Rates & Barrels - Surprising Starting Pitchers, The Challenge of Hitting in Seattle & How to Pitch to Elly De La Cruz

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

Eno, Trevor and DVR discuss Christian Scott ahead of his debut against the Rays, and four surprising starting pitchers that have put up great numbers over the first month-plus of the season. They also examine the unique challenges of hitting in Seattle -- and try to determine why the park consistently boosts strikeouts -- before building a game plan to pitch to Elly De La Cruz. Rundown 1:10 Christian Scott Debuting Saturday 3:45 Jack Flaherty: Career-Best K%, BB% & SwStr%! 14:07 Spencer Turnbull: Can He Maintain the Elevated K%? 21:48 Tanner Houck’s Breakout 29:38 Is Zack Littell’s Approach Meshing Well in Tampa? 35:42 What Makes Hitting in Seattle So Difficult? 55:15 Building a Game Plan: Elly De La Cruz Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Trevor on Twitter: @IamTrevorMay Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Raids and Barrels, it's Friday, May 3rd. Derek the Ripper, you know Sarah, Trevor May here with you. It's a live one. Thanks for joining us on our YouTube page for the're the live most Fridays at one o'clock Eastern. On this episode, we're gonna talk about some surprising starting pitchers. Got a quartet of guys that have exceeded expectations so far. We'll discuss whether you should expect anything similar

to the results so far to continue. We're gonna dig into the Mariners slumping offense and try to figure out why it's so difficult to hit in Seattle. It's been a long-term problem, goes as far back really as Adrian Beltre's time there in that newer ballpark in Seattle. So we'll talk about that. We got a latest in our game plan series. We're going to talk about how Eno and Trevor would pitch to Ellie de la Cruz. And of course, as we do each and every Friday, we'll take some questions at the end of the show as well. If you haven't joined it already jump into the discord the link is going to be in the show

description for this episode. We do have one upcoming debut to talk about before we get to our first topics. Christian Scott will come up and face the Rays for his major league debut on Saturday. You know we talked about him a little bit on the Thursday show big numbers at triple a 36 K's against just six blocks and 25 and third Innings has allowed seven homers But overall really good results and given the struggles of Adrian Howser in the back of the rotation This seemed like something that was on the horizon now. We know it's officially coming Saturday Yeah, a little bit more command over stuff, but he still had top 10 stuff plus in my minor league numbers And honestly, I'd rather hear that a guy had command coming up.

So I think that he should hit the iron running. One of the nice things about that is he's going to pitch in New York and we'll be talking about park factors. But, you know, I was talking to Pete Alonso about this and he's like, it's just the cold air coming off the, off the water. It's a hard place to hit. And so at least Scott won't come up and have every mistake blasted into oblivion. Like Cincinnati Reds pitchers or Rockies pitchers.

That's a great point. Seven homers, nine runs though. Seven homers a lot. Uh, that's, that's a little bit of red flag, but Hey, he's doing what pitchers always say, we're like, if you're going to give them up, make sure they're solo shots. It seems like he's doing that pretty good. Yeah, that's the command component had a 111 location plus down there on par with with Paul schemes in that way in that regard, at least. That's good company to be in. Yeah, I do think the interesting thing we're probably digging into

this in a future episode, home runs are down just about everywhere right now. Some explanations include an unseasonably cold April. But we always wonder when home runs dip as much as they do. Is it the ball? The season? Is it the ball? Is it something else? It's the worst top of Trevor. Trevor's face is just like, please don't make me do this again.

I do not want to. I do not want to. I do not want to have to research whether or not the balls are being changed. But again, again, I am a almost full time YouTuber at this point. So, hey, I can talk about it now. So I don't know. Maybe we'll put that on a rundown for a Monday or a Thursday so we can spare you from the nitty gritty details. You know, the lead on the the ball beat at the athletic anyway, so unfortunately his responsibility.

One of my least favorite beats. But Christian Scott, pretty much a pick up in all formats while he's up and could be up permanently. People think I'm a numbers nerd already, I have to be like, well what's the drag coefficient? It's next level nerdery. Let's get to our surprising starting pitchers. Let's start with one, Jack Flaherty, who pitched really well against his former team earlier this week.

Now for the season. Career best, 34% strikeout rate, 3.4% walk rate. The strikeout rate is actually supported by more swinging strikes than ever. It's up at 16.4%. Slightly more velocity this year, not a ridiculous amount, but we've talked about Flaherty in the past. You know, as someone that kind of sits right on that borderline that his normal range at the low end becomes problematic and his normal range at the high end makes him solid when he's there.

He doesn't like answering questions about it. We've learned that about Jack Flaherty over the years, but is there any reason to believe things are actually different this time around beyond being in a very picture friendly environment for half of the starts nowadays with the Tigers. Yeah. Well, in the games that he had 14, 10 and eight strikeouts, his, his velocity was over 94 and the games in which he had six, five and seven strikeouts, it was below 94. So I don't really believe in magic numbers, but for some reason, 94 is a big deal for Jack

Flaherty. He was 95.2 in his last game. I call that fueled by rage, since he was up against the Cardinals and probably wanted to show them what they were missing. But it just makes me a little distrustful of future, even though, you know, most of the things are there. Like he has enough stuff. He has three pitches. He has enough command. He has a great home park. He has amazing strikeout, my swap totals that are percentages that lead the league. I don't know why I don't trust him further.

It's probably come from, you know, the recent past is he's been inconsistent and hurt a lot. Probably a little bit of that coloring it. But in that, if we're talking about, if that's what we're gonna, like, look at, I mean, increasing VELO at any point, but, like, especially now, after all the stuff he's kind of worked through the last couple years,

is a big green flag for me. That's a good, I think, indicator of continued success. all the stuff he's worked through the last couple of years is a big green flag for me. That's a good, I think, indicator of continued success. You can't always bank on it being as good as it is. And then that Velo line, every single guy has one of those, I feel like. And this is an interesting thing because I don't think I've ever thought about it exactly that way that there's like a dotted line every guy has on where their they're where their range is and above that line, they're usually a little bit more successful than below it. I it'd be really cool to go like, I don't know, look at some other guys who have

wider ranges and Flaherty is one of those guys who can be like 91 to 98 in an hour. He does. He's a really different day, different arm for him. I played with a bunch of them who would be like 91 to 99 in an outing. I'm like, what is how do you do that? Oh God, I'll blank in his name right now. But I will think of a play for the Orioles for a long time swing guy, right? Mike Wright. He was a guy. Yeah. Yeah. He was a guy who threw like 89 one start. We'd see him again. He'd be 97. Like he was kind of bouncing between the pen and the starting rotation.

He was even doing it though, when he's fully starting the miners. Like it's just, he had, he's one of those range guys. I was a guy who threw like, I had like one and a half miles an hour between my lowest and highest every start. And I just didn't understand how they did it. So, but to see, you know, to see him have the success above that line

and he's able to get there now more, I would say he's a, you can have sustained success and he's a vet now. So he's, he's been around for a while. I think a lot of these things are I understand where your where your lack of trust might come from because you know last three years we've been like what we're gonna get out of clarity so it's one of those things like show us 15 straight starts then it's too late for the for the fantasy

heads exactly and then yeah so that's fantasy stuff this this is what this is what separates the the good players from the bad players I I guess, is guessing these things right, right? Right, well, the 95, there is a statistical underpinning here where Rob Arthur did a piece where he said there is a hot hand for pitchers and it is fastball Velo. So, you know, maybe we should just believe the 95. And even if it's not 95 exactly the next time it comes out, maybe it's more likely to be over 94,

which seems to be a big deal for him. I think I'm a little more optimistic than Eno, so probably more on the Trevor time it comes out. Maybe it's more likely to be over 94, which seems to be a big deal for him. I think I'm a little more optimistic than Enos, so probably more on the Trevor side of this one projections at the most optimistic side. Steamer has a three eighty seven, a 128 whip the rest of the way. I think that's doable for Flaherty. It's going to come down to innings. We're talking about a guy that has missed a lot of time in recent years. One hundred and forty four and a third innings last year. That was his highest total since 2019.

