Rates & Barrels - This Podcast is Written in Pencil

Episode Date: June 23, 2020

Rundown0:50 There's Still So Much to Figure Out5:19 The Universal DH is a Small Win for Players9:12 What Do the Players Have to Give?13:07 The Difficulty of Projecting Timetables to Start18:20 The Fantasy Strategy Adjustments to Consider (So Far)23:35 How Stretched Out Will Starters Be?27:18 Adjusting Wins for 2020 Season34:22 Judging Performance in a 60-Game Season38:46 Injury Risk & Limited Info While Ramping Up50:27 Peak Age for Pitchers59:18 Listener Idea: A Lemonade League Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarrisFollow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRipere-mail: [e-mail] Get 40% off a subscription to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Rates and Barrels, episode 106. It is Tuesday, June 23rd. Derek Van Ryper here with Eno Saris. On this episode, Major League Baseball is inching toward having a plan in place for the 2020 season. We're going to discuss what the season is beginning to look like and how it could really all unravel before this episode even sees the light of day. So, Eno, I know this statement makes no sense, but this podcast is written in pencil. Yeah, there's so much to be figured out. I had this idea to ask someone if they'd actually even play spring training games because most of the teams are going to go to their, I think most of them, but not all of them are going to go play in their uh home stadiums so they don't really want to have that much track like that much travel they've already talked about

you know different ways to to deal with travel and um i don't know they they don't know they don't know if they're going to play spring training games. That seems like a fundamental thing. But hey, I think the next text I had was strap in because we got to figure all this out really quick. It worries me really with the health and safety, which maybe that's all been happening behind the scenes. And that's been the least publicized part of all of this in recent weeks, especially. Maybe a lot of care is being paid to that. Like maybe we'll know more sooner rather than later.

They did. They did have some back and forth with plans when it came to, you know, how much testing there would be and how much could they shower. It ended up being about the sort of regular day-to-day stuff where players kind of wanted to be able to shower at the park. Yeah, there was a pretty detailed plan that was put out there, but it's just been so quiet about the health and safety. That just hasn't been one of the conversations. And it hasn't been something that I've heard from players much either.

Mostly has been anger about the financial component. Right. So I guess my assumption is that they're not far off on that, and I know that assuming anything about the owners and the players being on the same page is a terrible idea, but the general framework of what has happened, Monday afternoon, the Players Association rejected the league's latest proposal, and a few hours after that major league baseball owners voted

unanimously to move forward to have commissioner manfred implement a schedule it's supposed to be 60 games that's not locked in it's supposed to be over a period of 66 days it's not locked in it's provided that players agree by 5 p.m today, which is only four hours from the time that we're talking right now, that players will agree to report to Spring Training 2.0 within one week, and that players will agree on health and safety protocols. If those two conditions aren't met, then they can't move forward. So there's a bunch of things that have been put out there. I've seen combined divisions to reduce travel. That is supposed to be a part of this plan. We've kind of known that for a while. Opening day is supposed to be during the final days of July. I think I've seen July 24th pushed out there. I think I've even seen July 26th out there as well. Clearly, not locked in just yet. Still very much fluid. just yet still very much fluid and i've seen that players will be paid in the postseason by percentage of gate which has been the case in the past so there have been no changes to that but we have no idea if fans will even be allowed into the stadiums at that time because well we still

are living in a pandemic so you know like that's still the greatest threat to the 2020 season. Even when things were at their absolute darkest point in the back and forth between these two sides, which was about a week ago when we were recording this show. I think last Monday was one of the darkest days in baseball Twitter. That, to me, was still the biggest threat, and it still is the biggest threat so you know we know a little bit about what this season could look like it's starting to come into focus and yet we still are missing a lot of information yeah and it's hard to kind of piece it together from the outside but you know i have been speaking to players throughout this and you know one that was plugged in with what was going on was talking about, I think the playoff, the expanded playoff bit was the biggest carrot for the owners. That's what they wanted. They wanted to sign the waiver of future grievance, and they wanted the expanded playoff. That was the carrot for them. The carrot for the players was the DH, because that is an extra job for the extra 15 jobs. However, that's not the biggest carrot given what players know about free agency and how free agency is playing out.

Because you're talking about 15 jobs that'll probably, you know, pay the player like a million a year. Right, on average. For every Nelson Cruz in the league, you have teams that basically float that spot. Or maybe sign like a Travis Shaw, you know what I mean? Yeah, maybe that's your extra guy. He's a player who comes out, gets non-tendered, and then has a deflated free agent

market yeah and then nobody really pays for dhs anyway because there's no defensive value so anyway i think that the reason dh was in all these offers was not necessarily because um i think the owners put it in because it was an easy give yeah right yeah they probably looked at it and said this is really something we can give them. Yeah, we'll give them that. So that's why I was in. But expanded playoffs may not seem like a big deal going in. It is actually a huge deal because players are not paid for the postseason.

I don't want people to understand that. They're not paid for the postseason. And if you want to call it technicality, sure, it's technicality. They do get a bonus. However, the bonus has been traditionally defined as 60% of gate for the first three games of a five-game series and the first four games of a seven-game series. So they don't even get paid for gate for the whole thing. They only get gate, and that means owners get to see dollar signs in their eyes

with all the TV money for the postseason is just all theirs. dollar signs in their eyes with all the TV money for the postseason is just all theirs. And I think this is one of the things that could be the biggest sticking points in the 2021 CBA renegotiation. I mean, that expires December 1st of next year. So we've got one more full season potentially before that has to be hashed out. And I've been wondering, because this is far, far from my area of expertise, the holding onto the ability to file a grievance, which I think has taken a bit of a hit just given the sequence of events that have happened over the past week. You mentioned before we started recording, you know, Rob Manfred going to meet Tony Clark last week. That's kind of a big step towards eliminating the case or reducing the strength of the case of the grievance. towards eliminating the case or reducing the strength of the case of the grievance.

