they feel comfortable. That's already something that Joey Votto said, is that as the first baseman, the further I can play from the bag, the more balls I can get to, the better I can be defensively. Let's talk about a few other players who were on this list of value up, but not quite elite,

which I think is a fair description of everybody we talked about so far. A few really big risers, Ian Happ, who we mentioned earlier, Teoscar Hernandez, Dominic Smith. I mean, those guys are all pretty difficult to figure out for a longer season. They all have things in the underlying numbers that they're doing really well. Who do you like the most out of that group, out of Hap, Dominic Smith, and Teoscar Hernandez? Because they don't have longer track records that we can fall back on and say, yeah, I actually do believe in this guy because I've seen him do it before. This is really the first time they've reached this particular level.

Yeah. I mean, you can say something like, oh, well, Tasker Hernandez went from like 39% to 50% in Nitro. And that's basically like going from like a decent player to, you know, having the batted balls of a Freddie Freeman. You know what I mean? So you can say that, but then you'd have to know a little bit more about how this regresses. And I know that Nitro moves slower than outcomes.

We've already kind of illustrated that a little bit with Muncie, I think, and Voight, where their batted ball, like their Nitro levels, moved a lot less than their outcome levels, right? their nitro levels moved a lot less than their outcome levels, right? So does this mean that he's just found a new level when it comes to batted balls? Is he just going to hit 93 miles an hour average EV every year and have a 19% barrel rate? No, I think he would want to regress those things. I think you would actually project him for like an 11, 12, 13 type, uh, percent barrel rate, uh,

considering he had 11% last year. So you get like a 13, 14% barrel rate. That's what he had in 2018. So in 2018, um, he had the barrel rate you might project him for next year. And he hit two 39 with a one Oh seven WRC plus and 22 homers and 500 plate

appearances. So, um, you know, I just don't see enough with tay oscar in terms of you know a massive change in swing rates or um i mean his swing rate went from overall went from 47 to 46 his reach rate went up you know i just for me tay oscar is in the middle of a good stretch and he's a streaky hitter and there's going to be if it was a longer season there'd be a bad stretch in there that's kind of what it seems like to me too with him i think it's it's easier to tell yourself that something has changed for the good when you can kind of patch it together over multiple seasons

and that to me is true with both Happ and Dominic Smith. I think with Happ, we saw some flashes last year. He brought the K rate way down. He's always drawn walks. He brings power to go with a little bit of speed. And now we're seeing the increased walk rate on top of that, which gives him a chance to be a steady leadoff option in a good Cubs lineup. Still a little bit younger than you think, too. He just turned 26 in August. So I look at Ian Happ, and I think this is actually the player he's likely to be for the foreseeable future. We've got 23 home runs now this season and last season combined. That's over 111 games. That's like 30 home run power with non-zero speed, pretty good on base skills, and the average exit

velocities have always been really good for him. He's at 89.7 for his career. He's up at 91.5 right now. So we're getting more hard contact than ever. And he's been about a 130, 132 WRC plus guy now dating back to last season. And that's a really good offensive player who was very affordable in 2020 drafts. Is he a top 75 overall ADP sort of guy looking ahead to next season? Well, two things I like that in Hap's profile that you won't find at the Oscars is swing changes.

For example, and I think it's kind of interesting that these swing changes went back to where he was before 2019. When you look at his swing metrics, what really stands out is 2019. In 2019, he swung 52% of the time and he reached 34% of the time. And every other year, he swung closer to 43% and reached 24 to 27, right? So he got really aggressive in 2019.

I think maybe he saw this is my time. I'm going to go out here and take this job. And it didn't serve him terribly. He did have his best ISO that year. He hit some home runs. He kind of announced himself in certain ways. But it also led to some other problems that I think he's ironed out this year where he's kind of put the different best parts together. He's put the hunting, his pitch, together with the waiting for his pitch. He's kind of found the balance between those two. He found the balance between the aggression of 2019 and the passivity of 2018.

