Rates & Barrels - Struggling Stars & The Sophomore Slump

Episode Date: September 10, 2020

Eno and DVR discuss several struggling stars -- including a mix of hitters and pitchers -- the 'Sophomore Slump', an intriguing pitching prospect with very good command, and more. Rundown4:29 Hitters Are Missing In-Game Video Availability9:10 Swing Rate Variations Over Time13:43 Kris Bryant & Long-Term Ailments20:35 Making Sense of Adalberto Mondesi’s Ugly 202026:19 J.D. Martinez Bounceback Potential30:33 Marcus Semien & Regression37:28 Pete Alonso & ’Sophomore Slumps’44:03 Matthew Boyd’s Slide47:41 Concerns About Luis Castillo’s Inflated WHIP50:09 Flaws for Chris Paddack53:41 Patrick Corbin's Step Back55:54 The Sixto Sánchez Hype is Deserved59:05 George Kirby, Ljay Newsome & Mariners’ Command-Heavy Prospects64:42 Triston McKenzie and Fading Velocity Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic for just $1/month at theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 136. It is Thursday, September 10th. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, we're going to discuss struggling stars, the idea of sophomore slumps. Are they real? Are they like the Loch Ness Monster? Wait a minute. The Loch Ness Monster could be real.

We haven't ruled that out completely just yet. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about some struggling pitchers as well. So stars really on both sides in the wake of Eno's piece that went up on The Athletic on Thursday. And we had a good follow-up email related to Command that we talked about on our episode on Tuesday. So we'll talk about that as well. Eno, how's it going for you on this Thursday?

It's good. I woke up with a dog, a puppy dog, and two boys in the bed with me and my wife. in the bed with me and my wife. I think there was maybe a smoke inhalation related bloody nose for one. The other one said his room was too dark and

his belly was growling because he was hungry. I think the dog was puking or something. It's a great way to start your day. One of those mornings. i love them all to death but uh i love my sleep too and i was for a long period of time an only child with a single parent so i got a lot of sleep and there was nobody in the bed with me and there was none of this nonsense so

i try not to be uh too too much of a growling um upset dad on these days because it's still cute and you know they need their love but at the same time get out of my bed i like that there's a lifetime's worth of things that happen to you every morning between the time you wake up and the time we start to record this show. Well, yeah, I mean, they are chaos creation machines. Children and puppies, for sure. Yeah, I like that you've got a house full of them. It just makes life a lot

more fun. My wife is like, I'm running a farm. She wakes up in the morning and she loves plants and she's got all these alocasias and orchids and

bromeliads and all this stuff and half of them i guess she has to water every morning so she has to water the plants feed the cats and the cats and the dogs are getting to a detente but at the same time they kind of um it's like a little bit rough to kind of feed one and not the other and the dogs aren't allowed to eat the cat food so you have to we put the cat food up on a stool so that the cats can get up on and they knock it down you have to oh did you poo over there did you pee over there what's going on and then wait hey kids will you eat your breakfast you know it's so far sometimes my wife and i look at each other. It's so far from when we were in our early 30s, living in New York City, waking up at 10 a.m., 11 a.m. on weekends and just being like, what are we going to do today? Nothing? Yeah, sure.

Let's do nothing. Isn't that good fun? Let's just do nothing. Yep. I think you got to move to an actual farm. I think the activities the pets the people you need space you need room to roam you need you need places for these children to play and these animals to uh not kill each other but uh if you got any leads on a nice little

farm for for ito and his family hit us up on twitter uh let's talk about some struggling stars though you had a piece that went up on The Athletic Thursday morning, and you looked at some big hitters who just have not delivered at the levels that we have expected. The piece featured Christian Jelic and Nolan Arenado and Francisco Lindor,

Javi Baez, Pete Alonso, and Gleyber Torres. We're not going to talk about all six of those guys in detail, because hopefully people listening to the pod have or will read the article at some point in the near future. But I do think the theme with a few of these guys is that we have players who have complained about not having as much access to video in-game. And I've wondered, what types of things are you doing with in-game video that you simply can't do pregame with your prep? Like what's missing?

What notes are you unable to gather watching the pitchers you're likely to see ahead of time? Obviously, you know who's going to start that day so you can get video on that guy. Is it the bullpen at bats especially that are extra uncomfortable? guy is it the bullpen at bats especially that are extra uncomfortable like i've really kind of struggled to figure out how there hasn't been a counter adjustment made by some of these elite hitters who've talked about that being a big problem yeah hobby bias uh groused about it recently jd martinez brought it up i had a major league hitting coach tell me that it's a bigger deal than people are making of it so it seems like it's a real deal but i also share this wonder like what exactly they're doing out of it maybe it requires a story to kind of uncover it because i don't have

an answer i don't think you're like really necessarily looking at mechanics in game mechanics are almost tough to do in season mechanics are like often a end of the year you know off-season thing you know like are you really going to be changing a large part of what you're doing with your hands or your legs you know in game um in terms of tipping that yeah okay you're looking maybe you're looking for tipping but that sort of research is done by the coaching staff and everybody else on your team and also is being done in real time from the dugout you know like you could talk to a player that just came off and be like do you notice something when he's throwing fastballs or whatever it is you know um so i don't think it's tipping so So the thing that I come upon is pitch selection.

And I'm also surprised that they can't just remember. Oh, he went slider away, fastball in. You know what I mean? I'm surprised there's no like, or go to someone who's charting the game, right? Go to your hitting coach and be like, what did he send me? What did he do again? He did fastball slider. But I've talked to players like, I was talking to Alex Wood,

and I was talking about throwing to Yosemite Grandal, and he thought I meant pitching to him. And he related a pitch by pitch at bat from like four years before when he had pitched to Yosemite Grandal. That's a different sort of personality or different sort of brain right i mean i think that maybe part of what the issue is is some guys are visual learners some guys are going to be able to pick things up off of the written reports a little easier right it's it's all gonna vary from player to player a little bit i've coached players when I was a high school soccer coach who remembered details from games before I was even coaching them

or things that happened in games two years prior that I had even forgotten. And I feel like I'm pretty good with recalls. And there were just some kids I had that were phenomenal in that regard. I can remember every single thing. They said, oh, I faced this kid in a U12 tournament in PKs and he went upper 90 to the left on me. And I'm like, that's awesome. I'm glad you remembered that because you can

decide to guess that way in PKs if we faced them here in high school as a senior. I'm not good like that. Talking to Jason Stark about trivia, he'll remember trivia and he'll be like, well, maybe I could do it if I had my computer in front of me.