I keep wondering if having the ability to file a grievance is a bargaining chip that the Players Association is going to try and use to potentially get something in the next CBA. Like, we won't file a grievance. There you go. But we want this. Yes, I like that because along with playoffs,

this is how we contextualize this negotiation within the larger negotiation, which is the full CBA negotiation, which comes up at the end of next season. And the way that we do that is if you want to get something and the players need to get something, they need to either double the minimum salary or they need to reduce a year of arbitration. Because what's happening is 40% of the league is on the minimum salary. 40% of the league is on the minimum salary. And we're approaching two-thirds of the league is in arbitration. Like, doesn't that blow your mind? That's exactly what would happen if you showed an analytics guy, what would happen if you showed an analytics guy this is how players are paid they would say can we get as many possible on the five hundred thousand dollar deal yes so uh especially with aging curves and all that and we're gonna we have a great aging curve question later that we're going to talk about but um with aging curves the way they are and because right now players just

basically come into the league at peak and then fall off at like 25 26 uh as a whole uh then of course you want the 500 000 players because they're closer to their peak and they cost nothing so what players need is something to change in arbitration and something to change in the minimum salary in order to get those you have to have a big give now that's this is what the players the player kind of sat me down and said he said said okay what are gives the gives are reducing the pension because there's a pension plan uh associated with being a player salary cap which is like you know the nuclear option uh for the owners like the the thing that they've always wanted and that the players don't want to give them um the other option is expanded post season it's huge and the fourth thing is uh walk off the job these are the four sources of potential power for the players

right so walk off the job is the nuclear option for players and walk and a salary cap is the nuclear option for, for owners, right? So all that's really left that's possible to talk about is expanded postseason and pension plan. Those are the only two gives they give. And if people want to say the players didn't give anything, that's right.

Cause they only have two things to give. They only have two things to give. I'm getting angry. I'm going to calm down. I'm going to calm down, but that's, they have two things to give. and of course they weren't going to give it now. And now let's identify, okay, the playoffs that they turned down, $25 million. That's $30,000 a player.

Now guess what? Some places are opening up. Some places are going to have a postseason gate. And so there's a chance that people that are in the postseason get that $30,000 just from gate because it's such a low number that they might actually get it just from the gate. And then there's the chance that there is no postseason. Yeah.

I mean, Brett Anderson was among the players who put a question out there. What happens if we all get it, it being the virus? I mean, that's a fair question to ask. Like what, what is going to happen with pay? The Phillies camp just had, and that's another thing is like, we were talking about like, you know, you can't catch TJ, but you can catch COVID. And so when like a pitcher or two goes down and you're starting staff, like you can still play. That's how we play baseball. Like, we're just like, Oh, that's what the DL is for, or the IL, or whatever it is.

But the problem with COVID is Phillies camp, 10 people. What if those were all players? 10 players? Now the Phillies say, eh, guys, we've got to stop the season. Because we can't even fill a full roster. And that's what COVID

is going to be like. So, yeah. fill a full roster um and that's what covid is going to be like so uh yeah i think there is a tragedy that they didn't come together earlier because what we could have done is uh baked in more time for stopping the season for coronavirus we've already seen in japan that when they tried to start up a bunch of people got coronavirus and they were stars and they've been because they were stars i don't know what it, but they stopped for two weeks and tried again. In Japan, because they all wear masks, is the sort of data research conclusion that Japan's mask

wearing is a big part of why they have a better situation there. And who knows how well America is doing on that one. So I know I went to Lake Tahoe this weekend. I know how well people are wearing masks in public. But the point is most likely there will be another stop. And so if we'd started earlier, we could have had a stop and maybe be in the same position now.

But now we're getting everybody back together and we're going to test them all and we're going to find that people are sick and we're going to have to postpone it again. Yeah, maybe this is a very naive sort of thought again. Again, these are not pandemics and collective bargaining are not my areas of expertise believe it or not but my thought is that as you bring players back to the facility

right if they do agree to those two conditions and start reporting to spring training 2.0 which is a really stupid name since it's in the middle of summer but um you get people back and you're flying people in from all different corners of the country and even different parts of the world. You're bringing all these people together. You are creating a situation where you're almost certainly going to be exposing people who did not have the virus to people who do have the virus, who are probably asymptomatic. And you're probably going to have some setbacks upon arrival or soon after arrival. and you're probably going to have some setbacks upon arrival or soon after arrival. And I think you're absolutely right.

Had this process been taken care of three or four weeks ago, we'd probably be in the middle of some sort of delay right now, just sort of based on the situations we've seen unfold, I believe, at Blue Jays camp, Phillies camp, just what's happening in states like Arizona and Texas and Florida. We would be having a setback, almost certainly. But if we were having a setback now, we'd be moving forward in the next couple of weeks. We'd actually be moving forward on the schedule in which we're trying to start things up for Major League Baseball. Right. And these are all young people.

Not all, but very many of them are young people. Very many of them are not even married. And they're going to go to these places and some of them, bars are open. And we've already seen that there are going to be significant problems with this because, oh man, I wish I knew the exact details. There's a team that removed itself from the playoffs man, I wish I knew the exact details. There's a team that removed itself from the playoffs because half their team got sick with COVID because they went to a bar.

Yeah, the Orlando Pride had to pull out of the NWSL Cup because they had 10 positive coronavirus tests. It's a women's soccer league team, right? Yep. Yeah, so don't you think that's going to happen in baseball? Yeah, so don't you think that's going to happen in baseball? I mean, I hope, you know, the negotiations have kind of, and the negotiation over the health protocol is taken seriously and that players kind of think about that

and think about what they do in their free time. But since the bubble option is out, you know, these people are going to be in their free time. But since the bubble option is out, these people are going to be in their own homes and doing their own things. Now, maybe the California teams are going to be better off because there aren't even bars to go to. Who knows? But that's another thing that's going to be really interesting

is that the different policies in the different states is going to contribute to this. Right. There might be some teams who, because they play in a certain location they are basically on something that looks more like a lockdown comparatively speaking and therefore they have a lower chance of contracting the virus which is this conversation it feels so absurd like i can't believe we're talking about this on a baseball podcast, that this is the reality that we live in. But it's also making me wonder, are there going to be players who

choose not to play this season? We're seeing that a little bit in the NBA. We've had a few players say, yeah, you know what? No, not coming down for the bubble. Their situation's different. They're going to keep everybody at Disney and try to play and resume their season there. Are there going to be prominent big league players? We've heard different players step up at various points and express concerns about the previous bubble plan, but like Trout's among the many players expecting to have a child in their family in the next couple of months. How many people in that situation are going to risk the exposure? I just think we're gonna we're

gonna go through a period of the next three to four weeks where things in the player pool and the construct of this season change like maybe hundreds of times i'm trying not to exaggerate but i think if we've learned anything from the last three months, it's that everything we try to do right now is subject to change and further evaluation, like more so than ever. I was telling you before we started recording, my niece turns one in a couple of weeks and there's a birthday party for her. I would love to go, but I think there's going to be more than a few people there. So I don't think I'm going to go to that party. I think I have to make plans to go see her and my brother and my sister-in-law prior to that party just to keep a safer environment. I mean, that's the kind of thing that I never, ever in my wildest dreams would have thought twice about.

