Rates & Barrels - Teoscar Hernández's Home Run Derby Win, Yearly Changes in Pull Rate & Bidding Frenzies

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

Eno and DVR discuss Teoscar Hernández's Home Run Derby win, and how he's managed to do so much more at the plate than Adolis García despite similar strikeout, walk and barrel rates. Plus, they look at spray angles for hitters, and wonder if Anthony Volpe might put everything together in the final two-and-a-half months of the season.  Rundown 1:23 Teoscar Hernández Wins the 2024 Home Run Derby 10:42 Adolis García as a Failed Comp 16:36 Year-to-Year Changes in Pull Rate 20:24 Can Anthony Volpe Consolidate 2023 & 2024 Approaches? 30:10 Kevin Gausman: Trusting Recent Success? 34:35 Clayton Kershaw's Velocity Returning in Rehab Starts? 36:36 How to Manage Luis Gil & Other Potential Workload Restrictions for SPs 44:58 Is MJ Melendez Pulling Us Back In 49:59 Rates & Barrels Listener Check-In 52:12 Where the Money Went: Hunter Harvey, Rece Hinds & Lawrence Butler 1:02:23 Intriguing Drops: Edward Cabrera, Colton Cowser & David Fry Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Thursdays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Hosts: Derek VanRiper & Eno Sarris Executive Producer: Derek VanRiper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Tuesday, July 16th. Derek and Robert, you know, Saris here with you on this episode. We will dig into a lot of All-Star break related topics. We have our home run derby recap to ask her Hernandez Bobby with Junior among the players putting on a show on Monday night. We've got some interesting thoughts on batted ball spray angles. We'll take a look at some interesting information on that front.

Got a bunch of mailbag questions we're going to answer as well. We're going to check in on the listener league at the break, see who's in the top 10, see where Eno's at, see where I'm at. Oh, don't, does not do that. Maybe we'll skip that part, but we'll talk about some of the players that have been great in that format so far and try to figure out if that will continue because there have been some very big surprises that have carried some teams into the top 100. Colt Keith's turnaround has probably been good for me,

but I have not looked in a while because I didn't want to. Yeah, I got Colt Keith too. So it's not going to be a separator as we try to battle it out and try to find a place near the middle of the pack before the end of the season. We'll have a couple of our usual Monday segments today since we spoke with Melissa Lockhart on Monday

about day one of the draft. We'll have where the money went and some notable drops. So tons of ground to cover. It was Teasca Hernandez winning this year's Derby. It was an exciting finish because it came down really to the last swing. Bobby Witt Jr. sent one to the deepest part of the ballpark, hit the wall about halfway up. So I think we were all kind of sweating that one out watching, seeing if it was going to go to a swing off in the finals.

Yeah, I mean, I had the the nerd cast version on, of course. I imagine you had the same just to just to see launch angle exit below popped up on there on the screen for everyone. That's that to me. That's appropriate usage because you need to know like what are the chances this ball's getting out and you could kind of get a feel for it. I flipped between them a little bit, and I almost felt like the regular cast was learning from the, the, um,

the nerd cast because early on on the regular cast, they weren't showing the nitro zones as much. And then people, um, they were, by nitro zones, I'm just talking about, they, they showed like the, where, where the very best exit velocities, where that player was the best in terms of slugging in the strike zone. So you could see if the guy was throwing him the the pitcher was throwing the VP pitcher was throwing him the balls in the right place if he's making the right swing decisions, you know, that sort of stuff. And I saw that more and more on the regular cast, you know, as the night went on.

So that that kind of reminds me of the piece where Mike Petriola said like, you know, as the night went on. So that that kind of reminds me of the piece where Mike Petriola said, like, you know, what we used to do on the nerd cast is now just regular Sunday night baseball. They took Eduardo Perez, they took, you know, they took our producers. So I think there was some learning going on there. But also the the the changes in the rules was like a big conversation. It used to be more of a one. It used to be one V one, which meant that you could hit 30 home runs and lose to the guy who had 40, which definitely happened a couple of times in the last couple of years.

So they wanted to reward the best and get the best to the end. I like that part of it. They also, I think, wanted more better finishes, because I think we saw people break records early in rounds. The 40 rounds were almost always first or second round rounds. They would want people to finish with the best. So they were limiting swings and limiting pitches. And, you know, so I thought in that way they did succeed. The finale was the best round out of everything. What in the, I think maybe the unintended consequences or what ended up being, um, a consequence of it was that I think the earlier rounds were a little bit more boring because you didn't really have that one V one energy.

So when Marcel Azuma is at like 13 home runs, you're like, OK, all right, get him out of the way. Like on to the next guy, right? Like he's not going to make it, you know, it's like there wasn't any of that. Like, you know, teammates coming out and kids, your kid coming out be like, you could still beat him. You know what I mean? Like there was just kind of like the early was dragged on a little bit.

I heard people talking about it was too long, three hours. It's pretty long. I think you could tweak it again because they tweak it all the time. I would agree with you in the sense that I like the idea of not having someone who was great in the first round get bounced because they went head to head with someone that was just a little better. If the two best home run hitters happen to match up

in the first round or two of the three best match up against each other and the loser gets eliminated in round one, that's not great. You kind of want it to be more balanced. Shohei in Colorado a little bit, like he had it. Yeah. He had a really good round, but it wasn't good enough. And then he's just out.

Yeah, so I think maybe there's another way to try this. Maybe you add one more person and you do groups of three and it's like the triangle match. So three hitters all going against each other in a pod in the first round, number one of that group gets through and you do the same thing. Three other pods. And then instead of having a middle round, like the semifinals, that are going from eight to four to two goes right to the finals, go from nine to three.

You have three finalists. And then there might be a tie. But I think that might be the sweet spot for getting one more player out there, having a little more of the immediate competitive spirit and then not having it run quite as long. And then the other idea we talked about with Trevor a couple of weeks ago was having competition for pitchers. So if MLB is worried, if we shorten this up too much, we're going to lose ad money. You know, we need three hours of content.

Cause we're going to sell three hours of ad. Do something different in the next hour. Yeah. Give, give us like 90 minutes of the dingers or two hours of dingers and one hour of pitchers doing crazy stuff. One hour of dunk tank. I think that's probably a sweet spot that would work for a lot of people. I've also saw a lot of those complaints coming from people who live somewhere on the Eastern

time zone. It's getting late. Yeah. One another, just a really simple switch might be they had the finale was two minutes long and everything else is three minutes long just switch that. So all the early ones are two minutes long the numbers aren't as big you know but they're over quicker and and since there's more of them you're you're you're gaining more time back you know and then give us more time in the finale with these guys, you know? I like that tweak as well. You know, that's a, that's a kind of pretty simple one, but, um, yeah, I, it is also interesting. And I hate to say something like this because it sounds

like, Oh, you had to be there. It sounds kind of lame. I fell in love with the, the, uh, home run Derby live. You know, the first time I ever saw it live, it changed my opinion on it completely. And that has poured it over to the part that it's actually still my favorite part of all star weekend. Still there. But some of that is like, you know, kind of a memory of that.