I've outsourced memorizing that sort of stuff to my computer because it is way better at it than I ever was. So that could be it. I mean, that could really be it. Maybe I should see in myself what J.D. Martinez and Javi Baez are struggling with is just sort of remembering what happened in the last at-bat and remembering the sequence and remembering what the pitcher was trying to do. But still, it seems like there's other ways to do that, like go talk to the hitting

coach or go talk to somebody else who has that memory or look at the, there's got to be somebody charting the game. So maybe the person charting the game, oftentimes a pitcher is not allowed to be in the dugout with you. So this seems like something worth poking a little bit more, but I think it is worthwhile. And I think it goes hand in glove with another realization that's interesting that came from Craig Edwards' piece on Fangraphs about how pitchers were ahead of the hitters going in. And one of the things that was going on was that

hitters in the early parts of seasons apparently take more pitches. And I think what they're doing is basically playing the long game, where they're just going to take a bunch of pitches early on so they can see what pitches every pitcher has and then the next time they see them they've seen all their pitches and they're ready to there's a sort of accumulated knowledge factor right and if you in my piece you look at uh kristen yelich uh nolan arenado um gliber torres it's like three of the six and Nolan Arenado, Gliber Torres, it's like three of the six, and there might be a fourth, they're all swinging less than usual.

And Christian Yelich in particular, early in seasons, swings less, late in seasons, swings more, and when he's swinging more, that's when he really takes off. If you think about some of Christian Jelic's really blazing white hot stretches of time, they usually come in the second half or sort of May onward. So we think of this last month as August. And what's also funny is that August is the best time for power.

So you might have just taken a bunch of pitches in the best month for power. Right. Because of the weather and factors that enable the ball to carry really well. Because of fact, yeah. Because of weather mostly, which is a thing that it does not change. Even though we started our season in August, and so therefore they're taking pitches like it's April, started our season in August, and so therefore they're taking pitches like it's April. The weather is like August, and so that's the best time for power. There is a chance

that the sort of grip-it and rip-it types did well, but then you look at Javi Baez, and you look at somebody we might look at in a second, Adalberto Mondesi, those are grip-it and rip-it types, and they're not doing well playing April style baseball in august

but there's a lot of different things going in different directions where you have you know no video and your april approach and you know i do also feel javi baez i feel what he's saying when he says it's the video, but you also hear him sort of and everything else. So he talked about, oh, it's this crazy season. He kind of trails off, you know. So there was one question that was like, maybe some people's hearts aren't really in it just because it seems like such a weird season.

It's, you know, it's a 60 game season. Maybe they feel like it's just illegitimate and there are all these rule changes and they can't do things that they normally have and there's no fans. I could see their heart and heart being in it because honestly, and I might have admitted this before, but I had periods of time in the last six months where I was wondering if this is what I was going to do for the rest of my life. Yeah, I think everybody's having different versions of those thoughts, if not those very same thoughts, right? It's a global pandemic, the first of our lifetimes, and it changes the way that we approach everything. There could be any number of factors that are causing some players to either lose focus or just not have that extra drive. I mean, the absence of fans is probably a bigger deal than most people have let on. Playing in an empty stadium is weird.

Not getting that rush from the crowd in those situations where you're used to getting that is weird. And I do think the environments for getting into the ballpark, while you're probably used to that, that's still very different than what you've been accustomed to for the last 10 plus years of being a professional baseball player for a lot of these guys that's different obviously road situations are completely different the schedule's different you keep seeing the same teams over and over again so that's kind of weird which you'd think would maybe speed up the process of hitters getting a little bit more aggressive,

not having to wait as long to see pictures that they'd seen just the week before, right? Maybe you'd be getting along to the point where you're saying, all right, I'm comfortable. I know what this guy's bringing to the table. I'm going to be more aggressive this time around.

I don't know if that's really been the case to this point either. But yeah, so everyone's kind of got a different sort of theory on this, but and everything else is just such a good blanket in a way where it's like, well, the thing that's bothering Javi Baez right now might not be the same thing that's bothering Chris Bryan or might not be the same thing that's bothering JD Martinez or anybody else in this piece or not in this piece. But interestingly enough, too, there are some players that you didn't include in here that were brought up in the comments. Bryant was among them.

Bryant, I keep just looking at and saying he's hurt. And I think the follow-up question is, is he ever going to be completely healthy again? He had the major shoulder injury a couple seasons ago. Last year, I thought was really kind of a true sort of bounce back for him. 31 home runs was his best total since 2016. He's 4.8 wins above replacement. So kind of close to that MVP sort of level we saw at the beginning of his career. That seemed like a pretty healthy sort of bounce back, but he just got held of a lineup on Wednesday with an elbow issue again, was on the IL a couple of weeks ago. So when you see something like this, where a lot of the players you wrote about, there were still good underlying numbers, maybe the plate discipline was largely intact, or with Jelic, the hard hit rate was still there. You know, with Bryant, you're seeing a walk rate that's been cut in half, you're seeing more strikeouts than ever, and you're not seeing as much hard contact as you've seen in the past either.

So is it easy to just say, yeah, this is it, this is just an injury? You know, I think so, but there's something that makes me uneasy about the continual decline in certain stats. You know what I mean? Like, some part of me is like, maybe he's just aging. Well, I think with Brian in particular,

go back to the beginning of his career, average exit velocity is 89.7, 89.3. From 2017 on, we're at 87, 85.8, 87.5.5 and now 86.3 that's a pretty big drop right it's full it's two full ticks like when when young players are coming up and they're hitting in that 87 mile per hour range we always say well is there going to be more power is there going to be another level and when you fall into that level but you previously showed us something that's better it's i think it's a harder question can you get back can you get that power back generally aging curves say nope but if

you've been battling injuries for multiple years you're at that crossroads is this injury ever really going to go away or is this just the new baseline we're we've put enough distance between his shoulder injury and now that I feel like there's either another injury that we just don't know about or it's his age. And I think it's even more stark if you look at barrel percentage because it's just more gradual and he never really had that bounce back that he had. When you say 87.5 exit velocity, this is what the barrel rate was like. He started started 11 and 11 and a half percent which was actually at the time top 10 percent in baseball 11.7 percent in 2016 9.6 9.5

9.3 4.6 yes the 4.6 is stark perhaps uh he should be getting closer to a seven or eight perhaps there's more barrels in his back the launch angle is still high you know maybe he just uh is having these early season foibles and one thing that occurred to me too when we're talking about uh the absence of fans you know it's been proven uh you know i was a psychology major it's been proven in psychological research that you just remember things better when there's a positive emotion attached to it. And that is used in coaching a lot

where even if you're not like an edutronic data tech guy as a pitcher, your coach will look at the data and he'll say, oh, that was a good pitch. And he'll say, attaboy. He said, that's what we want. That's the curveball that we want.

