Rates & Barrels - Surprising Bats, Bohm Promotion & Broken Profiles

Episode Date: August 13, 2020

Eno and DVR take a look at several surprising performers near the top of hitter leaderboards, Trevor Story’s attempt to move into the elite of the elite, the promotion of Alec Bohm, and players with concerning batted-ball profile and approach changes to begin the season. Rundown3:31 Austin Slater Making Most of Opportunity in San Fran6:45 Interest in Dylan Moore?12:47 What’s Up with Robbie Grossman?16:25 Andres Gimenez Offering Immediate Speed20:15 Still Skeptical of Isiah Kiner-Falefa23:06 Erik Gonzalez Quietly Making Better Contact31:02 Alec Bohm Gets the Call40:37 Trevor Story’s Improved Plate Skills44:27 Batted Ball Profile Concerns55:14 Statcast and Command Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiperE-mail: [e-mail] Get 40% off a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode number 124. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. It is Thursday, August 13th. On this episode, we'll take a look at some early surprises on a few hitter leaderboards. We'll discuss the possibility that Trevor Story is becoming one of the elite of the elite hitters in baseball with some things he's been doing to begin this 2020 season. We'll also talk about some hitters who are struggling with some early shifts in their batted ball profile that could be a sign of even worse days ahead. Eno, how's it going for you on this Thursday?

It's good. It's going to be a hectic day. Going to be on the stat cast of cast. Brian Kenney, Sarah Langs, and I believe Harold Reynolds are doing the Mets game today against the Nationals. I'm going to come on for a little bit. I'll talk things like extension and the stuff that we talk about here, like why Austin Voth's new split finger is better than his old changeup

and stuff like that. Tune in if you've got a chance. After chance after that i'm gonna throw all the stuff behind me in a backpack put it on my back and go totally off grid until sunday and i'm hoping early enough sunday that i can check the box scores and do my fab maybe in the car on the way back. That'll be interesting. I will not be available for answering questions. I think in, uh, Joe Semity, um, we're going to, we're going to be so far out there that I won't be able to do anything on my phone, which is good. I gotta, I gotta just, you know, put that away for a little bit and that'll be amazing. We're going to, um, hike to two different lakes and jump in them.

That sounds awesome. It sounds like a good way to justify making fab worse. Your fab experience on Sunday from a phone will be an all-timer, I'm sure. I spent all my money on a reliever who's not closing. Woo-hoo! I'm expecting several texts from the highway, like frantic texts like,

what are you doing? Who are you bidding on? I need this. I expect those to be part of my Sunday now, but no, I'm glad you're getting some time away. Let's talk about some early surprises. I immediately went to the stolen base leaderboard, and I think it's because for the end of

Under the Radar on Wednesday, Ian Conn was throwing out some names of guys that he really likes in deeper leagues who have been stepping up with an opportunity to play to begin the season. Two names he threw out there are two who are much higher on the stolen base leaderboard than I expected. Austin Slater, who's tied with Tommy Pham and Fernando Tatis Jr. with five steals this season, was among the names he mentioned. Dylan Moore has four. A couple other guys like Robbie Grossman having four is a pretty big surprise. Andres Jimenez, who's been up playing with Robinson Cano on the IL, he's picked up four.

And Isaiah Kiner-Falefa, who I probably owe an apology for writing him off a few weeks ago. He's got four steals as well. I think most of those came against Arizona, though, as we talked about a couple weeks back. But Slater and Moore do more than just steal bases. And we'll start with Slater. I mean, this is a guy that is getting an opportunity in San Francisco. They've had a lot of success with Mike Yastrzemski as an unheralded guy that has come in

and done a lot with the playing time he's been given. What do you see from Austin Slater? Do you see another guy who might actually be around on the next great Giants team? Or do you see maybe a future trade piece? Or at least do you see someone who can continue to be good for fantasy players who've taken that early season flyer on him? You know, the one thing that I think, you know, that we really love on this podcast is Hit Tool. I think it's just one of the things

that's hardest to put your finger on, but it is also one of the things that leads to longer careers and also is a place to look for breakouts because Hit Tool plus even a slightly raised launch angle leads to a power breakout. I think Jesse Winker is in the middle of one of those, or maybe it was last year. But the point is, he didn't demonstrate all this power before, but he demonstrated the hit tool,

and then he added the power. And I think we're seeing that with Austin Slater. I mean, with Austin Slater, you had this guy that demonstrated low strikeout rates, or at least decent strikeout rates, and high BABIPs in the minors, which of course are related to the defense, but also have to do with how hard you're hitting the ball and the angles you're hitting the ball and where you're hitting the ball. He's a spray hitter with a decent contact rate. I see that as the kind of hit tool, you know, the best way into understanding hit tool when it comes to looking at stats. And then just look at his average launch angle, which we can now see on fan graphs, which is pretty fun.

Went from, you know, 1, 2, and 3 in the first three years to 9 this year. So he's hitting the ball about as hard as ever. The max EV is down a little bit, but give him a couple more chances, he might get one. But he's hitting the ball by hard hit rate as well as he has before. And now his barrel rate is up because he's hitting them in higher angles. So in terms of how much of this power I believe, I don't know if I necessarily believe a 300 ISO out of him. He's at 290 right now. But I think the projections might be light because we're talking about a 180 ISO in his first try at the league

and a 280 so far this year. Maybe it's a guy who could manage to have above average power. Average power is around 180 right now. What if he could be a guy that in a full season would actually hit 25 homers? What if he could be a guy that in a full season would actually hit 25 homers? That would be beyond the expectations, I think, of most people when they looked at Austin Slater's profile, even in college at Stanford or in the minor leagues. You take 25 homers and the ability to steal 10 bags a year

and throw up a good batting average, this is a fine for them. This is probably a league average uh outfielder uh which is you know for the giants they've they've had some terrible outfields for a while definitely a good find maybe a successful development story too and he's been pretty good in the upper levels of the minor leagues it's just been old for the level so i think that's kind of kept him off the radar so looks like a guy that will continue to contribute at a pretty high level. I think he's similar to Dylan Moore in some ways, just a long kind of grind through the minor leagues. Moore has changed organizations. He was drafted originally by the Rangers. He was a

seventh rounder back in 2015, but I don't think I've ever seen him anywhere near a prospect list outside of really organizational specific lists that run really deep. So he's bounced around a little bit from Texas to Atlanta to Milwaukee. Now he's in Seattle. Got some chances last year. Didn't do a ton with them. Did hit nine homers and steal 11 bases in 113 games, but he hit 206 with a 302 OBP and slugged 389. So there wasn't anything in that slash line that made you say, yeah, I want Dylan Moore, and I expect the Mariners to give him a chance to play. But already up to 58 plate appearances, hitting.294, the.379 OBP, slugging.608, striking out a bit less than last year.