So you worry about fatigue as the season rolls along. You worry about the nagging injuries possibly piling up. But I think a lot of the skills tweaks here are actually real, probably like a top 40, top 50 range starter on a per start basis right now. And I have to just say real quickly that if anybody's disappointed with the state of fantasy analysis, we sort of overreport Velo or something when we know that Velo has some role in injury. I find that a difficult thing to navigate myself.

That is actually, I think, the best news is that Flaherty has a large range between his max. So even when he was sitting 95 to he hit 97, eight. That's at least two point five. I think what I've heard from Glenn Fleissig is the magic numbers around three. You'd kind of prefer the guys closer to three.

But if you want kind of the other side of it, Kyle Bradish came out and the Vila looked pretty normal and he looked pretty good in his in his first start out. But he's sitting under two miles an hour between his max and his sitting. So he was like 96.9 and 95 between his max and his sitting.

And that's among the smallest ranges. And I looked back and it's kind of what he's been doing in the past. It's really hard to know. Then we had this piece of research that I quoted on Thursday that was that breaking ball spin is one of the biggest features that predicts injury. And that kind of goes along with it. Meister's been saying so it's really, really hard to navigate injury.

I think I tend towards what Trevor was just saying that like, it looks like it's good news Like you know yes some other people have seen below increases and then gotten hurt afterwards. That's true but you have a nice large range here and I think generally it means you're feeling pretty good. Well, it's both right It's weird catch 22 a little bit because if you're throwing harder Yeah, it might be an indicator that you're putting more stress on. Catch 22 a little bit because if you're throwing harder, yeah, it might be an indicator that you're putting more stress on your arm,

but also an indicator that you're feeling better. Right. You're able to. How much effort do you put in? And it sounds like Flaherty is one of those guys. He's OK throwing a sinker at 92 and a half and just like throwing it at 90 percent effort. Like, I think my range was was always low because I was always whatever part of my hood right then was that's how hard

We were having are traditionally tighter. Yeah. Well even even as a starter. I did the same thing I'm still throwing start to go. It's just the way I always so like that's what pitching like you had to do that to pitch Well, I felt like if I wasn't doing that that I wasn't doing my best. That's my point man I think that's an instinct dude. It's an instinct you get on the mound. You're like, I'm gonna throw this as hard as I can Yeah, and it's and some guys develop a different relationship. It's funny. A guy we're going to talk about later is another one of those guys who's able to take his foot off the gas and not so we're like he doesn't even know he's doing it, but it's just the way he thinks about approaching a guy and let

tell. But we'll get there in a minute. Yeah. And you've talked about I think Mason Miller was the example of someone that can't dial it back at all. Yeah. Just has a little bit of a drama. And you talk about that, right? But another good example, he can't dial it back at all. Yeah. Just has no ability. If you talk about that, right? Another good example. He can't, it's not the same mechanics. He can't throw the pitch right

unless he's throwing it as hard as he can. To an extent, I was similar, like trying to lob it. Like if he asked me to EFIS, my mechanics would completely, I would look like a different human being. I didn't even notice it with my kid. Honestly, like the best cue that we've come up with is throw it hard at dad. Like, like the best cue that we've come up with is throw it hard at that.

Like, that's the best cue. Yeah, that's because then he's just then he's just focused on me. He's focused on getting down straight to me. Like all of his his effort and attention is towards me. And he's trying to throw it hard. So he's trying to like, you know, and he wants to throw hard. So we've got a great question here down on the bottom here from Stephen about if revenge games are a real thing. I haven't seen it studied, but I will say this. I know for a fact that there is a playoff velocity bump and I know for a fact that there's a debut velocity bump.

It seems like revenge games would kind of fit right in there. Yeah, they were. Yeah, like revenge games would kind of fit right in there. Yeah, they were. Yeah. They're 100 percent real. Yeah. A little extra. That's that's a real thing. A little extra for the team that lets you go. We've been chasing those in daily fantasy for pretty much the entire existence of daily fantasy sites.

The revenge game narrative, it's even more prevalent in football. I don't know why everyone gloms onto that every single. Well, see in football, I'd't know why everyone gloms onto that every single chance. Well, see in football, I would actually say that it might not be real because football is such a team sport. It's like you can't, if you're the wide receiver back at, you know, back in town, like, can you make your quarterback throw it to you more? I feel like quarterbacks, the only one who could dial in a little bit more like making

crazy passes and running the ball like someone who's running more like they're running more would be like I'd be like taking off when you don't normally do it. He's willing to risk a little bit more injury today. Revenge games very real rage after a bad arbitration case also real perhaps. Oh, also, I think I have seen research on this the first pitch after a homer. That was a thing for me, 100%. That's real too.

I can honestly say I haven't looked this up. And maybe you probably have these searching skills that can pull this off. But I would love to know how often I struck the next dude out. It would be a lot. We'll get that for next week. Let's move on to our next surprising starting pitcher Trevor Spencer turnbull running with a 28.3 percent strikeout rate so far sort of forcing his way into an extended stay in the Phillies rotation even with Taiwan Walker back

First career is the tick below 22% two things jumped off the page to me. He's running a 184 babbitt He's got an eighty eight point7% left on base percentage the fan graphs one for anybody who's curious it's like 20 percentage points higher than his career the babbips more than 100 points better than his career what else is going on with turnbull that would lead you to be skeptical that he's going to be anywhere near as effective as he's been to this point yeah i did a little bit of a deep dive dive to how he's getting the success he's getting. He's not a big ground ball guy at the moment.

So if a guy who's not like a lot of like soft ground balls in the in the infield type of pitcher is getting that low of a bad bib, and by the way, 184 is an insanely low bad bib, he's one of those guys. So basically fly ball pitchers have generally a higher bad bip than average and ground balls have lower. It's just because they give it more contact and it's more often just fielded. So he's got a 302 for his career. That's pretty common, like a high 290, 300 for guys who give lots of fly balls. There's a forcing fastball a lot, but his fastballs, below like 92 or

maybe a little below on average, which is far well below average in the league. The movement profile, it doesn't ride a ton. It doesn't really run a ton. It's just kind of a dead zone fastball. He's just commanding it fairly well. But what he's getting away with is his sweeper, his slider, whatever he's calling it, and the command on that pitch. He has absolutely been dialed in. So he's just getting those miss hits in the zone. He's getting guys to hit the ball not hard in the zone because of his breaking ball. But even that pitch is not a it's not an elite moving pitch on its own either. It's pretty average for sweepers.

So that's just kind of what he's doing. He's just throwing that one pitch. That's that's the only pitch that's even average or above average in terms of movement profile. And so the amount of help he's getting from a defense just isn't sustainable. If, especially on that scene, if he, yeah, exactly. If he starts to get, you know, Schwabers not going to be out there. You know what I mean?