That was great. Good job. And, you know, anybody who's parented or tried to train a dog or anything knows that that's – but fans do that, right? When you have – when you're going well and you have the good swing going, fans will let you know. It's positive reinforcement. Yeah, positive reinforcement, and that's missing.

I don't know if that's necessarily, you know, Bryant has swung so many times that, you know, I think that may be more of an issue for someone like Gleyber Torres or a younger person who's still kind of solidifying his mechanics maybe. But for Bryant, when I look at him, I just see age. And at 28, he's two years past his peak. I might buy if the price was real low for this year, just as a lottery ticket, just be like,

hey, maybe he'll get it going. And, but I wouldn't buy him at in dynasty at a high price. And I don't know if I'd sell yet because this is a pretty low point to sell at. But I would be looking for an opportunity to sell basically in a dynasty league and in redraft leagues. I there, we will talk about better by low pickups if you still have some time left before your trade deadline yeah i keep looking at him i haven't been a dynasty league didn't trade him for the previously mentioned poo poo platter that

was offered to me by tom trudeau and i have some regrets just from a hey that might end up being the best offer i get in the long run if what we're seeing from Bryant continues. But I think there's enough there. If he can just get back, if he can show us that 2019 is the new baseline, I can get a little more than what I was offered in that trade. That's my hope anyway. I don't think he's getting back to his early career levels. I think if you're hoping for that sort of rebound from Chris Bryant, you're hoping for too much. And I'd be very surprised if he gets back on track before the end of this season. Yeah, but he's closer. When Joey Votto, the interaction of age and how far he is from

when he was better is better than when Joey Votto vato lost it um you know because joey vato was older um and he had just a stark of a drop in his sort of stack cast and barrel rate type stuff um that presaged uh you know the the player he is now uh but he was also in his 30s so that's why i would wait for you know chris bryant's decent 20 age 29 or age 30 season is this is he a free agent no he lost that grievance so he's got another year with the cubs you know it works out okay for him actually i mean this way at least he's gainfully employed he doesn't have to hit the market and take some uh you know donaldson-esque uh pillow contract yeah you're right this way he might just be under contract with the cubs and

have a better year and hit the market at a better time i think there's a health component to the next player we're going to talk about as well adalberto mondesi i did not realize how bad he has been at the plate so far this season. How about a 203, 227, 272 line? That's a 29 WRC plus. He's been a below replacement level player so far this season, and that's with being kind of an average sort of defender based on the grades there. This is troubling, and I think the biggest thing i would point back to is that he had off-season shoulder surgery and while we assumed that extra time to recover

while everything was stopped back during the spring would enable players like mondesi to come back at full strength they're closer to full strength. Maybe that was an unfair assumption to make. But the other part of this too is that we're talking about a very unique player when you look at his profile, right? He's an extremely low walk rate guy, strikes out quite a bit, makes a lot of course with the speed. He's 12 for 18 as a base dealer. So as bad as he's been from a real life perspective, at least you're still getting the stolen bases you signed up for from a fantasy perspective. It's been a batting average drag and certainly not much to go with it in the counting stats. You don't usually see a guy with

12 steals and 13 runs scored. That's a pretty hard thing to do, but when you're only on base at a 227 clip, you can't score that many runs. As you look at the overall body of work from Adalberto Mondesi, do you have any sort of adjustments you're making to your expectations for him going forward? I don't know. He's just so not my type of player.

If you want to sell me a guy with this kind of walk and strikeout rate, then he's got to have Teoscar Hernandez balls in play. You know? And I do realize that Alberto Mondesi's defense gives him a much softer landing than Teoscar Hernandez, but we're talking about fantasy, where everything, the bar is ratcheted up for everybody. And if you look at his barrel rate last year, 7%, that's just not enough for me.

It's above average. You know, in 2018, he had an 11% barrel rate. If he can get back to that, but right now he has a 4.6% barrel rate. So I'd say he's about half of what he needs to be doing in terms of barrels in order for me to really want to take part. I have zero shares. I've never owned a share at Alberto Mondesi. And I just, to me, it was like a slight step above Malik Smith at shortstop. But, you know know obviously 2018 exists and so there is another season in him where the power and the defense and the speed make him a really valuable player i just don't know that i'll ever own it maybe next year if there's a huge discount um take him as a bench piece but that's about all i got for you yeah i

think there's gonna be a pretty big discount i'm intrigued because some of the underlying numbers are still okay yeah the exit velocity has gotten up a little bit yeah now 111 max exit velo is good 93.1 on flies and liners looks pretty good like it's the approach has always been bad like we've right we haven't changed there really at all it's the approach has always been bad like we've right we haven't changed there really at all it's only a slight downturn from the pretty terrible levels of last season it's a more extreme version almost of the jonathan vr problem that i described a while back where i can't bring myself to draft jonathan vr at his 2020 adp because I don't think he's a very good real-life player. Even though I know I'm not drafting him for that, right?

Moniz is close to that. The defense does kind of get him a little bit out of that, but he's close to that. You just look and go, wow, this could be bad. This could be a bottom third of the order guy that he's a nine hitter who drags down your batting average doesn't score a lot doesn't drive many runs in gets to some power and steals a ton of bases which is it's a funkier version of a former royal from a profile standpoint of like a gerard dyson you get more playing time than dyson ever had so that's good um that's a that's a boost but it's a really challenging player to have you have to kind of

make adjustments to your foundation if you're going to roster him you have to build you have to build around him like you have to believe in him and build around him maybe not next year when you can take him on the bench and if he hits 260 he's playable and everything's fine uh but you know in a year where you have to spend to get him, for modesty, you'd have to... I would have baked in a 300 hitter. I would have had to pair him with Michael Brantley. That's a pretty simple adjustment though, right?