If you look at the batted ball profile last year, Dylan Moore was doing a good job hitting the ball in the air a lot. That's just been part of who he is as a hitter. It's probably part of what limits his batting average ceiling over a full season. Similar kind of thinking here as Slater, with this opportunity, can we expect something resembling these good times to last for him? I think there is a similar backstory for Dylan Moore as there was Austin Slater. As you see, you have sub-20 strikeout rates in the minor leagues.

You know, when he's with the Braves and the Rangers and the Brewers, he's walking around. Like the one thing that he always could do is make contact. And as you kind of track his progress through the minor leagues, you see a sort of gradually increasing fly ball rate. I think that's something to look for when you're looking for late breakouts in minor league players or small sample guys that have just come up. Yes, both Austin Slater and Dylan Moore are like, you know, Austin Slater is 27, Dylan Moore is 28. There's a likelihood that they're playing at close to their peak abilities.

And we're probably not likely to see careers out of them where they're still playing at 33 even. 33 and 34 is the cliff these days. And if you had to be so close to your peak to make it in the major leagues, my understanding is, like Ryan Ludwig before, you are gone fast as well you know you you you have to think of like your production as you know as a bell curve right and if you only are major league

relevant very close to your peak when it starts going down again you're going to be gone again so I don't necessarily think they're amazing dynasty assets in like I'm gonna build around these guys but in the conversation we're having in the last podcast right we were talking about who are guys that I could pick up or trade for that would be good for my dynasty team in the next two or three years that would not cost a lot and I think Dylan Moore and Austin Slater are awesome names for that because I do see enough with their you know I think Dylan Moore and Austin Sater are awesome names for that because I do see enough with their, you know, I think Dylan Moore might have one little bit of gear left because we haven't, it's been since 2015 since he struck out above 20% in the minors. And I could see him cutting the strikeout rate more than the projections say.

So if he sort of finds that one last gear where he's hitting the ball in the air 45% of the time and he's striking out 24, 25% of the time, then I think we can believe some of this batting average OBP goodness that he's got going. Otherwise, it's more of a 220 hitting, you know, get some homers and steals kind of play. Yeah, I think it's interesting to see the difference in how heavily rostered these two players are. I think Dylan Moore is now up to 100% ownership in the NFBC main event. It's a 15-team high-stakes league. Everyone's really dialed in to who's playing and how they're offering various categorical contributions. He has eligibilities.

Yeah, and I think with Slater, he's available in about 50% of leagues, thanks to Jenny Butler for sharing some NFBC main event ownership rates with me since I'm not playing in the main event this year. You look at that gap and you're like, well, Slater could definitely help. I mean, outfielders are pretty easy to come by. But again, speed's at a premium and he's doing enough things right where they're going to continue giving him opportunities until he gives them a reason to not do that. There aren't that many other options in San Francisco. I mean, there are a lot of people. They're not that great. I would say I've looked at the stolen bases and I wanted to point out that a lot of them came against the Astros and the Dodgers. And I thought maybe what

if, you know, those are just teams that people run against like the Diamondbacks that we pointed out earlier. It's true that the Dodgers are being run against. If you sort teams for stolen bases allowed, it's Angels, Diamondbacks, Red Sox, Mariners, Dodgers. So the Dodgers are in the top five in stolen bases allowed. They're tied with the Mariners for fourth. So they're allowing stolen bases. Oh, the Mariners have not caught one.

The Dodgers have caught a couple. But I would still say a lot of these teams are focusing on framing. And when you focus on framing, in particular with the Giants, we've seen actually they're doing the low technique that Gary Sanchez isn't doing in order to frame more balls. And that leads to a little bit tougher time throwing to second and to blocking past balls. So generally I think the league is going towards not preventing the run game because the run game is not something that people are doing and so maybe Slater is just sort of picking those off because in terms of sprint speed or times the first he's top 25 percent but he's not necessarily elite.

But the Astros here are middle of the table. They've allowed eight stolen bases, and two of them were to Austin Slater. So maybe he's just sneaky smart. He is a guy that the stolen base has been a part of his game all the way back to Stanford. So I don't know. I think you could bet on a full season pace from him of 10 to 15 stolen bases, which in today's game is nothing to sneeze at. Here's a weird one.

Robbie Grossman with four steals to begin the season. He's already got three home runs as well in 15 games. The thing about Robbie Grossman is that he's got a four-year stretch now where he's had a great walk rate. He's always walked, but he's also paired it with a sub-20% K rate. He's really, I think, evolved as a hitter, but also been also paired it with a sub 20% K rate. Like he's really, I think evolved as a hitter, but also been optimally used mostly against lefties, but he switched hits and, you know, he's 30 years old. Now you look at the early stack cast numbers, hitting the ball harder than

ever and 89.8 average exit velocity. So far, it's too early to say that that's who he is, but we're seeing him do really everything pretty well. And I think for a guy that's always had good plate skills, that definitely gets my attention. I think we're going to look at a Ramon Laureano suspension appeal this week, which means he's probably going to miss some time next week. But with that, Robbie Grossman probably gets another little nudge in playing time. We saw the A's get unexpectedly high levels of production from Mark Kanha a year ago, is Grossman kind of laying a similar foundation here in the early weeks of the season? I wonder if there's something also to sort of gathering guys that are,