I don't know. So I would recommend that if you go to an all star weekend at some point and you're debating whether or not to go to the home run derby, I would say go. Even if you are ambivalent about it on TV. Yeah. And I, and I think it's something worth tweaking because I think it has a tremendous upside and it's fun and it's fun in a way that's not quite baseball. I get it. If you don't like it, because it's not quite baseball. I get it. But we can have fun in things that are kind of baseball adjacent to.

I would agree with that. Now, to ask her, and it is winning this is pretty fun just because his backstory is actually cool. He's a position player who signed relatively late or a little older than a lot of players, a typical Astros move. We've talked a lot about how they did that with pitching over the years and had a lot of success, but Teasker Hernandez, even though his big breakout didn't happen with the Astros, it eventually happened after the Blue Jays traded for him. He's part of that success. Just having a player like that, being able to trade him and get something back in the return, that's still an organizational skill.

And Tasker Hernandez, people might forget, he ran a lot as a prospect. He had 31 steals in 96 games at high A back in 2014. He had 62 steals at double A over parts of two seasons, 190 games in 2014 and 2015. So he's just one of those players that I think has ended up being a really high outcome sort of guy that a lot of organizations may have just passed on completely.

So just kind of a tip of the cap to the Astros for giving them that opportunity and then obviously the Jays for being able to trade for them and kind of gives off a fringe five vibe for sure though as a guy that the Jays sought out. Fringe five of course being the old prospect posts from Carson Sestulli who now works for that the Jays sought out. Fringe 5, of course, being the old prospect post from Carson Sestulli, who now works for the Blue Jays. I have no idea if Carson was involved in that acquisition or not. I don't even know if the timing would have worked out.

But nevertheless, a fun story. And the first time a Dodger has won the home run derby. That was a kind of a surprising footnote that came up on the broadcast last night. I was like, wait, we've done this for more than 30 years and a Dodger has never won the home run derby before. Yeah, it would have been a first time, I think, for either team had Bobby Witt won. One sort of win for Predictive Analytics, Tom Tango looked at what balls do the best

in the home run derby. And I've, and I've, I've named those blasts and have used those. I know that's, it sucks because there's a, there's now a blast metric on, on there, but I'll come up with something more in the future, but, um, you know, w w basically it's 28 to 32 degrees over 105 miles an hour. You know, it's like, those are the very, it's not, it's like barrel plus it's like, you know, something even better than a barrel. And the winner of every Derby in the Statcast era has come from the top half of the field when it comes to blasts other than last year. But this year, it the using blasts, I looked at, I said that Gunnar, Bobby Witt and Teoscar Hernandez

should be the favorites. And having them both show up in the final seemed like a good feeling. But Teoscar is a really interesting player because he represents to me a little bit of a blind spot I have where I just, you know, we've talked about this a lot on this show, but I just don't prefer guys who don't walk really at a league average rate and then strike out more than 30% of the time. Really low batting averages but one thing he's always had is like a really high maxi V you know really high raw power really good power basically and he's powered his way to a three twenty nine batting average on balls and play. Over his career but we were kind of going over this before before the show and you know my comp for him was one of his competitors Adoles Garcia and I was like this is you know this is what we've been talking about forever. What's interesting is that they are great comps for each other in terms of walk rate, you know 7% for both of them, you know for career strikeout rate just around 30% for both of them, career ISO 220 for both of them. It ISO, 220 for both of them. Um, it really looks like a great comp.

Defense aside, uh, defense really favors Adelisa. You'd be like, okay, so Adelisa is the better player. It hasn't worked out that way. And the projections don't feel that. And so we were kind of like combing through it, trying to be like, you know, you know, what what separates them? And you discovered something in the batted balls that I was sort of surprised by. Yeah, a lot of infield fly balls for Adelise Garcia.

And there's a lot of things that can happen on a ball in play, but it's one thing that we tend to lose track of. It's not that even if you're hitting a lot of infield fly balls, the number is not necessarily off the charts high, but they're completely empty. They're very rarely going to be anything. Usually they're just outs. You're not going to get RVIs from them. You're not going to reach base.

They're valuable roughly as strikeouts. You could count them almost the same way. But I think they can misguide us sometimes into thinking that a player has been more unfortunate than the babbip would tell us at a glance. I would say that infield fly balls are deserved bad babbip, right? You're making a mistake. You're getting fooled as a hitter when those happen.

So if you have that as a built-in part of your batted ball profile year over year over year, that can be the big difference between a 240, 250 low OBP slugging player like Adelise Garcia and someone like Teasca Hernandez who hits in the 260 to 290 range most years. There's just a lot more batting average there because he's not giving those batted balls away. Of course, you can look at like just being able to go oppo and doing a few things like that as part of the package too. But I thought they would compare much more favorably than they actually do because those first few things

you pointed out and barrel rate too. They both are high barrel percentage guys. We look at them and say, sure, why not? Why can't Adelise Garcia have a year where he hits 270 or 280? And infield fly balls have been a big part of the reason why. And Teoscar has done it for a while. So you might say, OK, well, could this be a buy on Adelise? Would it be like maybe we're writing his epitaph too early?

But you notice that by this time in his career, Teoscar had already made this adjustment because Teoscar did actually hit a few too many pop ups early in his career and then made some sort of adjustment. And it hasn't looked back. So I'd at least has not made that adjustment yet. Another thing I wanted to point out was if you're looking at IFFB percentage on fan graphs, you might say, oh well, Adelise has a 10%, Teosca or Netta has 7.8, are we making too much out of this

little thing? Well, that's infield fly balls divided by fly balls, which is just a weird way to look at it. I never understood why that is the way it is. If you want pop-up percentage, which is just the number of pop-ups over batted balls, you have to multiply those two numbers together. And so if you do that, you have Adolis Garcia with a 43% fly ball rate times a 10% infield fly ball rate. You have Teosca Hernandez with a 39% fly ball rate times a 7.8% infield fly ball rate. If you compare those two pop-up numbers,

Atalys Garcia has a 40% higher pop-up rate. It's almost half again of Teosca's. So, you know, that's a, that's a really important thing. That ends up being, I think the reason why Adelis Garcia has a 288 career batting average on balls and play and Teoscar Hernandez is a 329. Teoscar has figured out a spray that really works for his amount of raw power. And since he has so much raw power, he can go Oppo, you know, and since he can go Oppo, he can get an Oppo line drives for a base hit on some pitches. He also becomes harder to pitch to, you know, if he's

just trying to pull everything like Adelise is, then you know what you're doing when you're facing him. Well, when Te Oskra says, I can pull this for a homer or I can push this for a double, that makes him harder to pitch to. Um, and he's shown this over time. It's been a skill and that's what the projections are picking up. And they might just be saying, well, he's had consistently high Bavit, the projections and saying, Oh, to Oscar, I'm just going to project a higher Bavit. And so therefore his projections are going to look better than Adelise's.