If you think about it, if all you have to do is seek out one really high average guy that basically washes away the low average that's not that much extra work to do well there's just fewer and fewer of those high average guys these days i mean the major league batting average is like 250 yeah but the adp 31 so alberto mondesi looking like a really frustrating and disappointing player despite the fact that the speed has been there i see him as more of a long-term buy though, despite the fact that the speed has been there. I see him as more of a long-term buy, though,

despite those flaws. If I could get him in a keeper or a dynasty league right now, I'm going to do it, because that speed's going to be there for a while. I don't think they're going to give up on him, and some of those underlying numbers that we mentioned are encouraging. JD Martinez is pretty fascinating,

because I thought he was one of the safest players in the pool. I thought he was actually one of the more underrated early round picks on draft boards this season. It just hasn't played out that way so far. I mean, one warning that I threw out there all along was, okay, this lineup is not going to be as good without Mookie as it was with Mookie, but look at JD. He doesn't look like himself at all. 216, 304, 385 is the slash lines, and 81 WRC+. Just four home runs on the season. He's been part of the group of players talking about the video and how difficult it's been to adjust to not having that available the way he has had in past years. So is JD Martinez a viable bounce back candidate down the stretch or beyond

this season? I mean, I wish he'd been traded because there's probably some element also of just being like, Oh, I'm on a crappy team again and we're not in it. And you know, there's not usually people on base and nobody's,

nobody's here. Nobody's watching. Nobody cares. So there's an element of that. But also, I think there's an element of randomness. I just wanted to look at his splits from last year. I know the world doesn't work this way, but if you just put March and September together, his ISO for those two months combined would be less than the

ISO that he's carrying right now. So I feel like when I look at his process stats, when I look at his stat cast stats, there's nothing that stands out as poor. I mean, yes, his barrel rate back in the salad days was more like 15 and 18 percent, more like leading the whole league. And now he's at 10 percent, but 10 percent still pretty good. And yes, his max EV used to be around 115, 116, and now it's 111. 111 is still pretty good. So, you know, when I look at him, I see a guy, it's actually the opposite of some of the things we've been saying. I see a guy that I wouldn't necessarily buy in a keeper dynasty for the future. I'd buy him for win now. I would buy him for a league this year. I would buy him for a league for next year. I would not buy him much beyond that because it's just going to keep going away. He's going to have an 8% barrel rate at some point, and he's going to have a 108 max below and

blah, blah, blah, blah. So, you know, definitely age is coming for him. He's 33. He probably has like two or three more good years as a fantasy boon, and I think this year will be one of them. fantasy um boone and i think this year will be one of them um but i don't know that long term um there's like i just you know we look at his swing metrics you look at his stack they're all in line he's fine he's totally fine would you trade for him then if you were a major league gm and you're looking at two years left on that deal i mean at 23 almost 24 million dollars per year for these next two years? The only thing is that people are risk averse and we don't know if fans are going to be in seats. And so the money would be the biggest difficulty. I think it would have been a really,

really interesting thing for the Padres to do instead of Mitch Moreland is get J.D. Martinez. for the Padres to do instead of Mitch Moreland is get J.D. Martinez. But they would have needed the Red Sox to pay down like half the deal. And, you know, the Red Sox being like, OK, you know, you need us to pay down 30 or 40 million dollars right now when we might be having cash flow problems like a lot of teams. And we don't know if we're going to have fans in the seats next year. Like, I think we'd almost rather, you you know just keep paying him his game checks you know what i mean right just ride it out not have to pay sending you some some portion or or agreeing to trade away someone like we're hoping to maybe rebuild fast you know that's that's definitely something that

heimblum would want to do. So maybe J.J. Martinez would be part of a good Red Sox team. So I think the money was the big thing. If you're talking about fantasy, yeah. I'd trade for him. C plus five home runs this season. He's chipped in three steals as well. K rate is way up. And that was something that was at a career best level a year ago, 13.7%.

He walked more than ever last year, really did everything maxed out playing time, got to more power than ever. We talked about Simeon having the problem of nowhere to go, but down because of playing time volume last year, but this is much different than that. What do you make when you look at some of the underlying numbers for Simeon having the problem of nowhere to go but down because of playing time volume last year. But this is much different than that. What do you make when you look at some of the underlying numbers for Simeon at this point? You know, it's interesting.

You see something like his ex-Woba is better than his Woba. I mean, it's only a little bit. But I just wanted to point out ex-Woba is broken right now, and I would not use it. This is, I think, something that might be useful for people as they're perusing StatCast. Just do a simple thing. If you can do the search, do WOBA minus XWOBA by team for 2020, and you'll immediately see why XWOBA is broken.

There is only one team outperforming its XWOBA. That can't, like, something's wrong. If there are that many teams that are underperforming its ex-wobba that just that that can't like something's wrong if there are you know that many teams that are underperforming um and you look at somebody like um arizona uh where you know the collective lead team is is 14 points under their ex-wobba like that doesn't make any sense um oakland is 26 points under their ex-wBA, that doesn't make any sense. Oakland is 26 points under their ex-WOBA. That doesn't make any sense. So ex-WOBA is broken. You've got to kind of try to look at the underlying stats

and figure it out for yourself. And when you do look at those underlying stats, something actually stood out for me. If you look at Stimian's barrel rate, so let's say we're going to project his barrel rate for this year. Just because barrel rate is good does not mean we're going to project his barrel rate for this year. You know, just because barrel rate is good does not mean you don't regress it. You know, everything, even the stickiest best year to year data always gets regressed somewhat to a mean and also has some

sort of aging factor, right? That's just how projections work. That's how aging works. That's how people work. Like even if you had a really good season, even if a lot of things you're doing right, you can do right again. You know that you're going to kind of regress back to what you've been before. So if you look at Simeon's barrel rate in 2017, 2.3 in 2018, 4.3. In 2019, 7.4. If you just did a simple Marcel projection, and Marcel's basically take five of last year, three of the year before, and two of the year before that, and divide by 10.

It's a very simple projection technique. It's called Marcel the monkey, and it does really well. It's basically the beginning for any projection system is to start there. If you did that, you would give him a 5.4% barrel rate. If you add any

aging, you're probably talking about 5.2, 5% barrel rate. Right now, his barrel rate is 4.5. I think he's kind of just regressing to who he was as a player and you could do it with just simple slugging rate where it was like 435 398 388 522 what do you what would you do with some a player like that you would regress him back closer to 400 so maybe the 358 is too low but

it's not too low by a lot you could adjust that, okay, maybe he's been 435 was the previous three-year high before last season. Yeah, maybe that. Maybe you go back to there and say that's the baseline. same um caveats that we have for the other players in terms of um you know just trying to figure out the season and um you know also like just it's been even weirder i think in northern california than some places like in the last week they played maybe three games that on days when I did not go outside, because it's orange sky again. Am I going to run today? It's a little bit weird to ask them to go out there. It's a little bit weird to ask them to go out there in a pandemic,

and it's even weirder to ask them to go out there and play when they're not supposed to, when their lungs are filling with crap. So I don't know. I think he's he's an amazing role model, has worked hard to get. The most out of what he has, and I think he will do a little better than he's doing, but I also didn't have any shares of him because it was a pretty clear kind of career year, and I don't think that people regressed enough off of that.