you know, the Cardinals kind of seem to, for a long time, wait on guys until they were like 26 to bring them to the big leagues, and then they were like, we're going to have you guys in the big leagues in your peak age range, and that's it. You're going to be with the Cardinals from 24 to 30, and we're not going to waste early stuff or late stuff, and that's it. The A's seem like a team that always have these veterans around just in case. Grossman has been very close to being DFA'd, I think, in his time with the A's. He might have been DFA'd, but

because his defense is not great, he's been most against lefties. There's the emergence of Seth Brown. But what do you do? Seth Brown, you bring him up. Oh, you know, he's striking out too much. He's not quite ready. Let's wait a little bit. Let's season him. Grossman's still here. Grossman's doing a little bit better. Oh, look at this. Breakout season from Grossman. So, you know, who's he been stealing against? It's all against the Angels.

And the Angels are number one in stolen bases allowed. So I'm not sure that I believe in his stolen bases. There's just not that same track record of speed in this way, and he's 30. So I think he'll steal maybe three more against the Angels. I think it's more about just what he can do as a hitter if more playing time comes his way, though. So it might be a nice little temporary pickup or a streamer

the next time the Angels pop up on the schedule. A guy that's often available in pretty much all mixed formats. I would do him as a short-term one based on maybe the Laureano suspension. One week soon, Laureano is going to miss a whole week. miss a whole week and when you do that to the Oakland Athletics outfield you probably play Kenha at at center Piscotti and Wright and then Grossman looks like he gets the majority of the playing time because Chad Pinder is in some sort of platoon at second for the most part so you'll see some Chad Pinder in the outfield but Grossman becomes a starter the minute Laureano goes into a suspension. Yeah, so that bodes really well. The other thing that's kind of helped too, at least in terms of

Grossman's playing time, Chris Davis has been playing a lot less than expected, so Kanha can be the DH. Occasionally, Grossman can DH as well, since Davis seems to be limited mostly to starts against lefties, not entirely, at least for the time being. I think one of the most interesting names on the stolen base leaderboard is Andres Jimenez. He's got four steals already. Hasn't even really been up with the Mets that long. I think the concern here is that the playing time will probably dry up as soon as Robinson Cano is back from his groin injury. But as you look at Andres Jimenez, this is a guy who's actually a prospect. He skipped over AAA.

He was at AA as a 20-year-old last year. Was 28 for 44 as a base dealer. So clearly some work to be done there. Brings a little bit of power to the table. Because he's so young, you have to think that there's still a lot more room for improvement for him just as an all-around hitter. So what's your interest level in Andres Jimenez? Is he still

mostly just an NL only and then keeper dynasty sort of guy because of the uncertainty about the playing time once Cano gets back? You know, one of the findings they found when they use force plate analysis on hitters, when they put force plates in the ground, you know, in some ways, baseball is behind golf. Force plates have been around for a long time in golf, and they've been able to tell golfers how to shift your weight and what weight is important for long drives and stuff like that. And so they brought that recently over to hitting, and what they found was the front foot, it's very important for pitching and very important for hitting.

Basically, the force that you put into the ground with the front foot is correlated to bat speed and to arm speed in pitching. It has to do with what people call blocking. You throw that thing down and it's almost like a javelin or something. Imagine a javelin thrower. He plants that foot down and then he hurls his whole body around it, right? And that's sort of the modern philosophy when it comes to pitching and hitting. Andres Jimenez, when he was showing very little power in A ball, his foot didn't really

come off the ground. He showed great defense, great contact ability, and so he kept advancing and has been a favorite of some. I've been worried about his 50-60% ground ball rates. I've been worried about his 50-60% ground ball rates. But then in AA this past year, he added more of an actual leg kick. And he showed some of his best fly ball rates. And yes, the strikeout rate went up, but that's maybe too expected as he came up through the league. He doesn't have great patience, so he's more of a hit tool guy. through the league. He doesn't have great patience, so he's more of a hit tool guy.

But again, what we have here is a guy with a hit tool, with increasing fly ball rates, a mechanical component. I'm not saying that I think he will have league average power, but maybe he'll have like a 130, 140 ISO. If he puts that together with the speed that he definitely has. I mean, he stole 28 bases last year in the minor leagues, and he did that again. He did 38 in 2018. So, you know, Andres Jimenez, very exciting in the minor leagues, and he did that again. He did 38 in 2018. So Andres Jimenez, very exciting for the hit tool, the defense, very important for the Mets

to have someone like him when they have Rosario at short and a bunch of old guys at second, pretty much. They need to have a young guy that can step in and provide depth as he is now. I don't know if he's going to rest a starting position away. They said Cano, when he comes back, could DH some, but Dominic Smith is a good bat. So I don't think that necessarily Jimenez has a full-time starting role once everyone's healthy on that team. But as a plug-in, I have him in a couple leagues where I'm just hoping to get some steals, have a good batting average, and go back to Mike Moustakas as soon as I can.

Yeah, Jimenez, too, played really well in the Arizona Fall League. I think he won the batting title for the league. We're talking about 70 at-bats, but still showed a little pop out in Arizona as well. I thought he looked good in the games that we got to see him last October. Wow, that feels like longer ago than 10 months ago. That feels like an entire lifetime ago. I mentioned Isaiah Kiner-Falefa.

I'll officially make this the apology to him. I do think, though, kind of like you're saying with Robbie Grossman, some of that speed was amplified by a really favorable matchup. And I think the problem I still have with Conor Falefa is we really just don't see a lot to fall back on at the plate as a hitter. I think he's just kind of an empty batting average guy who occasionally steals bases. Most of that value is going to come from his ability to rack up basically everyday playing time at third base while having catcher eligibility so he's hitting 321 right now obviously that's not an empty average because it's a good average and you know there's a little bit there nine runs scored i just don't

see kinder falafel being a difference maker in the long run even though he's been good so far for the fantasy players who picked him up yeah he's one of those one term yeah i mean remember josh willingham one year was a an outfielder and was a catcher eligible he was like the patron saint of kind of falafel in this year which is short term great ad for just volume at a position where you don't get volume. So those nine runs in the context of third baseman is just not that exciting. It's nine runs and four stolen bases from a position you normally want some power from. It's a weird fit.