That's what you see when you look at a 27% strikeout rate and a 13% walk rate. So that strikeout rate is better than Teoscar's. There's a chance for sort of three to five steals that I wouldn't give you from Teoscar. And then the last piece is that he's a good defender. I mean, he's not an amazing defender, but he's a good enough defender that he's played center this year. Let's see. He's played center all of this year, mostly. Let's see if he's played good enough defender that he's played center this year. Let's see. He's played center all of this year mostly. Let's see if he's played. He has not played any second, but he's played second in the past,

so there's a little bit of a soft landing there where if he has to move off of center, he can play in a corner outfield or maybe play some second base. And there's a chance for multiple eligibilities, a slightly better sort of hitter swing profile. I'm more positive on half across the board. And then the last player I mentioned, Dominic Smith, I think similar. He's shown over parts of two seasons, given playing time, he can do some damage.

20 home runs now combined over the last two seasons. That's about 400 played appearances, like 380. Always had a good hit tool. It seems like he's really unlocked that power as a big leaguer. And I don't think he's going to have as many obstructions for playing time. It seems like the Mets can kind of give him a spot to call his own. Maybe a guy that becomes a little more of a big side platoon player again, at least in terms of week-to-week expectations.

If we don't have the universal DH next year, I think he's on that list of players who could be affected by that. But he's shown enough where it has to be a priority to have a spot for him to call his own going into next season. Yeah, the only thing that makes it a little bit tougher, the thing I like about Smith versus Happ is just the strikeout rate and a chance that the hit tool is a little bit better. And as much as Happ has improved his numbers,

Smith, in terms of swings, Smith hasn't really done that yet. He still swings a lot. He still reaches a lot. He's a pretty aggressive hitter. But I do think he probably has that hit tool ability because he's making contact despite that aggression. I like him a lot as a hitter. The caveat is he doesn't have that defensive versatility that Hap does, and it could matter on this Mets team.

It might mean he ends up somewhere else. Because in Cano, J.D. Davis, Pete Alonzo, and Dominic Smith, that's four players who should maybe be D.H.'s next year. Yeah. I mean, maybe I'm being rough on Alonzo's first base defense, and maybe Dominic Smith could be first base. But let's be nicer and just say that's four people that should play first base next year. Dominic Smith is tradable, and he's got control left. He's been very productive.

There are a few teams that have a hole at first base. Davey Davis' bat might have made him tradable at this point. But we've also seen that people without defensive value don't get as much in trade value in trade return you know as much as like ender and ciarte doesn't get you much where it's just defensive value without the bat the opposite is true too that you know why why did luke voight end up in new york no defensive value easy easy player to replace from an organizational standpoint and maybe they didn't think he would be this good with the bat, but,

but even if, even without that part, you know, Voight was tradable because, you know, he's, he's DH probably, you know,

look at what the return that Jose Martinez got both times he got traded. Yeah. Basically a throw in the one that the, the Jose Martinez that's in Chicago, you know, with the Cubs now. And then he got DFA, or

optioned? He got optioned, yeah. But in any case, so why did Brody trade for, for so many right-handed hitting

center fielders? I mean, he traded for like, I don't even know all of them, but Jake Marisnyk was not the first. Oh, it was the, there was the guy that,

Keon Broxton? Yep, that was last the first. Oh, it was like there was the guy that Keon Broxton. Yep, that was last offseason. I think there was another one. I think he traded for like three of these guys. It's because if you look at his team, you're like, oh, they don't really have a center fielder. Yeah, they claimed Billy Hamilton. I think they claimed Guillermo Heredia. I mean, they had Juan Lagares for a while. they just don't really have a center fielder. And so, even if you look at that team, they don't fit together defensively. And I think it has to be undermining

their ability to hit because as a hitting team, they're pretty good. So, I think that team has work to do. And I don't know. Maybe that's none of our concern. Maybe Smith, and if you're thinking about keeper decisions, maybe Smith and Davis, maybe they're all good keepers because they either play in New York or they'll play somewhere else.