Like, like if he's out there, like you're just going to be in trouble, cast you on it. Like, it's just not something you can count on. And he is getting a lot of whiff, which is a positive thing. But again, it's on it's on that breaking ball. So the command slips a little bit and the fastball is not being used very effectively. It's going to go from that type of season to real, real tough. Like if he's not feeling good one day, it's going to be very hard for him to get out of a

tough situation if he only has that one pitch that's helping. So that's kind of what I'm seeing. Usually I go check to see how's the fastball performing. Is the fastball something that if they get in trouble and they need to rely on that because they can't command anything else can they get away with that and I don't think he's in a position that that's going to work out very well for him. Yeah I mean the the slugging percentage on the four seam is 286 but the expected slugging is 442 that's the the difference there I think in the BABIP really. The sinker has an interesting profile and is a little slightly better pitch for him, but it has a 714 slugging, 731 expected slugging and isn't a great weapon against lefty. So if you think about it, his better fastballs, the sinker, his best secondary pitch is a

sweeper. He is going to have some trouble against lefties. The nice thing is his change up is pretty good. The four seam is okay. I see this as one of these guys that has this little bit of a kitchen sink type thing where you know, he's got two fastballs, three secondary pitches. Secondary pitches are better than his fastballs. And so he's going to depend on his command.

And one thing that I did notice is the location plus on his two fastballs is below average. So some team is going to make him is going to get him into these counts. You can't really throw a sweeper 3-0. No, it's not really a good pitch for that. And the change up 3-0, not a good pitch for that. He does have a curve ball. But if he's doing curve balls over and over in 3-0, then the word will get out and people will anticipate a curve ball 3-0. So, and those kind of 3-0 curve balls are not the ones that get swings and misses. Those are the, those are kind of the get them in there. And so, yeah, there are hitters out there that can be like,

oh, 3-0, he's going to do the get them in there curve ball, bang. You know, there it goes. So one thing that I like about him compared to Flaherty is just the width of that arsenal. Like there are two fastballs and there are three secondary pitches. So I'm not saying he's going to do better than Flaherty. I do think he might keep his job. Christopher Sanchez is a sinker change up guy. Tywon Walker, I just think is on the soft end. I think of his career, I think he, I think you should try and sell Taiwan Walker on the bullpen because he's always had an okay fastball when the VLOS there and his secondary pitch,

he's always been looking for one, but the splitters okay. If you could get them out there and he's 95, 96 out of a bullpen with a sinker, that'd be more enticing than him as a starter. I think. Yeah. I mean, the problem, I guess, would be that you look at Walker and you get good enough results over a large enough body of work that you tend to want to keep him in the back of the rotation. Cause you sort of need him to get you through the regular season. Maybe he's the kind of guy you use in the regular season to the starter, shift him into the relief role in the bullpen,

and he becomes sort of lights out in that role. But the earlier you do that, the more likely you can get an actual VLO boost. One thing I've noticed is that the in-season switchers don't get the same VLO boost. A lot of times you'll see a starter switch to relief in season, get like a little boost. And the next season, who's the big one that just did that? Jeff Hoffman. Jeff Hoffman, who might be the closer for the Phillies right now.

And when he first switched over, he had like a little bit of a boost. And now he's like really throwing it hard. I think I mean, you can speak to this, Trevor, it's like, you know, in season, you're just like, I'm just trying to exist. I'm just trying to, you know, just trying to figure this out. Whereas season to season, if you know you're going to be a reliever next year, like you can change the way that you approach the offseason. Yeah, it's just commitment.

And some guys can commit. Sometimes they can't commit in season because they're still holding on to I might have to start. And that's a lot of time. You know, like especially you got like Taiwan, he's being paid as a starter. So they're not going to be like, hey, you're relieving now forever. We have enough starting depth to do, like they're just gonna be like,

it really will be like, we're gonna do you in two and three, any sense so he's not gonna just like air it out. Like he's totally, he's just gonna be a starter still out there. And that's, and I know Tai too, and I really well, and he's, he loves start, like starting is the thing he wants to do.

So it'll take him a little bit longer, I think, to commit. But who knows? Things could change a little bit. He could. I think he would. I think you're right. I think you could find a way to thrive. He's got the mentality to, I think he, I don't even think 95, I bet you,

I wouldn't be surprised one bit. If he's just like six to eight, he's a big, strong guy. And a lot of what he does as a starter and why his VELO is where it is, because he just like, he tried, he'd like tries to move. He tries to be a starting pitcher and move the ball around and, you know, sinkers forcing, but if he paired it down and just like let him go out and throw as hard as he can,

he's got that in the tank, 100%. Got a question floating through in the live hive about who is the luckiest good pitcher. It's from Hayden, we're gonna get to that in a minute, but I think we have a candidate here and it's Tanner Hauck, the next guy we're gonna talk about because I think Tanner Hauck has interesting skills. He's been very good against righties his entire career.

He's been kind of between the bullpen and the rotation, but he's having a lot of success right now in the starting role. He has a sub three Sierra for the first time in his career, 26.5% K raterate, walk rate's really low, and he's getting a little bit lucky on homers, right? But it's not quite like this turnbull situation where you have this insane 100-plus point difference between current BABIP and normal BABIP.

So I don't see a lot of luck in Tanner Hauck's favor, but we talked about the Red Sox schedule being favorable up to this point, you know? I think there may be some schedule luck and some home run luck that have made Hauck really sort of pop through these first six starts or so. Yeah, I mean, the thing that I've always liked about Hauck is that I think the release point is is one that's really hard for righties. And if you look, he's he's dominated righties for his career. So that's a good basis because there's

still more righties in the career. So that's a good basis because there's still more righties in the league than lefties. And so for his career, it's a 255 wubba in slash line terms. That's 214, 278 OBP, 285 slugging against righties for his career. So that's a good sample. 627 batters faced. 586 lefties have hit 244 with a 330 OBP and a 391 slug and that's not as good. 16 homers in there at bats versus seven from the righties. So that is always been the story of Tanner Hauck. It's the release point.

It's easier for the lefties to see plus his sinker is his best fastball, that doesn't profile well as a pitch you want to throw righty on lefty. And so a much was made last year when he had the cutter, he still has the cutter. What I just think is weird about this season is that he's doing so much better, but against lefties he's completely dropped the forcing. And so the big change from this year to last year is that he's throwing the splitter 35% of the time to lefties. And so it's 35% splitters, 35% sliders,

and 18% sinkers. It's a really weird package. It's part of what Boston's doing, which is completely dropping the fastball. They're really, they're the lowest fastball using team in the big leagues. I just, I don't know if it's like, if it's like, uh, me being like old school all of a sudden, I'm not normally old school, but I'm just like, can that work?

Can he throw 70% sliders and splitters to lefties and his sliders like not one that you'd want to normally throw to lefties either. So that's where my distrust comes in. I did have him ranked top 50. I think he's a good pitcher. He'll continue to dominate righties. Maybe he can just walk a bunch of lefties. That's what people do sometimes to get through lefties. But I do wonder that I think that you know throwing splitters and sliders 70% of the time to lefties will eventually lead to walks. Yeah the walks will increase probably a little bit. One thing I've watched a couple of his starts now and the reason he is dominating righties so much is because he is using the arm side of the right side of the plate so well.

So he's just running you just running that sweeping slider at guys and then back, so it's ball to strike, coming back and guys are just taking uncomfortable swings and then he's throwing the sinker and the splitter off of it and then just running down and in. So like that tunnel, that kind of inner black tunnel he uses constantly to righties is just, it's like a right-handed sail.