You might want to use him as a utility guy in some leagues, but I think the best fit is short-term catcher, not a long-term investment in terms of getting him in Dynasty Leagues or anything. For all the talk of how his improved body and

spring-summer camp stats in terms of power, his flyball rate is worse than it was last year, spring, summer camp stats in terms of power. His fly ball rate is worse than it was last year. Maybe he's hitting the ball a little bit harder, but if he's hitting the ball in the angles that he's hitting it, I don't think that he's necessarily going to hit many homers. I like to use hard hit rate over average EV because that captures how much they are hitting the ball over 95.

Sometimes you can have weird things happen in EV with just the weird displacement of maybe you're just only hitting 90 mile an hour balls or 88 mile an hour balls maybe that's not very exciting you know so hard hit rate is like everything over 95 his hard hit rate is identical to last year so even if you want to say his average ev is up his hard hit rate is the same i think he's very much the same guy really maybe a little bit better contact rate and that's that's about all i believe out of him so i want to kind of look forward and see if i can find a player who's widely available that might kind of fit in with this group that we're talking about someone who's quietly changed something and now has some playing time it's eric gonzalez in pittsburgh not a guy i've ever really been that interested in but you gotta remember coming back through the minor leagues, he was largely just overshadowed by the depth that Cleveland had. injury to Phil Evans, who was playing a ton going into last weekend. He unfortunately ran into Gregory

Polanco and got hurt. With Gonzalez, here's what I'm looking at. The hard hit rate, like you mentioned, kind of important early on. A 56.3% hard hit rate. We're only talking about 32 batted balls, but that's off the charts high. He's never really been a guy that struggled with strikeouts. He's down at 11.1% right now. Again, limited sample, only 36 plate appearances. But this is a guy that I think can play all over the infield. And we're not looking for sexy, high skills, toolsy guys that are going to be on your Dynasty League team for the next five years. Playing time is really important. And everyday playing time, especially with a path to a prominent spot in the lineup can make a pickup like this who really won't cost you much in fab might even be near like a min bid player in most leagues

it can actually yield pretty nice returns if you actually get out ahead of someone hitting a couple of home runs and really kind of locking into their opportunity. Yeah, you could find someone like Jacoby Jones, who, again, is near the peak age. I mean, he's, what is he, 20? Is he 28? 28 already. This is a group, this is a type of player now. Demonstrated some results, some ability,

uh, breaks out at 27, 28 doesn't always stick, uh, but can be useful in the short term. And one of the things you're looking for in the short term, I think if, if you're looking for things right now, you know, there's a thing about like sort of stabilization and some people are very sort of hard line about it and they say you know these stats haven't stabilized so they're useless on the other hand there are other people say like oh we we got to the stabilization point for this one stat so now it's it's golden it's not none of those neither of those is true because you know more information is almost always better for almost every stat but the things that sort of become meaningful earlier

are ground ball fly ball rate, stat cast type hard hit rate, and reach rates and swing rates. So that's, I've set up a Fangraphs customized table where you can see O swing. I have the sort of regular stuff up front. And then at the end, I have O swing, swing, ground ball, fly ball, hard hit rate and barrel rate. It's a little bit early for barrel rate because you're slicing it up more than hard hit, right? You're saying for barrel, you're saying it has to be these angles and this hard. For a hard hit, you're just saying, hey, how many times have you hit it over 95? So the less you slice it up, it's like reach rate is a little bit worse than swing rate because swing rate is just how many times you swing.

Reach rate is how many times you swing at these balls outside of the zone. But I think those things are a great sort of, you know, special sauce. In a season like this, you have to look at something, right? And you may not say, oh, Teoscar Hernandez is hitting the ball. He's got a 60% hard hit rate. And so this is it. This is who he is. He is a monster at the plate. You know, he still strikes out 30% of the time. He might regress some in the hard hit rate, especially if he's missing the ball. He has flaws as a player. He's not a really good defender. He's not a really good person to sell the farm for in terms of really buying high in Dynasty. But the other person who's selling to Oscar Hernandez also knows that he has these flaws and probably isn't building around to Oscar.

And he might be able to just pick him up for not too much and get a lot of value out of him in the short term. And who knows, maybe they're an absolutist when it comes to stabilization and just don't believe any of these numbers. Yeah, it's interesting because you have these players with flaws who could help you a lot and they're easier to trade for in long-term formats. They're often cheaper in weekly pickups than their more gifted counterparts or the prospects who get opportunities, too. I think that's the other thing that obviously jumps to the front of the line when you're talking about setting up your fab bids. And what do people actually pay for? Well, it's new closers. It's prospects.

It's two-start pitchers. But it's not 27-, 28-year-old guys who play every day on a bad team and are actually making these underlying changes. Amber Candelario is probably on your damn wire right now. And he's not exciting, but he's starting now, and he's got a 52% hard hit rate. That's ahead of Mike Trout. And again, I'm not saying it's going to stay there. I'm not saying that he hits the ball harder than Mike Trout.