But there's a reason for it. And the reason is pop-ups. And I think some of the better projection systems are drilling all the way down into that batted ball distribution. But you know, this, this fits right hand in hand with a story I just wrote about Stephen Kwan and. You know, the good part of this is that Stephen Kwan is showing more power this year and the guardians are showing more power this year. And this is despite Stephen Kwan or showing more power this year and the Guardians are showing more power this year. And this is despite Stephen Kwan or, and the Guardians, neither one of them

showing more barrels or exit velocity or hitting the ball any harder. And they've just decided to pull more fly balls. And this led me into a rabbit hole that included looking at some research that Tom Tango has done. Alex Chamberlain, Alex Chamberlain has a piece called The Pulled Flyball Revolution was always underway. Ben Clements has some pieces called Further Adventures in Pull Rate. I would recommend reading these.

So the mistake that I made or the thing that I missed was that if you put pulled flyball rate into your expected WOBA into your projections, you're going to make it worse. This is hard for us to maybe on rates and barrels to swallow because we've been the ESOCK Parades champions for so long. Yeah, let's make it predictable, right? Well, the way it doesn't work that way. swallow because we've been we've been the esok parades champions for so long. Let's make it predictable right? Let's both way doesn't doesn't work that way. Yeah and it doesn't work that way I think because for the middle portion of baseball pull rate is something that comes and goes is not very sticky and has a lot to do with your interaction with the pitcher. So one guy that we I was surprised to read

because this pulled fly ball revolution piece by Alex Chamberlain shows that the league is pulling more fly balls every year. And then he said that, oh, here are the teams that are pulling the most fly balls. And it's like, oh, yeah, of course, the Dodgers, the Rangers, the twins. We always saw how the twins are on barrel or leaderboards. They want to pull fly balls I've been asking their hitters about pulling fly balls And at the bottom you've got you know, Cleveland, of course because this is from last year, Miami, Chicago White Sox You know, you you know, you're like, okay. Okay, the progressive teams are pulling fly balls

the other ones are not and and So there's something here. Well, Volpe, Volpe last year was a pulled fly ball leader, uh, and he was doing it also against hard fastballs. He was, uh, he was in the top 10 for pulling fly balls against 95 mile an hour fastballs. This year, if you look at the year to year season stat grid on Fangraphs and you do pull percentage Anthony Volpe has lost 16.6% of his pull rate. Number one in baseball. And it worked for him for a little bit.

But then it didn't. And now it's not, you know? And I think the best hitters, because Mookie Betts is on this, he's second and then lost pole rate, but he's, he's not having a bad year. The best hitters have a bag of tricks. And they're like, and like, think of task or think we're just talking about task or is that at least task was like, I can pull it. I can push it. I'm looking at you. I'm waiting. I'm waiting. I'm looking at what you're going to pitch me. I'm thinking about what you're pitching me.

I think what people have been pitching me the last couple of weeks. Think about what you're thinking, what your strengths are. And I, and, and I've got people, my, my scouts from my team are telling me they're going to really try to do this to you. OK, so you're going to try to go up, you're going to try to go fill up the outside with hard fastballs against me. OK, it's Oppo time. You know what I mean?

Where Anthony Volpe is stuck between I had a pull fly ball rate, full, full, full fly ball approach that helped me in the minors get to 20 home runs and 20 steals and made me a big prospect, but also tanked my batting average to 210. You know, so this year, you know, he's like, I've got a new approach and it worked for a bit. What were you saying also about Stephen Kwan's Woba chart? I was just looking at his looking, his rolling X Woba

is just down, down, down, down, down. Like just, it's like pitchers have quickly caught on to what he was doing differently as a hitter and they're pitching him differently and he's not crushing the ball quite the same way he was earlier in the year. It doesn't mean he won't get back to it. I mean, I think you'd look at it and say,

Juan showing us this gives us reason to be more optimistic about his long term ceiling, but the adjustments can happen so fast. And we've always said this too, if as a hitter, if pulling the ball costs you something, if it costs you five percentage points at it's strikeout rate, right? Using Volpe as the example, he's striking out less this year. He struck out almost 28% of the time last year. He's down at 21% this year, but the barrel rate's been more than cut in half. The ground ball rate's gone up. I would argue that even though the WRC Plus result last year, it was an 84.

He's at a 91 right now. I think Volpe's best path forward was to continue doing what he was doing last year. If the approach is A versus B and not being able to blend them and take the best parts of what happened his rookie year and the best parts of striking out less and to Frankenstein that together, then the first approach to me would yield more fruit in the, in the long run. Because hitting the ball hard, especially hitting high velocity and pulling high velocity, that to me seems like a more important skill to have

in the long run than just tempering whiffs if you're just gonna hit the ball on the ground anyway. Yeah, this is one of those sort of fascinating threads that has, you know, that's been on our podcast forever that we've been trying to pull out that you. You know is there an ideal poor rate ideal ground ball rate is there when you're looking at these those pieces of information we know that there's signal in there there's something to tell you but do you know exactly what it is you know. It's not always good just to pull more or pull less i have biases towards pulling more because there's more power over there, but it's not always good. The other thing I think of is

when I look at Stephen Kwan's rolling Woba and then I look at his pull rate, his pull fly ball rate, and then I put overlay it with his rolling change up percentage, I see that his change up percentage kind of went through the roof right when he started trying to pull in the air a lot.

So that's the pitcher's trying to be like, oh, you're trying to pull you're trying. Oh, you're gonna take some big swings I'm gonna throw you an inside change. I'm gonna throw you an o-o change up, you know, here we go So that's part of the cat and mouse but for Volpe the the sort of little light bulb that's going on my head right now is little light bulb that's going on in my head right now is we have a thousand plate appearances and I might be tempting just to look at the thousand plate appearances and say this is who he is a thousand plate appearances 87 WRC plus good defense he's just a defensive guy put him in that bin buy him when he's cheap don't buy him when buy my expensive not really a great target and dynasty league not really gonna be a star.

That doesn't tell the story of what those two years is like it was almost like Anthony Volpe a and Anthony Volpe be and I just wonder if there's a see that is that Frankenstein. there's a C that is that Frankenstein. I'm like, there's some part of me that wants to, at least in one league, go get Anthony Volpe just in case, because what if he sometimes goes Oppo and sometimes tries to pull the ball in the air and has like a 22% strikeout rate with an 8% walk rate and a 180 ISO, you know, then you're talking. Well, that's actually pretty good. You know, that's somebody who could hit, you know, 260 with,

you know, 20, 25 homers and 20, 25 steals. You're like, oh, wait, like I want that on my team. That's like a, that's like a kind of a baby Lendor. Right. I think I would generally be optimistic about the ability to put everything together when you're talking about someone who made these adjustments in one off season.

This didn't take three years for Volpe to do. Now it's just learning how to use these two approaches in concert with each other around being pitched maybe a different way. And you consider the park, the lineup. Could this be a situation where we look at Volpe right now and we end up fast forwarding two and a half months into the season?

Is he this year's CJ Abrams, the guy that has everything just kind of click midseason? Maybe these few days off will be the mental reset he needs to come back in the second half and do all of these things together. That wouldn't be that surprising of an outcome based on the various skills we've seen from Volpe at different levels up to this point.