If you told me six months ago, hey, you're not going to be sure about going to your niece's first birthday party. What are you talking about? Of course I'm going to be there. I mean, that's the world we live in now. And I know that the financial incentive to forge ahead with professional sports is huge. That's why we're doing this. But I'm trying to have a very guarded optimism. I'm excited that something is happening. It's not the way anybody wanted this to go down fantasy strategy adjustments that we've talked about.

Here's what I've got so far, because I'm going through that process of trying to set up rankings based on this shorter season and the other factors in play. Universal DH is expected, but not confirmed, right? So you have all the DH stuff we've talked about on recent episodes, the extra playing time that opens up for NL teams. But you also have NL pitchers facing DHs instead of pitchers. So some of the advantages those pitchers had are now gone. That needs to be accounted for. We've talked a lot about the expanded rosters, maybe thinning out playing time in some cases.

The Rays always come to mind as a team that because of their depth, they would platoon every spot possible if they had the roster depth to do it. We're still keeping an eye on that. The injured players who are now healthy or healthy-ish or healthier than they were a few months ago, they need to be accounted for. They need to be adjusted. And then the biggest one of all really is team philosophy because as you were talking about different areas of the country

possibly allowing fans, think about that as a carrot for teams who were previously middle of the country possibly allowing fans, think about that as a carrot for teams who were previously middle of the pack and their incentive to be more aggressive with how they run their team. Maybe they were going to be a mid-pack like 80 to 82 win team, probably short of the playoffs before. In the shortened season with increased variance, their incentive to call up top prospects, to be more aggressive with playing time with young players, it's clearly there in the form of making it to the postseason. So that's just one aspect of team philosophy. In-game management of pitchers is going to be huge.

We've touched on that a little bit, right? I'm still daydreaming about Yanni Chirinos and Brendan McKay, like tandem starting and just basically combining for a complete game. That's part of the dream, but plenty of other teams are going to try that. And the challenge is we don't know which teams are going to operate which way before the season starts. They're not going to just show us their cards and say, here's exactly what we're going to do this season. It's going to kind of just start to play out and we're going to have to react and respond to it very quickly. I wonder if there's ways that we can see it ahead of time. I would think something that we should all track very closely is innings pitched for starters when they come back. I think that's maybe an easy way to see it

because with the way that modern training works, acute to chronic or whatever, the whole idea is that you have to build up, if you want to put it in layman's terms, and of course everything old is new again, of course we knew that we had to build up stamina for pitchers and this is another fancier way of talking about that if the if there are certain teams that are just cool with their starters throwing one inning when they first come back one inning is usually february yeah like the end of february

right like when things first begin you're right and then the usual sort of build up is like one two three and it's like very easy to track you see it as a season approaches they get four and then the last one before the the season starts they throw a full five you know there's always that one full start and then you know all the quotes after it or i feel ready to go i'm ready to go had all my pitches and you you know, blah, blah, blah. And so if we're starting the late February process and we only have three weeks, plus or minus Corona delay time, then tracking to see who starts at one, who starts at two and what, how quickly they kind of progress through that.

That'll tell us something about how they plan to use the pitchers, I think. And we've already had some inkling. Andrew Baggerly had a little tweet about how the Giants hinted that they would be aggressive with their pitching strategy. In some cases, they don't have that much to lose. I mean, Johnny Cueto is like theeto and Jeff Samarge, I guess, are grizzled vets. I don't think I would throw that yet on Gossman. And Gossman was even relieving some last year, right?

Yeah, I believe with the Reds, he spent some time in the bullpen. And Smiley's been relieving. And Suarez has been up and down. So when you look up and down this, you see, and Tyson Ross, how many does he even have? And Tyler Anderson is supposed to be in for discussion of the starting pitcher. And Derek Rodriguez was a starting pitcher but lost a bunch of velocity. What if he was a two-inning starting pitcher at 93 miles an hour? He did have enough secondary pitches to look like a starting pitcher, but lost a bunch of velocity. What if he was a two-inning starting pitcher at 93 miles an hour?

He did have enough secondary pitches to look like a starting pitcher, but when his velocity went away, he kind of fell apart. So what you've got is like eight credible starting pitchers, 10 even, I don't know, four, eight, nine, nine credible starting pitchers. Trevor Cahill's in camp with them. So you have 10 credible starting pitchers. Trevor Cahill's in camp with them. So you have 10 credible starting pitchers and none where you're like, oh yeah, that guy's a hoss, five innings

and we'll be in the game. I mean, okay, so if July 1st is the targeted report date, let's say that happens, that's week one. If pitchers have been throwing a little bit on the side, maybe they don't have to start at one inning. Let's assume intra-squad appearances instead of spring training games. I think that's at least part of what's going to happen. Let's say that's week one, though.

July 1st. So, honestly, how ready are the Giants pitchers going to be if they're only facing Giants hitters? Well, yeah. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Let's say you go two innings that first week because you've been throwing, so your base is a little higher than where it would be going into spring training, or it's pretty comparable because you've ran that once. Then you're at three and four, and you're most likely your start before you get going is four innings.

Four, maybe five, because if the first games are like monday the 27th if you manage to get four starts but there will be starting pitchers that don't manage to get four starts right well i think with inter-squad stuff though if you're not relying on a spring training schedule you have guys kind of throwing oh yeah their own schedule you can start everybody on the same day and quaita quaita both on the same day yeah okay yeah yeah and you know it's kind of weird from a hitting standpoint trying to figure out how you're going to get reps. I would assume that there will be

a lot of pitchers that can only go four in at least their first turn through the order. I think that's fair. Especially for younger guys and guys maybe who didn't have as much in terms of resources in lockdown. We saw pictures of guys on Twitter

who built their own mounds eventually. They just went to Home Depot, bought the stuff, put it together, and were throwing out in front of their houses. But not everybody did that. Not everyone could do that. So different starting points for different players. And it's also fair, like there's levels of adrenaline. And one thing that's interesting that I've seen at driveline is that they were really proud of

getting someone to throw a hundred and a bullpen at driveline because they are fully aware of the lack of adrenaline that you have when you're just throwing a bullpen. I think Sean Doolittle once told me that even in spring training, he won't hit his full velocities because he'll come out and he literally said, I'll slap someone's ass. I'll wave to someone in the crowd and I get my throws in basically. And I was talking to Trevor Bauer about where he's sitting right now just last week. And Bauer said that those those that video that you saw of him throwing to Derek Dietrich he was probably sitting 89 and that

that was his usual sort of off-season number and that he always just relied on you know being able to put four to five more ticks in his arm over the course of spring training. But that's kind of a full spring training, so it's still fair. I wonder what Bauer will sit in his first start. That's interesting to me. So I think the velocities will be a little bit down, but that might be bolstered. You know there's a relationship with how many pitches you have to throw and how hard you can throw.