Go run to Twitter with that one but he fits into this where it's just like old and boring and an oatmeal there's definitely a place for oatmeal yes when you rebuild a team you do want to take your shots at the top prospects you do want to try and pry Wander Franco you know loose you do want to kind of get these guys you do want to maybe do the kingmaker bid for Zach Gallin because you think he's a pitcher to build around, you know. You do want to do those things, but you can also improve your team by just picking up some of these guys and seeing maybe Austin Slater will be really good next year and maybe that he will be part of your next good squad. I do this all the time in my dynasty league where I'm just picking

up guys. And it's funny in this year with the way that we have no minor leagues, these players that have a little bit more value and players that are in the major leagues and struggling even have more value. So like, you know, there's people that hit the ball hard that we haven't talked about yet that, you know, may not be great acquisitions, may be too expensive because of this. But also are interesting, like I was talking about Rowdy Tellez, right? Like he's not quite starting all the time. He does hit the ball hard. He's got the strikeout rate problem. And, you know, these are the kinds of people that people are coming to try

and get off my team. Rowdy Tellez, Yandy Diaz, Michael Chavis, Mike Tauchman, you know, they're all in that sort of age range where you're kind of surprised that people want them, but this is why they want them. The stuff that we're talking about. Right. They're not giving up top prospects and great long-term pieces to get guys that actually help them out quite a bit in the short term especially got some prospect news to get to in just a second first 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 lawnmower 3.0 personal trimmer manscaped is the only men's brand dedicated to

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And for a limited time, subscribers get not one but two free gifts, a travel bag, which is a $39 value, and the patented high-performance Manscaped boxer briefs. So go to manscaped.com today and use the code THEATHLETIC20. So the breaking news, the Athletics's Megan Montemurro has reported that the Phillies plan to call up Alec Boehm ahead of Thursday's game against the Orioles. Had to make a tough cut in mixed-out wars this week.

You know, unfortunately, it was between Mackenzie Gore and Alec Boehm, and I decided that the possibility of Gore coming up would actually help my team more. My team's great on offense. With Joey down, right? Yeah. I looked at it, and I'm like, you know, Lucchese went down.

Gore's probably coming up soon. I don't want to cut either one of these guys, but I'm going to cut Boehm because if they were going to bring him up, they probably would have done it by now. Here we are a few days later. He gets the call. So I'm happy he's getting the call because I do have him in some other leagues. I want young players to play. I think that's the first question is how much does he play with their infield being healthy?

They've had Jay Bruce kind of working as the primary DH. Bruce is a lefty. Boehm's a righty. Would they dare break in a top prospect kind of in a part-time role as the small side platoon DH or at least small side platoon guy that maybe plays third base and they move other guys around to occasionally get days off and kind of float the DH at least against lefties? So I was talking about this board here, you know, the special sauce board. And if you sort by wobah ascending so you're getting the worst bats in the big leagues where did kingery go number one the worst bat in the major leagues

by wobah right now oh man number two is oscar mercado geez um anyway uh so uh i think kingery's job is at risk and here's why nothing looks good uh oh swing over uh over league average swing rate uh too aggressive uh too many ground balls one ground ball per fly ball uh and the hard hit rate is 20 he's not hitting the ball hard it's possible that there's some sort of ramifications from his COVID diagnosis and just coming back from that. But just generally, none of the things that you would look at early on look good. And I have to say it's pretty much the same for Mercado. I think Mercado's in the middle of losing his job. I think he has maybe lost it. So I think hitting the ball hard is really, losing his job. I think he has maybe lost it.

So I think hitting the ball hard is really, really important, and Scott Keringer's not doing it. So they may just install Alec Vaughn at third. Yeah, they could. And, again, they can move a lot of guys around. Kingery struggles, certainly, raise some concerns. They can move him to the outfield a little bit. He can kind of be more that super utility guy. Yeah, use him to the outfield a little bit. He can kind of be more that super utility guy. Yeah, use him as the...

And for the team, they signed him to a deal where, you know, I think they're okay. $60 or $24 million. If he ends up being a really good utility player, I think they're okay with that. They would still get a lot of that value back. But it just doesn't look good for him. The only thing that looks good is

strikeout rate and it's not supported by increase in swing strike rate so i don't think that uh kingery is doing well and i think by maybe uh taking him out of a starting role you could maybe do some stuff where you uh spend a few days working on things in the in with the hitting coach and kind of return to some something or or phantom dl him and let him you know get some of his uh cardiovascular strength back so there's something going on there and uh my call right now is bomb is in and um mercato and kingery are out at that point then is bomb going to be rosterable from the jump in like a 12 team mixed league he should be available this weekend in pretty much any format in which he wasn't held

including 15 team mixed out wars which you know helps no one listening but are you are you going after him in shallow mixed leagues you think there's enough ceiling you have to put it in in context with the other stuff you said where like he's the type of player that's going to cost a lot right i would put i would absolutely put uh money on him the the risk is that he that i'm wrong and that kingery uh still keeps the job and bomb is a part-time guy it just doesn't seem and part-time in the wrong side being a righty i just you know with a young guy like this i i think it is related to the kingery work and just being like hey let, let's see what we can do about our offense and let's bring this guy in.

The projections are going to say he's going to be league average and he has about league average power, league average strikeout rate. But if he is really hitting the ball hard in the minor leagues and by all indications it looks like he is, then those projections are going to be wrong. And we could have a guy who hits.2 280 with 25, 30 homers on our hands. And not for nothing, the Phillies offense has a 118 WRC plus entering Thursday. Only the Yankees have been better as a team.

So they're taking a good offense and maybe upgrading a spot, pushing them even higher. This is becoming a matchup that as we move further along, especially when they're at home, you're definitely being very careful about the types of pitchers you're throwing against them because they can do so much damage. Yeah, and that could be a soft way to enter a guy like this, right? You take the pressure off Kingery and you say, we're not making any long-term moves here. There's still a lot of places where you fit on the next year's Phillies, on future Phillies squads, right? Because we're talking about a veteran at second and a veteran at short. There's lots of places we could play you, right?

So, you know, I would have a talk with King of Rangers and be like, whatever happens in the next few weeks does not mean that you've changed in our estimation. We just want to take some pressure off you. We want to try and see what Baum can do. And we're looking to the future and for now. And you're still part of the future. We locked you down for a reason. And let him press go.