Yeah, and I think, you know, there's a little bit of a thing to watch, which is just, you know, you could, bit of a thing to watch which is just you know You could you don't have to watch pull fly ball rate Which because yes, I kind of go and do it you know on the split-sleeve abort and stuff You can just watch this fly ball right you know that's that's been a big change this year And what I see over the last you know 25 batter balls. It's it's creeping back up so

you know you can you can you can go to the rolling graphs and put pull on there, too, and kind of see that the pull is kind of creeping up. So what if he what if he puts those two things together? I don't know. We kind of railed against cops here recently, but I guess that. Am I saying that like there's still like the ceiling could be a Lindor? Who is who is like almost like Lindor, but not like a Willie Adams?

Yeah, I think Volpe. We don't always hit the ball harder, though, right? Yeah, Volpe has shown us more of a I'm going to get bags profile like the gear, the guarantee is always going to be the bags with the playing time. And whether he runs even more kind of hinges on getting on base more just by walking or finding ways to put the ball in play and get on base that way. Or unlocking more power. Like those are the ways he'll get a lot better. But I think I trust the bags already.

15 for 19 again this season. he was 24 for 29 last season. He's done that with a 290 OBP over those two seasons combined. So if he gets into the 330 range with his OBP at some point, more green lights are possible. So maybe it's more like a 2040 guy if it all comes together with all the pieces, right? Maybe there's not that much more raw power than what we saw in his age,

22 season is rookie season, but the best version of him is also hitting for average and stealing a ton of bases. Yeah, I'm not willing to write them off as a potential breakout candidate next year or in the second half because you know, there's, you see this kind of trying to find the ideal approach. But I think that pull percentage, you know, is one of these kind of noisy but really

interesting things. The way that they were putting it, that Kyle Bland from Pitcherless put it, is, you know, pull percentage tells you a lot about the play, what would happen on the play, you know, if it was pulled or if it was pushed, makes a big difference for how that ball ends up. But it tells you less about the player. And this part of what we're talking about is these different interactions between pitcher and hitter and their approach changing. Another thing that kind of reminds me of pitching is pull percentage seems to me like one of the things that a hitter can change on a dime. Because like Volpe, they can decide I'm going to let the ball travel. I'm going to go get the ball, you know, like it's a timing issue. It's just I'm going to I'm going to swing earlier.

I'm a swing later. You know, it's like that's the one of the one things that they could be like a pitcher pitcher could be like almost start throwing the cutter 30 percent of the time. You know, so on that level, that's the one thing that the hitter can kind of really manipulate. So you, that's why it creates noise and projections. It doesn't make your projection system better because a hitter could be like, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to start pulling the ball now, you know? Um, but at the same time, it's tempting to me to be like,

we can pick something out of there. Like we can find some value in there. We can, we can spot someone changing and we can spot potential maybe. So I think it's still worth looking at, at poll percentage, but it is, uh, it was. Eye-opening for me. I don't know that I just missed that somebody had tried to make a predictive X-WO-WO using spray angle and it made it worse. So that's, that's a piece of information too.

Glad someone tried. Yeah, exactly. Thanks. Thanks Alex. James. Thanks Tom Tango for your, for your work. It's, um, I, I, I just, I can't let it go though. I feel like there's still something there. I just, I can't let it go though. I feel like there's still something there. The debate will rage on, even in light of this new information. I'm Diana Racini, senior NFL insider at the athletic.

And I'm Chase Daniel. Diana used to cover me when I played quarterback in the NFL. And we're super excited to say our brand new podcast, Scoop City is coming to your podcast feed of choice right as training camp is getting started. Twice a week, Scoop City will take you inside the inner workings of the NFL,

bringing you exclusive inside and access that you won't be able to get anywhere else. We want to be your essential companion for the upcoming season, and with the help of the Athletics Stacked Football Newsroom, we've got a heck of a team to make that happen. So check out Scoop City from The Athletic. Wherever you get your podcasts, we can't wait to get started. We got some mailbag questions to get to. This first one came in from Discord from Johnny What's Up.

The question is about Kevin Gossman. Is there anything in the model that suggests Gossman is starting to return to his past self or is this just him taking advantage of recent matchups? Gossman has been pitching better stories about him tweaking mechanics and the last couple of starts have looked better, albeit against the Mariners and Giants and they were in good pitchers park. So is Kevin Gossman getting back to previous levels when he was flirting with the 30% K rate? Stuff Plus doesn't like it. In fact, it says that his fastball has gotten worse.

And one thing I've noticed is that his vertical release point is trending downwards. It's about two inches lower than it was at the beginning of the season. His ride is down to the last two starts. The one thing that has been keeping him afloat is that his fastball velocity has been better the last couple two starts. The one thing that has been keeping him afloat is this fastball velocity has been better the last couple of starts. All in all, none of this paints a picture of me of changing much or recovering what he'd lost or, you know, changing my outlook on him. I still like him as a pitcher.

I think he's a good fantasy number two now. And he's just going to have some bad starts and you want to be careful against like throwing him in Yankee Stadium against the Yankees. Even even in their reduced state right now, however, they're playing right now. That'd be something I would probably avoid, because as you noticed, which rate is back up again? Gossman's home run rate is back to the problematic levels, right?

1.3 homers per nine, highest it's been since 2020. And even from 2015 through 2020, that's where he lived. That was a problem, and that was a problem. So it's not like, sometimes home run rates can be noisy in one season, but when they sort of go back to where he used to be, you're kind of like, oh, okay.

Yeah, and we're seeing that kind of shift to the swinging strike rate, kind of at his peak. Was in the 15% range, three straight years. Just a shade below that in 2019 would have made it four. He was getting hit less in the zone throughout that time. He's getting a little more in the zone now. So it just looks like gradual decline from Kevin Gossman. If he's a two or three even right now, that's still not bad.

That's still a good pitcher. More of a what are the Blue Jays going to be after the All-Star break? Is the team context still going to be as good for Gossman? That might also have a little bit of an impact on his value down the stretch too. Would they consider trading him? I mean, I think they wouldn't because I think if they do anything, it'll be Jimmy Garcia and like short term guys, you say Kikuchi and reload for next year because it's Rogers, because it's Toronto, because that's what

they've done recently. But if they did a full rebuild, if Bulbashet goes, then you should start, the vultures will start hovering around Kevin Gossman. He might go somewhere I wonder if like trajectory or. You know trajectory is the new high-flying new fangled kind of hitting machine that they can kind of replicate pitches really well. I wonder if trajectory is going to put pressure on to pitch pitchers because. pitch pitchers because if you are a hitter facing Kevin Gossman, your team has a trajectory. You could go in there and see Kevin Gossman's shapes a bunch right before you go out there and see him and maybe you can start to pick up, oh, that's splitter, that's foreseam.