No, but if you go into 2021 and you're looking for 240, 250 batting average, 15-ish homers, another dozen to 15 steals, he's done that enough times where you kind of see that as something he'll get back to. Seems like a very good A.L. Aver type buy next year. Actually, he's a free agent, so wherever he is. I think he's a very good monoleague buy next year where you buy him for $5 or $6 and he gives you $10 in production. Yeah, maybe a really nice middle infield filler in deeper mixed leagues as well despite the downturn in production for marcus

simeon here in 2020 now is the time to celebrate football is finally back and draft kings the leader in one day fantasy sports has millions of reasons why you should be excited to kick off the football season draft kings is giving new users a free shot at a $1 million top prize with a total of $3 million up for grabs in this Thursday's football contest. That is tonight. Get in on Thursday night's single game showdown. All you have to do is download DraftKings using the promo code MAYS, M-A-Y-S. Draft six players from the season opener. Stand to the salary cap and see how your team stacks up against the competition.

So head to the app now to start making it rain. Plus new users sign up today on DraftKings using the code maze will receive a free shot at the $1 million top prize with your first deposit. Nothing adds to the sweat of watching the game like having a shot at a million dollar payday. Download the DraftKings app now and use the code maze for a limited time. New users can get a free shot at the $1 million top prize and $3 million in total prizes. Don't miss this extra special week one bonus. Enter the code MAZE to get a free shot at the $1 million top prize with your first deposit. That's code MAZE only at DraftKings. Make it rain.

Minimum $5 deposit required. Eligibility restrictions apply. See DraftKings.com for details. All right, you know, let's talk about sophomore slumps for a second because I was looking through the comments on your piece from this morning and that was brought up with Pete Alonzo. And I went from kind of believing in this or at least abiding by it as I built fantasy teams when I started playing in my late teens and early 20s. Then I kind of laughed about it for 10 years as a completely ridiculous sort of thing. But then I

kind of landed more in this middle ground where I think the sophomore slump sort of exists. It just shouldn't be called that. It's not a thing that happens because it's your second year in the league. It's a thing that happens because the league is very smart and very difficult to be successful in. And if you have a weakness, the coaches and players you're facing in the major leagues are going to find those weaknesses and exploit them. And every player is going to have a varying ability to counter adjust to those things, or they might not have a counter adjustment at all. They might just be a flaw that was found and the baseline comes in a bit lower than it appeared to be

when the player arrived at the big league level. So can we say that the sophomore slump exists but just needs to be renamed or just has a little more nuance than people would like? Yeah, I think of a few things. I mean, in the context of just having talked about Marcus Simeon and regressions,

I think that any time someone comes off a peak season, unless they're kind of Mike Trout-ish and that peak season just fit in with the rest of their offerings, right? I think that you always want to regress back to the demonstrated abilities that they had in the larger sample before that so the problem with the sophomore slump is that you don't really have that before and so people think sometimes that pete alonzo you know comes on the scene hits 53 homers that's his demonstrated talent level but it's like it's not and and then one of the ways that you can also think about this is the the vast majority of the evidence is that with aging curves that players now enter the league at their best and then go down from there

aging curves used to go up and then down. And then for the most part now, they just plateau until 26 and then go down. And I think that has to do with better player development. It has to do with better player development in high school and college and before that. Better independent player development, not even just MLB player development. And then sometimes it has to do with just a book, like the book is changing on P. Alonzo and it looks like people are starting

to climb the ladder on him and it's on him to prove if he's Schwarber or Bellinger or if he's Brandon Moss as I wrote in the piece so is that the right is sophomore self the right term or is it just regression

I don't know what do you think i like i guess it is a sophomore slump but it's it's not like every sophomore has the same like same slump there's like juan soto is not having a sophomore slump right but there's fewer holes in his game like you might find yeah that's what it is but with another hitter you're're going to find three or four. And correcting one thing is pretty easy. Correcting three or four things is really difficult. Is Keston Hira going through a sophomore slump right now?

I just think these are adjustments. It's boring to call them adjustments. It's not worth two points in scategories. But I don't know. You look at this situation for Pete Alonso, it's like, that's not a sophomore slump. That's clearly the league making the changes you described. And that's what's happening when production goes down in year two. Sometimes players figure it out within that same season. Sometimes they don't. But I think if you could call it up early enough, your sophomore

slump, as people would call it, could be a second half slump. It could be adjustments that happened on the fly mid-season that teams made against you, the boot got around, and then you struggled to make those adjustments. I mean, even for a guy like Dan Vogelbach, who got his first extended run as a regular last season in Seattle, he was an all-star on the strength of a great first half. Clearly, the second half was nothing like the first half. He got DFA'd, ended up changing teams twice already this season. The league kind of figured him out, and he hasn't been able to show that he's counter-adjusted just yet. factors might be on and off rosters he might be a brandon moss guy that bounces around finds a new home for a little while eventually is there for a couple of years and then kind of moves on quicker than you expect like that's a pretty normal sort of development for for that type of player and it's uh yeah it's not as it's not as sexy as something that has alliteration and we love our alliteration but But yeah, we could have seen this

in the second half for Alonzo last year. And because we didn't, I'm maybe not so worried about him. With a person that can go oppo as well as Alonzo did, like he, he did the weirdest thing where he like hit, uh,

he won the home run Derby with oppo home runs, which I, or at least like center field and slightly oppo, which I've never seen before. I think that somebody who can do that can handle the up and away pitch better than someone like Brandon Moss, who was, you know,

pull city. Um, so I have a fair amount of confidence that Alonzo will pull through this, especially given how hard he's hitting the ball and how his swing rates are fine. So the verdict sophomore slumps kind of real, but more of just adjustment phases that young players are going through not anything specific to that second season uh like we don't know the true talent level of a rookie yeah after a rookie season we don't really know it 100 yet like we don't we really don't know the true talent level of a prospect. That's obvious.

Then when they play one season, sometimes we flip a switch and say, oh, we know exactly who that player is. We don't. We know more than we did when they were a prospect, but we don't know everything. Right. Plenty of examples of players actually getting a lot better than what they were upon arrival. We talked about one on the last episode, Shane Bieber.