And then Baum is hitting eighth or something, right? And that's not amazing for his 12-team value. But if he hits the bound running and hits some homers, then he'll move up that lineup a little bit too. Yeah, that's always the drawback too. When a good offense brings up a prospect, you can get buried in the bottom third of the order. Then you're paying top dollar and fab for a guy that has great skills, but maybe doesn't have a great opportunity. And you have that extreme contrast between a player like Baum and a player like pretty much any of the guys we've talked about for the first 20 or 25

minutes on today's show. I think we're also supposed to see Dylan Carlson soon. I think that hinges of course, a lot more on when the Cardinals are actually up and running again, but I saw that kind of pop up in a piece on the St. Louis post dispatch this morning. I just saw Jeff McNeil is walking off the field, actually being carted off the field at Citi Field.

He made a catch in the outfield, collided with the wall, and appears to have some kind of leg injury. So some bad news for the Mets. And we were just talking about that situation with Andres Jimenez. And you think about all the moving parts. If Dom Smith has to go play some left field, then that could maybe move Cano to DH and possibly leave a spot up the middle for Andres Jimenez to continue playing. Yes, it could because that goes hand-in-hand with what the manager said today that Cano would play some DH when he came back. Not good news for McNeil,

but maybe something there for Jimenez. We'll have to see. The strikeout rate is a little bit higher than I expected for Jimenez, too. But unexpected addition to the middle infield depth in your fantasy leagues. Yeah, and just kind of looking at the body language from McNeneil something

seems very wrong more details yeah you just you don't see players get carted off very often so keep an eye out for the official word made a fantastic catch running down a ball and smashing to the wall but uh just immediately down in pain after doing that so hopefully it's not as bad as it looks for him coming up in a moment we're going to take a look at trevor story is he truly becoming one of the elite of the elite hitters or is he just off to a fast start but first a quick word from indochino all right now let's talk about trevor story for a few minutes he is showing some interesting things in the underlying numbers the k rate is way down early which you know you know, if you said, what's Trevor Story's biggest flaw?

Prior to this season, I would have said he strikes out a little bit more than you'd like for a guy who gets drafted in the first round. But he offsets it because he plays it course. And when a ball goes in play there, really good things happen. But as you start to look at the early numbers on him do you buy into this idea that story is actually pushing his way further up the board and maybe joining the the yellich bets acuna bellinger group atop the first round the uh the best news here is that he's swinging less that's something that gradually happens anyway. And if you just look at the last three years, 50%, 48%, 42% looks organic. Same. And much of that is coming off of his O-swing. It's coming off of his zone swing too,

but I think that can be a good thing. You know, you do want to be aggressive in the strike zone, but there are places in the zone that pitchers would rather you swing. You know, there are pitches in the places in the zone that you're not good at. And so I think he's learning himself at 27. We could see this. It's sad that we don't get the full season because this could have been his peak season, especially with a swinging strike rate that low. I will have to say that the 53% fly ball rate, it's something he's done before where he's really pushed the fly ball rate

and sometimes he'll come off of that and i think that has to do with what balls he's swinging at and what where his swing starts to become vulnerable if he is lifting the ball that much i.e what's happening high in the zone right so maybe he's just laying off high in the zone, right? So maybe he's just laying off high in the zone and driving everything low in the zone out or the opposite. But I really like the swing strike part. I really like the swing part of it. And I think for him, the fly ball rate is a little bit variable. You've seen it go up and down for him over time. And yet he is an athlete. I don't know if people know this, but he can throw 96, 97. He has been among the top sprint speed guys. When I did a thing that looked at the people who could run, throw and hit in the

top 10%, 15% of the league, he was in that. So he is an athlete, athlete of the highest regard, and he is refining his skill set. That said, this is the kind of thing that you could see at 27, it could last 28, 29. I think that once he gets to 31, 32, you're going to start to see a 26% strikeout rate again, a lower batting average, and then it'll be a little bit more dependent on what stadium he calls home. 26% strikeout rate again, a lower batting average,

and then it'll be a little bit more dependent on what stadium he calls home. So yeah, next three years, I'm all in on Trevor Story. Although, yeah, he's only a Rocky for one more year. Free agent class of 2022, right? Yeah. So he's signed for 2020 and 2021, and he'll be still under team control in 2022.

Right. That'll be his last year with the Rockies. They waited. They waited. Yeah. Two, three, four. Yep. Two more years.

That's why they wait. That's why they wait. Anyway, those three years, I want them. Yeah. I'm right there with you. I think the sprint speed was something that caught my eye a couple years ago doing draft prep. I just didn't realize that he was elite with speed. I knew he ran well, but that was right before the stolen bases started to come along with the power that he showed kind of from the jump as a rookie in 2016.

And again, he showed that with the swing and miss, but he's really done a good job whittling that down over the course of his career. Let's talk about some guys who have been struggling who really are concerning. I think you brought up Scott Kingery when we were talking about Alec Boehm, but we're looking for guys whose batted ball profiles have changed in a bad way. Not just guys who are striking out more. We talked about them a bit, I think, on our last episode, but guys who maybe are hitting the ball on the ground a lot. They're starting to reach a lot of pitches outside the zone because that, to me, is like a broken down process and a swing that's not generating the loft that you want, right? So you're looking for this combination of

bad decision making at the plate and just truly bad outcomes in terms of the bad ball distribution. As you start to look for players who fit this description, where do you see some of the most concern? Ozzy Albies, the reach rate is bad. The swing rate is hyper-aggressive and the production isn't there. I don't know that he's still young enough where maybe this season is just a bad one for him, or maybe he, you know, writes the ship eventually. I'm not willing to kind of jump off the bandwagon completely yet, but those metrics aren't good in terms of what he might do this season. They're not good signs. I think I'm totally out on Francisco Mejia.

Just a 44% reach rate is just only tenable if every time you do make contact, they are rockets. You know? And he's not doing that. Teoscar Hernandez maybe could handle it. You know what I mean? But, like, he is reaching that much, swinging 61% of the time. I don't think I've ever seen a six in the first column there for a swing right.