I mean, their bats play. Their bats play. For the guys we're talking about today, the overarching theme for these hitters is that they might be on the bubble in a lot of keep four, keep five, keep six, keep seven type leagues. You don't have easy decisions to make in many of those circumstances. There's not much that separates these players from the alternatives in many cases, especially if you're looking at two guys with similarly short track records.

I think that's a difficult call to make. Yeah, yeah. And I would say that, remember how we started this show, right? And how valuable, especially in this year, and I don't want to overvalue something that was important in a pandemic-shortened, crazy year where people are taking full weeks off

as teams and stuff like that. Maybe position eligibility won't be as important next year, but I have a feeling that it is important. And even though positions don't have as much value these days in terms of a redraft league or in a given year, it doesn't matter as much where a guy plays as long as you can fit him on your team. I think in keeper decisions, it does matter because there just are more outfielders. So if you can get a guy who has an infield eligibility that's better if you have a ci and mi slot and one of your guys is eligible there and one of your guys isn't that's meaningful you know um and uh so i do think that if you're

deciding between ian happ and dominic smith and you like that dominic smith has the better strikeout rate consider that ian Happ's eligibilities might be important. Right. Teams care about defense. You can't totally discount how the pieces fit defensively when evaluating playing time and making decisions. I think Danny Santana was the easiest bust call of the year. Yeah. I think you had really sound reasoning behind that. That was a really well thought out piece that you put together looking at those near replacement level players

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The tweet I mentioned from our friend Vlad Sedler, RotoGut on Twitter. If you're not following him, give him a follow. He's one of the sharpest fantasy baseball minds out there. He kind of did what we did with hitters, but he did that with starting pitchers. And I like how he laid this out. He had three first round pitchers going into 2021 based on NFBC 15 team draft. So like the main event style format, the three in the first round, Bieber, DeGrom, and Cole. I think based on the way those leagues tend to value strikeouts, Cole staying in the first round makes sense

is there any controversy for you with those three all being listed as first rounders no i don't think so i guess we talked a little bit about um is there a triumvirate that will be taken i i do think that de grom's hamstring um cole's new park and kind of the beginning the beginning of it of his tenure uh the home run rate and um shane bieber's uh lack of the same track record as de grom and cole i would say uh that between those three things i don't see like a number one pick or a number three pick you know like i think that's where cole was going in some drafts uh there were a lot of people making impassioned uh arguments that one of these guys or that digrom or cole would be the number one player in baseball this year but i think

that yes sometimes a pitcher returns number one value but that's not uh what you're necessarily doing when you're drafting the first round. Mike Trout, for example, has not returned number one value in baseball in many years. But he's always top ten. It doesn't miss aspect. That's what you're buying. Yeah. Yeah.

So I do think those are the three ones. I just think that they're back half of the first round. I think there's too many bats, that sort of top five or so of bats that we were talking about in terms of like what was it soto acuna tatis um trout and bets those five bats there's at least seven that you get to you're like i just like like this hitter a lot more. This is like a mid-career superstar. This is like a mid-career Hall of Famer in the case of Betts and Trout. You know what I mean?

Right, right. But I think the tricky thing is that once you get to the middle of the round, if you think that these three pitchers are a cut above everybody else, and I think there will be some strong arguments that could be made to support that just say the next four because you know those three i think there is a cut above for sure the next guys that vlad had for round two he had bauer darvish nola and kershaw and i get it based on performance this year i said yesterday you darvish would get my vote for nl cy young if i if i had a vote i think deserves that award. Bauer's obviously in that conversation. Kershaw, I think, has eased some of the concerns about his back, but you can't completely erase that over a 60-game season, right? If he'd come out this season, we played 162, and he'd gone 190 or 200,

that would carry a lot more weight than staying healthy for a dozen starts and a postseason. So you start to see those warts increase in size right away in round two you definitely don't want big warts you don't really want warts at all but especially big warts yeah i wonder if i'd give a yellow flag on any of these guys i mean i think i'd put a yellow flag on bowers command yeah i put a we were talking about flags like would you put a yellow command a yellow flag on Darvish's injury history? Yes. And Kershaw's?