So if they say, okay, Jeff Samarja, we only want four innings out of you, you can basically throw as hard as you can for a while, right? Or we only want three innings out of you. So maybe they'll be able to get their velocity up but not be able to have the stamina with the velocity, not have that sort of Justin Verlander 99 in the sixth inning kind of thing. So I think there'll be a lot of pressure on teams to shorten the amount of outing,

shorten the length of outings. And that means that wins will, for fantasy wins will just be a utter crapshoot. If, if you had commission control or you could at least start the conversation with your league, if you're not a commish, would you advocate changing the wins category to innings pitch for the season?

Because that's the move I would make in any league where I could. Oh, no, no. I was thinking real life. If I was the real life commissioner, I would advocate for a change in the wins rule. I think. Or even just not necessarily an official change, but there is a thing in the wins rule. I think, or, or, or even just not necessarily an official change, but there is a thing in the rule book where it says that the official score can have,

uh, some, some sort of subjective decision-making process when it comes to awarding the win. There is actually something about like, if nobody goes five innings, um, they can award the win yeah and it's usually they just give it to the reliever that comes in when the winning run is scored anyway

but um if you just told them hey no one's going to get the same bulk give it to the bulk guy that pitched well just tell your official scores like as a semi-official thing behind the scenes or as an official document say like you know consider bulk when more often when you are awarding the win i think that'd be more fair because i think it's way more fair like if you throw three or four innings in a game where nobody else threw more than one right why does it matter that one reliever was in when the go-ahead run was scored? The guy who threw three or four innings should be the guy who gets the win. It would be cool if the game decided to lean on the smart people,

like people who run and built baseball savant and said, hey, we get this win probability added thing that we could use and determine who wins a game on the pitching side based on that. And I think the cool thing about making a change like this, if the official score is following something like that and we know about it ahead of time, we can plan accordingly, which is great. It's not going to destroy the commissioner software. software like if you start changing some some rules around in certain instances you could have basically a different version of the otani problem where the commissioner services have to on the fly try and make a big tech change to get the scoring to work right we don't want that if the win is coming through the stats provider and it's the same as it would be otherwise it's just

there even if the method for applying it is different, I don't think that breaks down the leaves, which is really good. That's a change that's less painful from a logistic standpoint. And for us as fantasy players, it would be less painful if the win was just applied better, right? Because then we could still be like, okay, this is a starter.

The categories he affects are strikeouts and wins. This is a reliever. The category he affects are ratios and saves wins this is a reliever the category he affects are ratios and saves you know what i mean um so yeah i prefer smaller change when it comes to rule books and stats and a partial part of it is because of fantasy because i know what kind of havoc can be rung upon a fantasy league or just existing structures within fantasy and sports when you change a rule so i would just say change the application of the rule make it uh slightly better um because otherwise i think like logan webb is going to lead the giants and wins with

like four yeah that's fun let's let's get excited about uh logan webb with four wins i mean it's the function of a a bad team working through these unusual circumstances of course but i think that'll that could happen on the race i think the number would be slightly higher but like uh if they have a roster spot for mckay uh have Richards and Beeks and Yarbrough on the back end, it could look very much like how the Giants are running things, except just with a lot of better pitchers. Yeah, and they've done it. Yeah, the Yarbrough situation from two years ago is just a classic example of usage impacting wins in a way that's very, very bizarre. So there's at least a path to fix this and to get it right.

I have to think there's a really interesting thing going on here with streaming. Because when you think about a 60-game season, the spread in all the stats is not going to be that large. Maybe it will be on the ratios. When it comes to counting stats and especially counting stats where traditionally the number is lower like wins.

Is wins like the smallest counting stat that we play in? Yeah. It's usually, well, runs, RBI, homers. It's not way off from saves. Okay, so saves and wins. But wins is, let's say say for all intents and purposes,

yeah, wins is lower. Come on, you've got to have a guy who has 18 or 20. Although you have more of them. Yeah. Anyway, let's just say that the spread in wins is lower, which I think it probably is. But the spread in wins is lower, and then you cut that in a third,

the spread isn't going to be even tighter. That's going to suggest, hey, I should stream, right? I should try to get as many wins as possible. Yeah, I mean, I think the broad strategy, and you still have to not choose terrible players as you do it, but your in-season management is going to be all about maximizing playing time to the best of your ability. So, yes, in the form of two-start weeks, that's going to be all about maximizing playing time to the best of your ability so yes in the form of two start weeks that's going to be huge avoiding players who

in a given week are going to sit more than usual because of matchups you know lefty righty those are those matter in any season anyway but they just become amplified in a season yeah everything's clustered more together but the one thing i will say about streaming is that the streamer types are the ones who are going to be hit the most by the expanded roster so in any given week you might say oh ryan arroyo's got two starts this week i love him and then you put him on your roster and he gets six innings right because they tandem trevor richards behind him and richards also gets six innings something yeah something i totally could do that i think that seems almost probable you know so um the streamer types are going to be the worst options for wins and bulk

because they are treated as streamer types by their major league teams basically yeah it's i know there's a varying level of excitement about the season as we inch closer to it but i'm excited to see how this works out i just hope that like no one makes like long-term decisions about the efficacy of an analyst or even a player in this season because there's going to be so many different things that are going to happen. Like a star gets COVID and what if he has a bad recovery and it's more like a month? Well, if you had a month out of this season, oh boy. I think it's going to be really tough at every corner of the player pool though because someone who does very well in a 60 game season especially a young player

like what if lubav what if louise robert has a monster 60 game stretch this year and is a first round he's already 2021 he's already a guy that people like a lot. He's locked in financially, so it won't be a tragedy for him financially. There could be players that... There are definitely players that this is a tragedy financially. Mookie Betts just went from $350 million to $18 million, taking the qualifying. Yeah, yeah. The amount of money that the owners are going to save later, we can't even fully grasp that yet.