It's just not a good time. Him being able to get lefties out with a splitter is I feel like a, especially this year, it's a good weapon and he uses, again, he's using the slider and he's like not trying to go back full with it. He's just trying to run it off the plate away, back over or just run it in or half on them

and using it that way and it seems like they have a pretty good plan there because again, he can still use that tunnel but he can't use the sinker. That's the problem. So he can use the slider and the splitter the same way. He's using the varieties and he's going to get weak contact that way but if they never have to worry about anything hard that is when an adjustment will have to be made and who knows maybe the foreseeing makes a

little bit of a play up and in a little bit more and he just backs guys up. But two pitches that they have to worry about is enough to have some success to get it to another riding Most teams don't have enough lefties to make that a big deal but again like we we mentioned before with clarity and with turnball like you got to be able to get guys out with your fastball and Then that's a good indicator if you can't get guys out with your fastball It limits your your options long term and and things I feel like stuff only tends to like Degrade over time over through the season. There's fatigue. You factor in. There's research that suggests every pitch makes you worse over the course of

the season. Exactly. So the fast ball isn't there now. It's probably not going to be there later. So one thing that's interesting is he's throwing the sinker high and away to lefties. That's the one place you can live with a right on left sinker. So weird. What does that set up? It doesn't it doesn't tunnel with anything. It's set up an outside splitter. It's supposed to look like a juicy pitch that you can't quite hit as hard as you think you can.

So it's kind of kind of success. And yeah, it's it exists in its own little, you know, bucket. It's not setting up a slider. It's not like, yeah, you throw that pitch and then slide. It was really completely different Anything for you, but maybe that's you know, you can you can play that's an anti-town You can play off that meaning like yeah, you don't know what to throw next, but they don't either Right. Well, it could be any of these bitches now It's like he could go right back to that tunnel or he could go back up there. I don't I don't really know

Yeah, I guess you could do a he doesn't do this you could do like a backdoor cutter. You could throw sinkers high and away and then a backdoor high cutter. And, you know, they think it's a sinker or something. But you're still then the then the cutters coming towards their bat. I mean, yeah, I think what you probably do is get a lot of fouls on that the high and away sinker to the lefties. You get the you get the kind of like ping and it's like a,

you know, it's like a late foul, you know, like a, you get the you get the kind of like ping and it's like a you know, it's like a late foul, you know, like a, you know, they kind of protect and they hit it, they hit it and you still get a strike for it and you just like that was good enough. OK, not throwing on the sinker. And you make a fan hand, creating souvenirs for people. Yeah, very charitable. How versus Flaherty for the rest of the season. Who do you think has more success? I mean, more workload concerns in the bigger picture for Howe just because we haven't seen, even going back to his minor league season, how have we ever seen him go over 120 innings in a season? So once he gets to August,

it's going to be a lot of questions just about how he holds up physically, because he's never done that before. That's true. Similar projections though. Fenway is a lot harder than Detroit, but I'm still, I'm going to take the young froggy guy who can dominate righties. I'm going to take Tauke. All right. I'm on the Flaherty side of this one. Can't wait to see this one blow up in my face.

How about you, Trevor? Oof. This is like, I'm almost flipping a coin in my head right now. You know, I'll lean a little bit in the Flaherty side of things because I think that, yeah, I think the veteran presence and the fact that he's got a little bit more of a workhorse pattern earlier in his career that I think it's more possible. You'll probably have an easier schedule going forward as we've mentioned yesterday. Easier division and better park kind of takes it over the edge for me. Boston's had a really easy schedule so far and they're about to hit the harder part of their schedule.

One more name to get to as part of this segment, Zach Littell. And Trevor, we'll let you go first here. How does he do it? He's been on your team before, so you've seen it up close. How does Zach Littell have this much success as a starter now after years in the bullpen? I mean, up to nearly a 25% strikeout rate to begin this season with the Rays

and started turning the corner last year after he went to Tampa Bay. So I've been fortunate enough to actually have this distinct conversation with him before about his mindset as a starter. Coming up the minors, he was told right when he got drafted that if you lead the league in innings, you're doing something right.

And so that was always his goal. He had a season where he went 19 and 0 and then ended up losing his last start of the year or whatever. So they're 19 and 1. He almost won 20 games in a month like season and definitely led the league in innings. So he's always tried to do that. So Philip Zzone has just been his like,

he has no emotional attachment to like dominating out of the bullpen. And that's kind of why he was always the long guy and never could really thrive in like an eighth inning role because he just couldn't commit to throwing as hard as he could. He's got above average rider did. I actually haven't checked in the last year or two, but he can elevate. He's got good command.

He throws a lot of strikes and he always has thrown a lot of strikes. And his little cutter slider thing has turned up been a slider and a cutter and a slider and a cutter because it's not a huge like movement thing. They tried to get him to throw only that for a while in San Francisco to be like the slider guy. It's not that great of a pitch by itself. So he's definitely always had a starter profile committing to the splitter, which is a theme we're seeing a lot this year has been a big reason for it.

He fits really well. His mindset lines up with Tampa's mindset in terms of how to pitch. I'm going to get ahead, strike one. I'm going to use the whole box and then we're going to, we're going to get more fine off there. So they're just on the same page immediately, and so it's just that rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. It's a war of attrition with him,

so that's the way he pitches. He's just gonna continue coming at you, and you're not gonna be able to rattle him and have him walk a bunch of guys, because the brain is not gonna get in his way, it's just not how he is. So it doesn't surprise me one bit that the longer you do that, the more you fill up the zone.

And you start to use your stuff off of each other. Because again, like I said, there's nothing that jumps off a page in terms of movement on any of his pitches. But they work pretty well together. So it's just about maximizing his potential and then trying to go as deep into games. And that's just what he that's his mindset's what he's doing.

And you can see it in how he's using everything. But I think the splitter definitely probably is a big thing into games. And that's just what he, that's his mindset, what he's doing and you can see it in how he's using everything. But I think the splitter definitely probably is a big thing that's unlocking because that's just really, a lot of people are seeing success with splitters around the league. He's got something in common with Turnbull, which is he's got two secondaries that are pretty good.

Turnbulls are rated better by Stuff Plus and maybe better. I mean, he has a nice sweeper and Lattell's sweeper is not that great and he's got this gyro slider and you know, but I would say pretty good secondary is bad fastballs. But whereas Turnbull had the average locations on his fastballs, let's tell his great ones. And you're right about the race philosophy. There's a great piece. I forget who wrote it.

That was about just the race philosophy of throwing in the zone. And they just want you to throw good poop in the zone. That's their deal. So what you see was the tell is in San Francisco, his zone rates were near 40, 40, 42 percent, really low. Right now he's at 48 percent zone rate. And that goes back to what he was doing in Minnesota when you knew him. So it's kind of a return to you know what he's always done in terms of filling up the strike zone. The the wrinkle is the splitter and so now with the gyro and a splitter that he commands fairly well because he's his overall command is pretty good is basically he's trying to be 30 30 30 in the zone. So it's gonna be the fastball slider or the splitter and you never basically he's trying to be 30 30 30 in the zone so it's gonna

be the fastball slider or the splitter and you never really he's a random number generator but it's always in the zone so he's got a 3% walk rate the real question is what his strikeout rate will be going forward because for his career is 21 right now it's 25 stuff plus doesn't think it's gonna be 25 going forward so will he be as successful when he gets back down to, you know, league average strikeout rates? I think he'll be usable, but there's also some team philosophy stuff

where team structure stuff where Shane Baas is coming back and Taj Bradley is coming back and somebody at some point may need to make room. And it's just like looking at tells career is just like, oh, it's going to happen to him again. You know, I just that's how I feel is this is this is a guy who's he's going. He's going well. He's going well. You're happy with it. But if you've got Shane Baas, you know,

the next Garrett Cole or whatever coming up here, sorry, Zach. I've got this other guy who throws insane crap. I don't know. I mean, those types of problems often solve themselves because of injuries, too, though, right? Yeah. Someone else gets hurt and he stays in the rotation. I think the K-rate is the thing you look at the most and say, yeah, is that is that part real?