Bauer's command, Kershaw's injury history is a yellow flag. And Nola maybe doesn't have one unless you're talking about performance. I mean, his range of outcomes is wide enough where if a high 3 ZRA and a 120s whip is in his normal range of outcomes, do you want him as a top 5 pitcher? That's not super exciting. Yeah. So I think this group makes me inclined to say I'm pretty comfortable in the middle

and back half of round 1 of a 15-team draft taking one of those three at the top, one of Bieber, DeGrom, or Cole, and then taking the best available hitter because hitters are so loaded. I think we identified Francisco Lindor might be a second-round hitter next year. So you could go DeGrom, Lindor, Bieber, Lindor, something along those lines. And you still feel like you're getting a hitter who can finish the top five, top ten, but you're also getting a starting pitcher who's kind of a cut above everybody else. Yeah, I think back end of the first round, I agree with you

because I don't think that I would want to spend a second-round pick on those pitchers. Just think of like Bauer's 2018 or Darvish's 2018 or Nola's 2018 for that matter or Kershaw's 2018, which was good by numbers, but like a little bit worrisome in terms of throwing 89-90. So, it's funny how much that's kind of the pop-up group. It's like, in 2018, we wouldn't have put any of those guys there.

Going into 2019, we wouldn't have put any of those guys. Am I getting the numbers wrong? Were their 2019s bad? Their 2019s were bad. Their 19s were inflated. I keep thinking recency bias might be worse with pitching than it is with hitting.

Because they oscillate more. Right. Their performance ranges are naturally wider. At least that's how I perceive it to be. Is that supported by data or is that just a thing I believe? Well, projections are worse for pitchers.

So I think, yes. Okay. I think those two facts go hand in hand so it's not just the thing i feel it's a thing that seems to be true based on projections let's go to the third group around three 2021 pitchers according to vlad mike clevenger walker Bueller, Max Scherzer, Lucas Giolito, and Kenta Maeda. And that one, I love Maeda. I've got him a bunch of places this year. I thought he was one of the more undervalued pitchers in the league. That's a tough one too. I was on the side that back when he was acquired by the Twins, I argued that they wouldn't treat him the way the Dodgers did because they don't have quite the same pitching depth in their organization. They wouldn't worry as much about the incentives because he's such an affordable player that they would want to pitch him as a starter through September into October.

We don't get an answer to that question this year. We don't. We're left to guess going into next year. As good as he's been, are you willing to look at Maeda and say, yeah, he's a top 10, as he's been are you willing to look at maeda and say yeah he's a top 10 top 12 starting pitcher going into 2021 yeah uh you know i kind of think you know when you look at his velocities in other years other than this one uh there's a definite downturn right before he gets put in the bullpen so as much as the dodgers may have been playing around with the incentives on the contracts, you know, it does kind of stand out that, you know, he had 25 starts and 20 starts and 26 starts. That's, you know, in the contract, there's escalators, you know, as he gets closer to 30 starts. And so maybe they were saving money.

As much as that's true, true like i think you can look at the numbers and see the velocity decrease before he goes back in the pen and recovers his velocity we have three straight years of basically what you like like if you just look at 27 to 2019 it's a four era in a non-dh and nl you know um so i really like what he did this year but i think in a full season you may see that velocity loss happen again uh you may see some more ups and downs uh you know 206 babb if i don't i don't depend on that for pitchers but that that sticks out a little bit. You know, strand rate year to year is 70%. You know, pitchers strand 70% of the runners they get on base. And this year, Maeda has an 83% strand rate, which is far and beyond the best of his career. So there's just too many

metrics to say he's going to regress. And even if you look at the rest of season projections, even the bat, which is a little bit more agile maybe than the other ones um has a three six eight so and the rest basically have a four so i would project him for like a you know like a three seven era next year um and that wouldn't necessarily put him in this group i don't think right i don't think vlad's necessarily wrong i think he might get pushed up into that range i just don't want to take him there yeah I just don't want to hide taking him there. I guess Scherzer is an injury play. If maybe

you got Bieber early and you want to go to the two aces route, then I think you can take Scherzer there. But if you take Scherzer as your ace, you're just rolling the dice when it comes to injury. I think that's getting close. It's not a red flag, but it's definitely a dark yellow flag, you know, for Max with a back issue.