That's so bad. The players are going to take the hit over time in the form of smaller free agent contracts and in other ways. That's inevitable. But I've been thinking a lot about just how are we going to step back in this offseason? If we do get a 60-game season and look at any players who showed significant skills growth or significant skills loss,

how are we going to analyze that in the framework of, okay, well, there was a lot going on in 2020. It was a pandemic year. It started late. There was this long pause. Teams didn't have a lot of time to adjust rosters were different it was such a strange year in so many ways what will this season mean toward future future performance i mean can projection systems use the 60 games we get from this season the same

way they would use stats from previous seasons or should they be discounted in some way? I mean, like I just, I think it leads to all these different outcomes. I was actually going to say, I will try, I will probably Hugh closer to projections than I might in any given other year,

because they are for the most part equipped for this. And the reason I know they're equipped for this is because they have to do in-season projections. So any projection system that you know that does in-season projections already is equipped to handle that relationship between smaller sample sizes and future projections, right? So the weight should be correct based on the shortened duration of the season. It should not over or under correct. Right, because if you see steamer updated or the bat updated, which means the rest of season projection or the final season projection given the rest of the in-season projections. When you see those in-season projections, they basically say,

okay, we've played 30 games and this thing is a little bit more stable. I'm regressing this thing more than this thing because, uh, this thing has been shown to become stable faster. You know what I'm saying? So like the, the projection systems can do that better than our brains in some ways. Um,

it'll be toughest with the young players that are getting their first, uh, taste of the big leagues, of course, because MLEs are tricky. The relationship between minor league and major league stats are tricky. So, yes, actually the Robert thing that you bring up, or Robert thing, is exactly right.

Yeah, I could just see him having this great 2020 season and becoming a first-rounder, and I can also see myself being very skeptical because, Hey, it was awesome, but it was only 55 or 58 games. Yeah. Like if he, if he strikes out 28% of the time and has like a three 20 batting average,

uh, and, and powers and steals, people will look away from the 28% or they'll find reasons to, to prove that a 28% strikeout person can do this, but kind of maybe leave the wayside to all the other 28% strikeout person can do this, but kind of maybe leave the wayside to all the other 28% strikeout people that have terrible batting averages. Yeah, we'll probably have a conversation about him that's not totally unlike conversations we've had about Keston Hira,

you know, hitting over 300 at a high K rate. Yeah, Tatis. And that makes sense. I mean, just given the type of player that both of those guys are and the type of player that we expect Luis Robert to be. But tons of adjustments to be made in this 2020 season. And again, as we said at the top, everything we're talking about right now could be flipped completely upside down by a rejection. Yeah, that's true, the rejection. But even the injury bit, know i'm i'm we

talked about a little bit with the getting ready for the season and how it'd be i think injury risk is heightened for pitchers but you know i was talking to a hitter who said that he thinks there'll be a lot of oblique injuries for hitters because it's related to this timing thing and not really getting what they need from a pitching machine so you know there are there are some live abs being thrown around the big leagues but i just wonder how many of those live abs are at 94 miles an hour um you know so and and then let's say we're having like this intra-squad type spring how many of those intra-squad type interactions will be at 94 miles an hour and will we even have scouts there to even know how how how pitchers are sitting and that's you know it's maybe not the be-all end-all to know spring training velocity, but it's really, especially when it comes to large changes in spring training velocity,

it is meaningful. And I just wonder if we're going to know spring training velocities at all. They'll be in parks that have spring training velocity, but would they put that on the TV clicker? Will we even see these intra-squad games? Oh my gosh. Teams will have that information. Every time you think you've figured, every time you figure something else like this out,

you have like eight more questions, you know? Yeah, teams will have it and they'll keep it. I don't know if they're going to share it with all of us. I think that's a fair question to ask as well. But they'll want to put something on TV because there's nothing been on TV. So am I going to turn on the TV here in San Francisco and see an at-bat between Mike Yastrzemski and Jeff Samarja?

You could see something like that. I just keep thinking of the KBO streams. Those were done by individual teams. I don't know if major league teams are going to go that far to reach out to their fans and say, hey, here's the Brewers inter-squad stream for today. Well, I'm just thinking about the regional sports networks. They're hurting right now.

Nobody's watching them. Yeah, you could put... They would want to put it on, I think. We have a distribution method. So I would say that they're likely to be on. I'm not sure that anybody's going to watch them because there's not even the competition aspect, really. You're playing yourselves.

Uh, those RSNs have almost no other content to show. I mean, like I, I couldn't name one other show that currently airs on Fox sports, Wisconsin. No, no clue what they're running right now.

Like I, I only watch games on that channel and seen, I've seen a few sometimes that just, it's just on because I was watching the game last night. I'm like, what is this? they've got some golf stuff like there's some like there's some gambling yeah there's some gambling uh show that's always on i don't even know but um i and now that i'm thinking back most spring training podcasts do not have have the velocity the question though is that most of the spring training broadcasts

are from stadiums that don't have the velocity listed in the spring training stadium. So it'll be weird to be watching a broadcast of the Giants' spring training game from Oracle Park in San Francisco and not have the velocity on it. Well, at that point, yeah, they just got to turn it on. And it would be there. It's there. They'd be choosing not to be choosing in the park it's like well we don't want you to know

that our pitchers are throwing 87 like okay yeah they might not want you to know oh and i haven't even gotten into hawkeye dude i mean this is amazing this hawkekeye, Hawkeye, the new tracking technology, it produces like the one thing about stack has at the beginning, everyone said was, Oh, you know, the reason why we have to have savant and do chop up the data for you is

because you're, you're a little computer at home, honey, it couldn't handle this. You know, um, who, who are you?

Who was that? Who said that oh i don't know if anybody like literally said that way but that was there was there was definitely talk of like you know like stack cast is millions of megabits per whatever you know just like it's it's it's a large it's a large load but uh there's plenty of teams that took on that load and basically are chopping up stat cast data on their own. There are some teams that never did that and just take Savant's chopped up stats just like we do. Like they're literally teams looking at barrel rate.

That doesn't seem like the best way to go about it. To separate yourself from other teams? No. But then you take that away, StatCast, which is basically... I don't want to get it wrong, but it's like two or three cameras. You've got basically the two radar components, and then I'm not exactly sure how many optical cameras, but I think maybe just one optical camera that kind of captures pop flies

and tries to reintroduce that. So basically pop flies go past the TrackMan coverage up into the air, and so there's like an optical camera that catches it and, and, and reintroduces it back to track man data as it comes back to the ground, if that makes sense. So basically you're talking about two or three cameras. Hawkeye is like 12 cameras,

12 cameras, always on just, just gathering. And it's not gathering, you know, like track man is like trying to gather a signal in the noise of like, here's the ball and it's not gathering. TrackMan is trying to gather a signal and the noise of here's the ball and here's a player and that sort of stuff

and trying to produce movement numbers for each of those things. Optical data is optical data. It's everything. You can't just let something drop out. It's the blade of grass. You know what I mean? So it's another blade of grass you know what i mean so it's it's it's

another magnitude of data and i was asking around before all this hit you know are you guys ready for this amount of data did you buy buy a bunch of servers do you have the like the the the bandwidth to handle this and most of the team said i don't know dude like i said, I don't know, dude. Like, I don't know. And I'm asking analysts, right, who are – some are like, you know, we'll get to that. I'm like, you'll get to that. It's spring training. Hawkeye is going to start.