And just hitting a bunch of ground balls. 13% hard hit rate. There's nothing to hold on to there. Robinson Chirinos, tons of ground balls, not hitting the ball hard, reaching too much. I have to say, Gary Sanchez worries me a little bit. He at least hits the ball hard, but in terms of me thinking he's ever going to have

much more than a 240 batting average, I think that might be out the window. We might be settling into the point where in a full season he's a 240-30 homer guy whose run production gets a boost because of the park and lineup that he plays in, but if you took him out of New York, the power might come down a little bit.

The run production on an average lineup probably wouldn't be at that same level either. It's good while it lasts, but you do think that maybe we're sitting at a relative peak in his Dynasty League value right now. Maybe there's nowhere to go but down for Gary Sanchez at this point. Yeah, I think so. And just the profile, even at 240-30, I think profile is not necessarily the best catcher in the game. You know what I mean? It leaves best fantasy catcher in the game. You know what I mean? Like it leaves best catcher fantasy catcher in the game,

way open for discussion because it looks a lot more like your standard fantasy catcher. Yes. More homers. That's true. He hits the ball hard. He still is hitting the ball hard, but you know,

it's not, it's, it's a fairly even ground ball, fly ball mix. And the, the reach rate and the contact rates are just going so far south that it looks like a real problem in terms of what he can do for your batting average-wise. I think that J.T. Urimoto has passed him as the best fancy catcher in baseball.

I think I'm probably the biggest Byron Buxton fan in the world outside of Minnesota. He leads all hitters in O-swing percentage. Oh, no. What is it? Minimum 30 plate appearances, 51.7%. He got tied up pretty good by a Devin Williams changeup the other night, too. Down and in seems to be a problem for Buxton having just watched that last series. But he's got five homers.

He had two in Wednesday's game. I don't know. I'm still not ready to give up. But you have to see the caution signs when they're there. The athleticism is there. And the game is increasingly a sport of athletes. So it is good to bet on athleticism. But refined skills are important too.

Yeah. So I'm keeping a very close eye on this at least. Now, compared to some of the other guys we're talking about, a 38.2% hard hit rate. When he does make contact, he's making hard contact. That bodes well. That sort of bails him out. He has great defense in center field that props up his playing time.

Again, these are the reasons why I thought it made sense to draft him as much as you could around that pick 150 mark this season. Only one steal so far, but you can't complain about only having one steal when a guy hits five home runs in the first 15 games. I mean, that's way more power than you were expecting from Buxton. A little bit of a concern. He's not walking a lot to begin the season. Only 2% walk rate, close to a 30 k rate so he's under the microscope even though the results have been fine to this point some of

those underlying numbers are definitely concerning yeah um you know then there's i think the ones that are harder to read cody bellinger is in the midst of a weird stretch. You know, his reach rate is worse than usual, a little bit aggressive, making great contact, though, like cut his strikeout rate almost in half. And I think he talked about debuting this new swing that he worked on, which is kind of amazing given how good he has been in the past. Why would he do that? It doesn't make sense.

And I'm hoping that what he's done now is develop a C swing, right? So that now at some point he can go back to his A swing and he'll have A, B, and C. I mean, this is something we've seen with Cody Bellinger where he came to the league, he could drive every low pitch, so all of a sudden everything was high. And then he struggled for a little bit. He developed a B swing, a B swing that could put the high pitch in play so now he's got a and b swing then he he puts them

together in the right way and he has an mvp season maybe he's developed a c swing where he can make contact with everything but the power is gone and right now if you look at hard hit rate, he's 25th worst in baseball. He's sitting there with Albies and Edwin Encarnacion in the huh? And the people who are around them that you're like, oh, yeah, totally. Danny Mendick, Mauricio Dubon, Miles Straw, Roman Quinn. There's something wrong when Cody Bellinger is surrounded by those names. Yeah, he doesn't usually sit at the same table as those guys. No, he doesn't.

I think the secret sauce here is not definitive, though. And in terms of age, previous production, I think Cody Be a bylaw yeah i think so i mean i think this is much like what we're seeing from christian yelich too like you just have elite of the elite players off to slow starts trying to tinker through it and they'll find a way they'll find a way to make those adjustments i think the interesting thing is i look at bellinger kind of curious to see if he's having any of the same problems as Yellich. He's not struggling to make contact in the zone. In fact, Cody Bellinger is making more contact in the zone this season amidst this slow start. He's swinging more though as a whole up to a 50% swing rate. Last couple seasons, he's been between 44% and 45%. He's making more contact outside of the zone while also swinging more often at

pitches outside the zone so that's not really a combination you want either it's almost like hey i've got this new swing i think i can hit everything with it well maybe you don't want to hit those bad pitches with the new swing yeah exactly i think that's what's going on hey i figured out how to hit the ball that's six inches off the outside of the plate. It's like, well, that's not really you at your best. You don't have to play that way. Yeah, there's the time for the A, B, and C. I think that was really what made him so good at one point was he was like, oh, okay. It's A most of the time.

But when I think this guy is coming at me with a certain way or if there's two strikes, then here comes B, right? And then here's some interesting ones where the metrics are going in opposite directions like i think evan white is super interesting because the strikeout rate is terrible um the reach rate is okay the swing rate is not great but at 48 percent um it's like where story used to be right so you know there's some like okay the the reach and the discipline is not great, but it looks about league average. It doesn't necessarily see, I don't see something that would predict a 42% strikeout rate, right? And then on top of that, his hard hit rate is over 50%, which is very good.

I think if I was playing in a dynasty league of over 15 teams and Evan White white was on the waiver wire and i was rebuilding i would put evan white on my team for sure yeah maybe a long-term sort of buy low right now i'm kind of frustrated i'm rebuilding in a dynasty league and i already have them you know there's a few players on that leaderboard i looked at and i was like oh i'm not as concerned about them as uh as everybody else but i can't trade for them because I already have them, and that's why my team is in rebuilding mode. A little bit of chicken and egg there, but I'm with you on Evan White. I think the hard hit rate's encouraging.

It's not surprising to see you guys strike out. All the buy lows are on my team. I've got all the buy lows, but I'm rebuilding. It's not quite the position you want to be in. I think that Willie Calhoun is on the same way. Willie Calhoun has a 38% hard hit rate, a 25% reach rate, 44% swing rate, hitting more fly balls than ground balls. Everything lines up, and in a couple of the last games, he's hit some rockets.