The backs don't get better. And that's a secret yellow flag on Kershaw, too. He has a back problem. So of that group, I know his work on the field was the worst of the group, I know his work on the field was the worst of the group, but if I'm taking one pitcher out of that group and I don't have a pitcher yet, it might be Buehler. I'm always the guy drafting Scherzer or paying up for him in an auction. I've probably had Max Scherzer on more fantasy teams than anybody,

even when the price is sky high. 36, though, now. It's really hard for me to think about getting him, especially having seen a guy in Justin Verlander, follow a similar arc where he got discounted in 2018, kind of a third rounder at age 35, and he comes out and gives you a.252 ERA and a.90 whip and 290 Ks and 214 innings.

I know that's more of an outlier sort of performance, but I also know that Max Scherzer has the kind of DNA that makes him capable of doing that. And I think it's interesting when you can get possible first pitcher ceiling. At least I still think he's capable of that in the third round. and i do think you have to weigh the risk appropriately but i think the third round is a totally fair spot if we're talking about scherzer at like pick 20 pick 25 that doesn't feel quite right but we start getting to

the middle and back half around three so we're getting to the 35 to 45 range. I love that. I think that makes all the sense in the world. And I think I'd actually be comfortable if I didn't have a pitcher already taking the chance as my ace. I'd probably back him up with my SP2 a lot earlier than I would have in the past. Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking about is maybe thinking about these in pairs, right? If you go Bieber, DeGrom, or Cole, I think you can pass on the second group, maybe take a late one of the third group, and have a great pairing no matter what you do. If you did Bieber-Scherzer, that's fine.

You spent a fair amount on your pitching, but you could have two aces. If Scherzer's your first pitcher, then the guy I like out of the next group is someone like Gallin, who I just feel like maybe he doesn't have Scherzer-like ceiling, but he probably doesn't have a yellow flag when it comes to injuries. I think maybe pairing Scherzer with Luis Castillo, maybe even Jack Flaherty.

That would make sense. But pairing Scherzer with Lamette, you know, now getting a little bit further away from his Tommy John surgery, or pairing Scherzer with Snell, or pairing Scherzer with Luzardo, I think that would be super risky. Yeah, I think the Scherzer-Flaherty combination in 3-4, holy cow, if I could pull that off, I'd feel like I just pulled off some kind of early round heist. Because you would have two hitters on top of that. Two hitters on top of that and two pitchers who could finish in the top five

with room to be better. They have that in their range of outcomes, and it's not being unrealistic. I know with Flaherty, too, we're coming off one of his worst starts in a long time, or just a couple days ago against the Brewers. He got knocked around. But Jack Flaherty, I think, is an ace. I think people were right to be pushing him up into their top fives in 2020. And if he's falling kind of back top 10 11 to 15 range

definitely gonna have a lot of jack flaherty going into 2021 yeah uh you know he still has a chance to kind of be like a patrick corbin with velocity velocity. And I don't really see an obvious reason for his struggles this year. So I think I'm on the Jack Flaherty plane. It might require a deeper dive, but the strikeout rate is there, the walk rate is there, the home run rate is not that inflated, the strand rate is there the walk rate is there the home run rate is not that inflated the strand rate is bad you know it just looks it doesn't look uh you know the fip is fine the xxp is even better like i i don't know it seems fine to me and you know it's 35 it's eight starts right and if you play the kind of you shouldn't do this but if you take the if you play the well what if you didn't make that start against Milwaukee game? He's got great numbers on the year.