I think the results are going to continue being similar by ERA. The whip is a little high right now because Zach Littell has a bad BABIP compared to his previous career norms. I don't think that's necessarily going to hold up. I think the whip's gonna get a little bit better and be more in line with that mid-three sort of ERA. Yeah, dodge a few really tough matchups for him, but I bet he's in your lineup

more than he's out of your lineup going forward and should be in the rotation most the rest of the season. That's I have him behind. How can Flaherty though? I think I have him right around where I have Turnbull and they both have risk of being removed from the rotation. They both have, you know, not the greatest fastballs. They both have wide arsenals. I mean, I guess maybe I'll have Letel at a Turnbull. Yeah, he has better command. He has better command than Turnbull. Seems like the game plan is working really, really well for Zach

Littell right now. Let's move on to some other matters. Let's talk about the Mariners offense because they are a half game up in the AL West right now. Their pitching has been fantastic. They made a concerted effort, as they often do, at least by volume, made a lot of moves to try and shake things up for their lineup and

It's been rough to this point in the season They have not really got many of their bats going only two of their players with 50 or more plate Appearances have a WRC plus above 100. So It's some of the guys that are stars that you expect to be better like Julio He hasn't quite been himself yet 31% krate, just one homer so far this season. And then some of the new guys too like Jorge Polanco, Mitch Garver, Luke Railey, Mitch Hanniger's back for a second stint, all of those guys have really struggled and a lot of strikeouts too.

Which kind of puts us in this position to ask a broader question, why is it so difficult to hit in Seattle and why does that park boost home boost strikeouts the way that it does? It's one of the parks that is near the top of the league in strikeout factor. It boosts strikeouts by about 10 percent compared to an average park. So Trevor, I want to start this with you. Like what about being in that park could make life difficult for a hitter as far as maybe even just seeing the ball consistently. It's something that Tasker Hernandez made a point to mention this off season after leaving Seattle and signing with the Dodgers. Yeah, so we've seen a lot of guys mention

things about how they don't like hitting there and a lot of it's a lot of the mention, especially from like right handed pop is, you know, the ball doesn't go as far as I want it to go. Like balls I get are being caught up against the wall and but that doesn't go as far as I want it to go. Balls I get are being caught up against the wall, but that doesn't explain the miss as much and doesn't explain how some guys could hit there and otherwise couldn't. So there has to be something funky, something you can't put your finger on,

but you just feel uncomfortable in the box because I've heard it from just too many guys at this point to be a coincidence or to be isolated. And we were discussing this, and I apologize if I'm taking this from you, you know, but like the batter's eye is on an angle. Who was it? Was it Beltre who said I could never feel like the pitcher was like, I couldn't line it up?

That's what Tosca said, yeah. Tosca said I couldn't feel, I didn't feel like, I couldn't get straight to the pitcher. I couldn't get straight, like the pitcher was angled at me weird. But the batter's eye there is angled farther away on the left side than closer on the right side. And there's some, there's some, like, you know, there's shadows and there's some sun, especially when the, that the roof's open, the sun can shine kind of up and over from

the west side earlier in a game. So like it's kind of going like first three innings or whatever, you can have a little bit of a glare out there, which isn't great. And it's like that pretty much all summer because of the way it's the orientation of the stadium. But they don't open the roof that much. Even when it's not raining, it's still, they don't open it that much.

So that's not a huge deal and that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I think that slant has a lot to do with it because there is something to feeling like, you feel it when you play catch. This is really interesting. When the foul line, when you're playing catch play, partner is lined up but the stands are slanted differently.

As I step back, I would naturally line myself up the stands and start going off to one side, going towards to try to line myself up. I'm like, what am I doing? My partner would always be like, dude, you are fading way out. You are shifting way over there. Why are you over there? And I'm like, I don't know what. It's like an optical illusion. So for a hitter to like naturally like try to get themselves

lined up so they can see the ball flush against the background, it makes a lot of sense to me. And that would, and it would be more for, it would be more for a right-handed hitter than lefty because they're on the, they're on that side of the plate. And so they have that weird angle. They have a little bit of a different angle. So I don't know. That feels close.

But like the fact that there's been this many people be like, because the people struggle, I get it. Like, you're not going to hit you're not going to the ball. You're not going to any as many homers. Your average might go down. But to go somewhere and just start swinging and missing like crazy, there's something about seeing it that's going on. So that's like if that's my very random guess.

I did reach out to Ken Arneson, who works with weather applied metrics. And they do the little, you see them on Cubs broadcast, you see them on a lot of broadcasts, they do the little sort of the wind direction things that you'll see. And it's not just like the wind is pointing wonder. It's like those little, like they show the whole pathways,

all the different ways the wind is going through the park. And then, or you might see an announcer say, oh, according to weather applied metrics or Wham, that ball was aided 10 feet by wind, you know? They're working with baseball on those kind of things. He said that the West Coast ballparks are really a type of their own and it's not because of the marine layer that's kind of a myth. It's because in the summer the wind almost always blows from the Pacific Ocean west to east. And so he

says I don't want to say never but but it's almost always very little variation. And so if you think about the way the ballpark is set there, I think that would be blowing towards right field, which would be bad for righty power. You were just saying that righty power, people don't like it. If you're trying to hit, you know, a pull power, a pull homer and the wind is pushing it towards center, you know, and then it lands in center field where it's like 400 feet as opposed to whatever, that's not great. So that's part of it. And then, you know, I do think the slant is interesting. I tend to always think of the batter's eye, but what's also, you know, beyond that, you know,

so T-Mobile Park is the biggest, uh, increaser of strikeouts by Savant. They have a, a park factor of strikeouts. It's, it's T-Mobile, Milwaukee, and then Minnesota, uh, are the biggest places for increasing strikeouts. But I've never done this before. That's four righties. But if you do it, uh, if you do it overall, you know, it's Mariners at the top. If you do it against lefties, the Mariners drop to fourth. So it's obviously there's something there in the batter's eye that's bad for both maybe

that's a little bit worse for righties. And so I think it is that angle. There's also for lefties or just in general on that batter's eye, the fans come up really close on one side. It's not the biggest batter's eye. I've seen way bigger batter's eyes in this. You can see in right field those fans are inching right up on it. Like just do a line from the mound up and you're like, oh, why is it bigger? Like it's bigger on the left. The batter batter's eyes bigger on the left than the right if I you know from what you're looking on YouTube So it's it's like an asymmetrical batter's eye. That's also not

Flush like you know like perpendicular to home plate I don't think if you look at those stands behind you can see the stands behind the batter's eye are angled Not so they're not perpendicular to the batter Yeah, they're almost pointing in towards the third base dugout, those stands that are above the batter's eye. They're not straight at the plate, which is really bizarre.

And if somebody from the team says, oh no, you're wrong, the batter's eye is flushed to home plate, then I'd say, well, my eye is still gonna look at those seats behind it, you know? And you have a black thing and then you have seats that are not flush to me. And so my eyes gonna be like, Oh, what? What? You know, it's like, I can totally like he makes total sense to me. Yeah, I can't get straight.

Yeah, that's how our eyes, like determine depth. Yeah, like, you look at, we look at like, when it's a black background, we're like, Okay, what around it? Where are the lines that I can go with and make sure that I'm lined up right. And those seats, those aisles are just like pointing towards third base. You're like, ah, what? And I wouldn't be surprised if a guy like Logan Gilbert goes out there and throws out of those stands. Like he could possibly do that too. I played the show.