So throw that in. And then now think about all the teams and how they acted and how they acted about saving millions of dollars. I don't want to cast aspersions, but I'm fairly sure that the Oakland A's took that pick to not pay him. That first round pick.

Who's not signed, surprisingly. Who wanted like $6 million and they picked him at a slot that was $2 million in order to save $2 million! So if they're going to try and like $6 million, and they picked him at a slot that was $2 million in order to save $2 million. So if they're going to try and save $2 million, they're not going to spend the money on computing. And so who knows what they're going to do. Just take whatever Savant gives them.

Now, Savant costs money. Like Bam and Tango, that group like that costs money is bam making enough they're talented people who get paid and i and i'm not i'm not calling for the jobs at all like i think they do a really good job and i love i love this stuff i'm saying like our baseball team's gonna want to like save money there and then if they do do that who's tracking the data so i think this will be a crazy season from lots of different angles we set up hawkeye but we actually didn't plug in anything to track and record what it was monitoring or we just don't have the computers set up to to take in all the data uh i think uh probably that's been thought about on the league level i i think it's more on the on the team level that not everyone is prepared

uh for that data and um so i don't think teams will necessarily get as much out of this especially in this short season as they would hope to. But, uh, to be fair, you know, when, when pitch FX landed, uh, the first two seasons, the pitch type,

um, uh, classifications were terrible. Um, and when we had stat cast, we, you know, as much as they tried to give it a three year run up and stuff,

uh, of running concurrently. And as much as stack S had been around and teams were used to it already, I mean, I'm seeing TrackMan had been around and teams were used to it already, there were still some bumps in the road. I think you might remember some of the stuff about the pop-ups. Like, you know, they weren't really catching pop-ups and really low grounders that well at first.

So they had to add the optical camera. And, you know, they were definitely, they didn't have the suite of stats right away. It was kind of just like average exit velocity and stuff like that at first. But the thing that's also true about Hawkeye is where Trackman had about three years concurrently, Hawkeye had about a month. One month. One month. And that was a month that got you know shut down so

no no they i'm saying they were running concurrently last year hawkeye was set up last year september you're referring to september last yeah you're talking about this year being like the first time it was all turn you're right it did start up well i don't think it was in the spring training stadiums yet. And then there's also the problem of Rangers, the Rangers' new ballpark. They have zero. So everybody has about one month, and then the Rangers have zero.

It's important to have both systems running for calibration. Just so you can say, oh, what TrackMan called 95 miles an hour exit velocity, Hawkeye is calling 95 and a half. Yeah, you can adjust your baselines accordingly. We have to either adjust Hawkeye back or go back to all the StatCast numbers and dress them up or whatever. We have to make a decision about that.

So that's happened in 19 parks, but only for a month. And even when I was asking my analyst friends about it, they weren't sure how much their team was asking my analyst friends about it, um, they weren't sure how much their team was doing and who was doing it. So, um, yeah, well,

you know, we'll figure it out, I guess. Yep. It's going to be a lot of fun sifting through all of this, uh, as everything plays out top performers in business and sports often attribute their success to their morning routine, whether it's waking up early, setting their goals for the day, exercise, or meditation.

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here in the next couple of weeks. The first question comes from Tom. This is one you alluded to a little bit earlier, Eno. Tom writes, you've mentioned many times that 26 is the peak age for hitters. I'd love to get more thoughts on the peak age for starting pitchers. Eno talked recently about how this is hard given a number of variables, including prior health, such as Tommy John surgeries, pitch mix, how they adjust to lower fastball velocity, etc. But are there any signs we could look toward now for a pitcher's lasting value as they get older? If you look at Scherzers and Verlanders, what about them could we have identified years ago to project their continued success? So great question from Tom. First thought I had when I saw

this question was Scherzers and Verlanders are kind of extreme outliers, but the general question is a really good question. Is there something that we could have seen at an earlier age with those guys that might have put us on the path to sticking with them maybe longer in Keeper and Dynasty leagues or even just in Redraft, continuing to go back to the Welks? I know there are some people who've been staying away from Scherzer and Verlander for a while now expecting them to fall off and you know it really hasn't happened yet yeah yeah and i think that one thing that's that was surprising to me in the command plus sort of portion of um my analytical career like this this most recent bit, was that Max Scherzer has good command plus. He has decent command plus numbers. I always thought of him as a control, not command guy,

that he basically had great movement and threw to the middle of the zone and let that stuff move to the sides, basically. But he actually shapes his pitches really well. I have a feeling that it's his slider command that has been a big part of his ability to stave off velocity. And then there's Verlander, who's, I think, an extreme outlier because of his lack of velocity loss.

It's incredible how hard he still throws at this age. Yeah. So I think that velocity is actually a really important way to get in and scherzer's actually kept his velocity up pretty high too so both of those um are outliers because the the traditional trend for velocity and this is a little bit old because this is from 2012 but i think it's true for everybody bill petty did a piece where he did starting pitcher agent curves relief relief pitcher agent curves. And the normal trend for velocity is as you are born,

you begin to start dying. Like it just goes down. You lose about a half tick off of your velocity on average by 23. You've lost a full tick by 26. And then you've lost two ticks by 28 for starters. Right? And it's even worse for relievers. Relievers might actually gain a little bit, but they've lost a half tick.

Well, maybe it's not actually worse. It just looks more stark at the end because they've lost a half tick by 27. They're still able to throw closer to max, a full tick by 31 and two ticks by 33. However, their strikeout rate is just, exactly mirrors their velocity. So a relief pitcher's strikeout rate is just exactly mirrors their velocity so a relief pitcher's strikeout rate ages exactly as much as their velocity whereas a starting pitcher's strikeout rate ages much more softly than their than their velocity so already we have a clue about how

these different pitchers age relief pitchers age uh more in tune with their velocity starting pitchers have something else going for them that helps them age now you look at fip just use fip because it's easy uh fip for starting pitchers basically is steady all the way till 28 there is no slough off in FIP until after 28 on starting pitcher-agent curves. However, FIP for relievers is at zero, like, you know, wherever they are, when they're at 23 years old, it just goes up from there.