It's to me, kind of a no brainer. I wonder if he'll start in the fourth round and creep up when people start to come to their senses. I could see him maybe flipping spots with Clevenger. I could see Clevenger sliding into the early part of round four a little more often. But the team context,

I mean, the skills are still pretty good. I think people are looking at the missed time and saying clearly it wasn't because of the knee or the elbow. It was because of team discipline. So the workload being a little smaller this year isn't because of something that will impact him in 2021. Lemaitre being in the fourth, that makes sense based on the way NFBC players think about it. I do like Castillo a lot though in the fourth. I think Scherzer-Castillo or Scherzer-Flaherty would be optimal combinations, and no reservations with Gallin.

But I do think that's what you're looking at spending on him. Last five guys he threw in in the next-up category, Lance Lynn, Steven Strasburg, Max Fried, Corbin Burns, and Carlos Carrasco. We'll probably get more into the guys that also have cases on the pitching side in a future episode. But respect for Lance Lynn at this point, right? I mean, it's just an extension of what he was really doing a year ago for the Rangers.

Is he going to make me wrong again? Like I just, I just, I've said it. I made my pitch, my anti-L pitch, so many times on this podcast, so I don't think I need to do it again. It's just like taking him in the top 15 or 20 just seems like nuts to me. But I think when I was doing some in-season rankings and stuff, I was surprised by how quickly I was like, I don't want to rank these guys anymore.

I got to like 30 and was like okay i'm done so uh i you know context means so much and then we found that like you know the velocity in your last start can be meaningful um one nice thing that is interesting about carasco is that um he arrested a decline in fastball velocity um and so that was one thing i was interesting about Carrasco is that he arrested a decline in fastball velocity and so that was one thing I was worried about going in especially with his injury history so you know if he's he's sticking at at 93 6 94 and if Lynn can do that then I think that they're both decent picks for next year it's just they don't seem like number twos. And I'm out on Strasburg, dude.

I just, you know, with that injury, you know, I've had some people wonder, you know, how much he's going to come back from it and how well he's going to come back from it. And I would rather see him come back from it. Maybe once he's pitching in spring and we can get some fastball velocities, I can get a better sense of how he's doing post-surgery, but I generally don't love to get guys on the first

year back from major surgery. Yeah, not in the early rounds, at least. I'm going to take that flyer. It's going to be a bit later. Now, there's a question here from Joseph about Trevor Bauer. He wrote us an email. Hey, guys, what a crazy season. It's been great having you guys listen to you twice a week this season. Check out that third episode, too. We had one yesterday with Britt Giroli. I have a 2021 question about Trevor Bauer. According to him, he wants to sign one-year contracts and pitch every fourth day the rest of his career.

We all question the long-term viability of this plan, but let's assume he gets his wish in 2021. He would have roughly 40 starts with 240 to 260 innings. His three-year average strikeout rate, ERA and whip, puts him right around 300 to 330 strikeouts with a 340 ERA and a 120 whip, depending on how much you weigh in 2020. Is that not a first rounder? Only three people in the last 20 years have had 300 plus strikeouts. All of them returned a top 10 earn value. Wouldn't he have to be projected to at least lead the league in strikeouts? The park will probably get better.

I would have him behind only DeGrom, Bieber, and Cole going into 2021. Not based on talent, but based on opportunity. Thanks, Joseph. This is something I hadn't really thought about with Bauer. Do you think a team would even give him the chance to do that? The fact that he wants to pitch every fourth day is nice, but would a team

actually do that to him given the way teams think? Well, a lot of times they're protecting their long-term asset, and in this case, would they be? If they signed a one-year deal, then maybe they'd be more willing to let him do that

um i kind of you don't want to doubt bauer because he's gonna he's he's willing to do crazy things he's probably also made enough money um so far even that um he might think that like what's the real difference you know if I if I do if I get the 40 million dollar contract if I do the one year 40 million contracts that means more for my fellow players in terms of pushing pushing the limits on contracts. It means more for me in potential earnings and the downfall of it where instead of signing a deal for $100 million for however many years, I sign one for 30 and then I'm hurt. I sign one for five. The downside versus the upside, I'd still get paid pretty well

on the downside side. Yeah, he's just betting on his own knowledge and understanding of how he thinks pitcher aren't health works. In worst case scenario, he'll come out of this with at least $50 million. It's like, is he really going to sign the $100 million contract