If you can, that's 95% of what Kevin Gossman throws. So is this also some long-term concern about Spencer Strider once he comes back from his elbow injury? Well, I mean, the Strider was pushing the curve and change more than ever. He's trying, yeah. I think Spencer knows this stuff. I mean, we had a long conversation about it and he he disagreed with me in the moment, but. The actions sort of suggest that maybe. Yeah, the percentage is starting to creep it up. Yeah. So I mean, one of his biggest point was like, if I, if, if the, if the pitch doesn't have a goal, like that, I like, if the pitch doesn't do

something for me specifically, then I shouldn't throw it. Well, okay. Then make the pitches better. You know, so they, they can fit into a goal and sometimes that goal is just Show them something. It isn't your fastball insider. I don't know. I don't know. It seems like a goal. Yeah I think that's that's fair Thanks a lot for that question, Johnny We've got one here from Lolligagger about Clayton Kershaw's velocity

in a triple A start on Saturday, looking much more like the VLOs we've seen from him in recent years. So, are you having some growing confidence that Kershaw is actually going to make it back and be a quality piece of the reshaping Dodgers rotation down the stretch? This is much better than I expected. It's good. I'm going to be, I'm glad, I'm glad I want Kershaw to be healthy. And he's basically sitting 90. The one caveat I would have, and this is on the discord, you can see the chart on discord. The one caveat I have is that he starts dropping below 90 after 10 or 12

fastballs. But with him, this is a stretching out process, right? Yeah. Like he really only needs to get to, you know, sitting 90 for 30 or 40 fastballs, we could to make it, you know, through five innings for Clayton Kershaw, cause he's so efficient.

He's such a 50, 50 guy with the slider, you know, through five innings for Clayton Kershaw, because he's so efficient. He's such a 50-50 guy with the slider, you know, that that I think I think he's a lot closer than I expected. I didn't think he would even come back this year to to to get him throwing 90 for 10 fastballs and then 88 plus for another, you know, five to 10. I mean, he's basically halfway there. If he if he does this and keeps that Velo past 20 fastballs in this next start, like I'm going to have to change my tune. We'll see. I think I do have a lot of trust in someone in this bucket.

Like same Verlander Scherzer that when they're rehabbing, they're not necessarily maxing out every tick of Velo. We've talked about just the lack of adrenaline, but also the, I know I need to get my work in, but I'm not going to completely air it out until it matters again, right? So I think that's kind of baked in here as well for Clayton Kershaw.

Got a question here from Luke about Luis Heal. How to handle Luis Heal in the second half. We and other analysts have hinted that Heal's going to be on an innings limit this season and will eventually be moved to the bullpen, but how real is that? Is this something where someone who is dependent on him in multiple leagues should be looking for a trade or possibly just picking up a replacement

as soon as they can? Or is there just a possibility that they let him keep going all season, even though he's coming off of Tommy John surgery? Yeah, I mean, there's this idea that like, Oh, we'll, um, just monitor, uh, his, you know, release point and VELO and, um, you know, we don't have to look at innings anymore. We're in a post inning society or whatever. Um,

and we have seen the Yankees to be fair, be pushed Clark Schmidt fairly hard in a similar situation. And maybe it was temporary, but I will note that Luis Heal, you know, had sort of a three start stretch where his his release point was down about two inches and the ride on his fastball completely, like almost completely disappear, like it was really bad for like three starts. inches and the ride on his fastball completely, like almost completely disappear. Like it was really bad for like three starts.

I mean, it was a inch plus below where he's been. And you know, you've also seen just a general trend for a while where the VELO was going down and the last two starts though, he'll just totally reverse that. His release points back up, his Velo's back up, his ride is back. I don't know what to say, you know, his slider even has gained ticks and gained drop and like looks maybe the best that it's looked. So I I hate saying this, but I don't know, dude. I just don't know.

I don't think there's like a preemptive move where I would want to drop Luis here, even in a shallow league. I think you just play this out until you get another stretch, multiple starts where something's wrong. Like you just let this out until you get another stretch, multiple starts where something's wrong. Like you just let it happen. I think Clark Schmidt is relevant as far as being a similarly aged pitcher with major injuries and no previous anchor point for a workload that would give you off the cuff

confidence because Clark Schmidt got to what 159 in the regular season last year. He had nothing close to that during his time in the Yankee system. He had 90 in 2022 and maybe a 90 in 2019. That's it. Yeah. And I think he'll had like a 108, 110, three different levels in 2021. So even even that, like he'll probably had a little more of a foundation to work off of. So I think they're going to do exactly what they said and just be mindful of how everything looks along the way.

I also don't know that they have the luxury as they're currently built as far as how their roster is right now. I don't know if they have the luxury of pulling him out of that rotation. He's like kind of their best pitcher. I mean, like, I think Cole's kind of coming back, but like. At least in terms of on field results so far, he's been the best pitcher. I guess what I would say is there's a bunch of pitchers like this who at some point in the second half, they will be less effective

or they may get shut down. Crochet, skeins. Jones actually probably just got the injury that saved him from any of this conversation. He'll come back and just pitch. Yeah. Maybe people have questions like same some questions about Ronaldo Lopez. Yeah. I get it. But you in almost any situation, in what league context are you feeling so great about your

pitching and your pitching depth through the second half that you're not already trying to find more of it? I just don't know if I'm correcting any more with any one or two of the guys that I just listed than I am if I don't have anybody like that because pitchers break all the time. And what if they just limit him to five innings and skip a couple starts and, you know, get to the end of the season with 150 innings and you traded them away, which means you still have 50 more innings of value to get, and you traded them away sort of too aggressively, you know,

and you're trading partners looking to take advantage of you because they think, you know, oh yeah, this is not, this's not gonna get shut down, you know, so you're not gonna get, you know, full. The only place that I think is the most interesting place in this discussion is kind of you're a good team headed towards head-to-head finals or you're a dynasty team that's in the top three and you want to win now and you and you just you feel like every ending down the stretch is going to be a big deal. Which one of these guys would you trade? You know, because you're kind of sitting pretty and you like you want to make sure you finish

well either because it's a head to head finals or because you want it. You want to make sure you win that flag. I still think heels and crochet are hard to train the situation just because they look so good, you know, as pitchers Lopez. Maybe I would trade. I don't know. He's just older. I just don't really trust him to keep up this level of quality. You know, I think there's going to be some ramifications at some point in terms of fatigue or whatever.

The team might be able to make him give him more rest or put him in the bullpen or whatever at some point. I don't know. Lopez and the age, the age factor is part of it. So if I was in a dynasty head-to-head league, I might consider shopping Lopez. I also think that people think that he'll just pitch all year because he's pitched 180 innings before, but that doesn't mean he's going to pitch this well all season. So there's like kind of a little bit more of a performance risk along with the innings risk, you know? I don't know.

Lopez would be the one where I might consider it. Yeah, Lopez, I mean, the projections have continued to improve because of how well he's pitched in the rotation to this point. I think you see a 348 and a 126 for the ratios from Zips at this point. That's pretty good. The bat is at the pessimistic end, 449 ERA, 130 whip. Do you get the PP ERA projections for Ronaldo Lopez? I want to guess maybe splitting the difference?