And so relievers basically, even if they can keep their velocity okay long term, they basically enter the league and get worse over time. So now we have a clue that starting pitchers do age a little bit older. So even when we're finding out that hitters are peaking at 26, we're finding out the starting pitchers are peaking at 28, maybe 29. And that's a significant difference there already. And what is the source of that? Well, we know it's not necessarily velocity, so it has to be

some other things. And what I would postulate is that it's command slash mechanics. if you look at uh walks per nine for starting pitchers that is actually one of the few stats that gets better uh until they get to be about it doesn't cross zero until 33 years old so starting pitchers generally have better command uh have better uh mechanics and that's why they're starting pitchers. The other thing that makes you a starter over a reliever is number of pitches. So I would absolutely look at pitchers with young pitchers with a good command plus that have many pitches. And when I think of that, one of the first that comes to mind is Zach Gallin and I think Jack Flaherty is more of a Patrick Corbin type

and I'm not sure how either is going to age. They're mostly fastball slider guys that figure something else out. But if you want, you want to think about Granke. So you're not thinking about Woodruff necessarily as aging super well or Frankie Montas who just added his third pitch you're thinking about Zach Gallin you know you're thinking about

Urias has four pitches at least you think about Ergwitty you know are there any names that come to mind when I think of like good command plus like good command plus, good command, many pitches, young pitcher? Yeah, Mike Clevenger I think was part of this email too. I kind of truncated the question.

He's a little older than you'd expect. He's had some injuries, so he's a little more complicated. 99 command plus too, so it's not actually standout command plus for a starter. I've been looking at your piece from about a month ago when you were trying to define an ace and based on pitches with 100 plus for Command Plus

Clevenger has three of those and he's got three with a stuff of 100 plus. Two of those pitches are 110 plus. But he also has the injury history I don't know. I definitely saw his name and decided not to say it. What about his teammate, Shane Bieber? I think he's in.

He has a chance to be more of a Jack Flaherty, Patrick Corbin type, but his changeup actually rates as above average by stuff, and he does throw four pitches. So not necessarily a ton of the time so i think beaver's also um kind of on the line uh but gallon to me is like somebody that just like pops up there's just like oh yeah he's got lots of pitches command of all of them decent velocity like me if i need to pick a grant a future cranky it's that gallon yeah that's pretty consistent with some of the things we've talked about with gallon I think over the better part of at least six months or so now I mean I've called him the people's sleeper before because of all the the hype that

he was getting back at at first pitch Arizona man that that feels like a long time ago. But I think he's a sound choice for someone that will age very well and reach a very high level. People are justified in how much they like him. I think it definitely makes a lot of sense. So, yeah, it's a great question from Tom. There's a lot of good pitching questions that have been in our mailbox, so we're going to dive into those, especially as we get to the point where we can start putting out new rankings for this upcoming season. That process is underway for me behind

the scenes, probably still going to wait for some more progress on this final 2020 season plan before moving all the way through with those. There's one other email that caught my eye for this week. It came from Bruce, and it was about this idea that he's calling it a lemonade league. So he writes, my head-to-head league has been brainstorming short season formats and curious what we think about this.

It might actually be a good show topic. I think it is short season format ideas. So what they tried to do was set up a league. It's a 10-week league with six weeks of regular season using an all-play schedule, which was based on auly 20th start date running through the end of august so you can tinker accordingly and push it back into the first week of september if you have to they wanted to go 20 man rosters with 17 hitters and three team pitching staffs so you're taking out a lot of these concerns that we were talking about in this episode, tandem starters, guys only going maybe three to four innings initially,

all those different problems and saying, you know what, let's go team pitching staff. And this is a points league. So they've got a pretty elaborate point system set up where wins are worth 20, losses are minus 10, saves are 15. So it's a really creative solution to the problem and you know one of the questions that accompanied this email was would you go dodgers pitching staff or someone like acuna or yelich or trout with the first pick and it just it adds some pretty interesting strategy wrinkles while trying to take on some of the pitcher concerns that we have. Oh man, that's tough because there's very few places where you

really see like a projected pitching staff number. And then all of those numbers won't have the DH for the National League yet. It's true. If you just look at runs allowed per game, though,

the Rays last year, the Rays are projected to have the fewest runs allowed per game, and they've been pitching to DHs. So the Rays, Dodgers, Mets, Padres are probably the top four picks with the Yankees and Nationals and Astros right there. And Cardinals. I honestly don't see enough of a separation there to make my first pick a starting staff.

I'd be pretty happy, even with Cole gone, to settle in with the Astros or the Padres. I think they have a lot of young pitchers and could have a really good year with runs allowed on the, you know, on the correct side of the error bar, basically. And then the Mets starting staff is, you know, even with Thorgan is top heavy, but their bullpen is actually underrated.

Even when I simmed them in OTP, like Delon Batances had like a 16k9 a nine walks per nine and like a 170 ra i've seen some crazy walk rates in that game like i was looking at the athletics sim the one where i ran the padres you ran the reds and i was looking at the brewers because they were surprisingly bad and Josh Hader I think he walked like 80 hitters or something insane in like 97 innings and gave up 21 home runs like it was just the weirdest thing I'd seen in any of the sims so far but I think you're right about the Mets maybe just looking at last year you look at uh FIP as a. They were sixth in MLB. They did it last year with a few things that went wrong.

Not having Noah Syndergaard this season is definitely a hit. Wheeler's gone. But if that bullpen is good. But they added some bullpen. Yeah, they added some bullpen. And I would think that Familia Diaz and Batances are all decent bets to bounce back. Yeah, there's definitely a nice range for them on the positive side. But I think that would be back end because of the DH factor.

So I think if I did rank these, I think I would go Rays, Dodgers, Padres, Yankees Nationals. Yankees are up there. Braves. I mean, especially when you think about how wins are going to be valued in a league like this. Yes. You get the team win, at least. Yeah. You get the team win, which in this scenario, just to give you an idea.

That downgrades the Padres a little bit, yeah. Home runs are worth five in the scoring system that was sent to us, and wins are worth 20. I mean, that's a... Well, so Cardinals should go up a little bit then with the home run factor. It's kind of nice to think about wins just... Oh, you meant home runs hit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, home runs hit.