when he could make $200 million his way and the backup plan is making 50 you know right um so i think that um he might actually do it um and also the other part of the question is will yeah would a team let them do it if he was on a one-year contract they might be let him do it um and then there's the sort of interaction between him and his teams in the past where like the d-backs were like you're crazy all the stuff you want to do is crazy and goodbye you know um and they uh let him do a lot of the crazy like the sort of the shoulder bar shoulder tube he does and the long toss extreme long toss they let him do that and they have a pitching program where they um they kind of they let you do

different things if you uh explain to them what the thinking is and they might learn from it. You know what I'm saying? So like they're a fairly open-minded pitching program, but even them, you know, I think it was like 2015 or so Trevor Bauer told me, I'd written a piece about, you know, it's time for a pitcher to throw 80% curve balls or breaking balls. And I was talking to him about it and he's like, well, yeah, I want to throw 80% curveballs or breaking balls. And I was talking to him about it and he's like, well, yeah, I want to throw more breaking balls and they won't let me. So in 2015, he was throwing 30% breaking balls. And if you look at what's happened since, like this year, he's throwing, I would say just a quick math here, like 45% breaking balls.

I would say, just a quick math here, like 45% breaking balls. And it's kind of gone up mostly. So I would say that, you know, over time, you know, teams have allowed him to do his thing more often. If the Reds get into the playoffs, I could see the Reds signing him to this one-year deal. Fred's signing him to this one-year deal. And if they did that, Kyle Bode's there. Derek Johnson's there.

I think they would let him do it. But see, there's so many ifs, right? It's a lot of ifs because there's only a handful of teams that would be willing to do it. Then you're talking about a big cash outlay in a year next season in which teams are probably going to pinch pennies as much as they have in a long time. So who's going to give a player $40 million for next year? Yeah. I think there's a lot of interesting possibilities here. And if you were to get on a schedule,

I think the main thing from a fantasy perspective is, okay, if this happens, is he a first rounder? If he's already a second rounder, potentially without it in the eyes of smart people like vlad yeah that could be enough to bump him up i mean that's a lot more of a workload win probability for that many more starts is huge like look at how clustered wins are in your leagues and think about getting 20 more just from one guy who's good and pitches deep into his starts. Aside from that bump in strikeouts and given the potential that he could be at least good in the ratios categories, even though his range of outcomes is pretty wide,

there is definitely a case for him as a first rounder if an opportunity like this comes along. We won't know if that opportunity comes along until this winter at the earliest. Yeah, yeah. And I don't even think we will. Because I think there might be things said at the press conference or said after the press conference about something like this that the team and the player, their interests align on making the deal seem to make sense, right? line on making the deal seem to make sense, right? So if they have like a one year $40 million deal, there'll be people writing think pieces about how ridiculous this is. And, you know, just a year ago, Bauer had a four or five year array and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the team then could say, yes, but we are going to pitch him every fourth day or whatever, you know what I mean?

And, and like, imagine the angels who've had just the worst trouble just even having like good pitchers what if they like made the outlay and made the argument and said oh yeah bauer's gonna be a one-man staff you know um you have to get to spring and i think i wouldn't believe it i i might believe it before the first day of the season, before the first week of the season, before I actually saw him do it. But what I would want to see is he signed with a team that said he would do it, and in the spring his usage was already different. Like he's in the second week of spring when everybody else is throwing three innings, he's already throwing five.

You'd have to see something tangible before you believe in this. And I tried to give as many caveats being like, yes, teams have learned from him. Yes, teams seem to be listening to him more. Yes, teams seem to be letting him do his own thing more. He's in a position where if he re-signs with the Reds, I think the stars could align for a 300-inning season. People have done it before in the past. They weren't throwing as hard as him.

I don't think. Maybe somewhere. Probably not. I would say probably not, yeah. They just didn't have the strikeout rates of him. There's not a lot of people who've thrown 300 innings and struck out 10 batters per nine, especially if they did it more than once.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, just to put this in context of the history, since the free agency era began in 1974, we've had 22 seasons with a 300 innings thrown. That's like really rare. 22 pitcher seasons, right? And, you know, half of them are knuckleballers.