That stadium is very hard to hit in the show even because certain tall guys can get the ball into the white of the stance I would assume that Chris sales ball almost comes out of that stance because it seems shorter on that side So Chris sale being low and out there like I could see it could be pretty close to those stands Sat in those bleachers and says definitely not flush with the feel Yeah, I mean you could just a little bit turned to watch the game. That's annoying too. Wouldn't you have like a sore hip after three and a half hours?

Just like, why? Yeah, I've had I had seats for one of the World Series games with my dad and we were like it was like a 30 degree angle that we had to turn our bodies in our seats. Like, can we just go stand somewhere? As we're talking about it, yes, the park does help their pitching. I think they're a team that has good pitching that also gets a boost from its home park. Right.

So that's part of the story with the Mariners, but the ongoing problems of kind of building a consistently good lineup, I think are a function of the same things that help their pitchers. Like you have to kind of figure out a way to work through that going forward. Sort of question is how long do you think it takes hitters who are playing in a park like that for the first time to get comfortable, to adjust? Like, cause some seemingly never do, but is there a reason to stay patient or optimistic about some of those guys who are new there, right?

Like Polanco, like Garver, like Rayleigh, is there a reason to believe they'll start to figure it out as the weather changes over the course of the year, as the maybe the eye looks different, as the sun's in a different place, you get more daylight. We've talked about the differences. Just get more reps looking at that and be like, just ignore the seats up there. Don't look at the seats up there. Yeah, we've talked about it just from the perspective of even the stadium lights, they're so variable now. And natural light versus stadium lights might actually change how you see the ball. And now we love closer entrances as much as anyone.

The crazy lights that ballparks have for that might not be the best possible thing for seeing the baseball. Yeah, I mean, I talked in great length with Willie Adames about Tampa Bay and the lights there. And, you know, he never liked them and he never really he had really bad home away splits and he never really got used to it. You'll see other guys that do okay in Tampa. But I would say that maybe their use of young guys has been a big deal.

Remember Nelson Cruz went there and did not have great seasons in Tampa, if I remember correctly. And they've never really been the team that signs the old guy just to be the D.H. Remember the A's used to do that forever. They had Frank Thomas. Frank Thomas was an A. Mike Piazza was an A. They had all these guys. And the Rays haven't really done that. Maybe it's because you just need young eyes to like deal with this. And what they've said is in Tampa is it's the LED lights. And I think I talked to Chris Bassett about it too. And he's and Matt Olson and and they were talking about how if it's an LED light, LED lights are coming down from it's unnatural lighting. It's coming down like this. And I don't know that it reflects off the ground

the same way as natural lighting, which is a little bit more flush in spectrum and in terms of the colors that are in it, and that bounces off. So when you see a light in a dome that uses LED, it's half in shadow and half in light. And so that's just a weird way to like think of balls. I don't think that balls out in daylight, you see them that shadow as neatly, you know, they seem more well lit all around. So that

that was an interesting sort of idea of shadows on the balls and the lights coming down. One thing that does help tamper from a pitching perspective is a dome. Apparently, every pitcher that pitches out outside has a back. Almost every pitcher that pitches outside has a tailwind behind them, has a wind because the way the wind comes in, it hits the bleachers, it comes down and then it comes towards the pitcher from behind. Right. And so that can affect pitcher movements a lot. I think you've talked about sweepers catching and, and, and, and wind

pushing in a certain direction. Well, in Tampa, at least they get. Windless, you know, so in terms of like having a stuff metric and then having it play out the way you'd expect Tampa's like, this is a nice clean environment. We can play out our stuff exactly the way we want it, you know? So that helps them. But, you know, there are little changes that are always going on. So to some extent, I have faith in these players to figure it out

because this is a really interesting thing here that Ken Arson pointed out. And he was talking about the Mike Petriello has a great story about Ted Williams and how far he hit that ball, the red seat. You should look it up. Ken Arson was pointing out that Fenway is now 90 feet tall. And so even that 530 foot homer that Ted Williams hit back in the day would only be 480 feet now because the the it was shorter back then it was it was only 60 feet high. So a ball could get above Fenway and join the air above Fenway that's not swirling around or coming or doing ball air that's just going straight across when they like a jet stream type thing so the ball could actually get out of the park hit a jet stream and go and that's no longer possible but hidden

within this he points out I'll get to the point really quickly but he points out that changes in the stadiums and and the and the things around it are a big deal so he points out to and these two parks have had major changes in park in the stadiums and the things around it are a big deal. So he points out two, and these two parks have had major changes in park factors this year. Cleveland chopped off part of their upper deck this off season. Cleveland got shorter.

Cleveland got shorter. If you take three year rolling off and you just look at this year's park factors for how how how places are playing. Cleveland is the second most batter friendly park in baseball. If you do three year rolling 27th. How much do they chop off the stadium? They take 100 feet off. What balls are we using? We can't decide. What is happening in Cleveland? It's home of the down-bickers, not for them, no.

Minnesota has a new skyscraper out beyond the left field foul pole that was under construction, and now it's done. Minnesota on a one-year park factor is now 25th in terms of hitter friendly. So maybe this has made it even more of a picture friendly park. The point is, if these things are happening, if ballparks, you know, remember Washington didn't have any of those things out there, any of the skyscrapers out there. And now they have a ton of skyscrapers out there. They San Francisco, San Diego changed the size of their screen. of the skyscrapers out there and now they have a ton of skyscrapers out there. San Diego changed the size of their screen. Their big scoreboard and left center field.

Their scoreboard, the big new scoreboards, they chop off stuff. If this sort of thing is happening all the time, to some degree, players are going to figure it out because they're going to be like, oh, this ballpark is playing a little differently this year. Or they're just figured out without even knowing it. They can't even tell you. They're just like, okay, knowing it. They can't even tell you, they're just like, okay, you know, I'm playing baseball, like I'm gonna see the ball eventually, you know? It's interesting.

Yeah, I never thought about the skyscraper stuff. That's nuts. We were talking about this when we were doing the rundown for the show too. PNC has the famous in the league, amongst players, is the right center jet stream out towards the river towards the Allegheny like that gap between this right field and the center field like areas for the fans is like a funnel for air and then there and there's like a gate right behind home plate so like air is supposed to go straight through that gate and straight out that gap so you can

get them all in there. Like from the wind perspective, that makes sense because normally if you have stands there, it hits the stands and comes back. And so there's that tailwind. And it's hitting all the other stands. So like everywhere else it is getting come back, but then there's this one. There's one place where you can hit home. There's one place where you can hit home.

There's no resistance. Yeah, and when you get it there, like in BP you can tell, right-handers are going right center. Like, and easy, like easy, like out of the park, easy and everywhere else is fairly normal. It's a picture friendly or it's a header friendly park generally, but like it's not small and that's 400 feet out there and it is just they're getting out they're clearing it like by 30 feet easy. I just care about this. You know, I've done some work

with Yonder Alonso and done some like statistical sort of consulting for him over the years. And when he got to Cleveland, the first thing he wanted to know is where do I hit the ball? And Jed Lowry, when he when he was here, he would ask me a similar question where he's like, like, it seems like the ball dies a little bit more in this place. Mount Walton, not in his time, Mount Walter, what's it called? Mount Davis. Mount Davis is killing the ball specifically to like right center. Like is there a place can you like, is there a place that I can live?