But are home runs allowed as a stat for the pitching staff? No, it's just minus one for the hit and then minus three for the earned run plus any other earned runs that came with it. But still, maybe move the Cardinals up into that group too because they should get some wins. Maybe they should be slightly ahead of the Padres because they have very similar runs allowed production,

but the Cardinals are projected to win a lot more games. I do like this idea as one way to take it head-to-head. And just say, hey, let's lean into this weird season. Let's try something different I do like this idea as one way to take head-to-head league. And just say, hey, let's lean into this weird season. Let's try something different and try to make it a little bit more predictable and still have fun with it. And another idea that I had, somebody asked me today about what they should do with their head-to-head league. And one thing that I could think of is that I have seen this done before. I think it's very much dependent on what platform you're on, but I have seen two matchups in one week.

Yes, playing two head-to-head games. So Team A plays Team B and Team C in week one. Yeah, you could do that. You could play three or four, I guess, instead of doing all play. You could kind of, again, certain sites can do it, others can't. I think someone like Fantrax probably is your absolute best bet for anything customizable. But you do need to think about ways to make this work yeah cbs if you're paying

that they'll do a lot of cool stuff but um yeah fan tracks has done some really cool um customization stuff so i would i would uh i'd ask around on that one maybe it's time to move a platform based on who can uh cater to your wishes more. And then our fan graphs, auto new, regular league, the staff league, is considering just going from head-to-head to points, to points roto for a season. I think this is one of those things where it makes things easier for you as a league to switch to Roto for a year than it does to try and force in a bigger schedule head-to-head.

Just from a how the sites work standpoint. Yeah. in you know the argument that's pro head-to-head is that um uh you you're not like you can move up and down the standings easier i think is that part of the argument it's like you don't you could like make trades and be a better team and get out of the basement easier than if you're doing roto and you just things didn't go well in the first month and then you're just at the bottom trying to work up, you know? I think that's part of the argument. If that is part of the argument, then this season is for you.

It holds up better. Like you can start slowly and then go crazy and catch up. Yeah, it's going to be a lot more volatile. But if the part of the argument is that you really just like trash talking and going up against somebody in that sort of head-to-head format, then I guess you have no choice but to try and do multiple matchups in a week

or do lemonade league. Yeah. As Bruce writes, when MLB gives you lemons, make lemonade laced with vodka. I like the creativity. I like the creativity. I like the spirit. And just to answer that question, I'd be more inclined to take the individual elite hitters as opposed to the Dodgers, but I definitely understand why there's a debate there. Especially because the Rays are so close.

I'd love to get Mike Trout and then the Rays on the way back. And I feel like Rays on the way back or Cardinals, I'd feel okay about that. Yeah. I think the Cardinals are more likely to be there. I think the Rays are probably a first-round pick in a setup like this with each team only having three staffs and not wanting to get caught at the bottom.

There's some things that could go horrible. Maybe there's an angle, though, to say, you know what? I'm going to punt it. I'm going to take whatever's left, and maybe I'll get lucky. Maybe I won't be terrible. Maybe I'll just be okay. There's maybe an argument for that. The Rangers are projected to have a terrible staff,

but we've known that they've done some really cool things with pitchers in the past, and we also know they're moving into a new stadium that you know the effects are unknown so rangers as a staff is are interesting the mariners have a lot a few at least uh ready to go type pitchers if they end up coming into the big leagues that could change their. Runs a lot of projection pretty strongly. But yeah, like the Royals, Rockies, Tigers, Orioles, I want no part of those. I think I'm more likely to fish in the middle of this pool, though, and go Oakland, Milwaukee. Teams that manage their staff really well, that they don't do it as well as the Rays because maybe they don't have the talent that the Rays have. their staff really well that they don't do it as well as the rays.

Cause maybe they don't have the talent that the rays have, but they at least maximize the value of what they have. And people have that fear that if it goes wrong, it's going to be ugly, but they're smart enough to get it right process wise. And they can exceed expectations. They can, uh, you know,

overperform against their projections. I think that's where I want to be. Here's a, here's another name for you. If you're fishing in the middle and, um, you can beat me later if you want but i got a text that's i asked about you know what are the giants doing about their pitching strategy and the text says they're going to tandem the shit out of this so that's exactly what we saw when we looked at staff right yeah they have to like how else are they gonna really put it together that might

work well i mean samarja for three innings all of a sudden i'm like you know all right you know logan webb for a couple innings like yeah okay i could i could start to see this coming together and they have a ton of of just i would call them cromulent, but not exciting Major League pitchers in that stuff. They probably have more starters than anybody else. Yeah, and they've got a couple guys that are listed in the bullpen, like Derek Rodriguez and Tyson Ross, that you could push for two or three innings if you really wanted to as well. So I think that's...

I think the Braves are also really set to do something interesting with their roster uh and the padres because they the one thing i will reserve on the padres is they they weren't as aggressive as i thought they could have been last year with some of their young pitching uh they kind of you know just made paddock a major league pitcher and that was it they could have been they could have been taking people up and down and patino and those kind of just made Paddock a major league pitcher and that was it. They could have been taking people up and down and Patino and those kind of guys. They could have been doing more of that. And the Braves have Alex Anthopoulos at the forefront.

So I could see them pushing the limits a little bit and becoming more Razian, especially with their group of players. I mean, you know, in their starting pitching, you know, we've talked about who's going to make it between Sean Newcomb, Kyle Wright, and Bryce Wilson. Well, they could just say all of them. Yeah, even probably mix Ian Anderson in there a little bit too, if you're going to limit the exposure a bit. You know, Tukey's command issues, um, you know, have been, uh, you know, enough to make me think that he's disqualified from being, um, a starting pitcher

almost on the level of Newcomb. Um, but, uh, as a reliever, uh, you know, it's not as bad. He's, uh, his walk rate, uh uh is down a full batter per nine as a reliever last year um and and that has the potential to be better going forward but uh tuki just sent for two innings i'll take it too you know especially if uh you give some thought to how you base these tandems uh and you make sure that they come at you from different looks. I mean, a Newcomb-Tookie combo seems like that'd be pretty intense. Pretty sweet

nickname potential, I think, with that duo as well, which is always important when you're going to put together a couple pitchers for tandem starts. But thanks for the emails, Bruce and Tom, and again, many more emails to get to in the shows ahead. If you'd like us to answer a question, go ahead and send it our way, ratesandbarrelsattheathletic.com. Be sure

to spell out the word. And if you do that, you can also tweet at us. He's at Eno Saris. I am at Derek Van Ryper. And if you're enjoying the show on a platform that allows you to rate and review it, please take the time to do that. We greatly appreciate it. It helps other people find our show, which is good for us. The other way you could support us, of course, is to become a subscriber to The Athletic, which you can do at theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels. Get 40% off a subscription, thanks to the many of you who've already done that in the last several months or even in the last couple of years. We really appreciate that. That's going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with

you on Thursday. Thanks for listening.