I shut down Safari. Tabs crushed. But I do think we talked about this a little bit before. Ronaldo Lopez is the guy that a lot of fantasy managers are trying to trade all at once. And the move might actually be to trade for him or to just simply hold because you're not getting good value back. The

consensus view of him is slightly misaligned with his actual value and therefore you just have to ride it out. He'll more directions this could go. I was looking at the Clark Schmitt game log. Kind of in between but a little bit pessimistic. Renato Lopez 393 URI was 25% strikeout rate. That's playable in most leagues. If you're talking about 10 team league, maybe you're not as excited about that, but most leagues you're still pretty happy

to get that from Lopez. Clark Schmidt didn't fade completely in terms of workload. He's still going five plus for starts in September. I think he made five starts that month. Three of them went five innings or more. Two of them were only four innings starts. Those were the last two at the very end of the season. They were pretty good.

I mean the September six, six and a third three earned technically. Yeah, that was a quality start. Five and a third three earned three Ks K rate kind of came down. It wasn't missing as many bats at the end of the year. Walk rate ticked up a little bit. He looked a little fatigued by these results. I didn't get to see a lot of those starts the end of last year from Schmidt, but it was a little bit of a fade.

So you do have to worry about that as something that's looming. Heel has pretty poor command. I mean, if you if you had stones, you could you could get probably a lot for at least healing a dynasty. I would do it now, like right now, as opposed to two months from now, though. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks a lot for that question, Luke.

M.J. Melendez pulling us back in with some recent success. That's a question from Barry Manolode. Has it come time to revisit the enigma of M.J. Melendez? He's on fire doing everything but stealing again. Do we believe Barry has his doubts? Lightning in a bottle or time to buy in? I do have M.J. Melendez in a few lineups because of recent outfield needs.

The overall picture, though, still isn't great. And M.J. Melendez is in the hitting a lot of pop-ups club right now. I think he's already matched his career high. He's got 11 so far this year. If you count those as strikeouts it bring his K rate from 26% which isn't that bad to 29.8% which should be a little more concerning for a guy who's also walking less than ever and hitting the ball on the ground more than ever. So where are we at? Are we still getting pulled in on M.J.

Melendez? M.J. Melendez is rolling. Chase rate is higher than it's ever been in his career. Right now, his rolling pop up rate is higher than it's ever been in his career. I hesitate to do rolling pop ups because they don't happen as often, but yeah, it's and the pop-up rate is way up this year. And it hasn't always been a problem for him. It's very strange. I don't know why he's not better, but I think I've seen enough.

This is not like the Volpe situation where I'm taking the best parts and saying we still have a really bright possible outcome here. I think it's more of needs a change of scenery if it's all going to click. 15 team leagues only and just playing them as a volume schedule play. I wonder if the approach. That's exactly how I'm playing it. Like I he's been on and off my rosters. He's like a bat streamer for me right now. Yeah, that's that's I'm playing him. Like he's been on and off my rosters.

He's like a bat streamer for me right now. Yeah, that's sort of the usage for me in deeper leagues. I wonder if he's pressing now because he, look, players know, like the Royals are in contention, jobs are on the line, upgrades could be coming. Maybe that's part of it for MJ Melendez, trying to make things happen, being a little more aggressive

and just still not getting a great overall result, even though things in the last like 30 days or so have been a little bit better for him. Yeah, I mean, the projections still say that if the BAP up normalized, every projection has a most above average BAT. Yeah, since June 1st, 225, 295, 461, it's a 108 WRC plus six homers.

So, I mean, if your expectations are in that realm, then that's probably fine. It's kind of amazing these lines are above average. It's very power driven because no, I mean, the bad X is the high man on batting average, 240. And everybody's got basically 200 ISO for him, which is, I think also interesting cause he has never had a 200 ISO for a, for a season. I guess they're all, um, jumping into his barrel rate and his max TV and his bad ball stats at this

point. Is it kind of funny that when I think this is always funny when I see somebody projected to do something he's never done. at this point. Is it kind of funny to when, I think this is always funny when I see somebody projected to do something he's never done. Yeah, especially when they've been in the league for a little while too. I mean, he's 25 too. Like this is like, remember the Vlad, the Vlad Guerrero projections were always like,

so good. I wonder if they just missed the fact that that best year that he had was in Dunedin and Buffalo. We're going to go back down this road again. No, we're not. No, no, no. We'll save that. But I'll just saying, uh, I don't, I don't quite believe, I mean, I've just, the one thing that's so hard in fantasy is like when you've been burned by somebody and then you're like, they're almost on like a do not fly list for you.

You know, it's like, sorry, sorry man been down that road not doing it You know and I try really hard not to do that I try really hard to say You know even players I haven't liked players that burn me in the past if I like something about them or the price gets cheap enough So I will say Melendez has been on my rosters off and on this year But mostly just when like he's away from home or he's got seven games on schedule or something.

Right, I have not been clinging to that rest of season projection the way I might have in the past. Yeah. That's where I'm at with MJ Melendez. It's 1400 played appearances and unlike Volpe, we do not have large differences in approach. He's been the same guy.

So if at the worst case scenario, you're missing last year's 235-16-6. That's what I think. Thanks a lot for that question, Barry. I'm sure MJ Melendez with one more hot month comes up again at some point before the end of the season if he pulls it off. But I wouldn't be surprised if two weeks from now we're talking about another outfielder being in the mix for this Royals team if they're trying to make a push for 2024. Got a couple of updates here on the Rates and Barrels Listener League. We haven't really checked in on this one in a while.

Thanks to JRosje33 we have overall standings. The top 10 right now is looking pretty good. The D, D-Bolt, we got Wilge, Beagle, 001, Devon Roel, Flying Tigers, B.R. Reed Miller, Cole Mitch 22, Korolike, Dervish Nick, and AJS10 currently in the top 10. Oh, Derek Cardy as a God fell out. Derek Cardy as a God. We still have, we cannot confirm nor deny that it is or is not Cardy.

If it is actually Derek Cardy. Or just a big fan is not Carty. Or just a big fan of Derek Carty's. We think it's a fan, but haven't ruled out the possibility just outside the top 10. So still time to make up some ground. You know what? I probably aren't going to get in the top 10. He knows ahead of me right now.

He knows at 619th overall. I'm at 981st because I took the bait as a low guppy, Jeff Good pointed out in the Discord, Christian Encarnacion Strand was the most popular player in our contest this year and I ate the chalk and it hasn't obviously gone well because it's been a lost season for him due to injury, wasn't very productive before it happened either. But you look at some of the players that have popped in the contest this year. This list is not that surprising when you start to think about like relatively low usage, but also super inexpensive players.

Cutter Crawford, Seth Lugo, Alec Bohm. I think I have Lugo. Dantsby Swanson pops up on here as being on a lot of a decent number of good teams. But I'm surprised because he's been underperforming. Jaren Jaren Duran is on here as a really valuable, high performing player. Tanner Hauck made the top 20.

Willie Adames is in here. I'm looking at this list. I'm like, yeah, I don't really have any of these players. Chris Sale. I had a bunch of money in Ronald Acuna. Yeah. Yeah, that sucks. I've got Melendez on this damn team. Saddam Rafaela is helping me.