Struggling stars on the pitching side, I think, are also interesting to talk about. Matthew Boyd was on the opposite side of a Corbin Burns gem, a crazy 19-run performance from the Brewers' offense yesterday. But Boyd looked like maybe he was starting to put the pieces back together in his last couple of starts prior to Wednesday. I think among qualified pitchers, he's now by far the worst in terms of ERA this season. What's gone wrong for Matthew Boyd, and is it fixable? I think that sometimes you have to trust your approach and what it says. I think I talked myself into Boyd to some extent. I need to find my rankings here,

but I was looking at it this time and I have an 87 stuff number for him, a 102 command number for him. And in terms of strength of schedule, I have a 99. So below average stuff, slightly above average command, and basically an average schedule. The best that can produce is an average pitcher. And you throw on top of that, one thing that stuff numbers do not capture almost anywhere is the question of how many pitches a person has because stuff just looks

at how good the pitches are it doesn't it's agnostic of how many pitches you have so Matthew Boyd has always been a two-pitch pitcher and I had some hope for him the last three or four starts where he started throwing the change up and I still have some hope for him that if he can throw the change up 10 to 15 percent of the time, he'll have these occasional blowups because the stuff is not amazing. But he'll become a viable year-long pitcher. But you zoom out, he just hasn't been a viable year-long pitcher. I don't think there's any season where you can point out and be like, that season was just a really valuable,

glad I had Matt Boyd on my team all year long kind of season. Yeah, I mean, being a big league pitcher is hard. That's sort of an underlying caveat of all the conversations we have. But we're looking at a guy who's got a 509 ERA. But my personal feeling for him also may have clouded my analysis. I'll have to admit it. I mean, he's just a really nice guy and gives good interviews and seems very willing to kind of bear himself

in terms of like, you know, you kind of root for a guy like that. But yeah, what did you say? 509 for his career. Career 509. And we're talking about 127 career starts now. This is not the first two, three seasons in the big leagues. This is more than

four years worth of starts. And you still, you look at that strikeout rate minus that walk rate, it's improved every year and it's still pretty, except for this year, but it's still pretty good this year. And you say, there's still a chance there with that strikeout rate and that walk rate. But then your eyes wander over

to the home run rate. And that's the two pitch aspect. So, you know, if he comes out throwing 20% change-ups or 15%, 20% change-ups, I mean, right now he's at 14.8. You know, maybe DFS-type, stream-type situation, though, at times we'll all use him. But in my most recent ranks i i dropped them all the way down to 127 next to like steven matts and jake arietta it's like the boring veterans that

are sometimes useful but uh can also blow the heck up out of your team yeah unfortunately i think that is where he belongs at this point let's talk about luisillo, still missing a lot of bats, 31.1% K rate, getting a lot of ground balls. ERA doesn't look that bad at 395. He kind of caught my eye because the whip is really bad. He doesn't give up a lot of home runs. He's actually posting the best home run rate of his career. He's just been weirdly hittable. Is this a fluke? Is this just a small sample? We're talking starts for for most of these guys eight or nine pretty consistently is this just some some noise for luis castillo is he still someone that should be looked at as and kind of an ace on the rise maybe a fringy top 10 top 15

sort of starting pitcher going forward yeah i'm gonna i'm just gonna say it's it's a bit of a fluke and i'm still in on luis castillo you If you look at his career BABIP, even with this year included, it's 278, it's 387 this year. Almost every other thing is in line. His ground ball rate is second best of his career. Strikeout rate, best of his career. Walk rate in line with his career. Home run rate, best of his career.

These are all important things, and there's no velocity problem, velocity best of his career. These are all important things. There's no velocity problem, velocity best of his career. He hasn't really changed his pitch mix in a huge way. I see him as, I've got him seventh. I'm still way in the tank for him. The only asterisk I have for him and the only reason that he fell a little bit or was hard to rank was that he has a 102 strength of schedule. I used pitcher list Nick Pollock's schedules, and then I assigned basically a park factor and an opponent team strength factor to that. And the Reds have a decently tough schedule.

and the Reds have a decently tough schedule. Guys like Tyler Molle. Tyler Molle, I think, has the worst schedule remaining in baseball. And that colors it. However, a guy like Tyler Molle, it almost only matters what his next start is, right? And his next start is St. Louis, which, you know, I'm into that. that yeah i'm not fearing that cardinals lineup no no i'm not so um luis castillo i think is a little bit impervious to strength of schedule i think he's just going to regress towards in a good way

progress regress in a positive way i don't know how to say that is there just a weird weird concept uh but that's that's what i think of him i i don't know how to say that. Is there just a weird concept? But that's what I think of him. I don't see any warning signs. Let's talk about Chris Paddock for a moment. 475 ERA. That's a little bit inflated. Home runs have really been the culprit for him. He's still missing bats, not walking guys. It's still really just a two-pitch mix for the most part. We do see some curveballs, but I'm not really sure what to make of Paddock's struggles. I was probably a little higher on him than most coming off of the season he had a year ago. The whips up a little bit to 125. I mean, this was someone who,

I don't know if anybody was penciling him in for the same ratios as last year, right? A 333 ERA and a.98 whip is almost impossible to repeat unless you're the elite of the elite, and nobody was at that level with him. So is this just within the range of normal outcomes for the skills that we saw last year where 2019 was kind of the best it can be, and 2020 is kind of the worst it can be? And the answer is probably somewhere near the middle, which is where a lot of the projections are going forward i i would love to pick him up in a dynasty league i would love to pick him up in a long-term league i'd love to draft him next year at a discount although when i said that on twitter rob silver um thought that there wouldn't be any any sort of discount for paddock but i have to believe there will be some because I dropped him to 26 for this year behind guys like Lizardo and Corbin.

And behind a guy like Plesak just because, A, I think there's a mechanical issue. Working on the cutter and the curve removed two inches of ride from his fastball. So his fastball is more hittable this year. And I think that it's also affected his command of the fastball a little bit. And while I think that's fixable, I think that's easier something to fix in the offseason. And thirdly, he has a 104 strength of schedule, which is pretty tough. Ahead of him, only Ryu and Walker Bueller and Clayton Kershaw have tougher schedules. They're better pitchers right now.

I'm looking at the command plus column too with Paddock. 115 command plus. Still there. I'm in. I'm still trying to get Chris Paddock. 115 Command Plus. Still there. I'm in. I'm still trying to get Chris Paddock. I think Rob might be right. You're probably not getting a steep discount in Keeper in Dynasty Leagues because Major League Ready pitching is at such a premium in those formats.