You know, is there a place I can hit the ball? Get hit in the stairways there. That's both sides. Yeah, because there's some wind coming through a little bit, a little bit of wind, and it's also the closest. But yeah, it's not a great. You're in a hole. It's not a great dead uh, dead Lowry classic Stanford guy asking questions like that. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I mean, that was the first thing Yonder wanted to know when he got to Cleveland, so I bet you teams, uh, to some extent have done what I always wanted to do was kind of a heat map of like expected different expected versus actual distance, uh, given like keep launch angle and exit velocity the same and do exit expected versus actual distance given, keep launch angle and exit velocity the same and do exit expected versus, that'd be a wind map, right?

Basically. That's interesting. So then you could basically be like, oh, look at these red zones as a hitter. These are the places where they go further than you'd expect. Go aim for those places. Here's the adjusted wall distance. Yeah, right.

Yeah. Like the adjusted wall distance. Yeah, right. Yeah. Like the umpire. X wall over here is only 280. Here's what it's supposed to be and here's what it actually is here. You got to get the VR goggles on so you can actually like see the walls closer in certain spots and then take them off. Like trust us. Just do what you were doing with the headset on. It's there.

Pretend that wall is 10 feet in. Let's get to our game plan series. Simple question for a player who has been just on fire to start the season. How would you pitch to Ellie De La Cruz? I mean it should be easy. He's got a 31% strikeout rate overall so anyone who strikes out more than 30% of the time should be relatively easy to pitch to. Except no.

When Ellie does make contact bad stuff happens to you as a pitcher a fantastic number so far eight homers on the season he's also 18 for 21 as a base dealer. Savant had a story I think that went up this week he's on a 40 90 pace so if you thought what Ronald Acuna jr did last year was impressive just wait if Ellie pulls this off Ronald Acuna Jr. did last year was impressive. Just wait, if Ellie pulls this off, phew, minds will be blown. Eno, how would you pitch to Ellie De La Cruz? Well, one thing I would do is pitch with my left hand.

That would reduce his bat speed by two and a half miles an hour. When he's on that side of the fleet, you might have seen some tweets from Tom Tango if you wanna look him up. He's shown that Ellie De La Cruz loses more bat speed as a left-hander, no, as a right-hander. He loses more bat speed as a right-hander than anybody not named Josh Bell. And so, you know, that's the one thing. On the other side. There were some interesting ones that were higher

Higher from the right side were Jose Ramirez almost four miles an hour more bat speed From the right side could tell Marte and Tommy Edmund more than five miles an hour more bat speed From the right side. So if you are playing DFS or if you are you are playing fantasy or you are making line up as a manager, you might want to know that your guy has five miles an hour more bat speed from one side than the other. So you can expect a lot more power from Tommy Edmond and Ketel Marte against lefties, no matter what their demonstrate splits have said, because they got five miles an hour over bat speed. That's always going to lead gonna lead to more power. But if I had to throw with my right hand, I would actually do something very similar

to what happened in his first step bat ever, which was Tony Gonsolin tried to do this three times in a row, so that should tell you that it's hard to do. And what it is is you gotta hit him low and tight. And Tony Gonsolin threw breaking ball after breaking ball, trying gotta hit him low and tight. And Tony Gonsolin threw breaking ball after breaking ball, trying to hit him low and in. And you can see here on YouTube,

you've got sinkers low and in, you've got cutters low and in, and you've got changeups low and in. He's made a slight adjustment to now where he can actually hit some sliders at low and in. And what you might notice is some of these are front door pitches. Very hard to pull off.

You're throwing a sinker at his knees and hoping that it comes over the plate for basically called Stryker or whiff. You're throwing a change up at his knees and hoping that it doesn't end up in his nitro zone. You're throwing a cutter at his knees and hoping that he don't end up in his Nitro Zone. You're throwing a cutter at his knees and hoping that he don't hit him. So all these things are hard to do,

but low and in is a clear blue area. The last part, where do you put your fastball? Up, up and away. So you've got a clear way of attacking him, fastball up and away, soft stuff at the knees. That's the plan for Elia Cruz. Just don't miss because you're throwing pitches that are tough to throw in those places. Is that easy Trevor?

Sure. No, I think historically for his whole career, yes, a lot of that stuff, the down and in has been how he struggled. And what I would see, especially if I watch a video on him, is what I love to do is watch how they're swinging just at everybody, lefties and righties, just so what their natural swing path is and then also watch their warmup swings.

I'm one of those guys, because they tell you a lot about that. But Ellie's a big guy, long levers, okay? And he's not that far off the plate, honestly. It might help him out to maybe move a little bit off the plate and make him cover, because the reason he struggles with that stuff is his swing is longer, he's strong,

and he can move the ball fast, or he bat quickly, but he just cannot, like, he can't get the barrel, to get the ball down and in and barrel it up, his barrel's gonna be pointed down the line or foul a lot, so he wraps a lot of foul ball that way. But it's funny you mentioned, yeah, just beat him up and away with fastballs. That's the difference this year.

He is smashing four seams up and away, but he's pulling them. So I think people have seen that and that he got abused last year on it because it's such a long swing that he had trouble flattening out. It looks like he's been able to flatten out a little bit and he's hitting that ball up

away in the zone. Four seam fastballs, which is where a lot of guys righties throw fours, especially guys with right, that's where he gets swinging misses from lefties. He is crushing them, but that has left him a little bit open. So where the swings and misses is happening, guys are running it up and in. He's getting some miss there with the four seam cutters in, like you said, up and in and down and in are giving him a little bit of fits and he's still not hitting the breaking ball down and in as well he's just not chasing it as much as he has in the past. Yes that's has been his

plan is to spit on it more. So he's spitting on it more but the thing he's always he's still susceptible to and he's gonna continue being susceptible to as long as his swing path works that way and he's trying to hit the ball as hard as he's trying to hit the ball is the is the change up so he's starting to get splittered to death that's something he's missing a lot and he's trying to hit the ball as hard as he's trying to hit the ball is the change up. So he's starting to get splittered to death. That's something he's missing a lot and he's chasing that below over the plate a lot. Like if he sees a change up over the plate but it's below the zone, he is going to swing at it. He has a decent sense of what the plate is. Yes, it's off and on.

Left and right. Yeah, left and right. He's gotten much better this year. And he's so talented that that was his big glaring hole. And it seems like he's closed that up a little bit, but there's still holes. So he's gonna still continue swinging and missing because of the way he swings, the way his levers work, and his intent for hitting the ball. And his size.

He's up to some point. Exactly. So I would start him off, and I would probably use that body line in the words of Jeremy Heffernan. He says body line. That means in we would go along those edges and I'd probably try to start with a fastball up and in maybe try a slider first pitch and then come off of that down down and in. Yes. And try to grab strike one and then try to grab strike one

and establish that I'm using the inner at the plate to get him to try to adjust some way because he knows he wants to pull it and then go to grab strike one and establish that I'm using the inner half of the plate to get him to try to adjust some way because he knows he wants to pull it. From the left side. And then go under it. And then go under it. Either go under it or maybe even like with two strikes, if I were trying to waste pitch, I'd go way above the zone and try to run it back,

run it back kind of up and away, but so high that he can't get on top of it and take that shot because there is miss above there, but he's just hitting it within the zone. And then after that, maybe try try the try the seam shifting it over the plate and go below if I'm feeling good with that or try the slider below that so that's the put away pitch it's just it's got to be over the plate though so I'm staying over the plate and throwing things that go that go strike the ball from there and and

using my forcing fastball almost exclusively up and in because that's just something he's not going to do I think he's he's cheated the one and got one off the plate and hit it for a homer this year. Like Eddie Rosario's style. Yeah. But overall, he's trying to keep that front shoulder in and then his levers get long and he just misses. So I'm a swing and miss guy. I'm going for a strikeout with him.