Jordan Westberg, Colt Keith turned it around. So some of my guys are having better second halves. But I'm thinking that maybe James MacArthur has run his Won't be giving too many too many more saves in the second half with the acquisition of hunter Harvey That was a little bit of where the money went this this past week. I I'm a little pessimistic about MacArthur I would say given where he was drafted getting you getting 16 saves out of him and not destroying your metrics otherwise I think was a good outcome for MacArthur.

And actually it might be all I needed because my whole point in this was to have one closer to get off the bottom from everybody who punted closers. So maybe 14 will be enough, but Trevor Rogers is not helping me. But Lidolo's back in. Actually, if I go somewhere, it's because the rest of my staff, the only pitcher I've lost, and this is kind of amazing, the only pitcher I've lost is Shane Beaver.

Yeah, that's pretty remarkable. You need positive health outcomes for sure to do well in a contest that is set and forget like this. Yeah, exactly. What do you think about Hunter Harvey for the Royals? It was not an insignificant trade. And they give the 39th overall pick from the draft. As part of this deal and Kayden Wallace, so player and a pick, but 39th overall pick has good bit of value. So I would assume the Royals have some intentions on Harvey being obviously part

of their, their a bullpen, but could he actually be their closer, given some of the instability they've had in that ninth inning role? Yeah. Kayden Wallace was below average his first attempt to double a, but is 17% better league average with a stick in double A right now as a third baseman, five 11. So not a big dude has not shown big power, but makes good contact. You know, could, could make it as a sort of an average-ish regular. I don't see a superstar in there.

Hunter Harvey, I do think this was a significant investment in him. They like the fact that they get him for another year after this. And that he has the stuff of a closer. MacArthur had the curve ball of a closer, but never had the fastball. And Harvey comes in here with the fastball of a closer. I think they go to him right away and he is their closer. MacArthur's better set up, better profiles as a setup guy, I think.

Yeah, not surprisingly, the bids on Hunter Harvey were significant even in 12 team leagues, the Rotawire Online Championship, usually the contests we're looking at to see who's jumping onto rosters and who's being moved off. Reese Hines, who just continues to mash, was the Reese Hines who just continues to mash was the by far like biggest target in weekly fab. Reese Hines now has played seven big league games. He's homered five times, stolen a couple bases. He's 11 for 26. So that's a 423, 464, 1192 slash line so far through seven games. We described him going to the weekend as a what could go right sort of player

where sure this amazing heater he's on to start his career is everything that we like to see in a debut. It's fun. But you're just hoping that the floor isn't so low that he gets kind of jumbled up in the crowded outfield picture. Like there's a reasonable path for Hines just keep hitting and to be an everyday fixture for the Reds because some of their secondary options that outfield have underperformed all year. So he's done everything in his power.

Reese Hines has done everything possible to keep that door open for these next few weeks and to continue getting more opportunities. And I think the other number that we're keeping an eye on is that strikeout rate, right? 28 plate appearances so far, 7Ks, you can live with that. Like if that's where he settles in, we're going to be just fine. Yeah, but I don't think that is where he's gonna settle in.

He's had 38s and 40s in the minors. He just came up from AAA where he was 24% worse than league average overall as a 23 year old with a 38% strikeout rate. So I think we're going to see a lot of strikeouts. One thing that is annoying to me because I decided not to take part. I just didn't take part. I was like, this is, he went for 130, 150 out of, uh, out of a thousand. He went for, you know, 13, 15% of FAB, uh, free agency money, uh, Reese Hines did.

And I didn't really have that to spend in most cases. I didn't want to spend it on this player with this profile. We just talked about how I don't love players with this profile. One thing that's annoying to me though, is if you start this hot, even as you're striking out, your batting average, even as it's going down, will have had this like nice foundation to start,

that like, you know, you could add a week of 210 to this 423 and he'll still have like a 300 batting average, right? And you add another week of 210 He'll still be at like 250 and it'll still seem passable for two weeks and I wonder if that'll keep him in the lineup longer than I wanted to just look at one of the other guys that kind of That just that went in for money this year, and I did put money down on Lawrence Butler He did have a three home run game in a sort of coming out party there

He's doing the opposite where his numbers were so bad to begin that they're being artificially almost Depressed by how bad he was the first time he came up I mean if you look at just what he's done in June depressed by how bad he was the first time he came up. I mean, if you look at just what he's done in June, you're talking about a 317 average, 349 OBP, 854, that's July, but you know, he's on a heater. He started off badly and that's depressing his numbers. What I like about Butler is he strikes out less than Reese Hines.

He doesn't quite have the same 90 raw power on the 20 to 80 scouting scale, but he's got really good raw power. He's getting to that raw power more. And I think some of these adjustments are behind him. I think he's starting to figure out how he's being pitched and how to get the most out of his skill set. He also steals bases. So Butler was somebody I was in on. I did not win him, but I wanted him. The patients from the A's might be a little greater with Lawrence Butler, just given where they're at right now.

And the Reds kind of scrambling trying to find their way back into the wild card picture. They might be quicker to make an adjustment if Reese Hines hits a stretch of 10, 15 games where that strikeout rate balloons back up. We see it with prospects that were much more highly regarded than Lawrence Butler too. The adjustment seems to be a few months right now. So he had that taste of triple A, got the strikeout rate back down, showing a good eye, even though he wasn't just mashing. The line isn't like jump off the page good for the PCL either. But the combination of power and speed, I think the safer opportunity for Lawrence Butler

made him pretty appealing even in 12 team leagues, because he started five in those RotoWire online championship leagues. So I think that makes a lot of sense. But a three homer game will always do it. You hit three homers in a game, you're getting picked up in 12 team leagues. It's just the way that it goes. I got a baby resigns package for $3. Yeah?

Out of a thousand. Who's that? Adam Duvall. Oh, okay. Basically the same guy. No, Adam Duvall is only striking out 28% of the time, so. No, but I mean, he's kind of your raw power, low batting average guy. I needed that in in main event.

I also needed to buy players on the very cheap because we just got Edwin Diaz last week, so we are dollar days almost the rest of the season. So we got Adam Duvall for three, Kerry Carpenter for two, Zach McKinstry for one, and Casey Mize for one, if you want to know what it looks like to live on the fringes. But my big acquisition in two leagues was Juan Yepez, which I think I told people I was going to do, and I went and did it and I didn't spend that much money. I got him for basically 25 bucks in both leagues out of a thousand.