But he might be more gettable. You might have an owner willing to deal even if you're not getting a discount compared to this time a year ago. It would have been pie in the sky, completely impossible to even get that person to answer an email or a phone call. And you might be able to give him a lot of present value to get that, you know,

like I would do something even I think on the level of like a Kenta Maeda, maybe even like a Kenta Maeda and Lance Lynn for Chris Paddock and something else, because I feel like Maeda and Lynn, you know, with a little bit of velocity drop-off, are not going to be as good as they are now. And Paddock is more the beginning of his career. So as long as that second piece coming back was good, like, and pretty good, I guess, I might do something like that.

Like, just give him, and especially if it's like a keep six situation and you want Paddock for your one pitcher-keeper, then you could throw a lot of pitchers at somebody to get it. You need the right situation. You need someone who has Paddock and doesn't necessarily have six great keepers already. If you've got a little depth you can leverage, maybe there's an angle there.

You mentioned you had Patrick Corbin ranked ahead of Paddock, I think, just in passing. Corbin's been off the last couple of starts. Al Melchior and I have talked about it on Fantasy Baseball in 15. Velocity's down. We talked about him a while back as a two-pitch pitcher who might be kind of a younger version

of Rich Hill in some ways, but for the season, the K rate's down a lot for Corbin. The ratios have turned pretty ugly. A 434 ERA, a 147 whip. I mean, strikeout per inning stuff, or at least close to it, is where he's been to this point. Home run rate is up again for Corbin as well.

I'm a little spooked by what we're seeing from him, given especially the velocity drop. I just don't think a two-pitch pitcher can afford a velocity drop like the one we're seeing from Corbin, where he's lost about two ticks off that fastball. Not a great keeper situation. Definitely something to think about long-term because you can just look at the shape of his career, too,

and realize that at the beginning, two of his first four seasons, he had a 4-5 ERA and a 5-2 ERA, basically, as he struggled to sort of make the most out of that two-pitch mix. He also, we talk about how starting pitchers age better if they have more pitches to go to, and his changeup has never been good, and his curveball is just a slower version of his slider. So he really, really is a two-pitch pitcher. Part of the reason

I kept him where I kept him is I have a 97 strength of schedule for him. That's pretty good. It's one of the better ones. Zach Greinke probably has the best strength of schedule remaining. He has a 90, but otherwise a 97 sticks out as uh you know i have patrick corman there at 97 and i have six toe sanchez behind him um and on on on sort of stuff and even uh command and you know what i think of them i think i have six to ahead of corbin already um but sixo is running into a bit of a schedule thing with 104 there. So Paddock and Sixto just stayed behind Corbin for now.

There was a little bit of a soft spot there where I was trying to decide how far up I would push Sixto, basically. Yeah, you got a pretty nice little cluster here. Lizardo, Paddock, Sixto, and Barrios at 25 through 28. Four pitchers that I like quite a bit. And I think projecting Sixto's 2021 ADP, goodness. I mean, if you had to do it today, he'd be in the top 100 overall. I think there'd be that much helium based on what we've seen from him so far

but the underlying numbers seem to back it up yeah i mean uh here i've got 110 stuff 106 command and it's pretty easy to see that when you just watch him i mean he's throwing 100 mile an hour fastballs with a really legitimate almost screwball-esque changeup with just a ton of drop. I watched his breaking ball closely the first couple starts because I was wondering about the lower strikeout rates, but I think the velocity was just lower in the minor leagues a lot of times because he was kind of going through some problems, shoulder problems and and arm problems

so i do think um the risk actually for six dough is health more than anything because the breaking ball looked fine to me the strikeout rate is pretty much there he's not going to be a guy who relies on weak command he he does a weak uh contact he does get that with a 59 ground ball rate and you know some 60s in the minor leagues like he does get the weak contact the He does get that with a 59% ground ball rate and some 60s in the minor leagues. He does get the weak contact. The changeup does lead to outs without the strikeouts sometimes, but the breaking ball was good too. I don't think that the breaking ball is going to keep him down in that 7-8 K-9. I think he can manage the K per inning. The real question for me is health, just because it's been a question for him throughout his career yeah he's really i mean he's really similar to

paddock in a lot of ways with that profile and more velocity than paddock but just same kinds of injury concerns a lot of swing and miss of course coming from the change up and whether or not the third pitch is consistent for sexto sanchez probably determines whether the ceiling is legitimate like top 10 starter or if it ends up being more 20 to 30 range starter for him but he's already sort of pitched his way into that 20 to 30 range which is really impressive

just given how little we've seen of him at the big league level. Our sponsor today Manscaped is here to make sure you're well groomed above and below the belt. Manscaped promotes clean hygiene when it comes to shaving with their Lawn Mower 3.0 personal trimmer. Manscaped is the only men's brand dedicated to below the belt. Manscaped promotes clean hygiene when it comes to shaving with their Lawn Mower 3.0 personal trimmer. Manscaped is the only men's brand dedicated to below-the-waist grooming,

and the Lawn Mower 3.0 is a waterproof cordless body trimmer that makes it safe and easy. Subscribe to the perfect package and get a new replacement blade refill for your trimmer delivered to your door every three months, making sure your trimmer always stays fresh and clean. Get 20% off and free shipping with the code THEATHLETIC20 at manscaped.com.

That's 20% off with free shipping at manscaped.com and use code THEATHLETIC20. And for a limited time, subscribers get not one, but two free gifts, a travel bag, $39 value, and a patented high-performance Manscaped boxer briefs. So go to manscaped.com today and use code THEATHLETIC20. All right, you know, we had a great email follow-up that came in from Levi, and he pointed out that George Kirby, a pitching prospect in the Mariners organization, also has a future command grade of a 70. Pretty good velocity to go with it, as he points out, 93 to 95. some pretty interesting grades on his secondary pitches as well and i think you brought up the mariners probably in the last six months at some point as

an organization that seems to be making some pretty big strides with its pitching development so you look at kirby fastball slider curveball changeup has four graded pitches and that fan graph scouting report already has 55 command with room for more. And he's been picking up some velocity according to some of the news items I've seen scroll by recently. There's a tweet from Shannon Dreyer from 710 ESPN in Seattle that Kirby was hitting the upper 90s with the fastball during simulated games at the alternate training site. So we're kind of ticking some boxes here that are going to give people the Bieber feels, I guess we'll call them. That's a crazy high bar.

We are talking about a former first round pick, a guy that has some pedigree anyway, and isn't necessarily discussed as an elite of the elite pitching prospect, even though he has potentially elite command. Yeah, it's early going for somebody like LeJay Newsome, but I think he's instructive to talk about here because he's a Seattle guy. He's come up. He's in the big leagues.