So I'm using my change up and I'm using my slider quite a bit. And if I'm taking a shot with the four- seamer, I feel like I have a good job, good feel of it. I'm going up and in, trying to run it above the plate. That's how I get missed with the LA to the crews. The problem is he's just not chasing in or out as much like you said. So you want to get ahead. If you get ahead, I think you're all right. But I think guys are getting a getting behind because they're trying what worked last year. He's spitting on it.

He's getting ahead. You're in that fastball up the way. And he's that goes to a theme in our conversation, which is that I bring you a plan, and then you tell me about the feasibility of it from the perspective of the pitcher, because we even saw this with Tony Gonsolin in Ellie's debut, which was he was trying

to throw a slider low and in, in the zone, over and over and over again, and he didn't. I think he walked Ellie twice. And then Ellie like roped a leg double that you know, on something too. So Nick Pollack often talks to me about how important he thinks it is for lefties to be able to throw in tight on righties.

Is that the same thing for righties? And traditionally like, is that a skill that most righties? And traditionally, like, is that a skill that most righties have because they figured out they have to face lefties? Like, and also what's the difference between the feasibility of getting in on a lefty and getting in low on a lefty? Like actually hitting that low and inside corner.

Like how feasible is that for your mechanics and for, you mechanics and for you specifically or for others you think across the righty spectrum? I actually think the feasibility, like guys' ability to throw it down there is actually not as hard as you would think, but there's a confidence related to throwing it to a righty because it's moving away from them. Stuff that's moving into a lefty is scary because historically pretty much the last hundred years of baseball, every lefty get down in it. That's the the Max Kepler, the scoop and just how much do you practice that?

We've avoided like a plague for pretty much our whole lives. And then suddenly we're supposed to do it like back foot, which is like all your office. You're going to know. And there's no way you're going to hit this off your shoelaces. Right. Might Rafael Devers can. But like, you know, some guys, I don't wanna say that. But actually in the zone, low and in,

is like not a place you normally wanna go. It's scary, because that's been guys nitro zones naturally based on their swing for so long. The only reason it's not with Ellie's because he's just got such long arm and a long swing. And so you can get in on those guys, but most guys, like Robbie Grossman, for example I'm not going down and into Robbie Grossman, right? That's his spot

That's what the one spot he can really do to Roger Davis was the right-handed version Like he had one spot he crushed it was down in it. He did nothing else. He hit hard Exactly, and he just had a nap that's natural for him So and left these for whatever reason that maybe maybe it's Griffey. Maybe everyone watched Griffey Yeah, that's we in swing seems to be like take that low and in and pull it from he smashed that pitch so it's like And that everyone had that it just feels like lefties have more of a natural uppercut and righty said more of like a Turn the bat over situation. I it might have been the way the game was played in the 80s and 90s

But there's something to it and it's the numbers backing up. So if you're if you're a righty with inconsistent command Trying to trying to hit not the back foot that you're normally you're like Oh so you want me to aim sort of like six inches away from where I normally throw and So then so then probably Ellie's feasting on some sliders that don't make it all the way To the bad spot for him, you know, sliders that don't make it all the way to the bad spot for him. You know, and they probably don't break as hard.

These guys are a little bit or they just like they end up middle low and he can and he can actually get his arms to that in order to throw it in the zone. You got to pull your foot off the gas a little bit to try to like, you know, like there's a lot a lot of nuance there that's that's really hard to do. It's really remarkable what he's been doing so far. He's over 50% fastball scene so far this year. That's gonna go down, right? Teams are gonna have to make an adjustment to that

if we look at that number again, even three months from now, maybe it'll be back in the 40% range somewhere. But since coming up last year, 21 homers, 53 steals, he hasn't even played a full season's worth of games yet. It's 129 games and he's getting better. The K rates down from where it was last year. The walk rates up is the ceiling really as lofty as that sort of

quadruple or quintuple up the power and speed like is actually a 40 plus homer guy with seventy five plus steel potential this year. Is that real? You got the tools for it. That's for sure. Any place he's, he's red. In the right park. Anyone could hit like 40 homes there. I mean, the flaws right now are obviously still the K rate. You know, he's improved it.

It's still 31%. And then the 51% ground ball, 52% ground ball rate is still high. But as I said before, if you look in the minor leagues, he had 40% ground balls, mostly in the minor leagues, he had 40 percent ground balls mostly in the minor leagues. So I think the ground ball rate is something that will change over time. It changes with aging curves. You hit two ground balls as you age. So, you know, he'd be expected over the next four or five years just by aging

curves to hit two ground balls going forward. But I do struggle to find a comp because at 31% strikeout rate, who are you up against? Like who has, you know, it's like a Kyle Schwaber. It's a Kyle Schwaber with speed, like a Kyle Schwaber at shortstop with speed or. Well, I don't know if you look back, even just like the last five years, like Javi Baez, Javi Baez didn't walk as much as Ellie does right now. He had a 31 homer, 18 steal season just in 2021. I think people already sort of forgot about that. You go a little further down a leaderboard.

I mean, Tyler O'Neill like a Stanton, a Stanton at shortstop. He's I just think he's kind of a unicorn. There's not really we've really seen a player like him before. Tatis's early career numbers, maybe were a lot like that. Tatis is where he'd be going. And I think those types of players, somebody asked him if he I'll try to answer that really

quickly, but somebody tried to ask me, tried to ask if he had MVP type potential. I think yes, because, you know, it won't be he won't be the kind of guy where Mike Trout where he wins like a ton of them right? I don't think he'll win like 10 MVPs or something or like six but I think he might win one in the one year where everything is kind of set up. So I've got the question here is the

best season with a 30% strikeout rate or better. What I'm seeing here is it's probably well Tyler O'Neill's 2021 with he had a 143 WRC plus. Jack Cuss 2007 he had a 145. I haven't heard that name in a while. Wow. Yeah. You had a 145. I haven't heard that game in a while. Wow. Yeah. That's for us. Those are the only two over 140.

So those are your guys. Teosca Hernandez's 2022 was over 140. Oh, Aaron Judge, 20, 2017. Here we go. 30.7% strikeout rate, 18.7% walk rate, 52 home runs, 9 stolen bases, 174 WRC+. That is the best season. Ali De La Cruz could be an Aaron Judge with more speed.

Fun, fun player to play against. Yeah. I think Reds will take it. Yep. It's also like it makes sense as a body comp. And what does Aaron Judge sometimes struggle with? You know, called strikes at the knees because he's so tall. You know, it looks like even call strikes below the zone because he's so tall. You know, it looks like even call strikes below the zone because he's so tall, but it seems like it's still a strike. He struggles sometimes covering the whole zone because he's part of it.

He's so tall. But when he connects, it goes really far. You know, so Aaron judged with speed and and then then I guess some question of health. Yeah. Yeah. But harder to keep a body that big, healthy all the time. Hey, we'll worry about that some other day. with speed and then I guess some question of health. Yeah. But geez. Harder to keep a body that big healthy all the time. Hey, we'll worry about that some other day. Hopefully we get a nice long run of healthy seasons from Ellie

because we'll see some numbers unlike anything we've ever seen before based on how his career has started. So dig in the game plan series. We'll do more of those as we move forward. We are going to go. We're going to spare producer Brian the extra, extra long edit since we're already over an hour and 10 minutes.

Thanks to everybody who joined us live. We go live on Fridays at one o'clock Eastern on our YouTube page. You can find us on Twitter. Trevor is at IamTrevorMay, Eno is at EnoSaris, I'm at Derek and Riper. You can find the pod at Raids and Barrels. Join the Discord, the link is in the show description.

Have a great weekend. We are back with you on Monday.