Juan Yepez is not a guy who hits the ball super, super hard. So you might be surprised why I like him. Here's why I like him. He's playing every day in Washington, which is a nice park. And he has a good K rate. So he's like, he's a,

my co-manager said, tie France starter package in a better stadium. Oh, OK. I think maybe like a Masataka Yoshida Roto profile where it's like average and run production first and then power. Maybe it's like a secondary contribution with very little speed. Maybe the occasional bag, the Nats do run a lot. So maybe he'll get a few green lights, but you're not. You don't pick him up fourth speed,

any speed you get's the random bonus. I think the batting average is gonna be good. I think Washington will help him, aid him into some homers. And then lastly, he's first base and outfield eligible. And so you've got a little CIOF, one for one B, you've got some places you can play him. I think he's what Paul Spor calls a team streamer

for pitchers where it's like a player that's too good to drop. I think he'll be a guy who'll be my first guy on the bench or in my lineup and he'll kind of help me massage some other players around. The Thai France starter kit comp is probably the right comp though as far as your best case scenario expectations as well for Juan Yepez. On the drop side, three names stood out to me, Edward Cabrera, Colton Couser, and David Fry.

That's all-star David Fry. It's been a tougher stretch for Fry kind of heading into the all-star break, right? So I get it. I understand why people would be Tempering expectations slightly if you want to roll back from like June 1st Through the end of the half 202 266 293 no homers in 33 games 6rb eyes to run score climbing k-right the rolling k-rate got back up to 30% Which is kind of what his problem was before.

And the appeal, of course, with catcher eligibility to catcher leagues, the floor for a second catcher is pretty low. But even that recent run of playing time was enough for some people to say, OK, I've seen enough. Do you think this is just the beginning of the downturn for what was a really fun story? Or do you think it's just typical adjustments for a guy that doesn't have that much big league experience yet? Right. It doesn't matter how old you are. The league starts to figure you out and pitch you differently. And you've got to make some counter adjustments back. I mean, David Fry's only had

359 big league plate appearances between this season and last season for the Guardians. Yeah, I mean, there's some evidence he's a huge pole fly ball guy. The K-Rate climbing up makes me think that people found a way to use that against him. I think this is a little bit of an adjustment phase, but I also think their depth chart is so crowded

that part of the appeal that was there in the first two months could be whittled away if it's not an everyday role while he figures it out. Yeah, I am a little bit less worried that Cleveland is going to acquire a bat at the deadline than I am usually. I think that if they're looking anywhere, Cleveland's going to be looking to acquire an arm. Yeah, that's the... But Lanzardo represents a little bit of a threat, which is, you know, if he comes back up and takes a regular job that pushes Frye into a little bit more a threat, which is, you know, if he comes back up and takes a regular job that pushes Frye into a little bit more of a marginal situation.

They could even make that switch one for one. Yeah, yeah, they could. What do you make of Colton Couser and how he's been playing, kind of going back to May 1st even, had a great March, April, but six homers in his last 205 plate appearance is a 74 WRC plus since May 1st. 183, 278, 328.

It's not going to cut it on a team where there are a lot of viable options. And I know Heston Kirstad suffered the concussion after getting hit by a pitch just prior to the break. And there was the fallout from that between the Orioles and Yankees. But Kauser looks like a guy who might be in danger of losing his share of playing time in the immediate future, barring a quick turnaround. Yeah, he's, uh, you know, kind of been chasing more.

Um, you know, I'm, I'm a little surprised, uh, that the rolling strikeout rate graph has not been terrible. Um, you know, it's actually sort of generally trending downwards, but. Overall, he is a swing and miss guy, um, alongside really good patients. And so, um, I really like his outcomes longterm. Um, I don't know what that means for the short term. I would just caution all of us for fiddling the dials on the Orioles too much because I think we

all wrote Cedric Mullins epitaph already and he seems to be back in good graces. So Kalser may just be a guy that they let go through some stuff like Mullins did. It's possible. I mean, they're winning. He fills a role. go through some stuff like Mullins did. It's possible. They're winning. He fills a role. He plays center field against lefties. I'm not sure they have a great person to do that otherwise. Yeah, no, I think that was the saving grace for Mullins all along,

was how they use him defensively. Couser doesn't quite have that to fall back on. Edward Cabrera was the most notable pitching drop. I get it. Four homers allowed in three and a third innings. That was a rough start. Made two turns coming off the IL before the All-Star break. We haven't seen Edward Cabrera pitch five or more innings in a big league start since April 21st, but 42 Ks against 15 walks in 28 and a third inning.

So he is eligible for the air quotes next Hunter Brown, if you want to put him into that, that contest. I don't think I want to go there, but I'm curious if you still do as someone who has been consistently intrigued by the potential of Edward Cabrera. has been consistently intrigued by the potential of Edward Cabrera. There are some dials to fiddle with in his pitching mix. He has a sinker that he does not throw very often and the slider has been devalued over time for him. Um, and yet, um,

with a command problem like he has, um, maybe he finds that he can actually command one of those better. Maybe he shifts something on the slide or makes it more of a cutter. And that's how he comes back. I will bet on stuff like this, but I will be cautious as all heck because, you know, obviously it's been blowing up on him. I wonder, would you have played, I have him in some places.

I think I got burned by one of these. Yes. I, I played him against the white Sox. It wasn't terrible, terrible. The white Sox game was three and two thirds, four strikeouts, one walk, two earned. Not really terrible. I was not going to start him against Cincinnati and Cincinnati or the LA Dodgers So he's still in that like I'm intrigued the K-minus BB is actually really good. The stuff is pretty good I might pick him up if he's out there if I have a if I have a place on my roster where I can kind of Play with a pitcher I might pick him up if they use him for the first game out of the break or the first series out of the break

At least it'd be a home start against the Mets and then he would catch the Orioles at home for a second start I don't think I'd throw him in that spot. And if we go a little further down the road, I think he would get the Rays Probably the Rays on the road would be his third start after the break depending on when they let him go You know Probably the raise on the road would be his third start after the break, depending on when they let him go. You know, I kind of might do a wait and see on the Mets, not starting against the Orioles. So you can maybe leave him out there if you want. But if he does OK against those Mets, then I would feel better about starting against the Rays. If the schedule breaks a little bit differently, Edward Cabrera could be pitching in Milwaukee.

I might actually get to see it because Yacht Rock Night is coming up at the yard. July 26th. They have Yacht Rock Night on Friday night, and then they have Hawaiian shirt giveaway night on Saturday right after that. Wow. It's for the Marlin series. So it's like they know you. It's like they know exactly what I'm looking for. I'm going to be in Seattle next week, you know, all trips

and around. So I'll be I'll be off the airways for a little bit after Friday. But I'm going to have some fun out there in Seattle. Mount Rainier, Olympic, going up to the islands. It's going to be fun. Nice. We've got some subs lined up for next week as well.

So we're looking forward to that. So much deserved time off for you here as we and a crossed over that midway point of season If you'd like check out all the great content we have at the athletic you can do that the athletic comm Slash rates and barrels if you get ready for football season We just launched a new football podcast not you know and I but it was Diana Rossini and chase Daniel former quarterback They've got a show called Scoop City just launched on Tuesday. So be sure to check that out. Keep up with all the news and rumors

and all the good chatter from around the league. Anywhere you listen to your podcasts. You can find Eno on Twitter at EnoSarris. You can find me at Derek and Ryan for Find the Pod at Rates and Barrels. That's gonna do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you live at one o'clock Eastern on YouTube on Thursday.

Thanks for listening.