I think he was a little bit behind the curve because he got his face hit and was a little bit tentative on inside pitches and he that's where he does a lot of damage but i could see willie calhoun taking off from here yep i'm still there with you on willie calhoun dugout mugs is a company that was started in a college baseball dugout hence the name dugout mugs they take the barrel of a baseball bat and turn it into a 12 ounce mug dugout mugs are licensed by major league baseball so you can have your favorite team logo laser engraved onto a birchwood baseball bat barrel mug also get custom mugs made too so got a wedding coming up you got a personal logo that you like to wear put it around the mug they're perfect for the big game or to put on display or to be the life of the party and they're

a great gift for any baseball fan go to dugoutmugs.com slash theathletic and use promo code MLB30 for 30% off your first purchase. That's dugoutmugs.com slash theathletic and code MLB30. You know, we got one other question via email. This one's from Andrew, and he wants to know if we've heard of any way in the future that StatCast will be able to track a pitcher's command. It seems to me you could measure the distance the catcher's mitt moves

from the point of the pitch release to the catch. So is there any way to use StatCast to actually measure command? And he points out that he thinks the current ways of measuring command seem to have some holes in them, like Command Plus and different things we've talked about on this show. So can we use StatCast someday and Hawkeye and the new tech to better measure command i do think so uh we we've had this discussion in the past we've had this ability in the past pitch fx the first thing that we started to use to track pitches did have the ability to track the theer's glove. And that found that pitchers, on average, miss their target by 13 inches.

I found that a little bit problematic because I've also talked to people like Chris Iannetta, who said that he used to relax a certain way and then try to get the ball. And then he changed the way he relaxed before he went to get the ball in order so that his glove would appear lower. And he would be catching the ball in an upward trajectory to kind of make lower strikes look higher and look better. strikes look higher and look better. And so I have a feeling that different catchers have different relaxation techniques and different ways to indicate target. For example, there is a way to say with the finger, you sort of hit the inside of your thigh and say inside, right? People were accusing Cody Bellinger of looking back at the catcher. People accused Alex Rodriguez of being a peeker

and looking back at the catcher for targets. So if you think the guy is peeking or you've already indicated that it's an inside fastball with your signs, then you may not give the same kind of target. So I kind of feel like the catcher's glove is not something that you can put into

cement. You know what i mean that you can say that's exactly where he was trying to put it um you'll even see a catcher hit the ground with his glove and then just uh set up in a normal normal spot um that might mean you know miss bounce if you're gonna miss right so right? So the guy bounces it. Well, is that bad command or did he do the right thing? So Command Plus with Stats Performed, what they do is the Command Plus numbers that I use here and in my pieces, and I have a Command Stuff report coming out tomorrow. The Command Plus, what they do is they use the catcher's target. They use the pitcher's scouting report, and they use the hitter's scouting report. And they basically say, okay, the catcher signed cutter inside.

He's set up in a certain place. When this pitcher throws cutters inside to lefties, he throws them here. When this hitter has cutters thrown inside to him as a lefty hitter, they get thrown to him here. So we're going to now draw a dot that's basically at the nexus of those three things, the catcher's target, the pitcher's scouting report, and the hitter's scouting report. And I think that requires a human being. It's possible to maybe automate this down the line, but what they have at Stats Perform is they have human beings watching that

and kind of trying to put all this information together. And I was talking about this with Dustin Palmatier, who used to write for us about the Padres at The Athletic, and he was talking about Denilson Lemaitre, and he was asking what Denilson Lemaitre's command plus was. And he was asking, Denilson-Lamette, and he was asking what Denilson-Lamette's Command Plus was. And he was asking, well, you know, let's say Lamette's a head 0-0-2. Hedges sets up in the low-weight part of the zone, but Lamette throws a slider that bounces, right? This is exactly what we're talking about.

You know, Command Plus would say, you know, he's asking, would Command Plus miss that? And I would say, well, Command Plus would give him more credit for that than any other metric because he would be pretty far away from the catcher's target, but maybe you could look at his scouting report and say, ooh, sometimes he bounces

and gets whiffs on O2. So we should actually move this dot a little bit further from the catcher's target. Move it pretty close to the ground, right? Because that's where he's kind of, that's where he's aiming. And that's what he meant to do.

He kind of meant to bounce that. Um, so we were talking about that, but lament shows up as like an 89 command plus, which is very borderline for a pitch for a starting pitcher, uh, to be 10% worse than league average and command. And what I responded to him was,

um, wouldn't it be better if LeMet could hit like 6 inches off the bottom of the corner repeatedly like yes he meant to bounce it but like when you want to look at amazing slider command watch Patrick Corbin he's not always hitting the corner

but he is always within sort of 6 to 8 inches of the inside corner to righties and that's excellent slider command. So, yes, Lamette gets a little bit of credit in this for command plus, but also it's probably better to be sort of six to eight inches away than consistently bouncing pitches. It's much more convincing to a discerning hitter.

Exactly. A very good hitter is going to be able to spit on a bounced breaking ball, but if you're just six inches off the bottom of the zone you're not bouncing it i think that's everybody everybody has a problem with patrick corbin we'll see on denilson lamette uh especially now that he's throwing 50 sliders 50 fastballs i did not necessarily see that coming but um it is i'm still getting the chris archer vibe thanks a lot for the question andrew as always always, you can reach us via email, ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com. If you'd like to connect with us that way on Twitter, he's at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. If you're enjoying the show on a platform that allows you to rate and review the show,

we'd greatly appreciate that. It goes a long way to support our work. And if you don't already have a subscription to The Athletic, you can get one at 40% off at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. Get Eno's articles, all of our baseball coverage, league-wide stuff, team-by-team and fantasy coverage. It's the best around. You'll love it. 40% off

at theathletic.com slash Rates and Barrels. That is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Friday. Thanks for listening. Thank you.