We get to see some of the relationship between command, the future command score, and then the command plus score in the major leagues. And, you know know you really want about 200 pitches or something and lejay is not quite there but uh so far he has a 122 command plus and let me just sort my rankings for that because i think that might be one of the best in my rankings yeah uh zach davies lejay newsome michael pinata not many Zach Gallin, we've talked about him forever, Justin Verlander, Masahiro Tanaka, Aaron Nola, obvious, obvious, Trevor Williams, just missing the other stuff, and then Paddock, Molly, Mills, Ryu, Hendricks. I think Command Plus is really solid.

I think LeJay's number will come down a little bit, but it just shows you, I think, how much command can do for you. I mean, LeJay's other numbers, like he's a 40 future value guy with a 50 fastball, 45 curve, and 55 change. Like this is supposed to be a guy who's like a future reliever, maybe even, or just trying to hang on basically. Um, and he's done, he's done well for himself. So take that command and put it in Kirby, uh, who's got a 50 fastball, 55 future, 50 curveball, 55 future, uh, 45 change, 55 future, um, and a 40, 45 slider. Like, you know, the only question is, you know, can he develop a good slider in a slider league, I think. But you can see it up and down in Seattle's numbers.

Gilbert has a 60 future command, too. They love command. And the Mariners and Indians have made a big bet on drafting command guys and trying to give them velo and trying to shape their pitches and I have to tell you man Marco Gonzalez is as boring as oatmeal but and no one would ever leave like if you scouted Marco Gonzalez you didn't know who he was and he was in double a and you just watched him pitch, you would say command and control

number five. Five starter. It was all change up. It was a really good change up with command and nothing else really jumped off the pitch. And yes, he's added a cutter, but that's about it. Yes, he added a cutter. And that's what you're asking George Kirby

to do, basically. Right? Yeah, but he might have better tools to work with from the start. That's what you're asking george kirby to do basically right yeah but he might have better tools to work with from the start that's what i'm saying yeah um and even tristan mckenzie who i don't think uh the command plus on him has not shown up uh the same way that's why i caution a little bit on on the jay newsome but uh the command plus for tristan mckenzie so far is 99 still keeps him out of that josh james territory even christian javier even you know a lot of the astros guys astros bet on stuff and a lot of their guys have really bad command plus numbers when they get to the major leagues and don't make it as starters or underperform um and i my bet is that as much as i i love stuff and i'm a stuffist like i am watching the seattle pitchers very closely kirby gilbert

even newsome and they've got penn murphy who i can't wait for people to see him because he's an NBA-having former military guy who throws basically underhanded. And he's just a really interesting guy. He thought he would just try baseball out for a second because it might lead to a front office job or who knows what. And he just got added to the Major League roster. And they still think maybe he could start, but I think he'll be a good reliever for them. But yeah, Gilbert, Kirby, Newsome, that's the threesome I talked to. All have really good heads on their shoulders,

all being coached really well, all have good command. Tristan McKenzie came up yesterday. I was on Twitter. I really feel bad. I don't know who put this out there, but I'm looking at Baseball Savant now because I saw a tweet from somebody who pointed out that McKenzie's average fastball velocity has been down in each of his first four starts. He started off at 94.5 in that debut, went down to 93.3, down to 92.7, and now down to 92.4 with his most recent start this week. How troubling is that? You kind of expect that extra bump for the first start,

so a drop from start one to start two is not really a big deal, but we're talking about almost another full mile per hour from the second start through the fourth start. Could that be Hawkeye-related issues, or is that actually a real sort of concern with a drop like that? I haven't heard much about Hawkeye with issues or is that actually a real sort of concern with the drop like that i haven't heard much uh about hawkeye with respect to uh velocity there's been a slight questioning of some of the pitch classifications i had someone texting me about john gray throwing uh sinkers in um in texas and never ever before or after. And there's the question of like,

when will we generate stuff that we're getting now is basically just a faux track man. It's not. Those are different problems. So I believe that the velocity is down. You know, he is like 100 pounds soaking wet, and I would point out that there is a debut bump. That's something I found. It can be as much as a tick.

So going from 94.8 to 93.7 in the next start, I would still say 93.7 is good, and that's an acceptable kind of follow-up to a debut. It is a little bit troublesome to me that a guy with arm trouble, who looks like he does, then lost another tick. So I like that he was back up a little bit to 92.8 in the last start, and I would hope that he averages over 93 in the next start. If he doesn't, it's something I'll stash away.

It's hard to argue with the results. He's a really nice changeup. The mix seems there. The command is at least league average. When he's over 93, he's got better than average VLO. But it is something to worry about. It is something to look at. Especially since dude had a real hard time. I think he missed a whole season.

2019. He missed all of 2019. And even before that, 2018 was only 90 innings, 16 starts. 2016 was 80 innings, 15 starts. They've been slow walking this guy for a reason i like him but it's the prime time to deal him away in a long-term league if you had someone

interested in and paying up for tristan mckenzie i think you know the velo drop the injury history he's pitched well so far there's just enough there where you can probably max out what you're going to get for him right now if your league's trade deadline hasn't passed i'd package him for like zach gallon right now mckenzie plus maybe gets you there at this point so hopefully it's nothing but something to watch very closely and again i've apologized to if someone listened to the show who put that out there i wish i could give you credit it just got me to look closer at that and it's definitely a concerning trend with mckenzie if you're enjoying this show on a platform that allows you to rate and review the podcast please give us rating and

review we greatly appreciate that if you don't already have a subscription to the athletic you can get a subscription for a dollar one dollar per month at the athletic.com slash rates and barrels get enos articles and, all of our baseball coverage, fantasy baseball coverage, fantasy football stuff, a Premier League starting up again soon. We got NBA coverage from the bubble. We got NHL dual bubble action as well. Lots to read each and every day.

And I just want to say thank you again to everybody who has been supporting this site with a subscription already. Thanks to everybody who has rated and reviewed the podcast. We really appreciate your support. Obviously, if you were on Twitter yesterday, you probably saw that as a company, The Athletic reached 1 million subscribers and just means the world, I think, to both of us that people pay to read and hear our work and support what we do. Hopefully, we're able to continue doing this long into the future. But if you don't have that subscription yet, a dollar a month is, I think, the cheapest offer we've ever put out

there. So theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels if you'd like to get that. As always, you can reach us via email, ratesandbarrels at theathletic.com. Be sure to spell out the word. And if you do that on Twitter, he's at Eno Saris. I'm at Derek Van Ryper. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you Friday. I say it every time, but I mean it. Thanks for listening.