Not even kidding. Phil Negro is first, second, and fourth in terms of innings thrown. Then you've got Nolan Ryan. Basically, you're saying Trevor Bauer has to be Nolan Ryan because Nolan Ryan, in 1974, threw 330 innings with a 10 strikeout rate and had the five walk rate. There's actually some similarities to Bauer. That's the only season that pops anything close to Bauer

because everybody else, the sort of average strikeout rate for guys who threw over 300 innings is around five strikeouts per nine. I mean, that's what I'm seeing. No one's thrown 300 innings since 1980 with Steve Carlton when he had an eight-per-nine strikeout rate. So it's one of those situations where you'd probably bet the field. You know what I mean? Right, yeah, yeah.

This would be something that has never happened before. It would be pretty fun if it did. It just feels unrealistic, though, especially with the context that you just provided there. So thanks a lot for the question, Joseph. Definitely some food for thought. We'll see if a team is willing to take a chance on Bauer in that particular way at some point this winter.

Last question I want to get to on this show. This email came in from Ricky. He wants to know, is this brilliant or is this Bush League? In a Yahoo 12 team head-to-head 6x6 league, I recently played a team that played one position player for the week. Said player went 3 for 5, so he batted 600 and had an OPS of 1,400. Needless to say say he took those two categories but i won the other four hitting categories on the pitching side he ended up throwing 120 innings to my 80 i was fortunate enough to win so i'm not quite as upset if i

would have been if he'd won my question is is this a bush league move or something straight from the that i should embrace for next year? Love the show. Ricky. My position is always whatever is in the rules is in the rules. And, you know, he figured something out. You could just have plate appearance minimums, just like you have innings pitch minimums to deal with streamers. So I've never seen anyone do this.

But, I mean, you could have have someone like you could just have your first pick be Mike Trout you know someone with a really high floor and he's your only player and then every other pick you take is pitching there's some rosters that allow that yeah you just fill in with a bunch of guys that you're not going to use and then bench them when the season starts I think that's pretty extreme I actually don't think it's that bright of a tactic. I think there are similar things you can do in head-to-head that might be worthwhile, but I do agree with you from a philosophical standpoint.

If it's allowed in the rules, in this case, you're not doing something. There's some shady things within the rules that you can do where you can, let's say you pick up more players than your roster will allow to keep them from going to other teams, and then you cut them before the week starts that's kind of bush league right like if your roster limit is a seven-man bench but the way pickups work on your site is that you can have as many people on the roster until lineups start to lock bush league move even though it's within

the rules this is just choosing a strategy and head-to-head with your lineup trying to win the categories but because you have counting stats that are categories, you have to punt a couple just to get those ratios. And I think it is counteracted very easily with that rules tweak of having a minimum played appearances per week. So hopefully Ricky and his league

mates can look at that and say, hey, I like you're trying to be clever and try something different, but let's not do this in the future. Let's have other interesting ways of trying different strategies that aren't this exact one yeah i mean age to age in general yeah you can uh punt uh speed i think you know the easiest are punting speed and and and punting stolen bases punting saves, those have the least correlation to other stats. So you can get runs without steals, for example. And you can have nice relievers with good ERA and whip

without getting saves. So that's more conventional. I think this is pretty funny. I'm glad that Ricky put this on our table, but I'm just generally like, hey, if it's in the rules, it's in the rules. I like the idea and the effort in theory. I just don't know if that was the most brilliant execution.

So again, hopefully they can make a tweak, make the rules a little tighter for next season. Let's get to a few more mailbag questions on our Thursday episode. Rates and Barrels at TheAthletic.com if you want to reach us. He's at Eno Saris on Twitter. I'm at Derek Van Ryper. Before we go, I should say, if you're enjoying this show

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stuff team by team fantasy football you want jake seeley's football rankings and waiver advice every week you know you do get it for one dollar a month at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Thursday. Thanks for listening.